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28th August 2012 Archive

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  • Cloud 'destroys time' and fracking is great innovation

    VMworld 2012 CEO thought bubbles from Dell, Gelsinger, Maritz, Georgens, and Tucci

    Dell supremo Michael Dell, EMC CEO Joe Tucci, NetApp opposite number Tom Georgens, soon-to-be VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and his prececessor Paul Maritz have held court on a CEO-only panel at VMworld, largely reciting the same old stuff about how important it is for CIOs to simplify IT so that sysadmins can be unshackled from …

    Business 28 Aug 02:00

  • Telstra to extend reach of 4G network

    Clickity click says big T, as it plans to reach 66% of Australia

    Telstra has outlined plans to extend the reach of its 4G network, revealing today it will bathe “approximately two-thirds” 66% of Australia's population in fast wireless in the next ten months. The population coverage claim needs to be read carefully in light of Telstra's explanation that the 1,000 new base stations it plans …

    Networks 28 Aug 03:53

  • Shenzhen wage hike causes supply chain jitters

    Local gov may raise minimum wage for sweatshop toilers

    Chinese tech hub and boom town Shenzhen is set to increase the minimum wage of workers there by 13.3 per cent in early 2013, causing a few sweaty palms in the technology supply chain. Shenzhen and the wider Pearl River Delta area in southern China is one of the most concentrated technology manufacturing hubs in the world. …

    Business 28 Aug 04:00

  • Open source author pulls code after GPL abuse

    Mayan EDMS code pinchers named and shamed

    Robert Rosario, the developer behind the open source document management tool Mayan EDMS, has pulled the development code of the software from public repositories. He claims it's being pinched by folks who use it in ways not allowed by the GNU Public Licence. In a Google+ post, Rosario says he works hard to make the software, …

    Software 28 Aug 04:20

  • Arctic ice shrinks to ‘smallest in satellite era’ - NASA

    And summer at the North Pole is not yet over

    NASA has tossed its coin into the “shrinking Arctice sea ice” kitty with images showing that on August 26, “sea ice dipped to its smallest extent ever recorded in more than three decades of satellite measurements”. Noting that the 2012 melt season could still have weeks to run, the NASA measurements compare the August 26 …

    Science 28 Aug 06:33

  • Ten netbooks

    Product Roundup Small, cheap computers for scholars

    Tablets may have taken the wind out of the netbook's sales, and prompted some manufacturers, Dell and Sony among them, to stop selling them, but if you're looking for a small and, crucially, cheap personal computer for the kids, for offspring heading off to college, or just for emailing while travelling, a netbook is well worth …

    Laptops 28 Aug 07:00

  • Pay TV giant Hulu becomes victim of its own success

    Latest rumour of CEO's departure heralds end of stormy honeymoon

    The latest rumour of Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s imminent departure sounds like a good old silly season story designed to fill the void of empty news pages while people are on vacation. But the fact Hulu has been attracting such rumours while other big hitters in pay TV never seem to get them, itself provides a clue to a story of …

    Media 28 Aug 07:35

  • Visual Studio 2012: 50 Shades of Grey by Microsoft

    Review It's a good thing looks aren't that important, right?

    Microsoft offended thousands in April with a preview of its next Visual Studio, a John-Major-inspired, grey affair intended to take Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE closer to the look of Windows 8. Thousands gave the new look a thumbs-down on the Microsoft UserVoice poll, with people demanding a return to colour. The day of …

    Windows 8 28 Aug 07:57

  • Police beg for e-forensics team to probe crims' iPads, mobiles

    Wanna star in CSI: ICT?

    The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) said it wants an e-forensics project, aimed at speeding up the examination of ICT used by criminals, to be available to all forces from September. Over the past seven years, the number of electronic devices examined by technology experts in police force hi-tech crime units (HTCUs) …

    Law 28 Aug 08:18

  • Violin thrusts vSphere into flash arrays, turns them into servers

    VMware OEM deal

    Flash array vendor Violin Memory is turning is all-flash arrays into virtualised servers by embedding vSphere in them. It has agreed an OEM deal with VMware to run vSphere inside its arrays. Violin's top-end array is the 6616, which uses fast single level cell (SLC) flash with 16TB of raw capacity, 12TB usable, and has two x86 …

    Servers 28 Aug 08:42

  • Windows 8 Storage Spaces: Can you trust it with your delicates?

