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7th December 2012 Archive

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  • Tim Cook’s 'One more thing': Apple TV rumor-stoker

    Nebulous product refuses to die ... or live

    Apple CEO Tim Cook has dropped the tiniest of hints about the company’s ongoing interest in televisions. Cook gave an interview to NBC's Brian Williams, portions of which can be seen here, in which he reportedly says, "When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years …

    Hardware 7 Dec 00:05

  • SoftLayer fires up MongoDB database service

    Eyes Cassandra, Hadoop, your money

    Privately held hosting and cloudy infrastructure peddler SoftLayer is tag-teaming with 10gen, the creator of the MongoDB NoSQL data store, to sell preconfigured MongoDB setups to park your big data on its 100,000-server data centers. The addition of a MongoDB service is just the latest in a line of infrastructure and platform …

    Virtualization 7 Dec 00:32

  • New research cuts Kepler's exoplanet count by one third

    Look out for those 'astrophysical false positive' impostors

    A new study has shown that the number of exoplanets – planets outside of our solar system – discovered by NASA's Kepler may be inflated by over a third. The Kepler team's "Table of confirmed planets" (their emphasis) in that spacecraft's slice of the sky now stands at 105. According to the criteria used by NASA's Exoplanet …

    Science 7 Dec 01:36

  • Republican staffer fired for copyright reform suggestions

    Don't mess with Big Content big business

    A Republican staffer who wrote a position paper suggesting that the current system of copyright legislation might benefit some market-based reform has been summarily fired. Last month the Republican Study Committee, an influential group made up of members of the US House of Representatives, put out a position paper saying that …

    Government 7 Dec 01:41

  • Report blasts NASA for 'lack of consensus' on goals, plans

    Future of US space program said to be at risk

    A new US government report offers a damning assessment of the strategic direction and management of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), painting the space agency as a rudderless organization whose lack of well-defined goals could threaten US leadership in space sciences. The report, titled "NASA's …

    Government 7 Dec 02:03

  • Google kills free version of Apps for business

    Goes back on 2007 blog saying Standard edition 'will continue to be offered for free'

    Google has killed off the free version of its Apps for business product. Google Apps offers gmail, Google Drive and a calendaring service, plus Google’s in-browser word processor, spreadsheet and presentation graphics app. All the apps work in a browser. At launch, the service was free to organisations with fewer than 20 …

    Applications 7 Dec 03:45

  • China admits $10 BEEELLION tech trade deficit

    Still imports way more than it flogs abroad

    Despite a growing trade surplus with the rest of the world and a claim to be the global centre of tech manufacturing, China’s technology exports were worth $US10bn less than its imports in 2011. Zhou Liujun, a senior official with the Ministry of Commerce, told a press conference at the Shanghai International Technology Fair …

    Financial News 7 Dec 04:01

  • EMC: 'Nope', XtremIO won't link to back-end arrays

    Possible Tucci successors hinted at also

    Not being happy with an interview write-up, EMC VP and Global Marketing CTO Chuck Hollis rewrote it in his blog with what he considered to be the right answers. This provided new information, to us, about EMC's coming XtremIO networked flash storage array. Answering the question if it will be possible to connect disk arrays to …

    Storage 7 Dec 05:08

  • Google enables private Play stores

    Roll-your-own app store means game on for BYOD

    Organisations planning to give users access to curated collection of Android apps can now do so with their Google Apps account, after the advertising giant quietly threw the switch on what it has poetically dubbed “The Google Play Private Channel for Google Apps”. The existence of the new feature was snuck out in a support …

    Media 7 Dec 05:17

  • Cognizant filing stokes Indian outsourcer growth fears

    Keep Calm and Hold Your Shares: growth will still be around 16 per cent

    An SEC filing from IT services poster boy Cognizant has sent ripples of uncertainty through the entire Indian tech sector after some interpreted it as a sign the company is expecting slower growth in 2013. The filing from NASDAQ-listed Cognizant, whose revenues beat those of IT giants Infosys and Wipro in the last quarter, …

    Business 7 Dec 05:27

  • 'Build us a Death Star, President Obama' demand thousands

    Would create more and better jobs than highways, maybe

    A petition asking the Whitehouse to construct a "Death Star", has gathered over 5000 signatures on the American government's ePetition site. The petition 'Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016' was created by a John D of Longmont, Colorado, and has gathered 5,370 signatures in the 3 weeks …

