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30th August 2012 Archive

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  • WISE-watchers munch on hot DOGs

    Millions of new black holes turned up

    The latest data release from the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer has NASA almost as excited as a Mars landing, with the space agency trumpeting “millions” of new black holes, among other discoveries. Comparing the infrared received by hot dust-obscured galaxies – “hot DOGs” – to normal galaxies, the authors of this paper at Arxiv …

    Space 30 Aug 00:20

  • Customers dumping Samsung phones in wake of Apple suit

    Prices of used kit plummet on sudden oversupply

    Apple CEO Tim Cook might be pleased with the verdict in his company's recent patent legislation against Samsung, but Samsung customers are definitely not, according to the market watchers at mobile phone trade-in firm Gazelle. "Consumers seem to be jumping ship," Anthony Scarsella, Gazelle's "chief gadget officer," told …

    Business 30 Aug 00:44

  • AGIMO suspends govt supplier application process

    Is anyone using Oz government's multi-use lists of approved suppliers?

    The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has suspended its Multi Use Lists (MULs) for consultants and general ICT suppliers, possibly because no-one is using them. The lists contain vendors approved to supply goods and services to Australian federal government agencies. A blog post announcing the …

    Policy 30 Aug 01:19

  • Harvard boffins build cyborg skin of flesh and nanowires

    Man and machine become one

    Humanity has taken another step down the path of the Borg with the invention of the first flesh containing a functional nanowire sensor network that's biocompatible with the human body. "With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it," team …

    Rise of the Machines 30 Aug 02:20

  • Oracle knew about critical Java flaws since April

    Could have issued patches, but didn't

    The critical Java vulnerabilities that have security experts cautioning users to disable Java in their browsers are not new discoveries, a security firm claims. On the contrary, Oracle has known about them for months, and it has probably had a patch ready since before an exploit was discovered in the wild. Security …

    Security 30 Aug 02:23

  • 'iPhone 5' released by Chinese Apple copycat

    Goophone releases Android-based handset matching rumoured iPhone 5 look

    Fanbois in China who just can’t wait to get their hands on the much-hyped upcoming iPhone 5 are in for a treat, as an Android-based version of the device modelled on the imminent handset's rumoured specs has made its way online. Yes, hot-on-the-heels of a Japanese fanboi's efforts, China's Goophone is hoping to steal a march …

    Data Centre 30 Aug 04:26

  • Chinese dissident grassed by Yahoo nears release

    Wang Xiaoning completes porridge on Friday

    A Chinese democracy advocate and journalist who was sent to jail for a decade after Yahoo! grassed him up to the authorities will be released this week. Wang Xiaoning, who’s now 62 years-old, was jailed in 2003 for “incitement to subvert state power" after posting some essays critical of the Communist Party and praising …

    Policy 30 Aug 05:15

  • Philippines tech industries survive floods

    Outsourcers unscathed after recent floods

    To the west of the Philippines' capital, Manila, lies Laguna De Bay, a colossal freshwater lake that has just become the site of what can loosely be called maritime services startups. The new businesses sprung up weeks ago after the annual monsoon hit the Philippines harder than usual. The lake filled, then spilled into …

    Business 30 Aug 06:15

  • Apple Mac OS X Server for Mountain Lion review

    Playing god with an £14 app

    The cost of Mountain Lion Server is a fraction of what Apple charged for its server software just a few years ago, especially if you look at the old 'unlimited client' editions of Mac OS X Server. Then, the software alone cost as much as a new Mac. Now, it costs as much as a Hollywood blockbuster on DVD, and it’s far more useful …

    reghardware 30 Aug 07:00

  • Quantum sends out cheap 'n' fast newbie to beat off Amazon's Glacier

    Tape market facing global cooling

    Quantum is facing the Amazon onslaught head on with the debut of its cloudy Q-Cloud service – cloud-based backup, restore, and disaster recovery – at Amazon Glacier pricing: 1 cent per GB per month. Amazon's new gear is a cloud-based online data archiving service costing $0.01/GB/month and pitched as an alternative to tape for …

    Storage 30 Aug 07:32

  • Radio arse tags solve modern-day TV musical chairs dilemma

    Vid There's no such thing as over-engineering

    Little electronic tags that broadcast data over the air turn up in the strangest of places. Now they've managed to end up sewn into the back of contestants' shorts in a TV version of childhood favourite, musical chairs. The programme is called Oh Sit! and made by US broadcaster CBS. It adds live music and an obstacle course to …

