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22nd August 2012 Archive

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  • The Oatmeal hits $850,000 goal for Tesla museum

    Crowdsourcing brings in the bucks, again

    Cartoonist Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, is proving to be something of a fundraising machine with the success of his latest project, raising $850,000 to set up a museum honoring the great scientist Nikola Tesla. Tesla's old laboratory in Shoreham, New York (known as Wardenclyffe) is up for sale with a price tag of $1. …

    Science 22 Aug 00:18

  • Rackspace lands in Australia

    Takes hall in Digital Realty's local bit barn

    Rackspace will take possession of one data hall in Digital Realty's new Sydney data centre, and pack it full of kit to serve Australian customers. The company revealed the new data centre today at a press event at which Jim Fagan, its Managing Director for the Asia Pacific Region, said Australian customers are mad for cloud …

    Cloud 22 Aug 00:20

  • The problem with Foxtel’s call for NBN copyright cops

    Destroy the network to save the content

    Kim Williams of Foxtel has become the latest high-profile executive to demonstrate a complete misapprehension of what the NBN is. As reported here yesterday, Williams wants the National Broadband Network to become a “model” in its approach to piracy. Because he doesn’t understand the aims of the network, its architecture, or …

    Broadband 22 Aug 00:27

  • Apple, Samsung blast away in patent case closing arguments

    Jury decision 'could change the way competition works' in US

    They're done. Apple and Samsung have each given their closing arguments in the epic patent trial over whether the South Korean mobile maker infringed on Cupertino's iPhone patents. For the nine members of the jury, however, the next phase of the ordeal has only just begun. Weighing the three weeks of testimony to decide …

    Law 22 Aug 00:35

  • D-Wave goes public with 81-qubit protein modeling

    All together now: ‘It’s quantum, innit?’

    D-Wave – whose claims to have a working quantum computer have been met with skepticism and major contracts in equal measure – has published a paper in Nature in which it demonstrates the application of quantum annealing to protein folding analysis. Protein folding is a difficult problem in the classical world, because of the …

    Science 22 Aug 01:00

  • Don't bother with Big Data – listen to customers instead

    Analytics has a role, says telco innovator, but better insights come from your ears

    Dabbling with big data won't produce insights into how to improve a business as rapidly as listening to customers' interactions with a business, according to Michael Ossipoff, the Director of Capability and Innovation and Australia's dominant telco, Telstra. “Insights wont come from data, they'll come from observation,” …

    Business 22 Aug 02:39

  • Google facing irrelevance in China

    Local rival Qihoo drops Google from popular portal

    Google's key local partner Qihoo dropped has dropped the text ad giant from its popular portal site and promptly replaced it with its own newly launched service. A visit to Qihoo’s hao.360.cn directory site, which it claims gets more traffic than a similar page run by Baidu – hao123.com – shows the firm has indeed relegated …

    Business 22 Aug 03:25

  • Behold: China's robot noodle army!

    Coming soon to a restaurant near you?

    Former chef Cui Runguan has created an army of noodle-slicing robots that he hopes will staff restaurants across China. The 'Chef Cui' appears to be modelled on the upper torso of 1960s Japanese TV robot hero Ultraman, complete with rather sinister yellow flashing eyes. Its left hand holds the ball of noodle dough while the …

    Bootnotes 22 Aug 06:17

  • Foxconn certified as good employer, rights groups disagree

    Labour organisations want other Apple suppliers investigated

    The Fair Labor Association (FLA) has claimed Apple supplier Foxconn is ahead of schedule with a remediation plan in place at three factories to improve working conditions, but labour groups have warned that major issues still exist throughout Apple’s supply chain. The FLA’s latest report tracks progress at Foxconn’s plants in …

    Business 22 Aug 06:27

  • Ten Androids for under 100 quid

    Product Round-up Call for change

    It feels like yesterday smartphones were a luxury only afforded to those with sexy salaries, but as high-end devices push their predecessors down a peg – these yesterday's men are there for the taking for those on a shoestring. There's a fairly wide choice of attractive handset for less than £100 but you'll not find an iPhone …

    Phones 22 Aug 07:00

  • WikiLeaks' secrets weren't, says former MI5 chief

    Dame Stella Rimington wants pollies' TXTs on the record

    WikiLeaks' revelations of the “secrets” of global diplomacy weren't that secret, says Dame Stella Rimington, novelist and former Director general of MI5. Speaking in Australia, where she today delivered an address to the International Council on Archives conference , Rimington told The Reg that one of the issues public sector …

    Security 22 Aug 07:25

  • Facebook ordered to unmask anonymous trolls by beak

    We've axed web pests' accounts... bitch

    Facebook was given 24 hours to supply a court in Northern Ireland with the email addresses of account holders who used the site to post abusive messages about a Belfast company, according to press reports. Three staff members from the unnamed company have been targeted by messages on the site over a period of several months, …

    Law 22 Aug 07:32

  • Speaking in Tech: Can you sell technology without having AWESOME HAIR?

