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10th January 2013 Archive

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  • FCC to unleash unlicensed spectrum, relieve 'Wi-Fi traffic jam'

    CES 2013 Shared-spectrum scheme with the Department of Defense

    The US Federal Commnicatioons Commission has announced plans to open up a chunk of unlicensed spectrum to relieve the "Wi-Fi traffic jam," according to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. "We're announcing today that we're moving to free up a substantial amount of spectrum for Wi-Fi to relieve Wi-Fi congestion and improve Wi-Fi …

    Networks 10 Jan 00:04

  • Just what the world needs: Android in the rice cooker

    Things you can’t make up

    Less than a fortnight into 2013, we have a candidate for the year’s silliest product: a networked, Android-sporting rice cooker. Readers will remember some chilling demonstrations during 2012: the vulnerability of pacemakers to outside attack, for example (insulin pumps were already compromised in 2011), while McAfee (the …

    Hardware 10 Jan 01:14

  • Anonymous wants DDoS attacks recognized as speech

    'No different than Occupy protests'

    The loosely organized hackers of Anonymous don't just launch distributed denial-of-service attacks for the lulz. They do it to send a message, which is why they've petitioned the Obama administration to recognize DDoS as a legal form of protest. The petition, which was filed on the White House's We the People website, argues …

    Security 10 Jan 02:14

  • Report: RIM plans six BlackBerry 10 handsets for 2013

    CES 2013 Carrier-free spread of smartphones for all sectors

    RIM might not have a stand at CES and it isn't holding any press conferences, but its executives are busy on the floor talking up the handsets coming out at the January 30 launch. CMO Frank Boulben told FierceWireless that the launch would see two handsets running the BlackBerry 10 operating system, one full touchscreen device …

    Mobile 10 Jan 02:21

  • Fireflies donate gut feelings to LED research

    Belly, belly, burning bright

    Structures that help fireflies produce bright light from their abdominal lanterns have been mimicked in the lab to increase the efficiency of LEDs. In their Optical Express article, the researchers explain that the jagged structures they found on the Photuris Lampyridae firefly enhanced the glow of their lanterns. By creating …

    Science 10 Jan 02:28

  • ZTE to launch Mozilla-based phone in Europe in 2013

    CES 2013 Other markets may not be far behind

    Chinese electronics firm ZTE is ramping up its efforts in support of the Mozilla Foundation's open source Firefox OS for mobile phones, and if all goes well, it could deliver a device targeting European customers as early as this year. In an interview at the CES 2013 conference taking place in Las Vegas this week, Cheng Lixin …

    Mobile 10 Jan 03:33

  • Astronaut yells FIRE ... from SPAAAACE

    Handheld shots show flames from International Space Station

    Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield has posted photos of Australian wildfires taken from orbit on the In ternational Space station. One image is sufficiently detailed that it depicts flames licking at local foliage. Australia has, over the last ten days, been beset by fire. More than 100 homes were destroyed in Tasmania and …

    Science 10 Jan 04:15

  • Foxconn calls in the cops over supplier bribes claims

    Employees sought payments from suppliers

    Manufacturing behemoth Foxconn has revealed it is working with police to investigate allegations of bribery against employees suspected of seeking illegal payments from supply chain partners. The Taiwanese firm, which churns out kit for Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HP and others, made the revelations after an article appeared in …

    Law 10 Jan 05:21

  • Microsoft’s Asia-Pac head goes to post office

    Drops off resignation letter, joins Australia Post to digitise its business

    Microsoft’s vice-president for Asia-Pacific Tracey Fellows has left the company for Australia Post, the nation’s postal service. Fellows was Redmond’s leader for Australia, New Zealand, various small Pacific nations, Korea, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Microsoft’s profile of Fellows also mentions “South East Asia” as coming under …

    Business 10 Jan 06:03

  • Chinese Twitter Sina Weibo goes bilingual

    The Chinese are coming!

