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2nd October 2012 Archive

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  • Oracle stumps for community support for Java strategy

    JavaOne 2012 'It's not just up to us'

    "Make the future Java" is the official slogan of this year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, but if there was a central theme to Sunday's keynote presentations, it was that moving Java forward is not just an Oracle project but a community effort. Throughout the more than three hours of talks and demos, members of Oracle's …

    Developer 2 Oct 00:29

  • Facebook digs in over Jill Meagher page

    Australian Police worry comments could spoil murder trial

    A Facebook page dedicated to directing hate at an accused murder has sparked a legal row in Australia, after Facebook declined to take down the page despite Police appealing for its removal. Victorian Police last week arrested Adrian Bayley over the rape and murder of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation employee and Irish …

    Networks 2 Oct 00:30

  • Apple slapped with patent lawsuit over iOS 6 Passbook app

    Poker-playing, restaurant-managing software dev seeks treble damages

    Apple has been named in a patent lawsuit by a poker and restaurant software developer who claims that Cupertino has infringed upon four of its patents in the recently released iOS 6 Passbook app. The plaintiff, Ameranth, is self-described as "a leading provider of wireless and Internet based solutions for the hospitality/ …

    Law 2 Oct 00:36

  • Pirate Bay site sinks, Swedish police raid its ISP

    Oddly, the two events aren't related

    Rumors are flying after the Pirate Bay's website took a dive on Monday just as news broke of a raid by Swedish police on its hosting company PRQ – but the group says the two facts are not related. "Dear internet. We have not been raided. We are not shutting down. We like turtles, waffles and you," the group said on its …

    Security 2 Oct 00:42

  • Simon Cowell plans X Factor for Tech

    The hunt for the Susan Boyle of code is on

    The man responsible for unleashing Il Divo, Susan Boyle and Sinitta on the world will now apply the same star spotting eye to finding the next tech superstar. Reality TV impresario Simon Cowell has teamed with Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am to produce and new reality TV format based on the “X Factor” template, but this time …

    Business 2 Oct 02:00

  • Boffins suggest orbital dust-up to combat climate change

    Let's park an asteroid beyond the moon

    A researcher from Scotland’s University of Strathclyde has suggested what looks to El Reg like a fairly radical proposal to combat climate change: asteroid dust. The PhD research student, Russel Bewick, at the university’s Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, has put the idea to LiveScience ahead of the publication of a paper …

    Science 2 Oct 03:00

  • Microsoft releases JavaScript alternative

    TypeScript embraces and extends JavaScript, but is open source

    Microsoft has released a new JavaScript development environment, dubbed TypeScript, and says it is designed to help developers write more complex apps with the popular scripting language. Long-time Reg readers may recall that Microsoft has form giving the world new technologies, but not always for altruistic reasons. During …

    Developer 2 Oct 03:52

  • Conroy wants telcos to wear undies on heads

    And make them red, says Conroy as he brags of “unfettered power”

    Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has bragged of his unfettered power to command local telcos, saying it gives him the power to compel them to wear red underpants on their collective heads. Conroy's remarks were made at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information …

    Networks 2 Oct 05:15

  • Guild Wars 2 game review

    Review A real Blizzard stomper?

    I’ve just been reigning supreme on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 playing Panda and knocking out the advanced bear fighting moves while I wait to play a Panadrian Monk in the mother of all MMOs World of Warcraft. I wasn’t planning on playing Guild Wars 2, as I was worried it might become a distraction in couple of weeks when I need to …

    reghardware 2 Oct 07:00

  • Whiptail lifts flash-array skirt: We're ready for bigness

    But EMC's about to kick the door in. You ready for that?

    Whiptail, the self-proclaimed first shipper of an all-flash array, opened up to a press briefing party in Whippany, New Jersey, and spoke of its future plans, saying it is ready for hyper-growth. Company CEO Dan Crain said flash arrays would enable businesses to run lengthy processes five times, ten times or even more times …

    Storage 2 Oct 07:27

  • UK brings in small-claims court for intellectual property

    Can't afford a lawyer? Accept this much smaller payout

    Small-biz bosses in England and Wales will find it easier and cheaper to protect their intellectual property from today. That's the promise by Blighty's business minister Michael Fallon, who yesterday launched a new way to use the Patents County Court (PCC) to settle small claims of up to £5,000 without getting expensive …

    Law 2 Oct 08:01

  • Sanbolic pulls out FLASH liquid, scrubs vigorously round data bowl

    Mmm! Fit to shove your head into

    Enterprises are snapping up flash storage to solve IO bottlenecks in their infrastructure. But they can easily screw up tidy and controlled overall application workload management software by placing flash performance silos outside the controlled infrastructure they have relied upon. Sanbolic is hoping to attract this messy …

    Storage 2 Oct 08:19

  • EU, US edge closer to mega-transatlantic patent system

    Turns out Apple holds a patent on the idea

    The US and European Patent Offices have moved a step closer to a universal patent system by officially publishing their new Cooperative Patent Classification system. Released today in draft form, the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system comes into effect from 1 January 2013. It means that both the States and Europe …

    Law 2 Oct 08:39

  • Varonis pushes out cloudy file transaction-tracking snitch

    Oi, who's uploading all the source code?

