The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

19th October 2012 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Microsoft reports low Q1 earnings on sluggish PC sales

    Everyone's waiting for Windows 8 – they hope

    Microsoft had an unremarkable quarter during the three months ending September 30, with a soft PC market contributing to low earnings in advance of a raft of highly anticipated Redmond product launches that will begin later this year and continue through 2013. On Thursday, the software giant posted a profit of $4.47bn on …

    Financial News 19 Oct 00:14

  • AMD to 'reset' goals: servers, embedded, ultra-low power

    CEO Read promises 'clear and decisive action'

    After his company announced a $157m loss and its plans to lay off 15 per cent of its global workforce on Tuesday, AMD president and CEO Rory Read explained how he and his brain trust plan to pull Intel's only x86 competitor out of its spiral. First, AMD will "reset and restructure" its business model to reduce expenses by 25 …

    Hardware 19 Oct 00:15

  • Google 'uniquely positioned' for move to mobile internet

    Cites $8bn in mobile, content and apps revenues

    Google might have lost billions in stock valuation owing to a printer's mistake early on Thursday morning, but CEO Larry Page was in optimistic mood at the company's scheduled quarterly earning call. "We've had a really strong quarter and I'm really happy with our business," he told analysts. "Google's been operating for 14 …

    Financial News 19 Oct 00:18

  • Apple banishes Java from Mac browsers

    Fanbois told to install Oracle's plugin

    Apple has discontinued its own Java plugin, issuing an 'update' that removes it from MacOS and encourages users to instead download Oracle's version of the software. The update, available now and depicted at the bottom of this story, advises users to install new software with the following effect: Java for OS X 2012-006 …

    Software 19 Oct 01:32

  • Ocker CANNIBAL DEATH SPIDERS invade Japan!

    Red Back in terror march

    One of Australia’s two lethal spiders, the Redback (Latrodectus hasselti), has escaped into Japan and is creating national terror, according to news outlet The Asahi Shimbun. First spotted in Japan back in 1995, the spider has now reportedly reached 22 prefectures in the country, the site reports. Most of the affected areas …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 02:00

  • Kiwi three strikes piracy case collapses

    Accused had never seen, and had no idea how to use, file-sharing software

    One of the first three cases brought under New Zealand's controversial three strikes copyright infringement has collapsed after the accused demonstrated no knowledge of file-sharing software. Civil liberties group Tech Liberty NZ reports the case collapsed because the accused had no idea how file-sharing software worked. But …

    Government 19 Oct 04:04

  • Move over Silicon Valley, the Chinese are coming

    KPMG report says PRC will be innovation leader by 2016

    Over 40 per cent of technology leaders think that Silicon Valley will be supplanted by China as the world’s leading tech innovation hub, according to a new report from KPMG. The consultancy interviewed hundreds of tech execs from start-ups to multi-nationals across the globe and found that 44 per cent believe China will …

    Business 19 Oct 04:07

  • New Oz road rules forbid touching mobes

    Can we cash in on the hands free rules, Siri?

    Motorists in Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, will not be permitted to even touch their mobile phones while their car engine is running, under new laws to take effect on November 1st. Outlined in this document (PDF), the new road rules state that “While a vehicle is moving or stationary (but not parked), a …

    Mobile 19 Oct 04:54

  • Majority of humans still don't have a mobile

    Hello? HELLO?

    The world still has some way to go before it is fully mobile, with global subscriber penetration standing at just 45 per cent despite the huge strides made in countries such as China and India, according to a new report from industry body The GSMA. Global penetration based on total connections will exceed 100 per cent by next …

    Mobile 19 Oct 05:07

  • Windows 8 'bad' analyst says Store is a weakness

    On the upside the Windows Store has more apps than Firefox's new Marketplace

    Gunnar Berger, the Gartner Research Director who last July assessed Windows 8 on the desktop as “bad”, has added a sixth instalment to his five-part review of the OS, and opined that he feels the Windows Store's lack of apps may hold back the new operating system. Berger lists several things that excite him about Surface …

    Software 19 Oct 06:05

  • ICO: Education ministry BROKE the Data Protection Act

    Exclusive But we have decided not to do anything about it

    The Department for Education broke the Data Protection Act after it exposed the email addresses, unencrypted passwords and sensitive answers of members of the public who filled in an online form about parental controls on the net, The Register can reveal. However - despite the breach - the Information Commissioner's Office has …