    Podcast We chat about this and other erm, storage and virtualisation puzzlers...

    It's all about virtualisation and the cloud this week at our enterprise techcast, hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is Vaughn Stewart, director of cloud computing and virtualisation evangelist at NetApp, who gives us the skinny on VMWorld, the latest in virtual storage gizmos …

    Virtualization 22 Aug 08:02

  • City strokes modest firms, promises to spend a few million on IT

    There, there. Your time will come, soon, ish

    Bristol City Council has announced changes to its ICT strategy aimed at ensuring that within the next three years 25 per cent of its annual technology budget will be spent with local SMEs. The council is planning a "more flexible approach" towards the procurement of ICT goods and services on which it spends about £25m each …

    Government 22 Aug 08:23

  • UK.gov's minimum booze price dream demolished

    Economists sink case, addicts will always sink cases

    Economists at the Office of Fair Trading have quietly demolished the UK government's case for minimum alcohol pricing. Minimum pricing regulations are likely to see more booze sold than ever, they predict, contrary to the government's desire to curtail alcohol consumption. Profiteering is also likely, with higher alcohol …

    Government 22 Aug 08:41

  • Apple's Cupertino comrades conspire to capture Russia

    'Direct sales invasion mulled'

    Apple is beefing up its presence in Russia, according to rumours in the Russian financial daily Kommersant. Apple has registered a company called Apple Rus and assigned Vitaly Morozk, the company’s local legal advisor, as its director general, reports the paper. Allegedly, opening stores in President Putin's back garden is not …

    The Channel 22 Aug 09:02

  • Curiosity preps for first Martian road trip

    Rover gets ready to roll three metres from landing site

    NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has wiggled its four corner wheels for the first time to get ready for its first drive across the surface of the Red Planet. The $2.5bn six-wheeled Martian nuclear truck has been sat still on its landing site for the last two weeks, but is now gearing up to trundle out on its mission to find signs …

    Science 22 Aug 09:25

  • NASA: WE'VE FOUND Four-toed NON-HUMAN FOOTPRINTS

    'Photos taken on Earth', insists amateur scientist

    US space agency NASA, one of the few organisations with probe craft operating beyond Earth orbit (for instance upon the surface of Mars and above planets and moons still further-flung) has stunned the world by releasing photos of a huge, four-toed footprint dating from more than 100 million years ago. 'Huge, armoured creature …

    Science 22 Aug 09:42

  • Everything Everywhere flogs 4G hand-me-downs to Three

    But what's this? 'Do not open until September 2013'

    Everything Everywhere has flogged its excess 1800MHz radio spectrum to rival mobile operator Three with one rather important condition. The sale briefly raised the possibility of the UK having competing 4G networks this year until EE crushed that dream by failing to relinquish the bands until September 2013. The European …

    Broadband 22 Aug 10:02

  • LOHAN turns up the heat on Vulture 2 motor

    Space-grade toaster to keep spaceplane engine warm

    We know you lot like a nice bit of kit, so you'll certainly enjoy the latest piece of high-tech gadgetry to turn up at the SPB's mountaintop headquarters. As you know, we've been busy conducting experiments with the Rocketry Experimental High Altitude Barosimulator (REHAB) hypobaric chamber, to see if we can persuade solid …

    SPB 22 Aug 10:17

  • Patch Tuesday deja vu: Adobe patches Flash ... again

    Double-take for IT admins

    Adobe yesterday released a Flash Player update just one week after its patch Tuesday release, providing a bit of extra hassle for admins for the second Tuesday in a row. The latest (APSB12-19) update for Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR addresses six cross-platform flaws in Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Android …

    Security 22 Aug 10:28

  • Councils launch eight spying ops on Brits A DAY using RIPA

    Law designed for spooks, used against smokers

    Blighty's councils are conducting an average of eight covert surveillance operations A DAY using laws intended to regulate serious crime investigations. Kent County Council is the worst offender, clocking up 315 operations in three years, according to a survey of spying requests made under the Regulation of Investigatory …

    Law 22 Aug 10:44

  • Nikon snaps first Android-based camera crown

    All it needs now is a phone

    Nikon today unveiled its first Android-based point-and-shoot camera, the Coolpix S800C. The smart snapper runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and connects through Wi-Fi to provide full support for Google Play apps, easy image upload to social networking sites and GPS tagging functionality to boot. With a plethora of photo-related …

    Hardware 22 Aug 10:53

  • Boffins zapped '2,000 bugs' from Curiosity's 2 MILLION lines of code

    Billion-dollar laser-firing nuke tank - what could go wrong?

