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15th November 2012 Archive

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  • Facebook beats the heat in North Carolina data center

    It's not the heat or the humidity

    The techies at Facebook may like to "move fast and break things" as company founder Mark Zuckerberg admonished them to do three years ago before the social media juggernaut went public, but the one thing they don't want to do is break a data center and all of the servers and storage running inside of it. But using outdoor air …

    Data Center 15 Nov 00:41

  • Apple bans 'memory' games from iOS App Store

    Cupertino surrenders to German trademark claim

    Apple is reportedly sending email notices to developers of iOS games with the word "memory" in their titles, warning them that unless they change their apps' names, they will be pulled from the App Store. According to a report by Gamasutra, the move comes at the behest of German puzzle and board game maker Ravensburger, which …

    Applications 15 Nov 00:45

  • Obama signs off on secret national cybersecurity plan

    Meanwhile, Congress sits on its hands

    President Obama has signed off on Presidential Policy Directive 20, a cybersecurity plan that seeks to establish the rules of engagement for defending the US critical infrastructure against online attack. "What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber operations," a senior …

    Government 15 Nov 01:05

  • Google Chrome app offers guided tour of known universe

    HTML from the hearts of space

    Google's Data Arts team has released a new, experimental app for its Chrome web browser that offers users an interactive tour of our local stellar space. Dubbed "100,000 Stars", the app draws on scientific data to plot the true positions of thousands of nearby stars, allowing users to zoom, pan, and pivot amongst the heavens …

    Science 15 Nov 01:56

  • Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs

    You’re pronouncing the word of the year wrong, say Oxford lexicographers

    Not content with somehow managing to proclaim ‘GIF’ the USA’s word of the year for 2012, the lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries now insist that the correct pronunciation of the word does not use a hard g, as in golf. The dictionary chose GIF as its word of the year because the USA has gone GIF-crazy. Making satirical GIFs …

    Bootnotes 15 Nov 02:41

  • Sydney Uni boffin wants database to track smokers

    Swipe a smartcard when you buy a pack so Feds can email and tell you to quit

    Open access journal PLOS Medicine has staged a debate on the topic of licenses for smokers. The advocate of the case for a licence, Simon Chapman, is Professor, Director of Research and Associate Dean of the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, argues that prescriptions are a temporary licence to possess and use …

    Policy 15 Nov 04:56

  • Apple staff call Taiwanese filmmaker an 'idiot'

    450-mile Hong Kong trip to explain piracy claim doesn't quite go to plan

    A Taiwanese writer and director who flew to Hong Kong to confront Apple in person over a long-running copyright infringement saga says he was branded an "idiot" by staff and escorted off the premises by police. Giddens Ko, who wrote and directed the hit Chinese language movie You Are the Apple of My Eye, revealed his encounter …

    Law 15 Nov 05:05

  • Is that a truncheon in your trousers, officer, or ... an antenna, you say?

    Scottish upstart to help track cops using Galileo

    An EU project to create wearable tracking devices for cops has recruited Sofant, a mobile tech startup spun out of Edinburgh University last year. The plan is to slip Sofant's antennas into uniforms to receive Galileo satnav signals. And it's not just for the police: the ARMOURS* project will spend €1.5m developing prototypes …

    Security 15 Nov 06:01

  • Equinix's new Sydney bit barn built to survive TOXIC FLOOD

    It's just 90 metres from Australia's most polluted waterway, but design rises above the problem

    Global bit barn baron Equinix has opened its newest data centre in Sydney, just 90 metres from the shores of the Alexandria Canal, a waterway that in the late 1800s was envisaged as linking Botany Bay to Sydney Harbour. The digging barely made it a tenth of the way, but that was enough to make it a useful place to situate …

    Data Center 15 Nov 06:18

  • Sharp set for 30 BILLION YEN cash injection

    Reports say Intel and Qualcomm could help prop up ailing firm

    Ailing electronics giant Sharp could be set to receive a welcome boost to its coffers after reports from Japan revealed chip giants Intel and Qualcomm are considering investments of at least ¥30 billion (£236m) in the firm. The Osaka-based firm may have been haemorrhaging money in recent years but it is still Japan’s biggest …

