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31st January 2013 Archive

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  • RSA adds Big Data analytics to security service suite

    Finding needles in the haystack

    In just under a month, security folks are coming to San Francisco for the annual RSA show, and if Wednesday's announcement from the company is to go by, one of the major themes at conference will be Big Data. At a press conference at its Massachusetts headquarters, RSA unveiled its Security Analytics appliance that's designed …

    Security 31 Jan 00:17

  • First ‘three strikes’ decision handed down in NZ

    Insufficient evidence costs RIANZ its big win as court imposes tiny fine

    The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) is reaching for the porcine lipstick after its first “three strikes” win resulted in a tokenistic fine of a little over $NZ600. New Zealand’s “Skynet” law, which came into effect in November 2011, provides for fines of up to $NZ15,000 for infringements. However, in …

    Law 31 Jan 00:18

  • Citrix morphs from Windows app virtualizer to all app mobilizer

    Projecting a $3bn air kiss in 2013

    In its last quarter Citrix has blasted past analyst expectations and produced a very healthy set of results and predicting that revenues will hit the $3bn mark for the year. A decade ago, Citrix Systems was a Windows app virtualizer that existed largely at the mercy of Microsoft even though it has plenty of clever technology. …

    Virtualization 31 Jan 01:02

  • Microsoft dev tools to add Linux-style source code versioning

    Git support coming to VS2012, Team Foundation Server

    Microsoft's developer tools division has taken another step closer to the open source community, with the announcement that both Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio will soon incorporate support for decentralized source code version control using Git. Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry announced the new tools at the …

    Developer 31 Jan 02:13

  • Facebook reports revenues up 40% but Wall Street says 'meh'

    Mobile money up but margins are falling

    Mark Zuckerberg must be tearing at his hoodie after Facebook's shares dipped following the release of what are, on the face of it, very respectable quarterly results for his company. Revenues for Facebook's fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 stand at $1.585bn, up 40 per cent on this time last year, with advertising up 41 per cent …

    Financial News 31 Jan 02:14

  • BlackBerry bets fans are willing to upgrade skills

    First Look New Z10's slippery bottom needs a firm hand

    BlackBerry OS 10 is slick, fast, usable and oozes potential, but is sufficiently different from previous that users of older BlackBerries won't see an upgrade as a natural choice, based on what we've seen so far. That means the company's greatest strength – millions of users, many of them very enthusiastic – is somewhat …

    Phones 31 Jan 02:27

  • Snooping on movement can reveal smartphone PINs

    Accelerometer as attack vector

    It’s not the first time boffins have proposed the use of smartphone accelerometers as an attack vector, but it’s scarily efficient: with as few as five guesses, Swarthmore College researchers say they can use phone moments to reveal user PINs. As noted in his paper (PDF - Practicality of Accelerometer Side Channels on …

    Security 31 Jan 03:12

  • Great Firewall architects fingered for GitHub attack

    Crude man-in-the-middle attack followed White House petition

    The Chinese computer scientists who helped build the country’s infamous Great Firewall may have been responsible for a man-in-the-middle attack on users of GitHub after they were named and shamed on the social code sharing site. This is the theory put forward by GreatFire.org, a not-for-profit organisation which monitors and …

    Security 31 Jan 04:34

  • Forget cupcakes: What you find on Facebook and Twitter is TARTS

    Social marketing - that poke could go viral

    Sex trade workers have taken to using Facebook and Twitter as a 21st Century phone box by posting calling cards on the networks that show them clearly touting for business. A Times report found hundreds of public pages being used by prostitutes and escort agencies. In some instances their names, contact details and prices were …

    Networks 31 Jan 06:03

  • Support for RHEL 3 ends one year from … now!

