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31st October 2012 Archive

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  • Microsoft opens Windows Phone 8 dev kit to world+dog

    Build 2012 Claims it did everything right this time

    Microsoft has officially launched the software development kit (SDK) for Windows Phone 8, delivering the final piece of what the company says is a common programming model across all of its latest OS platforms and devices. "As you can see, we're combining an array of hardware, tools, and technology to deliver a fundamentally …

    Developer 31 Oct 00:11

  • Underdone iTunes put back in oven for another month

    'Taking longer than expected' to avoid crap Maps app flap recap

    Back on September 12, during Apple's iPhone 5 rollout soirée, the company also previewed a "completely redesigned" iTunes software, promising that it would appear this month. It won't. In an email widely circulated on Tuesday, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said that the new version – presumably iTunes 11, seeing as how we're …

    Applications 31 Oct 00:32

  • Disney buys Lucasfilm, new Star Wars trilogy planned

    Jar-Jar: 'Meesa gonna meeta da beeg mousie, okeeday?'

    Disney has bought out Lucasfilm in a $4.05bn deal and announced a new trilogy of Star Wars films under the leadership of the entertainment behemoth. "For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next," said George Lucas, CEO of Lucasfilm in a canned statement …

    Media 31 Oct 00:42

  • If you measure IT with PCs, you're doing it wrong

    Canalys APAC It's time for the channel to buy drinks for vendors

    Assessing the health of the IT industry by taking the temperature of the the PC market is no longer a useful approach, Canalys President and CEO Steve Brazier told the analyst outfit's APAC Channel Forum in Singapore today. Bounding onto the stage after two of Singapore's signature dancing lions ensured the event got off to an …

    The Channel 31 Oct 05:19

  • China fingered as counterfeit parts flood tech supply chain

    IHS warns all tiers to tighten supplier scrutiny

    The number of ‘high risk’ suppliers, including some flogging counterfeit products to US government, military and commercial channels has grown by almost two-thirds since 2002, with China pegged as a key player, according to market watcher IHS iSuppli. The firm urged all parts of the supply chain to tighten procurement and …

    The Channel 31 Oct 06:05

  • Hurricane Sandy stops Apple stock deflating

    Canalys APAC As channel guru blows hot and cold over Apple store woes

    A woeful week for Apple is probably a good thing for the rest of the tech industry, a top channel guru declared today, even if it doesn't mean a new sense of humility within the Infinite Loop. Steve Brazier, opening the Canalys Channels Forum in Singapore today, repeated his assertion that Apple currently dominated the tech …

    The Channel 31 Oct 06:15

  • Baidu income soars but mobile success will take years

    Analysts point to lack of coherent mobile strategy

    Chinese search giant Baidu said Q3 net income jumped 60 per cent year-on-year, but also gave Facebook-watchers something to ponder by saying it will take two years before its mobile business is firing on all cylinders. Baidu is the dominant player in China's domestic market, where it accounts for about three quarters of all …

    Business 31 Oct 06:23

  • Plextor M5 Pro 256GB SSD review

    Modern Marvell

    Some companies make a real song and dance about the launch of a new product, others just seem to launch something without hardly making a ripple. Plextor sits firmly in the latter category, which is something of a surprise considering its latest Pro SSD range, the M5 series, features not one but two new technologies that are, …

    Hardware 31 Oct 07:00

  • 'IE hit squad' helps ease browser babel on office PCs

    Used to be all (Microsoft green) fields round here

    A browser start-up is building software to help large operations manage the increasing breakdown in dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the proliferation of various other browsers in the workplace. Internet Explorer hit squad Browsium has announced beta availability of Catalyst, software that manages the creeping …

    Operating Systems 31 Oct 08:00

  • PC builder Lenovo to pump iron, invade hefty biz systems sector

    Sure it's the post-PC era - just not the way you think

    PC builder Lenovo is making a play for heavier duty infrastructure kit as it tries to make its presence felt beyond commoditised desktops and mobile systems. The Enterprise Product Group (EPG) has launched stateside ahead of a Euro blitz in 2013 - it will house server, storage, networking, software and cloud services to be …

    The Channel 31 Oct 08:27

  • ARMed warfare on the server: Intel versus AMD plus world?

    Live Chat Chipzilla RUMBLE: Reg readers have their say

    Underdog, disrupter and casualty – AMD’s been on a rollercoaster ride in its battle against Intel. AMD rose on the strength of its 64-bit, x86-compatible server processors as Intel was penalised on Itanium; Intel re-bounded with the Xeon E5 as AMD got dragged down by IT spending cuts and problems with its Barcelona Opterons. …

    Servers 31 Oct 09:00

  • Telefonica fails in bid to claw back 'flip-flop' 2010 termination charges

    Only clean player got taken to the cleaners - that's OK

    Ofcom acted properly when setting mobile termination rates - the money one operator must cough to another for terminating a call on its network - the Competition Appeal Tribunal has ruled. The UK's second-largest telco, Telefonica/O2, had appealed to the tribunal over Ofcom's ruling in a dispute between the big Blighty-side mobe …

    Mobile 31 Oct 09:26

  • Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

    Bond on Film Esters, Vespers and giving a damn!

