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5th November 2012 Archive

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  • New Jersey allows email voting

    Suffrage-as-a-service for voters displaced by Sandy

    Voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy will be able to vote in the US Presidential election by email or fax. The electronic poll will take place in the US State of New Jersey, thanks to a decision by Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno, who feels it is unfair for displaced people, and emergency services workers, to be deprived of their …

    Policy 5 Nov 00:18

  • AWS storage gateway adds local volumes, tiering

    Cloud titan kindly offers to reduce burden on in-house arrays

    Amazon Web Services' Cloud Storage Gateway has added another feature that will raise eyebrows among storage hardware vendors: tiering. The cloudy concern recently let it be known that the Gateway, a virtual appliance that shunts data into and out of its simple storage service (S3), can now provision a local volume that servers …

    Cloud 5 Nov 01:06

  • Yahoo! To! Sell! Home! Gene! Test! Kit! In! Japan!

    And you thought Google knew everything about you …

    Yahoo! Japan will soon sell genetic testing kits, so its users can figure out if they have a disposition to disease. The Japan Times reports officials at Yahoo! Japan, which was formed as a joint venture between SouthBank and Yahoo! USA, promises the company “... will play only a marketing role and will not handle any data …

    Bootnotes 5 Nov 02:36

  • KDE 'annoys the hell of' Linus Torvalds

    'Boring' Linux deity revisits UI, finds it 'too cartoony'

    Linus Torvalds has decided, “after a long absense” (that's his spelling), to give Unix desktop environment KDE a go. His assessment of the UI isn't kind, with his opening statement declaring: “It still looks a bit too cartoony, and the default widget/plasmoid behavior with mouse-over pretty much immediately showing the …

    Software 5 Nov 03:54

  • EU and China in yet another tech trade spat

    Polysilicon complaints heighten trade tensions

    Already-tense relations between Europe and China appear to have worsened after the People’s Republic announced an anti-dumping investigation into EU imports of solar-grade polysilicon. The move was widely seen as a response to the European Union’s decision to launch a similar investigation against Chinese manufacturers in …

    Policy 5 Nov 04:14

  • Stratus load balances virty machines across Avance clusters

    Primary machine tired of doing all the work

    On the heels of its acquisition of high-availability server maker Marathon Technologies at the end of September and the revamping of its ftServer fault tolerant servers earlier that month, Stratus Technologies is tweaking its Avance clustering software for server hypervisors and their virtual machines to allow load balancing …

    Virtualization 5 Nov 05:01

  • AMD revs Opterons up to 6300 for fat x86 servers

    Drop-in-socket performance jump, perhaps a Q4 revenue jump as well

    Customers using big ol' fat x86 servers didn't have much to jump for joy about this year. There just isn't a lot going on. But to make things interesting, AMD is now goosing the performance of its top-end parts with the launch of its "Abu Dhabi" Opteron 6300s, which sport the "Piledriver" cores that already debuted in the FX …

    Servers 5 Nov 05:01

  • China fingered for Coca Cola hack - report

    Several big name multinationals kept quiet about breaches

    Suspected Chinese hackers launched damaging cyber raids on several big name multi-nationals over the past few years, including Coca Cola, according to new reports. Fizzy drink giant Coca Cola, British energy company BG Group, Luxembourg-based steel maker ArcelorMittal and Chesapeake Energy were all named by Bloomberg as having …

    Security 5 Nov 05:45

  • Asset raider busts in, demands seat at Quantum table

    Cash in/cash out types clearly don't know the tape vendor

    As if tape storage vendor Quantum doesn't have enough to worry about with its plummeting stock price, it's now facing an assault by Starboard Value, an asset raider, which says it has 16 per cent of the shares and wants board representation. Starboard Value "invests in deeply undervalued small cap companies and actively …

    Storage 5 Nov 06:03

  • Australia opens inquiry into smartphone apps

    Concerns about quality and in-app purchases to be tested

    Australia's nanny state will take up residence in its citizens' smartphones, after the nation's government decided to launch “an inquiry into the experiences of Australian consumers with downloading apps, including free and paid apps, and making in-app purchases, on mobile phone and handheld devices.” Assistant Treasurer and …

    Software 5 Nov 06:18

  • El Reg seeks hoardiest reader for crap-stashtic honour

    Competition Buried under useless junk? Send us proof, if you can find your camera...

