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15th January 2013 Archive

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  • Siri, will Chrome's new speech features kill you?

    Google bakes Web Speech API into browser beta

    Arguments that WIMPs' (windows, icons, menus, pointers) status as the dominant user interface paradigm are under challenge like never before just got a little stronger, after Google announced that a new beta of its Chrome browser will adopt the Web Speech API. The API is a W3C initiative that makes it possible for browsers to …

    Applications 15 Jan 00:23

  • RIM adds 15,000 new BlackBerry 10 apps in one weekend

    Crisp $100 bills waved in devs' faces

    Research in Motion's BlackBerry App World store gained a healthy new crop of apps over the weekend, thanks to the company's "Port-a-thon" promotion, which offered developers $100 apiece to bring their existing apps to the BlackBerry 10 platform. In a Twitter post late Saturday night, Alec Saunders, RIM's VP of developer …

    Developer 15 Jan 00:39

  • Hyperspeed travel looks wrong: Leicester students

    Movie-makers ignore the Doppler shift

    Sorry, special effects people, you got it wrong: if the Millennium Falcon can actually do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs*, Han Solo and his passengers won’t see the stars stretching by. In fact, they won’t see the stars at all. In addition to slaughtering the inhabitants of the solar system at their destination, the …

    Science 15 Jan 02:14

  • DDN grabs first slab of 100PB storage cloud

    Australia's Research Data Storage Infrastructure is coming online

    Data Direct Networks (DDN) will provide storage for a node of Australia's Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI), a $AUD50m project aimed at creating a pool of storage the nation's researchers can use to house large quantities of data, the better to feed it into the nation's supercomputers and subject it other forms of …

    Storage 15 Jan 02:52

  • Swedish school puts Minecraft on the curriculum

    Those are some lucky students

    Whereas most schoolchildren have to sneak in a gaming fix at school on the sly, one Swedish hall of education has made playing Minecraft compulsory. The Viktor Rydberg school in Stockholm introduced the gaming lessons to inspire creative thought. Minecraft, which was developed by the delightfully named Swedish programmer …

    Games 15 Jan 03:22

  • IRENA launches global renewable energy atlas

    Shines a light on wind and solar to help spur adoption

    The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has kicked off its third assembly in Abu Dhabi with the launch of an open-access renewable energy atlas. The atlas, available here, currently charts solar and wind resources and infrastructure. IRENA hopes that a single resource for renewable energy data will help countries “ …

    Science 15 Jan 03:38

  • China's Android users warned of giant botnet

    One million infected by MKD Trojan, and counting

    Security researchers in China are warning Android users to be on their guard after claiming to have discovered a million-strong botnet lurking on the platform. The Android.Troj.mdk Trojan, first spotted by security firm Kingsoft Duba back in early 2011, is thought to be hidden in over 7,000 apps today, including many popular …

    Security 15 Jan 06:07

  • Singapore allows pre-crime strikes against online crooks

    Hack first, ask questions later, to protect vital infrastructure

    The Singaporean government has passed amendments to the city-state’s Computer Misuse Act, renaming it the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, and granting itself powers to take proactive measures against a potential cyber threat before it disrupts critical infrastructure. The Ministry of Home Affairs released a statement on …

    Policy 15 Jan 06:19

  • DoJ to Kim Dotcom: We never asked you to retain files

    US authorities rubbish entrapment claims

    Days ahead of what The Reg has been told will be an “unforgettable evening” at the Dotcom mansion to launch Kim Dotcom’s new Mega service, US authorities have refuted the brash entrepreneur’s insistence that the files he is being prosecuted for hosting were only there because Dotcom was asked to assist with other piracy …

    Law 15 Jan 07:01

  • Titsup Windows Phone 8 orders user to cram 'boot disc' in mobe

    Pic Baffling 'black touchscreen of death' emerges on web

    A Windows Phone 8-using wag claims he provoked his Microsoft handset into asking for an installation DISC - with a boot manager error message familiar to anyone who's wrestled with Windows NT. At least it didn't do a blue screen of death The error is by no means standard and - we're told - only generated by mucking about …

    Developer 15 Jan 07:03

  • Hooking offshore wind farms into UK grid will HIKE bills, MPs warn

    'Leccy supply deals will bankroll investors, bankrupt us

    It is "unlikely" that a new licensing system intended to connect offshore wind farms to the national grid will save consumers money, an influential committee of MPs has warned. In a report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that the offshore transmission operator (OFTO) licensing regime could instead "lead to higher …

