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29th November 2012 Archive

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  • AWS cloud growing three times as fast as dot-comming Amazon

    Re:Invent S3 storage service gets a huge price chop

    Retailing giant Amazon runs AWS as a subsidiary at arm's length and in a somewhat stealthy manner at that. Having AWS be a little removed from Amazon is necessary because Amazon often competes with some of the companies that want to host applications on its cloud, and the stealth is just a way for AWS to preserve some mystique …

    Cloud 29 Nov 00:06

  • Apple manufacturers: ARRGH, pesky iThings are impossible to make

    YOU try it, Mr I-just-draw-pretty-pictures Cupertino guy

    The iPad Mini is the latest Apple product to cause big problems for manufacturers in the Asian supply chain. According to reports, it's the LCD panels that are the problem, and both manufacturers - AU Optronics and LG Display - are losing money on the contract, Digitimes reports. AU Optronics and LG have struggled to produce …

    Hardware 29 Nov 00:06

  • Inquiry ordered after phone exchange blaze

    Fire at Telstra's Warnambool exchange disrupted telecoms, earns government ire

    The Australian government has launched an inquiry into the communications collapse that ensued after a fire engulfed a pivotal Telstra exchange last week. The fire wiped out communications for a large portion of South Western Victoria at Telstra’s Warrnambool telephone exchange hub, leaving over 60,000 residents without fixed …

    Networks 29 Nov 00:25

  • Google GRINCHES have change of heart, bring back Christmas

    Android fix restores month of December

    Google has begun rolling out a patch for Android 4.2 "Jelly Bean" that fixes a bug that caused the month of December to vanish from the system's built-in People app. People is the Android contact-management app, first introduced with Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich." In addition to storing the usual names, phone numbers, and …

    Operating Systems 29 Nov 00:33

  • Server revenues decline in the third quarter

    EMEA taking it especially hard, says Gartner

    The server racket continues to be impacted by issues throughout the global economy and intense competition between incumbent players, upstarts, and those making their own hyperscale boxes. Shipment growth is anemic, revenues were down, and it is very likely that profits were down even further, according to the latest data. In …

    Servers 29 Nov 01:06

  • Australian cops bust Romanian credit card thieves

    Wrestler questioned after RDP SNAFU and two vulns lead to 500k card heist

    Australia's Federal Police (AFP) has triumphantly announced it has brought a gang of Romanian credit card fraudsters to heel, but not before the criminals purloined half a million credit card numbers from small Australian retailers. Detective superintendent Brad Marden, the AFP's national co-ordinator for cybercrime operations …

    Security 29 Nov 01:45

  • European Space Agency clears SABRE orbital engines

    Skylon space plane gets its power plant

    A British-built rocket/jet engine designed to enable Mach 6 flight and orbital capability has passed a key milestone, now that the European Space Agency has cleared the revolutionary cooler that fuels it. The Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) extracts the oxygen it needs to fly from the air itself while in jet …

    Science 29 Nov 03:30

  • Microsoft claims Windows Phone sales up 300%

    App store bursting at the seams, too – or is it?

    Speaking at the company's annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer waxed enthusiastic about Windows Phone 8, claiming sales were off to "a great start." Without citing any exact numbers, Ballmer said Redmond is selling four times as many Windows Phone devices than at this time last year. In …

    Mobile 29 Nov 03:31

  • AWS, NetApp, make close 'n' cloudy connection

    Re:Invent Direct Connect lets arrays and EC2 enjoy rapid hook-ups

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NetApp have cooked up a new alliance designed to make it easier to use data stored on arrays with Amazon's whatever it is that AWS uses to provide its storage services. Dubbed NetApp Private Storage, the new offering allows one to place a NetApp FAS appliance in a data centre – specifically one …

    Cloud 29 Nov 03:36

  • US software firm hacked for years after suing China

    Solid Oak nearly went under after three years of persistent attack

    A Californian software company which sued the Chinese government for pirating its flagship content filtering product has revealed how it was targeted by hackers from the People’s Republic for the three years of the resulting legal proceedings. Santa Barbara-based Solid Oak Software filed the civil lawsuit against China after …