    I was on a storage start-up press tour of the eastern USA, taking in Miami, Boston and New York – don't ever say this business doesn't have its moments – and a supplier had cancelled, so we went to see Varonis instead. The company's Data Goverance Suite has a DatAdvantage set of modules which look at file transactions: creations …

    Storage 2 Oct 08:58

  • Ubuntu 12.10: More to Um Bongo Linux than Amazon ads

    Review But as of Beta 2, y'all better get used to web apps

    A second beta of Ubuntu 12.10 has arrived and its biggest feature has proved its most controversial: the integration of Amazon.com search results on your desktop. A new Lens in the Unity Dash will poll Amazon to find results relevant to your search terms. And yes, if you click the link and buy the item Ubuntu-maker Canonical …

    Operating Systems 2 Oct 09:21

  • Ofcom tries to chop months off EE's 4G exclusive

    Spectrum jiggery pokery behind closed doors

    Ofcom is asking Arqiva to shift Freeview out of the 4G spectrum bands ahead of time, in the hope of appeasing the mobile operators who are still livid about EE's exclusive. All the parties involved will be meeting today to discuss the matter, including the Ministry of Fun (who took over control of Ofcom last year) and the …

    Mobile 2 Oct 09:42

  • Adele's Skyfall poised to fall from sky

    Latest Bond theme unleashed this Friday

    Brit chanteuse Adele is poised to make her bid for Bond movie glory, as the clock counts down on the release of her theme for Skyfall. At (naturally) 0:07 BST on Friday, 5 October, the world will find out just how Tottenham's finest measures up to Welsh warbler Shirley Bassey, she of the classic Goldfinger anthem. Adele said …

    Media 2 Oct 10:01

  • WSJ bigs up Nimble and Coraid, massages their VC backers

    Storage start-ups bag spots on top 50 investor-backed firms list

    The Wall Street Journal has decided hybrid disk array vendor Nimble Storage and Ethernet storage array biz Coraid are going to be The Next Big storage Things. Nimble Storage sells hybrid flash and spinning disk drive arrays as a way of getting flash speed and disk capacity without paying the all-flash array premium. Coraid is …

    Storage 2 Oct 10:14

  • Ex-HP printer veep's job deal inked, jets off to outsourcer

    Industry vet Vyomesh Joshi lands board seat at Wipro

    Former HP printer veep and industry vet Vyomesh Joshi has joined the board at Indian outsourcer Wipro. Joshi retired from the troubled US titan in March after the PC and printers businesses were stitched together and PC honcho Todd Bradley was asked to head up the expanded unit. As is customary with high-level appointments, …

    The Channel 2 Oct 10:29

  • Pastafarians: Get your noodly appendages off that Facebook suspect

    Pasta-based worshippers protest arrest of man for 'blasphemy'

    Greek Pastafarians staged a protest in Athens on Friday, days after a man was arrested for running a Facebook page that satirised a revered monk. The 27-year-old faces blasphemy* charges over a Facebook page that mocked deceased Greek monk Elder Paisios, using the name Elder Pastitsios (the name of an even better known Greek …

    Bootnotes 2 Oct 10:47

  • WTF is... VoLTE

    Feature Why voice calls on 4G may be pants (at first)

    How are the UK's mobile network operators going to handle voice calls when they switch on their 4G LTE networks? Possibly not very well. LTE is a purely IP network, so ordinary phone calls need to carried using voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. That ought to be straightforward: VoIP has been around for years, the principles are …

    Mobile 2 Oct 11:00

  • Op Tuleta officers cuff 2 more computer hacking suspects

    Scotland Yard sweeps homes of suspects

    Scotland Yard cops investigating criminal breaches of privacy manacled two men early this morning. A 58-year-old man - whose occupation was not revealed - was arrested at his home in Surrey and was expected to be interviewed at a south London police station later on Tuesday. The Met added that it had also cuffed a 61-year-old …

