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12th October 2012 Archive

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  • Boffins baffled: HUGE EYEBALL washes up on Florida beach

    Does Cthulhu need an eyepatch?

    A Florida beachcomber has discovered what appears to be a huge eyeball washed up on the beach, and experts are stumped as to what kind of sea creature it came from. Eye, eye, what's all this then? Local resident Gino Covacci found the giant eyeball washed up at the high-tide mark of Pompano Beach on the southeast tip of …

    Science 12 Oct 00:24

  • Office 2013 hits RTM, will ship starting in November

    Buy Office 2010 now, get a free upgrade

    Microsoft has put the finishing touches on Office 2013, paving the way for the latest version of Redmond's flagship productivity suite to reach general availability in the first quarter of 2013. An early preview of Office 2013 has been available for download since July, but that trial version lacked some features, including …

    Applications 12 Oct 00:34

  • Harvey Weinstein wants US to adopt French piracy laws

    Google and Apple get paid - not the actors

    Hollywood power player Harvey Weinstein has urged Big Content to take a “hang ‘em first and talk about it later” stance when it comes to piracy. Keynoting at the BFI London Film Festival, he railed against the online industries approach to piracy, and slammed Apple and Google for “getting paid, not the actors.” "I think we …

    Law 12 Oct 00:37

  • Japanese cubesat to flash Earth with Morse message

    Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's a small metal box

    Scan the night sky next month and you may witness a rather unusual phenomenon – an tiny Japanese satellite using LEDs to beam a Morse code message earthwards. The message will come from FITSAT-1, or Niwaka, a 10cm cubed satellite weighing just 1.3kg and recently released from the from the International Space Station. Built by …

    Science 12 Oct 05:35

  • Asia skills shortages attract job-hunting IT project managers

    Opportunities aplenty if you don't mind long hours

    There was good news today for IT pros keen on a move to Asia, with new data suggesting hiring expectations in the technology sector better than any other and a notable skills shortage emerging in Hong Kong. It's not all happy days out East, though, as experts also warned of long working hours and risk of employee burn-out for …

    Jobs 12 Oct 05:42

  • VR pioneer invents 'illumination-as-a-service'

    VRML man Mark Pesce puts LAMP into lamps that REST at home

    In the wild, early, days of the web, hopes were high that it would spawn or host virtual realities along the lines of those imagined by the likes of Vernor Vinge and William Gibson. One of the most notable aspirants from those days was Mark Pesce, who worked on virtual reality headsets and authored Virtual Reality Markup …

    Hardware 12 Oct 06:23

  • South Korea on top of the IT world

    UK climbs to fifth as Australia, USA, also take big leaps up league table

    South Korea has once again been named the world’s most advanced ICT economy according to the latest annual study from the International Telecommunications Union, which had good news for the UK too as it crept up into the top ten. The ITU’s Measuring the Information Society 2012 report is intended to provide a snapshot of …

    Networks 12 Oct 06:45

  • Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight e-reader review

    Review Backlit screen casts Kindle into the shade?

    It’s not hard to imagine how Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch initial design meeting went. Assorted hardware engineers, industrial designers and marketing types assemble to examine Amazon’s Kindle Touch and work out how they can make something better. And they have. On almost all points, the Simple Touch - and the Simple …

    reghardware 12 Oct 07:01

  • Regulator spanks quiz line with record £800k fine

    Kept eldsters hanging on the line at premium rates

    UK premium-line regulator PhonepayPlus has slapped Churchcastle Limited with the largest fine it has dished to date, ruling the phone-quiz host guilty of misleading and bamboozling callers with impenetrable terms and conditions. After it received 15 complaints, PhonepayPlus found Churchcastle guilty of targeting the elderly, …

    Networks 12 Oct 07:31

  • Inside the mind of a Bond supervillain: Psychotic, autistic - or neither?