    Government 15 Jan 07:32

  • Satnav blunder sends Belgian granny 1,450km to Croatia

    Quick trip to the station ends in two-day odyssey

    A Belgian granny who planned an 80km car trip to Brussels ended up in Croatia, after ill-advisedly obeying her satnav's orders to traverse Europe. Sabine Moreau, 67, intended to drive from her home in Solre-sur-Sambre to pick up a chum from the Belgian capital's Brussel-Noord station, but was instead directed eastwards on a …

    Bootnotes 15 Jan 08:01

  • Today's antivirus apps ARE 'worse at slaying hidden threats'

    But they're not as rubbish as those other researchers said

    The effectiveness of antivirus products has declined, according to tests by German testing outfit AV-Test.org. AV-Test put 25 antivirus products for home users and eight corporate endpoint protection software applications through their paces in November and December 2012. Only an average of 92 per cent of the zero-day attacks …

    Security 15 Jan 08:33

  • Microsoft ends Mac users' Windows Phone 8 misery

    Stone the crows, fanbois can actually use their mobes now

    Microsoft has updated its Mac OS X mobile software so that owners of new Windows Phone 8 handsets can synchronise music and photos with their Apple computers consistently. An update for the Windows Phone client for Macs appeared on the Apple App Store on 31 October, but while Windows Phone 7.5 devices continued to sync up just …

    Mobile 15 Jan 09:02

  • Smooth criminals spared the clink for hacking Sony's Jacko archive

    100 hours of unpaid graft for music raid. Now who's bad?

    Two hackers were spared jail after admitting breaking into Sony's network and lifting unreleased Michael Jackson songs among 7,900 other files. James Marks, 27, of Daventry, Northants, and James McCormick, 26, of Blackpool, also swiped songs by acts including Elvis, Beyonce, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears as well as …

    Media 15 Jan 09:18

  • BT's shock new wheeze: Make phone calls from smartphones

    There is method in this VoIP app madness

    BT customers can now make calls over the internet from a smartphone app and have the cost added to their landline bill. The national telco's SmartTalk service is available for iOS and Android, and lets a landline customer register up to four users who can make calls that are added to that landline's bill, or deducted from the …

    Mobile 15 Jan 09:42

  • Ex-Xsigo CEO grabs reins at Brocade: Will he sell or will he grow?

    Lloyd Carney replaces Michael Klayko

    Ex-Xsigo CEO Lloyd Carney has been given the Brocade CEO spot, replacing long-time incumbent Michael Klayko, who signalled his retirement last August. Carney formerly headed up Xsigo, which built technology to virtualise data centre network fabrics across InfiniBand and was bought by Oracle for an undisclosed amount in July …

    Storage 15 Jan 10:14

  • IBM brains ponder universe, say kids will go nuts for STEAMPUNK

    Data-crunching beasts crack key problems facing humanity

    Big Blue wants to show off its ability to chew on Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to predict the next big mainstream fashion: steampunk. So now you know what your kids will want for presents this year: don't be surprised if they want to suddenly build dirigibles instead of rockets and ask for a steam-powered, gear-driven …

    Management 15 Jan 10:38

  • Just who is the mystery gobbler of flash upstart GridIron?

    And did they pay $300m for the TurboCharger maker?

    GridIron Systems, a SAN accelerating startup, has been bought by a mystery buyer for an unknown amount. The company builds the TurboCharger, a DRAM and flash cache box with software to automatically move the most-wanted data from the backing SAN into its cache store. GridIron's TurboCharger is also bundled with NetApp's E- …

    Storage 15 Jan 11:05

  • Amazon-bashed HMV calls in administrators, seeks buyer

    Slightly battered gramophone, dog - only to good home

    HMV sought insolvency protection last night, becoming the second big name retailer on the battered British High Street to come close to defeat in the first few weeks of 2013. This comes after the music retail giant spent several years struggling to turn its business around as customers have increasingly shifted to shopping …

    Financial News 15 Jan 11:25

  • Flash pioneer STEC invests in ZFS zealot Nexenta

    Open storage software firm gets cash injection

    Sources close to the situation have revealed that solid state memory drive manufacturer STEC has invested in ZFS storage firm Nexenta, substantially too. We're told that it seems like a curious play for STEC since a typical ZFS deployment only uses a couple flash drives for the L2ARC and ZIL. One can only imagine that STEC has …

    Financial News 15 Jan 11:49

  • Media barons threaten to spike UK.gov's audacious copyright grab

    Instagram-like gobble of pics and code dragged into courts

    A major legal challenge threatens to put a spike through the Conservative-LibDem coalition's radical overhaul of copyright, including the proposed Instagram-like land grab of photos, source code and other work. Two years ago, the Prime Minister launched the so-called "Google Review" to investigate making the UK's copyright …

    Law 15 Jan 12:15

  • Privacy winds blow through Clouds towards Switzerland

    Opinion Safe haven guaranteed?

