The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

6th February 2013 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Microsoft to open 11 new retail stores by summer

    All these Surfaces aren't going to sell themselves

    Microsoft has announced that it will open six new retail stores in North America by summer 2013, in addition to five locations that were previously announced in December. To be precise, only a few of the new stores represent brand-new markets for Microsoft. Several are permanent replacements for earlier holiday pop-up stores, …

    Business 6 Feb 01:31

  • Study: Gay marriage support linked to pr0n consumption

    Open legs lead to open minds

    A research paper by two American academics has concluded that one of the key factors in the increasing support among straight men for same-sex marriage comes down to how much pornography they consume. The research, published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Communication Research, is based on a six-year study of 500 US …

    Science 6 Feb 01:46

  • Amazon patents digital resale market

    Too cheap? Too often? No sale

    If Apple ever wants loan-or-onsell capabilities in iTunes, it will probably find itself discussing patents with Jeff Bezos. That chat is one possible outcome that may flow from this newly-minted Amazon patent: “A secondary market which allows users to effectively and permissibly transfer “used” digital objects to others while …

    Law 6 Feb 01:55

  • Review: Living with Microsoft's new Surface Pro

    Is it a tablet? Is it an Ultrabook? It's up to you

    While the Surface RT was aimed at Apple's iDevices, its posh Pro cousin is Microsoft's Windows 8 showcase in the PC space, and on midnight on February 9 the first units will go on sale. But we got one early, lived with it for a week, and have, ahem, surfaced to tell of our experience. Microsoft is adamant that the Surface Pro …

    Tablets 6 Feb 02:03

  • Boffins find 17,425,170-digit prime number

    257885161-1 takes crown as biggest prime ever found

    The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has struck again, finding the largest-ever Mersenne prime number. The number, the 48th Mersenne prime found, is 17,425,170 digits long and therefore most comfortably represented as 257885161-1 . The previous record-holder was a mere 12,978,189 digits. If you want to read the …

    Science 6 Feb 03:04

  • US military advisor calls for McKinnon pardon, recruitment of "master hackers"

    Gesture will help Pentagon gain trust of hacking community, says Arquilla

    A leading US military strategist has urged the Obama administration to soften its stance if it wants to attract the kind of “master hackers” that would enable it to compete in cyber space with China, starting with the symbolic gesture of pardoning Gary McKinnon. John Arquilla, a US Naval Postgraduate School professor and …

    Policy 6 Feb 05:17

  • Pinging in the rain: Boffins track wet spots using phone masts

    Raindrops keep falling on my EDGE

    Dutch university boffins working with meteorological experts and, er, T-Mobile have mapped rainfall using records of radio attenuation, producing real-time maps as good as radar and a lot cheaper. Not that they tried real-time first: as the writeup in the National Academy of Sciences explains, the proof-of-concept uses …

    Mobile 6 Feb 06:08

  • Microsoft 'touches 16k shop workers' to flog Windows 8 hard

    Ambitious OS wasn't explosive, admit top bods

    Microsoft says Windows 8 PC sales were cursed by the unholy trinity of a slow economy, incursions by Apple and Android tablets, and the "ambitious" user interface design. But the software giant insisted it is working with retailers and manufacturers to supply hardware that people actually want in time for the peak sales season …

    The Channel 6 Feb 07:03

  • UK web snoop charter: Just how much extra info do spooks need?

    Analysis Influential parliamentarians sniffs around packet-sniffing draft law

    MI5 makes the most requests for information on Brits' phone calls and internet activities, according to a panel of MPs and peers scrutinising Home Secretary Theresa May's draft communications surveillance law. The controversial bill calls for much wider spying on online activity. The Home Office, in pushing for these extended …

    Government 6 Feb 08:03

  • BSkyB to flick switch on network-level smut-'n'-violence filters

    Insists move 'not a change in position', won't rule out packet-sniffing

    BSkyB will switch its broadband service to network-level filtering later this year in a clear move away from giving subscribers control over what content they want their families to access online in their own homes. The telco said that computer-based parental controls were not enough to protect kids who use web-based services …