    Law 2 Oct 11:14

  • Amazon UK: We're hiring 3,000 Xmas temps? Make that 10,000

    Army of Bezos' little helpers is looking swell

    Amazon UK has tripled the number of temp box packers it will hire in the Christmas run-up: 10,000 short-term packaging jobs will now be created at the company's UK shipment centres. Amazon has eight so-called fulfilment centres in Rugeley, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Doncaster, Peterborough, Dunfermline, Inverclyde and …

    Jobs 2 Oct 11:31

  • From Russia with gov: PM Medvedev glad-hands Zuckerberg

    Now build us a Facebook lab... bitch

    Mark Zuckerberg ditched his trademark hoodie getup and pulled on a suit for a meeting with beaming Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev yesterday. The Facebook founder posted a photograph of his visit to the Russian leader's residence just outside Moscow on the social network. The 28-year-old Web2.0 adman said the pair had …

    Financial News 2 Oct 11:48

  • Oregon farmer devoured by own hogs

    DA describes demise as 'doggone weird'

    Authorities in Coos County, Oregon, are investigating just how a 69-year-old farmer ended up being eaten by his own monster hogs. The remains of Vietnam vet Terry Vance Garner were discovered at his farm outside Bandon "several hours after he went to feed his animals". A family member first spotted the farmer's dentures on the …

    Bootnotes 2 Oct 12:02

  • Amway daddy to flog wireless charging pioneer

    eCoupled thrown onto the auction block

    The technology behind the Qi charging standard, so recently adopted by Nokia for its Lumia handset, is being sold off by its owner – which was only using it to power a water filter and sell some makeup. eCoupled was developed by Fulton Innovation to power the eSpring water filter which is sold by Amway. Fulton quickly saw the …

    Mobile 2 Oct 12:23

  • BYOD trend could kill off role of CIO – SCC

    Disruption predicted for channel too as PC buying cycles 'fast evaporating'

    The traditional role of the CIO is under threat as the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) phenomenon crosses into the mainstream. But the channel is set to feel the impact too, or so says reseller-cum-integrator SCC, whose CTO today delivered a keynote on 'Architecting Choice' to the CIO Connect Conference in London, identifying …

    The Channel 2 Oct 13:00

  • New study: 'Fraud behind two-thirds of pulled medical papers'

    Surge in retracted findings linked to funding cuts

    Medical boffins are rarely wrong when they publish in journals - but some are prepared to lie quite a lot, according to a new study on retracted scientific papers. Previous studies have claimed that most papers are pulled from publication because there's some error in them, but this fresh investigation claims malpractice is …

    Science 2 Oct 13:18

  • HTC outs Jelly Bean running One X revamp

    Faster CPU, bigger battery life, more storage

    HTC has updated its One X smartphone, pledging the handset will be faster, more capacious and run for a longer duration. The new model, the One X+, comes equipped with a 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, making it 27 per cent faster than the One X, HTC claimed. Despite the faster processor, the new phone's battery life when you're …

    reghardware 2 Oct 13:24

  • US court lifts ban on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

    Sammy gets (a small) one in Apple's eye

    Galaxy Tabs will go back on the shop shelves in America this week, as Samsung got one piece of good news from the patent court in California where its battle with Apple saw it handed a $1bn fine. Samsung's Galaxy tab was banned in June following a ruling that it infringed a key design patent - D’889. That ruling was overturned …

    Law 2 Oct 13:37

  • Adobe bets on cloud collaboration for Acrobat XI

    Predicts the death of paper contracts

    Adobe is upgrading the Acrobat platform to include cloud collaborative editing of PDFs and PowerPoint decks, as well as the touch and mobile friendly features and automatic form generation it says customers have been demanding. Acrobat XI is an attempt by Adobe to move its online document dominance into the cloud realm and not …

    Applications 2 Oct 14:09

  • Is Oracle squeezing the MySQL lemon too hard?

    Open ... and Shut If it hoards functionality, it could lose the community

    Despite what many feared, Oracle has not abandoned development of MySQL. Indeed, as announced at Oracle OpenWorld this week, Oracle just released MySQL Release Candidate 5.6 with a host of new features. Unfortunately, only paying customers are ever going to see the best of those features. Well before Oracle acquired Sun ( …

    Developer 2 Oct 14:48

  • OK - who just bought a biz PC? Oh wait, none of you did

    Economy not at fault - the world's gone mobile

    A revival in fortunes for desktop makers evaporated this summer as shipments across Western Europe collapsed. In each country across the region, sales out through distributors declined in July and August compared to the same months a year earlier. The latest stats show Finland reported the steepest decline, down nearly 23 per …