    Government 19 Oct 06:29

  • Chinese gaming giant NetEase opens pig farm

    Diversification plan adds porkers to gamers

    Chinese online gaming giant NetEase has made a surprise move into the commercial pig-rearing business. The firm, which runs the hugely popular 163.com web portal, announced revenues of two billion yuan (£199m) in the second quarter from its massively multiplayer online games and other services. Now founder William Ding, who …

    Business 19 Oct 06:46

  • Resident Evil 6 game review

    Review It's bite night tonight in a horrorfest sporting an impressive engine

    What a dumbfounding series Resident Evil is. First, we have the innovations – popularising the survival horror genre for one. Then later, perfecting the third-person shooter camera, before taking environmental interaction to new heights. The game even led the way in cooperative campaign mechanics. But then there's the series' …

    reghardware 19 Oct 07:00

  • Look behind you, WD: Seagate's turned up, and it has 3 biz drives

    Fashionably late to the 4TB party - who is that stranger?

    Seagate is playing catch-up in the enterprise space with its announcement of two new 3.5-inch drives for 24x7 operations and a new 2.5-inch Savvio drive optimised for performance and power-efficiency. The 3.5-inchers are Constellation drives, positioned as an enterprise value drive, the Constellation CS, and an enterprise …

    Storage 19 Oct 07:33

  • Labour claims 'highest ranked UK politico in World of Warcraft' title

    Camden councillor 'Plaguepit' expects Lib Dem challenge

    A London councillor has claimed to be the highest-ranked UK politician in World of Warcraft, boasting that his Undead Destruction Warlock PlaguePit has reached level 85. Theo Blackwell, the Labour finance chief of Camden Council, told the Reg that he would continue to claim the title until another elected representative of the …

    Government 19 Oct 08:01

  • Sacked British RIM staffers to get minimum legal payout

    Exclusive As bosses scoff foie gras and chips

    Staff at RIM's UK headquarters were upset to see their VP tweeting about foie gras as they learned that the hundreds of them who will lose their jobs by the end of the year will be receiving the bare minimum redundancy payout that the government allows. A source told The Reg that the staffers who will be out the door before …

    Business 19 Oct 08:20

  • EU judge scolds Austria: Data sheriffs must be properly independent

    You in the back, stop whispering with the chancellor ...

    EU countries that merely provide for their appointed data protection authorities to have "functional independence" cannot be said to be compliant with EU law, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled. In order to be said to have "complete independence", DPA staff must not share the same offices as Government …

    Law 19 Oct 08:37

  • EMC in bizarre Juniper gobble attempt - Wall Street whispers

    Tucci hoping to go down in history as 'Crazy Joe'?

    Reports say that data networking supplier Juniper Networks is putting itself up for sale and EMC could be a buyer. Benzinga, a financial website, reported a rumour this week that Juniper was shopping itself around, with banker JP Morgan hired to deal with bids from potential buyers, such as EMC. A bid in the high twenties was …

    Storage 19 Oct 09:13

  • Iffy image said to signify incoming 10in Google tablet

    'Nexus 10' eyed in EXIF data

    It’s thumb and forefinger sodium chloride collection time, perhaps, but a photo has turned up on Google’s Picasa picture-sharing site that was taken on a device called the Nexus 10. The reference to the device is embedded in the image’s EXIF photo metadata. The picture, uploaded on 15 October, is of a rather blurry multi- …

    reghardware 19 Oct 09:38

  • Craig, Connery or ... Dalton? Vote now for the ultimate James Bond

    Poll 007 vs 007 in pub-debate movie supremacy deathmatch

    Last week, Reg reader movie buffs voted Ernst Stavro Blofeld as the vilest Bond villain - and the sinister cat-stroking nutter certainly deserves the title. Kill Bond and bring me some Whiskas, now! Blofeld first popped up in From Russia with Love and Thunderball, although fans didn't actually get to see his face until You …

    Bond, James Bond 19 Oct 10:00

  • 'PENDING LARRY QUOTE' - Google financials dunder blunder

    Quotw Plus: 'Alas, John McClane isn't around to fix weak IT systems'