    Security 29 Nov 04:05

  • Microsoft tightens the scroos in search battle

    Attack site scroogled.com accuses Google of prioritising paid search results

    Microsoft's Bing unit has published a web site attacking Google Shopping's product, insisting the ad giant's search results as driven entirely by profit. The attack comes in the form of Scroogled.com, which proclaims “Simply put, all of their shopping results are now paid ads”. On Bing, by contrast, Microsoft promises “an …

    Business 29 Nov 04:57

  • America planned to NUKE THE MOON

    Carl Sagan worked on plan to demonstrate military might, says CNN report

    America once hatched a plan to nuke the moon, according to a report from CNN. The broadcaster interviewed one Leonard Reiffel, a former US Air Force physicist CNN says led the project to plan a lunar nuclear launch. Cold war paranoia drove the project, Reiffel says, with the plan calling for a conventional missile to be …

    Science 29 Nov 05:05

  • Half of us have old phones STUFFED in our drawers

    Other half are presumably just glad to see you

    Fifty-five per cent of Brits have an old handset or two lying about the place, as despite the charities happy to recycle them we're surprisingly reluctant to let them go. Quite why we won't give up our old hardware isn't clear, but figures from Comscore put more than 28 million of them knocking around with more than 12 per …

    Mobile 29 Nov 05:56

  • Cisco takes aim at fakers with anti-piracy tool

    Report suggests new system will help govt spot counterfeit kit

    Cisco hopes to strangle the trade in counterfeit versions of its products by launching a tool designed to help US government agencies spot imitations, many of which come from China. The firm’s senior vice president for public sector, Patrick Finn, told Nextgov that increasing numbers of “rogue partners” pretend to posses Cisco …

    Business 29 Nov 06:13

  • EMC flash man: PCM will save us from the Incredible Shrinking NAND

    Someone must've ironed out Phase Change Memory's kinks

    EMC's flash exec expects Phase Change Memory - one of the possible non-volatile successors to flash - to appear in storage architectures from next year. Phase Change Memory exploits the differing resistance levels in chalcogenide materials as they change from an amorphous to a crystalline state and back again, background here …

    Storage 29 Nov 06:34

  • Raspberry Pi daddy: Stroke your hardware at night, land a job easy

    You want a career in computers? Start using computers

    Eben Upton, a key player in the Raspberry Pi's genesis, said out-of-work graduates should get busy with computers in their spare time if they want to land a job. And he didn't mean logging into Facebook. Speaking in a Google Hangout video chat conference call thing, Upton drew on his years of hiring newbies at chip giant …

    Jobs 29 Nov 06:58

  • Former HP direct sales bloke Logan jumps ship to Misco

    Felt so empty inside, unable to add value

    Headhunters are out in the channel recruiting bods into Misco's fledgling enterprise team - and ex-HP bigwig Richard Logan is the first to join. The Systemax-owned reseller has grand plans to knock its largest EMEA rivals off their perch within five years, and is restructuring to achieve this. Logan, previously sales director …

    The Channel 29 Nov 07:27

  • Chinese state media accuses Cisco and other US giants of spying

    Huawei oh Huawei would they say such things?

    State mouthpieces in China have published a series of articles attacking Cisco, accusing the networking giant of being complicit in US attacks on its infrastructure. The first coverage seems to have appeared as the cover story in China Economic and Information Technology Magazine, and doesn't mince words in laying into Cisco, …

    Data Networking 29 Nov 07:28

  • ZTE make benefit glorious world's tiniest 4G dongle

    Available in Kazakhstan now. Is very nice!

    Chinese telecoms kit maker ZTE has bolstered its credentials in the 4G space with the launch of what it claims to be the world’s smallest LTE data card. The Shenzhen-based rival to Huawei said the imaginatively named the MF823 is only 13mm thick, around a third the size of a first generation LTE equivalent and consumes a third …

    Networks 29 Nov 07:35

  • Far Cry 3 game review

    Jungle warfare

    In a few simple beats Far Cry 3's accidental hero, Jason Brody, goes from being nervy, spoilt rich kid to John Rambo, as his extreme sports holiday takes a turn for the worse. It’s a forgivably quick process for plot development purposes, if an abrupt one, but made palatable by the use of subtle tricks skilfully employed to pull …