    Bootnotes 7 Dec 05:57

  • England and Germany square off for FIFA goal line tech prize

    Let's hope it doesn't come down to penalties

    Little known football teams Sanfrecce Hiroshima and Auckland City made history on Thursday after their Club World Cup match was the first ever official fixture to feature goal line technology. The game saw the use of GoalRef, a radio-based system developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits which works by …

    Hardware 7 Dec 06:30

  • Speaking in Tech: So you've built a data centre - but is it UNDER THE SEA?

    Podcast The things you come up with while in Amsterdam

    Welcome back - it's another Speaking In Tech hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, Ed has taken over the podcast with this special - and shorter - episode from Structure Europe 2012 in Amsterdam. Our special guests this week are Sam Johnston, director of cloud and IT services at Equinix, and Lane …

    Datacenter 7 Dec 07:05

  • The best tablets for Christmas

    Surface, iPad, Nexus, Note - we were spoiled for choice in 2012

    Thank God for Microsoft. Without it and its new Surface tablet this article would be nothing more than me running around having an Android versus iOS argument with myself. Thankfully, as with smartphones, the arrival of Windows 8, here in its RT incarnation, has saved mankind from a bipolar tablet OS nightmare. More …

    Tablets 7 Dec 08:00

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012: Why Bother?

    Live today Two Reg readers provide many reasons

    Join us today at 11:00 GMT, when we’ll be broadcasting live from our London studio with Reg readers Chris Losch, from Newham Council, and Gary Collins, from Intercept IT. Between them, they’re going to run through a raft of real-world projects and deployment scenarios where they’ve been using and abusing Windows Server 2012 to …

    Datacenter 7 Dec 08:22

  • Tearful, poetic Reg readers hail heroic, departed Playmonaut

    The short 'naut who cast a long shadow

    We're obliged to all those readers who've offered condolences at the loss of our heroic playmonaut, who disappeared in the English Channel last week during a Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission. Many of you were moved to quote from High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, and our man certainly "topped the wind- …

    SPB 7 Dec 09:00

  • GPU-stuffed monster cracks Windows passwords in minutes

    That's what you get for using a crap hashing algo

    Security researchers have put together a monster number-crunching rig capable of cracking strong passwords by brute force in minutes. Jeremi Gosney (aka epixoip) demonstrated a machine running the HashCat password cracking program across a cluster of five servers equipped with 25 AMD Radeon GPUs at the Passwords^12 conference …

    Security 7 Dec 09:18

  • Major £30m cyberheist pulled off using MOBILE malware

    Eurograbber did just what it says on the tin

    Cybercrooks swiped £30 million (€36m) from the banks accounts of 30,000 customers in Italy, Germany, Spain and Holland over the summer using an elaborate mobile banking fraud scam. The malware-based attack targeted both corporate and private banking users, performing automatic transfers that varied from €500€ to €250,000 to …

    Security 7 Dec 09:39

  • Private cloud user in dialogue with Atmos, el Reg facilitating

    It's a unique edge case, not a bug

    Atmos user Michael Roney identified some difficulties he was having with an Atmos array on an EMC community website, saying he wanted to do ordinary-seeming things but couldn't. EMC has responded, saying he is trying to do things that are rarely, if ever done. Atmos is EMC's object storage system for public and private cloud …

    Cloud 7 Dec 09:57

  • NetApp launches SECRET MARS MISSION, seeks egghead

    We drill into storage biz's Red Planet development

    The Reg storage desk has learned of a Mars project at NetApp. So we've sent our own Curiosity rover - specifically, a Google bot - to scan for job descriptions. This is what it transmitted back: Mars is an industry-leading next-generation product and one of the most strategic projects within NetApp. Mars is a clusterable and …

    Storage 7 Dec 10:25

  • Datel: Reseller growing faster than its vendor master Sage

    Gobbles record orders, belches, loosens waistcoat

    Datel, Sage's largest channel partner in the UK, clearly isn't suffering similar growing pains to its vendor master after posting double digit growth for fiscal 2012. Sales saw an 18 per cent spike to £16.8m in the twelve months to 31 May and EBITDA rose 47 per cent to £1.67m. Pre-tax profits reached £1.14m from £588,000 a …