    Business 15 Nov 06:22

  • Quantum squirts object storage filler into Big Data-hungry crevice

    LATTUS pray for fulfilment

    Quantum sees object storage as a the Big Data gap filler between overly expensive dual-controller RAID disk arrays and laggardly but cheap capacity tape archive vaults. Its Lattus products use Amplidata technology and will arrive independently this year and integrated in StorNext in 2013. As the amount of data to be stored …

    Storage 15 Nov 06:34

  • So you broke our encrypted files? Ha! They were DOUBLY encrypted

    Even if they steal the cloud, they can't get the rain out

    Developers have launched a sync-and-share service aimed at small businesses that adds an extra layer of encryption absent from popular services such as Dropbox and Box. InfraScale says its Filelocker software protects data by encrypting it locally, in-transit and again in the cloud. Files are encrypted with a user's personal …

    Security 15 Nov 06:56

  • China's Danger Maps highlight health hazards

    Dirt the party doesn't like to talk about exposed by mashup

    China’s many environmental hazards are well documented, as are its government’s less than transparent approach to governing. But one enterprising local start-up has managed to address both in a new app which uses publicly available information to let users check whether they’re about to move next door to a landfill. Danger …

    Government 15 Nov 07:32

  • Software sucks these days - and just maybe it's all YOUR fault

    StorageBod Blog Say NO to beta-grade stuff

    Every now and then, I write a blog article that could probably get me sued, sacked or both; this started off as one of those, and has been heavily edited by myself to avoid naming names. Software quality sucks. The "release early, release often" model appears to have permeated into every level of the IT stack; from the buggy …

    Storage 15 Nov 07:35

  • ViewSonic VSD220 22in Android mega tablet

    The display with ideas above its workstation

    Depending on how you might want to look at it, the ViewSonic VSD220 is either an expensive 22in monitor or an inexpensive tethered Android tablet. But then you'd be missing the point: it's actually both and neither. It's an unusual mashup for which ViewSonic deserves credit simply by giving it a go. Launching Android 4.0 on a …

    Tablets 15 Nov 08:00

  • Automatic Facebook couple pages: Nauseating sign of desperation

    Ad firm frantically churns the content you gave it

    A week after Facebook introduced the nauseating idea of automatic couple pages, it has been rolled out to users across the globe, inducing reactions such as: "creepy and intrusive", "retch-inducing" and "smug". Here is your relationship Facebook users who have listed themselves as "In a Relationship" or "Married" and linked …

    Media 15 Nov 08:27

  • 'I'm a PIRATE' confessions spew from OED iPhone dictionary

    Cross developers puppet innocent along with buccaneers

    Users of iOS dictionary apps from Collins, Longman and the OED have found themselves outed as pirates on Twitter, as a name-and-shame tactic used by the apps' developer backfires. The company concerned, Enfour, apparently reckons that 75 per cent of its users are pirates, which is why it planted some code in its applications …

    Security 15 Nov 08:55

  • Isilon feels need for speed, unleashes swarm of 'Mavericks'

    You know what your problem is, Maverick? Huh?

    EMC has released the "Mavericks" update of its Isilon scale-out filer operating system, OneFS, aiming to be the top scale-out filer gun in the enterprise sector. Isilon filers cluster together in swarms to produce more than 15 petabytes of file storage resources in a single pool with over 100GB/se of throughput and data …

    Storage 15 Nov 09:22

  • Google stealthily coalesces UK music cloud into being

    Maybe it's on my phone already? Do I care? Probably not

    Google has quietly yet finally brought its cloud-based music service to the UK. It's part of Google Play, which is Google's continuing makeover of the scruffy Android Marketplace into a slick cloud storage and playback service for books and mags, movies and music. The magazine department isn't ready yet in the UK, but now the …

    Media 15 Nov 09:38

  • Sophos to axe 35 developer posts, shifts gaze to mobile, networks

    Exclusive Everything's secure here, except jobs

    Sophos intends to shed 35 jobs from its development team as part of a company shakeup. The security software maker confirmed cuts are on the cards, but would not discuss the specifics of the planned redundancies after an anonymous source tipped off the The Reg. The firm said it will attempt to move affected workers within the …

