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4th February 2013 Archive

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  • Analyst says vendors offer pretend reference customers

    Microsoft's 'Contoso' may be more real than some users

    Gartner senior research analyst Jarod Greene has alleged vendors sometimes suggest he call reference customers that may not exist. In a blog post, Greene offers the following three examples of odd things that happen when he asks for customer references: ”I’ve been sent emails from Analyst Relations people that brag about …

    Management 4 Feb 01:16

  • Blobs that swarm spark ‘it’s alive’ hypegasm

    The mathematics of flocking

    A group of scientists led by New York University’s Jérémie Palacci has demonstrated the swarming behaviour of clickbait headline-writers by showing off inanimate objects that swarm a little like living cells. It’s not even close to life – as Palacci himself tells New Scientist, “even though the particles have no social …

    Science 4 Feb 01:44

  • Euro boffins plan supercomputer to SIMULATE HUMAN BRAIN

    €1.19b for in-silico experiments to build robots driven by simulated people

    The European Commission has selected the Human Brain Project (HBP) as one of its Future and Emerging Technologies and will send it up to €1.19b over ten years so it can build a supercomputer capable of simulating the human brain. The HBP wants to build a simulated brain because we don't know enough about our grey matter. The …

    Science 4 Feb 04:03

  • Schmidt slams China as world's most prolific hacker

    Google exec chairman has nothing to lose in book-based rant

    Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has strongly criticised China, claiming the country is the world’s most prolific hacker of foreign firms and predicting that its actions will increasingly drive Western tech vendors closer to their governments. The remarks came in a new book, The New Digital Age, which the Wall Street …

    Security 4 Feb 05:18

  • Under cap-and-trade, flying is greener than taking the bus

    Don't bother saving 'leccy either: It'll have no effect

    Under so-called "cap and trade" schemes designed to reduce carbon emissions, individuals will actually be acting more green-righteously by taking the plane rather than the bus, according to new research. Dr Grischa Perino of the University of East Anglia uses the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) - a typical cap …

    Science 4 Feb 05:59

  • Nordic telco CEO strolls in aftermath of Uzbek spectrum doodah

    Under the table doings with Presidente's daughter: Bad

    Lars Nyberg resigned as CEO of TeliaSonera, the main telco of Sweden and Finland, following accusations that he and the board failed to properly investigate the Uzbekistani business with whom TeleSonera worked when expanding into that country. Nordic lawyers Mannheimer Swartling carried out the investigation, at TeliaSonera's …

    Mobile 4 Feb 06:26

  • Twitter clients stay signed in with pre-breach passwords

    OAuth means apps can connect despite reset of passwords made unsafe by breach

    Twitter has detected a breach and suggested 250,000 users change their passwords. Yet users who heed that advice will still find that apps using the Twitter API, including the company's own, allow access to the service without asking users to enter the new password. Reg readers and hacks in Vulture South, our Australian …

    Security 4 Feb 06:56

  • UK minister: 'There must be a limit to what the gov knows about its people'

    Justice Minister Tom McNally talks to The Register

    Any new British privacy law will have to protect citizens' privacy from the government as much as from the media. That's according to UK Justice Minister Tom McNally, who was speaking on Data Protection Day at an event organised by the Information Commissioner's Office. McNally discussed the new defamation and privacy …

    Government 4 Feb 07:01

  • Brit boffins GANG-RESEARCH tiny LEDs for 1Gbps network

    Itsy bitsy teenie weenie LEDs to go all beamy

    A consortium of UK universities have banded together to spend some government cash building very small LEDs with a view to creating broadcast networks capable of hitting 1Gbps. The team, led by the University of Strathclyde and taking contributions from research units at Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and St Andrews, plans to …

    Science 4 Feb 08:04

  • BT to end traffic throttling - claims capacity is FAT

    'Totally' devoted to you. BUT always remember to read small print

    BT has claimed that it will kill off traffic management on its broadband service and stop capping usage limits on all but its entry-level products. From now until early June, its "Totally Unlimited Broadband" offering will be applied to BT's 16Mbps copper service for £16 a month, while Infinity customers can get their mitts on …

    Broadband 4 Feb 08:28

  • Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers

    Product Round-up The shape of things to come

    You may not know why but you probably want a 3D printer. These are intrinsically cool devices: A mix of engineering, electrical engineering, material science, chemistry, electronics and software. As an emerging technology you need to understand a bit of all of these to get the most from a hobbyist device, just as early …

    Hardware 4 Feb 09:00

  • No solace in view for Quantum

    Analysis Company struggling break free of red tape ink

    Is Quantum going to surprise us all and not have a fourth quarter drop in revenues after climbing out of a trough since its fiscal 2013 year started? Are we going to see the same old, same old pattern or are Gacek's gang going to break out of the box they are in? Quantum sells disk and tape data protection gear, data …

