25th November 2012 Archive

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The ‘subversive adult Disneyland’ where iPods track your every move

El Reg visits the Museum of Old and New Art, where IT budgets are boundless

David Walsh invented what he calls “a money mine”, and when he decided to spend some of its contents on an art gallery, he gave his IT team more than four years to provide the best visitor experience of any museum in the world. That team now rates their work on the gallery as a “dream project”, thanks to Walsh’s no-compromises …

Networks 25 Nov 00:09
Minecraft coming to Raspberry Pi in hackable edition

Pinecraft, anyone?

Minecraft will soon be available for the Raspberry Pi, and in true Pi fashion will be hackable. The Pi guys have blogged that they “sent a bunch of boards out to Notch and the guys at Mojang in Stockholm a little while back, and they’ve produced a port of Minecraft: Pocket Edition”. The port, dubbed Minecraft: Pi Edition, …

Games 25 Nov 02:48
Google, Apple, eBay shouldn't pay taxes - people should pay taxes

Opinion And we'll all be richer as a result

eBay is not paying enough tax in the UK because it sells everything through PayPal Luxembourg. So the Sunday papers tell us, adding to the stream of stories about how Starbucks ain't payin' enough tax, Google ain't, Apple isn't and... well, we're being taken to the cleaners as a nation, aren't we? We provide this lovely country …

Business 25 Nov 12:00
Welcome to 'Vulture South'

Australian Reg readers have spoken

A couple of months ago, we asked Australian Regreaders how we should refer to our Asia-Pacific bureau based in Sydney. El Reg obviously wasn't quite right, given that Spanish phrases other than “Hasta la vista, Baby” and “Living la vida loca” aren't exactly in common usage in Australia. We offered readers five alternatives, …

Site News 25 Nov 20:00
Australia’s new AUD$5m golden visa

Open door policy for millionaires, just not via boat

Australia’s yen to morph into an entrepreneurial hub for the Asia Pacific region has led to the creation of a new visa category designed to lure the world’s brightest and richest business elite. Once the Australian immigration is satisfied that you have the business credentials of the next Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg, all …

Business 25 Nov 21:51
Application Lifecycle Management: The movers and shakers

Devs and ops feeling the love

Old applications never die; they just stick around sucking up valuable computing resources and helpdesk time. If your business faces that problem, then it’s time to take application lifecycle management seriously. Code is alive. Applications are living, breathing things that are supposed to change as the business changes, and …

ALM 25 Nov 22:00
Sandy Island does exist - on a 1908 chart

Auckland librarian spots early citation of contentious isle

A librarian at Auckland Museum has shed a little bit of light on the possible origins of the “island that isn’t there”. The difficult-to-eradicate Sandy Island, which isn’t in the Coral Sea between Australia and New Caledonia, drew attention last week when an Australian scientific expedition sailed to the chart-marked location …

Science 25 Nov 23:09
The secrets of spacetime revealed - on your workbench!

Boffin cooks up maker-style ‘quantum foam’ test kit

Laser source? Check. Lenses? Check. A suspended block of glass? Check. A single-photon detector? Check. Supercooling apparatus? Check. Congratulations: put that kit together, and you might be able to help resolve some of the most fundamental questions of quantum physics. OK, it might not be within reach of the backyard …

Science 25 Nov 23:46
Apple versus Samsung: everything infringes everything

Babies and bathwater

With Samsung seeking last week to widen its patent claim against Apple to include the iPad Mini, iPad 4 and iPod Touch 5, Cupertino has predictably responded in kind, expanding its own claims. In this filing, Samsung asked a magistrate to approve its new claims that the three Apple devices infringe the same patent, US 7,672, …

Law 25 Nov 23:48