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4th October 2012 Archive

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  • HP's Whitman: 'I will turn this company around – by 2016'

    Fewer PCs and printers, more high-priced contracts

    During a meeting with financial analysts on Wednesday, HP CEO Meg Whitman said her plan to turn around the ailing company was on track, but the restructuring won't be complete until 2016 and investors should expect HP's earnings to shrink even further before the work is done. In August, HP reported a loss of $8.9bn, with …

    Business 4 Oct 00:06

  • Red Hat launches community contest to rename JBoss

    Sounds too much like it's a Java thing

    Red Hat says its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform has evolved to embrace far more than just Java, and to reflect this, it has launched a contest to rename the JBoss Application Server (JBossAS) to something more in line with its current vision of multi-language programming. In a blog post on Monday, Red Hat Senior …

    Developer 4 Oct 00:51

  • Assange movie portrays leaker as teen rebel

    Review Telemovie says hacker martyr's infant escape from cult sparked activism

    A car passes through a foggy forest. In the back seat, memories wash through a floppy-haired teenaged boy's mind. He recalls another night drive, one on which his mother spirited him away before a stepfather could despatch him to live on a creepy cult's hidden commune. Years later the family emerges from the same car and …

    Security 4 Oct 00:53

  • Big Data skills gap needs filling says tech industry

    Oracle OpenWorld Want a job for life? Get good at data science

    Concern is growing in the US technology industry about a skills gap in education and training in the field of data analysis. "Last 50 years arguably have been about computer science," said Jeremy Burton, VP of product operations for EMC, during his Monday keynote at Oracle OpenWorld. "The next 50 years are going to be about …

    Jobs 4 Oct 01:06

  • Boffins get black hole double-vision

    Messier 22 springs astro-physics surprise

    The Messier 22 globular star cluster has yielded a messier-than-expected observation: instead of the black hole astronomers expected to find in its centre, there are two. Conducted by the University of Southampton’s Dr Tom Maccarone, Michigan State University assistant professor Jay Strader and others, and using the NSF’s Karl …

    Science 4 Oct 01:45

  • ScanJet sings number one hit

    Disks are cymbals, oscilliscope bass, in song that humans used to know

    What to do does one do with outmoded printers and obsolete computers? Create a machine that plays over saturated, heavy rotation pop hits from Australia, of course. This week’s You Tube hit puller is from Canadian homestyle electronica boffin bd594 who has managed to use a 2004-vintage HP ScanJet 3c and an Amiga 600 to play …

    Bootnotes 4 Oct 02:15

  • Global action takes down tech support scam

    Canadian, Australian and US authorities claim victory over crims

    Australian, US and Canadian authorities have jointly proclaimed a victory over scammers who call punters and offer unsolicited and unnecessary tech support. The scam has been running for years and involves a call from someone claiming to be an employee of Microsoft or another tech titan. If you answer, the caller explains that …

    Security 4 Oct 04:11

  • Boffins prescribe SNAKE VENOM as future pain killer

    Take two Black Mamba bites, see your doctor if pain persists

    The venom of the Black Mamba, rated the world's seventh most potent snake poison, has been suggested as a future painkiller for humans. A letter in Nature suggests the application is viable as the venom contains “a new class of three-finger peptides … able to abolish pain through inhibition of Acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs …

    Science 4 Oct 06:09

  • Griffin StompBox iOS pedalboard review

    Playing footsie

    Music making on Apple's iOS devices has long since migrated from mere display driven ditties to a range of additional hardware better suited to musicians. Alesis, Digitech and IK Multimedia, to name a few, are known music technology brands working the iOS instrument dock market. Nowadays, mainstream iDevice accessory vendors, …

    reghardware 4 Oct 07:00

  • 'It is absolute b*ll*cks that contractors aren't committed'

    Oz survey finds HR managers should love freelancers

    The academic who penned an Australian study into the working lives of freelance professionals says the results would, if they described full-time employees, mean human resources managers tick all the boxes needed to score a bonus. The study in question, the 2012 iPro Index, was conducted by Monash University Senior Lecturer Dr …

    Jobs 4 Oct 07:13

  • Privacy guardian wants one EU rulebook on ID databases

    'Keeping citizens' privates protected must be in law'

    Organisations tasked with certifying systems individuals use for inputting personally identifying information should have to abide by a "common set of security requirements", an EU privacy body has said. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) recommended that 'trust service providers', and those that issue individuals …

    Law 4 Oct 07:26

  • Romans, Han Dynasty, kick-started climate change

    What have the Romans ever done for us?