    "A distressingly large amount of rubbish is talked about cocktails," Noel Jackson, top boffin at the Life Science Centre in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, tells The Reg. You know, that's not half bad. I'm going to have to think up a name for that Jackson, a Cambridge-University-educated chemist, has all the straight-up science on …

    Bond, James Bond 31 Oct 10:00

  • Universal Credit dole 'liable to be paralysed by IT cockups'

    UK.gov track record on monster ICT is rather poor

    Benefit claimants could end up with nothing if the IT system for the new Universal Credit falls over or if they're just not that web-savvy, a report claims. The Universal Credit (UC) system is due to start replacing a whole bunch of government benefits for Brits from this time next year, but there's concerns that the superfast …

    Government 31 Oct 10:29

  • One million Facebook users' names and email addresses: $5

    An effective way to fight social network fraud: Priceless

    Name and email addresses of Facebook users are available online at prices as low as $5 per million. The dodgy trade was uncovered by Bogomil Shopov, an internet marketeer and blogger in the Czech Republic. Shopov said he approached the social network about the problem. He said Facebook asked him to forward and then delete the …

    Security 31 Oct 10:53

  • Virgin Media spanked for 'we've already cabled up your house' mailshot

    Turned out they simply hadn't

    Virgin Media has once again been sent to the headmaster's office for a caning after producing a misleading ad. This time the Advertising Standards Authority lambasted the telco's attempts to convince some of its customers that they could receive Virgin Media's "state-of-the-art fibre optic cable" product even though it was …

    Broadband 31 Oct 11:14

  • NAND ho! New Intel and Samsung SSDs heave over the horizon

    Writing's more important than reading, seemingly

    Intel and Samsung have both pushed out new solid state drives (SSD) to the storage market, and both are promising their kit can provide improved high-speed storage for the server and desktop market. Intel's 335 is a 240GB PC boot disk drive replacement, an update of its 330 - background here - which uses 25nm NAND process …

    Storage 31 Oct 11:29

  • Kickstarter kindly allows Brits to channel 95% of their money through it

    Mass begging portal keeps the other 5

    Crowdfunding website Kickstarter started taking money for UK projects today - along with a five per cent slice of the action for itself. The site, which lets users pledge money for products, movies, albums and other projects that can't or don't want to get bank funding, has been running just in the US until now. In return for …

    Financial News 31 Oct 11:44

  • Acer is the latest maker to delay plans for a Windows RT fondletop

    'Market needs to develop' - and Surface didn't help

    Acer has postponed the release of its Windows RT tab on the channels say so as it waits to see how market adoption rates develop. The Taiwanese giant had planned to push out its version around February next year but EMEA president Oliver Ahrens confirmed the date has slipped by a couple of months. "We talk to channel partners …

    The Channel 31 Oct 12:02

  • Asus: we ship a million Google's Nexus 7s monthly

    Manufacturer highlights popularity of 7in slab

    Asus is shipping around one million Nexus 7 tablets a month, the company has claimed. Google's affordable fondleslab was hugely popular with consumers and rapidly sold out during its first product run. However, exact figures remained hazy. Now manufacturer Asus finally lifted the veil. "At the beginning, it was, for instance …

    Hardware 31 Oct 12:16

  • The Register's iPhone app gets a makeover

    Site news Works better, too

    Head over to the iTunes apps store for the latest iteration of The Register iPhone app. Version 2.0.5 adds offline reading capabilities, full iPad support - and comments! Props to the developer, Ocasta Studios, for making the app work and look so much better than our last effort. Fingers crossed, the rating for our app …

    Site News 31 Oct 12:18

  • Future-proofing the data centre

    Lessons from the front line

    Whether it’s public, private, or hybrid, there is an emerging consensus that various forms of cloud computing will have a role to play in the future of IT delivery. But you have a data centre already, doing tasks that won't go away overnight. How do you build an operational environment without creating a completely disjointed …

    Business 31 Oct 12:19

  • French gov 'plans to hand Google €1bn tax bill' - report

    Getting sick of Dutch sandwiches and Irish doubles

    The French tax office will be handing Google a €1bn tax bill to make up for revenues from France routed through Google Ireland, claims French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné*. An inquiry into Google's Transfer Pricing - how profits and revenues are moved across borders by the corporation - has just finished and according to Le …

