18th November 2012 Archive

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Author of '80s classic The Hobbit didn't know game was a hit

The Register meets gaming pioneer - now Big Data researcher - Veronika Megler

Every few days, Veronika Megler gets email from a stranger. Some thank her for teaching them English. Others acknowledge her role as an influence in their decision to pursue a career in computing. Megler was never a teacher, nor a mentor, to those who send the messages. But her correspondents remember her fondly as one of …

Software 18 Nov 03:27
The Sinofsky Letters: Defenestrated Windows overlord corresponds

'How can I offer you death by a thousand cuts?'

Last year when Windows 8 Developer Preview shipped, a British techie found a few usability problems. Why not take it to top? This correspondence followed. Enjoy. From: D Sent: Friday, September 16, 2011 8:45 AMTo: Steven Sinofsky Subject: Hi Steve, Hello Steven, I thought I better help. http://www.ghacks.net/2011/09 …

Software 18 Nov 09:00
Bleeding storage firm Overland: OK, we're losers, but so are our rivals

Award-winning tech... but nobody's buying it

Is Overland toast? Its latest results are dreadful - again - with revenues down and losses up, yet management talks about operating profitability being gained by July 2013. Is it nuts? CEO and president Eric Kelly said: "Our lower than expected total revenue is largely due to the difficult macroeconomic environment in Europe …

Storage 18 Nov 10:57
DARPA looking for citizen sky-watchers

Why not find some space junk in your spare time?

A reader has alerted The Register to a story that passed us by last week: the launch of a DARPA program recruiting amateur astronomers to help identify and catalogue space junk. Launched here, the SpaceView project would add “citizen scientist” efforts to more expensive space junk searches like the Space Surveillance Network …

Science 18 Nov 21:56
Bah humbug! Google cancels Christmas

People app in Android 4.2 forgets to include entire month of December

The People app in Android 4.2 has forgotten that the month of December exists. People includes a limited calendaring function that is mainly used to assign birthdays to contacts. But if you try to use it to record the birthday of a certain Judean carpenter, you'll struggle to do so, because the whole month of December, …

Software 18 Nov 22:47
CSIRO creates underwater bomb-sensor

Reducing the UXB danger

America’s Sky Research and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) have teamed up with CSIRO scientists to create a more sensitive detector for unexploded bombs in the ocean. The problem of unexploded ordinance underwater is bigger than you might realise, with the SERDP estimating that in the US, …

Science 18 Nov 22:53