    Anthropogenic climate change may not be a recent phenomenon, with researchers reporting ice cores from the first two centuries AD show big spikes in methane prevalence. Those two centuries, the researchers note, co-incide with the most prosperous periods for the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty. A Nature paper, Natural and …

    Science 4 Oct 07:34

  • UK.gov to spunk £2m a year policing global cyber-security

    BCC New centre to advise countries on beefing up defences

    The UK will spend an extra £2m every year on improving international computer security defences, including a research centre for businesses and countries to tap into. A senior Foreign Office official said last night Blighty was focussed on helping enterprises overseas and nations to sort out their cyber-security. "This centre …

    Security 4 Oct 08:00

  • Boffins: Our memory film is like your girlfriend - transparent and cheap

    But also very ... bendy

    Boffins at Rice University have invented flexible see-through resistive memory that can replace flash drives and be attached to car windscreens or device displays. The memory, described in Nature, is made from a layer of silicon oxide (SiOx) sandwiched between two checkerboard arrays of graphene or indium tin oxide, which form …

    Science 4 Oct 08:17

  • Scottish brainiacs erect wee super-antenna

    Putting intelligence into the aerial

    A spinout from Edinburgh University is touting a mobile-phone antenna smart enough to aim at the nearest base station, and small enough to squeeze into the slimmest smartphone. The technology was developed at Edinburgh University by a trio including one professor and a PhD student, backed with £450,000 from the Scottish …

    Science 4 Oct 08:42

  • Chief leaves Brit IT giant Phoenix after just 15 months

    'Unrelated to ongoing accounting investigation'

    Phoenix IT Group chief exec Dave Courtley has quit the firm after less than 15 months in the role, the LSE-listed IT services company confirmed this morning. The former Fujitsu Services bigwig rocked up at Northampton-based Phoenix in July 2011 replacing long-serving boss Nick Robinson, who stepped down after 18 years at the …

    The Channel 4 Oct 08:45

  • Experts mull 'kill switch' for stock-wrecking techno-blunders

    Markets need a cure for Facebook IPOcalypses

    Technology and market experts reckon it's a good idea to design "kill switches" to stop computer glitches from causing chaos with stocks, à la Facebook's IPO, but said they better be well-designed. The markets have been plagued by a number of high-profile cock-ups, including the crazy day of Facebook's first stock offering, …

    Financial News 4 Oct 09:01

  • Apple: Blue-shirts can fix iOS Maps in their spare time

    Cunning new plan

    Concerned that the blue-shirt in the Apple Store isn't paying enough attention to your questions about charger adapters for your iPhone 5? Maybe that's because she's trying to correct the location of the local airport on Apple's Maps application. One of Apple's new strategies for fixing iOS Maps is to get their retail staff …

    Applications 4 Oct 09:16

  • Whopping supersonic-car rocket rattles idyllic Cornwall

    Boffin Jubb fires up Bloodhound's hybrid thruster

    The Bloodhound SuperSonic Car team yesterday pushed the big red button on the "biggest rocket fired in the UK for over 20 years"*. The Falcon Hybrid Rocket - a 45cm (18in) diameter by 3.6m (12ft) long unit burning hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene solid fuel and high-test peroxide (HTP) oxidiser - roared to life for 10 seconds …

    SPB 4 Oct 09:29

  • From Dr No to Skyfall: The Reg's one month of Bond

    Bond on Film 007-size science, technology and myths in depth

    It’s 1962 and John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev are facing off over nuclear missiles in Cuba while Telstar bounces the first satellite transmission through space. Meanwhile, James Bond is making his cinematic debut in Dr No in London, with Sean Connery bringing Ian Fleming’s naval officer turned secret agent from book to …

    Bond, James Bond 4 Oct 09:46

  • Nokia pumps up Lumia browsing with Xpress

    It's paradigm-busting, really it is

    Nokia's server-side compression platform is now open to Lumia users, in beta at least, providing a 75 per cent reduction in traffic, SkyDrive integration as well as an entirely new browsing paradigm. Xpress has been available for the Asha series of handsets for a while, interpreting web pages in the cloud and delivering only …

    Mobile 4 Oct 10:24

  • STILL TRUE: Facebook and co to handle taxpayers' ID

    Comment And the entire system will STILL NEED primary legislation, too

    Cast your minds back to June 2011 when The Register exclusively revealed the Cabinet Office's plans to allow British citizens to sign into public services online via social networking log-ins such as Facebook. Now, if you glance at the national press today, you'd be forgiven for thinking that something new had happened with …

    Government 4 Oct 10:27

  • HP snorage must wake up before biz bosses kick it out of bed

    Blocks and Files Storage line-up needs more than 3PAR and StoreOnce arrays

    At the HP analyst day this week, enterprise group executive vice-president Dave Donatelli laid it on the line for subsidiary 3PAR and the StoreOnce team: you gotta help get us out of this place. This place being the rut HP's growth figures are stuck in, and CEO Meg Whitman has bet on 3PAR and StoreOnce in her turnaround plan …