    Bond on Film Also - 007's Dr Who style differing personalities

    Without villains there'd be no James Bond. SPECTRE, SMERSH, megalomaniacal industrialists and media tycoons have all contrived fiendish, intricate plots to take over the world, seize its wealth, provoke nuclear war, destroy London’s financial system, eliminate the human race etc etc. These people and their plots have needed to …

    Bond, James Bond 12 Oct 08:00

  • Amazon prices up Kindle Paperwhite for Blighty

    Always-on backlight, higher res display

    Amazon has priced up the Kindle Paperweight - sorry, Paperwhite; Freudian slip there - for the UK. The Paperwhite is Amazon’s first e-reader with a backlit E Ink display, the notion being that the illumination doesn’t merely make it possible to read books on the gadget in the gloom, but also that it makes for a higher contrast …

    reghardware 12 Oct 08:11

  • Hands on with BB10: Strokey dokey

    Preview No time for 'Back' buttons - we're headed into the FUTURE

    There is no back button in BB10, BlackBerry's long-awaited new operating system, because all the screens flow so intuitively you won't need one - at least according to Canadian mobe-makers Research in Motion (RIM). Instead, a series of swipes and pulls will let the user navigate the OS upon which RIM has pinned the survival of …

    Developer 12 Oct 08:20

  • Flashboys: HEELLLP, we're trapped in a process size shrink crunch

    How can we escape the dreaded NAND-woes?

    The NAND flash industry is facing a process size shrink crunch and no replacement technology is ready. Unless 3D die stacking works, we are facing a solid state storage capacity shortage. The NAND flash foundries are pumping out more and more sub-20nm NAND. Previously they'd mostly produced 2Xnm dies – that is NAND dies with a …

    Storage 12 Oct 08:37

  • Amazon's Bezos confirms content pays for Kindle

    Finally admits hardware sold at cost

    That Amazon makes little or no money selling its Kindle e-readers has been a popular assumption for some time. But assumption no longer - company chief Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon is after content sales profits instead. The first Kindle was launched in April 2008 and cost $399 - £248 at today’s exchange rate - and follow- …

    reghardware 12 Oct 08:49

  • Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain

    Poll I've been expecting you, 007

    In the 50 years since Her Majesty's Secret Service first let 007 loose on the silver screen, James Bond has faced some truly fearsome adversaries. Menaced by steel-toothed giants, Koreans wielding killer bowler hats, and dagger-shoed Russian madwomen, it's fair to say that the world's favourite spy has survived some of the …

    Bootnotes 12 Oct 09:00

  • UK.gov tries to close site giving home addresses of badger cull figures

    Animal libber reveals opponents' details, keeps his secret

    The British government has unleashed a legal threat against a website hosted in the US that is currently displaying the names, home addresses and personal telephone numbers of MPs, farmers and others who are said to be in support of the controversial UK badger cull. The Register spoke with a man going only by the name "Jay", …

    Government 12 Oct 09:18

  • Winston Churchill's personal papers digitised, available online

    Madam, if I were your husband I should read them

    The man who famously stated that the British would "fight them on the beaches" in the event of a German invasion has had some of his less-often quoted words including his private letters (and his receipts for cigars) fully digitised and made available online in the Churchill archive. Winston Churchill's private musings, …

    Bootnotes 12 Oct 09:37

  • Samsung shoots Galaxy S III with shrink ray, unveils 4in Mini

    Size flatters

    Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S III Mini, the widely predicted compact version of the firm's flagship Android smartphone. As revealed earlier this week, the Mini boasts a 4in, 800 x 480 display plus a dual-core 1GHz ST-Ericsson Novathor U8420 chipset powering Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The blower features a 5Mp rear …

    reghardware 12 Oct 09:54

  • HP veep: 'Lenovo won't be No 1 in PCs... oh wait...'