    Attention Twitter: Chinese micro-blogging giant Sina Weibo has just updated its platform to accommodate English speaking users in a move that may well signal international expansion. The English language interface is still only partially complete and a Sina spokesman told local blog TechInAsia that it “isn’t open globally yet …

    Networks 10 Jan 06:33

  • Lucky Luczo: Seagate sales will beat expectations

    Shifts more drives than it thought it would

    Seagate is expected to shift $3.5bn worth of kit in its second fiscal 2013 quarter ending 31 Dec, 2012, but says it has exceeded that number, providing a revenues figure of at least $3.6bn. This is $132m less than the previous quarter but $400m more than the year-ago quarter. It looks like the Thai flood sales boost has played …

    Storage 10 Jan 07:03

  • Twitter won't unmask racist Frenchie unless US judge says so

    Hé Parisians! Nos lèvres sont scellées!

    Twitter has told a Paris court it will not name an anonymous French tweeter unless a US judge orders it to do so. Alexandra Neri, a lawyer for San Francisco-based Twitter, said the social network was bound by American law and would not divulge the information at a hearing this week. The French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) …

    Law 10 Jan 07:24

  • Logicalis: We've found the new FRESH PRINCE OF BERKSHIRE

    Now this is the story all about how Starkey's life got turned upside

    Logicalis has confirmed that COO Mark Starkey will take over from UK MD Tom Kelly who leaves at the end of next month. After a decade in the hot seat, Kelly revealed late last year that it was time for a new challenge. But he is staying on board until the close of the global IT provider's fiscal 2013 on 28 February. Talking …

    The Channel 10 Jan 08:02

  • 5,000 UK pubs get free Wi-Fi... and they're not even all in London

    Pleased as Punch

    Punch Taverns, operator of more than 5,000 tenanted and leased pubs in the UK, has signed with The Cloud to put free Wi-Fi in all of them in the hope of promoting a little lunchtime drinking. That's drinking coffee and tea, as well as beer, but the chain reckons sales of everything increase once Wi-Fi is freely available as …

    Networks 10 Jan 08:39

  • Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake

    Tinned 'diet' swill will send you INSANE

    Further proof - were it necessary - that strong unsweetened coffee is the only correct workplace beverage and that sickly imitation pop is the devil's own satanic brew has emerged this week. Boffins in the States have confirmed that sweetened and "diet" drinks are associated with a significantly heightened risk of mental illness …

    Bootnotes 10 Jan 09:02

  • A pre-ticked box in web forms should NOT mean consent - EU report

    New proposals suggest an end to automated assent

    Businesses will not be able to use pre-ticked boxes to gain user consent for the processing of their data under changes proposed by the European Parliament to new EU data protection laws. In a new report, Jan-Philipp Albrecht, a rapporteur for the European Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee on the …

    Government 10 Jan 09:26

  • Microsoft spin-out floats Azure for open-sourcers

    All the Linux you want, as long as it's Ubuntu

    A Microsoft spin-out is trying to tempt open-sourcers to its owner’s cloud with a catalogue of Azure-friendly open code. Microsoft Open Technologies has announced VM Depot, a site it calls: “A community-driven catalog of preconfigured operating systems, applications, and development stacks that can easily be deployed on …

    Developer 10 Jan 10:02

  • Sony PS3 extends lead over Microsoft's Xbox 360 by a cool million

    Upcoming next-gen machine a console-ation for 360 fans

    Bad news for Microsoft and Xboxers: in December 2012, Sony shipped sufficient consoles for the number of PS3s the Japanese giant has sold to exceed the volume of 360s Microsoft has sent out by a margin of a million machines. And that’s despite the year in which the second-generation Xbox had no direct competition from Sony. …

    Games 10 Jan 10:36

  • WD mixes flash-disk cocktail in Vegas, lets clients feel up models

    CES 2013 OEMs given terabyte and half-terabyte versions

    WD is sending out samples of its 500GB and 1TB hybrid flash hard disk drives to OEM customers and showcasing them at CES in Las Vegas. According to an Engadget report WD is sampling two hybrid HDDS with its OEMs: A 500GB 2.5-inch model with a 5mm z-height and 24GB of NAND, called the WD5000M13K A 1TB 2.5-inch drive with a …