    'Horrible write speeds', 'vanishing storage'... but it IS early in the RC

    I have been watching a few Storage Spaces discussion threads on Microsoft’s support forums with interest. Storage Spaces is a new way to manage disk storage in Windows 8 and Server 2012. It allows you to create a pool from two or more drives, create virtual drives on them with an option for RAID-like resilience, and add or …

    Windows 8 28 Aug 09:03

  • Facebook's new app bazaar 'violates' punters' privacy – lobbyists

    Sort it out or we'll see you in a German court... bitches

    Facebook stands accused by a consumer lobby group of breaching Germany's privacy laws with the recent launch of its App Center. The dominant social network has been threatened with possible legal action if it fails to respond to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations within the next seven days. The lobby group …

    Networks 28 Aug 09:19

  • Hong Kong beauties stiffed by hackers' enormous poll attack

    Miss HK wannabes 'hosed in web flood'

    Fans of simpering scantily clad vixens are furious after the online voting system to pick the next Miss Hong Kong was demolished by hackers, allegedly. The winner of the much-hyped beauty pageant, held on Sunday, was instead decided by a panel of judges. Broadcaster TVB had been stringing the public along for months with …

    Cloud 28 Aug 09:42

  • Middlesbrough culinary giants battle for parmo supremacy

    Local takeaway crowned post-pub nosh king

    Middlesbrough culinary giants went head-to-head over the weekend in the World Parmo Competition - a battle to identify just who serves the ultimate local contribution to haute cuisine. The honours went to Mike's Return takeaway, which wrested the crown from 2008 winner Borge Ristorante in Stockton-on-Tees, pipping it into …

    Bootnotes 28 Aug 09:59

  • MasterCard beds Everything Everywhere for exclusive pay-by-bonk

    Friends with benefits

    MasterCard has signed an exclusive deal to develop a pay-by-wave platform for Everything Everywhere over the next half decade – hopefully one with greater impact than the existing QuickTap service. The first product of the deal will be a co-branded payment platform, using Near Field Communications (NFC) to facilitate pay-by- …

    Mobile 28 Aug 10:21

  • Troubled! Yahoo! tries! to! keep! staff! sweet! with! free! nosh!

    CEO du jour also bags ex-Amazon exec

    Yahoo!'s shiny new CEO Marissa Mayer has nabbed a former Amazon exec for the job of chief marketing officer at the ailing web firm. Kathy Savitt, founder of social commerce startup Lockerz and also a former exec at American Eagle Outfitters, will start the job next month, Mayer said in a canned statement. Mayer is attempting …

    Business 28 Aug 10:42

  • RIP Neil Armstrong: The reluctant American hero

    Obituary Tributes to the first man to walk on Moon

    Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died aged 82 on Saturday after complications from heart surgery. Armstrong on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission The American astronaut and ace test pilot - born on 5 August, 1930 in Ohio - was best known for the 1969 lunar landing and moonwalk. His immensely dangerous …

    Science 28 Aug 10:56

  • Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Android tablet review

    Stylus over substance?

    Remember your first touchscreen? If it was a personal organiser or satnav, chances are it used a pressure-sensitive, resistive screen. If it was a Palm, you probably had a stylus to pick out letters onscreen. The arrival of capacitive screens that responded to human touch certainly made an impression and now account for nearly …

    Tablets 28 Aug 11:14

  • VMware to penetrate OpenStack cloud

    Gold-level competition

    NASA and Rackspace spun up OpenStack as an open-source alternative to VMware for spinning up clouds two years ago. Now VMWare has applied to become a full OpenStack member with a decision to be taken at the OpenStack group’s first full board of directors’ meeting today. Intel and NEC will also apply to join OpenStack at the …

    Virtualization 28 Aug 11:18

  • UK ISPs crippled by undersea cable snap

    Updated Many quickly re-routed but slowcoaches O2, Be slapped

    A major internet routing outage struck UK telcos over the bank holiday weekend - knackering access to the World of Warcraft website*, the BBC, Amazon, Facebook and other sites for more than 24 hours. It's understood that a submarine cable carrying web traffic snapped between Blighty and the Netherlands, causing headaches for …

    Broadband 28 Aug 11:39

  • Mars rover harangues empty landscape with loudhailer

    Audio 'Gooooood morning Mars! General Charlie Bolden here'

    Curiosity, the nuclear-powered laser raygun rover recently landed on the surface of Mars by NASA, has begun shouting propaganda messages from Earth at the apparently empty desert which it is currently patrolling. A speaker on the car-sized robotic vehicle was used to issue a message from NASA chief Charles Bolden, a former US …