    A couple of weeks back, Alistair Dabbs rang a few bells among Reg readers with his "Why can't I throw anything away?" lament - a harrowing tale of a man threatened both by a growing mountain of redundant tech and a wife determined to declutter chez Dabbs. Right, where did I leave that ZX81 16kB RAM pack? According to your …

    SPB 5 Nov 07:00

  • Cambridge boffins bag big-time backers for White Space standard

    Everyone's going Weightless

    Neul, the Cambridge White Space start-up staffed by some of the UK's top radio boffins, has managed to pick up some serious backers for its new Weightless protocol. A new special interest group backed by ARM, CSR and Vodafone-owned Cable & Wireless Worldwide will be pushing the UK to the forefront of M2M, plugging everything …

    Mobile 5 Nov 07:26

  • LucasArts' Dark Forces

    Antique Code Show Star Wars meets Doom in this classic first-person shooter from 1995

    With the release of Doom in 1993, and Bungie’s Marathon, the year after, the first-person shooter was firmly on the gaming map, so it was no surprise LucasArts wanted to be there. If there was one thing a Star Wars fan wanted, it was to get in on the action, to grab a blaster and take out some Stormtroopers. In 1995, Dark Forces …

    Games 5 Nov 08:00

  • HP hopes to give itself a shot in the arm with its LeftHand

    '66 per cent less time' watching backup bar move across

    We've met StoreOnce, HP's in-house deduplicating backup products, and the StoreVirtual virtual storage appliance; now HP is launching its range of StoreVirtual and StoreEasy hardware and software. StoreVirtual is a brand name for the P4000 LeftHand iSCSI storage arrays and not just the virtual storage appliance (VSA) …

    Storage 5 Nov 08:19

  • Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? How to avoid a crap IT job

    Part 1 El Reg job expert Dom Connor reveals key clues to look out for in interviews

    Do not try picking up a girl with the line: “You’re not as fat as my current girlfriend; if you sleep with me I’ll drop her as soon as she’s finished painting our bedroom.” Trust me on this, it doesn’t work. It should set off alarm bells in anyone's head. Yet during job interviews, hopefuls are told things like: “We’re …

    Jobs 5 Nov 09:01

  • Consumer VPN service could be popular as regional paywalls go up

    'Everyone except Hulu, the BBC and the Telegraph loves us'

    Consumer VPN firm AnchorFree is touting mobile data cost saving through compression as well as Wi-Fi security as means to gain more users for its software: buts it's likely that many of its users will be more interested in getting around regional media paywalls - or even national government firewalls. David Gorodyansky, chief …

    Security 5 Nov 09:19

  • Finally, a use for Microsoft Azure: Storing Seagate biz backups

    Aah, the cloud. Perfect for precious EVault data, right?

    Seagate's online backup service EVault will use the Microsoft Azure cloud as its back-end data vault. According to the Redmond software giant, Azure is good for storing bytes as well as crunching computational tasks. Seagate's EVault Endpoint Protection (EVault EP) product promises cloud-connected backups and data security for …

    Storage 5 Nov 09:37

  • Acer Iconia A110 8GB Android tablet review

    Tegra 3-based Asus Nexus 7 worrier?

