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25th September 2012 Archive

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  • Half of Milky Way's mass found in million-Kelvin gas cloud

    Our galaxy is but a mere speck inside a ginormous ball o' baryons

    Scientists have just discovered that the extreme drought bedeviling America's midsection is being caused by a gigantic halo of hot gas surrounding the Milky Way. Okay, okay... We're kidding about the cause of the drought – but not about that gas cloud, which is a few hundreds of thousands of light years in diameter, weighs …

    Science 25 Sep 00:49

  • Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'

    The secret to a long life is knowing when to let them go

    Bollocks boffins studying the effects of male sex hormones on life expectancy have concluded that becoming a eunuch may be the key to living a lot longer. Male members of many species, including Homo sapiens sapiens, live shorter lives than their female counterparts, and castrating some male animals will make them live longer …

    Science 25 Sep 00:53

  • iPhone 5 Lightning cables sticking in USB ports

    Wires revealed, tempers frayed

    Owners of the new iPhone 5 are reporting a sticky problem with the new "Lightning" cable used to connect their handsets to power sources or computers sticking in USB sockets. Lightning is Apple's replacement for its 30-pin connector and terminates in a standard type A USB plug, as featured in USB memory sticks and pictured at …

    Hardware 25 Sep 01:03

  • Oracle woos open sourcers with free Java web framework

    ADF Essentials gives away the basics

    Battling against an increasingly crowded field of Java web development frameworks, Oracle – ordinarily never one to turn away a buck – has decided to bite the bullet and offer a version of its Application Development Framework (ADF) as a free download. Oracle ADF Essentials is a slightly stripped-down version of Oracle ADF, …

    Developer 25 Sep 01:08

  • What does Steve Wozniak do at Fusion-IO?

    Reg hack bemused by Woz at down under appearance

    Fusion-IO rolled into Sydney this week, with CEO David Flynn and other execs duchessing media and customers with tales of super-fast flash speeding things up inside the data centre. All of which is useful knowledge for IT folks, even if it is far from a revelation to anyone who has paid even passing attention to solid state …

    Storage 25 Sep 02:03

  • Most biofuels fail green test: study

    Swiss research pours cold water on eco claims

    A Swiss study has reconfirmed a common criticism of the use of biofuels as a replacement for fossil fuels: often, the “green” alternative merely replaces one set of environmental problems with another. The study, by Switzerland’s EMPA – the Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology – confirms results the …

    Science 25 Sep 02:18

  • Cisco scores AU$38m NBN win

    MPLS routers, switches and firewalls will power Australia's NBN

    Cisco has sunk its claws deeper into NBNCo, after the networking giant picked up a tender to provide routers for the NBN's operational networks. Cisco is already embedded in NBNCo's data centres, where its servers and networking kit sit alongside VMware software and EMC arrays. The new deal will see routers running multi- …

    Business 25 Sep 04:30

  • Meet Shenzhen, tech capital of China

    El Reg journeys to the city where much of our tech is made

    Welcome to Shenzhen, a geek wonderland at the heart of the technology manufacturing hub of China and the world – the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Last month The Reg had a rather disappointing experience pounding the streets of Tokyo’s Akihabara, where these days maid cafes and manga shops are more prevalent than stores selling …

    Business 25 Sep 04:55

  • Myspace mutates Windows 8 with new look

    Video demo would do Redmond proud

    Myspace* has released a video that shows off a new look that, at first glance, owes a fair bit to the design thinking behind Windows 8, with a dash of Pinterest thrown in for good measure. The once-dominant social network, infamously acquired by Rupert Murdoch for US$580m in 2005 and then offloaded Specific Media for a paltry …

    Networks 25 Sep 05:26

  • Apple Maps to the rescue in China/Japan conflict

    Two sets of disputed islands depicted, one for each nation

    The increasingly vitriolic bun-fight between China and Japan over a disputed set of islands in the East China Sea got an unusual tech arbiter recently after it emerged that the much-maligned mapping app in iOS6 has been undertaking a rather unusual kind of virtual diplomacy. Google Maps is as-of-yet unavailable for iOS6 and …

    Bootnotes 25 Sep 05:32

  • Huawei wants to be telepresence king

    Dethroning Cisco and massive domestic retail rollout to chase US$100b revenue goal