    Quotw Plus: 'Hackers used a spell they call Aura of God, I think'

    This was the week when someone laid waste to the World of Warcraft, decimating city populations and leaving behind weeping masses of MMORPG-ers who no doubt dropped to their knees, shook their fists at the heavens and screamed, "Whyyyy?". An "exploit" was duly exploited, resulting in the deaths of both in-game characters and …

    Bootnotes 12 Oct 10:00

  • El Reg VULTURE logo FOUND ON MARS

    Playmobil or It Didn't Happen This is how you do it, Red Hat

    Seriously underwhelmed is the only way to describe El Reg's reaction earlier this week to Red Hat's guerilla marketing stunt which saw the Linux outfit flash a giant ad at punters flying into Barcelona airport for VMWorld Europe: The Special Projects Bureau quickly scrambled an astroturfing SWAT team which moved with …

    SPB 12 Oct 10:15

  • Dolly the Sheep creator scientist Keith Campbell dies

    Obit RIP cell biologist who first cloned a mammal

    Biologist Keith Campbell, famous for creating the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, has died aged 58, the University of Nottingham said. Professor Campbell's creation of a live Ovis aries clone in 1996 was an incredible event, thrilling scientists with a breakthrough that paved the way for other successful cloning …

    Science 12 Oct 10:29

  • Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

    Poll Mostly in kilos: Hobbits and suchlike to be exterminated

    Our suggestion earlier this week that El Reg's Special Projects Bureau get with the program(me) and convert entirely to SI Units prompted the traditional lively debate among our beloved commentards. The consensus seems to be we should indeed kick imperial into touch, with a couple of exceptions, which we'll come to later. …

    SPB 12 Oct 10:44

  • Unrootable: Mash these bits together to get a CLASSIFIED spyphone

    Sysadmin blog Someone kind of already has - but who?

    What does it take to build a classified smartphone? Demand clearly exists Given how readily every iPhone and Android device is rooted, infected, and otherwise compromised, the answer isn't simply "better software." In the battle to secure our mobile endpoints, operating system tricks and mobile device management will only take …

    Hardware 12 Oct 11:01

  • MYSTERIOUS GREEN GLOW seen on iPhone 5s

    'What can it mean?', wondering fanboys ask

    Days after Apple explained the purple haze invading iPhone 5 photos as a holding-it-wrong problem, a new strange colour is tripping out 5-owners. This time a green glow described as a plasma bleed from the edges of the screen is appearing on some of the new handsets. The green light is momentary, and appears on the unlock …

    Hardware 12 Oct 11:22

  • And the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is ... the EU?

    Prevented Germans invading anyone for record period

    The European Union has won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. The 27-member-states bloc won the famous award today for having contributed, during its six decades of existence, "to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said today. Prominent recent Peace Prize …

    Bootnotes 12 Oct 11:39

  • Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? Flash, ooh-err

    No matter how much storage space you get, and no matter how much you free up later on, it always gets stuffed to the gills. I am, of course, talking about my attic... and the garage, and indeed the garden shed. Many reasons for this have been mooted, including the need to do something with my kids' childish belongings as they …

    Hardware 12 Oct 11:41

  • GreenBytes brandishes full-fat clone VDI pumper

    VMworld Barcelona 'Focused on an enormous pain point'

    GreenBytes, a flash-array storage vendor, appears to have re-focused on virtualised server I/O offload – and most punters here at VMworld on the Catalonian shores are asking themselves why. It all started when Stephen O'Donnell became GreenBytes' chairman in July this year, with an executive aspect to the role we understand. …

    Storage 12 Oct 11:59

  • 'Mapsgate' fails to dislocate iPhone 5 demand

    Widely reported geo-glitches 'not a problem', say buyers

    Were you steered away from the iPhone 5 by Apple’s ‘Mapsgate’ controversy? Were you tied by the introduction of a new, incompatible Lightning cables? If so, you're not like most potential buyers of Apple's latest phone, it seems. New research suggests these issues have had little or no impact on demand for the iPhone 5. In …

    reghardware 12 Oct 12:02

  • Samsung, not Nokia, fans' most favoured WinPho brand

    Survey suggests Microsoft could triple is market share

    Nine per cent of folk thinking of getting a new phone in the next six months say they’re likely to go for a Windows Phone 8 device. So suggests research data from ChangeWave, a US pollster, after asking 4300-odd North Americans and assorted other peoples in September about their near-term smartphone purchasing plans. If you’ …

    reghardware 12 Oct 12:24

  • Take away bad drivers' mobile phones, they still crash their cars

    Jalopy-jabber crackdown achieves diddly squat - study

    Chinese researchers reckon its bad drivers who cause accidents, not the phones they're using at the time, and that banning in-car use doesn't reduce accident figures significantly. The state-sponsored study was triggered by disappointing results from bans on mobile usage, which haven't reduced accidents as much as had been …