    Acer’s Iconia A110 7in Android tablet is the first real competition that Google's Nexus 7 has faced. It’s similarly sized, similarly priced and uses the same quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 underpinnings. It also runs the same Jelly Bean version of Android. Lucky seven? Acer's Iconia A110 The main technical distinctions are that …

    Tablets 5 Nov 10:00

  • Deloitte in the saddle at Comet, seeking stability - and a buyer

    Santa's empty sack could be omen for 6,000+ employees

    Deloitte said its first task as Comet's administrative receiver is to steady the ship and then seek anyone interested buying an ailing veteran retailer, hamstrung by huge overheads and facing fierce competition from leaner online rivals. Good luck with that. After days of industry chatter, Comet finally called in the …

    The Channel 5 Nov 10:14

  • So you want an office of Apple Macs - here's a survival guide

    Trevor Pott digs out the tools to keep fanboi workers happy

    Apple Macs are ready for the enterprise. Unsurprisingly, they can already be found in organisations of all sizes. The five sigma announcement by CERN of the Higgs boson bordered on an Apple advertisement. IBM has more than 10,000 Macbooks deployed. My own SME clients have heterogeneous networks, some are even Mac only. With so …

    Management 5 Nov 10:30

  • Welsh council's unused mountain of 2,400 laptops

    A year later, 'discussions' are 'near conclusion'

    A Welsh council kept 2,400 laptops, which were supposed to be used by school pupils, in storage for at least a year because it couldn't figure out what to do with the kit. Torfaen County Borough Council bought a batch of 8,642 laptops in March last year for itself, Monmouthshire council and Newport council. Torfaen footed the …

    Government 5 Nov 10:43

  • Fondle fever: Growing tablet market no longer just an iPad market

    Apples are not the only fruit

    Apple may be losing its vicelike grip on the tablet market, as Android fondleslabs - particularly from Samsung - sneak up the charts. Beancounters at IDC saw Apple's third quarter share of the tablet market slipped to 50.4 per cent from 65.5 per cent in the last quarter and 59.7 per cent in the same quarter last year, with …

    The Channel 5 Nov 10:55

  • Texas woman sues cops over burst Bulgarian airbag

    Rough handling ruptured implant, lawsuit claims

    A surgically enhanced Texan is suing police over a burst Bulgarian airbag she claims went pop as she was arrested over an unpaid speeding ticket. Rebecca Van Hooser, of Arlington, was pulled over on 28 October in neighbouring Pantego for a "headlight violation". The traffic cop acted on a warrant for the unpaid ticket by …

    Bootnotes 5 Nov 11:19

  • Naughty-step Apple buries court-ordered apology with JavaScript

    LOOK AT THIS iPAD PIC We are sorry about the Samsung case

    Apple insisted it would take 14 days to publish a three-sentence declaration on its UK website that Samsung had not ripped off the iPad design. But in the 48 hours Judge Robin Jacob instead gave the Jesus mobe maker, Apple has managed to upload both the statement and a wad of JavaScript code that resizes the homepage's central …

    Law 5 Nov 11:29

  • O2 roaming rates to rise by up to 140%

    Travellers check...

    O2 will increase its roaming costs for making calls outside the EU by nearly 140 per cent this month. The network is set to raise the cost of making calls in the US and Canada from 90p a minute to £1.10, while increasing the charge to receive calls from 39p to 90p. Sending a text from across the pond will set punters back 40p …

    Mobile 5 Nov 11:35

  • Virgin close to releasing long-delayed TiVo app

    18 months after first sighting, it's here... almost

    Virgin Media first showed a TiVo app for iDevices off in June 2011. Almost 18 months later, the cable telly company may at long last be gearing up to release the software. The app, which works with Virgin’s TiVo-based set-top box was originally due to go live in September 2011 but with that deadline missed, the company kept …

    Media 5 Nov 11:41

  • Facebook Phone rumours are back: And probably true this time

    You'd like a Zuck cash register in your pocket ... bitch

    The Facebook Phone rumours are back again. This time it's absolutely, positively, certainly, proven to exist by gadget blog Pocket-Lint and its "very reliable source". Sarcasm aside, it's true that a Facebook Phone has never had a better reason to exist. Pocket-Lint reckons the Facebook Phone, made by HTC and named "HTC Opera …