    Broadband 30 Aug 08:01

  • Tosh flashifies disk in demo hybrid drive

    Enjoys a Momentus moment

    Toshiba has demonstrated a 1TB hybrid disk drive at the Flash Memory summit; that's 250GB bigger than Seagate's Momentus XT. The 2.5-inch XT drive is Seagate's third generation hybrid drive and features a 2-platter, 7,200rpm disk drive fitted with either a 4GB fast SLC flash cache in the 500GB product or an 8GB SLC NAND cache …

    Storage 30 Aug 08:19

  • Samsung readies handheld releases for Windows 8

    IFA 2012 It's all touch and go

    At the Mobile Unpacked event in Berlin last night, Samsung showed off its Windows 8 handheld devices that appear in its new Ativ range of computing products that all feature touchscreen functionality. The Windows RT Ativ Tab is a 10.1in fondleslab with a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor with 2GB RAM and 32/64GB …

    reghardware 30 Aug 08:22

  • Amazon steps over Groupon's festering corpse to set up UK deals souk

    Shopping giant can't wait to tout tat vouchers

    Amazon has launched its daily deals bazaar in the UK, moving into a market that seems already oversubscribed with the likes of Groupon. AmazonLocal, a typical coupon site, will have offers on things and stuff to do albeit initially for Londoners only. Prospective customers can book and pay for products and services with the …

    Media 30 Aug 08:42

  • Super-critical Java zero-day exploits TWO bugs

    Write Once, Exploit Everywhere

    A potent Java security vulnerability that first appeared earlier this week actually leverages two zero-day flaws. The revelation comes as it emerged Oracle knew about the holes as early as April. Windows, Mac OS X and Linux desktops running multiple browser platforms are all vulnerable to attacks. Exploit code already in …

    Security 30 Aug 08:59

  • Mobe-maker flogs self-designed phones ... to your KIDS

    Custom phones for custom people

    UK mobile phone company OwnFone is pitching a £55 handset which can only call up to 12 pre-programmed numbers, betting that the ability to create your own buttons and colour scheme will blind users to the price. OwnFone is a brand spun out by CyCell, which already provides customised handsets locked to the Vodafone network for …

    Mobile 30 Aug 09:17

  • Indian gov ponders restrictions on Chinese networking gear

    Lovely and cheap, but possibly communist and traitorous

    The Indian government is set to become the latest global power to restrict the use of Chinese-built telecoms and internet infrastructure technology, in what could be another blow to the ambitions of Huawei and ZTE as they look to grow abroad. The country’s telecoms minister, Kapil Sibal, is currently considering the findings …

    Data Networking 30 Aug 09:31

  • Sony unwraps James Bond's new Droidphone

    IFA 2012 Also splashproof, wipe clean 'slab. Ideal for, er, media

    Sony ushered in a fresh range of smartphones at IFA this week, as well as its first Xperia tablet. The Japanese firm's latest flagship smartie - the Xperia T - hits the UK market with product placement in the forthcoming Bond flick Skyfall. The handset's supposed licence to thrill comes through a Qualcomm S4-Plus 1.5GHz dual- …

    reghardware 30 Aug 09:44

  • Why Java would still stink even if it weren't security swiss cheese

    Sysadmin blog Nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure

    Java is horrible and I hate it. Good, now there's a strong intro: attention grabbing, and it gets the natives all riled up. Sadly, the extremist sentiment of my statement is not that far from the truth. Hating or loving a logical construction such as a programming language is irrational, illogical and otherwise nonsensical. As …

    Servers 30 Aug 09:58

  • Facebook co-founder Moskovitz scrambles to offload his shares

    Bumwad from the bank of toyland

    Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has sold over 1.3 million of his shares in the social network over the last two weeks. Moskovitz converted some of his Class B shares - the kind that carry voting rights - into Class A shares and has been getting rid of stock at 150,000 shares a day since a couple of days after the first …

    Financial News 30 Aug 10:15

  • Love vSphere? You're going to have to love Flash too

    Trevor Pott gets hands-on with vSphere's new web client

    If you're considering building your cloud infrastructure on the latest version of vSphere, you probably weren't banking on Adobe Flash being part of your set-up. VMware has announced vSphere 5.1 and along with it an updated web based management client. Features new to vSphere 5.1 will only be available in the new web client, …

    Infrastructure 30 Aug 10:29

  • Yahoo! bureau! chief! sacked! for! Mitt Romney! racism! jibe!