    Upgrade time for laggards

    Red Hat has let it be known that by this time next year it will wash its hands of the third version of its Enterprise Linux. In a notification sent to customers and CERTs, the company has pointed out that its product lifecycle for Red Hat Enterpise Linux 3 is about to run out of life. The product debuted in October 2003, …

    Operating Systems 31 Jan 06:07

  • Game off: No end to official China console ban

    Unofficially though you can buy 'em anywhere

    Rumours earlier this week that China was about to overturn a long-standing ban on the sale of gaming consoles appear to have been premature, after the government apparently denied it was planning to lift the ban. A source at the Ministry of Culture had told state-run paper the China Daily that it was “reviewing the policy” and …

    Games 31 Jan 06:31

  • Report: DDoS attacks now MORE ANGRY, complex and targeted

    Less like the Hulk, more like Iron Man

    The days when attackers relied on sheer bandwidth volume alone to knock out websites are over, with miscreants increasingly using application-layer and multi-vector attacks. The latest annual study from DDoS attack protection company Arbor Networks reports that 46 per cent of respondents said they had experienced multi-layer …

    Security 31 Jan 06:59

  • TodDANG! Rampaging monkeys storm Indonesian village

    Seven people injured during surprise attack

    The residents of an Indonesian village were left badly shaken yesterday after a violent incursion by wild monkeys left seven people injured. According to the Jakarta Post, a troop of around 10 simians stormed Toddang Pulu in the district of Sidenreng Rappang, South Sulawesi, "entering homes and causing panic". One 16-year-old …

    Bootnotes 31 Jan 08:04

  • Comp Sci becomes 'fourth science' in English Baccalaureate

    On a par with Physics for spotty Blighty blighters

    Education Minister Michael Gove has added computer science into the new English Baccalaureate as a "fourth science", putting it on a par with Physics, Biology and Chemistry, the Department of Education announced today. Computer Science is the only extra subject to make it onto the list of core academic subjects that comprise …

    Government 31 Jan 08:36

  • BBC: What YOU spent on our lawyers in Secret Climate 28 debacle

    The only UK govt agency with a blanket FOIA exemption

    The BBC has revealed the cost to the licence-fee payer of its surreal legal fight to keep a publicly available list from the public. Or at least a small part of the cost we all paid in the affair which became known as "28Gate". Regular readers will no doubt recall that 28Gate saw the Beeb attempt to keep secret the names of 28 …

    Science 31 Jan 08:59

  • Reg Hardware Awards 2012: The Winners...

    ...and The Loser

    Almost 17,000 votes were cast by Reg readers when we asked you all to name the best - and the worst - tech products of 2012. We asked you to tell us which kit you though most warranted a Reg Hardware Award from shortlists in a variety of categories: laptop, tablet, e-reader, home entertainment device and smartphone, but we …

    reghardware 31 Jan 09:02

  • LOHAN teases with quick flash of spaceplane

    Our rocket-powered Vulture 2 design for your viewing pleasure

    It's with a portentous drumroll and fanfare of trumpets that we reveal today the design of our Vulture 2 spaceplane - the rocket-powered vehicle at the centre of our audacious Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) ballocket mission. At the end of 2011, a heavyweight team of Southampton University postgraduates climbed …

    SPB 31 Jan 09:31

  • 'Gaia' Lovelock: Wind turbines 'may become like Easter Island statues'

    Blasts Green 'fundamentalists' destroying civilisation

    Former climate change alarmist Dr James Lovelock, famous for popularising the "Gaia" metaphor, continues his journey back to rationality. Lovelock is objecting to a "medium sized" (240ft high) erection planned for his neighbourhood in North Devon by infamous windfarm operator Ecotricity. The UK currently has 3,000 onshore …

    Security 31 Jan 10:02

  • Java open-source frameworks 'pose risk' to biz - report

    Hibernate and don't mingle your Java and C/C++, warns software analyst

    Open-source programming frameworks revolutionised Java development during the last decade, but not enough people know how to use them properly. That’s according to the CRASH Special Report by CAST that sampled 496 applications with 152 million lines of code and found most apps had been misconfigured. This increased the degree …

    Management 31 Jan 10:19

  • Happy dealers, solid managers. So what's wrong at HP?