    Science 28 Aug 11:51

  • LG first to flaunt quad-core Qualcomm smartie

    Optimus G adopts Snapdragon

    LG today officially unveiled the Optimus G, the first 4G smartphone to utilise a Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. While LG only recently hit Blighty with its first quad-core Droid dialler – the Optimus 4X HD – its replacement here ditches the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor in favour of Qualcomm's alternative. The …

    Phones 28 Aug 12:01

  • Apple demands a quickie, aims its torpedo at 8 Samsung mobes

    Judge Koh urged: Wham, ban, thank you ma'am

    Apple is seeking quick bans on eight of Samsung's phones after beating the South Korean firm to a bloody pulp in its US patent super-trial. Yet legal experts are unsure the verdict can hold up. The fruity firm is wasting no time in seeking preliminary injunctions on Sammy mobes ahead of getting the permanent bans the jury …

    Mobile 28 Aug 12:17

  • Official: Google's brazen domination of Earth nearly complete

    TLDs, gotta catch 'em all

    The word “google” is the top domain name on the internet, in terms of registrations, according to new research. A study by domain data provider DomainTools has found that the ad giant's name is registered in 231 of the world's 300-odd top-level domains (TLDs) - from google.biz and google.com to google.tk. It beat its closest …

    Hosting 28 Aug 12:41

  • VMware: Our monster will eat servers, belch clouds, excrete profit

    VMworld 2012 Grow or die like a minicomputer

    The scribbled Monster VM logo that server virtualization and cloudy wannabe VMware started using last year as a joke may be the most appropriate and honest emblem that any IT vendor has pulled from its cosmic ether. Because VMware and its papa EMC want to do nothing less than gobble all of the hardware in your data center and …

    Virtualization 28 Aug 13:03

  • Queen of WorldPay cash-machine scam sent down for 2.5 years

    Hi-tech Fagin herded money mules

    A Nigerian woman has been jailed for two-and-a-half years in the US after she was found responsible for playing a key role in the infamous $9m WorldPay payment card scam back in 2008. Sonya Martin, 45, was convicted of managing a team of Chicago money mules who withdrew money from cash cards that had been loaded with looted …

    Security 28 Aug 13:24

  • Why the Apple-Samsung verdict is GOOD for YOU, your KIDS and TECH

    Analysis Think we'll be richer without patents? Think again

    Relax, everyone. While the patent system is far from perfect, a remarkably common-sense jury decision last week in the Apple-Samsung trial has clarified that patents are the "lifeblood of business", as inventor James Dyson calls it. Putting powerful short-term legal protections under inventions is overwhelmingly more …

    Law 28 Aug 13:43

  • 1 MILLION accounts leaked in megahack on banks, websites

    On my (shell) command, unleash hell!

    Hacker collective Team GhostShell leaked a cache of more than one million user account records from 100 websites over the weekend. The group, which is affiliated with hacktivists Anonymous, claimed they broke into databases maintained by banks, US government agencies and consultancy firms to leak passwords and documents. Some …

    Security 28 Aug 14:01

  • Bluetooth 4 pulls on pair of profiles, hits the track

    Standard still has a long way to run

    Two new Bluetooth profiles will measure how fast the user is running or peddling, creating interoperability, but are also aimed at proving that the standard isn't slowing down. The profiles come from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and standardise the way in which information about running speed and cycling cadence …

    Broadband 28 Aug 14:33

  • IBM embiggens iron with System zEnterprise EC12 mainframe

    Hot Chips Five score 5.5GHz engines wrapped in a funky new chassis

    The systems business is largely dominated by x86-based machinery these days, but Big Blue's mainframe unit is hanging in there after five decades and is still a bit of a mint. You put in $1bn every two years for hardware development, as IBM has done with the new System zEnterprise EC12, and you take out $7bn in ridiculously …

    Servers 28 Aug 15:01

  • Tech disties and telcos lock horns in cloud death match

    Spread the love, not war

    The friction and competitiveness between IT distributors and the telecommunications vendors in the new cloud-based world is becoming apparent. While working on some research about the cloud-driven evolution of tech wholesalers, Forrester Research interviewed many tech vendors and distributors in the last months, and curiously …

