31st August 2012 Archive

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Huawei picks Android for new tablets and smartphones

IFA 2012 Asks users to second its Emotion

Huawei is betting on Android with its launch of four new smartphones and two tablets all running Google's OS, albeit with a customizable interface dubbed "Emotion" that the Chinese networking giant is opening up for customer's suggestions. "We have made our choice," the company's decidedly non-Chinese vice president Lars- …

Mobile 31 Aug 00:06
Australian 'scope to help Europe's galaxy-mapping satellite

Zadko telescope ready for earth-saving duty spotting low flying rocks

Australia's Zadko telescope will be pressed into service assisting The European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. Gaia's mission is to create “... a three-dimensional map of our Galaxy … in the process revealing the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy.” The process of scanning the skies for the billion or so stars …

Science 31 Aug 00:15
Publishers pony up $69m in ebook price-fixing settlement

Pennies from ~~heaven~~ the DoJ for you and me

Three of the publishers accused along with Apple of price fixing in the ebook market have agreed to settle the case for a total of $69m, in a move that could mean a (very small) windfall for consumers in 49 US states and the District of Columbia. Under the terms of the settlement, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster …

Law 31 Aug 00:58
BYOD turns sysadmins into heroes

Intel China's IT boss on consumerisation

Bring Your Own Device programmes can help to keep staff happy and turn IT bods into "heroes" but the hard RoI from spikes in productivity is unproven, according to Intel’s IT manager for China. Liam Keating told media at Chipzilla’s Cloud Summit event in Bangkok this week that Intel has around 29,000 employee handsets to …

CIO 31 Aug 01:00
China's net addiction staff told to stop the beatings

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone

China’s much-feared internet addiction treatment centres are set to become a little less grim for inmates after it was revealed that any instructors found to be using physical violence would be stripped of their job. China was one of the first countries in the world to recognise the peculiarly modern affliction as a …

Policy 31 Aug 04:20
Yikes. Supervolcano found under Hong Kong

Krakatau a mere firecracker compared to thankfully-dormant discovery

Hong Kong geologists have revealed for the first time the full extent of an ancient supervolcano with a diameter of 18km sitting beneath the former British colony. The giant ash monster is thought to be of the same collapse caldera type as the infamous Krakatau volcano which killed tens of thousands and literally rocked the …

Science 31 Aug 04:24
Build your own robot soccer world cup winner

Brainware, CAD files, all online and open source

The Robot soccer World Cup's Humanoid League, Kid Size division, can only be won by the toughest and smartest autonomous mechanical anthropomorphs . Which surely makes the news the winner of the last two years' competitions is available as a set of open source software and CAD files welcome for would-be managers of robotic …

Science 31 Aug 05:07
Now even China's PC market is shrinking

Record PC sales declines across Asia and Gartner says Windows 8 won't turn things around

Just when you thought the outlook for the PC industry couldn’t get any more gloomy, shipments in APAC declined in the last quarter by 2.6 per cent from the previous year. Even China stopped buying PCs, posting its first ever year-on-year loss of 5.4 per cent, according to Gartner. The analyst’s latest report for Q2 can be read …

Business 31 Aug 06:00
Velociraptor drives get Thunderbolt boost

VD and daisy-chaining go together, says WD

Western Digital's speeding disk dinosaurs, its Velociraptors, have been given a dose of Thunderbolt. The MyBook Velociraptor Duo (MyBook VD?) pairs two of the 1TB, 10,000rpm Velociraptor drives with two Thunderbolt ports. It delivers up to 400MB/sec, close to SSD performance WD claims, which means transferring 2000 5MB images …

Storage 31 Aug 06:29
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Review Gang bang

Take a good close look at your favourite multiplayer first-person shooter and chances are it owes much of its weapon balancing, map structure and pacing to Counter-Strike. A tactical, team-based Half-Life mod which first saw light of day in 1999 – having itself been influenced by the brilliant but glitchier Action Quake 2 – …

reghardware 31 Aug 07:00
NFC tap-to-pay kit spreads its wings at IFA: Now used for audio

It's not just good for bonking

NFC is finally sneaking into a range of hardware, with Sony and Nokia emphasising the audio-pairing capabilities while everyone else is just sticks it in there for laughs. Nokia hasn't announced its new Windows Phone yet, there's a teaser up for next week, but it has announced that such phones will pair with HARMAN speakers …

Broadband 31 Aug 07:19
Readers: Choose the proper new name for Everything Everywhere

Nothing anywhere, something somewhere, Omnipulant ...