    Mobile 5 Nov 11:44

  • Slideshow: A History of First-person Shooters in 20 Games

    Clicky-clicky, bang-bang

    The long-anticipated release of Halo 4 and the latest Call of Duty, November is shaping up to be a great month for first-person shooters. We've decided to look back at the great FPS games of the past, so here are what we think to be the 20 most notable titles from the last 30 years. During that time, there have been plenty …

    Games 5 Nov 12:02

  • Olympics is over, prepare for a COMPUTER SPORTS SMACKDOWN

    SC12 If ye would have peace, prepare for cluster WAR

    It’s November, which can mean only one thing for computer sports enthusiasts: it’s time for another Student Cluster Competition. The seventh edition of this annual event begins in about two weeks at the SC12 conference in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. The competition pits teams of university undergrads against each other in a …

    HPC 5 Nov 12:19

  • Young HPC warriors grab Big Irons, whack away at Cold War plutonium waste

    SC12 Massively parallel 3-D reservoir sims just 1 of the apps in student cluster compo

    The apps for this year’s edition of the SC12 Student Cluster Competition are the typical mix of HPC workloads, chosen to represent a range of scientific disciplines and computational challenges. In order to drink deeply from the chalice of victory student teams will need to crawl inside each of the apps, find the bottlenecks, …

    HPC 5 Nov 12:22

  • Euro jobs cut threat hit us like a train, say Systemax workers

    The reward for good work: not more work, this time

    Systemax staff are shellshocked in the wake of the revelation that jobs in Europe - the region leading growth across the company - are to be cut. The reseller is consolidating back-office functions into a shared services centre in Eastern Europe as well as shuttering two retail brands and closing down PC production lines …

    The Channel 5 Nov 12:36

  • Apple iPad Mini 8in tablet review

    The tablet even Apple haters won't be able to leave alone

    Hitting the Apple Store shelves a whole week after Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablets began arriving in the post, and two months after Google launched the Asus-made Nexus 7, the iPad Mini deserves to suffer in comparison. Even Google managed to slip a new 32GB version of its Nexus 7 under the radar at the beginning of the week …

    Hardware 5 Nov 13:00

  • Facebook COO Sandberg sells MEELLLIONS OF DOLLARS of stock

    Bumwad from bank of Toyland offloaded, more to come

    Mark Zuckerberg's right-hand woman Sheryl Sandberg banked approximately $7.44m on Friday, after she sold around 353,000 of her shares in Facebook as trading restrictions for employees expired. The free-content ad network's COO - who joined Facebook from rival Google in March 2008 - retains about 20 million vested shares in the …

    Financial News 5 Nov 13:18

  • Martian atmosphere pristine, totally free of fart gas, reports Curiosity

    Red world very different from billion-bottomed Earth

    Mars rover Curiosity has taken a whiff of the wind at Rocknest in the Gale Crater - but the Red Planet hasn't been passing the gas the nuclear-powered tank is looking for. A common or garden Earth-based methane-producing machine The rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments have been sniffing for methane gas because …

    Science 5 Nov 13:36

  • Beep! NASA here, a 400 tonne spacecraft is about to buzz your house

    Quite high up, fortunately

    US space agency NASA, to mark twelve years' continuous occupation of the International Space Station, has set up a service which will alert users round the world when good chances to see the station pass over are about to occur. Under favourable conditions the ISS is the third brightest object in the sky, outshone only by the …

    Science 5 Nov 13:36

  • Mobile operators have another go at killing IM and Skype

    You're not just a name, you're a NUMBER too

    Global trade body the GSMA is pushing its operator-interaction API Joyn with an emulator enabling developers to start work. It has also just announced that US mobile carrier MetroPCS has Joyned the club. MetroPCS follows a handful of European operators in deploying the platform which the GSMA is hoping will drag customers back …

    Mobile 5 Nov 13:58

  • Facebook login-via-email-link option BLURTED user secrets

    NEWS FLASH: Unencrypted email is not secure

    Facebook has been forced to kybosh a security-lite feature that offered an auto login shortcut to its users, after a privacy flaw was unsurprisingly uncovered. The shortcut in question had allowed Facebookers to access the site simply by clicking on a web link sent to their email addresses. But Hacker News uncovered late last …