    Cloud services are one of the major changes to the way companies use computing services, but the weather may be changing as a consequence of increasing activity of European Data Protection watchdogs. Whereas US citizens and companies have to contend with ever decreasing rights to privacy, EU companies will come under pressure …

    Hosting 15 Jan 12:19

  • Former PayPal, eBay hackers strap a rocket onto MongoDB

    NoSQL cloud runs on flashy hydrazine

    If ObjectRocket told you all of the secrets behind its bespoke cloud for running the MongoDB data store super-fast, then it would have two choices: It would either have to kill you or hire you and make you keep the secret. Alternatively, you could just use the ObjectRocket cloud to host your NoSQL data and not care about how it …

    Cloud 15 Jan 12:29

  • Sheffield ISP: You don't need a whole IPv4 address to yourself, right?

    PlusNet seeks volunteers - just for a tick, until IPv6

    Facing the shortage of IPv4 addresses, and glacial adoption of IPv6, UK ISP PlusNet is looking for volunteers among its customers to test out sharing the IPv4 addresses on its network. The technique being tested by PlusNet uses a NAT (Network Address Translator) to share a single internet-facing IP address between multiple …

    Hosting 15 Jan 12:46

  • Hortonworks adds Ambari control freak to Hadoopery

    Downloads and business are booming for open source data munching

    Hortonworks, the Yahoo! spinoff that has emerged as the third supplier of commercial support for the Apache Hadoop big-data muncher, is ramping up its Data Platform to the 1.2 release, which includes better security, enhancements to HCatalog data sharing and HBase database services that ride on top of Hadoop, and integration of …

    Cloud 15 Jan 13:00

  • UK falls behind in global graphene patent race

    Chinese physicists have already outlapped the lot

    Physicists all over the world are scrambling to patent their research on the various different aspects of miracle substance graphene, with Chinese researchers leading the field. China is the country with the most patents for the carbon that's a hundred times stronger than steel, while Korean giant Samsung is the top company …

    Science 15 Jan 13:19

  • WTF is... WebRTC?

    Feature Voice and video communications game changer

    Last week’s release of Firefox 18.0 saw the not-for-profit browser gaining “preliminary” support for a technology called WebRTC. Folk downloading the browser afresh or updating from a previous release may have been keener on Firefox’s new support for Apple’s “retina” displays or the browser’s promised JavaScript performance leap …

    Networks 15 Jan 13:44

  • Belgian watchdog barks at Apple: Take care when you flog that warranty

    EU consumers need to know their rights

    A Belgian consumer group is taking Apple to court for providing customers with "unclear" information on product guarantees. By law, all electronics sold in Europe are required to have a two-year warranty. But Apple sells its own extended warranty, AppleCare Protection Plan, which offers an extension to its one-year limited …

    Law 15 Jan 14:03

  • Ex-Doctor Who babe Karen Gillan touts dodgy diet pills in twit gaffe

    Amy Pond actress tackles new kind of monster - hackers

    The Twitter account of former Doctor Who actress Karen Gillan was compromised to tout dodgy weight-loss pills to baffled fans. A series of links posted by @KarenGillan2 suggested the Scottish star, who played the time lord's companion Amy Pond, had found a means to rapidly shed pounds without the need for some Adipose …

    Media 15 Jan 14:28

  • HP dangles axe over Autonomy salesmen, cash wad over coders

    70 layoffs planned in push for mobe video software

    HP plans to lay off sales staff at Brit software subsidiary Autonomy while seeking to shore up the small biz's R&D. An internal memo penned by Robert Youngjohns, an exec hired from Microsoft last September, started with the good news first and claimed the tech titan is pumping more cash into software development overall. "As …

    The Channel 15 Jan 15:02

  • Mysterious Facebook product plumps up shares on Wall Street

    Fat goose or slim pickings coming later today?

