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11th September 2012 Archive

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  • Firefox support extended to older Android mobiles

    Experimental builds for phones with ARMv6 chips

    The Mozilla Foundation would like to see its Firefox browser running on more mobile phones. But since almost no handsets ship with Firefox pre-installed, that means getting the software onto more of the phones that are already out there – even if they use older hardware. Up until this Monday, the mobile version of Firefox has …

    Applications 11 Sep 00:22

  • Hacker uses Kindle as Raspberry Pi screen

    DIY instructions await the brave or foolish

    A hacker named Gef has rigged up his Raspberry Pi to use a Kindle e-reader as its monitor. “Hacker” may not quite be the word, actually, as the individual responsible identifies himself as an “eclectic yogi discovering the world of computational art and new media” on the blog post where the recipe for the KindleBerry Pi is …

    Hardware 11 Sep 00:34

  • McAfee: Emma Watson riskiest celebrity search

    Malwaria activissima

    In McAfee's latest survey of the celebrity searches most likely to lead to malware infection, Emma Watson – perhaps best known as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films – has taken the top spot, knocking off model Heidi Klum from last year's most-likely-to-infect honors. Be careful what you search for... According to …

    Security 11 Sep 00:50

  • AMD previews Piledriver, Ivy Bridge SeaMicro microservers

    Stretches Freedom interconnect fabric out to storage

    SeaMicro is not longer an independent company, but you would not have guessed that if you were dropped in from outer space to attend the launch of the new SM15000 microserver in San Francisco on Monday afternoon. Advanced Micro Devices may own SeaMicro, but the company went out of its way to support the latest "Ivy Bridge" Xeon …

    Servers 11 Sep 01:56

  • UK's loyalty set for £1.2bn Huawei reward

    There's a good boy...

    The UK economy is set to get a much needed boost on Tuesday when Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei announces an expected £1.2bn investment including hundreds of jobs. The announcement, which is expected to be endorsed by prime minister David Cameron, will consist of a pledge to create at least 700 jobs in the country …

    Business 11 Sep 03:50

  • iPad no flight risk says Federal Aviation Authority

    American Airlines allowed to use in-cockpit fondleslabs “in all phases of flight”

    Being asked to switch off your electronic devices during the takeoff and landing phases of a flight now looks even more anachronistic, after American Airlines announced it has been given permission to let its pilots use iPads in the cockpit “in all phases of flight”. The airline is chuffed that the Federal Aviation …

    Hardware 11 Sep 04:28

  • Oz court to test AdWords' WHOLE BUSINESS MODEL

    Regulator insists ad placements can misled and deceive

    Australia's High Court, from which no appeal is possible, will this week hear a case in which Google stands accused of intentionally deceiving and misleading consumers by automatically placing ads according to advertisers' requested keywords. The case is being pursued by Australia's Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), …

    Law 11 Sep 05:05

  • Samsung accused of sex discrimination in China plant

    Electronics giant's woes continue as CLW turns the knife

    South Korean electronics behemoth Samsung has been hit by fresh allegations of impropriety at one of its manufacturing plants in China, this time involving purported sexual discrimination in its hiring policy. Rights group China Labor Watch (CLW), which has been something of a thorn in the side of the chaebol in recent months …

    Business 11 Sep 05:47

  • Archos 101 XS 10.1in Android tablet review

    Magnetic keyblet combo, anyone?

    Archos has built a decent business making budget Android tablets, so I suspect the word 'merde' echoed loudly around the Igny HQ when Google pulled the rug asunder with its low Nexus 7 pricing. Archos hasn’t given up though and has now released a new device pitched as a budget alternative to the Asus Transformer Pad. Archos …

    Tablets 11 Sep 07:00

  • Microsoft urges devs to 'lead Windows 8 app land grab'

    Give the people what they want - ASAP

    Microsoft has urged developers to “lead the land grab” by developing Windows 8 apps ASAP. Developer evangelists Nick Hodge and Andrew Coates told the developer-centric keynote at the Australian incarnation of the company's TechEd conference that the time to write Windows 8 apps is now, before civilians get their hands on the …

    Windows 8 11 Sep 07:11

  • Ambitious Alibaba wants to take on Android

    There's only one way to settle this...FIGHT!