    Security 5 Nov 14:19

  • My name is Trevor, and I'm ... an IT consultant

    Feature How I stopped being a user and started being product

    For years I worked as a sysadmin, as addicted to late night security patch updates as I was to bad coffee and long hours. One day I woke and decided enough was enough. It was time to get clean and become an IT consultant. This is my story. While the barriers to setting up your own IT consultancy vary from jurisdiction to …

    The Channel 5 Nov 14:52

  • Android: Google's baby ate 75% of smartphones in just 4 years

    Walking corpse BlackBerry still doing OK on inertia

    Seventy five per cent of smartphones sold in the last three months were running Android, according to IDC, though the iPhone 5 could well be to blame. The figure comes from the company's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, and covers July-September inclusive, so Apple's decision to launch a new iPhone on September 21 has …

    Operating Systems 5 Nov 15:04

  • Guy Fawkes Night hack of Lady Gaga, NBC points to Anonymous

    We hack what we can, not what we should

    American news channel NBC was prank-hacked last night with a Guy Fawkes image, and the traditional children's rhyme: "Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot / I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot" repeated four times and followed by the phrases: GREETZ TO ODAY, …

    Security 5 Nov 15:16

  • Bonfire Night sets internet AFLAME: Anons claim PayPal, Symantec

    Bigger fireworks as hacktivists raise their sights

    Anonymous claims to have leaked 28,000 passwords from PayPal as part of a a global day of protest to mark 5 November, Guy Fawkes night. Hacktivists uploaded thousands of email addresses, names, and passwords - supposedly snaffled from the payment processing firms systems, TheNextWeb reports. A PayPal representative said it has …

    Security 5 Nov 15:38

  • Skype floods UK stores with top-up cards

    Call credit for cash

    Skype has introduced prepaid cards to the UK, offering shoppers the option to purchase their call credits in stores. Top-up VoIP vouchers - available for £10 and £20 - are on the way to various retailers, including Asda, Currys, PC World, Sainsburys and WHSmith. The prepaid amounts can be put towards subscription bundles as …

    Mobile 5 Nov 15:49

  • Virgin liberates landlines with converged call service

    Wi-Fi revitalises endangered home phone

    Virgin Media today unveiled SmartCall, an app which lets customers use unlimited minutes from their landline talk plans on smartphones through a Wi-Fi connection. SmartCall automatically detects when such a service is possible and whether it would be included in a Virgin landline customer's talk plan. Subscribers with …

    Mobile 5 Nov 15:53

  • Ballmer: Windows Phone 8 'WILL ramp quickly', god dammit

    Man says thing it was most unlikely he would not say

    In an unsurprising vote of confidence in his own company and its latest product, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer predicts that Windows Phone 8 will create a strong third player in the mobile market and sell quickly. Speaking at a launch event for Win 8 in Israel, reported on by Reuters, he said: With the work we have done with …

    Mobile 5 Nov 15:56

  • Twitter in BRUTAL crackdown on copyright looters. Sort of

    #Yoink #Naughty-naughty #Ineffectual

    Twitter has begun politely telling people to stop attempting to share copyrighted material on the micro-blogging site by tweeting a pass-agg message informing them that the content has been withheld. The company revealed on Saturday that it would be offering "more transparency in processing copyright reports by withholding …

    Media 5 Nov 16:12

  • Windows Phone 8: Exceptional tools, but where are the devs?