    Games 29 Nov 08:00

  • Beware the malware-tipped SPEAR TRAP in your inbox

    That person who knows all about you? Not your friend

    The vast majority (91 per cent) of targeted attacks begin with a spear phishing email, according to a new study by Trend Micro. Spear phishing is a form of phishing that makes use of information about a target to make attacks more specific and “personal”. These attacks may, for example, refer to their targets by their specific …

    Security 29 Nov 08:27

  • RETURN of the PLAYMONAUT: El Reg's space hero suits up again

    Our intrepid ace test pilot hears siren call of LOHAN

    We at the Special Projects Bureau are of the opinion that our heroic playmonaut - who guided the Vulture 1 spaceplane to Guinness World Record glory - has been a bit idle of late. Back in May, he jetted off to Blighty to assist in the design of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) Vulture 2, and that was pretty well …

    SPB 29 Nov 09:00

  • Antivirus biz's founder unmasked as noted Chinese hacker

    Blackhat once attacked US Department of Defense

    Antivirus startup Anvisoft was founded by an infamous Chinese hacker who allegedly cut his teeth exploiting Microsoft Office security holes to hack US defence contractors, it has emerged. Investigative journalist Brian Krebs uncovered evidence - largely based on historic domain records for Anvisoft and reports compiled by …

    Security 29 Nov 09:19

  • HP boffin: Honey! I shrank the PC. To nanometre size, dammit

    Right, who here has a really fine set of tweezers

    HP boffins have packed layers of RAM, caches and storage into a combined block of memristors and processor cores to create highly scalable "nanostore" systems. It's hoped these little monsters will chew through mountains of data with terrific energy efficiency. A memristor increases or decreases its electrical resistance …

    Storage 29 Nov 09:44

  • What KILLED Motorola? Not Google! It was Moto's DIRE software

    Feature Ex-Moto director Rockman tiptoes through the code graveyard

    The Motorola we used to know is dead. After it was split in two, Google bought phone maker Motorola Mobility in May this year, leaving the profitable equipment biz Motorola Solutions to live on. Then the ad giant decided to lay off 20 per cent of the Moto Mobility workforce. Although this was all relatively sudden, the fall of …

    Mobile 29 Nov 10:00

  • Black Eyed Peas star pitches pricey iPhone cam add-on

    Will.i.am thinks he's worth it

    Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am has revealed the "i.am+" case for iPhones, which launches next month for those with more money than music taste. The i.am+ will come in two iPhone 4/4S flavours at first, with the basic "C.4 contemporary" model, setting punters back £199. This features interchangeable lenses for standard, …

    Hardware 29 Nov 10:16

  • Data cop slap for Brit text pests

    IMPORTANT: You may be entitled to pay us £440k

    The two owners of a rogue marketing firm have to cough up £440,000 for spamming UK mobiles with millions of texts over the last three years. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) made its first use of new powers to levy heavy fines for serious breaches of the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) …

    Security 29 Nov 10:18

  • Dixons returns to profit in UK, rubs hands as Comet circles drain

    Losses overall down to crazy Pixmania, penniless 'peans

    Dixons Retail says it's positioned to capitalise on Comet's collapse as the firm returned to profit in the UK for the first time in five years. Group challenges still remain, however, with gadget souk PIXmania still performing "poorly" and those pesky penniless peeps in Southern Europe dragging numbers down. Pre-tax losses …

    The Channel 29 Nov 10:38

  • New Tosh drive can wipe out 4TB 'near instantaneously'

    Plods on the stairs and fire escape? Press this and smile

    Toshiba has whipped out its own enterprise-class 4TB hard drive just days after Western Digital revealed a 4TB disk. Toshiba's 4TB MG series Tosh will build the rival drive at the 3.5-inch disk factory it bought from WD. Western Digital had to sell the plant in order to placate China's MOFCOM regulator during its …

    Storage 29 Nov 10:58

  • Spaniards Joyn together to hunt and kill the Skype monster

    Grab Android pitchforks and flaming torches, compadres

    Three Spanish operators have launched interoperable Joyn services, providing VoIP and IP messaging between networks in a belated attempt to take on the plethora of internet services stealing their customers. Movistar, Orange and Vodafone have all signed up to support Joyn, the latest innovation from the GSMA which provides a …

