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14th February 2013 Archive

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  • Cisco wins tax battles with Uncle Sam, posts big bump in profits

    Big John 'cautiously optimistic' about networking, ecstatic about servers

    Networking giant and server upstart Cisco Systems is feeling pretty good about the financial results for its most recent quarter, and not just because business is stabilizing in some of its key markets but also because some battles with the US Internal Revenue Service have ended in its favor to the tune of nearly $1bn. In the …

    Financial News 14 Feb 00:12

  • Apple refreshes MacBook Pro range

    Faster CPUs, lower prices, for the pre-post-PC crowd

    Apple has stopped working on watches, televisions and all the weird stuff it has patented for just long enough to refresh its MacBook Pro range. Reg readers may remember the MacBook as an example of Apple's “personal computer” range, a product category it pioneered in the late 1970s. The phone and fondleslab company is still …

    Hardware 14 Feb 00:55

  • Journo says Elon Musk apologized for Tesla battery fiasco

    'Charging stations should have been closer'

    A New York Times journalist has hit back at Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk's charges that he botched a review of the company's Model S electric car, claiming that Musk had even acknowledged his troubles with the vehicle before the review went to press. In a detailed post to The Times' "Wheels" blog on Tuesday, John Broder argued …

    Hardware 14 Feb 01:17

  • Adobe investigating attacks on PDFs using zero-day flaw

    FireEye warns the world to check before you click

    Vulnerability researchers at FireEye are reporting that Adobe's Reader software has a zero-day flaw that hackers are already exploiting in the wild. You've been pwned (click to enlarge) The flaw is found in Adobe Reader 9.5.3, 10.1.5, and 11.0.1 and involves sending a specially crafted file to the target. Once opened, the …

    Security 14 Feb 01:43

  • Which volcanoes impacted ancient climate? Sulphur tells the story

    Ice core isotopes ID the big blasts

    A staple complaint of the climate sceptic, that it’s impossible to determine the impact of historical volcanic eruptions on the climate, is a step closer to being spiked, courtesy of work at the University of Copenhagen. The university’s Matthew Johnson, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, has published work …

    Science 14 Feb 03:57

  • Higgs hunt halts as CERN prepares LHC upgrades

    'Long shutdown 1' will enable collider to be turned up to 11

    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may have identified the Higgs Boson, but CERN knows the instrument can do better and today started the process of shutting down the massive machine, and the organisation's other particle accelerators, for a spot of maintenance. The key work, according to Simon Baird, deputy head of CERN's …

    Science 14 Feb 04:32

  • British, Belgian boffins battle buffering bandwidth bogeyman

    Golden era of uninterrupted kitten vids may lie ahead

    International boffins have been enlisted to stop that most annoying of internet snafus, the buffering circle of doom right in the middle of your kitten video. The European Commission will splaff €3,569,000 over three years in an effort to reduce internet transport latency (the RITE project) without a requirement for new and …

    Broadband 14 Feb 06:02

  • NBN Co coffee budget brews caffeinated controversy

    Slow EspressoHits per second rate hurts NBN Co

    NBN Co, the entity charged with spending over $AUD30bn or so building a national broadband network for Australia, has defended the price it pays for coffee. The company felt the need to do so because members of Australia's opposition parties, after combing through NBN Co's finances, wondered why it had spent over $AUD100,000 …

    Government 14 Feb 06:40

  • Ask Google this impossible question, get web filth as a reward

    Try it before search engine PHWOAR, er, flaw is fixed

    An odd bug in Google's search algorithms appears to be benefiting XXX-rated websites. Searches for impossible pages - such as the contradictory search term -4^(1/4) which means "Find me pages containing a 1 next to a 4, but which do not contain a 4 - return web-page results liberally sprinkled with links to online grumble …

    Bootnotes 14 Feb 07:03

  • Forget wireless power for phones - Korea's doing it for BUSES

    Video Genuinely Electric Avenues planned in London too

    From July, two electric buses will travel back and forth along the 24km road from Gumi station, but they won't need to recharge as induction loops along the route will top up the battery as they roll. The technology is coming from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and is little more than an extensive field …

    Science 14 Feb 08:03

  • Imation takes $310.2m hit in hellish, wallet-draining 4th quarter

    Storage firm keeps wolf from door by flogging off consumer brands

    $310.2m: That's Imation's fourth 2012 calendar quarter loss. $299.1m: That's Imation's fourth quarter revenue. It takes some brass to record results like these and talk of the company's strategic transformation but that's what happens when you rightsize over-valued assets. The chart below shows the scale of the disaster. Third …

    Storage 14 Feb 08:28

  • Scottish uni slams on the Accelerator to boost UK boffinry

    Just don't call new supercomputer system a cloud

    The boffins who run two big supercomputers on behalf of the UK government and academic research institutions - as well as one smaller machine aimed at industrial users - have converted those machines into an HPC utility called Accelerator. And they want you to buy core-hours on their machines instead of wasting your money …