    Analysis Microsoft's vast scary world of versions and APIs

    The Windows Phone 8 SDK emerged at the Microsoft’s BUILD conference in Seattle last month. After so much hope, hype and promise, what’s new for developers? A lot, as you would expect given that this version of Windows Phone is built on the same core as Windows 8, whereas the 7.x line is built on Windows CE. At the same time, …

    Developer 5 Nov 16:16

  • WAR HERO PIGEON carrying SECRET WWII CODE found in chimney

    Fanciers clamour for brave dead bird to get top gong

    The remains of a World War II homing pigeon carrying a coded message from the D-Day landings has been found in a chimney in Bletchingley, Surrey. The message is so potentially sensitive that it was handed over to codebreakers at GCHQ, who are now frantically trying to decipher it. Historians reckon the bird, found by David …

    Security 5 Nov 16:26

  • Sony's iOS Reader app hits iTunes - TWO YEARS LATE

    ePub viewer finally tweaked to meet Apple's Ts&Cs

    In January 2011, Apple rejected Sony’s Reader app for iDevices. Sony today revealed the software is back on the cards. A “media alert” from Sony US was issued at lunchtime today headed, “Sony Reader Store Introduces Reader for iOS.” Unfortunately, the alert links to an empty HTML page, as does the headline that appears on …

    Applications 5 Nov 16:32

  • Mozilla gets away with $1.5m tax bill in Googlebucks settlement

    Taxmen let browser bods off easy: They had $15m ready

    Firefox maker Mozilla will cough up $1.5m after it came under scrutiny for insisting it shouldn't pay tax on the vast revenue it gets from Google. The non-profit organisation had argued that the search engine's contributions are royalties and therefore non-taxable. But on Saturday, Mitchell Baker - who is chairman of the …

    Financial News 5 Nov 16:43

  • The Cloud made of Penguins: Open source goes 'industrial scale'

    It takes a village to raise a data child

    Thanks to projects like OpenStack and the mighty operation that is Amazon’s EC2, open source and Linux are quickly becoming the building blocks of “cloud” computing. OpenStack, which started life in 2010, releases compute, storage, networking and other components under an Apache licence, and it is being adopted by huge …

    Cloud 5 Nov 17:00

  • Windows Phone 8 will be 'less than explosive' - HP bigwig

    We're not getting back into phondleslabs any time soon

    HP is in no rush to accelerate its reentry into the world of smartphones: last week's launch of a certain mobile operating system by Microsoft passed without so much as a whiff of any new handy handheld hardware from Palo Alto. Smartphones and tablets remain the growth drivers for intelligent devices, outstripping demand in …

    The Channel 5 Nov 17:16

  • More VMware secret source splattered across internet

    Rudely exposed 'visor kernel dates from 2004

    VMware has confirmed that the source code for old versions of its ESX technology was leaked by hackers over the weekend - but played down the significance of the spill. The virtualisation giant said on Sunday that the exposed portions of its hypervisor date back to 2004, and the leak follows the disclosure of VMware source …

    Security 5 Nov 17:29

  • Apple shifts 3 million iPads in 3 days: But how many were Minis?

    Cook keeps schtum on crucial mini-fondleslab penetration

    Apple sold three million iPad 4s and iPad Minis in the weekend after the device launched, Apple announced in a bullish release today that described the sales as "record-breaking". Sales were double the 1.5 million sales of the iPad 3 in its first weekend in March. “We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of …

    The Channel 5 Nov 17:46

  • Microsoft's 32GB Surface RT has 16GB of free storage

    The rest? Tools, apps, OS, and the definition of "gigabyte"

    If you've saved up $499 for a 32GB Microsoft Surface RT, you might want to save a bit more for a capacious microSD memory card, or at least break out one of your external USB drives: according to Microsoft, half of that 32GB will be unavailable for your files. Microsoft has published a support note that details how 16GB is all …

    Hardware 5 Nov 18:06

  • Brocade barges into virtual networking with Vyatta buy

    Virtual switch and OpenFlow controller needed

    Brocade Communications started out lashing servers to storage, but through its acquisition of Foundry Networks four years ago it jumped into the Ethernet switch and router business. Since then, it has been driving convergence across server and storage switches, following the lead of rival Cisco Systems. But convergence is not …

    Servers 5 Nov 18:27

  • Solar eclipse due November 14th

    Australia gets the best action until Lunar Eclipse hits USA Nov 30th

    November will be a month of eclipses for Reg readers in The New World. The darkness kicks off on November 14th, when the moon will pass between the Sun and Earth to create a Solar Eclipse that will be apparent to viewers in the Australian city of Cairns, which has helpfully erected a web page to inform tourists about the event …