    Mobile 29 Nov 11:14

  • Assange needs to get some sunlight and fresh air, say Ecuadoreans

    Well yes, obviously. Possibly nothing new in that, though

    Julian Assange™ is sick. That's the medical verdict according to the Ecuadorean embassy in London where the WikiLeaks founder is currently holed up. He is seeking a safe passage to the South American country and the latest tactic appears to be to complain about his health. A lack of sunshine and living "in a confined space" …

    Government 29 Nov 11:27

  • Sony to do what Apple can't: Remove its batteries - sources

    Bankers keen to chop off energy arm and sell it

    Sony is considering selling off its battery business, Sony Energy Devices, and at least three investment banks have offered to help. Getting the biz on the market would help the stumbling entertainment giant to cut costs and give it some cash to put towards its restructuring, sources muttered in the general direction of …

    Financial News 29 Nov 11:43

  • Bungie talks up 'genre-defining' Destiny shooter

    As 'deep' as Star Wars, apparently

    Halo and Marathon developer Bungie has officially confirmed its next project will be called Destiny, a futuristic shooter with "a universe as deep as that of the Star Wars franchise". Details of the game were splashed across the web when a blabbermouth leaked the project write-up to IGN after getting his mitts on Destiny's …

    Games 29 Nov 11:56

  • Global warming still stalled since 1998, WMO Doha figures show

    'We're looking into this thing which is NOT HAPPENING'

    Figures released by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation indicate that 2012 is set to be perhaps the ninth hottest globally since records began - but that planetary warming, which effectively stalled around 1998, has yet to resume at the levels seen in the 1980s and early 1990s. The WMO figures are produced by averaging …

    Science 29 Nov 11:58

  • Ten badass brainy computers from science fiction

    Great movie motherboards

    Computers used to be our loyal servants. But slowly and surely, we've let them control us. I used to believe these machines had the ability to positively change the world, but after the 56K modem invented Dubstep in the 1990s, I've been somewhat sceptical. So have film makers. Boost a PC with a new processor these days and …

    Hardware 29 Nov 12:00

  • Troll sues Apple for daring to plug headphones into iPhone

    Spare us some change, guv'nor, just $3m will do?

    A patent hoarding firm is suing Apple for $3m for allegedly ripping off a protected design that describes plugging headphones into a mobile phone. Intelligent Smart Phone Concepts, a Delaware company with no web presence, launched its legal action against iPhone-maker Apple in California. ISPC has demanded damages for the …

    Phones 29 Nov 12:24

  • Broadband minister admits rural rollout by 2015 is 'challenging target'

    Could £530m BDUK project hit the skids?

    Broadband minister Ed Vaizey has confessed that the government's £530m pledge to deploy a faster fibre network to rural areas by 2015 is "a challenging target". Speaking with MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, Vaizey said that his department was "running as fast as we can" to deliver on time. …

    Broadband 29 Nov 12:29

  • Boffins BREAK BREAD's genetic code: Miracle of the loaves

    Climate change? Population growth? Maybe science can help

    A crack team of international boffins have done a "shotgun sequencing" of the wheat genome that will help increase wheat yields and thereby feed the world. Wheat is one of the big three globally important foods, along with rice and maize, and it accounts for 20 per cent of the calories consumed by the entire human race. …

    Science 29 Nov 12:31

  • iPod daddy: Ousted iOS chief Scott Forstall 'got what he deserved'

    'People were cheering in Cupertino'

    Talking to the BBC, father of the iPod and original iPhone hardware designer Tony Fadell talked about clashes with Scott Forstall, saying that Apple's iOS chief got just what he deserved when he was shuffled out of the company last month. Fadell worked on the first 18 revisions of the iPod, but left Cupertino back in 2010 and …

    Business 29 Nov 12:44

  • Microsoft STALKS YOU even more than supermarkets do, says dev

    Hey, get your tracker kit out of my trouser browser

    Web-tracking is rife on technology vendor websites, with Microsoft among the worst offenders. Tech sites serve up even more trackers than the average online retailer, say browser privacy plug-in devs. Trackers follow surfers after they visit a website to serve behavioural ads elsewhere online. The technology started in the …

    Security 29 Nov 12:57

  • Monty on broken MySQL promises: Oracle's going to fork it up

    Exclusive 2014 will be the year of reckoning...