    Chinese telecoms and handset giant Huawei has its sights on dominating yet more markets, with plans to leapfrog Cisco to top spot in the video conferencing space in three years and to expand its retail presence in thousands of domestic bricks and mortar stores to boost handset sales. Huawei’s sales of telepresence kit doubled …

    Business 25 Sep 06:40

  • 7 English cities grab £12m for 'cash back' Green Deals

    Property owners can double-glaze away... pay nothing upfront

    Seven English cities will receive a share of a £12m funding package to allow them to support and test the launch of the government's flagship Green Deal programme in their regions, the energy secretary has announced. Edward Davey said that the funding would enable the cities, each of which received devolved growth powers as …

    Government 25 Sep 07:27

  • Brocade's former $2bn sales boss joins Riverbed

    Golden goose to flog WhiteWater, Steelhead kit

    Brocade's recently departed worldwide sales boss Ian Whiting has popped up at Riverbed as its senior vice president for sales in the Americas region. Riverbed sells Steelhead wide area network transit optimisation products as well as WhiteWater cloud storage gateway products. Whiting's job is to grow revenue and profitability …

    Business 25 Sep 08:01

  • Last remaining reason to order an iPhone 5 disappears

    Opinion Taking so long to ship, it won't even be fashionable

    OK, so it's well known that buying an iPhone 5 is a foolish decision if you want a fully-featured smartphone with any useful new technology in it (the new Apple phone isn't one, and doesn't have any). Also Steve Jobs actually died as the last one came out, so his followers would in many ways be disrespecting his memory by …

    Mobile 25 Sep 08:24

  • Cash-rich SimpliVity bets the farm on rip-'n'-replace boxen

    Will enterprises junk legacy IT for virtual data centre-in-a-box?

    SimpliVity is betting its business on the idea that existing layered server/storage and networking boxes-style IT is heading towards the crash barrier. The company has bagged $25m in funding to market and sell the hell out of its OmniCube product, the one-trick pony that does it all for virtual machines. The box is a 2U rack …

    Storage 25 Sep 08:45

  • Nokia out $99 dual-Sim Asha

    Android alternative

    More low-cost Asha phones from Nokia. Out in Q4, the Asha 308 and 309 will both come in Sim-free at under $100, Nokia said today. The two touchscreen handsets are pitched at emerging-market punters seeking mobile internet access and who might otherwise be tempted by a cheap Android smartphone. Nokia is lining up its Lumia …

    Phones 25 Sep 08:52

  • Man City drags Big Data into Big Football

    Open ... and Shut And Google+ grabs sweaty ballers for its Hangouts...

    Football is the world's most popular sport by a crushing margin. Yet for all the money and attention it gets, the beautiful game has remained doggedly anti-technology, eschewing video replays or goal-line technology despite the prevalence of such tools in other sports. One club, however, is opting to make technology a central …

    Management 25 Sep 09:02

  • Samsung slams Apple patent jury, wants new trial in US

    South Koreans' filing blasts jurors for $1bn payout

    Samsung wants a new patent trial with Apple in the US, claiming the jury couldn't and shouldn't have come to its $1.05bn verdict for its iPhone-maker rival. The South Korean firm's filing with the court is partially redacted, but the section that's been blacked out is likely to claim jury misconduct, as previous cases cited to …

    Law 25 Sep 09:43

  • Mmmm, delicious new sugar batteries keep gadgets up all night

    We.. like... full-fat batts and we cannot lie

    Boffins have discovered they can improve battery capacity by using sucrose - aka table sugar - to create the anode material. Shinichi Komaba and his team at Tokyo University of Science made the discovery during their efforts to produce commercially viable sodium-ion batteries, according to Japanese tech site DigInfo.tv. The …

    Science 25 Sep 09:44

  • Analogue TV snuffs it tonight on UK mainland

    Freeview to drop out briefly - but not as a mark of respect

    Tyne Tees will switch off its analogue TV transmission at midnight tonight. The shutdown will mark the last region of the mainland to go entirely digital despite the obituaries written in April. Exactly how the signal will be killed off is described in quite terrifying detail by the A516 Digital blog. The switch to digital TV …