    Storage 4 Feb 09:26

  • US giant Juniper bites off webby arm of Basingstoke's security boys

    Webscreen sale nets $10m for Brit security player Accumuli

    Brit managed security services player Accumuli has sold its Webscreen Systems Ltd (WSL) subsidiary to US giant Juniper Networks for $10m (£6.37m). AIM-listed Accumuli picked up DDoS software maker WSL as part of the Boxing Orange acquisition it made in March 2011, a deal which cost it £5.48m in total - meaning that outlay has …

    The Channel 4 Feb 10:02

  • Ofcom ploughs up UK spectrum fields, reseeds them with 4G

    Used to be all 2G round here, far as the eye could see

    Ofcom has published plans to refarm mobile radio spectrum into 4G goodness, letting operators deploy whatever technology they like in their existing holdings as well as the bands on which they're currently bidding. The proposals aren't surprising: Ofcom has made it clear that restricting bands to specific technologies is …

    Mobile 4 Feb 10:18

  • Wham SAN, thank you ma'am: Adapter biz smacks biggest rival

    Emulex outsells QLogic

    After Emulex's long, arduous revenues climb, and the simultaneous droop in fortunes of QLogic, it seems it has finally caught up to its high-flying SAN adapter competitor - and if current trends continue, it could even hang on to the top spot. That is, if QLogic's new Rainier product doesn't give it the bounce it needs to …

    Storage 4 Feb 10:43

  • Oracle blocks security hole with quick, hot 'n' premature Java update

    Rushed out 2 weeks early

    Oracle has brought forward the timetable of an upcoming Java security update by two weeks in order to block off an in-the-wild security hole. The update, originally scheduled for 19 February, was released a fortnight early on Friday because of "active exploitation 'in the wild' of one of the vulnerabilities affecting the Java …

    Security 4 Feb 11:07

  • Samsung: Never mind Steve Jobs, let's snap off a piece of stylus biz

    Demand for vibrating tool is 'expected to rise' - South Korean firm

    Steve Jobs famously said of tablets: "If it comes with a stylus, you're doing it wrong", but Samsung is betting the vibrating tools will go big and has just bought a 5 per cent stake in stylus-making company Wacom. Wacom has already made pens for Samsung, and the new investment lays the foundations for more and better styluses …

    Financial News 4 Feb 11:23

  • Schoolgirl's Hello Kitty catonaut soars to 93,000ft

    Pics'n'vid US student sends her fave feline to SPAAAAACE

    A 13-year-old Hello Kitty fan has made her mark in the world of High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) by sending her fave feline toy to a heady 28,537m (93,625ft). Seventh-grader Lauren Rojas, of Cornerstone Christian School in Antioch, California, hit the heights for a class assignment designed to test the effect of altitude on …

    SPB 4 Feb 11:42

  • BlackBerry 10: Good news, there's still time to fix this disaster

    First impressions The Z10 is hard work, a fair bit is missing, but not a write-off. Yet

    If BlackBerry is to complete the greatest comeback since Lazarus, it all depends on how it can lure back former users as well as woo new customers. Which means its fate hinges on BlackBerry 10, its new operating system and apps platform. BB10 has three things going for it. It’s technically sophisticated and well up to the …

    Mobile 4 Feb 12:10

  • NFC SD crew gives up: No one wants our safe bonking tool

    When it comes to secure mobe transactions, 2 options are enough

    The NFC SD consortium - a collaboration attempting to capitalise on the use of removable memory to secure pay-by-bonk transactions - has called it a day seeing that no one wants to secure transactions using a Secure Digital (SD) card. The investment, which NFC Times pegs at €3m, came mostly from Giesecke & Devrient but with € …

    Financial News 4 Feb 12:17

  • Android gets tipsy on Wine, runs WINDOWS apps

    It's not an emulator, but it will run on fandroid's kit

    The man behind Wine, the not-an-emulator which runs Windows applications on Linux, has been showing off an early version for those desperate to run MS Office on their Android device. It was, according to Phoronix - who witnessed the demo - "horrendously slow", and running on a Mac which was itself running an Android emulator. …

    Mobile 4 Feb 12:37

  • 'Online sex abuse of children is growing trend', warn Brit net cops

    Spike in 'unfiltered' smartphone usage among kids blamed

    Paedophiles are increasingly targeting kids online and pressuring them to perform sex acts that are recorded on mobile phones, net-cop quango the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre warned today. It said, after carrying out joint research with the University of Birmingham, that an "alarming new trend" was …