    Broadband 6 Feb 08:26

  • Ex-ICO: Draft EU privacy rules will turn every citizen 'into a liar'

    Current commish: Data protection reforms must target crooks, not biz

    Britain's Information Commissioner wants the force of the European Data Protection Directive to fall on rogues, not on businesses which already face mountains of paperwork. That's the message that Chris Graham will be taking to Europe when he goes there to hash out a compromise on the new European Data Protection Directive …

    Government 6 Feb 09:03

  • Raspberry Pi on a diet: New skimpier, cheaper model on sale

    Milliamps-gobbling circuit board now draws even less

    An even cheaper Raspberry Pi has gone on sale in Europe with less stuff on it so the tiny ARM-compatible Brit-puter can consume even less power. The Model A Pi was touted during the hype-gasm surrounding the Raspberry Pi's launch in February last year. But it was the Model B circuit board that went on sale first, and went on …

    Hardware 6 Feb 09:38

  • The truth on the Navy carrier debacle? Industry got away with murder

    Analysis Sold 'adaptable' ships which couldn't be adapted

    The Ministry of Defence is in the pillory again today, being corporately pelted for the recent unedifying sequence of events in which the Coalition government decided in 2010 to fit the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers with catapults - and then abruptly changed its mind in 2012, reverting to the former plan which will see them …

    Government 6 Feb 10:00

  • Life after Cisco: I've got 99 problems but a switch ain't one

    Test lab Dell vs Supermicro - Trev smacks that switch up

    Pending network upgrades have reignited an old debate: what exactly makes a switch "good enough?" I have the opportunity to give two switches a truly thorough battering; my lab contains a Dell PowerConnect 8132F and a Supermicro SSE-X24S. Try as I might, I can't find fault with either unit. Both are 24-port switches, with …

    Servers 6 Feb 10:32

  • Stricken 2e2 sacks 627, winds down, retains a few data centre caretakers

    Fat lady folding up her music stand, eyeing exit

    Stricken UK integrator 2e2 - in administration and unable to find a buyer - effectively started to wind down operations today by confirming 627 people were being let go with just a small group of data centre staffers left to keep things "ticking over". Employees were told at 8.30am to get onto a conference call at scheduled …

    The Channel 6 Feb 10:52

  • Cable Cowboy lassoes Virgin Media with HUGE £15bn deal

    John Malone to be new sheriff in town as Neil Berkett quits

    The world's second biggest cable company - Liberty Global - has confirmed its plans to buy British ISP Virgin Media for $23bn (£15bn), after the telco said on Tuesday it was in talks with the corporation run by American billionaire John Malone. That stock and cash deal, which would gift Englewood, Colorado-based Liberty Global …

    Financial News 6 Feb 11:14

  • Will Michael Dell become the Marlboro man of the PC age?

    Comment You've come a long way baby... now get off the stock market

    The mooted Dell takeover, the one to take it private again, is now happening. The big question is why? Why come off the public markets to operate as a private company again? The obvious and logical answer here being that the people buying the company think they can make more money this way than by not doing it. Why do they …

    Financial News 6 Feb 11:37

  • Review: Dell XPS 10 Windows RT tablet and dock

    The convertible that Microsoft's Surface should have been?

    Windows RT: unholy fondleslab abomination or clever integration of a grown-up desktop and touch-friendly tablet UI? Opinions veer wildly and violently between one and the other extreme. The newest and first non-Nvidia Tegra 3 receptacle for Microsoft’s alleged problem child is Dell’s Asus Transformer-esque XPS 10. On paper, …

    Tablets 6 Feb 12:04

  • Profitless internet biz Pinterest seeks $2.5 BILLION valuation

    Who could put a price on cupcakes and kittens?

