23rd November 2012 Archive

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Sailboat cracks 100 km/h for first time

Anglo/Australian ‘Sailrocket’ blows away speed records with wind turbine tech

A sail-powered boat has cracked 100 km/h for the first time, thanks to a ‘Wing-Sail’ designed by a British consultancy that specialises in wind turbine design. The vessel in question is the Sailrocket 2, a vessel piloted by Australian Paul Larsen, built on the Isle of Wight and designed with the help of Brighton-based …

Science 23 Nov 01:36
Hexing MAC address reveals Wifi passwords

Update Researcher says Belkin boxen at risk of simple substitution attack

The default WPA2-PSK passphrase used in some Belkin routers simply replaces a character of the device’s MAC address with another hecxadecimal character, according to security blogger Jakob Lell. Lell describes the situation as follows: Each of the eight characters of the default passphrase are created by substituting a …

Security 23 Nov 02:29
Lenovo set for Chinese smartphone crown in 2013

Next stop the WORLD...

Chinese PC giant Lenovo is set to oust Samsung as the top smartphone manufacturer in the People’s Republic by next year, thanks to success at the mid-to-low end of the market, according to Gartner. The analyst said in its top five 2013 predictions for IT in China that Lenovo, which earlier this year displaced HP as the world’s …

Business 23 Nov 03:33
Apps-for-feature-phones leader BiNu scores more cash

$US4.3m to enter markets where feature phones still rule

Australian developed mobile platform biNu, which aims to give all mobiles access to smartphone apps, has secured a fresh round of VC funding to further expand into emerging markets. The creation of former OzEmail executives Gour Lentell and Dave Turner, biNu has topped existing funding from Eric Schmidt’s investment vehicle …

Business 23 Nov 03:36
Israeli deputy PM's social media hacked by pro-Palestine group

Cyber attacks continue in wake of Gaza bombardment

Israel's deputy prime minister Silvan Shalom has become the latest victim of the escalating cyber conflict between Israel and Palestine after his social media accounts were hacked and used to issue pro-Palestine propaganda. Shalom’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogger and LinkedIn accounts were hacked by a pro-Palestine group …

Security 23 Nov 05:10
Dreamworks open sources animation software

Beats Pixar for once with release of smoke-and-mirrors-ware

Animation studio Dreamworks has released some of its production animation code under an open source licence. OpenVDB, the software in question, is billed as “an open source sparse volume processing toolkit” and is available under version 2.0 of the Mozilla Public License. The C++ library “comprises a hierarchical data …

Developer 23 Nov 05:32
Barclays Bank buys 8,500 Apple iPads in one go

Bank's ranks thank bosses for fondle-slabbin' workplace

Barclays Bank has bought no less than 8,500 Apple slabs of fondling loveliness in one go, The Channel can reveal. The buy, made with dealer Insight UK, is believed to be one of the largest roll outs of the iPad or indeed any tablet in the UK finance sector, and signals the growing acceptance of the tab tech in corporate land …

The Channel 23 Nov 05:55
South Korean convicted for tweeting Pyongyang propaganda

Twitter joke backfires for hapless Seoul man

A simple Twitter-based lampoon almost backfired for one South Korean user this week, after a Seoul court found him guilty of breaking the country’s strict national security law by retweeting North Korean propaganda. Suwon District Court handed 24-year-old Park Jeong-geun a 10-month suspended prison sentence after ruling he had …

Law 23 Nov 06:19
Cyber blaggers autoplunder bulging accounts on Euro pay network

'Operation High Roller' rascals in mass slurpening

Cybercrooks have developed a Trojan that targets high-value accounts linked to the European SEPA payments network. The highly targeted malware-based scam is an extension of the ongoing Operation High Roller, according to Intel's McAfee security division. Fraudsters have siphoned off tens of thousands from SEPA-linked accounts …

Security 23 Nov 06:27
Ofcom: White Space. We're bloody serious this time. ONE YEAR

Could this be the future of ALL radio spectrum? Eh?