    Government 4 Feb 13:05

  • Biz rivals tussle over customers, former staffers of fallen 2e2

    Headhunters pursuing us, say axed workers

    Channel rivals of 2e2 are offering staff at the fallen integrator a lifeline and are tapping up customers wondering what the short-term future may hold for their current tech supplier. Type 2e2 into Google's search engine and PSU, Codestone, Gap Consulting, Kelway, m-hance and Amicus ITS are but a few of the names to have run …

    The Channel 4 Feb 13:16

  • World's 'most green' supercomputer in red-hot battle between Intel, Nvidia

    Analysis Uni boffins demand more bang for their watt

    Non-profit consortium CINECA has deployed what may be the greenest supercomputer in the world at its Bologna centre in Italy. Called Eurora, the new machine claims it can perform 3,150 megaflops per watt, compared to the 2,499.44 achieved by Green-500 king the Beacon supercomputer at the National Institute for Computational …

    HPC 4 Feb 13:37

  • Tick-tock, TalkTalk: Users face fourth day of titsup broadband

    'Network error'? You're 'avin a bubble bath, mate

    TalkTalk customers are piling up complaints on the company's social network pages and forums after days of paralysed connections in the south east of England. A number of Reg readers got in touch to gripe about the telco's broadband service slowing down to a crawl on Friday night. Sadly, the problem remained in place all …

    Broadband 4 Feb 13:53

  • BANG and the server's gone: Man gets 8 months for destroying work computers

    Must cough £1,000 for dousing server room with Cillit

    A peeved employee took revenge on his company by repeatedly spraying Cillit Bang into its servers in a three-year campaign that caused £32,000 of damage. Edward Sobolewski was convicted of criminal damage at Oxford Crown Court on Friday and sentenced to 8 months in prison for the attacks on his employer's computers. He was …

    Law 4 Feb 14:26

  • Private clouds creep into the enterprise

    But don’t forget the networks

    According to readers of The Register, Private Cloud is creeping towards being a central plank of IT with more than 30% of them estimating their IT will be based on such a dynamic infrastructure within the next three years. This isn’t a project that can be done at server level in isolation of course. Rather, it’s a project that …

    Datacenter 4 Feb 14:42

  • Report: Over 1.5 MILLION UK drivers will have hydrogen cars by 2030

    Fuel cell cars on roads in 2015. Boom - ahem - to follow, says quango

    Hydrogen fuel cell cars won’t hit the market until 2015, but with the right investment in infrastructure, more than a million and a half of us could be driving one by 2030, with annual sales topping 300,000 vehicles, an evaluation conducted by government and industry has forecast. A timeline drawn up by UKH2Mobility - a …

    Hardware 4 Feb 15:03

  • Netflix tempts binge viewers with House of Cards pilot freebie

    Outer Spacey: Doh! ... You have to install Silverlight

    Netflix is making the pilot episode of its made-for-IPTV series House of Cards free to anyone to watch, whether they’re one of the streaming service’s 33 million subscribers or not. The entire 13-part series went live en masse on Netflix late last week. Rather than run the series episode by episode, week by week, Netflix …

    Media 4 Feb 15:33

  • 'Broke' Estonian suspect pleads guilty to DNSChanger click fraud scam

    Cybercrooks netted $14m after infecting 4m machines

    An Estonian man has pleaded guilty to involvement in the DNSChanger click fraud scam. The Trojan infected 4 million computers worldwide, netting cybercrooks an estimated $14m in the process. Valeri Aleksejev, 32, pleaded guilty to fraud and computer hacking offences at a hearing at a US federal court on Friday, Reuters reports …

    Security 4 Feb 16:02

  • Dutch tech services outfit Imtech takes €100m write-down

    'Possible irregularities' at Polish sub ruin 2012

    IT technical and managed services provider Imtech is warning of a financial writedown of at least €100m due to "possible irregularities" at its Polish sub. The Netherlands-based group, which also has electrical and mechanical service units in addition to its ICT arm, said it had "ordered a forensic investigation" of the …

    The Channel 4 Feb 16:18

  • Daisy, Computacenter turn down purchase of stricken 2e2

    We've talked the talk, now we're walking the walk

    The prospect of 2e2 administrator FTI selling the entire UK operation of the stricken integrator in one swoop was dealt a blow this weekend after several key suitors walked away from a deal. As revealed on Thursday, Computacenter and Daisy Group were seated at the negotiating table but have now decided to end their interest in …

    The Channel 4 Feb 16:36

  • Unlucky for you: UK crypto-duo 'crack' HTTPS in Lucky 13 attack

    OpenSSL patch to protect against TLS decryption boffinry

    Two scientists say they have identified a new weakness in TLS, the encryption system used to safeguard online shopping, banking and privacy. The design flaw, revealed today, could be exploited to snoop on passwords and other sensitive information sent by users to HTTPS websites. Professor Kenny Paterson from the Information …