    HPC 14 Feb 09:03

  • Could you build a data-nomming HPC beast in a day? These kids can

    Analysis Everything you need to know about the undergrad cluster sport

    Student cluster-building competitions are chock full of technical challenges, both “book learning” and practical learning, and quite a bit of fun too. I mean, who wouldn't want to construct a HPC rig against the clock and kick an opponent in the benchmarks? Here's what involved in the contests. Whether you’ve been following …

    HPC 14 Feb 09:31

  • Nokia's Elopocalypse two years on: Has Microsoft kept its side of the bargain?

    Analysis The Lumias are here. What's Redmond got to show?

    It's two years since the "Elopocalypse". This week in 2011 Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop set Europe's biggest technology company off in a radical new direction. Nokia would license its flagship phone software from Microsoft, rather than develop its own, set fire to three of its own mobile platforms, and eventually shed …

    Phones 14 Feb 10:03

  • Capita gobbles Northgate Managed Services for £65m

    Cloud biz finally finds a buyer

    Outsourcing monolith Capita has coughed up £65m to buy Northgate Managed Services (NMS) in a deal announced to the London Stock Exchange this morning. As revealed by The Channel last year, VC Kholberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Company - owner of NMS parent Northgate Information Solutions, touted the division with a price tag of …

    The Channel 14 Feb 10:49

  • Spanish cops cuff 11 for €1m-a-year ransomware scam

    Interpol says Reveton malware ring has been smashed

    Spanish police have arrested 11 individuals suspected of running a €1m a year ransomware scam using malware that posed as a message from law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies in Spain first became interested in the Reveton malware after hundreds of complaints from victims of the scam starting flooding in at the beginning …

    Security 14 Feb 11:10

  • Apple: iOS 6.1 network overload caused by our Exchange SYNC OF DOOM

    Fanbois should switch it off and on again

    The source of the battery-draining bug that sucked the life out of iPhones, and strained mobile phone and corporate networks, has been identified by Apple as a cock-up between its iOS calendar app and Microsoft Exchange servers. The flaw affects people synchronising their Microsoft Exchange calendars with their iOS 6.1 devices …

    Applications 14 Feb 11:39

  • Google whips out pocket cannon, fires VoIP patent sueball at BT

    Telco eats first ever direct volley from search giant

    Google is suing BT in the US and the UK over allegations Blighty's national telco infringed four patents. The search giant typically leaves it to its Android phone-making pals, or its Motorola Mobility division, to drag rivals (read: Apple) into court over patents. But today, for the first time ever, it's seeking direct …

    Law 14 Feb 12:03

  • Fashionably slate

    Comment Why TV makers are trying to turn telly into tablet - and why it's a daft idea

    It’s not easy being a television manufacturer these days. Most homes, especially in the West and the wealthier parts of Asia, now have a large flat panel TV, thank you, and don’t need another one. Sales, then, are not as strong as they once were, pushing down prices and, in turn, whittling production margins from razor thin to …

    Tablets 14 Feb 12:14

  • Spanish boffins increase GPS accuracy by 90%

    Self-driving car would still mow down pedestrians though

    Boffins at Madrid's Carlos III University have used cheap accelerometers and gyroscopes - and expensive mathematics - to improve the accuracy of GPS* by as much as 90 per cent. The team compared their results to differential GPS - which is about as good as satellite systems get - and found that with detailed analysis of the …

    Science 14 Feb 12:39

  • BBC Vision and Audio tossed on bonfire, replaced by 'TV', 'Radio'

    Strategy Unboutique New DG calls a spade a spade, kills off euphemisms

    In a radical rebranding move, the BBC will rename the department responsible for television programmes to "TV", and the department responsible for radio to "Radio". The department that produces journalism - sport and news - will henceforth be known as the "Journalism" department. The changes coincide with a reshuffle of Beeb …

    Media 14 Feb 13:24

  • Facebook is off the IPOcalypse hook... for NOW

    Judge dismisses 4 lawsuits over firm's float flop

    A US judge has thrown out a set of four shareholder cases against Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and other senior staff over its IPOcalypse, and although it still faces many more, things are looking up for Zuck. All four suits rested on allegations that the social network and its officers had withheld certain information from …

    Law 14 Feb 13:37

  • Red Hat revs OpenShift Enterprise to 1.1

    Fixes bugs, buffs UI, beckons to young devs

    Red Hat has whipped out version 1.1 of OpenShift Enterprise, its locally deployable platform-as-a-service. The main changes in the 1.1 release are a slew of bug fixes relating to stability and security, a bit of judicious code pruning, and enterprise-certification of a web GUI. The release comes just two and a half months …