    Facebook's stock went north on Wall Street - reaching $32 a share yesterday for the first time since July 2011 - basking in the glow of the free content ad network's imminent product announcement. The company sent out invites to the press last week to "come and see what we're building". Surprisingly, the details of what will …

    Media 15 Jan 15:29

  • Grey Matter cashes in on solving software licensing mysteries

    Sales and profits up in fiscal 2012

    Grey Matter, a specialist in the dark arts of software licensing, had a decent fiscal 2012 with both the top and bottom lines rising. The Devon-based reseller saw turnover climb by more than a fifth to £26.8m in the year ended 30 June with operating profit rising 15.7 per cent to £793,000 and net profit up 17 per cent to £600, …

    The Channel 15 Jan 15:35

  • Google denies smacking Botswanan ass

    Street View donkey outrage shakes cyberspace

    Google has strenuously denied that it is responsible for the death of a Botswanan donkey after concerned netizens discovered the poor animal, which appeared to have been floored by a Street View vehicle. Botswana got the Orwellian black Opel treatment last year, and images of the country grabbed by Mountain View went live at …

    Bootnotes 15 Jan 16:03

  • Verizon puffs up Terremark cloud over London and Dallas

    Offers per VM pricing, Federal-grade security to enterprises

    It has been two years since telecom behemoth Verizon shelled out $1.4bn to buy cloud computing partner Terremark. And since that time, this poster child for VMware's vCloud wares has been pretty quiet as corporate types work to absorb it into the telco and realize the $500m in "synergies" – that means cross-selling and cost- …

    Cloud 15 Jan 16:32

  • Latest Java patch is not enough, warns US gov: Axe plugins NOW

    Metasploit boss says Oracle needs TWO years to make everything good

    Security experts advise users to not run Java in their web browsers despite a patch from Oracle that mitigates a widely exploited security vulnerability. The database giant issued an emergency out-of-band patch on Sunday, but despite this the US Department of Homeland Security continues to warn citizens to disable Java plugins …

    Security 15 Jan 17:02

  • Live blog: Facebook's 'screw you' to Google revealed at last

    Zuckerberg's big unveil as it happens. And, no, it's not a phone

    Facebook has called the world's press down to its headquarters in Menlo Park, and El Reg has braved the Death Race 2000 zone that is California's freeway system at commute time to be here. Speculation has been running wild about what the Behoodied One will announce. Theories have included a Facebook smartphone or tablet, an …

    Business 15 Jan 18:02

  • Storage glitches fell Australian supercomputers

    DDN and SGI find fix after faulty firmware fingered for Fornax fail

    Supercomputers at two Australian research organisations have experienced substantial downtime after glitches hit their storage area networks. West Australia’s iVEC experienced an outage, detailed here, that saw its Data Direct Networks (DDN) array and the 1152-core Fornax machine unavailable for around four days. iVEC’s …

    HPC 15 Jan 21:00

  • NASA snaps pics of China's 'Airpocalypse' pollution disaster

    Images Bad from orbit, worse on the ground, shades of London '52

    China's capital city, Beijing, is suffering from some of the worst air pollution imaginable – and NASA has the images to prove it. The lung-clogging cloud enveloping Beijing was measured by the US embassy on January 14 and found to contain fine, airborne particulate matter at a volume of 291 micrograms per cubic meter of air. …

    Science 15 Jan 21:05

  • Google ordered to identify bloggers

    Australian defamation case a headache for Mountain View

    Google’s woes at the hands of Australian courts continue, with the State of South Australia's District Court ordering the Chocolate Factory to hand over the identities of anonymous bloggers in a defamation case. Former Australian Football League player (that's Australian Rules, not soccer) player Shane Radbone sought the …

    Law 15 Jan 21:36

  • Microsoft control freaks Server 2012 clouds with System Center SP1

    Wraps up Azure cloud smarts for service providers

    Redmond is pushing out a Service Pack 1 update to System Center to get all of the functionality it has been talking about out the door. It was only last September when Windows Server 2012 was launched with much fanfare and the combination of System Center 2012, Microsoft's server and hypervisor control freak, was billed as " …

    Cloud 15 Jan 21:51

  • Long-delayed Fedora Linux 18 arrives at last

    'Spherical Cow' brings updates for desktop, cloud, and more

    The latest version of the popular Fedora Linux distribution has finally been released, just one week later than the already-delayed ship date that was announced in November. Fedora 18, codenamed "Spherical Cow" by its developers, was originally due to arrive on November 6, but a number of thorny problems caused the final …

    Operating Systems 15 Jan 22:32

  • Empire says ‘primitive’ Earth not ready for Death Star

    Imperial Press Release strikes back against Obama's Death Star decree

    The Galactic Empire has welcomed the Obama administration’s decision not to build a Death Star. In an press release issued by the Imperial Centre on Coruscant (aka the Star Wars blog), the Empire labels earth a “tiny, aggressive planet” and says the petition calling for a Death Star to be built were “bellicose demands”. The …

    Bootnotes 15 Jan 23:07