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27th February 2013 Archive

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  • Apple patents situational awareness for oblivious fanbois

    Get ready for a sensitive iPhone that responds to your surroundings

    Maintaining an awareness of sensory cues in the vicinity has just been patented by Apple – for portable electronic devices, anyway. The technology outlined in Apple's new Patent 8,385,039, which the US Patent and Trademark Office granted on Tuesday, would make iPhones, iPads, and a potential iWatch capable of sensing certain …

    Software 27 Feb 00:05

  • Visa to devs: Please take contents of our wallet

    Make shopping fun like first-person-shooters to repel PayPal, Google

    Buying stuff online should be so fast and fun that it resembles the experience offered by first-person shooters, in which as soon as one acquires a tool it is possible to start using it. That's the professional opinion of Greg Storey, head of Visa's V.me service for Asia-Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa. …

    Business 27 Feb 00:46

  • Adobe squashes TWO critical Flash vulnerabilities with emergency patches

    Two out of three threats are dangerous, being used in wild

    Adobe published a critical Flash Player update on Tuesday to fix three exploits, two of which are under active attack by hackers. Two of the three vulnerabilities are being used by nefarious folk, Adobe said, and one of these two explicitly targets the Firefox browser. Adobe introduced the Flash Player sandbox a year ago to …

    Security 27 Feb 00:57

  • Revolution weaves predictive analytics into Hortonworks Hadoop

    Teaching an elephant to prognosticate like a pirate – R!

    Revolution Analytics, the commercializer of the open source R statistical analysis programming language with proprietary extensions that are closed source, has come up with a bunch of ways to integrate the Hadoop big data muncher with R. And it is testing the integration of its R Enterprise ScaleR predicative algorithms in …

    Cloud 27 Feb 01:22

  • Outsourcing your own job much more common than first thought

    RSA 2013 Verizon finds canny computer worker's business plan

    Computer programmers outsourcing their own jobs and pocketing the profit from salary differentials overseas is much more common than first thought. Last month, Verizon reported that an investigation into a client had revealed that the unnamed company's star programmer, a chap dubbed Bob, had outsourced his job to a Chinese …

    Security 27 Feb 01:42

  • Yet more world+dog patent suits, this time over encryption

    Apple, Dell, HP, Toshiba, etcetera

    A hitherto little-known company called Maz Technologies has taken aim at seven major vendors, filing lawsuits claiming that they infringe its security patents. Maz Technologies first popped its head over the patent parapet in 2002, when it sued a company called PC Dynamics over a security patent, and in 2008 it settled a suit …

    Law 27 Feb 02:48

  • Networks go over the top to meet the enemy

    MWC 2013 For those in the communications industry a lesson: talk to each other

    One of the things mobile network operators complain about most is how they have to invest in infrastructure while over the top (OTT) players are making all the money. So it takes a brave man to take part in a keynote when he’s one of those OTT pariahs. At the “Future of Communication” keynote that man was Talmon Marco, co- …

    MWC 27 Feb 03:54

  • New social network is for DEAD PEOPLE

    'Immortalize the loved ones who are no longer with you'

    Not content with worming their way into every aspect of daily life, a new Indian social network has decided to do the same for the afterlife. Departedlife.com is the output of Anglo-Indian outfit Planet E-com Solutions, which says it is a Microsoft Certified Partner offering software development, search engine optimisation and …

    Networks 27 Feb 06:02

  • World+Dog don't care about climate change, never have done

    It's the economy, stupid - and it always was

    Seventeen years of continuous surveys covering countries around the world show that people not only do not care about climate change today - understandably prioritising economic misery - they also did not care about climate change even back when times were good. The new information comes in a study released by the National …

    Science 27 Feb 06:14

  • Microwaves thrash fibre on speed... if you like two-nines uptime

    Radio network between stock exchanges hits 357 million MPH

    “Time? They ain’t making any more of it, so you gotta get in and get out, or you’ll get your f*****g face ripped off,” screamed an old Chicago Merc floor trader at my grad school class during a field trip. I nodded, like the rest of the class, figuring he knew what he was talking about and also not wanting to provoke this …