    Hardware 25 Sep 10:24

  • Facebook denies Timeline publishes punters' private posts

    It's just a Web2.0rrhea rumour... bitch

    Facebook has denied claims it has exposed its users' private messages on their profile pages. Reports stemming from France, where Facebook has just rolled out its Timeline website layout, suggested that punters could view old private missives as public posts between 2007 and 2009. The new Timeline format is gradually being …

    Networks 25 Sep 10:25

  • Curiosity rover blasts, grabs and fondles its first Martian rock

    Lump of Mars thoroughly investigated in drive-by examination

    Mars rover Curiosity has completed its first contact with the Martian surface, successfully fondling a rock with its robotic arm. The nuclear truck arrived at the "Jake Matijevic" rock, named after a late NASA engineer, after a short drive and probed the stone with its robotic arm to assess its chemical elements. As well as …

    Science 25 Sep 10:43

  • Motorola's Razr design daddy legs it, gets inside Intel

    Why bagging top electronics bod is a coup for chip giant

    Roger Jellicoe, the veteran engineer behind Motorola’s greatest hits – the MicroTAC, StarTAC and Razr – has joined Intel as a vice president at the newly formed Devices R&D team within its Mobile Communication Group (MCG). It's an awesome coup for Intel, and a loss for Google, after mass redundancies signalled the Chocolate …

    Mobile 25 Sep 11:01

  • DON'T PANIC: Arctic methane emissions have been going on for ages

    'Surprising' finding of scientific survey mission

    Scientists returning from a seaborne expedition to the Arctic say that the ongoing panic in some quarters regarding runaway emissions of methane from the chilly polar seas - and associated imminent global-warming disaster - appears to be unjustified. For those unacquainted with this particular panic, the idea is that rising …

    Science 25 Sep 11:19

  • Eric Schmidt: Ha ha, NO Google maps app for iPhone 5

    'Apple should have kept ours. But what do I know?'

    Google has not made a maps app for the iPhone 5, its chairman Eric Schmidt said this morning - and his company is not working on one. The search engine supremo's snub will come as a blow to fanbois who "upgraded" to the latest Apple smartphone, or installed the new iOS 6 operating system on their fruity gadgets, and found …

    Mobile 25 Sep 11:42

  • Microsoft flashes fat mobe wallet, whispers: 'Just rub our hub'

    But don't mention NFC nor Windows Phone

    Microsoft has showed off its Windows Phone Wallet - which sits in version 8 alongside the Games and People Hubs, but stores payment and loyality cards rather than games and business cards. However, the software giant would prefer not to talk about NFC - the wireless data transfer tech behind pay-by-wave - or Windows Phone for …

    Windows 8 25 Sep 12:03

  • Resellers eye up £60m-a-year UK uni software deals

    Southern University Purchasing Consortium issues the tender

    The Southern University Purchasing Consortium (SUPC) has issued a tender to resellers for a software framework worth an estimated £60m a year. SUPC is the largest of the UK's six higher education procurement organisations and includes 117 member colleges and institutions that stump up its funding. Resellers were last week …

    The Channel 25 Sep 12:14

  • BT to fibre up another 163 exchanges, coy on exactly where

    Keen to bag more UK.gov funds to lay cable across Blighty

    BT has indicated another 163 exchanges will deploy fibre in 2013 as part of its £2.5bn broadband upgrade for two thirds of the UK. The national telco said the rollout will lead to more than one million homes and businesses witnessing hordes of BT Openreach engineers laying high-speed optic cabling mainly to street cabinets. …

    Broadband 25 Sep 12:31

  • Brave copper single-handedly chases 'suspicious' Moon

    Mystery light source baffles werewolf plod

    A Worcestershire copper is apparently taking some serious stick from his fellow officers after heading off into the Clent Hills to investigate a "suspicious bright light" which turned out to be nothing more sinister than the Moon. According to Police Magazine, the "single-crewed" officer radioed his sergeant to alert him of …