    Not content with dominating the massive Chinese e-commerce market, local hero Alibaba now wants to chase Android into the sea by making its cloud-based Aliyun mobile operating system China's preferred smartphone OS. The company’s chief strategy officer, Zeng Ming, told the Wall Street Journal that the firm is set to more than …

    Software 11 Sep 07:30

  • Apple's soon-to-be-slurped securo firm shrugs off crypto warning

    Windows passwords exposure confusion

    AuthenTec, the security firm that's the target of an $356m acquisition by Apple, has denied reports that possible cryptographic weaknesses in its fingerprint scanner software pose a risk to the security of laptops. Apple's attempted slurp of the fingerprint-scanning firm, which also makes other security products, was announced …

    Security 11 Sep 07:33

  • WD to parade flash-disk mutant for Wall St moneybags this week

    Thinner, 'extreme' capacities promised

    Western Digital will face investors on Thursday and tell them what the world's new number-one disk drive supplier is going to do to stay at the top. That means products, products and more products. Having acquired Hitachi GST and its enterprise drives, WD can't wait to put competitive pressure on Seagate and dive deeper into …

    Storage 11 Sep 08:02

  • Want to avoid another cookie law mess? Talk to EU bods next time

    'Dear ICO, sue us ... We're sick of you and this ridiculous cookie law'

    UK businesses should actively involve themselves in the debate over changes to EU law if they want to avoid problems stemming from the way those laws are drafted, an expert has advised. Technology law specialist Luke Scanlon of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that businesses can help law makers avoid …

    Law 11 Sep 08:19

  • Gov IT bods must shield their budgets from gov's knife – Socitm

    Increased use of council ICT services putting the squeeze on managers

    A report from the public sector IT directors' group Socitm has identified four ongoing priorities for ICT managers in the wake of continuing austerity. The priorities are: protecting ICT budget share by promoting the role and achievements ICT functions; focusing on reducing total costs of ownership; reviewing insourcing versus …

    Government 11 Sep 08:42

  • Array biz Nimble: Quick, lob us $40m before storage giants wallop us

    Hybrid racker needs VC cash

    Hybrid flash and disk drive array start-up Nimble Storage has been given $40.7m in venture capital funding to boost sales, marketing and engineering. Forty million for a company that has established its products and is doing nicely is a lot of cash. After all, since starting product ships in August 2010, Nimble has passed the …

    Storage 11 Sep 08:58

  • Kelway Holdings sales shoot up despite recession

    But acquisition of ISC sends costs through roof

    Kelway Holdings sales shot up in fiscal year ended 31 March - no mean feat in he dire economy - but the acquisition of ISC caused costs to swell and working capital ratios were hit. The parent of acquisitive London-based Kelway UK grew turnover 34 per cent to £350.7m including a full year's worth of trade from ISC Networks, …

    The Channel 11 Sep 09:14

  • Blighty battles Oz for stratospheric supremacy

    Pics Amateur ballooning rivals meet for head-to-head showdown

    The friendly rivalry between Brit and Oz amateur High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) enthusiasts hit new heights over the weekend when the two nations went head-to-head in a stratospheric clash of high-altitude titans. Raspberry Pi In The Sky chap Dave Akerman met his Antipodean opponent Mark Jessop in a Cambridgeshire field to …

    SPB 11 Sep 09:28

  • Acer racks up Xeon E5s, picks fight with US server bad boys

    From little seeds giant oaks shipments grow

    It has been a while since Taiwanese server and PC maker Acer has made some noise in the server racket, but the company is plodding along after planting its seeds on United States soil in February 2011 with a revamping of its Xeon-based servers. Acer targeted Europe first – back in March 2010 – as the flag bearer for Advanced …

    Servers 11 Sep 09:44

  • So many devices, so little policy

    Live event So what are you waiting for?

    Every one of your users has a computer at home, maybe a laptop, definitely a phone, and likes to log in from someone else's computer from time to time. They're carrying your data around, but often not your security policy. You know how hard it is to match policy form device to device, location to location. If only it were …

    Security 11 Sep 09:45

  • Trams crashes through £20m sales barrier

    Apple and HP reseller stays on track despite economy

    London-based reseller Trams breached the £20m sales barrier for the first time in its calendar 2011, a filing at Companies House shows. The Apple Authorised Reseller and HP Gold Specialist grew turnover 13.7 per cent year-on-year to £21.7m, including £217,600 from export sales. As a result of the top-line spike, operating …

    The Channel 11 Sep 10:11

  • What a card: Brit boffin Alan Turing stars in Monopoly tribute set

    Bletchley Park flogs custom board in honour of code-breaker

    He may not have made it onto the £10 banknote, but the face of WWII code-breaking hero Alan Turing now adorns the back of the silly money that's boxed into a new custom Monopoly set. The board, cards and pieces in the "Alan Turing edition" of Monopoly have been tweaked to tell the story of Turing's life, with the Utilities …