    Online scrap repository Pinterest is trying to raise a new round of funding that would value the as-yet-profitless firm at $2bn to $2.5bn. Undeterred by the lack of an actual business model, the cupcake and kitten scrapbook firm reckons that existing backers like venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners …

    Financial News 6 Feb 12:16

  • When open-source eats itself, we win

    Open ... and Shut Lessons of the Nginx v Apache slug fest

    For years the headlines have been about open source cannibalising proprietary software. But what happens when open source starts to cannibalise itself? In some markets, open source rules the roost. For example, Drupal, Joomla, my old company Alfresco and other open-source content management systems regularly duke it out for …

    Applications 6 Feb 12:38

  • Astronomers unravel solar system's strange energy 'ribbon'

    New theory - not involving Office 2007 - might be the answer

    Astroboffins reckon they may have solved the mystery of the vast ribbon at the edge of our Solar System after three years of puzzling over it. The mysterious band of energy and particles, first discovered by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) at the edge of the system in 2009, could be caused by strong magnetic …

    Science 6 Feb 12:57

  • Shocked Zynga investors get a penny per share

    Still losing users and money in general though

    Zynga has shocked analysts by somehow coming up with a cent in earnings for each one of its shares. The online gaming firm, which is struggling to retain its users, was expected to come up with a loss of three cents per share for investors, but managed to grab them a penny instead. That did not make the rest of its financial …

    Financial News 6 Feb 13:17

  • Big Data versus small data: Unpicking the paradox

    Can NoSQL and relational both be adaptable?

    NoSQL and Big Data crashed into the ordered world of relational architectures a few years back, thanks to services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. But while concepts such as key value stores and content-specific stores have certainly enriched our environments, the downside to their arrival is that it has created quite a …

    Management 6 Feb 13:38

  • Lawyer: 2e2 customers should act quickly as liquidation looms

    'Critical' alternatives must be sought - legal eagle

    Any 2e2 customers that clung on in the hope a buyer could be found for fallen channel giant must act now to minimise disruption to service, a law firm has warned. More than a week has passed since 2e2's 10 UK subsidiaries were placed in the hands of FTI Consulting, and the administrator seems to have run out of potential …

    Management 6 Feb 14:04

  • NASA deep space probe sends back video of 'Comet of the Century'

    Potentially moonshine-beating dirty snowball INCOMING

    NASA's Deep Impact probe has sent back images of comet Ison as it heads inexorably towards a close fly-past of the Sun later this year. The spacecraft snapped the comet from a whopping 793 million kilometres with its Medium-Resolution Imager over a 36-hour period on 17 and 18 January, allowing NASA to stitch together this time …

    Science 6 Feb 14:53

  • Ex-US Army man: NYT hacks part of wider war on western media firms

    Mainland Chinese journos also 'put at risk', claims security bod

    Recent hack attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal may be simply the most prominent out of a wider series of assaults against western media firms, according to a cyber-security intelligence firm. Researchers have said that at least six separate Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups are likely responsible …

    Security 6 Feb 15:29

  • HP EMEA boss recruits enterprise generals

    Prepare your soldiers for the channel trenches

    HP EMEA boss Peter Ryan is bolstering his band of generals by plucking a couple of Brits from HP's UK ops to lead the channel networking and volume server units at a regional level. Ryan shares the top job in EMEA with Printing and Personal Systems boss Eric Cador and is also head of the Enterprise Group. Following the merger …

    The Channel 6 Feb 15:54

  • Fed confirms but downplays Anonymous Super Bowl banker hack

    Sod that, Beyoncé is a member of the ILLUMINATI

    The US Federal Reserve has admitted that its systems were hacked during Sunday's Super Bowl, a breach that led to the leaking of personal data on hundreds of US banking executives. The breach allowed hacktivist ragtag collective Anonymous to post the names, email addresses, mobile phone numbers and login credentials (password …

    Security 6 Feb 16:03

  • Antivirus update broke our interwebs, howl Win XP users

    Updated You were only supposed to blow the bloody viruses off

    Thousands of Windows XP users were blocked from accessing the internet this week after they applied a misfiring antivirus update from Kaspersky Lab. The issue affected both consumer and business versions of Windows XP. Vista or Windows 7 users were untouched by the snafu. Even so, Kaspersky's support forums quickly filled up …