Ofcom has laid out the rules regarding White Space devices, kicking off a consultation process which could see devices on the shelves around the end of next year. The rules are complicated, because devices operating in White Spaces have to consult with an online database for usable frequencies, and check back regularly to …

Mobile 23 Nov 06:58
UK.gov to upgrade buying tool after mega cockup downs £1bn deal

Not even good enough for government work

Government Procurement Services is to refresh the hardware platform it uses to collate supplier tender submissions to prevent a repeat of the crash that downed a £1bn software and services framework. As revealed by The Channel early this month, the Applications Development, Delivery and Support Services (ADDSS) agreement was …

The Channel 23 Nov 07:27
Samsung Google Nexus 10 tablet review

The purest, most affordable 10in Android yet

Why would you buy a tablet other than an iPad? Obviously, some don’t care for Apple’s locked-in system and others like the way users can dig more deeply into the workings of Android. Good enough reasons, sure, but the truth is that until the day dawns when a tablet is of comparable specification, but substantially cheaper than …

Tablets 23 Nov 08:00
Mint Linux gifts Unity haters with 'Nadia' ... plus her Mate

Mint 14 plus UI update

Ubuntu users with a hankering for Gnome can take comfort: the latest version of Linux distro Mint has been released. Mint 14, codenamed Nadia, is based on Ubuntu 12.10 comes with Mate 1.4, an updated version of the Mint user interface with greater stability and bug fixes. Mint continued the Gnome 2 look with Mate 1.x, but it …

Operating Systems 23 Nov 08:32
Google Adwords scammer charged premium to call NHS Direct

Presumably no mirrors in his house

Premium-rate call regulator PhonePayPlus has fined Red Play Media £50,000 for using Adword adverts to trick surfers into using premium-rate numbers to call non-premium services. Red Play Media bought up Adwords, and Bing equivalents, to place links alongside searches for "NHS Direct" or similar. Clicking on the advert brings …

Security 23 Nov 08:59
Reg boffins blow lid on sheepsecs

Vid Lucy Sherriff on Welshmen and the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum

Many, many moons ago, Reg boffin Lucy Sherriff provocatively stated that the "comet-tailed" red giant Mira was thundering across the heavens at "roughly 150,000 times" faster than the speed of the average sheep. This prompted lively debate about just how fast sheep might in fact travel in the vacuum of space, and Vulture …

SPB 23 Nov 09:20
IBM insider: How I caught my wife while bug-hunting on OS/2

Part one No wonder that chkdsk flaw was never fixed

The unholy alliance of IBM and Microsoft unleashed OS/2 25 years ago with a mission to replace Windows, Unix and DOS. Back then, I was a foot-soldier in that war: a contract bug hunter at Big Blue. Here’s how I remember it. By cruel fate, an even crueller editor has decreed that a quarter of a century later I must write an …

Operating Systems 23 Nov 09:39
Woz on Microsoft: Whoa! They really changed things drastically. Whoa!

Quotw Plus: 'I'm not going to be HP's scapegoat!'

This was the week when HP finally realised that maybe slurping Autonomy a year ago wasn't such a good idea after all. Back in the days of Mad Leo Apotheker, HP agreed to fork out over $10bn for the Cambridge-based enterprise search and business intelligence software firm in a bid to transform itself into a software and …

Software 23 Nov 10:05
Troubled OCZ now has feds up ass with microscope

Harsh cawing of lawyers fills the air

Flash storage springbok OCZ, which suddenly lurched into the intensive care ward and ditched its founding CEO, now has less of a spring in its step; it's received news of an SEC probe into the company. This is to do with OCZ's inability to file a required business report for its latest quarter - some background here - due to …

Storage 23 Nov 10:29
WWII HERO PIGEON crypto message STUMPS GCHQ boffins

Time to call in the Vulture Squadron?

Brit spook central GCHQ can't decipher a coded message found on a pigeon that died trying to deliver the missive during WWII, and may have to turn to the public for help. The remains of the bird, found by David Martin in his chimney in Surrey, had a secret message attached - 27 handwritten blocks of code. The pigeon is …

Security 23 Nov 10:49
Channel players hit the pub for Christmas... it's been a long year

Conferences, closing deals - anytime is pub 'o clock

Well, it’s nearly over. For a lot of us 2012 has been a tough old annus horribilis. Continued economic uncertainty at home and abroad has made life particularly difficult for some resellers and software vendors, and the slightly pessimistic forecast is that things are going to improve only very slowly next year. Of course …

The Channel 23 Nov 10:52
Exploit broker releases EXPLICIT VIDS of holes in industrial control kit

Will only sell to 'trusted customers from reputable countries'

Malta-based security start-up ReVuln claims to have uncovered a raft of vulnerabilities in industrial control kit from many leading manufacturers. ReVuln released a video depicting zero-day exploits against SCADA* equipment from Siemens, General Electric, Schneider Electric, ABB/Rockwell and others. The unpatched flaws are all …

Security 23 Nov 11:10
Missed the cloud bandwagon?