    Bootnotes 25 Sep 12:44

  • Samsung scribbles in UK Galaxy Note II debut date

    Stylus council

    Samsung has said that its Galaxy Note II 5.6in, 1280 x 720 smartphone-cum-tablet, which was launched earlier this month at the IFA show, will be out on Monday, 1 October. The stylus centric gadget sports a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, an 8Mp camera, 2GB of Ram, 16-46GB of Flash storage, dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and 3G HSPA+ …

    Mobile 25 Sep 13:04

  • Wikimedia UK trustee quits amid conflict-of-interest row

    Hangs on to his QRCodes, though

    The IT consultant at the centre of the latest UK Wikipedia scandal has resigned his position as a trustee of the £1m charity Wikimedia UK. The UK chapter's board issued a statement confirming the resignation of Roger Bamkin on Thursday evening. Bamkin is a director of the charity and was, until April, its chairman. Bamkin had …

    Media 25 Sep 13:09

  • Nintendo confirms Wii U region lock

    Cross-border sales crossed out

    It's official: Nintendo is to region-lock the Wii U. Various claims on the internet to that effect prompted trade title CVG to ask Nintendo, and Nintendo said that it will indeed implement region-lock measures to stop punters buying games from, say, Japan and playing them in consoles bought in the UK. As the site notes, …

    Games 25 Sep 13:30

  • Elon Musk's new re-usable, hovering rocket ship in first test liftoff

    Grasshopper hops

    SpaceX, the upstart space startup founded and bankrolled by famous internet nerdwealth kingpin Elon Musk, says it has carried out the first test of a new rocket craft which could lead to development of fully reusable spacecraft. The company announced yesterday: On Friday, September 21, SpaceX's Grasshopper vertical takeoff …

    Science 25 Sep 13:32

  • Dell spills beans on biz app rejig after software gobble fest

    Texan titan also polishes control-freak appliance KACE

    Software wannabe Dell is rejiggering the divisions within its burgeoning Software Group to rationalize them in the wake of a number of acquisitions which have seen it gulp down a serious amount of software IP. The Round Rock firm has also launched an updated KACE management appliance for both PCs and servers. Back in February …

    Software 25 Sep 14:01

  • Sony to fling $642m at scandal-hit Olympus

    Electronics firm to bag a stake as camera-maker's execs go on trial for fraud

    Sony is reportedly about to invest ¥50bn ($642m) in beleaguered digital camera-maker Olympus, giving it a 10 per cent stake in the firm. The Japanese electronics giant will set up a joint business with Olympus to develop new medical equipment and get a seat on the board next year, three sources whispered to Reuters. Olympus …

    Business 25 Sep 14:19

  • Einstein's brain FOUND ON APPLE iPAD

    Secrets of super-boffin's mind locked in fondleslabs

    Albert Einstein's brain can now be downloaded to your trusty Apple iPad, should you own one. Sadly it's not an iOS-compatible simulation of the top physicist's mind, best known for coming up with the general theory of relativity and laying the ground work for quantum mechanics. Instead it's a selection of photos of slices of …

    Science 25 Sep 14:36

  • Why Oracle must kiss goodbye to its database past

    Open ... and Shut Moneybags Larry hopes cloud will shower him in cash

    A few years back Apple opted to drop the "Computer" from its corporate name, and instead became "Apple Inc." Last week, Oracle made a similar move, quietly stopping its decades old practice of reporting database revenues. Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison was quick to point out on Oracle's earnings call that for its database …

    Management 25 Sep 15:04

  • Xbox Live gamers blown offline by 'Virgin Media routing balls-up'

    Telco and Microsoft investigating cause of outage

    An unknown number of Virgin Media customers have been locked out of Xbox Live due to unconfirmed reports from users suggesting that routing issues are affecting the telco. The Register has asked VM and Microsoft – which owns Xbox – to explain what had caused the service to go titsup for some users since at least the early …

    Broadband 25 Sep 15:25

  • A single web link will WIPE Samsung Android smartphones

    Magic number in URL triggers factory reset

    An enterprising hacker has demonstrated how a simple web page can reset various Samsung phones back to the state they left the factory - enabling a click, bump or text to take out a victim's mobe entirely. The devastating flaw lies in Samsung's dialling software, triggered by the tel protocol in a URL. It isn't applicable to …

    Security 25 Sep 15:36

  • Micro Anvika Stratford goes titsup - 2012 Games 'boom fell flat'

