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9th August 2012 Archive

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  • Microsoft and NYPD install big data crime-fighting system

    Domain Awareness System watching Big Apple

    Microsoft and the New York Police Department have teamed up to an information gathering system that is designed to identify and shut down criminal activity on the streets of the Big Apple. Dubbed the Domain Awareness System (DAS), the software links up police databases, CCTV camera footage, reports from over 3,000 radiation …

    Law 9 Aug 00:26

  • SCO keeps dying, and dying, and dying

    This time it might be for good, though

    The undead entity formerly known as SCO but lately doing business as The TSG Group – if you can call bleeding away cash on legal fees a business – has filed a motion in a Delaware court to convert its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case to Chapter 7, Groklaw reports. Under US law, Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows a company to restructure …

    Software 9 Aug 00:30

  • Curiosity phones home through Amazon cloud

    That’s no rover … it’s a cloud computer!

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) has outlined how its infrastructure was used to power mars.jpl.nasa.gov in order to “…deliver successfully engaging experiences of Mars to the public” without going titsup at peak traffic times. In a case study outlining the cloud rig assembled to bring news of Curiosity’s adventures from one world to …

    Science 9 Aug 01:21

  • DNA barcodes leap out of the lab

    Spray-on evidence for the CSI generation

    The South Australian government has backed the commercialisation plans of a locally developed DNA barcoding technology to be launched internationally as a security and authentication tool. Biotech outfit GeneWorks claims its DNA barcoding invention, which can invisibly mark a range of valued items, is compatible with forensic …

    Science 9 Aug 02:33

  • NetApp ANZ VP jumps ship

    Heading for nimbler vendor?

    Peter O'Connor, NetApp's Area Vice President for Australia, New Zealand and South East, has resigned from the company. The Reg understands O'Connor is bound for Nimble Storage, which recently opened an Australian office. NetApp's Australian office is one of the company's global success stories, as engagements at giant clients …

    Business 9 Aug 04:47

  • Tokyo Stock Exchange falters as IT problems return

    Sell! Sell! Sell!

    The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) suffered its second major systems outage this year on Tuesday (August 7th), suspending derivatives trading for over an hour and striking another blow to the capital’s reputation as a global financial centre. There’s little publicly-available information about the incident, which knocked trading …

    Business 9 Aug 05:16

  • Apple, Amazon, close password door after horse bolts

    Comment Australian bank dealt with this a decade ago, why can’t tech titans?

    Apple and Amazon have, in the wake of the grievous p0wnage inflicted on WiReD writer Mat Honan, changed their security procedures and no longer allow password changes to be made over the phone. Much is being made of how sloppy it was for both companies to allow this to happen. I've got worse news: this stuff has been going on …

    Security 9 Aug 05:31

  • PayPal parts company with major China partner

    Payments giant on lookout for fresh blood

    Global payments behemoth PayPal could be in for a spot of bother in Asia after a much heralded partnership with Chinese e-commerce platform DHGate.com, its biggest in the region, ended this week. The firm confirmed to The Reg that as of Monday DHGate does not accept PayPal as a payment method, although failed to elaborate on …

    Business 9 Aug 06:14

  • Amazon Kindle Touch Wi-Fi eBook reader review

    Wordy tappinghood

    Having so many unread books at home, the Amazon Kindle and its numerous variants never really captured my imagination. I just wasn’t that fussed about e-Books and using them was a slow burn, starting with iBooks on my iPhone – I’m blessed with good eyesight – followed by musing over tomes on an iPad 2. Finger friendly: Amazon …

    reghardware 9 Aug 07:00

  • Party like it's 1999: CDE Unix desktop REBORN

    Stirrings among Mars Curiosity screens

    The original Unix desktop, the Common Desktop Environment or CDE, is back. Seven years after Sun replaced it with GNOME on Solaris, the Open Group's Common Desktop Environment has returned, now fully open-source and with a modern Linux port. CDE was developed about 20 years ago as a unified desktop environment for all the …

    Operating Systems 9 Aug 07:34

  • How talent-spotting boffins help Team GB bag Olympic gold

    Amateurs plucked from obscurity, shoved into sporting history

    Fancy a trip to Rio in 2016? Getting on the British Olympics team might be one way of doing it. Sound ridiculous? Maybe not: Helen Glover, who last week won Britain’s first gold medal at London 2012 along with rowing partner Heather Stanning, only started rowing four years ago in 2008. London was her first Olympics competition …

    Science 9 Aug 08:03

  • Banking IT cowboys 'need whipping into shape by watchdog'

    It's not just dodgy bankers who need a slap

    The technology underpinning the UK's financial services sector needs urgent investment if regulators are to be able to spot potential abuses and prevent future financial crises, an influential report has claimed. Intellect, the trade association for the UK technology sector, said in its report (62-page/5MB PDF) that banks …

    CIO 9 Aug 08:22

  • Lincolnshire dangles ICT cash carrot over hungry suppliers

    Who wants £150m in contracts?