    Mobile 12 Oct 13:02

  • Stone's veteran CEO Bird flies the nest

    Board has shortlist of successors

    Stone Computers has confirmed that longstanding chief exec James Bird has left the building. The search for a successor is well underway but these are big boots to fill - Bird founded Stone in 1991 and has been pretty much at the helm ever since, save a year's absence in 2005. That was the year Bird sold the business to the …

    The Channel 12 Oct 13:09

  • Anonymous turns on 'one man Julian Assange show' Wikileaks

    Bond of chumship between DDOSers and Assange™ broken

    Members of hacker collective Anonymous have stopped supporting Wikileaks after the site put up a paywall, saying that Wikileaks is more bothered about Julian Assange™ than getting information to the public. In a statement on Pastebin, linked through from Anonymous Twitter account AnonymousIRC, the group said Wikileaks had …

    Security 12 Oct 13:19

  • O2 network staggers across UK

    Good job it's not really as vital as oxygen

    O2 has been hit by a serious failure, with reports coming in from around the UK of the network disappearing and its status page conceding some network problems. The trouble started mid-morning with phones dropping off the network, but the problems aren't location specific so it seems some sort of central server is again …

    Mobile 12 Oct 13:19

  • British computing biz going stronger than Continent - Computacenter

    Services-based economy?

    Computacenter's (CC) UK biz was the group's major growth engine in Q3 fuelled by the realisation of infrastructure services contracts and to a lesser extent product sales. This performance just about offset the challenges elsewhere in the organisation - difficulties in Germany and currency headwinds across the continent - that …

    The Channel 12 Oct 13:29

  • Jimmy Wales: It was Wikipedia that ended the evil of SOPA

    RSA Europe And we shall battle Blighty's snooper charter

    Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the site's blackout played a key part in defeating the USA's controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The English version of Wikipedia, Reddit and hundreds of other smaller websites coordinated a notional service blackout for a day in mid-January to raise awareness of SOPA. Wales …

    Security 12 Oct 13:38

  • Online mutterings foretell iPad Mini on October 23

    BEHOLD ye fanboiyim, the Pocket Stroker™ cometh

    Rumours about the new iPad Mini have fixed the date for its launch on October 23rd, which would put the miniature slab in stores in time for Christmas. Mutterings had previously set the mini-tablet launch as sometime in October: and AllThingsD and Apple Insider are betting on 23rd October as the day. The other touted date - …

    Hardware 12 Oct 14:01

  • 'Stop-gap' way to get Linux on Windows 8 machines to be issued

    You'll still be able to pick up a Penguin

    The Linux Foundation is temporarily supporting a Microsoft security policy to ensure Linux isn’t blocked from running on PCs installed with Windows 8. The Foundation plans to obtain a Microsoft key to sign a pre-bootloader from core Linux kernel maintainer James Bottomley. Together, the key and pre-bootloader will allow users …

    Windows 8 12 Oct 14:19

  • Orally urinating turtle boffin in nominative-determinism classic case

    Shit Fun Chew probes mouth-excreting chelonian

    We're obliged to reader Roger Denholm for alerting us to the best example of nominative determinism we've seen for many moons - the case of Shit Fun Chew and the orally urinating turtle. New Scientist reports that Alex Yuen Kwong Ip of the National University of Singapore has been studying Pelodiscus sinensis, known to its …

    Science 12 Oct 14:40

  • Microsoft sues Google directly in German Maps-on-Moto lawsuit

    These manufacturers are only Mountain View pawns

    Microsoft is taking the rare step of suing Google directly for something, tacking it onto a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility over Google Maps. Yesterday in Munich court, Microsoft's general counsel Dr Tilman Müller-Stoy told Moto that it was going to amend its complaint to add its parent Google as an additional defendant. Dr …