    Cloud 14 Feb 14:04

  • World's biggest distie cans Euro growth hopes for 2013

    Ingram Micro 'not planning on any significant growth'

    Ingram Micro's European operation is likely to continue to be the group's metaphorical fly in the ointment for 2013 with "no significant growth" forecasted by senior execs. The world's largest IT distie last night reported calendar Q4 numbers showing a 14 per cent rise in turnover to $11.38bn, including $1bn and $75m of sales …

    The Channel 14 Feb 14:32

  • The official iPhone actually runs Android - in Brazil

    Apple left hurting by painful Brazilian procedure

    Apple has lost the rights to the trademark "iPhone" in Brazil to a local manufacturer which makes an Android phone called the iPhone NEO. Yesterday the Brazilian Trademark and Patents Office rejected Apple's claims to the trademark "iPhone" in the category of telecoms and the category of electronic devices. "Registration …

    Phones 14 Feb 15:03

  • Disk biz Overland bleeds more cash - bah, only a flesh wound!

    Storage array maker still thinks it's invincible

    Another quarter for Overland Storage, and another big loss as revenue slides year-on-year. The struggling tape and disk array vendor hopes its scale-out clustered NAS, branded the SnapScale, can turn its fortunes around - along with damages it'll possibly get from BDT and other tape biz if it wins a patent-infringement court …

    Storage 14 Feb 15:33

  • Asian political activists whacked in Mac backdoor hack attack

    What's up .doc? Oh, too late

    A security hole in Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is being exploited to hack and spy on Asian activists at odds with the Chinese government. In the past few days, spear-phishing emails - highly targeted booby-trapped messages - were sent to Apple users in the Uyghur community, which is an ethnic group of people mostly (but not …

    Security 14 Feb 16:05

  • Spammers unleash DIY phone number slurping web tool

    Well it is Valentine's Day... How else are you going to get those digits?

    Mobile spammers have released a DIY phone number harvesting tool, but instead of advertising it solely on criminals-only online hangouts, they're trying to flog it out in the open. The availability of the utility turns the simple act of submitting a mobile number to a website something that might lead to the receipt of more …

    Security 14 Feb 17:03

  • Are you lonesome tonight, tech firms? Let our dating service fix you up

    Vulture Valentines Saucy startup seeks older partner, solvent, GSOH

    With Dell happily married to itself thanks to some money from the private equity gods, and EE having signed up a whole bunch of sugar daddies to foot its bills, what other lonely hearts of the tech biz could use a date this Valentine's Day? Mature, big-boned mobile phone firm, still with a lot to give, seeks deep-pocketed …

    Financial News 14 Feb 18:04

  • Nvidia revenues fight the PC tide, but annual profits pinched

    Tegra 4 ready for Q2 launch

    Graphics chip and processor wannabe Nvidia turned in its numbers for its final quarter of fiscal 2013 after markets closed on Wednesday, and the top and bottom lines were more or less in line with expectations, given the cutthroat nature of the PC, smartphone, and tablet markets these days. In the quarter ended on January 27, …

    Financial News 14 Feb 19:43

  • Irony alert: Pirate Bay accuses anti-piracy group of illegal copying

    Kiddie-raid copyright cops called out

    The Pirate Bay has claimed it will sue Finland's main anti-piracy pressure group, theCopyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre(CIAPC), after the group illegally copied code from their Swedish neighbors. "We are outraged by this behavior," a spokesman told TorrentFreak in what must surely be the spirit of irony. "People must …

    Media 14 Feb 19:54

  • Surface RT now on sale in 13 more European markets

    On sale, yes – but is it selling?

    Continental Europeans who can't think of anything to get that special someone for Valentine's Day might condsider a Surface RT fondleslab, which Microsoft made available in 13 additional markets on Thursday. Until now, the ARM-based tablets running Windows RT have only been available in Australia, Canada, China, France, …

    Hardware 14 Feb 21:49

  • Inside Microsoft's Surface Pro: A fiendishly difficult journey

    Photos 'A completely different bag of beans' than the Surface RT

    Microsoft's new Intel-powered, Windows 8–running Surface Pro continues manufacturers' increasing drive to create kit that's all but impossible to repair, according to the part-and-repair folks at iFixit. "The Surface Pro received a 1 out of 10 score on our repairability scale — the worst any tablet has ever received," iFixit …

    Hardware 14 Feb 21:54

  • Doped nanotubes boost lithium battery power three-fold

    Stringy silicon also recharges in minutes

    A team from the University of Southern California (USC) has built a lithium battery that provides three times the power capacity of conventional designs, with a recharge time of just ten minutes and a predicted long life-span. "It's an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next generation lithium-ion …

    Science 14 Feb 22:47