You NEED my top tips

There continues to be a cacophony of marketing noise from technology vendors about their cloud strategies. While the announcements sometimes include messaging for their channel, many partners are still unsure of their future role in the industry. The Cloud and Technology Transformation Alliance (CCTA) reported that its survey …

The Channel 23 Nov 11:10
BOFH: The Great Patch Mismatch

Episode 13 Halon, the noblest of gases

"It's just a minor ROM patch." the service engineer bleats "It'll only take five minutes." "Yeah... Nah," the PFY says. "It's minor - just addresses a couple of memory leaks and and cookie issues in the web interface." "Yeah. Nah," I repeat. "It's just the interface - the UPS will be completely unaffected!" "Nope," the …

BOFH 23 Nov 11:36
WANTED: Actual HELPFUL info on price-comparison websites

Watchdog growls at dearth of details, trust

The Office of Fair Trading has had a word with price-comparison websites, suggesting they up their game to improve consumer trust. The watchdog said it has written to 100 leading price aggregators urging them provide clearer information to would-be punters. The OFT found that, following a sweep of 55 such sites that operate …

Government 23 Nov 11:52
Assault on battery

Something for the Weekend, Sir? What do you mean, it’s run out?

When working on-site, I like go into the office early on Thursdays because I have to leave by 5pm. It’s simply essential that I get away in good time on Thursdays. And on Wednesdays. Oh, and Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Weekends are completely off-limits, by the way. 'Heylp! Heylp!' Source: Pratheek Prasanth Naturally, …

Hardware 23 Nov 12:01
Russians: Decision on diva Sarah Brightman's space trip in early 2013

One-time Hot Gossip singing temptress may get ISS stay

Russian space agency Roscosmos has said it will decide early next year if classical singer Sarah Brightman gets to travel to the ISS as a space tourist. Brightman announced in October that she was planning to take a jaunt on a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station with cosmic travel agent Space Adventures. The trip …

Science 23 Nov 12:11
Windows 8: A soaraway Kinect? Or is it Red Ink Friday for Microsoft?

Signs are this stock burn will be a slow one at best

Can Windows 8 and Windows RT slabs bring the Kinect effect to Microsoft? That’s the question as US shoppers and retailers begin a four-week shopping frenzy in the run up to Christmas. It was just over two years ago Microsoft launched its hands-free game controller Kinect for the Xbox to wild and unexpected success. This was …

Windows 8 23 Nov 12:28
Super-Earths' magnetic FORCE FIELDS could harbour ALIEN LIFE

Little green men/microbes may lurk safe from cosmic rays

A geo-boffinry study has found that super-Earths could have oceans of liquid metal and magnetic shields that protect life on their surfaces. The heat and pressure inside planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune alters the magnesium oxide in their rocky mantles, according to new scientific calculations, transforming …

Science 23 Nov 12:35
Man strives to shatter Call of Duty world record

Plays for five days straight

We all know gamers spend too long on their consoles, but even the craziest of enthusiasts tend to hit the sack when the sun rises. Bedtime, however, was the last thing on one madcap Australian's mind this week, as he attempted to set a world record for the longest videogame marathon known to man. Retail worker Okan Kaya played …

Games 23 Nov 12:43
Pirate cops bust LITTLE GIRL, take her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop

Plods advise outraged dad to give pigopolists Xmas money

In their zeal to excise the cancer of copyright-infringing downloads, a Finnish anti-piracy group sent police to the home of a nine-year-old girl, where the coppers confiscated her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop. The Pooh-impounding plods were unleashed upon the young lass by the Finnish Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre ( …

Media 23 Nov 13:03
Why you need an interactive file archive

Real world advice from Reg readers

Are your file or email archives a black hole? Do you even archive? If not, you might have a black hole in a black hole. Do you have funding for your archiving project? If not, you have a black hole in a black hole in a… you get the idea. Email is embedded in your business processes. It contains vital business intelligence, but …

Management 23 Nov 13:18
Warming up the thruster that will ram LOHAN to glorious heights