    Lincolnshire county council is to launch a procurement exercise later this year to investigate the provision of various support services, including ICT systems. A pre-tender document issued by the council says the estimated value of the deal is between £100m and £150m over five years. The contract – or contracts - which will …

    Government 9 Aug 08:38

  • Fujitsu tosses VMware cloud-in-a-box at biz newbies

    Skewered by a SKU

    EMEA private cloud wannabees can now enjoy servicing themselves with a single, ready-to-use, all-in-one Fujitsu private cloud product. The company's Dynamic Infrastructures for VMware vCloud converges 4 to 18 Primergy compute blades, up to 144TB of Eternus storage, Brocade networking and VMware's virtualisation and vCloud …

    Cloud 9 Aug 09:02

  • Snap suggests Apple out to 'screw' hardware hackers

    Flatblade, philips, pentalobe and now... WTF?!?!

    Apple is designing its own, entirely proprietary screw-head in a bid to prevent punters and repair shops getting inside its future iDevices. At least, it is if - and it's a very big 'if' - you take a piccy posted on the interweb at face value. Captioned "a friend took a photo a while ago at that fruit company, they are …

    reghardware 9 Aug 09:08

  • US and S Korea both claim first place on voice over LTE

    Rival operators in race to nick VoLTE glory

    Network operators from South Korea and the United States were both claiming victory on Wednesday after racing right down to the wire to become the first in the world to offer voice over LTE (VoLTE) services. South Korea’s largest operator, SK Telecom, and national rival LG U+ both announced VoLTE services would begin on …

    Broadband 9 Aug 09:26

  • Disaster strikes Doyenz disaster recovery cloud

    Plug pulled in the UK, says reseller

    Disaster has struck UK customers of the Doyenz rCloud disaster recovery service: it's apparently closing down. The rCloud service was launched in Blighty in November 2011, and is hosted in Interxion's London data centre. It claimed to be a disaster recovery service that could drastically reduce the time needed to restore …

    Storage 9 Aug 09:48

  • Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

    New study: Most of the time they just leave victims to die

    Housecats should be kept inside more often to keep them from their daily killing sprees, a study shows. KittyCam at the scene of the crime. Pic credit: National Geographic & University of Georgia Those cute kittens whose faces are peer from endless posts on Pinterest are actually predators, and a third of those trailed in a …

    Science 9 Aug 10:02

  • Samsung: We NEVER sniffed around RIM... or BlackBerry licence

    OS rental rumours denied after analyst causes stock flutter

    Samsung has once again slapped down rumours that were circulating about Samsung licensing RIM's next OS. Yesterday's prediction, which came in the form of a note to clients from a veteran analyst, pushed RIM's shares up 6 per cent. But Samsung was in touch with news agency Reuters first thing this morning to say it wasn't even …

    Financial News 9 Aug 10:20

  • Ouya Android games console to ship April 2013

    But you can order it now

    Ouya, the 'play Android tablet games on a telly' gadget, will be shipping in April 2013, the company behind it having been pledged a whopping $8.6m in crowdsourced funding - more than nine times the amount it was seeking. And it's taking orders. Slap down your local currency equivalent of $119 (£76), which includes $20 P&P, …

    reghardware 9 Aug 10:31

  • Mobile dinosaurs can gain (not just lose) from Over the Top rebellion

    Cash on table, but networks hedge bets with VoIP rivals

    As more people bypass their mobile operators to make voice calls and send messages, a new survey attempts to measure the potential losses and opportunities for WhatsApp, Skype and other so-called "Over the Top"* players. The poll by analyst outfit Mobile Squared grilled operators and smartphone users in 68 markets worldwide, …

