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16th October 2012 Archive

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  • NASA's Cassini spacecraft turns 15 while spying on Saturn

    Awaiting springtime on the ringed planet

    NASA's Cassini spacecraft celebrated a very lonely 15th birthday on Monday from its orbit near the planet Saturn, roughly one billion miles from Earth. Cassini was originally launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on October 15, 1997. Since then, it has logged more than 3.8 billion miles in a tour around the …

    Science 16 Oct 00:17

  • Study finds file sharers buy more music

    American Assembly research also finds copies of friends' tunes rivals piracy

    A preview of research conducted by The American Assembly, a “national, non-partisan public affairs forum” attached to Columbia University, has found that file sharers who acquire music also pay for more tunes than their non-freeloading brethren. Copy Culture in the US and Germany concludes “The biggest music pirates are also …

    Networks 16 Oct 01:36

  • Chinese e-tailer to build 1,000 empty stores

    Walmart-owned Yihaodian will fill them with QR codes

    Chinese e-commerce giant Yihaodian has hit upon a novel approach to food retail – open 1,000 supermarkets which don’t contain any actual food, but instead feature images of items alongside scannable QR codes. Shoppers will scan the codes for the products they desire, and the goods will be delivered to their homes. The …

    Business 16 Oct 04:09

  • HP prosecuted by Australian consumer regulator

    Tough warranty conditions alleged to mislead and deceive punters

    The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the nation's guardian of consumer rights and regulator of competition and consumer law, has commenced legal action against HP over its warranty and repair practices. The ACCC is upset with HP for five reasons, namely: The remedies available for a faulty HP product …

    Business 16 Oct 05:11

  • Apple supplier AU Optronics suffers IP theft blow

    Former execs accused of selling Amoled secrets to China

    Two former execs from Taiwanese flat panel-maker and Apple supplier AU Optronics have been arrested on suspicion of carrying out industrial espionage for their new employer, Chinese electronics firm TCL. The two – surnamed Lien and Wang – were pulled in for questioning by the Taiwanese Bureau of Investigation last month, …

    Security 16 Oct 05:34

  • Gartner spells out magic behind quadrants

    Blogger smackdown leads to reveal of research methods

    Analyst group Gartner has detailed how it prepares its sometimes-controversial magic quadrants, revealing that a two-hour demo is sometimes part of the research process. Gartner already offers a detailed explanation of how it compiles its Magic Quadrants here. But in an exchange with governance, risk management and compliance …

    Management 16 Oct 05:58

  • Dishonored game review

    Review Steampunk rocks in this tour de force of adventure gaming

    Remember those Fighting Fantasy "choose your own adventure" books penned by the likes of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone - now whatever happened to them... - in the mid-1980s? Well, Dishonored plays like the ultimate version of one of those, offering choice in terms of strategy and approach at every turn. Dolly mixture …

    Games 16 Oct 07:00

  • Chinese arrest 9,000 cyber-crims

    Halts online PR racket flooding net with negative reviews

    Chinese police have smashed over 700 cyber crime gangs and arrested nearly 9,000 alleged criminals. The Ministry of Public Security – or police force, to you and me – announced confidently that it had cracked 4,400 criminal cases in its bid to "earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the masses of the people …

    Policy 16 Oct 07:25

  • Final decision by Home Sec on McKinnon extradition due today

    May be, May be not

    The Home Secretary is expected to announce whether or not the government will block Gary McKinnon's US extradition in Parliament today. Theresa May is due to deliver a decision on whether the Scottish sysadmin's medical problems as an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer are sufficiently severe to block extradition. A possible appeal …

    Government 16 Oct 07:30

  • Ukraine navy to deploy DOLPHINS WITH GUNS ON THEIR HEADS

    Sharks? Lasers? Pshaw. Let's get realistic

    The Ukrainian navy is to deploy specially trained dolphins equipped with "pistols fixed to their heads" against possible enemy frogmen, according to reports. Russian newswire RIA Novosti broke the news last week, reporting from the naval base of Sevastopol on the Black Sea. This was formerly home to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet …

    Science 16 Oct 08:00

  • When cookie spewers single you out, it IS personal, barks watchdog

    Identifiers should be classed as 'personal data' – EU body

    Information that can lead to individuals being "singled out and treated differently" should generally be classed as "personal data", an EU privacy body has recommended. The Article 29 Working Party has outlined changes (45-page/410KB PDF) to how it wants 'personal data' to be defined, and to what information the term should …

    Media 16 Oct 08:18

  • UK.gov spunks £500k to create jobs in startup marketing businesses

    'Sustainable growth' from 'brand engagement'

    A pot of £1m has been promised to 10 UK start-ups as part of a "business accelerator" plan managed by Creative England. Funding for the venture has been partly provided by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, whose Regional Growth Fund poured £500k in loan capital into the pot. The other £500k is equity …

    Media 16 Oct 08:41

  • Now pay attention, 007: James Bond's Q re-booted

    Bond on Film What makes an HM Secret Service tech guy?

    There were others, but Desmond Llewelyn defined the part of Q in James Bond, appearing in 17 films and nailing the shtick with the wayward agent who invariably broke or lost his toys. Q perfected the long-suffering dad to Bond’s fidgety teen, who pressed the wrong buttons to earn an exasperated: “Pay attention, 007!” Skyfall …

    Bond, James Bond 16 Oct 09:00

  • Quite contrary Somerville: Behind the Ada Lovelace legend

    Lovelace Day Behind every famous woman there stands ... another woman

    Ada Lovelace is a compellingly romantic figure, irresistible in today’s age of equal geeky opportunities. The daughter of "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron, her mathematics-loving mother Annabella Milibanke purportedly beat the poet out of her with relentless studies in science, maths and logic. A beauty enthralled …

    Vintage 16 Oct 09:20

  • Carphone Warehouse lauds Nexus 7 while eagerly eying iPad Mini

    And Google updates seven-incher's Android

    Asus’ Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet is “the best selling Android tablet ever”, at least according to Carphone Warehouse. Incidentally, Google has now posted the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update that triggered headlines last week but failed to show up. Not ‘best selling tablet’, you’ll note - the Nexus has some way to go to …

    Tablets 16 Oct 09:28

  • Mini-Me, stop humping the laser: Littler Flame cyber-spy tool found

    Updated Tiny agent nips through backdoor, nicks your files

    Kaspersky Lab has discovered a cut-down version of the infamous Flame cyber-espionage weapon. MiniFlame, like its big brother, is also an information-slurper well suited to cyber-spying. The malware, also known as SPE, was found by Kaspersky Lab’s experts in July 2012, and originally labelled as a Flame module. Two months of …

    Security 16 Oct 09:49

  • Windows 8 and the ‘Dad test’ stunts

    Comment Let's get real

    Out and about shopping yesterday, I spotted a PC magazine in the newsagent advertising the ‘ultimate guide’ to Windows 8 in the form of a ’33 page special’. As well as reminding me of reports that Microsoft is planning to spend over $1.5bn on Windows 8 marketing, it made me think of those horribly contrived YouTube videos in …

    Windows 8 16 Oct 10:01

  • CAPTCHA-busting service relies on CAPTCHA to block bots

    Can you use to it to spam itself?

    An automated CAPTCHA circumvention service has decided to use CAPTCHAs to restrict access to its own contact us services. It's unclear whether or not its possible to use bypasscaptcha.com to, err, bypass bypasscaptcha.com "contact us" page CAPTCHA. The automated CAPTCHA solving service is likely to be of interest primarily to …

    Security 16 Oct 10:14

  • Amazon seeks 50,000 temporary elves to wrap up America's Xmas

    Just 76 boxing days left before Boxing Day

    Amazon will be taking on over 50,000 seasonal staff in the US to pack up the nation's Furbies, Lego and video games for Christmas. The mega-etailer is already hiring 10,000 short-term staff in the UK and said today that it would need five times that for its centres in America. “We’re hiring at our sites across the US for …