    Security 4 Feb 16:58

  • Google frenches Gallic media with €60m and some 'help'

    Have some cash and forget all about that nasty link tax

    Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google has dropped a little sweetener to the French media as Google's legal tussle over "a link tax" rumbles on. Schmidt announced a 60m euro fund for "innovation" in French journalism and "help" for French publishers using Google's advertising tools, in a joint announcement with the French President …

    Financial News 4 Feb 17:27

  • Cisco revs up Nexus switches to 40GE with fresh ASICs

    Other tweaks, SDN promises, and a VPN tunnel for control freaking public clouds

    Cisco has vowed to push 40GE Ethernet switches into the mainstream while also improving its 10GE/40GE Nexus boxes. The transition to 10GE networking is well under way, and the convergence of server and storage traffic onto switches continues apace, albeit at a slower rate than Cisco Systems had hoped. Despite this, the …

    Data Networking 4 Feb 18:24

  • Oracle ponies up $2.1bn for Acme Packet to bully its way into unified comms

    Larry takes on Cisco, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, and others

    If Oracle sees a good idea and a pile of money sitting underneath it, and that idea is adjacent to something Oracle is already doing, then cofounder and CEO Larry Ellison gets out a bigger pile of money and pounces. And that is precisely what Oracle has done with its first big deal of 2013 as it snaps up unified communications …

    Data Networking 4 Feb 18:44

  • Hard drive sales to see double-digit dive this year

    Optical drives may disappear entirely

    Hard drive sales will take a nose drive in 2013, according to a report by the market analysts at IHS. "Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSD), global hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12 percent this year," IHS reported in an email on Monday …

    Storage 4 Feb 20:11

  • HP jumps on Chromebook bandwagon with 14-incher

    As big as a laptop, as powerful as a web browser

    HP has become the latest hardware vendor to release a low-cost laptop based on Google's Chrome OS, topping rivals Acer, Lenovo, and Samsung by shipping its version of a Chromebook with a generous 14" screen. Second-place PC maker Lenovo unveiled its own Chromebook in January, so it's no real surprise that leader HP would …

    Laptops 4 Feb 20:49

  • Apple loses bid to 'cut in line' in Samsung patent dust-up

    Court: 'No, Mr. Cook, you have to wait your turn like everybody else'

    A US Federal appeals court has rejected Apple's request to expedite its appeal requesting a ban on a passel of its über-enemy Samsung's smartphones from the US market. "In some sense, Apple was asking to 'cut in line'," Santa Clara University law professor Brian Love told Reuters, "and judges are generally reluctant to give …

    Law 4 Feb 21:03

  • Kirk to beam up chat with ISS astronaut on Thursday

    William Shatner to boldly go to the land of his birth

    Las month El Reg reported on a Twitter exchange between William Shatner, a lot of people's* favorite fictional astronaut, and his fellow Canadian Chris Hadfield, who is currently ensconced in the International Space Station. Hadfield is currently orbiting the Earth at 17,247mph as an ISS flight engineer, and is due to take …

    Science 4 Feb 21:10

  • Australia joins hunt for corporate tax dodgers

    Name and shame plan floated in election year

    Australia's government has signalled it will try to publish details of how much tax multinationals pay in the island nation. Australia's Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury last year explained, and bemoaned, the “Double Irish Dutch Sandwich” used by the likes of Google to minimise the amount of tax they pay. Microsoft and other …

    Law 4 Feb 21:20

  • Day of the Trifid: VPAC fires up new HPC cluster

    $AU1.2m buy adds 45+ TFLOPS

    The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC), a consortium of Australian universities, has flipped the switch on 45.9 Teraflops of a new $1.22 million HP-based cluster to cope with rising workloads from partners La Trobe University and RMIT, and its other customers. The Reg understands the 180-node, 2,880 core …

    HPC 4 Feb 21:53

  • Anon claims ‘d0x’ on bank execs

    4k logins published in Operation Last Resort

    As part of its ongoing campaign following the suicide of RSS inventor and activist Aaron Swartz, Anonymous has published the names and login details of what it says are 4,000 US banking executives. The information was first posted on a site under the Alabama .gov domain (the Alabama Criminal Justice Center), with a mirror …

    Security 4 Feb 23:23

  • Opscode guts Chef control freak to scale it to 10,000 servers

    Facebook likes – and uses – Chef, just like Amazon and Google

    Opscode is in a race with Puppet Labs to become a next-generation management tool, and its latest Chef product, which does configuration, change, and cloud management, is used by some of the name-brand hyperscale cloud application operators out there. As part of the launch of the Chef 11 tool, Facebook is outing itself as a …

    Servers 4 Feb 23:29