    The Channel 7 Dec 10:55

  • 'Facebook is completely undreamt of even by the worst spying nation'

    QuotW Plus: 'Students who have iPhones don't work'

    This was the week when Google+ head Bradley Horowitz told the world that that whole Facebook thing was soooo last year. According to the +er, Facebook is the "social network of the past", mainly because Zuck's ad strategies are so intrusive they're putting people off. When people are online socialising, they should really be …

    Law 7 Dec 11:00

  • Emulex moves to snap up network-monitoring Endace

    Yum yum, end-to-end app visibility

    Storage networking and Ethernet vendor Emulex is making a bid for Endace, a New Zealand-based network monitoring company. The bid is worth $130 million cash, or 500 pence/share and, Reuters reports is 65 per cent higher than Endace's London Stock Exchange closing price on December 4. Emulex, facing a low- or no-growth Fibre …

    Storage 7 Dec 11:26

  • Take it or break it: the return of the drop test

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? Smashing technology

    In flagrant negation of the forces of nature, I seem to be growing less clumsy as I get older. That is, I break fewer things and do it less often. This is partly the result of a series of conscious decisions to be more careful. One such was choosing to don my spectacles before making breakfast rather than after, thus cutting …

    Hardware 7 Dec 12:00

  • 2020AD: Space tourists will be FOUND ON MOON

    To the moon for $700m. Jupiter and Mars? Don't even ask

    A group of former NASA employees are planning to send two people to the Moon for $1.4bn as part of a new space tourism venture. The newly launched Golden Spike Company wants to use existing rocket tech to get the mission off the ground before 2020. The firm said the time was ripe for their business because of the private …

    Science 7 Dec 12:21

  • Apple, Samsung patent judge: 'I feel like I'm in Groundhog Day here'

    Samsung wants a retrial, Apple wants MORE damages

    Samsung tried its very hardest to argue for a retrial in a hearing with Apple yesterday, as the fruity firm pushed for additional damages on top of the $1bn it already won. The hearing was ostensibly to discuss permanent bans on sales of Samsung products that a jury decided infringed Apple patents, but the South Korean firm's …

    Law 7 Dec 12:58

  • I've got the 'fastest growing THINGY ever', boasts Google+ chief

    You could be in Plus and not even know it

    Google veep Vic Gundotra has described Google+ as "the fastest-growing network thingy ever." He claimed that 135 million people were now actively using it, while 500 million users have been signed up to the site. He added that 235 million peeps had used Google+ to do things like "hanging out" with their chums in Gmail. The ad …

    Networks 7 Dec 13:29

  • Battle of the Clouds: Azure goes lower

    What will Amazon and Google do now?

    Windows Azure pricing is dropping by up to 28 per cent as Microsoft goes head to head againstAmazon's cloud storage. As announced in the Windows Azure blog by Steven Martin, general manager for Windows Azure business planning, there is a "price reduction for Windows Azure Storage by as much as 28 per cent, effective on …

    Cloud 7 Dec 14:04

  • Data gobbling app lands Delta Air Lines in the dock on privacy charge

    Biz faces $2,500 fine per download since 2010

    California's Attorney General has taken an airline to court for not having a mobile app privacy policy, in the first case of its kind. Delta Air Lines' Fly Delta app collected user information including addresses, credit card details and their location, but had no policy on safeguarding this private information. That puts it …

    Government 7 Dec 14:24

  • Rare critical Word vuln is the star of December Patch Tuesday

    Microsoft cheese a bit less swiss this year

    Microsoft is planning to release seven bulletins next Tuesday, five of which tackle critical vulnerabilities, as part of its final Patch Tuesday update of 2012. All currently supported operating systems (including Windows 8 and Windows RT) will need patching. The updates feature critical updates for Redmond's IE 9 and IE 10 …

    Security 7 Dec 15:03

  • Arbitrators side with Foxconn in brain-damaged worker case

    Fondleslabricator gets away with lower payout

    Chinese layout arbitrators have ruled against the family of the Foxconn worker who was brain-damaged in a factory accident in Shenzhen. Zhang Tingzhen was injured while at work in October 2011 and had to have nearly half of his brain surgically removed. He has been in hospital in Shenzhen city ever since. Problems arose …