    With a $2.5bn price tag, a 350-million mile journey and 2 million lines of C and some C++ code, the only bugs NASA wants its Curiosity rover to find are those possibly beneath the Martian surface. And it may not be a particularly glamorous job, but software analysis outfit Coverity was the company tasked with "ensuring that …

    Security 22 Aug 11:00

  • Doctor Who to hit small screen on 1 September

    Time Lord countdown to Series 7 begins

    The latest instalment of Doctor Who, which will feature Amy Pond's "heartbreaking" exit, is set to air in the UK on BBC1 on 1 September. Series 7 will also debut the Time Lord's latest sidekick, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, who will make her first appearance during the Christmas special episode. Before that, Who fans are …

    Media 22 Aug 11:16

  • It's not just crap PC sales: Dell's storage revs are also slipping

    Slump hits across the board

    Has the spark has gone out? Despite acquisitions Dell's storage revenues have been declining for over a year. The effort to develop synergies between the products hasn't delivered the sales goods yet. Is it time for a re-think? Dell has just announced second fiscal 2013 quarterly results with revenues 8 per cent down year-on- …

    Storage 22 Aug 11:33

  • Everything Everywhere to be Nothing Nowhere in rebrand

    Reg readers! Suggest new name for mobile telco NOW

    Everything Everywhere will change its identity before the end of 2012 - but will NOT merge its Orange and T-Mobile brands, which will continue to confuse punters indefinitely. Orange and T-Mobile are, and will remain, consumer brands for Everything Everywhere, the UK's largest mobile operator. EE will announce a new moniker in …

    Mobile 22 Aug 11:46

  • AMD snubs hackers' tiny package, will fix raided blog

    As perps turn fire on Philips' websites

    AMD hopes to heave its blog back online soon after hackers broke into the site. The chip fryer downplayed the attack, and said a small number of encrypted account passwords were lifted. The records were subsequently dumped online in a 32KB file by the blog raiders. Nonetheless AMD has reset its scribes' login credentials as a …

    Security 22 Aug 12:01

  • OpenStacker stuffs free Moxie on USB

    Piston Cloud repackages OpenStack for devs

    The people who stuffed an enterprise-ready version of the OpenStack cloud onto a USB stick have devised a cut-down freebie edition to get you started. Piston Cloud has released Airframe, a scaled-down version of its Enterprise OpenStack product, allowing users a taste of the OpenStack installation and management process that …

    Developer 22 Aug 12:22

  • Apple's patent insanity infects Silicon Valley

    Open ... and Shut Patent trolls go nuclear

    Spotting a patent troll used to be easy. They were the ones who sold lawsuits, not products. Companies like Intellectual Ventures picked up the title "patent troll" from critics as they went beyond buying and licensing patents to suing companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard over claimed violations. That is, until the industry …

    Law 22 Aug 12:43

  • SkyTap embeds Cloud Foundry in app dev cloud

    Imports and exports from private VMware virty servers

    The floating application development laboratory called SkyTap is burrowing deeper into the VMware fold and making itself more useful to coders by supporting the Cloud Foundry framework on its eponymous dev and test cloud. The company, funded in part by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is also firing up new templates for SkyTap that …

    Virtualization 22 Aug 13:01

  • Ofcom vows to smooth out ISP complaint complaints

    'Inconsistencies' found in dispute handling

    Pissed-off punters can now benefit from what communications watchdog Ofcom has described as "an improved experience" when complaining about mobiles, landlines and broadband. The regulator said it has held a major review of its Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services, which act as middlemen between internet providers and …

    Broadband 22 Aug 13:28

  • Ubisoft: 'Vast majority of PC gamers are PIRATES'

    Free-to-play inevitable?

    Ubisoft reckons just one in ten PC gamers legitimately source games, using the figure as justification for a move towards more free-to-play and web browser-based titles. The French software publisher has eyes set on growing its PC market share - but insists the only way forward is to offer games completely free, dangling the …

    Games 22 Aug 13:57

  • Superworm Crisis eats Macs, VMware and - shock - Windows

    Don't panic, don't panic - OK, panic! Panic!