    Jobs 16 Oct 10:29

  • OCZ's SEC filing fail gives stockholders the fear

    Even we don't understand our customer incentive scheme

    OCZ has announced that it won't be able to file its quarterly report with the SEC on time, leading to doubts about its cash position. The struggling SSD and PCIe flash card vendor appears perhaps to have loosed off a shot or two into the vicinity of its foot by expanding too fast, failing to secure reliable NAND chip supplies …

    Storage 16 Oct 10:44

  • EU data bosses order Google to sort out privacy

    Gmail, YouTube, Google+, search - they all know you

    EU data regulators have told Google that it has to make changes to its new privacy policy due to "incomplete information and uncontrolled combination of data across services". The regulators, led by France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique (CNIL), have spent several months investigating the policy, which basically …

    Law 16 Oct 10:58

  • Asus doubles up phone-slate combo's specs with Padfone 2

    It's a phone! No, it's a tablet! No, it's a phone!

    Asus has refreshed its three-in-one smartphone, tablet and notebook concept and unveiled the all-new Padfone 2. As with many products that take far too long to materialise, the original Padfone was a great idea on paper that never quite lived up to its hype. By the time it was eventually launched, at Mobile World Congress (MWC …

    Phones 16 Oct 11:12

  • Why Google and Amazon could end up cooking their own chips

    Open ... and Shut Good lord, 'tech' firms doing technology!

    It used to be that the ante for being a serious player in the technology game was your own data centre. Or several. On this basis, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and very few others have constructed hugely expensive data centres that centre much of the web's activity on them. But among these web giants, it may no longer …

    Hardware 16 Oct 11:19

  • McKinnon will not be extradited to the US, says Home Secretary

    Whole US extradition system may be 'streamlined'

    The Home Secretary has blocked Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US. In a statement to Parliament on Tuesday, Theresa May said that long-running extradition proceedings against the 46 year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer would be withdrawn on medical and human rights grounds. Psychiatrists warned that the Scot was likely to …

    Policy 16 Oct 11:53

  • Microsoft Surface ad targets preppy, Glee-watching youngsters

    Kids just wanna get in touch with each other

    Is it an Apple advert, a commercial for insurance, or an episode of Glee? No, it’s the first Surface commercial from Microsoft. Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s Windows 8 ad – which seemed to bury the tablet and emphasise the traditional PC – Microsoft's latest ad flogs its own hardware: the Windows 8-based Surface. The ad is …

    Tablets 16 Oct 12:09

  • Manchester plods cop £120k fine for USB-stick-inna-wallet data gaffe

    Serious Serious Crime crime 'sends shivers down spine'

    The Greater Manchester Police Force have paid a £120,000 fine after losing the details of more than a thousand people under investigation for serious drugs crime. The personal details were kept on an unencrypted memory stick with no password protection, belonging to an officer with the Serious Crime Division team. Kept in the …

    Security 16 Oct 12:22

  • Power and cooling: The Oak Ridge way

    Video 25 Megawatts, 6.6 tons of cooling, more on the way

    You think you have power and cooling issues? Slip into the shoes of Arthur ‘Buddy’ Bland, Project Director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, and learn how they keep one of the largest computing facilities in the world powered up, yet cool enough to prevent melting. I talked to Buddy recently about how Oak Ridge …

    HPC 16 Oct 12:39

  • 'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

    Damn you and your evidence-based science

    Veteran Campaigner Against Stuff Arthur Firstenberg won a case last week, and lost one too, but there won't be much celebrating as even the victory was a false one. The case he lost started in 2010, when Firstenberg claimed his neighbour's Wi-Fi was sneaking through the mains wires into his house to keep him awake at night. …

    Mobile 16 Oct 13:01

  • Apple hires top Amazon search exec to take over Siri

    Stasior to take another function behind the garden wall?