    Mobile 9 Aug 10:38

  • Bucks muck chuck muck-up leaks 840 email addresses

    Council lets folks know how to get in touch with EVERYBODY

    About 800 people in Buckinghamshire had their email addresses leaked by their district council in an email about waste collection. Aylesbury Vale District Council sent out a message to 840 people about garden waste collection that had everyone's email addresses pasted into the main body of the missive. The council told The …

    Security 9 Aug 11:01

  • Dragons' Den badboy's Expansys back in the black ... just

    Networks and wireless op 'suffered' in UK

    Wireless tech web retailer and provider of mobile networks Expansys is back in the black – but only just – as currency headwinds, weak UK consumer spending and restructuring took a toll. The group, majority owned (41 per cent) by Dragons' Den investor Peter Jones, pushed up sales for the year ended 30 April by a third to £108. …

    Financial News 9 Aug 11:18

  • Zynga COO quits: Game over for John Schappert

    Bigwig legs it as Mafia Wars biz dwindles

    Zynga chief operating officer John Schappert has left the company as it struggles to recover from its poor financial performance and plummeting stock. The online gaming biz said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Schappert was off, but the firm was keen to point out that his exit had nothing to do with …

    Financial News 9 Aug 11:41

  • Micron shows off bits: Sneak peak at new SSDs, flash cards

    Company webcast: You need a flash foundry to be a real player

    You need combined flash foundry product smarts and controller technology to succeed in the flash business, and Micron says it has both. The semiconductor-maker has flash foundries and delivers both solid state drives (SSDs) and PCIe-connected flash cards – the single level cell P320h for example, which is used by EMC in its …

    Storage 9 Aug 12:03

  • Nokia straps Qt into ejector seat and hits the shiny red button

    App factory caught by new owner Digia

    Nokia's back-room clear out continues with the Qt platform being sold to Finnish firm Digia Oyj for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal 125 engineers will swap employers. Digia was a licensee of Qt, distributing commercial and freeware versions of the platform and development tools, but now it owns the whole shebang. Qt …

    Developer 9 Aug 12:22

  • Doctor Who gets one-off special to mark Time Lord's 50th year on telly

    Mark Gatiss pens An Adventure in Space and Time

    Doctor Who passes an important milestone in 2013 having - by then - been on British TV screens for 50 years. It's unsurprising then that the Beeb has decided to uncork a special one-off drama to celebrate the Time Lord's undying appeal with sci-fi fans. The telly show was first aired in glorious black and white on the BBC way …

    Media 9 Aug 12:43

  • LOHAN's fantastical flying truss sprouts tail

    Vulture 2 launch platform design shapes up nicely

    The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team has been bogged down over the last few weeks in hypobaric rocket motor tests, but we've also been busy firming up the design for the Vulture 2 launch platform - our fantastical flying truss. It's been a while since we last pondered this critical structure, which will be a …

    SPB 9 Aug 13:03

  • Make life easier on campus with a simpler LAN

    Three layers into one will go

    The campus LAN is probably the most common network in use today, but its customary trio of layers is coming under examination as the need to reduce costs, add wireless access and increase performance continues to grow. Back to basics: a campus LAN interconnects users in separate and multi-floored buildings in a smallish area, …

    Data Networking 9 Aug 13:13

  • Samsung to probe claims of underage workers, abuse at supplier

    Investigators from S Korean firm arrive in China today

    Samsung has said that it will probe allegations that one of its suppliers employs underage workers. The South Korean company's investigators are slated to arrive in China today. The New York-based China Labour Watch (CLW) released a report (PDF) earlier this week claiming that in three investigations during June and July, it …

    CIO 9 Aug 13:27

  • Gartner: UK PC market stayed on its knees in Q2

    Will 'solid growth' ever return?

    The UK PC market was lifeless in Q2 and apocalyptic beancounter Gartner is not sure the whether it can be fully revived ever again. Or maybe its just that PC disties are placing fewer, less sizeable orders in anticipation of slow summer sales – and with one eye on keeping inventory at more manageable levels after getting burnt …

    Hardware 9 Aug 13:59

  • US judge gives RIM its $147m back in patent spat

    Jury award overturned in Mformation case

    Beleaguered Canadian mobile firm Research in Motion has managed to get a patent verdict against it overturned, saving the BlackBerry maker $147.2m. A US court overturned the ruling that RIM had infringed on a patent of Mformation Technologies and said the firm no longer needed to hand over the jury award of $147.2m. …