    Security 15 Nov 09:56

  • Adobe shuts down Connect user forum, confirms passwords raided

    Connect itself untouched - unless you used the same login

    Adobe has admitted that its Connectusers.com forum database was compromised, exposing password information about users of its conferencing technology in the process. Potentially exposed passwords were hashed using MD5, but it's not clear whether or not they were salted, an extra security precaution that thwarts brute force …

    Security 15 Nov 10:18

  • Wireless boffins boost Wi-Fi hotspot performance 700%

    Doubleplusgoodput

    Researchers at US college North Carolina State University claim to have worked out how to allow Wi-Fi hotspots to fling up to 700 per cent more data back and forth, freeing large-scale Wi-Fi networks from the congestion that keeps users waiting for web pages to load and, in worst cases, to think they’ve been disconnected. And …

    Networks 15 Nov 10:45

  • Hold it! Don't back up to a cloud until you've eyed up these figures

    Trevor Pott drills into the real price of online storage

    Online data vaults are everywhere. On the small storage side, we have options such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Teamdrive. My Synology NAS, the upcoming 2012 Microsoft Server Suite and any number of virtual appliances can all back up bulk data to the cloud. The software side of things may be settled, but is this all truly …

    Cloud 15 Nov 11:03

  • UK digital terrestrial TV turns 14 today

    Archaeologic Freeview may be ten years old, but there's a gawky teenager peering over its shoulder

    is an occasional column focus on retro tech and digital archaeology. Today, a look back at the events that went into motion 14 years ago and led to the foundation of the bedrock of UK TV, Freeview. Freeview, Britain’s free-to-air terrestrial digital TV brand, is ten years old. It formally launched at the end of October 2002, …

    Media 15 Nov 11:14

  • Toshiba readies feature-pruned, profit-boosting Jelly Bean tablet

    Lesser spec, unchanged price for AT300 Special Edition

    Toshiba has announced a new member of its AT300 Android tablet range, this one running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Bizarrely, punters will pay for the software upgrade by foregoing the existing, Ice Cream Sandwich-based AT300’s 5MP and 2Mp front- and rear-facing cameras in favour of 3Mp and 1.2Mp jobs. You can read our AT300 …

    Hardware 15 Nov 11:18

  • NetApp bags CacheIQ for secret cash sum

    Blip over for storage firm as all that ONTAP R&D finally pays off

    After last quarter's disappointing fall in revenues and profits, NetApp's latest quarterly results showed annual revenue growth and a profits recovery. Separately, the perked-up NetApp has just bought CacheIQ, a cache-based filer accelerating technology start-up, for a secret sum. The Austin, Texas company had placed a …

    Storage 15 Nov 11:26

  • New Microsoft Windows chief 'shocked' by Sinofsky defenestration

    Analysis Microsofties tear new boss to Ribbons

    Microsoft’s new Windows chief Julie Larson-Green has admitted to being “shocked” at her elevation as Windows chief, casting further doubt on the idea that her predecessor Steven Sinofsky's departure has been an orderly process. In a Facebook message, Larson-Green thanked people for a tide of congratulations adding: “Still in …

    Business 15 Nov 11:34

  • Samsung readies bendy smarties for 2013

    Spiral Galaxies

    Development work on Samsung mobiles fitted with flexible OLED displays is nearing completing, with handsets set to be released in the first half of 2013, it has been claimed. A source said to be close to the matter reckons Samsung is almost ready to launch flexible displays for mobile handsets, the Wall Street Journal reports …

    Mobile 15 Nov 11:51

  • Android-loving suits boot BlackBerrys into 3rd place in the office

    BYOD = Bill Your Own Director as comms costs soar

    RIM's share of the business market continues to slide: new figures put BlackBerrys into third place behind Android and iOS as staff are increasingly allowed to use their preferred handsets for work. Only a third of the 1,600 firms surveyed globally provide smartphones for their employees, down from 58 per cent a year ago. …