Everything Everywhere is looking for a new name, and El Reg readers haven't been backwards in coming forwards with suggestions so we present a poll from which you can pick the best. Orange and T-Mobile, the consumer brands run by EE, will (we're told) continue to exist, and they'll be no more EE shops, but the parent company …

Mobile 31 Aug 07:38
Windows Phone 8: What Nokia and Microsoft MUST do

Analysis You - Ballmer, Elop - yes you. Pay attention

Next week, we're expected to get a sneak preview of Nokia devices based on Windows Phone 8 at a special publicity event in New York. Here's a view on what Microsoft and Nokia need to deliver - based on something a bit unusual: the user experience. I find there's a yawning empty chasm in consumer technology coverage. You can …

Windows 8 31 Aug 08:00
O2 looses legal torpedo at Everything Everywhere 4G monopoly

Let us have something somewhere, pleads spurned telco

Mobile phone operator O2 will appeal against Ofcom's decision to allow a rival firm to launch superfast broadband services later this year using its existing network capabilities, according to media reports. O2 has written to the telecoms regulator to announce its intention to appeal Ofcom's decision to the Competition Appeals …

Mobile 31 Aug 08:14
Mellanox rips covers off virt-SAN beast, claims Fibre Channel vanquish

Preparing a whuppening for VNX ass, one might think

InfiniBand vendor Mellanox has demonstrated a Fibre Channel-beating virtual SAN appliance at VMworld, claiming it's six times faster than FC SANs. Virtual SAN appliances (VSAs) are becoming more serious. They started out as SAN try-outs using server SW and the server's local disks to produce a shared block-access storage area …

Storage 31 Aug 08:28
Windows Phone 8: Microsoft quite literally can't lose

If it bombs, Ballmer is no worse off than he is now

Should Microsoft's mobile operating system Windows Phone 8 bomb, the effect on the software giant's sales would be negligible - but the same could not be said for its prestige. According to one estimate, sales of WinPho handsets added a mere $736m to Redmond’s coffers in its last fiscal year – that’s just under one per cent of …

Windows 8 31 Aug 08:44
Hands on with the HP Envy X2

IFA 2012 Windows 8 tablet-keyboard combo fingered

The tablet plus keyboard combo looks set to be a prominent vehicle in getting Windows 8 into the hands of punters. Along with the new OS comes a slightly different form factor too with 11.6in keyblets from Samsung – its Ativ Smart PCs play this game with Core i5 and Atom CPU options – and HP has its own Atom-powered Envy X2 …

reghardware 31 Aug 09:00
A load of Tosh: External hard drives the new 'personal clouds'

New STOR.E Cloud 3.5in disk is a NAS disguised as a bandwagon

Calling an external hard drive on a desk at home "a personal cloud" is a bit of a stretch - but that is exactly what Toshiba is doing with its latest 3.5in disk product, the STORE.E CLOUD. After announcing internal-fitting 3.5in drives using technology acquired from Western Digital, Tosh has quickly followed up with 2TB and …

Storage 31 Aug 09:17
LOHAN rolls out racy rocketry round-up

Progress to date on our audacious spaceplane mission

In response to requests from several Reg readers who've been following the progress of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) ballocket mission, we've put together a round-up of just where we're at with the various aspects of the project. The LOHAN team is fighting on several fronts to advance towards an explosive …

SPB 31 Aug 09:31
Philips databases pillaged and leaked SECOND time in a month

Updated Anonymous piles into electronics giant

Electronics giant Philips has been hacked for the second time in a month and its databases raided. Usernames and encrypted passwords were leaked after the breach. It is not clear at this moment whether email addresses or the actual contents of corporate emails were included in the records dumped from the company's SQL …

Security 31 Aug 09:47
Hands on with LG's 21:9 monitors

IFA 2012 Widescreen viewing for business or pleasure

With so many telly boxes out there, it seems likely an on-board tuner on the TV itself will become a thing of the past in the not too distant. Perhaps LG’s EA93 21:9 aspect monitor, announced at IFA, offers a clue to the shape of things to come. A 29in monitor touting a 2560 x 1080-pixel resolution it may be, but the EA93 …

reghardware 31 Aug 10:00
VMware bounced from the OpenStack party

What do you mean we're not on the list?