    Storage 10 Jan 11:02

  • Baby sharks are so HARDCORE they avoid baddies like tiny ninjas

    How canny fish sense and trick predators with SCIENCE

    Baby sharks can fool passing predators even before they're born - by freezing on the spot or simply playing dead. The embryonic sharklings can sense a hungry predator by detecting their electric fields and avoid being eaten by staying very still and slowing down their breathing. Boffins already knew that adult sharks used …

    Science 10 Jan 11:22

  • SMART, Micron 960GBs: Safe pair of NANDs or more cloud guff?

    CES 2013 Heat-slash tech versus through-the-night endurance

    SMART Storage Systems and chip maker Micron have each launched new solid-state drives at this week's Las Vegas CES event. Micron, which operates the Crucial and Lexar memory brands, has focussed on what it calls adaptive thermal throttling, which cuts the drive's workload and power consumption if it gets hotter than 65°C. …

    Storage 10 Jan 11:44

  • Review: HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 handset

    Taking on Nokia at the Microsoft smartphone stall

    It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for HTC. Eighteen months ago it was the darling of smartphone manufacturers having reinvented itself from a maker of unbranded handsets for the likes of O2 to an outfit boasting some of the best Android smartphones around. Platform alteration: HTC's 8X Windows Phone 8 But Samsung's …

    Apps 10 Jan 12:00

  • The 10 best … Windows Server 2012 features

    Opinion Microsoft takes on all comers

    Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 is out. For many systems administrators, the question about this latest iteration of Microsoft's server family is not "What's new?" but "Why care?" Server 2008 R2 is a great operating system, while Server 2012 bears the stigma of Metro and the Windows 8 controversy. But the answer to "why care" …

    Datacenter 10 Jan 12:22

  • Wireless charger posse smacks down rival in EXPLICIT video

    Vid No strings wires attached

    The Alliance for Wireless Power has approved its own standard and is promising products soon in the hope that its superior technology will help it fight back against rival Qi's first-to-market advantage. The Qi standard is being pushed by the Wireless Power Consortium, and is already in the Nexus 4 and Nokia Lumia phones, but …

    Networks 10 Jan 12:45

  • Google's Schmidt: I squeezed Norks to lift web blockade

    Stop being evil, yeah? Well, at least I asked

    Google chairman Eric Schmidt ended his controversial visit to North Korea by declaring he urged the secretive state to embrace the "free and open internet". Schmidt - no doubt keen to cram ever more online ads into every corner of the globe - argued that the Great Firewall of North Korea, which curbs citizens' web access, …

    Networks 10 Jan 13:04

  • Not Cool, man: Potent new hacking toolkit costs crooks $10k a month

    Blackhole gang snap up latest 0-days to build a better mousetrap

    The brains behind the Blackhole Exploit Kit is using profits from the hacking toolbox to buy up security exploits and create a far more formidable product. The ubiquitous Blackhole kit is usually installed on compromised websites and uses vulnerabilities in web browsers and other software to inject malware into visitors' PCs …

    Security 10 Jan 13:35

  • Reg Hardware Awards Best of 2012: VOTING NOW OPEN

    Reg Hardware Awards 2012 Your chance to pick the best and name the worst products of the year

    Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the annual Reg Hardware Awards are here and, once again, we need your help finding the best - and the worst - consumer electronics and IT products of the past year. Here’s your chance to vote for your favourite kit from among this year's releases. In each category - Computing, Lifestyle, …

    reghardware 10 Jan 13:53

  • Review: HP ENVY x2 Windows 8 convertible

    Display unclips to work as a tablet

    The flourishing market for tablet computers has left people wanting more. Those using tablets at work invariably end up buying a keyboard and regularly curse the limitations of a mobile operating system. Those using a Windows laptop at work often wish they could occasionally dispense with the keyboard for convenient touchscreen …