    Mobile 15 Nov 11:54

  • Humax HDR-1000S Freesat+ recorder with FreeTime

    TV from space, time travel by broadband

    The all-new Freesat recorder has arrived, after a long gestation, sporting a nifty user interface and the FreeTime system that integrates catch-up services such as the iPlayer and ITV Player into a programme guide that goes back in time, as well as ahead for planning hard disk recordings. Viewing in style: Humax toys with …

    Hardware 15 Nov 12:00

  • Lord to sue Twitter users who falsely accused him of abuse

    'We have the technology to know who you are'

    A former Tory Party treasurer has indicated that his solicitors will pursue anyone on Twitter who wrongly linked his name to false allegations of child abuse. Lord McAlpine, speaking emotionally on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, said he was utterly devastated by inaccurate claims that were reported on BBC2's …

    Media 15 Nov 12:17

  • Fart-buster underpants selling well among Japanese salarymen

    Flatulent businessmen warm to trouser-cough suppression

    Pairs of fart-absorbing underpants designed to contain the copious trouser cough output from Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferers have proved a hit with Japanese businessmen. Manufacturer Seiren expressed pleasant surprise that their guff-busting smalls had attracted the attention of suits more accustomed to allocating most of …

    Bootnotes 15 Nov 12:27

  • Facebook stock plunge halts - despite insiders being freed to sell

    Nobody cashing out just yet at free-content ads giant

    Facebook stock jumped 12.59 per cent yesterday despite early investors getting the go-ahead to offload millions of shares if they so wished. A lock-out period that prevented staff and others from trading their shares ended on the biggest block of Facebook shares yesterday. The time limit was put in place to give the social …

    Financial News 15 Nov 12:44

  • Disney plans three Lucasfilm flicks EVERY YEAR

    May the yawns be with you

    Disney plans to recoup the $4 billion it recently spent on the Lucasfilm acquisition by producing two or three films each year. While another outing for the increasingly geriatric Indiana Jones is on the way, it's very likely Star Wars Episode VII and the two films already said to follow will merely be the first of an …

    Media 15 Nov 12:46

  • Pollster predicts mega UK smart TV sales

    Forecast flies in the face of sales evidence - just ask Comet

    Brits are rather keen on internet-connected tellies, with more than half of households owning a TV that has already been hooked up to the interweb, a survey carried out by pollster YouGov has discovered. But this apparent interest in buying seems out of joint with the reality of high street sales. YouGov regularly questions …

    Hardware 15 Nov 12:52

  • 'Spend police USB stick data loss mega-fine on IT lessons for cops'

    Tough on data leaks, tough on the causes of data leaks

    A six-figure fine levelled against police for losing a USB stick of drug probe suspects' details should be spent on training cops to take better care of sensitive data. That's the view of a candidate standing in today's police commissioner election in Greater Manchester. Last month the county's police force was fined £120,000 …

    Security 15 Nov 13:15

  • Fujitsu: We're not blacklisted by gov, but we want private work

    Grey men of Whitehall confirm there's no black list

    Fujitsu’s UK CEO says the company is continuing to bid for UK public sector contracts, but the share of its business coming from the public purse will continue to decline over the next few years. Duncan Tait said the firm had been rebalancing its UK business over the last two years to boost the amount of revenue it generates …

    The Channel 15 Nov 13:42

  • Russia restores comms with space station after roadworks cut cable

    Can you hear me Major Tim?*

    Russia restored its communications with the International Space Station and satellites this morning after repairing a cable in Moscow that had been damaged during roadworks, Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced. Roadworks in Moscow actually interrupted space traffic yesterday as an accidentally severed cable cut Russia …

    Science 15 Nov 14:12

  • Nazi Enigma encoding machine sells in London for over £80k

    You could have got a better price there when it was new

    A rare German WWII Enigma cipher machine has beat its auction estimate in London, selling for £85,250. Bonhams auctioneers had put a £40,000 to £60,000 estimate on the pristine 1941 oak model coding device, used by the Nazis to encrypt and decode messages sent between the military and their commanders. "Enigma machines come …