    Samsung takes over branded store in London's East End shopping mall

    Micro Anvika Stratford (MAS) is in the process of being liquidated, just months after opening its first Samsung-backed and branded East London store in readiness for the Olympics. Re10, which was appointed administrator of associated company Micro Anvika, is also handling the affairs of MAS and a creditors' meeting has been …

    The Channel 25 Sep 15:55

  • White House 'wants Feds to draw up cyber-defences' for power plants

    Crack council to oversee water and electricity supplies

    The White House is reportedly getting all federal agencies together to develop voluntary cybersecurity guidelines for power, water and other critical infrastructure companies. The Feds will get 90 days to propose the regulations and put together a new cybersecurity council at the Department of Homeland Security with agents …

    Government 25 Sep 16:01

  • Chip strip reveals 'handmade' Apple A6

    Dual-core CPU, three GPUs exposed

    Electron microscope photos of an Apple A6 processor lifted out of an iPhone 5 confirm the presence of a dual-core ARM CPU within the system-on-a-chip plus a trio of Imagination Technologues PowerVR graphics cores. The SoC was pulled from the handset by the team at iFixit.com, and the die extracted from its ceramic package and …

    Phones 25 Sep 16:09

  • iPhone 5 'jailbroken' ... before most fanbois even have it

    All this has happened before. All this will happen again

    Hardware enthusiasts claim they have already figured out a way to jailbreak the iPhone 5. Grant Paul, AKA chpwn, a veteran of the scene, posted a photo and screenshot of a jailbroken iPhone on Twitter which show it running Cydia, an unsanctioned app allowing access to the indie software shop of the same name – where you can …

    Mobile 25 Sep 16:28

  • iPhone 5 sales curbed by lack of smashable screens – report

    Not because demand is dropping, then?

    Sales of the iPhone 5 on the first weekend of its release were lower than expected because the phone is so innovative, not because customer interest is tailing off, reports newswire Bloomberg. The iPhone 5 sold 5 million units in its first three days of sale: and while the huge figure is an increase on the 4 million iPhone 4Ss …

    Mobile 25 Sep 16:48

  • Tesla Motors falls behind in Model S production, issues more shares

    Can't seem to get anything out of the door but paper

    Quality control and supply issues have slowed down the production of Tesla's Model S sedan, as the firm tries to avoid the fate of Fisker's Karma. The company, owned by Tony Stark inspiration Elon Musk, said in a filing today that there was a hold-up in its assembly line that would hit its expected revenue this year. "To …

    Science 25 Sep 17:18

  • SHA-3 hash finalist Schneier calls for halt in crypto contest

    'No award' in algorithm bake-off would be best, says Bruce

    A US government agency will soon announce which of five remaining candidate algorithms will become SHA-3, the new hash function to replace SHA-1 and SHA-2. The latter is a key component in various security technologies, from SSL and SSH to PGP and IPsec, and must be used by law in certain US government applications. The US …

    Security 25 Sep 18:02

  • Caching outfit Terracotta gives away freebie Java doritos

    Once you pop, what can't you do again?

    Sometimes you have to give to get. And Terracotta, which specializes in caching programs for Java applications, has decided to give away a freebie version of its BigMemory in-memory caching appliance to try to expand its base of customers who are willing to pay for the full-on and much more scalable version of the product. …

    Servers 25 Sep 18:32

  • Ex X-IO exec Alan Atkinson takes reins at Dell's Compellent

    Just suddenly appears behind desk one day

    X-IO's chairman and ex-CEO Alan Atkinson has joined Dell to run its Compellent operation. There has been no announcement by Dell , or X-IO, but Atkinson's LinkedIn entry shows the move has been made. When Dell bought Compellent its co-founder and CEO Phil Soran stayed on and ran Compellent as a Dell business until he left in …

    Storage 25 Sep 19:06

  • RIM seeks to woo developers with REO Speedwagon cover

    Shows off latest Blackberry 10 build, preps app store

    Crumbling Canuck smartphone vendor RIM has taken to song in an effort to keep developers writing for the platform. In a music video, released for the BlackBerry Jam developers conference that kicked off on Tuesday in San José, California, several RIM staffers rock off a cover of REO Speedwagon's "Keep on loving you", with …

    Mobile 25 Sep 19:47

  • RackWare uncloaks self, unveils cloudy control freakery

    Getting physical as well as virtual

    The market for tools to manage virtual servers and the clouds they underpin is crowded, and it just got a little more so now that startup RackWare has uncloaked with its RackWare Management Module (RMM) tool and elbowed its way into the game. RackWare, which was founded in 2009 with funding from unnamed angel investors, …

    Virtualization 25 Sep 20:00

  • Google, Microsoft butt heads in browser benchmark battle

    Will the real real-world test please stand up?