    Law 9 Aug 14:26

  • Suppliers underwhelmed by UK's G-Cloud services catalogue

    Applicants down, suppliers falling off

    The number of tech companies lining up to join the government's G-Cloud service has dropped by nearly half with just over two weeks to go before new applications can be submitted. Existing suppliers, meanwhile, have left the government's directory of ICT services in the sky. The government on Tuesday blogged that there had …

    CIO 9 Aug 15:03

  • BSkyB deals Ofcom a blow in battle over telly sports prices

    Wins right to appeal against meddling of its crown jewels

    BSkyB has won a major victory in a five-year battle with the UK competition authorities over its crown jewels: its pay TV sports channels. Both Ofcom and the Competition Commission had decided that the pay TV market was not serving consumers, ordering Sky to wholesale its premium sports channels to arch rivals Virgin Media and …

    Media 9 Aug 15:26

  • Google pays just $22.5m to FTC over Safari tracking blunder

    More of a tickle than a drop and cough test

    As expected, Google has agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission a paltry penalty of $22.5m for its sneaky bypassing of the default privacy settings of Apple's Safari browser. The consumer watchdog confirmed in a statement today that Google had settled on charges that it "misrepresented privacy assurances to users" and …

    Law 9 Aug 15:51

  • Luminex rips virtual tape from data centres, shoves it in the cloud

    Joins the buzzword party with cloudy storage biz Nirvanix

    While EMC thinks the next move in storage is to rip the tape out of the mainframe and replace it with the virtual stuff, Luminex seems to be going one step further: by grabbing its virtual tape from the data centre and floating it up to the cloud. Mainframe virtual tape library (VTL) vendor Luminex has buddied up with cloud …

    Virtualization 9 Aug 16:18

  • VMware snacks on Pattern Insight's log tool

    Analyze this

    VMware has an insatiable appetite and billions of dollars in cash, so hardly a month goes by when it doesn't buy something. The server virtualization and soon-to-be network virtualization juggernaut – once it closes its $1.26bn acquisition of Nicira – has just snapped up the log analysis products of Pattern Insight – and taken …

    Virtualization 9 Aug 16:42

  • Oooh-la-la! 'iPhone 5' bares all, strokes tiny nano-SIM in pics

    Size does matter

    Apple's leaky supply chain has doled out pictures of the insides of what's claimed to be an iPhone 5, indicating that the forthcoming mobe will take nano-SIMs. Photos of what appears to be the next-gen handset fresh off a Chinese assembly line appeared on French site Nowhereelse.fe, and revealed the presence of a nano-SIM …

    Mobile 9 Aug 17:02

  • Red ink deeper at SGI as sales shrink

    Low margin deal hangover

    Jorge Titinger, who was tapped to be the CEO at server and supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics back in February, has his work cut out for him amind slowing sales and mounting losses. It is a situation that many CEOs at SGI (and at rival Cray) have found themselves in time and time again. But SGI is now in a new fiscal year …

    Servers 9 Aug 18:00

  • Oracle won't pull plug on Java SE 6 until 2013

    Aging platform gets one more reprieve

    Oracle is extending the official end-of-life date for its aging Java SE 6 software development platform a second time as it struggles to get the Java language development process onto a consistent, two-year release schedule. Had it stuck to its original roadmap, Oracle would have stopped providing public support and software …

    Developer 9 Aug 19:54

  • Google updates Chrome Flash plugin for security, stability

    Says it runs Flash content in Windows 8 better than IE10

    Just when you thought Adobe Flash was close to dying out on the web, none other than Google has stepped in to give the much-maligned rich media plugin a new coat of polish. The latest stable version of the online ad-slinger's Chrome browser for Windows includes a redesigned version of the Flash plugin that Google reps say will …

    Software 9 Aug 23:01

  • Locking in the NBN

    Beneath the covers, the network is getting closer to irreversible

    Supporters of Australia's government-backed National Broadband Network are fearful of what will happen if there’s a change of government in 2013, since the current federal opposition remains strongly committed to doing something else with the NBN. Exactly what the “something else” might be remains something we can only see …

    Broadband 9 Aug 23:09

  • Microsoft: It's not Metro, it's Windows 8

    That clears everything up then

    Microsoft has racked its collective brains to come up with a replacement name for what it had formerly called its Metro user interface, and after much deliberation, its new moniker will reportedly be ... Windows 8. Veteran Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley was the first to report the name change, citing unnamed industry sources …

    Windows 8 9 Aug 23:38