    Oracle will break the promises it made to European regulators on MySQL nearly three years ago, according to the open-source database's co-creator Monty Widenius. In fact, he says, it has already broken a few. Widenius told The Reg he's scared about the future of MySQL. He said he is concerned that if the database giant further …

    Software 29 Nov 13:18

  • YouView: 'Public service catch-up telly should belong to us alone'

    Exclusive Hang on, we've already paid for that

    British broadcasters' telly-on-demand services should be exclusive to YouView set-top boxes to make the hardware more attractive, said YouView's chief - according to industry sources. YouView is a venture backed by the BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, telcos TalkTalk and BT, and TV transmission company Arqiva. The partnership's set …

    Media 29 Nov 13:33

  • Hurricane Sandy blows US pirate-pestering plan into 2013

    Dear Cutlass Bob, please stop stealing all our stuff

    The voluntary US copyright scheme designed to head off anti-piracy legislation has been delayed again - this time, because of Hurricane Sandy. The Center for Copyright Information (CCI) says alerts won't now be sent out to serial infringers until early 2013. "Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy …

    Media 29 Nov 13:42

  • Cloud storage giant Amazon cuts S3 prices, waits for rivals to die

    It's a numbers game

    Amazon is dropping its storage prices again, gambling it can lower prices to levels where it can be profitable but its competitors lose money and give up. Generally it is agreed that Amazon leads in offering cloud services with companies like Google (see news yesterday) and Microsoft, with its Azure offering, some distance …

    Storage 29 Nov 14:02

  • Dell launches Sputnik Linux Ultrabook

    Beefy open-source machines on the way

    Apple landed an important punch against Microsoft some years back by becoming a popular platform among devs building new applications. The resource-vampire Windows Vista, Microsoft’s effective hiatus on new releases, the power of MacBooks and rise of the web as a runtime saw Microsoft lose its grip on an influential and …

    Laptops 29 Nov 14:24

  • Google tools gaffe let ZOMBIE web admins feast on websites

    Dead accounts resurrected to cause merry hell

    Google potentially allowed former web admins to drive corporate websites off a cliff by resurrecting deleted accounts for its webmaster tools service. Google Webmaster Tools accounts can be used by anyone to manage their websites, from checking the indexing of pages to fine-tuning their visibility in the dominant search engine …

    Security 29 Nov 14:42

  • Leveson tells media to set up independent regulator or bow to Ofcom

    Blames internet revenue disaster for gutter tactics

    Independent regulation of the British press underpinned by legislation has been recommended by Lord Justice Leveson today. The peer, who has carried out a 16-month-long inquiry into press ethics following phone-hacking and other allegations aimed at the now-defunct Rupert Murdoch owned Sunday tabloid News of the World, …

    Media 29 Nov 14:50

  • Phoenix IT Group tumbles off a cliff: £63m in losses

    Onlookers predict Humpty Dumpty landing ahead

    There's trouble at Phoenix IT Group - the services provider has recorded losses of more than £60m, been forced to take a massive hit from accounting errors and is laying off staff. The results of accounting errors are in and the firm has taken a post-tax knock of £17.3m, forcing it to restate multiple year results after …

    The Channel 29 Nov 15:03

  • Dawn of the X-Men? MUTANTS swarm AMONG US, say geneticists

    Particularly among weirdo Europeans

    Humanity has entered a new genetic era, according to a newly published study, with well over half the mutations found having occurred "recently". Potentially troublesome genetic changes are particularly common among those of European heritage compared to those with African forebears, the research shows. "The recent dramatic …

    Science 29 Nov 15:19

  • Japanese firm offers 4-tonne GIANT MECHs for just $1.3m

    Flying car? Robot butler? Pah, I stomp on them

    Kogoro Kurata, Japanese maker of strange machines, is selling ride-on mechanical monsters starting at £844,000, but you'll need to pay extra for the weapons and cup holder. The Kuratas robot weighs in at 4 tonnes, and is 4 metres (13 feet) tall, so the pilot straps in at the head, ready to stride across the most desolate …

    Science 29 Nov 15:36

  • Sony tempts 4K Ultra HD TV buyers with free films

    Bundled on a gratis video server, natch

    Fancy a 4K x 2K TV - aka '4K Ultra HD' - but you’re worried you won’t have any native content to watch on the living room filler? Look to Sony. Today, the consumer electronics giant announced a server box stuffed with ten 3840 x 2160 movie transfers ready to play. The Amazing Spiderman, Total Recall (2012), The Karate Kid ( …