    Google Chrome has finally met a web benchmark suite it can't master, and no one could be happier than the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft, which has used the occasion to suggest that the Chocolate Factory's browser is not really the speed demon it's cracked up to be. Dubbed RoboHornet, the new, open source benchmark suite …

    Applications 25 Sep 21:14

  • NASA releases stunning image of our universe's distant past

    Photo A 13.2 billion year peek into the past

    NASA has combined 10 years of deep-space photos to create what it dubs the "eXtreme Deep Field" (XDF), an image of a tiny slice of the sky that contains well over five thousand galaxies, some almost unimaginably ancient. "The XDF is the deepest image of the sky ever obtained and reveals the faintest and most distant galaxies …

    Science 25 Sep 22:24

  • Sam Palmisano exits IBM

    New CEO Rometty has the reins, spurs, and saddle now

    This is Sam Palmisano's last week at the top of IBM, a company he has been running more or less since he was tapped to be president and chief operating officer back in July 2000. Ginni Rometty, who had previously run IBM's worldwide sales and marketing group and a chunk of the Global Services behemoth for many years, was …

    Business 25 Sep 22:25

  • Nextgen on the block as Leighton seeks cash

    Metronode and Infoplex also up for sale

    Some prime pieces of Australian IT&T real estate are on the block, with construction company Leighton Holdings announcing that it intends to sell network subsidiary Nextgen Networks. The company’s decision will also put its Metronode data centre business and Infoplex IT arm, while Leighton’s will retain its network …

    Business 25 Sep 22:41

  • Intel CEO thinks Windows 8 isn't ready, insider claims

    But at least it will ship before the holidays

    To hear Microsoft tell it, work on Windows 8 wrapped in August and the final version of the new OS is already shipping to PC makers. But according to a source close to Intel, Redmond's closest hardware partner thinks the current Windows 8 code is still only half-baked. At a recent company meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Intel CEO …

    Software 25 Sep 22:55

  • Microsoft extends Windows Server 2008 support

    Eighteen month stay of execution for ye olde pre-cloud OS

    Sysadmins can plan a more relaxed schedule for 2013, after Microsoft extended support for Windows Server 2008 to January 15th, 2015. Redmond initially planned to send the OS to the graveyard, at least in terms of provision of official support, on July 9th, 2013. Microsoft has now decided, in its Support Lifecycle Quarterly …

    Servers 25 Sep 23:03

  • Google promises autonomous cars for all within five years

    New California law clears driverless cars from 2015

    Sergey Brin is promising Google's self-driving cars will be available for everyone within five years, and says that his company's current fleet of vehicles has managed to drive 50,000 miles without humans having to take the wheel. Google has over 300,000 miles of automated-driving testing under its belt already, he said, and …

    Science 25 Sep 23:13

  • Chambers says Cisco is mulling succession plans

    Top brass get out their running shoes

    John Chambers has been running networking giant and systems wannabe Cisco Systems for so long that it's hard to remember the vendor existed for seven years before he came on board in 1991 to run worldwide sales and operations after spending a decade and a half at Wang Laboratories and IBM. But at 63, Chambers has no choice but …

    Business 25 Sep 23:19

  • IEEE slips up, leaks logins

    FTP server logs unsecured, leaving Apple, Google, IBM and Oracle details exposed

    IEEE members will be scrambling to change their logins after it emerged that more than 100,000 members’ names and plaintext passwords were left in plain sight for more than a month. In this documentation and analysis of the breach, Danish FindZebra computer scientist Radu Dragusin notes, among other things, that bad password …

    Security 25 Sep 23:37