    Vintage 15 Nov 14:38

  • World's LEGGIEST BLONDE is super-rare millipede living in SF

    Vid Off shoe shopping, see you in another 77 years

    The world's leggiest animal has been rediscovered in California, the extremely rare millipede Illacme plenipes. It's often assumed that a centipede has 100 legs and a millipede has 1,000. But in fact centipedes can have hundreds of tiny pins and there is no known millipede with as many as 1,000 legs. One species of …

    Science 15 Nov 15:07

  • Comet train set for SMASH, staff can only hope to be in right carriage

    Inability to fill Santa's sack may mean sackings

    Penniless Comet's network of UK stores is on the brink of break up as staff enter a "collective consultation" over potential redundancies. In a letter to the electrical chain's workers, administrator Deloitte warned that if it is unable to sell the business as a going concern, it will be forced to flog bits and pieces to …

    The Channel 15 Nov 15:09

  • Vodafone will rent you an iPhone 5 for 69p* a day

    *On top of the cost of the Sim, natch

    Vodafone has tweaked its Sim-only tariffs and introduced a fresh handset rental scheme which lets customers swap their old phone for a newer model when their 12-month contract is up. Users who fork out £47 a month for Vodafone's "Red Hot" deal will get the choice of either an Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III or Samsung …

    Mobile 15 Nov 15:36

  • Chinese baby war-boffins bust 3Tflops, snatch student LINPACK crown

    SC12 Aw jeez, the zero button on my calculator's broken

    Salt Lake City is abuzz with news that China's NUDT team has once again snared the LINPACK benchmark crown at a student cluster-building competition. The team's record-breaking score of 3.014 TFLOPS topped all other competitors and marked the first time a student cluster team has broken through the 3 TFLOPS barrier. This is …

    HPC 15 Nov 15:36

  • Belize PM: McAfee boss is 'bonkers', should 'man up and talk to cops'

    Cybersecurity pioneer 'paranoid' over murder probe, says prime minister

    Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow has called the founder of McAfee antivirus software "bonkers" and "extremely paranoid", wading into discussion over internet guru's decision to first hide in the sand and then go on the run from the police in the Central American country. "I don't want to be unkind," said the PM in remarks …

    Security 15 Nov 16:00

  • HP PC chief: Microsoft's Surface is 'KLUDGEY'. There, I said it

    Man says not entirely surprising thing for him to say

    HP's chief of personal systems has branded Microsoft's Surface "kludgey" in a broadside against the new laptop-cum-tablet hardware. Todd Bradley dismissed the fondletop in an interview with IDG's CITEworld, and said although the tech press is obsessed with it, the public couldn't care less about Microsoft's 10-inch offering. …

    Hardware 15 Nov 16:29

  • Opera site served Blackhole malvertising, says antivirus firm

    'No need to issue a press release', firm tells press

    Opera has suspended ad-serving on its portal as a precaution while it investigates reports that surfers were being exposed to malware simply by visiting the Norwegian browser firm's home page. Malicious scripts loaded by portal.opera.com were redirecting users towards a malicious site hosting the notorious BlackHole exploit …

    Security 15 Nov 16:53

  • Phone users favour Wi-Fi for dataslurp

    Only 22 per cent of info sucked into phones over cellular

    Don’t think mobile data is too expensive and too slow in the UK? Then you probably work for a network operator. Few others would agree with you, which is why smartphone users get more than 78 per cent of their data over Wi-Fi links. So claims market research company Nielsen, which bases its conclusion on the results of putting …

    Mobile 15 Nov 16:59

  • HP forges hyperscale ProLiants aimed at big data

    Reworked iron for Hadoop – and OpenStack, Exchange and Vertica, too

    Big data doesn't fit in normal servers, and so HP's engineers have gone back to the whiteboards and designed a new line of hyperscale machines called the ProLiant SL4500s. Google designed its own servers not just because it has some serious motorheads in charge, but because the boxes available from the tier one server makers …

    Servers 15 Nov 17:26

  • Lawyer sues Microsoft rather than slot an SD card into his Surface

    This thing isn't made by Apple, you know

    A lawyer is suing Microsoft for false advertising after his 32GB Surface slab turned up with 16GB of free space. Andrew Sokolowski claims that he quickly ran out of storage capacity on the tablet when he was loading it with music and documents because half the flash memory was filled by the operating system and pre-installed …