    Whitman: A scythe-wielding Canute on a sinking ship

    What’s going on at HP? CEO Meg Whitman has pulled out the scythe and is whipping it through the troubled hardware titan, chopping out the weak and underperforming bits and clearing a path back to a market-leading position. But trouble keeps cropping up. The latest batch came in when HP cried foul play over its $10.3bn of …

    The Channel 31 Jan 11:04

  • BT inks 2 more gov-funded broadband deals

    But work WON'T be done 'til 2016

    BT bagged two more government-subsidised broadband contracts on Wednesday, when it confirmed that work on those separate rural projects would not be completed until 2016. A pattern is now clearly emerging that shows communications minister Ed Vaizey was right to describe the Ministry of Fun's target to ensure all Brits get at …

    Broadband 31 Jan 11:18

  • Fusion-io nosedives as Facebook, Apple finish scoffing flash and chips

    Shares tumble on weak Q3 outlook

    Flash memory maker Fusion-io's revenue is forecast to decline by 30 per cent from last quarter to the next, ending its meteoric growth. Sales in the company's Q2 of fiscal 2013, which ended on 31 December, rose 43 per cent year on year to $120.6m, an 8 per cent rise on Q1 and a record for the company. Profits of this latest …

    Storage 31 Jan 11:42

  • I watched Excel meet 1-2-3, and beat it fair and square

    Lotus relaxed, then blew it

    I remember Lotus 1-2-3 very well. It really was as widely used as all the history-of-Lotus stories claim it was. In fact, back around, say, 1984, when almost no software package had a monopoly, Lotus already had its particular niche locked up tightly. That’s right: WordPerfect was still a serious competitor to Microsoft Word …

    Applications 31 Jan 12:03

  • How to destroy a brand-new Samsung laptop: Boot Linux on it

    Motherboard DEATH alert. Suddenly Windows 8 doesn't look so bad

    Linux users accidentally bricked their new Samsung laptops by booting their favourite open-source OS on the shiny computers. A kernel driver crashes on Sammy machines when users start up from an Ubuntu 12 USB key - although other distributions may be at risk - giving them the dreaded black screen of no activity whatsoever. …

    Laptops 31 Jan 12:16

  • Google submits remedy proposals to EU antitrust chief - ICOMP

    Updated 11th hour response from Mountain View, apparently

    Google has submitted a new round of proposals to the competition wing of the European Commission, which has fingered the search giant for possible "dominance abuse", according to ICOMP. It would appear that its latest effort to offer a remedy to antitrust concerns laid out last year by Commissioner Joaquin Almunia came at the …

    Government 31 Jan 12:42

  • New York Times probes China's Premier, gets hacked by Chinese

    Gray Lady's passwords, emails raided in four-month assault

    Hackers "persistently" attacked The New York Times to swipe its passwords after the newspaper claimed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's family had amassed a vast fortune. During the four-month assault, miscreants linked to China's military broke into the email accounts of the NYT's Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza and former …

    Media 31 Jan 12:53

  • Power-mad HPC fans told: No exascale for you - for at least 8 years

    And here's why...

    I recently stumbled upon a transcript from a very recent interview with HPC luminaries Jack Dongarra (University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge, Top500 list) and Horst Simon (deputy director at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.) The topic? Nothing less than the future of supercomputers. These are pretty good guys to ask, since they’re …

    HPC 31 Jan 13:07

  • Nokia tries its luck with a sub-£150 Win Phone 8: The Lumia 620

    But will the colours distract Apple from the rounded corners?