    Laptops 10 Jan 14:11

  • Woohoo! UK IT channel insolvencies plunge to pre-credit-crunch levels

    Good news: Only 57 firms crashed out. Bad news: Er, 57 firms crashed out

    Insolvencies in Britain's IT distribution channel have plummeted to pre-global economy meltdown levels according to credit reference agency Graydon UK. Some 57 companies went under in the fourth quarter of 2012, representing a fall of more than 35 per cent on the same period a year ago when 88 businesses went to the wall. The …

    The Channel 10 Jan 14:36

  • 2e2 investors pull in bigshot beancounters to pore over books

    Last FD Simon Burt replaced at troubled integrator

    2e2's financial backers have brought several seasoned beancounters into the debt-laden business, The Channel can reveal. Sources told us that Lynn Mawdsley has gone in as CFO to replace the previous group FD Simon Burt. She describes herself on LinkedIn as a "turnaround director". It is also believed that Simon Poulton, who …

    The Channel 10 Jan 15:07

  • Ruby off the Rails: Enormo security hole puts 240k sites at risk

    Update NOW or give everyone shell access to your app server

    Popular programming framework Ruby on Rails has two critical security vulnerabilities - one allowing anyone to execute commands on the servers running affected web apps. The newly uncovered bugs both involve the parsing and handling of data supplied by visitors to a Rails application. The CVE-2013-0156 hole is the more severe …

    Security 10 Jan 15:31

  • Yahoo! Mail! offers! HTTPS! amid! account! hijack! spree!

    Vid Web giant tangles with resilient XSS bug

    Yahoo! is now offering to encrypt its webmail service with HTTPS for security-conscious users. Meanwhile, an exploit that allowed anyone to hijack Yahoo! Mail accounts if victims clicked on a link was being flogged to cybercrims for $700. The HTTPS development, which is not enabled by default, affords Yahoo! webmail users …

    Security 10 Jan 15:59

  • Manning was 'illegally punished', will get 112 days lopped off any sentence

    Treatment of 'WikiLeaks' private was 'excessive' - military judge

    US Army private Bradley Manning, who is accused of "aiding the enemy" by allegedly handing over classified Army documents to Wikileaks, will get 112 days cut from any prison sentence he could get if he's convicted on the charges. This is after a military judge ruled that Manning had been "illegally punished" in a Marine Corps …

    Security 10 Jan 16:32

  • Report: Tablets to outsell ALL PCs by 2016

    Yes, but today's PC isn't the same as tomorrow's...

    It was claimed by one market watcher this week that tablets will outsell notebook computers during 2013. By 2016, says another, slates’ share of the PC market will have surpassed all other devices combined. The research firm in question is Canalys, and it reckons Wintel’s share of the PC market will drop from 72 per cent in …

    Tablets 10 Jan 16:51

  • Dell, Intel and pal pump $10m into OpenStack biz Mirantis

    Chip titan and Chinese sugar daddy help bankroll PC giant's cloud dream

    Michael Dell’s computer giant, Intel and WestSummit have joined forces to inject a new open-source cloud vendor with $10m so that the startup can develop and sell its delayed OpenStack public cloud. The investment arms of the three tech giants - Dell Ventures, Intel Capital and China-based WestSummit Capital - awarded the cash …

    Cloud 10 Jan 17:06

  • Kill that Java plugin now! New 0-day exploit running wild online

    Over to you, Oracle

    A new Java zero-day security vulnerability is already being actively exploited to compromise PCs. The best way to defend against the attacks is to disable any Java browser plugins on your systems. The offending bug is present in fully patched and up-to-date installations of the Java platform, now overseen by database giant …

    Security 10 Jan 17:26

  • Hunt is on for Jupiter-sized HIDDEN planets stuffed between star's belts

    What happens in Vega, stays in Vega

    Astrophysicists have clapped their eyes on what seems to be a massive inner and outer asteroid belt hugging the Vega star. The finding suggests that a gap spotted between the warm and cool belts of the star could mean that multiple unseen planets may orbit it, according to astronomers who used data from NASA's Spitzer Space …