    Security 6 Feb 16:19

  • 3 Brits banged up for £300k VAT scam

    Tax crime squad pounced on bogus businesses in dawn raid

    Three men have been jailed for setting up nine totally fictional firms so that they could get away with £300,000 in a VAT scam. The men set up bogus companies including a clothes manufacturer, a publishing house and a software engineering company and then submitted VAT repayment claims for the businesses, the HMRC said today. …

    Law 6 Feb 16:39

  • Speaking in Tech: HP's snarky Dell jab 'doesn't seem very Meg-like'

    Podcast Plus: 'NetApp's too expensive to be acquired right now'

    It's another episode of El Reg's enterprise tech cast, with your hosts Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, they're guest-free, which means Sarah can consolidate her high score on Temple Run while the crew get really honest about what they think of the infamous HP press release about Dell going private. We …

    Datacenter 6 Feb 17:06

  • Apple serves up 25 BEEELLIONTH iTunes download

    340,000 years of 'Monkey Drums'

    Apple's iTunes Music Store has served its 25 billionth download, and is now shuttling tunes to Macs, PCs, and iDevices at a average rate of 15,000 per minute. "We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world," said Apple's internet software …

    Media 6 Feb 18:03

  • Watch your back, Amazon: Google coughs $125m for 'shopping engine' firm

    Buy-up of Channel Intelligence suggests new focus on retail

    Google have bought inventory tracking software company Channel Intelligence for a hefty $125m. Its owner, ICG Group, announced the cash buy-up from Google today. The parent company said that Channel Intelligence's "Boost services", which help its clients to track transactions online and drive their referred sales, include: …

    Financial News 6 Feb 18:34

  • Google Doodle honors British bone-finder Mary Leakey

    100th birthday sketch of humanity's detective

    Google has honored British archaeologist and paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey with a home page Doodle, celebrating a woman who spent over 60 years uncovering the remains of modern humans and their close cousins. Mary Nichol was born on February 6, 1913, and began fossil hunting at the age of 12. In a time when most women were …

    Science 6 Feb 20:14

  • A new Mac Pro coming this spring? 'Mais oui!'

    Well, it depends on exactly what you mean by 'new'

    Apple will release a new Mac Pro this spring, according to a French fanbois website that got its mains on what it says is a memo from a Gallic Apple reseller. "Apple nous informe qu'une nouvelle gamme Mac Pro va sortir au printemps 2013," France Systèmes wrote in a missive to its customers informing them of the February 18 …

    Hardware 6 Feb 20:16

  • Brit cloud Elastichosts chases boom to Asia

    Sydney, Hong Kong, added to global network

    British cloud operator Elastichosts has splashed down in Asia, renting space in Sydney and Hong Kong data centres and declaring it is ready to cash in on the boom in cloud and the healthy economies of Asia. Elastichost offers a range of cloud hosting and compute services, using the KVM hypervisor and its own enhancements to …

    Cloud 6 Feb 22:30

  • Data centers to go bonkers over microservers

    Blades for cheapskates to hack a hunk out of the server racket

    Intel can't hold a press conference these days without being harangued about ARM-based servers and the potential for microservers based on low-powered processors to bite into its Xeon server-chip biz. And for good reason: there is a growing consensus that these baby servers are going to catch on because of the inherently …

    Servers 6 Feb 22:43

  • Speedy MySQL 5.6 takes aim at NoSQL, MariaDB

    The downside? It's still owned by Oracle

    Oracle has announced general availability of MySQL 5.6, even as many MySQL users prepare to transition to alternatives such as MariaDB because of what they claim is Oracle's overweening handling of the open source database. "The new features and enhancements that MySQL 5.6 delivers further demonstrate Oracle's investment in …

    Software 6 Feb 23:03

  • Bug kills Intel gig-E controllers

    Detective work at Layer 2

    Star2Star CTO Kristian Kielhofner has identified a buggy implementation the Intel 82574L Ethernet controller that makes some kit subject to a “packet of death” that hangs the port receiving the packet. His lengthy description of the discovery of the bug is at his personal blog, here, but it boils down to this: with the right …

    Data Networking 6 Feb 23:15