    This was the week some Googler's finger slipped at just the wrong moment, sending its rather worrying financial results out a mite too early. The Chocolate Factory's third quarter profits were much lower than expected and its revenue, famed for continued growth, has slowed down. It was quite clear that the early release was a …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 10:20

  • HSBC websites fell in DDoS attack last night, bank admits

    Updated Hacktivists blamed for online banking blackout

    HSBC has blamed a denial of service attack for the downtime of many of its websites worldwide on Thursday night. Various Reg readers told us they were unable to reach the HSBC UK and First Direct websites on Thursday, leaving them unable to carry out internet banking services. Problems kicked in just before 20.00 BST and …

    Security 19 Oct 10:23

  • IBM Business Partner cloud guru slips off to set up own biz

    Heeney to guide channel firms into the clouds

    IBM's cloud leader has split to set up his own consultancy advising channel firms on the best way to tackle the "commercial and cultural" realities of moving into cloud services. Steve Heeney rocked up at Big Blue in February 2001 as channel manager and remained in that position until November 2010, when he became the cloud …

    The Channel 19 Oct 10:23

  • Distie consolidation: Someone everyone's gonna get hurt

    No one stays a winner for long

    When you look at the latest spate of acquisitions by broadline distributors, it's hard not to visualise an alcoholic who, concerned that he's facing a period of drought and associated health issues, decides the best way to deal with them is to have another drink. The pace of acquisitions by major distributors like Arrow, Tech …

    The Channel 19 Oct 10:24

  • Sony posts, pulls PlayStation Store update

    Revamp's 'teething troubles' vex users

    Sony pulled its new-look PlayStation Store from the UK yesterday after a barrage of complaints from users. The firm has now postponed the refresh in several countries and reverted the Store to its old design until it fixes "teething problems". Those who installed the update say it was buggy, full of random crashes and had …

    reghardware 19 Oct 10:39

  • Nokia puts Symbian out to pasture ... why not release it into the wild?

    Old girl needn't be finished yet

    Symbian is now in 'maintenance mode', and Belle FP2 was its last ever update, Nokia Developer support is telling devs. This is hardly a surprise, but official confirmation of any kind has been elusive. As we exclusively revealed back in February, Nokia cancelled the entire roadmap of Symbian phones, leaving just one device: …

    Developer 19 Oct 10:45

  • Why James Bond's Aston Martin Top Trumps the rest

    Bond on Film Reg motor maniac Oates gets mechanical - Now pay attention, 007

    What car should James Bond really drive? It's a hotly disputed question. Our man on film is closely associated with the Aston Martin, the DB5 initially and DBS V12 of late. Clearly the producers of recent Bond outings hope to identify their character with the spirit of an earlier time regarded as iconic and special. And they …

    Bond, James Bond 19 Oct 11:00

  • Education Secretary Gove: Tim Berners-Lee 'created the INTERNET'

    Signs up Facebook to teach our kids, links to prostitutes

    Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and BT have been signed up by the Education Secretary Michael Gove - who thinks Tim Berners Lee is the "creator of the internet" - to offer industry insights into the type of computer science skills British school kids need to be equipped with for the workplace. A £20,000 scholarship was also announced …

    Government 19 Oct 11:16

  • Mac gamers a-gog as GOG goes Mac

    Witcher 2 hits OS X

    Online retailer Good Old Games pushes its services onto Mac OS X this week, with a new collection of over 50 titles for the Mac. As well as a bunch of Bullfrog classics and nostalgia point-and-click epics sure to tempt our Antique Code Show readers, Mac gamers can now snag a copy of CD Projekt's highly-rated role-player The …

    reghardware 19 Oct 11:24

  • BYOD: Ready or not, here it comes

    Video You can’t hide

    Whisper it. The techies have lost control. Partially at least. The rise of the smartphone, slate/tablet/whatever you want to call it, means that more and more unqualified devices are creeping onto the corporate network. In our recent broadcast, Many Devices, One Policy, Tim Phillips, Andy Buss and Sasi Myrthy explored how …

    Business 19 Oct 11:40

  • The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? The dangers of hanging on to very old kit

    I like my house zen. Unfortunately, I am a hoarder, so it’s not. My half-life wife has been trying to educate me by making me watch TV programmes with titles like Extreme Hoarders, I Can’t Stop Hoarding and Smelly Old Fat Bastards Who Don’t Wash And Won’t Throw Anything Away. To some extent, this does the trick. After each …