Project team prepares to shove pocket rocket in toaster

Our audacious Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) spaceplane project continues to advance on multiple fronts, and while Neil Barnes and Anthony Stirk put together the Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) control board, we've been doing some more work on the Vulture 2 rocket motor heater set-up. …

SPB 23 Nov 13:22
BlackBerry 10: AWESOME. If the hardware matches it, RIM jobs are safe

Opinion Our Vulture fondles his way through the new OS

BlackBerry users have a love-hate relationship with their phones. The devices were often forced upon users rather than chosen. At the same time, the handhelds were the most usable and useful communications gadgets you could put in your pocket. Yes, there are things a BlackBerry can't do very well or at all. But it is capable …

Operating Systems 23 Nov 13:37
Huawei hawks hundred quid handset hupdate

Will the Android-based Ascend G330 be the new king of budget blowers?

Huawei's refreshed sub-£100 Android phone, the Ascend G330, will be available in the UK from early December, the manufacturer said today. The Chinese company will attempt to build upon the G300's success in the budget Android market through the next-gen model, which steps things up a notch from its highly-rated predecessor. …

Mobile 23 Nov 14:04
Comp sci boffins Venus: HPC newbies post respectable score

SC12 Mix of ‘strong’ and ‘struggling’ on scientific apps

We spent a few minutes on the last day of the SC12 Student Cluster Competition (SCC) talking to Team Venus from the University of the Pacific. This is not only their first year in the cluster competition, but also the first time any of the students have done anything at all HPC-related. Under the mentorship of Oak Ridge …

HPC 23 Nov 14:04
Apple LTE iPad Mini release slips back in Blighty

4G iPad 4 out at last

Apple's fourth-generation iPad with retina display is now available in the UK, but those who ordered the 4G iPad Mini may end up waiting longer for their shiny new slate than they expected. The Cuperino firm had previously pledged to deliver the iPad Mini LTE to British buyers by the end of the month, but after the US launch …

Hardware 23 Nov 14:08
APPLE goes on crazy, price-SLASHER Black Friday RAMPAGE

Discounts kit by a whopping, er, 8%

On the day when stores slash prices and punters queue for hours to sweep up tech bargains, Apple has slightly reduced prices on its iPads and MacBooks. Black Friday is bargain bonanza day in the US - and increasingly, the UK - and Apple has tentatively joined the cost-cutting orgy with some 8 to 9 per cent discounts. Form an …

Hardware 23 Nov 14:23
NHS Trust ditches in-house servers, chucks 15TB into the cloud

Mersey Care slips its storage into SCC's data centre

NHS Trust Mersey Care is trying to eke out 15 per cent cost savings by ditching its in-house server farm in favour of SCC's OptimiseCloud platform. Mersey is the first NHS Trust in England to jump into the cloud, and is one of nine under the guidance of Informatics Merseyside, a central buying agency which signed a cloud …

The Channel 23 Nov 14:45
Jubcropgate: El Reg in snake-fondling nude nipslip outrage

Several pixels of tophamper get past decency filter

El Reg had Middle England choking on its Coco Pops a couple of weeks back following the failure of its jub-detection algorithm (JDA) - an advanced piece of coding designed to protect sensitive readers from an eyeful of unchecked chesticle. The JDA compares images uploaded to our media servers with a photographic database of …

Bootnotes 23 Nov 15:00
Dogs would say: SIZE is IMPORTANT, shape - not so much

Ball? The mouth-sized chewy thing? Can I have a treat now

We here on the canine desk at Vulture Central have often pondered the mystery of how it is that dogs - with their own mental lexicon - understand words that relate to fetching specific objects such as "ball" or "bone". Now animal behaviour trick cyclists at the University of Lincoln have collected empirical evidence that …

Science 23 Nov 15:04
UK student in dock over Anonymous £3.5m PayPal attack

Denies charge relating to Operation Payback campaign

The trial of a British university student accused of participating in attacks by hacktivist collective Anonymous against the websites of PayPal and others has begun in London. Prosecutors say Christopher Weatherhead, 22, was studying at Northampton University when he allegedly took part in "Operation Payback", the packet- …

Security 23 Nov 15:34
Claranet gulps down rival STH in managed services merge

Deal valued at £55m

British managed services player Claranet has hoovered up rival STH Ltd and its subsidiary, Star Technology, in a deal it says values the acquired firm at £55m. The fragmented mid-market MSP space is ripe for consolidation with numerous deals done this year including Redstone's acquisition of Maxima. And it's a space that many …