    Bootnotes 11 Sep 10:14

  • More 'iPad Mini' tat pics leak ahead of Apple's big unzip

    Rumour mill in overdrive for 7in tablet

    Rumours that Apple will launch an "iPad mini" at its unveiling event tomorrow intensified today after more pictures of cases leaked online and retailers started advertising screen protectors for a 7in slab. Mobile accessories manufacturer TeckNet has already touted packs of display protection sleeves that are supposedly "only …

    Tablets 11 Sep 10:43

  • Everything Everywhere swept away by its own 4G hype tsunami

    EE rises to promise 16 cities next-gen mobe broadband

    Everything Everywhere is no more: long live EE and 4G. The mobile operator now gets to watch its children, Orange and T-Mobile, starve to death as they're denied access to the 4G feast. London's Science Museum played host this morning to the launch of "EE", which has a new logo, a UK exclusive on 4G and will be selling …

    Mobile 11 Sep 11:02

  • Profs: Massive use of wind turbines WON'T destroy the environment

    Would destroy the economy, though

    Windy professors in the States have produced research in which they say that massive use of wind power would not, as had been thought, damage the planet's atmosphere and cause undesirable climate changes. They also argue that it would be "practical" to obtain half the energy required by the human race using wind turbines. …

    Science 11 Sep 11:17

  • Phone-hack saga: Prison officer cuffed in cop bung probe

    Operation Elveden nets another suspect

    A 31-year-old prison officer was arrested at his home in Northampton this morning as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into alleged bungs to cops. The probe is related to the Met's ongoing phone-hacking inquiry. The unnamed suspect remains in police custody. He was cuffed over allegations of conspiracy to corrupt, contrary …

    Law 11 Sep 11:26

  • Laugh all you want at 'the cloud' - it'll be worth '$100bn by 2016'

    Public-facing services to coin it, predicts IDC

    Some $100bn will be slurped up by public IT cloud services by 2016, according to the crystal-ball gazers at IDC. Spending is set to peak at $40bn this year but is forecast to expand more than 26 per cent on a compound annual growth basis over the next four years – five times faster than the total industry average. "The IT …

    The Channel 11 Sep 11:44

  • Windows 8? Nah: Win Phone 8 should give Apple the fear

    Open ... and Shut Tiled phone, not PC, could put Redmond on top

    Windows Phone 8 might spell the beginning of a climb to relevance for a desktop vendor breaking out its latest PC operating system at almost the same time. Why will Windows Phone 8 mean more than Windows 8? Not because Windows Phone 8 is groundbreaking. And not because its user experience compels adoption. While Windows Phone …

    Windows 8 11 Sep 12:01

  • Backroom music streamer Omnifone palms first profit

    Stuffs wallet with Sony and BlackBerry cash

    Privately owned music services pioneer Omnifone boasted its first ever annual profit this morning. The company provides a platform for streaming services including that of Sony (Music Unlimited) and RIM (BBM Music) and operates in 28 markets. Omnifone was founded in 2003 and launched its first service, MusicStation, in 2007. It …

    Media 11 Sep 12:24

  • Google skids car insurance comparison engine onto rivals' lawn

    Now, Brits, tell us everything about your motors

    Google is now offering to compare car insurance prices for Brits following the company's acquisition of BeatThatQuote. It signals that the web advertising giant is more than happy to hoover up personal data from anyone willing to hand over their home address, age, their motor's registration number, and other sensitive …

    Business 11 Sep 12:42

  • Shuttleworth drops one million cluster bucks on Ceph upstart

    Linux moneybags funds Um Bongo's cloudy file system

    Billionaire Linux kingpin Mark Shuttleworth has injected $1m into storage startup Inktank to bring the team's distributed file system Ceph to cloud computing. Shuttleworth invested the cash as a convertible note to grow the four-month-old biz and fund the development of the open-source fault-tolerant storage system Ceph. …

    Storage 11 Sep 13:00

  • Cable offers to shower UK biz in taxpayer gold to stimulate growth

    Govt-backed bank may pump bioscience, tech sectors

    Blighty's Business Secretary Vince Cable pulled back the curtains on his new biz investment bank this morning. While outlining plans for the state-backed pile 'o public cash, which would provide capital to companies, the Liberal Democrat minister efforts so far to kickstart the economy were laissez-faire - and said his bank …

    Small Biz 11 Sep 13:29

  • There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button

    Comment Keep calm and download these handy tools

    The disappearance of the Start button in Microsoft’s new Windows has proved unsettling for users. “I want Start. Start I say,” said an early tester in a post entitled "Worst 60 minutes in my entire life". One year on, and the Start screen is still a contentious issue. “The advantage of the overlaid menu is that it preserves …