    Storage 4 Oct 10:46

  • Microsoft installs new Win8 evangelism boss – weeks before launch

    Devs to be wooed by OEM exec

    Microsoft has dipped into its OEM executive pool for a new head of Windows 8 developer evangelism on the eve of the operating system's launch. The company’s reported to have named Steve Guggenheimer as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer and platform evangelism division. Guggenheimer had served as corporate vice …

    Developer 4 Oct 11:16

  • Google handset arm grabs facial recog tech firm

    Chocolate Factory wants to know who you're looking at

    Motorola Mobility, the handset arm of the Googleplex, is acquiring Viewdle, the Valley-based vision specialist offering facial recognition among other things. Details of the deal haven't been released, but Techcrunch pegs the deal around $40m, and points out that Viewdle has been supplying Motorola with software for years and …

    Mobile 4 Oct 11:32

  • Iran linked to al-Qaeda's web jihadi crew by old-school phone line

    Updated X.25 records reveal possible base for terror cheerleaders

    New information has since come to light following the publication of this article, revealing the real identity of the leased line owner. An organisation that attempts to recruit Westerners to carry out terrorist attacks on their home soil was backed by the Iranian state, according to an unlikely source of information: leased …

    Security 4 Oct 11:44

  • Forget Apple's AirPlay - it's Windows 8 you want, says speaker maker

    First Windows 8 Play To streaming speaker ships

    Rather a lot of speakers are touting their support for Apple’s AirPlay Wi-Fi hosted audio streaming technology, but here’s one designed for Windows fans. The Audio Aris is, says creator Aperion, the first Windows 8 certified speaker. It too operates over Wi-Fi, being fed from a Windows PC, tablet or smartphone using the source …

    reghardware 4 Oct 11:52

  • Bone-bothering boffins pull TINY fanged dinosaur from drawers

    Had been sitting in a pile of fossils for 50 years

    A two-foot long dinosaur with the beak of a parrot, teeth of a vampire and covered in some sort of bristly quill stuff is the latest new dinosaur to be identified. The Pegomastax africanus scampered around the earth 200 million years ago, announced Dr Paul C. Sereno, a palaeontologist at the University of Chicago, describing …

    Science 4 Oct 12:03

  • HP UK veep Murphy volunteers to jump ship amid staff cuts

    One of 166 HPers heading for the door

    HP UK veep Steve Murphy is understood to have taken voluntary redundancy ahead of mass lay-offs at the wobbling tech titan. Murphy, who joined HP in April 2011 months after resigning from his position as UK chief at HDS, is believed to be one of more than 150 people the vendor hopes will volunteer for the chopping block. …

    The Channel 4 Oct 12:18

  • $3500 will get 13.3in Mac tablet in your mitts

    No aversion to conversion?

    Years ago, El Reg ran stories concerning rumoured Mac tablets. Apple, of course, never made one and eventually released the iPad instead. But in 2007, US Mac upgrade seller OWC offered to convert an iBook into a tablet for you. Five years on, another company is having a go, this time with a 13.3in MacBook Pro. If you really …

    reghardware 4 Oct 12:28

  • Chinese Nitol botnet host back up after Microsoft settles lawsuit

    Owner agrees to chuck nasties down the sinkhole

    Microsoft has reached a settlement with the Chinese site linked to the Nitol DDoS botnet. The emerging Nitol botnet was hosted by the 3322.org domain. In order to stem the threat, Microsoft filed a suit to take control of the 70,000 malicious subdomains hosted on 3322.org, gaining control of the domain in mid September. …

    Security 4 Oct 12:42

  • Major Freeview EPG revamp to go ahead after appeals rejected

    Fresh retune booked for 17 October

    DMOL, the company maintaining the Freeview EPG and the order of stations listed within it, has thrown out two appeals made against the channel listing revamp it proposed in July. The channel number changes were due to be implemented in a retune that went through on 19 September. Thanks to two separate appeals against the plan …

    reghardware 4 Oct 12:49

  • IBM unchains new storage monsters to spook upstart hybrids

    What you need to know from Big Blue's latest info dump

    IBM has boosted its top-end storage array performance with a new processor - and is upgrading its XIV and Storwize v7000 systems - in its fourth major enterprise systems announcement this year. El Reg's Timothy Prickett Morgan covered the POWER7+ developments yesterday. Here Vulture Central's storage desk looks at Big Blue's …