    The Channel 2 Oct 15:13

  • RIP Psion PLC: You're with Motorola now

    Assimilation of UK pocket PC hero is complete

    Motorola Solutions - the profitable bit of Motorola that wasn't gobbled by Google - has completed its acquisition of Psion PLC, and can now start integrating the company. The purchase was announced in June, but it's taken a while to complete despite the £129m offer being unanimously recommended by the Psion board. Motorola …

    Mobile 2 Oct 15:38

  • Hackers leak 120,000 student records in raid on world's top unis

    We don't need no education - except in web programming

    Hackers have attacked the world's top 100 universities in a protest against tuition fees and what's deemed to be a falling quality of education. Anonymous-affiliated Team GhostShell dumped information from 120,000 user accounts and student records after raiding servers at institutions including Princeton, Harvard, Cambridge …

    Security 2 Oct 16:02

  • Juniper chops workforce by 5.3 per cent

    Dumps WAN optimization, endorses Riverbed wares

    In July, Juniper Networks reported a 50.1 per cent drop in net earnings for the second quarter and said that it would be restructuring as well as forming a partnership with Riverbed Technologies. We now know a bit more about exactly what they meant by "restructuring". At the time, Juniper – which has seen increasing pressure …

    Financial News 2 Oct 17:09

  • Samsung adds iPhone 5 to patent battle v Apple

    No, not that battle, this battle

    As expected, Samsung has added the iPhone 5 to its patent infringement case against Apple, coincidentally just after a California judge lifted the ban on importing the Korean electronics giant's Galaxy Tab 10.1 fondleslabs. "The iPhone 5 has the same accused functionality as the previously accused versions of the iPhone," …

    Law 2 Oct 17:57

  • Oracle Linux honcho 'personally hurt' by Red Hat clone claims

    OpenWorld 2012 'We're not the same, we're better'

    Oracle has taken its share of knocks for marketing a version of Linux that's package-for-package compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but according to Oracle senior engineering veep Wim Coekaerts, Oracle Linux's reputation as a copycat is entirely undeserved. "I often read things on Slashdot or blogs where folks …

    Operating Systems 2 Oct 20:59

  • Oracle claims complete cloud suite

    OpenWorld 2012 Takes an axe to Salesforce with CRM and social apps

    On Monday, Larry Ellison told attendees at OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco that Oracle was a reluctant entrant into the cloud market, pushed on by the wishes of its customers. Just one day later, his company claimed its new public cloud applications suite is the biggest in the business. VP of Oracle Product Development Thomas …

    Cloud 2 Oct 21:30

  • Paul Allen: Windows 8 'promising' yet 'puzzling'

    Microsoft cofounder's verdict: 'Does certainly require adjustment'

    Billionaire investor Paul Allen says he's bullish on Windows 8, but it seems even the co-founder of Microsoft has struggled with what he describes as some of the more "puzzling aspects" of the new OS. In an in-depth review posted to his personal website, Allen says he has been working with a preview release of Windows 8 for a …

    Windows 8 2 Oct 22:29

  • Rapper rips up Microsoft's Atlanta store during performance

    Updated Machine Gun Kelly rap gets out of hand

    It must have seemed like such a wonderful idea – have an up-and-coming rapper perform at Microsoft's store in the Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta Georgia. It all ended in tears, however, with trashed computers, claims that the police were called, and embarrassing videos circulating on YouTube. Machine Gun Kelly (MGK to his …

    Bootnotes 2 Oct 22:36

  • Level 3 named as possible Nextgen buyer

    Fibre network sale excites speculation

    Australian telco industry newsletter Communications Day is reporting speculation that America’s Level 3 Communications might be considering acquiring Nextgen Networks, put up for sale by parent Leighton Holdings last week. The long-haul network – one of a handful of national-scale backhaul competitors to Telstra, with a …

    Networks 2 Oct 22:36

  • Intel spreads $40 million investment love to 10 companies

    From Silicon Valley to Bollywood

    Intel Capital has announced $40m worth of investment in 10 companies headquartered from Silicon Valley to Shanghai. "The globe is our oyster," Intel Capital president Arvind Sodhani said in a webcast from his investment group's 13th annual Global Summit in Huntington Beach, California, where the announcements were made. From …

    Financial News 2 Oct 22:43

  • ACT Pirate Party outlines Lego manifesto

    Transparent parliament, plod on the pavement, hugging and sharing everywhere

    The Pirate Party has outlined a manifesto … in Lego and on video. The philosophy, expressed in the video below, comes from Stuart Biggs, a Pirate Party candidate in the forthcoming elections in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), a region roughly analogous to the USA's District of Columbia inasmuch as it houses the nation' …

    Policy 2 Oct 23:30