    Media 31 Oct 12:29

  • Vodafone NZ finishes chewing, finally swallows TelstraClear

    A snap at NZ$840m

    Vodafone's acquisition of New Zealand operator TelstraClear is now complete, leaving NZ with one fewer virtual operators and Vodafone with a useful chunk of spectrum. The NZ$840m ($AU660m) deal was announced back in July, but has been chugging though the regulatory system since then and only completed this morning with …

    Financial News 31 Oct 12:42

  • What economic crisis? Big Data powers cash cascade at CommVault

    Backup bucks up: bucking the trend

    Backup and archive software supplier CommVault is becoming a profit-making machine with its net profits as a percentage of revenues rising from 7.2 per cent two years ago to 11.8 per cent in its second fiscal 2013 quarter. There is also no indication of any slowdown in enterprise spending - companies like EMC should be so lucky …

    Financial News 31 Oct 12:46

  • Slideshow: A History of Horror in 20 Scary Games

    The chills, they're multiplaying

    Complimented on the cobwebs, skeletal remains and general stench of death in my flat the other day, I suddenly remembered it was Halloween this week, so here's another nostalgic slideshow to celebrate. This time it's a collection of 20 pant-cacking games, titles that raised the hair on the back of our necks or at least raised …

    Games 31 Oct 13:00

  • Fans' loyalty questioned as iPhone popularity plummets

    Quarter of customers consider jumping ship

    iPopularity is in a state of decline, with "Apple loyalty" said to have fallen for the first time since the iPhone's 2007 release. Only 75 per cent of iPhone owners in Western Europe say they'd choose an Apple device for their next smartphone, new data from market watcher Strategy Analytics show. That still seems a relatively …

    Phones 31 Oct 13:11

  • FBI cuffs 14 over $1m 'Gone in 60 Seconds' casino scam

    Feds alerted after well-timed heist on cash-advance machines

    US cops have arrested 14 people over an elaborate scam where $1m was stolen from casino kiosks in a scam the FBI has described as ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ bank fraud. The suspects allegedly stole $1m by exploiting a gap in Citibank’s electronic transaction security protocols in casino "cash advance" kiosks - which required …

    Security 31 Oct 13:29

  • Apple brand channels hefty profits to iThing maker Foxconn

    Wow, that dog has a big tail

    Foxconn Technology, manufacturing buddy of Apple, received a nice boost to its profits courtesy of the continued popularity of iDevices. The mega electronic components manufacturer, also known as Hon Hai Precision, reckons its improved productivity and better device lineup gave its earnings a lift as well as bringing some …

    Financial News 31 Oct 14:01

  • Monty Python legend Eric Idle and rockstar boffin Cox write a song

    Meaning of Life 'Galaxy' number gets numbers checked

    Monty Python legend Eric Idle and fresh-faced rockstar physicist Brian Cox have teamed up to write a song. It's an update to Monty Python's "Galaxy song" about the meaning(lessness) of life, with a new focus on the biological reasons for our insignificance and will be featuring on the BBC show The Wonder of Life in January. Idle …

    Bootnotes 31 Oct 14:27

  • Quarter of Eastern cell towers BLOWN down BY SANDY - FCC

    'Save bandwidth, text with a friend', pleads federal boss

    Around a quarter of mobile phone towers in the ten East-coast states hit by Hurricane Sandy have been damaged or destroyed, the Federal Communications Commission has said. The FCC is anticipating continued communication problems as other towers are running on backup power. "This was and still is a devastating storm with a …

    Mobile 31 Oct 14:53

  • Privacy group damns Ubuntu's Amazon search marriage

    Unhelpful when you're searching your pr0n library

    Privacy activists have taken Canonical to task for exposing users' web searches and searches of their local hard drives to sites such as Amazon, Facebook and the BBC. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called Canonical's integration of the Ubuntu 12.10 Dash search feature with results from Amazon "a major privacy problem …

    Operating Systems 31 Oct 15:19

  • MULTICOLOURED TARANTULAS found UP TREES in Brazil

    Fears they may be kept as pets, farmed for DRUGS

    Spider experts working in Brazil have discovered nine new species of pink, purple and orange mini tarantulas after carefully probing into the classification of the hairy horrors. The haul of new spider species comes from a study in the Amazon rainforest by tarantula specialist Dr Rogerio Bertani of the Instituto Butantan in …

    Science 31 Oct 15:36

  • Avere to tart up FXT with cloud storage gateway, mutterings foretell

    'Talk to the clouds, man, they'll answer you'

    Avere is working on a strategy to front-end cloud object storage products with FXT, its filer-accelerating NVRAM, flash and disk tiered system technology, say storage insiders. Conversations with people close to the situation suggest that customers using Avere's clustered filer acceleration products - and there are about 100 …