    'Black people drowning' shot deemed off-colour

    Yahoo! News' Washington bureau chief has been sacked after he joked that Republican US presidential wannabe Mitt Romney was "happy to have a party with black people drowning". The quip was made as the right-wing party held its National Convention and Hurricane Isaac barrelled across the southern state of Louisiana, bringing …

    Media 30 Aug 10:48

  • NASA launches armoured storm probes to the Van Allen belts

    Survey of vast radioactive particle-Sargasso doughnuts

    NASA has successfully launched two Radiation Belt Storm Probes into Earth's orbit to start a two-year mission to study the two giant donuts of plasma trapped in radiation surrounding the planet. The heavily shielded satellites blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 9.05am BST this morning aboard an Atlas V rocket and were …

    Space 30 Aug 11:14

  • Samsung whips out Galaxy Note II, cam-phone with proper zoom lens

    IFA 2012 YES! I AM TAKING A PICTURE!

    After Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Note II at IFA this week, attentions turned to its all-new camera phone, a digital snapper with built-in 3G connectivity. The South Korean firm's latest push into the photography domain introduces the Galaxy Camera with its 16.3Mp sensor, 21x optical zoom and practically every type …

    reghardware 30 Aug 11:27

  • UK data-blurt cockups soared 1,000 PER CENT over last five years

    That was supposed to be a secret but it got out

    The number of times Brits' sensitive data has been lost or leaked in the UK has risen 1,000 per cent over the past five years. Councils recorded the biggest increase in breaches of data protection law, according to figures obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request. The stats from the Information Commissioner’s Office ( …

    Government 30 Aug 11:44

  • Brummie plod cuffed in Facebook troll hunt

    Don't I know you, sunshine?

    A serving West Midlands police officer has been arrested after a woman was torn into by trolls on Facebook. Nicola Brookes, 45, of Brighton, received "vicious and depraved" taunts on the dominant social network as she wrote comments defending disqualified X Factor wannabe Frankie Cocozza. Detectives from her home town …

    Law 30 Aug 11:57

  • Scotland Yard manacles another suspect in phone hack probe

    Man gets Weeting greeting at Saarf Landon nick

    A 60-year-old man was arrested this morning at his home in South West London on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications relating to Scotland Yard's probe of alleged phone hacking. Operation Weeting officers are currently questioning the man at a South London cop shop. The identity of the latest arrest in the phone …

    Media 30 Aug 12:35

  • If you can't take the Samsung, get out of the kitchen

    IFA 2012 Household chores to become 'inspirational experiences'

    Samsung’s IFA keynote was true to form, some might say. Although the company had "a different script" with its presentation style, it did seem to have copied been influenced by the recent UK Olympic opening ceremony, given its theatricalities. Samsung's head honcho and chief wizard of the day, Boo-Keun Yoon, consumer …

    reghardware 30 Aug 12:58

  • Windows 8 tablets unwrapped in Berlin: Dell goes keyless for ARM

    Do these tanks have the grunt to park on Apple's lawn?

    Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony have hitched their skirts to reveal PCs running Windows 8, which will be on sale in October. All three announced ultra-thin machines that can be twisted and turned into tablets running the latest version of Microsoft's operating system. Dell, though, was the only one to unveil a pure-play slab: a …

    Windows 8 30 Aug 13:25

  • Flash tart Astute goes fourth and multiples your data

    Chequered history for solid-state RAID array maker

    Staff at storage biz Astute Networks are all smiles as they tout their fourth-generation all-flash array at VMworld 2012 - but behind-the-scenes, the company has had a chequered history. Astute is headquartered in San Diego in southern California, not Silicon Valley, and is lead by CEO and president Steve Topper. It garnered $ …

    Storage 30 Aug 14:01

  • Robot rover Curiosity sets out on first long Mars trip

    Nuclear raygun tank on the prowl

    The Mars-invading laser-toting nuclear-powered space truck Curiosity is off on a 400-metre jaunt to try out its life-hunting drill. These boots were made for walking NASA's rover is trundling eastward and completed a 16-metre jolly on Tuesday that was longer than its first two excursions combined. Those test drives were …

    Space 30 Aug 14:32

  • Foxconn overlord seeks cheap Sharp stake to cope with Apple fanbois

    Shuffling, moaning hordes clamour for more SCREENS

    Foxconn daddy Hon Hai wants a piece of Sharp so it can improve the moribund telly biz's production of Apple iPhone displays - but it will only do the deal if talks on how to boost Sharp's earnings pan out. Hon Hai executive Tai Jen Wu told reporters in Sakai, Japan, that discussions about sharpening Sharp's profits were …

    Financial News 30 Aug 15:02

  • Attack of the Gigantic Tellies hits Berlin IFA

    IFA 2012 Many now too large to fit in a normal house

    Television manufacturers bigged-up their products at IFA this week, adding additional inches to their respective boob tube offerings. Here's a run down of what to expect and where to focus those square-eyes in the future. Sony wowed punters with the unveiling of an 84in 4K LCD display, boasting four times the pixel count of …

    reghardware 30 Aug 15:27

  • Obama Q&A on Reddit briefly knackers entire site

    You nerds like space stuff, right?