    Security watchers have discovered a virus strain that compromises VMware virtual machines as well as infecting Mac OS X and Windows computers and Windows Mobile devices. It demonstrates previously unseen capabilities in the process. The Crisis malware typically arrives in a Java archive file (.jar) and is typically installed …

    Security 22 Aug 14:33

  • Apple TV: Rubbish, you don't like documentaries – I'll just flick to porn

    Cupertino awarded patent on intuitive channel-switching

    Fed up of having to pick up the remote controls to change channel when something boring comes on? Apple has just patented a broadcast device that will know - in advance - whether you're going to be interested in that nature documentary, and will change to something better so you don't have to. In patent 8,249,497 'Seamless …

    Media 22 Aug 14:59

  • New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

    Fission not just safe and affordable: sustainable too

    Since the Fukushima meltdown - as a result of which, not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation - we know that nuclear power is safe. New discoveries by US scientists have now shown it's sustainable as well. That's because US government scientists have just announced research in which they've massively …

    Science 22 Aug 15:13

  • Windows 7 hotspot hacker turns to software bonding

    Wi-Fi, 4G, wired, whatever you've got – borged into one powerful stream

    The company responsible for hacking a Wi-Fi hotspot into Windows 7 is turning its hand to software bonding, promising tens of megabits over the slowest of cellular connections. The company has prototype Windows code which can bond multiple IP connections into a single stream, merging multiple Wi-Fi, cellular or physical …

    Applications 22 Aug 15:38

  • Google screams into top Opera soprano gig - again

    Norwegians seal two-year search deal for browser

    Google will continue to serve as the default search engine for Opera Software's web browser for another two years, the Norway-based company confirmed today. The partnership between the ad giant and Opera applies to the outfit's mobile and desktop versions of its browser. Like other software of its ilk, Opera provides a little …

    Applications 22 Aug 16:01

  • Tech Data on its crappy Q2: Don't blame us, blame the strong dollar

    Distributor's profits drop in lacklustre second quarter

    Distribution giant Tech Data, daddy of Computer 2000 and Azlan in the UK, has disappointed investors with a blip in its second quarter results. Net sales for the firm slipped 7.6 per cent from the same quarter last year to $5.96bn while net income dropped 26 per cent to $38.3m from $51.7m in 2011. The company said that …

    The Channel 22 Aug 16:26

  • Bogus Android markets seized in FBI software crackdown

    'You wouldn't steal an Android app...'

    The US Department of Justice reports that three domains selling stolen Android applications have been seized in a combined operation by the FBI and international police. Visitors to applanet.net, appbucket.net, and snappzmarket.com hoping for hooky apps will be disappointed to see the FBI's warning page showing that the Feds …

    Security 22 Aug 17:20

  • T-Mobile USA: Our new unlimited data plan is actually unlimited

    Carrier compensates for iPhone-less inadequacy

    Wireless carrier T-Mobile has what it describes as a "bold" new feature in store for its upcoming unlimited data plan: This time, it's actually going to be unlimited. Like most other major American mobile carriers, T-Mobile's current "unlimited" plans have their limits. The amount of data that punters can download is not …

    Mobile 22 Aug 19:47

  • Curiosity spins its wheels and shoots up the Martian landscape

    Pics NASA renames touchdown point 'Bradbury's Landing'

    The driving team at NASA has taken Curiosity out for its first spin around the landing site ahead of its first road trip, as well as shooting up the area with a laser to get the initial readings about what exactly it is trundling across. On Wednesday, Curiosity advanced 15 feet (4.5m) to give a full rollover of the drive …

    Science 22 Aug 21:23

  • HP posts $8.9bn loss on slow sales, charges in Q3

    Revenues down in nearly every division

    As expected, Hewlett Packard's earnings slumped in the three months ending in July, causing the PC maker to post a third-quarter loss of $8.9bn, or $4.49 per share, which was in line with the high end of analyst estimates. Much of that loss can be attributed to an $8bn write down of its Enterprise Services division, which is …

    Financial News 22 Aug 22:27

  • Clarke tags new RuggedCom vuln

    Hard-coded RSA key provides new backdoor

    Justin Clark, who back in April pinged industrial control vendor RuggedCom over a backdoor that existed in control systems based on its ROS operating system, has turned up a second vulnerability in the form of a hard-coded RSA key. The original backdoor was a simple undocumented account designed to provide admin access in case …

    Security 22 Aug 23:07

  • Aussie mobile SAP house acquired by Kony

    Sky Technologies gets global push

    Australian mobile enterprise SAP solution provider Sky Technologies has been snapped up by US based mobile enterprise player, Kony Solutions. Founded in Melbourne by former Accenture executive Troy O’Connor in 2002, Sky Technologies has deployed mobility projects to SAP customers in around 35 countries. Sky allows users to …

    Business 22 Aug 23:31