    Apple has reportedly nicked top Amazon exec and search maestro William Stasior to head up its Siri division. Adam Cheyer, who co-founded Siri before it was slurped by Apple in 2008, and CEO Dag Kittlaus both left the company in the last two years, leaving an empty spot at the helm. Stasior will step in to run the fruity firm's …

    Media 16 Oct 13:29

  • Game over for legendary 1980s games designer Mike Singleton

    Obituary Lords of Midnight coder pops clogs

    Classic videogame designer Mike Singleton - famed for titles such as the ZX Spectrum's The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge - has died aged 61. Singleton will be best remembered as a trendsetter, developing popular 1980s titles such as Dark Sceptre and Midwinter, and building hundreds of games for systems from the …

    Games 16 Oct 14:25

  • WD escapes $630m hit over Seagate 'trade secrets' ... for now anyway

    Lot more secrets in a hard drive than you thought

    Western Digital is off the hook for a cool $630m in an arbitration case it initially lost over the alleged misuse of Seagate's confidential information, including trade secrets. Back last year, Seagate complained about the activities of WD and a former Seagate employee who had joined WD, alleging that WD was using Seagate …

    Storage 16 Oct 14:58

  • Santander downplays risk of 'personal data-stuffed' cookies

    'If compromised', cookies would not allow access to online services 'on their own'

    The Spanish banking giant Santander has downplayed growing concerns over its alleged inclusion of "sensitive data" in its cookies. The bank did not deny including personal data in cookies. In a post on widely read security mailing list Full Disclosure, an anonymous contributor details a number of alleged problems on Santander …

    Security 16 Oct 15:26

  • China to get 20,000 4G base stations ... just for starters

    China Mobile trusts ZTE, even if the Americans don't

    China Mobile has gone domestic and awarded ZTE the contract to deploy 20,000 TD-LTE base stations, putting the company at the leading edge of TD-LTE development. Not that Chinese users will get any 4G goodness for another year or perhaps two, as China Mobile is still trying to realise its investment in the home-grown 3G …

    Mobile 16 Oct 16:01

  • It's official: Apple will reveal 'a little more' on October 23

    iPad mini? 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display? Even a little more?

    Apple has sent out invitations to what world+dog assume will be the introductory event for the oft-rumored iPad mini. And as expected, said soirée will be held on October 23. 'A little more'? How coy, Cupertino, how coy... The invitation's tag line certainly hints towards the introduction of the expected 7.85-inch iPad: "We …

    Hardware 16 Oct 16:58

  • Got loads of old databases clogging up your company's storage?

    Let us hoover up that old Oracle info, pleads CEO

    Delphix is a start-up whose software technology effectively makes a copy of a database, such as Oracle 10, and then presents virtualised instances of it for test and development, recovery or any other purpose. It's generally thought there can be 10, possibly 20 or even more copies of production databases scattered throughout …

    Storage 16 Oct 17:01

  • SGI munches MarkLogic database, hatches Dataraptor appliance

    Having big data for lunch

    Silicon Graphics knows a thing or two about handling huge amounts of data, but it doesn't have its own database or NoSQL data-store software. It needs to partner to be able to feast on the big-data carcass, and its latest partnership is with NoSQL database maker MarkLogic to create a big-data appliance called Dataraptor. Not …

    Servers 16 Oct 17:52

  • Foxconn: THESE child workers were NOT making Apple products

    What do they teach them in schools nowadays?

    Apple manufacturer Foxconn has admitted that child labourers were working at one of its factories in China. The Taiwanese firm said an internal investigation found employees as young as 14 working at its plant in Yantai in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, according to China Labour Watch. The US-based NGO said Foxconn …

    Hardware 16 Oct 18:02

  • Microsoft Surface: Designed to win, priced to fail

    Analysis Rival fondleslabs have little to worry about

    Microsoft has at last released some more details on its Surface tablet – including pricing – but based on what we've seen so far, Apple and Android-tablet makers don't have much to worry about. First the good stuff: Microsoft appears to have created a system that, on the face of it, could give Apple a run for its money – at …

    Hardware 16 Oct 19:03

  • Kaspersky Lab to create new OS 'to save the world'

    Aims to shield industry, infrastructure from malware

    Kaspersky Lab, the Russian security firm that has garnered headlines with its research into Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu, Gauss, and other sophisticated malware, says it is working on a new operating system designed specifically to shield against attacks by cyber-weapons. The as-yet unnamed OS – internally it's known only as "11.11" …