    US President Obama has his fingers crossed for another four years in the White House - and to bolster support for a second term, the Democrat took to Reddit.com for a cosy chat with left-leaning cat-worshipping netizens. The 30-minute "ask me anything" session ended up being fairly pedestrian even though it garnered 23,000 …

    Networks 30 Aug 16:01

  • Amazon: Time for a new Kindle Fire, this one's sold out

    People just love carrying our cash registers around

    Amazon says the Kindle Fire has completely sold out and production has ceased, paving the way for a successor to be launched at the company's event next week. While a 2nd-gen model has yet to be officially confirmed by Amazon, the fact the Kindle Fire did so well commercially - grabbing 22 per cent of US tablet sales in nine …

    reghardware 30 Aug 16:28

  • Mystery virus attack blows Qatari gas giant RasGas offline

    Stop the fuel pumps too? Ha ha ha! No

    A mystery virus has infected the network of Qatar's natural gas pumper RasGas, prompting bosses to pull the plug on the biz's internet connection. Office systems have been unusable since the malware struck on 27 August, according to local reports. In a fax to suppliers, the company reportedly said: "RasGas is presently …

    Security 30 Aug 16:52

  • Applied Micro's X-Gene server chip ARMed to the teeth

    Hot Chips Ready to take a bite out of x86 servers and Cisco

    An opportunity to define the future of server processing comes along once every decade or so, and Applied Micro Circuit, a company known for its networking chips and PowerPC-based embedded controllers, wants to move up into the big leagues to take on Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and the handful of remaining etchers of RISC …

    Hardware 30 Aug 18:31

  • UK: 'We're legally bound to arrest Mr Assange'

    Hague tells Ecuador not to spirit away the WikiLeaker

    The UK's Foreign Secretary has refused to rule out storming the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Julian Assange and pack him off to Sweden. On Tuesday, The Right Honourable William Jefferson Hague met with the vice president of Ecuador over the Assange issue. When questioned about it by the BBC on Wednesday, Hague described the …

    Government 30 Aug 19:52

  • Microsoft NZ exposes TechEd delegates' passwords

    Registration emails included passwords as plaintext

    Software used by Microsoft's New Zealand outpost to register attendees for next week's TechEd conference has exposed delegates' passwords to unwelcome scrutiny. Cross Kiwis have contacted The Reg to point out that emails from a third-party events management company offered a URL which they can click to print a barcode that …

    Security 30 Aug 21:02

  • Oracle rushes out patch for critical 0-day Java exploit

    'Everything's fine now, please don't delete us'

    In an uncommon break with its thrice-annual security update schedule, Oracle has released a patch for three Java 7 security flaws that have recently been targeted by web-based exploits. "Due to the high severity of these vulnerabilities, Oracle recommends that customers apply this Security Alert as soon as possible," Eric …

    Security 30 Aug 21:38

  • ACMA flags more ‘agile’ regulatory future

    Fleet feet needed in converged world

    The days of “black letter law” regulation are numbered, according to ACMA chairman and CEO Chris Chapman, with technology changing and converging faster than legislation can keep up. Delivering the ACS / Telecommunications Society Charles Todd Oration yesterday, Chapman said the fast-moving telecommunications environment …

    Policy 30 Aug 22:04

  • Apple and Google in talks to end patent war?

    Jobsian jihad could be over by Christmas

    The heads of Apple and Google are said to be in talks to try and find a solution to the current patent war over the Android operating system. Much like President Obama, Apple CEO Tim Cook inherited a some-would-say pointless war from his predecessor, but unlike the politicians it seems the techies are willing to try "jaw, jaw …

    Business 30 Aug 22:11

  • ANU scientists in a record-breaking tangle

    Eight entangled modes from one laser

    A group of ANU researchers says it’s taken a step towards usable quantum communications with a setup that creates eight entangled modes from a single beam, doubling the world’s previous record. The “easiest” (since entanglement isn’t so easy to create) way to create entanglement – and therefore lay the basis for quantum …

    Science 30 Aug 23:16

  • Oracle rallies PaaS providers to float cloud interop spec

    Aims to help customers swap platforms more easily

    A consortium of seven technology vendors, including enterprise software heavyweights Oracle and Red Hat, have teamed up to produce an industry standard that they say will make it easier for customers to manage applications deployed in platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments. Called Cloud Application Management for Platforms …

    Platform 30 Aug 23:35