    Hardware 19 Oct 12:01

  • IBM prepares to demo 125TB MONSTER tape

    IP Expo: Tape Summit Huge LTO-6 hardness is shingled

    IBM has revealed it is preparing a technology demonstration of a 125TB tape, and has revealed that LTO-6 tapes use shingling, with overlapped data tracks. In January 2010, IBM demonstrated a tape with 35TB of raw capacity. Apply LTO-6's 2.5:1 compression ratio to that and you get 87.5TB. This contrasted with the then-current …

    Storage 19 Oct 12:29

  • Royal Society hosts edit-a-thon to get women onto Wikipedia

    In the form of information, and as nerditors too

    The Royal Society is hosting an edit-a-thon for Wikipedia, signing up a bunch of contributors to spend one day adding and editing articles about female scientists including black female neurosurgeon Alexa Canady and UCL Biomedical Imaging expert Eleanor Maguire. The Wiki-eds will have access to a whole host of material from …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 12:58

  • Young Frenchwoman desperate for fat pipe tumbles out of window

    Needy numpty goes down in quest for hookup

    A 25-year-old French woman's search for a Wi-Fi signal ended rather badly when she fell out of a first floor window, suffering "multiple fractures". The network-needy numpty was apparently sitting last Friday on a windowsill in her flat in Menton, a coastal town in southeastern France, with her laptop extended into the void " …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 13:15

  • Cisco: Listen up, partners – we need to close the skills gap

    Partner Sales Academy hit US in July, tours Europe next year

    Cisco is piloting a graduate sales training scheme for channel partners stateside ahead of an expected launch in Europe next year. For the last decade Cisco has run an internal Cisco Sales Associate programme but given the perennial skills gap that usually exists somewhere in the channel it is trialling a partner version. The …

    The Channel 19 Oct 13:22

  • French cops cuff man over €500K Android Trojan scam

    Suspect had wanted to earn his crust as software dev

    French police have arrested a 20-year-old man who allegedly earned €500,000 (£405,00, $650,000) through an Android malware scam. The unnamed perp from the Amiens region allegedly tricked 17,000 victims into installing a Trojan that posed as a legitimate application on their Android smartphones. In reality, the malicious …

    Security 19 Oct 13:27

  • EARTH was a BAKING LIFELESS DESERT for 5 MILLION years

    Steaming seas prevented recovery from mass extinction

    Boffins have discovered that "lethally hot" ocean temperatures kept the Earth devoid of life for millions of years after the mass extinction that occurred 250 million years ago. The global wipeout that ended the Permian era, before dinosaurs, wiped out nearly all of the world's species. Mass extinctions like these in Earth's …

    Science 19 Oct 13:58

  • Anonymous cell: Shove off, credit-hoggers, WE took down HSBC

    Updated Hacktivist splinter group claims responsibility for packet flood

    An Anonymous-affiliated group has claimed responsibility for attacks that left HSBC websites worldwide knocked offline on Thursday night. UK-based Fawkes Security claimed responsibility for the digital sit-in via a post to Pastebin. As some of you may be aware HSBC bank suffered several DDoS attacks on the named sites in the …

    Security 19 Oct 14:28

  • Windows 8 wait prompts PC sales droop in EMEA

    Lenovo only firm to boost channel sales-in during Q3

    IDC has confirmed sales of PCs to distributors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa tumbled in Q3 as all the major players bought stock conservatively ahead of the launch of Windows 8. The beancounter noted "weak sell-in levels" in July and August forced a 7.7 per cent slide in shipments across EMEA and a 12.8 per cent …

    The Channel 19 Oct 15:01

  • FalconStor honcho rejigs storage biz: OEMs - who needs them?

    McNiel fights to embulgen balance sheet

    FalconStor CEO Jim McNiel is not quite a happy man, but he hopes to be one in a year or so. He is the president and CEO of a once phenomenally successful storage software start-up, and it's his task to restore the company's fortunes. McNiel, formerly Falconstor's strategy chief, came into his position when he replaced the …

    Storage 19 Oct 15:34

  • Google adds 25 million grey building 'footprints' to Maps

    Ideal for the rooftop chase Parkour enthusiast

    Google has added 25 million building footprints to its Maps product, giving extra detail to maps of key American cities. Maps that once just showed a road now show the outlines of individual buildings next to that road. And not just big buildings - all the buildings, down to standard residential properties, along with height …

    Media 19 Oct 15:44

  • Curiosity scoops up SHINY BITS from the RED SANDS of MARS!