    Hardware 29 Nov 15:48

  • Italian tax cops grease up probe: 'Google owes us €240m'

    Vado a bordo, cazzo ... you owe us

    Italian authorities have launched a new tax probe of Google in the country after an earlier investigation found the firm failed to declare income and still owed tax. In a response from Italy's Finance Ministry to a question posed by MP Stefano Graziano in the country's parliament, the authorities said that the tax police in …

    Financial News 29 Nov 15:53

  • What can save the Xmas PC market? Not Windows 8, say analysts

    People wanted Win7, but there's no Vista effect now

    Analysts are lining up to denounce Microsoft's latest OS, claiming Windows 8 has been slow out of the blocks. The NPD Group estimates that in the four weeks since Microsoft coughed the software it was on 58 per cent of devices sold - compared to the 83 per cent achieved by Windows 7 after its launch. Stephen Baker, veep at …

    The Channel 29 Nov 16:30

  • PM demands media clean-up, not keen on doing much himself

    Leveson report: Cameron unlikely to back legislation

    Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament this afternoon that he opposed any rush to legislate the press following recommendations put forward by Lord Justice Leveson on Thursday - but he added that newspaper barons needed to pull their finger out with self-regulation. The PM repeatedly used the idiom of "crossing the …

    Media 29 Nov 16:36

  • RIM bribes coders: Make BlackBerry 10 apps, GET A FREE SHINY

    All that nice software you've got? Hand it over

    The first 100 developers to build applications for BlackBerry OS 10 using Appcelerator's Titanium cross-platform kit will get free devices as RIM attempts to kickstart its mobile platform. The next 10,000 developers will get free access to cloud services. Those wanting the freebies will have to download the BB10 version of …

    Applications 29 Nov 16:42

  • Moody's slashes HP's credit rating

    Predicts slide in sales next year

    Moody's Investor Service has cut its credit rating on HP indicating a lack of confidence in Meg Whitman's ability to return the sickly tech monster to the road to recovery. The rating now stands at Baa1, three levels above junk, down from the relatively exalted score of A3 - and the outlook is negative. "Although HP will …

    The Channel 29 Nov 16:58

  • 'Abnormal' thruster halts South Korean space rocket launch

    Third attempt to put first rocket in orbit cancelled

    South Korea called off a third attempt to launch its first space rocket with just minutes to spare this morning. The liftoff of Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1, also known as the Naro-1, was cancelled with 17 minutes left on the countdown clock. "Abnormal signals from the thrust vector system of the upper (second) stage rocket …

    Science 29 Nov 17:29

  • The Lord of the Rings saga lies hidden deep in your Mac

    Fun with FreeBSD, the Terminal, and OS X

    As Hobbitmania continues to build in anticipation of the worldwide release of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, OS X users can slake their thirst for Tolkien lore by firing up their Mac's Terminal app, typing  cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr  at the prompt, and hitting Return. They'll then be treated to …

    Operating Systems 29 Nov 17:55

  • Syria cuts off internet and mobile communications

    What dark deeds does the blackout hide?

    Network monitors are showing that Syria has gone dark for internet traffic and mobile communications as rebel forces fight their way into the capital city of Damascus. Syrian data traffic dropped off a cliff at 10:26am UTC, according to internet inspectors Renesys, with 77 networks representing 92 per cent of the country …

    Networks 29 Nov 17:59

  • Twitter forced to cough raw feed after PeopleBrowsr wins temporary order

    A little bird has ejected us from its 'warm spot', say data crunchers

    Twitter was slapped with a temporary restraining order yesterday, preventing it from terminating a tweets-for-cash contract it has with the data analysis company PeopleBrowsr. Twitter wanted to end the million-dollar-a-year contract tomorrow, 30 November, but a judge in the Superior Court of the State of California court has …

    Law 29 Nov 18:02

  • Prisoner found with phone + charger in anal cavity

    Luckily he's not an iPad owner

    A Scottish man has been given an extra stretch inside after prison officials found him trying to smuggle both a mobile phone and its charger into prison up his bottom. Christopher Hughes was facing a nine-year sojourn in the Big House for stabbing four people outside a Motherwell nightclub with a pair of scissors. He pleaded …