The Channel 23 Nov 15:54
Just bought an Apple product? Need support NOW? Drop an F-BOMB

Handy Reg Black Friday tip. No, don't thank us

When you're caught in automated telephone-support hell, there's a magic word you can utter to ensure that you're quickly routed to an actual human being: the "F-bomb". "I was having some trouble with my (older) laptop and wanted to order a new keyboard to fix it myself," a Reddit poster writes. "After exploring every option …

Hardware 23 Nov 16:00
Bolton biz kingpin tables '7 figure' offer for Comet website

And rumour tells of mystery shopper eyeing 140 stores

The future of Comet's stores hangs in the balance: but the business brain behind Appliances Online has tabled a million pound plus bid for the website part of the drain-circling retailer. As previously revealed, Dixons and Maplins are understood to have expressed interest in only a handful of Comet stores as administrator …

The Channel 23 Nov 16:10
Don't touch Sony, Panasonic's junk, says credit agency

Pana may grope its way out of misery, though

Panasonic has a better chance than Sony of surviving the global disinterest in new consumer electronics, credit rating agency Fitch said today. Fitch downgraded the two debt-saddled firms to junk status: Panasonic's credit rating was pushed down two ranks to double-B, and Sony was nudged down three to double-B-minus. Panasonic …

Financial News 23 Nov 16:37
Mystery Chrome 0-day exploit to be unveiled in India on Saturday

I don't want $60k, I want FAME?

A Georgian security researcher is due to present details of an unpatched vulnerability in Google's Chrome browser at the Malcon security conference in India over the weekend. Years ago the circumstances of Ucha Gobejishvili's presentation would hardly have raised an eyebrow but that was before Google began offering up to $60, …

Security 23 Nov 16:59
Cluster compo newcomers slap down winning hand: 6 NVIDIA Tesla cards

SC12 Team USTC talks the universal language of clustering

Here’s a short look at what the team from China’s University of Science & Technology was up to on the last day of the SC12 Student Cluster Competition (SCC). There’s a pretty big language barrier here – one that’s made worse by my inability to speak slowly and clearly after drinking a quart of press room coffee. (A note/rant …

HPC 23 Nov 17:39
The early days of PCs as seen through DEAD TREES

Feature The golden days of computer mags, replete with ancient adverts

Thirty years ago, Time Magazine broke its 86-year tradition of naming a Man of the Year, and instead anointed its first Machine of the Year: The Computer. Time didn't deliver this news via www.time.com nor an HTML-encrusted email blast, but rather by macerated wood pulp pressed into sheets and coated with ink, cut into …

Vintage 23 Nov 18:22
Convert your iPad into a foosball table and relive the dot-com days

Is this the ultimate fondleslab accessory? Could be ...

Sometimes an idea is so effing brilliant that we face-palm our foreheads and wail, "Why didn't we think of that?" Behold "Classic Match Foosball, The Ultimate Mutliplayer [sic] Experience for your iPad," created by New Potato Technologies and brought to our attention by Technology Tell. Both Mutliplayer and immesrive! The …

Tablets 23 Nov 19:04
IBM recasts Power 775 ~~Blue Waters~~ super as big data muncher

GPFS storage servers don't need no stinkin' RAID controllers

IBM has yanked the chain on the petaflopping 'Blue Waters' supercomputer that it was going to install at the University of Illinois this fall because it was too expensive to make at the budgeted price. But that doesn't mean the Power 775 server nodes that comprised IBM's Blue Waters machine are not useful. Ditto for the PERCS …

HPC 23 Nov 19:55
Nokia's imaging chief makes surprise exit

Dinning looking to develop other options

Nokia's head of imaging, and the man behind a lot of the features the Finns are hoping will make its Lumia smartphones popular, has left the firm unexpectedly. "Following the relocation of key strategic roles to Finland, and with great reluctance, Damian Dinning has made a personal decision to leave the company effective 30 …

Business 23 Nov 20:47
IBM warns mainframe shops of 2013 price hike

10 per cent jump coming next July for flat-priced wares

When your customers pay millions of dollars for your machines and then spend many tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month – and sometimes much more – on monthly license fees for your software, you can't just spring a price increase on them one day. You have to give fair warning so they can budget for the price …

Servers 23 Nov 21:21