VMware’s admission to the OpenStack open-source cloud party has been kicked back. The inaugural board meeting of the new OpenStack delayed its decision on letting VMware join as a gold-level member because of time pressure, according to a report. OpenStack executive chairman Jonathan Bryce reportedly told the Linux Foundation …

Developer 31 Aug 10:16
So, just what is the ultimate bacon sarnie?

If you think you know, prove it

It's fair to say that the question of just what makes the ultimate bacon sandwich has proved somewhat controversial with hungry Reg Readers. Our Bauernfrühstück v bacon sarnie post-pub nosh deathmatch prompted a furious scrap over the comparative merits of back versus streaky, brown sauce versus ketchup and butter versus, well …

SPB 31 Aug 10:29
'This lawsuit is not about patents or money, it's about values'

Quotw Plus: 'A mind-numblingly inept display'

This was the week when analysts, pundits, beancounters and opinion-holders of all stripes got to have their say on the Apple v Samsung patent verdict going the fruity firm's way. While Apple pushed hard to get Samsung mobes pulled from the shelves as soon as humanly possible, the Korean chaebol vowed to fight on and passed …

Law 31 Aug 10:43
Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin

Something for the Weekend, Sir? I just want to touch

My wife is radioactive. I'm terribly excited about this, to be honest. It's like living with a superhero or a 1950s B-movie starlet just before she grows to 50ft. And while the house may be host to the occasional randy spider on the lash at night, my wife was not bitten by some escaped bug from a science exhibit. Warning: …

reghardware 31 Aug 11:00
Cheer up, Samsung: Tokyo judge bins Apple's sync patent claim

South Koreans didn't nick music transfer idea

A Tokyo court took a few minutes today to rule that Samsung's Galaxy gear does not infringe an Apple software patent. It hands the South Korean giant a small win after its $1bn thrashing by Apple in an epic US mobile phone patent trial that concluded last week. Just one patent was being contested in Japan this week, and it …

Law 31 Aug 11:13
Capita Group snaps up travel agent for biz types Expotel

Outsourcer will book events and travel for firms like BP

Business process outsourcing group Capita, daddy to Capita IT Services, has slurped business travel booking agent Expotel Group for £16m. Capita grabbed Expotel, which handles UK hotel, business travel and conference booking, to snap onto its existing business travel operations and provide events management as well. Expotel …

Financial News 31 Aug 11:29
Hertfordshire plod passwords leaked by pro-Assange data burglar

Database raid by lackadaisical protestor

A UK police website has been hacked, exposing usernames, unencrypted passwords and other sensitive login details for more than 90 serving officers. The miscreant who raided the Hertfordshire force's database also lifted and leaked workplace phone numbers, email addresses, warrant numbers and PINs of the county's Safer …

Security 31 Aug 11:46
Hipsters hacking on PostgreSQL

Open ... and Shut Relational cred from SoMa to Shoreditch

With the rise of NoSQL, it's easy to assume that old-school relational databases are simply living out their dinosaur dreams for legacy applications. But a funny thing happened on the way to the SQL cemetery: PostgreSQL became cool again. Yes, PostegreSQL. PostgreSQL was developed in 1986 by Michael Stonebraker. It was meant …

Developer 31 Aug 12:03
Facebook shoves your face in Microsoft's Bing thing

Please visit our search engine... bitches

Microsoft has inked yet another search deal with Facebook that this time allows users to find photos in Bing that were uploaded to the world's biggest social network. It would seem that Redmond's $240m stake in Mark Zuckerberg's company back in 2007 is still proving fruitful for the software maker. Microsoft has been making …