    Science 5 Nov 19:01

  • EMC offers a somewhat more Hurricane Sandy proof array

    Data can be in two places at the same time

    EMC's array-virtualising and federating VPLEX product now supports vMotion workload flow between active-active data centres up to 200km (a little over 125 miles) apart, twice as far as before. VPLEX is a box, running the Geosynchrony OS, that sits on front of an array and communicates with another VPLEX box sitting in front of …

    Storage 5 Nov 20:05

  • Google expects Apple to block its not crap iOS maps app

    'We don't want no steenking competition'

    Google should have a mapping application for iOS ready by the end of this year, but sources within the company are concerned that Apple is unlikely to let it into the iOS Apps Store. Apple has earned a lot of grief over the poor performance of its Maps app, and the snafu is thought to have contributed to Apple recent executive …

    Applications 5 Nov 20:24

  • HP upgrades Linux Foundation membership to Platinum

    Now chips in more than Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu . . . or Google

    HP has increased its support for the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization that promotes the growth and development of the free Linux operating system, by upping its membership level from Gold to Platinum status. The new membership level, which requires HP to pay $500,000 in annual dues to the Foundation, puts the PC …

    Operating Systems 5 Nov 20:31

  • Scientist plans to catch Bigfoot with remote-control blimp

    Could be a shaggy Sasquatch story

    An Idaho scientist is planning on trying a new tack to hunt down the elusive Bigfoot, which is thought by some to inhabit the wild forests of America, by using a blimp. Jeffrey Meldrum, an anatomy and anthropology professor at Idaho State University, is looking to raise $300,000 to build a remote-controlled airship armed with …

    Science 5 Nov 21:45

  • Apple's anti-Googorola patent lawsuit tossed by US court

    Big setback for Cupertino's scorched-earth patent offensive

    The Wisconsin US District Court was scheduled to have begun hearing Apple's patent lawsuit against Google's Motorola Mobility division on Monday afternoon, but don't bother trying to track down a live blog: just hours before that trial was set to start, the judge dismissed it. "We're pleased that the court has dismissed Apple' …

    Law 5 Nov 21:57

  • Scientists ‘untangle’ quantum communications

    Faster without entanglement

    Entanglement is one of the foundations of quantum communications, since that’s the property that makes quantum communication schemes secure*. So why is a group of scientists from Japan and the UK proposing to work without entanglement? A study in Nature Photonics (abstract) led by Bill Munro – a research scientist with NTT’s …

    Science 5 Nov 22:26

  • BIONIC MAN makes it to top of Chicago skyscraper

    Mind-controlled limb carries him 1,350 feet up

    Bionics took a giant step forward on Sunday – or 2,109 steps, to be precise – when Zac Vawter became the first person to climb the 103 stories to the SkyDeck of Chicago's famed Willis Tower using a mind-controlled prosthetic leg. As reported by the Associated Press, the 31-year-old Vawter, who lost his right leg in a …

    Science 5 Nov 22:53

  • Accidental discounts land Apple in NZ's Disputes Tribunal

    El Reg has seen the screen shots and the story stacks up ... mostly

    Apple is in trouble over pricing again – this time, however, because an apparent e-store glitch let a New Zealander whack together a $NZ1,600 order for $NZ35. Adam Crouchley, a 'Wordpress developer, SM advisor and Radio Announcer on Hashtag Radio', according to his LinkedIn profile, told El Reg, as we followed up a report by …

    Business 5 Nov 23:07

  • Sysadmins: Basically a happy lot, but frustrated and underpaid

    Have you tried turning it off and on again?

    In old days, you used to throw raw meat into the glass house with an occasional paycheck and the mainframes pumped out the reports and processed the transactions somewhat magically as far as managers and users were concerned. But these days, all users are acquainted with computers and they know exactly who to blame – system …

    Jobs 5 Nov 23:31