    Storage 31 Oct 15:43

  • To Russia with Love? Georgia snaps 'cyber-spy' with his own cam

    Govt puts pics on internet - not much else they can do

    Georgia has taken the unusual step of publishing photos of a man it suspects of being the hacker who has been attacking the former Soviet Republic's systems for months. Photos of the alleged cyber-spy were captured after Georgia security experts set up a honeypot sting, tricking the person they believed to be the hacker into …

    Security 31 Oct 16:02

  • 'We invented Windows 8 Tiles in the 1990s', says firm suing Microsoft

    We couldn't get anyone to like them either

    Microsoft had barely got Windows 8 out the door before it was slapped with a patent lawsuit related to the new OS. Software and OS design tech firm SurfCast has filed a suit in Maine over Live Tiles, which it says it invented. The company has just four patents, but one of them, filed in 2000 and granted in 2004, deals with a " …

    Software 31 Oct 16:21

  • Curiosity probe tastes Mars soil: Dude, this reminds me of Hawaii

    Aloha, potential microbial life-forms

    Science lab and nuclear truck Curiosity has tasted its first Martian soil and decided it's a bit like a piece of Hawaii. The Mars rover's CheMin instrument analysed the minerals in its fistful of dust and found the composition is similar to the basaltic volcanic soil of the islands. "We had many previous inferences and …

    Science 31 Oct 16:52

  • Guess who's still doing OK in PCs? Fujitsu, though it has troubles too

    Truly, your actual computer is the Ubiquitous Solution

    Japanese IT conglomerate Fujitsu has turned in its financial report for the second quarter of fiscal 2012: and the results were mixed, as has been the case for most IT suppliers wrestling with an uncertain global economy. For the quarter ended in September, Fujitsu had total revenues of ¥1,114bn, up seven-tenths of a per cent …

    Financial News 31 Oct 17:19

  • Hurricane Sandy: Where are all the cynical online scams?

    Comment Update: Ah, there you are!

    The occurrence of a natural disaster or celebrity death have been guaranteed to mean the appearance of topical scams and malware for some years, certainly since the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 if not before. But the devastation wrought by superstorm Sandy on the US north-east coast and beyond has strangely been accompanied by …

    Security 31 Oct 17:50

  • Mega Euro storage show: Players talk tech on objects, tape and flash

    SNW Europe Tape vendors seem perky... maybe TOO perky

    At StorageNetworkWorld (SNW) Europe, branded as Powering The Cloud, we were bombarded with information from a multitude of vendors. As any backup and storage player in the game would know, the best way to deal with a mass of data is to break it down into chunks, so El Reg will do just that. This article is the first in a series …

    Storage 31 Oct 18:29

  • California begins crackdown on mobile app developers

    Protect user privacy or face the courts

    In the next few weeks, up to 100 mobile application developers will be getting a letter from California's government ordering them to install privacy protection warnings on their apps or face the legal consequences. The letters warn that "an operator of a commercial Web site or online service that collects personally …

    Software 31 Oct 19:20

  • New York tech firms form 'bucket brigade' to fuel flagging servers

    Shifting fuel 17 floors up by hand

    Three technology firms have joined forces to avoid any data center downtime in the aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy amid the continuing power outages crippling Lower Manhattan. Employees of Peer 1 Hosting, blog host Squarespace, and Fog Creek Software have formed a 'bucket brigade', lugging diesel up to the backup generators …

    Data Center 31 Oct 20:46

  • Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI

    Build 2012 Not even Microsoft, it seems

    Microsoft says it is 100 per cent committed to its new user interface (UI) design principles, as embodied in Windows 8, even though it still hasn't come up with a meaningful name for them. Speaking at the annual Build developer conference in Redmond this week, Microsoft Principal User Experience Advisor Will Tschumy said the …

    Applications 31 Oct 21:01

  • Pollster says ID fraud less costly than we thought

    Most attacks relatively trivial

    Here’s a riddle for you: what’s the cost of identity theft and so-called “cybercrime” in Australia on an annual basis? If you answer “I don’t know”, you’re probably as close as most people. The latest data to be lobbed into the discussion is here, from Essential Research. Of its survey respondents – 995, the study had the same …

    Security 31 Oct 21:30

  • Dark matter pioneer scoops Oz science prize

    Work on underweight galaxies recognised

    If you want to know why we’re searching for the Universe’s pesky dark matter, here’s someone who deserves to shoulder at least some of the blame: Professor Ken Freeman of Australia’s Mount Stromolo Observatory – and winner of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science. You could argue that Professor Freeman has had to wait a …

    Science 31 Oct 22:15

  • FaceTime now on patent troll list

    Apple just one of many targets

    A Texas-based company, Intercarrier Communications, is lining up its lawyers against a small throng of companies over a messaging patent. Apple is on the list, with FaceTime and Apple Messages accused of infringing its patent, but the company has been far busier than that. Similar suits have been filed against Iris Wireless, …

    Law 31 Oct 22:45