    Security 16 Oct 19:46

  • US weather boffins fire up 'Yellowstone' 1.5 petaflopper

    Don't expect the short-term forecast to improve

    The US National Center for Atmospheric Research admitted a year ago that it had fallen behind in the flops race versus the weather boffinry in other countries, and shelled out tens of millions of dollars to build a new massively parallel Xeon E5-based cluster. The machine, dubbed "Yellowstone" because it is installed in a shiny …

    HPC 16 Oct 20:33

  • Intel inches above Wall Street's earnings expectations

    Stock drops anyway

    On the day that the Dow notched its first triple-digit gain in over a month, Intel joined the party – well, in a minor way, to be sure – by beating Wall Street's lowered expectations for its most-recent quarter. The company reported quarterly revenue of $13.5bn, net income of $3bn, and earnings per share of 58¢. While those …

    Financial News 16 Oct 20:44

  • Microsoft gouges Australia lightly on Surface

    Windows 8 tablet prices AUD$25-$41 higher than in USA

    Australian punters frustrated by the fact they pay more than their North American brethren for Apple gadgets, despite the Australian Dollar currently buying more than one US Dollar, can now get just a little bit mad with Microsoft too, after the company today announced prices for its Surface tablets that exceed US prices. …

    Hardware 16 Oct 22:01

  • Google's 'JavaScript killer' marks first birthday with update

    New Dart SDK brings speed boost, language revamp

    Just over a year after it first unveiled the Dart language for large-scale web programming, Google has announced that its purported "JavaScript killer" has hit its first major milestone. "Today, after plowing through thousands of bug reports and feature requests from the web community, a new, more stable and comprehensive …

    Developer 16 Oct 22:21

  • Australia mulls data breach notification laws

    Law enforcement agencies may be exempt

    The Attorney-General’s department has released a discussion paper seeking public input on whether Australia should have mandatory data breach notification laws. The discussion paper emerges while debate about the department’s proposed data retention regime – under which carriers and ISPs would be required to hold data about …

    Policy 16 Oct 22:33

  • Google releases 'Disavow links' tool to fix SEO spam

    Use with care Google warns

    Google has used the PubCon conference in Las Vegas to release a "Disavow Links" tool, allowing webmasters dump links into their site that are hurting search rankings. "Most people should not need to use this," said Matt Cutts, head of webspam at Google. "We build our algorithms such that in most cases we handle things just …

    Hosting 16 Oct 22:57

  • EFF warns of ACTA redux

    Canada, EU clone criminal provisions into new treaty

    America’s Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning that Canada and Europe are in talks to copy-paste the criminal provisions of the notorious ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) into a new treaty called CETA. With the multi-lateral ACTA stumbling towards an unmarked grave, the world’s copyright enforcers appear to have …

    Policy 16 Oct 22:59

  • Big Blue down on all fronts in its third quarter

    Retail system divestiture can't save profits

    Its third financial quarter was not an easy one for IBM, with sales down across most product lines and in many geographical regions, and profits down even after selling off its retail-store systems business to Toshiba. Total sales in the quarter were off 5.4 per cent to $24.75bn, and every part of IBM, including the Software …

    Financial News 16 Oct 23:02

  • Intel CEO: PC market slogging along at half speed

    Windows 8 the savior? Wait 90 days. What will it run on? Wait a year

    Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini knows that the PC business is in the tank, believes that Windows 8 might lift it out of its funk, and can't predict which form factor will be The Next Big Thing – tablets, convertibles, or Ultrabooks. "We do believe that when the numbers are all in," he told analysts and reporters during a …

    Hardware 16 Oct 23:46

  • Earth-sized planet found at Alpha Centauri B

    ‘Scorched rock’ is just 4.37 light years away

    Astronomers have spotted an Earth-sized exoplanet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. At just 4.37 light years away, the stars of the Centaurus constellation are Earth’s nearest neighbours. That makes the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet rather exciting. Sadly, the planet is even closer to its star than Mercury is to Sol, …

    Science 16 Oct 23:58