    Windows 8 11 Sep 14:01

  • Google's Nexus 7 tabs 'can't perform' if flash RAM crammed

    Fondling fandroids say slab needs hard reset

    Reports are filtering in that some Google Nexus 7 tablets slow to a crawl once the memory starts filling up, and require a hard reset to bring them back to the admirable speed expected of Google's flagship hardware. Most of the reports, on various forums, relate to the 16GB model, and claim that once the remaining capacity is …

    Operating Systems 11 Sep 14:18

  • Zombie PC herders issue commands from Tor hideout

    Bury command server deep in the onion

    Security researchers have discovered a botnet that uses the Tor anonymiser network to hide its command nodes. Owners of the compromised network of Windows PCs have placed their command-and-control server, which uses the common IRC protocol, as a hidden service inside of the Tor network. Aside from the use of Tor for extra …

    Security 11 Sep 14:42

  • Who'll save the 100 most endangered species? Microsoft, apparently

    No, not Nokia engineers. Well, not this time

    Microsoft has pledged software and expertise in a battle to save the world's most endangered species - and we don't mean Nokia engineers. In partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the 'Softies are helping to track and trace the world's 100 most at risk species, including a mushroom that …

    Science 11 Sep 15:06

  • Viewsonic 22in Android 'tablet' hands-on review

    First look Passes the Google test and then some

    There was birthday cake aplenty at Viewsonic’s 25th anniversary event in London today that also saw the introduction of three new products covering an innovative range of display options. Viewsonic's VSD220 Smart Display: 22in fondleslab, anyone? The main attraction was the VSD220 Smart Display which is the first Android …

    Hardware 11 Sep 15:28

  • Pirate Bay co-founder named in probe into Logica, tax office hacks

    Warg hauled back to Sweden for copyright cooler stint

    Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, a co-founder of download haven The Pirate Bay, is back in Sweden - and now faces allegations of playing a role in an attack on the country's taxmen and IT consultancy biz Logica. Warg was holed up in Cambodia when he was arrested on an international warrant obtained by Swedish officials and flown home …

    Security 11 Sep 16:02

  • UK.gov blacklists Fujitsu from future contracts - report

    Not good enough for government work. Cutting

    Japanese IT group Fujitsu is among several companies that have been "blacklisted" by the UK Government, claims the Financial Times. It means that Fujitsu, G4S and other unnamed companies will not be considered for future public sector contracts when they come up for tender because of their poor performance on past and existing …

    Government 11 Sep 16:24

  • Al-Jazeera's mobe news feed hijacked by pro-Assad hacktivists

    More breaking news on the conflict in Syria

    Pro-Syrian government hacktivists have cracked the mobile update service of al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite news network. Three fake news story were pushed through al-Jazeera's SMS alert service as a result of the breach, the BBC reports. One of the reports was apparently a bogus alert that an attempt had been made on …

    Media 11 Sep 17:24

  • Day-long outage 'not a hack,' claims GoDaddy

    Just a little router trouble, that's all

    Domain registrar GoDaddy has commented on the daylong DNS outage that downed many of its customers' websites on Monday, saying that not only was a hacker not responsible, but that the service interruption wasn't the result of a DDoS attack at all. "The service outage was not caused by external influences," Scott Wagner, the …

    Hosting 11 Sep 17:53

  • Channel legend Howard Strowman dies

    CEO at Westcoast Asset Management

    Howard Strowman, the colourful channel veteran and CEO at Westcoast Asset Management (WAM), has died from injuries sustained in a motorbike crash. The accident happened in North Wales on Sunday, September 9, and after being airlifted to hospital, Strowman went in to intensive care. He died on Tuesday morning. In 1973, …

    The Channel 11 Sep 18:14

  • Microsoft betas System Center service pack for unified control

    SP1 beta increases InTune integration

    Redmond's been talking about how System Center will be at the heart of its reboot of the Windows franchise for months now, and now it has released the beta of its first service pack. System Center 2012 was officially launched in April, but with SP1 the code base now supports the release of Server 2012, as well as SQL Server …

    Applications 11 Sep 18:33

  • iPhone to account for half of US economy by 2030 - projection

    America to get rich selling Foxconn gizmos to itself!