    Nokia’s latest budget smartphone brings the price of admission to Windows Phone 8 below the £150 mark. From today O2 will sell the Lumia 620 at £149.99 on pay-as-you-go, a bargain considering what’s inside. The network will also chuck in an additional free colour cover. Other operators will also offer the 620: Three and Virgin …

    Mobile 31 Jan 13:24

  • Boffins prep tasty data-cramming 3D metal-sandwich chip

    Turns your world upside-down

    Boffins have constructed a microprocessor architecture capable of packing in up to 1,000 times more data than today’s generation of processors. Crucially, the data in the chips is recorded and stored using the spin of electrons. Physicists at the University of Cambridge have built a 3D microchip that crams data into a three- …

    Science 31 Jan 13:43

  • Surface left on shelves as world+dog slurps up small slates

    Knife brought to gunfight, etc, etc

    Half a million Microsoft Surface tablets may be gathering dust on shop shelves, it has been claimed. Market watcher IHS iSuppli reckons Microsoft shipped 1.25 million Surface tablets into the resale channel during Q4 2012. However, only 55 to 60 per cent of those Windows RT-based devices were purchased by punters. That means …

    Laptops 31 Jan 14:14

  • Official: Fandroids are smarter/tighter* than iPhone fanbois

    * Delete as appropriate depending on mobile OS allegiance

    Startling figures show that iPhone owners pay bigger phone bills - but the stats are silent as to whether that's because they make a lot of calls or are just too stupid to notice. Almost 60 per cent of iPhone users pay more than $100 a month, according to a survey in the US by Consumer Intelligence Research. Meanwhile, a shade …

    Mobile 31 Jan 14:42

  • Car dashboards get Nokia HERE without a phone in sight

    Google might have a Kai but Nokia is driving Toyota

    Nokia's recently rebranded mapping platform HERE will be slipped in front of the wheel on Toyota cars from next year, staking a claim in the next mobile battleground. The deal with Toyota only covers vehicles in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, for the moment, but should see cars packing Nokia's maps, and location-based …

    Applications 31 Jan 15:02

  • Apple still top for slab-fondlers despite FLOOD of Xmas tablets

    Samsung up, ereaders down in IDC quarterly figures - IDC

    Apple is still riding clear at the top of the global tablet market, though it has lost 8 per cent of its share of sales since the same time last year. Its tablet rivals, meanwhile, experienced triple-digit growth compared to the final quarter of 2011. This is according to the latest stats from IDC, which showed Samsung and …

    Tablets 31 Jan 15:34

  • Commentards Ahoy! How about a Petabyte of storage?

    Let's do some data recycling

    A little experiment from us: we are rounding up comments on a couple of articles - and turning them into articles. Some might call this stretching the material - social media types might call it amplification. But we think that not all of our commentards are mad - and many have very interesting insights to share. Today, we mine …

    Storage 31 Jan 15:35

  • WORLD temporarily FREED from BURDEN of TWITTER!

    Productivity surges ahead as some work finally gets done

    Twitter is broken for an unknown number of its 500-million-strong userbase. The site's over-capacity Fail Whale is greeting many people who are trying to access the site, while others are finding the service to be extremely slow. A spokeswoman at the privately-held company confirmed to The Register (by email) that there was …

    Cloud 31 Jan 15:46

  • 'Silent but deadly' Java security update breaks legacy apps - dev

    Oh man, that's foul ...

    An application developer reports that the latest Java 7 update "silently" deletes Java 6, breaking applications in the process. Java 7 update 11 was released two weeks ago to deal with an unpatched vulnerability which had gone mainstream with its incorporation into cybercrook toolkits such as the Blackhole Exploit Kit in the …

    Security 31 Jan 16:19

  • NHS IT bods 'walk out' in pay row with crashed UK tech giant 2e2

    Outsourcer's collapse hits hospital tech dept, claim insiders

    A number of contractors from collapsed UK tech giant 2e2 refused to turn up for work in NHS IT today after their January pay was withheld, it is claimed. Debt-crippled 2e2 Group went into administration this week and put staff wages under "review", but its new handlers assured health service bosses that hospitals are a top …

    The Channel 31 Jan 16:54

  • Apple to stop European shipments of Mac Pro on March 1?