Media 31 Aug 12:17
HTC hawks fresh Desire for market boost

IFA 2012 X marks the spot

HTC launched the Desire X at IFA this week and simplified its product range by bringing an end to its low-end Wildfire lineup. The HTC Desire X rolls with a dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon S4 processor powering an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich build. There's a 4in WVGA display, a 5Mp camera and 4GB of internal storage. While such …

reghardware 31 Aug 12:30
Sharp's slim screen factory 'flogged to death' by Apple

Plant can't build enough working parts for Cupertino idiot-tax giant

Sharp's production line of screens – purportedly for Apple's next-generation iPhone – is reportedly running behind schedule. The moribund Japanese display-maker, which has never admitted to having Apple as a customer, said at the start of this month that its LCD plant in central Japan, a factory widely known to churn out gear …

Mobile 31 Aug 12:43
Archos pushes out 7-inch GamePad, slaps on dual thumbsticks

IFA 2012 Droid-tab gets Vita-esque makeover

Archos threw its hat into the videogames domain at IFA this week, introducing a 7in slate with dual thumbsticks and dedicated gaming buttons. The Archos GamePad packs a 7in capacitive touchscreen, is powered by a 1.5GHz processor and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which unlike predecessor platforms now supports game …

reghardware 31 Aug 12:59
Catapults, subsidies, and benefits: Bongonomics explained

¡Bong! Our VC's on FIRE at Burning Man and the Paralytic Games

"Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it" - Mao Tse Tung from Oppose Book Worship (1930) JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. Greetings, fellow entrepreneurs! By the time you read this I shall be on the playa at the Burning Man …

Media 31 Aug 13:26
Sony slims down 3D headset, cooks up eye candy

IFA 2012 Also updates NEX snappers and projector tech

Sony's roaring IFA presence this week continues with an update to its 3D headset and further developments in the imaging domain. The Sony HMZ-T2 is more compact and lighter than its predecessor, weighing in at 330g, and comes with a new array of fitting options for greater comfort. There is also the ability to add one's own …

reghardware 31 Aug 14:02
Amazon flings open doors to Android Appstore in Europe

At what point does choice turn into fragmentation?

Amazon's Android Appstore is now open for business in Europe, providing a branded alternative to Google Play, and a free app every day, in preparation for the forthcoming Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire has been on sale in the US for nine months now, and is entirely dependent on the Amazon Appstore, so that store was going to …

Applications 31 Aug 14:27
Apple drones reject American drone-strike tracker app

Is it useful to know when robot flyers kill someone?

Apple has repeatedly rejected an app which pushes notifications onto iPhones every time an American robot flyer makes a strike. The information is public, slurped from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the app takes its lead from The Guardian, which bundled the same functionality into a story on the subject of death …

Applications 31 Aug 15:04
Computacenter profit hit by start-up costs in Germany

'Growing pains impacted our bottom', groans chairman

Computacenter's shift towards IT services instead of products has started to pay off, giving revenues a boost, but first half results were still hit by the costs of catering to its new contracts. "We are not pleased that we did not properly anticipate the operational impact of winning so many contracts at the same time," …

The Channel 31 Aug 15:07
Chemical biz 'Nitro' hackers use Java to coat PCs in poison ivy

Chinese spying crew is back in business

The crew behind last year's "Nitro" industrial espionage attacks are among hackers exploiting the two potent Java security vulnerabilities patched this week. The team, which attempted to lift sensitive blueprints from companies by compromising workers' computers, is now using holes in Oracle's software to install Poison Ivy on …

Security 31 Aug 15:31
3,000 Guild Wars 2 gamers banned for flogging stolen loot

Black-marketers get the black spot

Developers of the hit Guild Wars 2 online role-playing game have banned thousands of players who cheated the system to trouser weapons at a fraction of their normal cost. ArenaNet nuked 3,000 gamers who took advantage of the so-called Karma Weapons Exploit - better described as a bug - to build up massive armouries. The flaw …

Media 31 Aug 16:02
Pret-a-porter: LG boffins' bendy battery can be worn as PANTS

But keep that fire extinguisher close

You can shrink them, make them skinny, or make them swallow more charges – but unless you're a Maker Faire type, you can’t actually wear a battery. Until now. Engineering and chemistry boffins working with LG Chem have devised a cable-like lithium-ion battery just a few millimetres in diameter – and flexible enough to be …