    Science 10 Jan 17:28

  • IBM tops chart for churning out patents for the 20TH TIME

    Today it's mostly software IP - 2 decades ago it was hardware

    It may be arguable whether patents are desirable or over-prescribed in the high tech industry, but there is no doubt that companies use patents as competitive – and anticompetitive – weapons, and therefore they have a huge value. Applying for and receiving lots of patents, then, can be seen as an insurance policy against …

    Management 10 Jan 17:58

  • Amazon puts up CD rack in the cloud, unearths your OLD stuff too

    No Limits (2 Unlimited)? Um, that's not MINE...

    Amazon's cloudy music service is filling up with every CD you ever bought, ready to play back on as many as 10 approved devices along with your MP3 collection. The service is called "AutoRip" and is US-only for the moment, but where available it creates digital versions of CDs in the cloud so as soon as the purchase is made …

    Media 10 Jan 18:27

  • Hybrid flash array maker Starboard bags biz trio

    Hired gurus in big mid-market showdown

    Starboard Storage is taking on three experienced execs to help it grow. Starboard, the re-named and re-energised Reldata, punts a hybrid flash+disk unified file and iSCSI-accessed storage array and has recruited: Tom Major, the ex-SVP of product management and business operations at Seagate, and he was at iSCSI array start-up …

    Storage 10 Jan 19:33

  • SAP claims speeds record with HANA Business Suite revolution

    Co-founder smiles at Ellison's discomfort

    SAP has announced a new version of its Business Suite that offers blindingly fast database reporting via HANA with the goal of three-second response times to transactional queries. "It's much better analytics, between ten and ten thousand times faster. I'm not bragging here that we achieved up to 250,000 times faster because …

    Software 10 Jan 21:12

  • All your audio, video kit is about to become OBSOLETE

    CES 2013 Deep-geek soothsayer predicts smart audio, Ultra HD eyewear, much more

    Although much of the audio and video technology packed into CES 2013's 1.9 million square feet of exhibition space is indeed impressive, one panelist at an emerging-technology conference session channeled a little 1974 BTO, essentially telling his audience that "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Rich Doherty, research director of …

    Hardware 10 Jan 21:43

  • Cray beats out SGI at German HPC consortium

    Climbing to 2.6 petaflops with a "Cascade" super

    The Höchstleistungsrechnen is going to have a different brand name and architecture on it at the Norddeutschem Verbund für Hoch- und Höchstleistungsrechnen (HLRN) supercomputing alliance in Northern Germany, now that Cray has beat out SGI for a big bad box that will have a peak theoretical performance in excess of 2 petaflops …

    HPC 10 Jan 22:02

  • Latest exoplanet discovery is a virtual CLONE of Earth

    Right size, right star, right orbit

    Astroboffins poring through data from NASA's Kepler telescope have spotted what they think might be the most Earth-like planet yet discovered. The object has a radius 1.5 times that of Earth, which lumps it into the class of extrasolar planets known as "super Earths." That's not so unusual, in and of itself; scientists …

    Science 10 Jan 22:53

  • Technology, bushfires and AM radio

    The connected life isnt' hugely helpful in the bushfire zone

    As Australia's heat-wave returns, I’ll be in the Blue Mountains in NSW, surrounded by eight hectares – around 20 acres – of mostly uncleared bush, contemplating both the benefits and shortcomings of modern emergency services communications. Here with two smartphones and a laptop with a mobile broadband connection, there are …

    Networks 10 Jan 23:06

  • First Swedish Pirate Bay server displayed by Computing Museum

    After some considerable tarting up

    The first server to host The Pirate Bay in Sweden has been cleaned up and put on display at the local Linköping Computer Museum. "Stockholm, in the year of 2004. In the home of Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, at his parent's place, this ordinary computer is running day and night," reads an inscription on the glass side of the machine …

    Servers 10 Jan 23:56