    Strange, terrible, yet curiously inevitable news today - the day before iPhone 5 day. Analysis based on figures from hefty Wall Street brains appears to show that the Jesus Phone is set to account for a large chunk - perhaps the majority - of US economic activity within a matter of decades. The Register's elite economic …

    Bootnotes 11 Sep 19:07

  • Touch tech firms tap Intel for factory cash

    IDF 2012 Chip giant to keep Win8 touch bandwagon rolling

    Intel has been pumping money into the touchscreen component business in order to encourage the production of panels of 13in and up to make sure there are enough of them for vendors to build all the touch-enabled Windows 8 notebooks Intel hopes World+Dog will want. The head of Intel's PC Client Group, Kirk Skaugen, didn't say …

    Laptops 11 Sep 19:18

  • Intel demos next-generation voice and gesture interfaces

    IDF 2012 Offers a million bucks for the best 'perceptual computing' idea

    Intel wants computers to be as smart as humans in how they understand voices and gestures – and it's offering $1m to the best idea that can help achieve that goal. "Human beings are very rich in the way that they interface with each other, the way they interact with each other," David Perlmutter, the general manager of Intel's …

    Applications 11 Sep 19:25

  • Intel to turn Ultrabooks, all-in-one desktops into giant tablets

    IDF 2012 Can't beat 'em, join 'em

    Intel wants to turn laptops and even desktops into tablets in order to reverse the decline in the personal computer market. To that end, it unwrapped two form-factors it will be promoting to get tablet-hungry consumers back buying PCs. Well, if you can't beat 'em... Ultrabooks will remain Intel's "hero product", according to …

    Hardware 11 Sep 19:49

  • Thomas-Rasset faces $220,000 file-sharing bill after losing appeal

    Court rules $9,250 per track is constitutionally fair

    Nearly five years after being found guilty of file-sharing in the media industry's first jury trial on the issue, Minnesotan mother of four Jammie Thomas-Rasset is back where she started after the appeals court upheld the original verdict. The US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has found that the original fine of $9,250 …

    Law 11 Sep 20:46

  • GNOME hacker: Culture isn't holding desktop Linux back

    'There is no single simple issue to fix'

    Open source bigwigs like Alan Cox, Miguel De Icaza, and Linus Torvalds can bicker all they want, says GNOME hacker Michael Meeks, but changing developer culture won't do a thing to attract more consumers to the Linux desktop. "I happen to mostly agree with [De Icaza's] conclusion – that we're still facing a huge uphill …

    Operating Systems 11 Sep 21:13

  • Fuel VFX goes up in smoke

    VFX house's staff gone, buyers in the wings

    Australian visual effects company Fuel VFX looks set to be sold, just weeks after being placed into voluntary administration less than a fortnight ago. The visual effects house secured cornerstone work in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, The Avengers, Mission Impossible and Iron Man 2 but was hit with a cash crisis stemming from a …

    Business 11 Sep 22:00

  • Content convenience squeezes freetards: Swinburne Uni

    Auntie’s Dr Who experiment shows the way

    The success of the ABC’s decision to offer an iView stream of the new Dr Who in step with its broadcast in the UK suggests how content owners could squeeze out P2P – and it comes at a time when new research suggests that P2P usage is already starting to decline in Australia. Australians may well be on their way to …

    Media 11 Sep 22:30

  • NASA reports first sighting of dry ice Martian snowfalls

    Carbon-dioxide flakes form and fall

    Scientists using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found definitive proof that flurries of carbon-dioxide snow are falling on the Martian South Pole. "These are the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds," said Paul Hayne of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement. "We firmly establish the clouds …

    Science 11 Sep 22:33

  • More cloudy goodness in NeCTAR funding round

    Cloud clusters countrywide

    The University of Tasmania is among the latest institutions to get cloud funding, announcing that it’s won two projects worth more than $AU2 million under the federal government’s NeCTAR program. The National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources [apparently, in this age of austerity, someone’s saving money by …

    Cloud 11 Sep 23:29

  • Reviewers say ‘yes’ to Higgs boson data

    Close to rubber-stamping the discovery

    Two months ago, CERN set the physics world a-fire with its Higgs boson announcement: the particle exists, they said, we’ve seen it, and it has a mass of between 122 and 131 GeV. At that point, the “discovery” entered a long formal process that’s taken another small step with publication – and therefore acceptance by peer …

    Science 11 Sep 23:36

  • Woz to visit Oz

    Wearing his Chief Scientist hat

    Apple founder and geek legend Steve Wozniak will soon visit Australia. The Register understands that for at least part of his time down under his Wozness will be wearing his hat as Chief Scientist of flash memory company Fusion-io. He'll front the press on September 24th to expound the virtues of PCI-resident flash. He may …

    Bootnotes 11 Sep 23:41