Science 31 Aug 16:36
Ethernet switch sales sizzle

Everybody needs – and is buying – bigger pipes

The server market may have stalled a bit as Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle, and Fujitsu work through various stages of processor transitions, but the Ethernet switch market is going gangbusters. According to the box counters at IDC, the worldwide market for Layer 2 and 3 switching gear that adheres to the Ethernet protocol accounted …

Data Networking 31 Aug 16:42
Flash firm boss smacks back at SEC's insider trading charges

It ain't me ~~guv~~ gov

STEC boss Manouche Moshayedi has issued a detailed rebuttal of the SEC's indictment that charged him with insider trading, saying that the SEC is plain wrong. The SEC charges relate to a STEC public offering of shares held by Moshayedi and his brother Mark on 9 August, 2009, with the SEC alleging Moshayedi knew that EMC was …

Financial News 31 Aug 17:02
Here we go again: Critical flaw found in just-patched Java

Emergency fix rushed out half-baked

Security Explorations, the Polish security startup that discovered the Java SE 7 vulnerabilities that have been the targets of recent web-based exploits, has spotted a new flaw that affects the patched version of Java released this Thursday. The company would not disclose specific details on the nature of the new vulnerability …

Security 31 Aug 18:45
Symantec crowdsources buzzword bingo to name product

Global Intelligent Integrated Automated Critical Business Recovery, anyone?

Symantec has taken to Twitter to offer you the chance to name its next disaster-recovery product, erecting a Surveygizmo quiz to find a name for the software. But before you leap on the quiz to show off your creativity, dispel any dreams you have of naming the product "I'll Be Back" or something similarly evocative, as …

Applications 31 Aug 18:57
NASA funds sexy, stealthy, sideways supersonic flying wing

With just one small problem ...

NASA has awarded $100,000 in funding for a unique four-pointed flying wing that rotates mid-flight to transition between super and subsonic flight, thus increasing efficiency and eliminating sonic booms. The proposed Supersonic Bi-Directional Flying Wing (SBiDir-FW) aircraft, by Florida State University aerospace engineer Ge- …

Science 31 Aug 20:20
Schlockmeister Troma's back catalog hits YouTube

Toxic Avenger, Surf Nazis Must Die, and other works of cinematic genius now online

Legendary B-grade film studio Troma has taken its back catalog of schlock, horror, and violence to YouTube. Troma rose to infamy on the back of films such as Surf Nazis Must Die, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, and The Class of Nuke 'Em High. The company's flagship franchise, The Toxic Avenger, told the story of a nerd who, …

Media 31 Aug 20:33
IBM to double-stuff sockets with power-packed Power7+

Hot Chips Big boost in clock speed, smart accelerators

Power Systems users, start your engines. Or, more precisely, start your budgeting cycle so you can get ready for Big Blue's impending Power7+ RISC processors to run your AIX, Linux on Power, and IBM i (formerly known as OS/400) workloads. At the Hot Chips conference this week in Silicon Gulch, Scott Taylor – one of the chip …

Servers 31 Aug 23:03
Ninefold offers Windows Server 2012 head start

Australian company offers cloudy servers with cut-over to official code

Microsoft will officially launch Windows Server 2012 next Tuesday, September 4. But if you want to run the OS now, Australian public cloud outfit Ninefold will let you create a server and automatically switch it over to a fully-licensed version. Ninefold is the public cloud arm of otherwise-staid Aussie company Macquarie …

Operating Systems 31 Aug 23:08
The dead reanimates as HP ships Open webOS beta

Meg's boys are also hiring webOS developers. Curious...

As promised, HP has shipped the beta release of Open webOS, the open source version of the web standards–based webOS mobile platform that was the last hurrah of the former Palm before HP absorbed it in 2010. More surprisingly, however, HP actually seems to be staffing up its webOS development team – an odd reversal of recent …

Operating Systems 31 Aug 23:16
Google engineer finds British spyware on PCs and smartphones

FinSpy turning up in dictatorships across the world

Two security researchers have found new evidence that legitimate spyware sold by British firm Gamma International appears to be being used by some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Google security engineer Morgan Marquis-Boire and Berkeley student Bill Marczak were investigating spyware found in email attachments to …

Security 31 Aug 23:30