    The Channel 28 Aug 15:05

  • Didn't know THAT could go in THERE: EMC dedupes server flash

    VFCache working with vMotion

    EMC is adding to its server flash cache arsenal by adding deduplication to its VFCache product, thus enabling it to hold more data, as well as adding a larger capacity card, and making VFCache interoperable with vMotion. According to EMC, this is the first time deduplication has been used in server flash caches. Server flash …

    Storage 28 Aug 15:28

  • Nokia, Moto, Sony phone wing of Foxconn is soaked in red

    Half-year loss sparks hunt for better customers

    Shares in Foxconn International Holdings slumped nearly 8 per cent today after the kitmaker reported a whopping loss for the first half of the year. FIH, the bit of Hon Hai Group that works for Nokia, not Apple, has lost a record $226m so far this year as its star customer falters, compared to a loss of just $18m for the same …

    Financial News 28 Aug 16:02

  • Watchdog probes rules for naughty mobe fondling on flights

    Whipping out gizmos on takeoff and landing revisited

    US regulators are going to look into the rules that stop passengers using their "interfering" electronic gizmos on aeroplanes. The Federal Aviation Administration announced that it would be setting up a government and industry group to assess how airlines decide which gadgets can be used and when. The current norm is to be …

    Government 28 Aug 17:04

  • VMware sees multi-device future on Horizon

    VMworld 2012 Declares Post-PC era not happening, talks up 'UI virtualisation'

    VMware has inched its vision of mobile computing forward, releasing an Alpha of a new product called the Horizon Suite that it hopes will make it easier to share apps and data among many devices. Horizon Suite includes ThinApp, Horizon Application Manager, and Horizon Mobile, along with the apps-in-smartphone-sandboxes " …

    Virtualization 28 Aug 18:12

  • Lexmark dumps inkjet arm, sacks 1,700

    Estimates savings of $95m per year

    Lexmark is to shut down its inkjet printing manufacturing and research operations, although it will continue to support and supply existing hardware and is keeping its laser printing division. "Today's announcement represents difficult decisions, which are necessary to drive improved profitability and significant savings," …

    Business 28 Aug 18:44

  • UKNova drops torrents after threats from FACT

    Pressure group claims another scalp

    UKNova, a torrent indexing site for British TV and radio, has announced it is shutting up shop after threats of legal action from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). The site, which is much beloved by expatriates, overseas members of the UK's armed forces, and certain El Reg hacks as a source of media from back home …

    Media 28 Aug 20:13

  • Firefox 15 offers fewer leaks, more frags

    Improved WebGL support for in-browser 3D gaming

    Another month, another Firefox update. But although Mozilla's breakneck release pace can be bewildering for some users, new Firefox versions continue to bring performance, stability, and security improvements – and in the case of the newly released Firefox 15, some nice goodies for gamers. "Although its roots have been around …

    Applications 28 Aug 20:51

  • Dr Who shoves BitTorrent in the Tardis

    New series to stream in Oz minutes after first Beeb broadacast

    The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) will stream the new series of Dr Who mere seconds after it finishes airing in the UK, in an effort to stop avid fans downloading the show. Dr Who previously screened on a one-week delay, but the ABC has told news.com.au that it recognises fans' urgent need to view new Who will mean …

    Media 28 Aug 21:30

  • 'Intel made more virty cash than VMware'

    VMworld 2012 And that's why Cisco won't fear Nicira, says VMware's top cloud man

    Cisco and other networking hardware vendors needn't fear VMware's acquisition of virtual networking company Nicira, because they'll end up selling mountains of virtualisation-friendly kit. That's the opinion of Raghu Raghuram, VMware's Executive Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure and Management, who says that when server …

    Cloud 28 Aug 22:18

  • NYT fights back against links-in-texts patent

    Troll meets big billygoat

    A patent covering sending HTML links in text messages is to get a legal workout, with the New York Times telling the patent holder “see you in court”. According to the Associated Press, a company called Helferich Patent Licensing, vehicle for inventor Richard J Helferich, has followed a successful strategy of filing against …

    Law 28 Aug 22:47

  • Lab-on-a-chip takes Eureka prize

    Sniffing out the sarin

    A chip-sized lab designed to detect chemicals in small traces was among the Eureka prize-winners announced last night (August 28). The work, led by CSIRO materials scientist Dr Yonggang Zhu, puts all of the components of a test lab into a one-square-centimeter device: channels, mixers, diffusion chambers, electrodes, pumps and …

    Science 28 Aug 23:54