    Storage 4 Oct 13:32

  • Facebook's CHAIR sat on by 1 billion people ... bitch

    Ad campaign launched to fluff up Zuck's brand

    It's official: Facebook is like a chair. Or a plane. Or a nation. And it's apparently especially true now that the dominant social network has passed the 1 billion user mark. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the site today that it was "very special" for him to be celebrating having so many people connecting together on his website …

    Media 4 Oct 14:02

  • Mobe app makers doubt Windows 8 will be worth the hassle - poll

    Fears over Microsoft's promise of run-anywhere code

    Programmers are still ambivalent towards Windows 8, according to a new poll, piling pressure on Microsoft to win them over before it is too late. The survey found that although developers are optimistic about Redmond's promise to ensure that code written for Windows 8 will work across desktops, tablets and smartphones, there …

    Applications 4 Oct 14:32

  • Europe UNDER ATTACK in simulated cyber security test

    This is a drill. No networks will be harmed in this exercise

    European banks teamed up with information security agencies and governments to run a DDoS cyber-attack preparedness exercise today. Cyber Europe 2012, a simulated cyber security attack involving 300 cyber security professionals, is being co-ordinated by European Union security agency ENISA. It's the second exercise of its type …

    Security 4 Oct 15:12

  • Google settles epic US book-scanning battle with 5 publishers

    Digitised deal agreed with big name book-pushers

    Google has settled a seven-year-long dispute with publishers in the United States, bringing to an end a copyright infringement lawsuit first filed against the company in October 2005. Under the deal, the rights of the copyright-holders have been acknowledged by the search and ad giant. Five members of the Association of …

    Law 4 Oct 15:33

  • BYOD cheers up staff, boosts productivity - and IT bosses hate it

    Hidden costs, security too much of a headache - for now

    Costs, security headaches and battles to get different technologies working with each other are stalling Bring-Your-Own-Device schemes in UK offices, according to new figures. In an Insight poll of 232 IT managers in Blighty, 79 per cent said they aren't implementing strategies to allow employees to buy their own kit for both …

    The Channel 4 Oct 16:02

  • IBM rolls up SAP HANA appliance on SUSE Linux, x iron

    Wiener schnitzel not included

    With the HANA in-memory database selling like hotcakes among SAP customers and the German software giant offloading the job of configuring and selling the hardware, IBM wants to get a piece of the action, and do so before HP, Dell, and others (excepting Oracle, which has its own appliances) snap up the business. To that end, …

    Servers 4 Oct 17:24

  • Microsoft sets date for Windows Phone 8 unveiling

    San Francisco showcase on October 29

    Microsoft has set the date for the unveiling of its Windows Phone 8 smartphone operating system: October 29, four days after the scheduled Windows 8 launch. There are good reasons to link the two together. Microsoft is promising a shared code set between its desktop and smartphone operating systems, allowing developers to …

    Mobile 4 Oct 19:31

  • Samsung claims Apple jury foreman LIED to get REVENGE

    Wants a whole new trial

    Samsung has filed a new, unredacted version of its motion requesting a new trial in its $1bn patent dispute with Apple, revealing allegations that the jury foreman in the original trial engaged in serious misconduct that prejudiced the verdict. Attorneys for the South Korean mobile maker originally filed the motion in …

    Law 4 Oct 21:29

  • Tizard super goes live in South Oz

    State gets boost in computing power

    South Australia’s Tizard supercomputer has been formally launched, giving eResearch SA a more than six-fold boost in compute power. The 34-Teraflop, 28-node SGI supercomputer was officially launched on October 4 by the state’s Science and Information Economy minister Tom Kenyon. It’s keenly anticipated by the state’s research …

    HPC 4 Oct 22:21

  • Apple files 'Shake to Print' iOS patent application

    What's more intuitive than shaking your iPad to print, eh?

    Apple has filed a brace of patents that, in part, describe methods to control printing and print settings by having the user physically interact with their iOS device by "shaking, flipping, rotating, spinning, moving laterally or to follow a shape, or combinations of these." In US Patent and Trademark Office applications …

    Software 4 Oct 22:32

  • Intel pushes Atom-fueled storage for homes, SMB

    Hot-swappable RAID for home, sweet home

    Intel is pushing its Cedar Trail Atom D2550 and D2500 processors as the power behind a range of network-attached storage (NAS) systems aimed at small business and power home users. "The amount of data being created in the home and by small businesses is bloating," said David Tuhy, GM of Intel's storage division at a Thursday …

    Hardware 4 Oct 22:44

  • Google rewrites dot-doc death note

    All formats can be uploaded to Google Docs

    Google’s plan to give old Microsoft Office file formats a quiet bullet behind the woodpile seems to have fallen by the wayside, with Mountain View quietly revising its feature announcement. Google's original announcement stated: The following features are intended for release to these domains on October 1st: Docs: Users no …

    Applications 4 Oct 23:51