    Law 12 Oct 14:58

  • Small biz scrappers urged to take the fight to hackers

    RSA Europe Active defence in a hostile world

    Small businesses should consider the possibility of developing well formulated plans for "hacking back" at aggressors in the event of a hack attack. Presenting an "active defence" would not be a form of vigilantism and could even work within the law, argued two speakers at a presentation at the RSA Europe conference. …

    Security 12 Oct 15:31

  • Kissane to mould NetApp: Time to turn off the tap on ONTAP

    Comment Stuck faucet? Force it

    NetApp has sharpened its focus on corporate strategy by moving incumbent product strategist Jay Kidd to a chief technology officer role and recruiting Jonathan Kissane from CA to a new chief strategy officer role. Kidd, previously SVP for product strategy and development at the storage firm, and an ex-CTO at Brocade, now …

    Storage 12 Oct 16:01

  • Tosh grabs 2.5-incher, heads for single platter party

    500 gig spinner

    Toshiba has joined Seagate and WD with a single platter 500GB drive for thin notebooks, DVRs and the like. The MQ01ABF is essentially half an MQ01ABD, a 2-platter 2.5-inch drive storing up to 1TB. Like that drive it spins at 5,400rpm, has an 8MB cache and a 6Gbit/s SATA interface. Unlike that 9.5mm thin drive it is 7mm thin, …

    Storage 12 Oct 17:03

  • Apple to drop chip-baking partnership with Samsung?

    TSMC said to forge Apple's next-gen 20nm, quad-core ARM chips

    Apple is planning to shift production of its ARM-based microprocessors from Samsung to the Taiwanese chip-baking giant TSMC as early as next year, according to a report by the China Economic News Service (CENS). The report, spotted by MacRumors, cites CitiGroup Global Markets analyst J.T. Hsu as saying that TSMC will be Apple' …

    Hardware 12 Oct 18:31

  • Incompatible IT systems blamed for bank sale collapse

    RBS £1.7bn branch sale to Santander is off

    Royal Bank of Scotland's $1.7bn sale of 318 branches to Santander has gone titsup. The Spanish bank pulled out, largely "because of problems over integrating the two banks' IT systems", The BBC reports. The Telegraph has a teeny bit more detail, reporting a "series of IT problems that have resulted from a lack of …

    CIO 12 Oct 18:51

  • Windows 8 pricing details announced as preorders begin

    Wacky retail packaging revealed

    Microsoft revealed full pricing details for Windows 8 on Friday as Redmond and its retail partners began accepting preorders for the new OS, which will begin shipping on October 26. Starting on Friday, customers can preorder an upgrade edition of Windows 8 Pro for $69.99 in the US or £49.99 in the UK. That's for the full …

    Windows 8 12 Oct 20:10

  • Apple pays up for stealing design from Swiss Railways

    Cupertinian cash covers clock copyright cockup

    Apple may be willing to spend millions in court over some copyright fights, but it has learned the lessons of history and has decided not to mess with the Swiss. Last month, Switzerland's railway operator SBB took Cupertino to task for stealing the design of its clock for iOS 6's Clock app. Now the world's favorite fondleslab …

    Law 12 Oct 20:11

  • Endeavour: donuts and a Toyota ease shuttle's drive through L.A.

    Trundling to its final resting place at two miles per hour

    If you're reading this right after we clicked The Reg's Publish button at 2:13pm Pacific Time on Friday, know that the Space Shuttle Endeavour is leaving its parking place near the corner of La Tijera Avenue and Sepulveda Eastway in Los Angeles, and continuing its journey to the California Science Center in that city's downtown …

    Science 12 Oct 21:13

  • FTC nearing decision in Google antitrust probe

    Four out of five officials agree

    The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is nearing a decision in its 16-month-long investigation into Google's search and advertising businesses, and sources say things are not looking good for the Mountain View–based company. According to Reuters, three separate sources have confirmed that four of the five FTC commissioners are …

    Government 12 Oct 23:04

  • Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing

    Patent hoarder Myhrvold & Co. could control nascent tech

    A division of Intellectual Ventures, the IP-holding company founded by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former CTO, has been granted a patent on a system for introducing digital rights management (DRM) controls to 3D printing. Under the system described in the patent, files containing plans for printed objects would be encased in …

    Law 12 Oct 23:25