    Prowling nuclear robot sieves and sniffs the dirt

    Curiosity's latest dig into Martian soil has uncovered yet more shiny objects, but this time boffins don't think they're from the rover. When the science truck swallowed its first solid sample of soil for analysis by its CheMin instrument to look at the minerals inside, it saw that bright bits were in the Martian sand. The …

    Science 19 Oct 16:28

  • Penguin Computing muscles into the ARM server fray

    Aiming Cortex-A9 clusters at Big Data

    Linux cluster supplier Penguin Computing is diving into the low-power ARM microserver racket and has tapped server chip upstart Calxeda – which has just rolled out its multiyear product roadmap for its EnergyCore processors – as its chip and interconnect supplier for its first boxes. The new machine, called the Ultimate Data …

    Servers 19 Oct 17:06

  • SanDisk jolted out of flatline after Q3 flash storage shock

    Put the paddles away ... it's ALIVE

    SanDisk is putting its poor first and second quarter results behind it, as the flash storage supplier returns to selling stuff customers want and starts growing revenues and profits again. A total of $1.27bn in revenue came in in SanDisk's third calendar 2012 quarter, with net income of $77m. Comparing it with the year-ago …

    Storage 19 Oct 17:28

  • They've only gone and HACKED the WEATHER

    Hackers punch into NOAA, in 'vengeance for Stuxnet'

    Hackers have lifted potentially sensitive data from the US National Weather Service after exploiting a vulnerability in the weather.gov website. A previously-unknown group called Kosova Hacker's Security claimed credit for the hack in a lengthy post on pastebin, containing a stream of data lifted as a result of the hack. …

    Security 19 Oct 17:52

  • Tape vendors thrust LTFS tool at punters: Go on, you know you want our tape

    IP Expo: Tape Summit Reclaiming the tape software interface

    Two years after its inception, the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is the tape hardware industry's best hope to claim a piece of the tape software interface and repair the damage done by decades of proprietary and hard-to-use backup software. We've all heard that "tape is dying" from the various disk array vendors, while others …

    Storage 19 Oct 18:14

  • Apple breaks ground on massive Oregon data center

    Facebook, Google, Amazon neighbor to use 100% renewable energy

    Apple has broken ground on a massive new data-center complex on a bluff overlooking the town of Prineville, Oregon, home to just over 9,000 souls, as well as to another data center owned and operated by social-networking megagiant Facebook. Portland's The Oregonian reports that the first phase of the project will cost $68m, …

    Datacenter 19 Oct 19:07

  • FTC offers $50,000 bounty for robocall-killing tech

    Add torture and we'll pay extra

    The Federal Trade Commission is offering $50,000 in cash to a "hero" who can come up with a way to block illegal robocalls. "The FTC is attacking illegal robocalls on all fronts, and one of the things that we can do as a government agency is to tap into the genius and technical expertise among the public," said David Vladeck, …

    Government 19 Oct 19:10

  • State of Minnesota bans free online education

    Coursera told to pay up or get out

    Web-based education startup Coursera offers university-level courses "for anyone to take, for free" – anyone, that is, except residents of the US state of Minnesota, where free online education has been declared illegal. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Minnesota Office of Higher Education has told Coursera …

    Government 19 Oct 19:40

  • Apache promotes OpenOffice to top-level project

    Fiddling as LibreOffice speeds past

    Ever since Oracle dumped OpenOffice on the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), progress in developing the free office apps suite has been glacial at best. That may now change with the announcement that OpenOffice is now officially a Top-Level Project (TLP) for the open source group. "The OpenOffice graduation is the official …

    Applications 19 Oct 22:38

  • Salesforce CEO Benioff: Win 8 is 'the end of Windows'

    Shocks world with cloudy future prediction

    The official launch of Windows 8 is only a week away, but Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff won't be making the upgrade, and he doesn't think most enterprise CIOs will, either. "Windows is irrelevant," Benioff said, speaking at a press Q&A session at Salesforce's Cloudforce event in New York on Friday. Benioff explained that …

    Windows 8 19 Oct 23:17