    Replacement may – or may not – be in the works

    Apple will discontinue shipping its long-neglected Mac Pro tower to the EU, EU candidates, and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member states on March first, sources tell 9to5Mac. According to that "Apple Intelligence" website, Cupertino has informed resellers that the Mac Pro is being retired from the aforementioned …

    Hardware 31 Jan 18:48

  • Dell control freaks its own hardware stacks, VMware and Microsoft hypervisors

    New SAP HANA appliances based on 'active infrastructure'

    The ownership of Dell, the company, may be in flux, but Dell's aspirations in the software business are clear, and with the launch of a new control freak for Dell Active Infrastructure integrated systems, Dell wants companies to use its system and hypervisor management tools instead of alternatives from hypervisor makers such as …

    Servers 31 Jan 19:48

  • Senators propose permanent ban on internet sales and access tax

    Except for your local collector of course

    Two members of the Senate Commerce Committee have introduced a mini-bill that would permanently block both taxes on internet access and "multiple and discriminatory taxes" against e-commerce. "E-commerce is thriving largely because the internet is free from burdensome tax restrictions. Unfortunately, tax collectors see it as a …

    Policy 31 Jan 19:51

  • Customer service rep fired for writing game that mocks callers

    Canadian tax office has sense of humor failure

    David Gallant, a worker at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and gaming hobbyist, has been fired for lampooning dealings with customers during his day job in a game called I Get This Call Every Day. "Because I've become nothing more than a numb meat popsicle I've decided to make a game about my day job," he said on his website …

    Games 31 Jan 20:42

  • Boffins propose satnav tracking for 'KILLER KOALAS'

    Museum, journal, perpetuate man-masticating marsupial monster myth

    A confession: when Australians meet tourists worried their holidays will be disturbed by dangerous animals – sharks, spiders, snakes, crocodiles and jellyfish are all prevalent here in Vulture South – they often slip in a mention of a little-known but very menacing marsupial: the drop bear. The drop bear is, according to this …

    Bootnotes 31 Jan 21:18

  • Competition watchdog seeks NBN forecast data

    Access debate rolls on

    The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) is setting itself the task of analysing the revenue forecasts for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), and has written to NBN Co requesting the release of a bunch of data to help. The request is in this letter, (PDF) and is part of the ongoing debate over NBN …

    Policy 31 Jan 22:07

  • Italian 'Eurora' supercomputer pushes the green envelope

    Besting Cray and IBM in the energy efficiency game

    The "Eurora" supercomputer that was just fired up in Italy may not be large, but it has taken the lead in energy efficiency over designs from big HPC vendors like Cray and IBM. The new machine was built by Eurotech, a server maker with HPC expertise that is based on Amaro, Italy, in conjunction with graphics chip and GPU …

    HPC 31 Jan 22:08

  • Microsoft: Old Internet Explorer is terrible and 'we want to help'

    New tools help web devs find problem spots

    As every web developer knows, one of the biggest headaches of building modern, standards-compliant web pages is getting them to look and work right in Internet Explorer. Well, coders, apparently Microsoft feels your pain, because it has released a new set of free tools to help you do just that. The tools, collectively dubbed …

    Developer 31 Jan 23:17

  • ESA proposes 3D printing on the moon

    Instant lunar base, just add moon rock

    One of the challenges with constructing a moon base is the extravagant expenditure needed to boost the necessary materials from Earth. The European Space Agency is now considering an alternative proposal: feeding moon rock to a 3D printer. Architecture firm Foster + Partners has designed a concept demonstration suggesting it …

    Science 31 Jan 23:24

  • SGI not selling off NUMAlink – so forget that idea

    Swings to a profit in the December quarter on UV, ICE X sales

    Thanks to belt-tightening and the shifting of $50m low-margin deals out another quarter, supercomputer and dense rack server maker Silicon Graphics turned in a relatively decent second quarter of its fiscal year 2013. Two weeks ago, when it was participating in the Needham Growth Conference, SGI released preliminary financial …

    Servers 31 Jan 23:35