    Bootnotes 29 Nov 18:57

  • Apple ships 'completely redesigned' iTunes 11

    Updated As Mom admonished, 'better late than never – but better never late'

    Apple has released what it modestly deems to be "the best iTunes yet." That would be iTunes 11, which Cupertino touts as having a "dramatically simplified player, a completely redesigned Store, and iCloud features you'll love." When iTunes 11 was previewed on September 12 during the iPhone 5 rollout event in San Francisco, it …

    Applications 29 Nov 20:56

  • AWS fattens EC2 cloud for big data, in-memory munching

    re:Invent Data Pipeline service links data sources, automates chewing and spitting

    Werner Vogels, the Amazon CTO who also knows a thing or two about the Amazon Web Services cloud, kicked off the second day of the re:Invent partner and customer conference in Las Vegas with a long lecture about how cloud computing enables people to think about infrastructure differently and code applications better. Interspersed …

    Virtualization 29 Nov 21:04

  • Voda fails again: network melts in Melbourne heatwave

    ‘Try turning it off and turning it back on again’

    Vodafone is once again apologising to customers after an air-conditioner wilted as Melbourne temperatures hovered just under 40°C yesterday. That outage, in the company’s Tullamarine switch, flattened services for as many as half of its Melbourne customers, reaching out to impact as much as 15 percent of its traffic nationally …

    Networks 29 Nov 21:28

  • The Terminator, coming to a reality near you

    UK boffins demo cell-to-electronics interface

    Researchers at the University of Newcastle in the UK have demonstrated a communication pathway between living cells and electronics. The recipe is based on genetically-engineered protein cells from the ovaries of a Chinese hamster, which produce nitric oxide (NO) when exposed to light. The mutant cells where then coupled to a …

    Science 29 Nov 22:23

  • Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro gets laptop-level price

    Up to twice that of ARM-based Windows RT version

    If you were holding out for a Surface tablet with Windows 8 Pro, Microsoft has confirmed that they will be available in January. Just be sure to bring a bulging wallet. In a blog post on Thursday, Microsoft Surface general manager Panos Panay revealed that Redmond plans to offer two versions of the Surface running full Windows …

    Hardware 29 Nov 22:33

  • NASA: 'Those life-on-Mars rumors? Chill, dudes and dudettes'

    Monday's big news less Earth Mars-shaking than world had hoped

    Calm down, Mars fanatics. NASA has tossed a wet blanket over speculation that its Curiosity rover has found evidence of life – or, at minimum, of organic compounds – on the Red Planet. "Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," the agency plainly stated in a …

    Science 29 Nov 23:10

  • IDC: A year of server revenue declines

    Well, unless you are Dell, Cisco, Inspur, or Lenovo

    Server unit shipments may have increased for eleven out of the past twelve quarters, but what matters more are revenues and profits – and according to IDC, the world's server makers have endured their fourth successive quarter of revenue declines in the period ending in September. The IDC box counters reckon that 2.1 million …

    Servers 29 Nov 23:26

  • Microsoft halves Surface RT production orders - report

    Ballmer was right after all, might only 'sell a few million'

    Microsoft has slashed the number of Surface RT tablets on order with the Original Design Manufacturers in Asia, according to reports. The supply chain was primed to build and ship four million units of the ARM-based device by year-end but Redmond has slashed this to two million on the back of weak demand, sources told Digi …

    The Channel 29 Nov 23:33

  • NASA confirms ice at poles of Mercury

    Astrobiologists probe tiniest planet in 'soggy' solar system

    NASA's backronymic MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) orbiter has detected ice in polar craters on Mercury, and has confirmed the finding with multiple methods. What looked like ice on the poles of Mercury was detected in 1991 by the Arecibo radio telescope, and NASA said this March that …

    Science 29 Nov 23:42

  • Big Bang bashing boffins ‘Big Bounce’ back to BIRTH OF TIME

    The universe before inflation took hold

    A group of Penn State physicists says the universe we now see could have arisen from a "Big Bounce" rather than a Big Bang. The new work by Penn State, led by professor Abhay Ashtekar, director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, proposes ways to apply quantum physics "further back in time than ever before – right …

    Science 29 Nov 23:54