    Law 15 Nov 17:31

  • NASA 'nauts personal DATA at risk after laptop SNATCH BUNGLE

    Total ban on non-encrypted disks outside the wire

    A NASA laptop containing personal records of thousands of employees and contractors was stolen two weeks ago. The computer, which contained a copy of workers' social security numbers among other information, was taken from a locked car near NASA HQ in Washington DC on 31 October, according to a leaked email. The laptop was …

    Security 15 Nov 18:14

  • Forklift fondleslab 'fellas flee with vast haul of iPad Minis at JFK

    Perhaps now in Vegas tucking them into dancers' G-strings

    Rather than waiting minutes in an iPad-mini queue, a couple of enterprising fellas took it upon themselves to hit up the airport for easy dough. Just like Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, these guys needed money - or a few thousand handily miniaturised mobile computing devices - so they robbed the joint described by Ray Liotta's …

    Law 15 Nov 19:39

  • Cisco eats Cloupia to control freak clouds

    And to have a VMware alternative

    Here's a question: If Cisco Systems, storage partner EMC, and its virtualization and cloud minion VMware are all such good buddies in the Virtual Computing Environment, then why does Cisco need to by Cloupia, a maker of cloud management software? With VMware, and therefore EMC, buying into the virtual networking space with the …

    Cloud 15 Nov 19:58

  • Aus gaming industry gets AUD$20m bonus

    Govt takes gaming export seriously

    Australia;s computer gaming sector has been handed an AUD$20 million stimulus from the federal government in the form of a three year Interactive Games Fund. The funding, which will be administered by Screen Australia, aims to accelerate the Australian gaming development industry to compete globally in a market expected to …

    Policy 15 Nov 20:16

  • Google to devs: Fragmenting Android is AGAINST THE RULES

    That's one way to nip it in the bud

    Android developers often complain about fragmentation of the platform, and Google apparently agrees – so much so that it's written an anti-fragmentation clause into the license terms of the latest Android SDK (software development kit). Under Section 3.4 of Google's new terms and conditions, "You agree that you will not take …

    Operating Systems 15 Nov 21:08

  • Sinofsky denies failed putsch led to his defenestration

    My tanks were nowhere near that lawn, says Windows man

    Ex-Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has apparently denied that a power grab for Windows Phone and Microsoft’s “developer division” forced his exit. In comments on a blog here Sinofsky said he’d never “initiated any discussions to bring together” the organisations and he wasn’t approached to manage them as part of his work on …

    Business 15 Nov 21:08

  • Curiosity clears Mars radiation levels for fleeting human visits

    Trying to avoid a vomit-in-spacesuit situation

    NASA has released the first radiation readings taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars, and it looks as though astronauts should be able to stay on the planet for at least six months without significant health risks. Curiosity is the first rover to take radiation readings from another planet using its Radiation Assessment …

    Science 15 Nov 21:54

  • Broken Hill to sprout more satellite dishes

    NBN Co to land up the road from IPStar

    IPStar’s satellite earth station in Broken Hill will be a little less lonely, with NBN Co confirming plans to drop some dishes near the outback city. The site, which NBN Co says will be about nine kilometres east of the city on the Barrier Highway, is one of a bunch of earth stations being rolled out to support the satellite …

    Networks 15 Nov 22:00

  • US petitions Obama for better policing of its mega-cities

    Stricter, motorcycle-based judiciary proposed

    A group of Americans has turned to the Obama administration's online petition site to propose a radical reform of the US law enforcement and judicial systems. While citizens of as many as 40 US states have lately used the petition system to request permission to secede and form their own governments, this more civic-minded …

    Government 15 Nov 23:03

  • Notebook price war slams Dell's revenues, slashes profits

    Servers and networking can't fill in the gaps

    A price war at the low-end of the notebook PC market where Dell has chosen not to participate plus a slump in PC sales where it is fighting to win buyers is wreaking havoc on Dell's financials. In the company's third quarter of fiscal 2013 ended on November 2, consumer mobile PC revenues were down a staggering 30 per cent. The …

    Financial News 15 Nov 23:53