    Government 7 Dec 15:55

  • Telcos and hosters add US jobs in November, semi manufacturers cut them

    Hurricane Sandy didn't affect the national stats

    In some surprising good news for the US and perhaps the rest of the world in this interconnected global economy, employers added more jobs and lost fewer jobs in November in the wake of Hurricane Sandy smacking into the east coast in late October, and state governments started adding workers, offsetting losses in the government …

    Jobs 7 Dec 16:29

  • Dell storage boss Topgun Thomas leaves 'to pursue a new opportunity'

    Former fighter pilot hits the eject button

    Darren Thomas, head of Dell's Storage Group, is leaving the company, following several quarters of declining revenue and an influx of new executive blood into Dell. Dell spokesperson Gladtys Elia said: "Darren Thomas has decided to pursue a new opportunity outside of Dell. … Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager of …

    Storage 7 Dec 16:29

  • TVShack's Richard O'Dwyer sent home with £20,000 fine

    Extradition swerved

    Richard O'Dwyer, the Briton who ran one of the world's most popular download links websites, must cough up £20,000 after avoiding extradition in a bargain with US authorities. The GP's son will pay the sum under a "deferred prosecution agreement". He voluntarily flew out to New York from Blighty for his court hearing yesterday …

    Law 7 Dec 16:30

  • C2000: 'We will become a £3bn distie'

    Clock ticking on five-year revenue goal

    Computer 2000 has set it sights on growing into a £3bn sales juggernaut in the next five years and reckons signing up new vendors, and a deeper move into supply chain services will help it get there. The UK's largest wholesaler planned to reach the £2bn milestone by the end of fiscal 2015, ended January that year, but hit the …

    The Channel 7 Dec 18:10

  • Apple: 27-inch iMac won't ship until next year

    If you're a UK fanboi, prepare to pay dearly

    Apple's long-delayed 27-inch iMac is now scheduled to ship to US customers sometime next month, according to an updated page on the company's stateside online store. That's the US store on top, the UK store below The UK store, on the other hand, still lists the "Dispatched" date as being in three to four weeks – which would …

    Hardware 7 Dec 18:50

  • AMD bites bullet, slashes chip orders

    Downside: hefty penalty. Upside: leaner inventory

    The slumping PC market has put the hurt on AMD to the extent that the struggling chipmaker has sharply reduced its Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with its chip-baking partner, GlobalFoundries. AMD estimates that it will purchase $115m worth of wafers from GlobalFoundries this quarter under the amended WSA. The previous agreement …

    Business 7 Dec 20:02

  • Stallman: Ubuntu spyware makes it JUST AS BAD as Windows

    Urges users to give it stern shunning

    Free Software Foundation founder and noted weird-beard Richard Stallman has called upon Linux advocates to reject the Ubuntu distribution, claiming the latest version contains dangerous "surveillance code." In a lengthy post to his FSF blog, the GNU Project creator slams Canonical, the company in charge of Ubuntu, for …

    Operating Systems 7 Dec 20:21

  • FCC urges rethink of aircraft personal-electronics blackout

    Signs of sanity over American skies

    The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has written to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) asking for a rethink of the current ban on using electronic items in flight. Currently all electronic devices have to be switched off on US aircraft operating below 10,000 feet, and can only used in flight-safe mode …

    Government 7 Dec 20:26

  • Business sues for $750,000 over bad Yelp review

    Novel form of corporate funding plan

    An American woman is being sued for three quarters of a million dollars for giving a local building contractor a scathing write-up on crowd-sourced reviews sites Yelp and Angie's List. Jane Perez, a retired captain in the armed services living in Virginia, wrote the bad reviews about Washington DC building contractor Dietz …

    Law 7 Dec 22:09

  • US text-to-911 emergency SMS to go live by 2014

    Top four carriers to start rollout next year

    "Omg hlp nd a dr" may soon become a familiar phrase to emergency operators in the US, thanks to a plan to enable text messaging to the 911 emergency telephone number from anywhere in the country by 2014. On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Julius Genachowski announced that the four major US mobile …

    Mobile 7 Dec 22:26