    Data Networking 27 Feb 07:02

  • Google: Our 'freedom of expression' should trump punters' privacy

    'Right to be forgotten' is overrated, huffs search giant

    Google has called on the EU's highest court to uphold its right to display links to published "valid legal material" in the face of calls from Spain's data protection authority to remove links on the grounds of privacy. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is due today to stage a hearing on a case in which it has …

    Law 27 Feb 08:02

  • EU web chief: Europe's slow on 4G, but 5G GLORY WILL BE OURS

    MWC 2013 Steelie Neelie pledges €50m to design ultra-fast networks

    A top Euro politician has urged Europeans to get cracking on rolling out 5G networks after falling behind Asia and America in adopting 4G. Neelie Kroes, who is vice-president of the European Commission and heads up the continent's digital strategy, has earmarked €50m (£43m) for funding research into faster-than-4G mobile …

    MWC 27 Feb 08:32

  • Commvault disgorges ginormous flood of biz data-furtling software

    After 2 years of silence, we heard a rumbling... then - OH MY GAAAAH

    One-trick software pony Commvault has finally pushed out a raft of updates with Simpana version 10.0 in the hopes of broadening its user base in the biz data backup, archive and search game. Simpana 9, the previous generation of the software, came out in October 2010 - so we've had to wait almost two-and-half years for gen 10 …

    Storage 27 Feb 09:03

  • Brit firm PinPlus flogs another password 'n' PIN killer

    Enter the matrix

    The inventor who co-founded visual PIN company GrIDsure has become involved with another pattern-based authentication start-up in the hopes that the shoulder-surfer proof technology could replace two-factor authentication. His new company, PinPlus, does away with passwords and PINs by combining a method for securely delivering …

    Security 27 Feb 09:27

  • Wheeeee... CRUNCH: DDN pushes out monster Hadoop appliance for biz

    Big Data ingester and digester

    Supercomputer storage firm DataDirect Networks (DDN) has brought out a scale-out Hadoop storage array, the hScaler, to both ingest and digest Big Data using Hadoop, combining compute and storage in one platform. DDN claims this approach gets rid of the data-transfer bottlenecks that slow down Hadoop servers in the existing …

    HPC 27 Feb 10:03

  • Veteran distie Northamber swings to loss, sales dive by 22%

    Blames Comet demise, UK economy, IT vendors and bank interest rates

    AIM-listed Northamber blamed the economy and cost-cutting on the part of IT vendors for a massive slide in sales and the return to losses at the halfway stage in its fiscal 2013. The oldest IT distie in Blighty said turnover fell to £41.5m in the six months to 31 December from £53.8m in the same period a year earlier, …

    The Channel 27 Feb 10:32

  • Nokia wants to build the Google of human behaviour - and share it

    Interview Really, really, really Big Data to work out who's doing what, when and why

    Nokia has a radical strategy to outflank some of the world’s biggest technology companies, including Google, and it shared some of the details with El Reg in Barcelona this week. According to Michael Halbherr, a key member of Nokia’s top executive team and arguably number two to CEO Stephen Elop, location-based human behaviour …

    MWC 27 Feb 10:36

  • Google squishes login-bypass bug that opened door to hijackers

    Two-step account authentication sidestepped

    Google has patched a flaw that allowed attackers to circumvent the web giant's two-factor login system and hijack victims' accounts. Researchers at Duo Security said anyone could bypass a Google account's two-step verification system, reset its master password and gain full control of the profile simply by capturing one of the …

    Security 27 Feb 11:03

  • PayPal founder sets up mobile payment service verified by FACEBOOK

    2-click buy-now-pay-later system

    PayPal co-founder Max Levchin has launched his new payments startup, Affirm, to fight it out in the rapidly expanding arena of mobile payments. The new firm will use customers' Facebook accounts to authenticate their identity, allowing them to buy stuff on their mobes with just two taps. "Affirm brings two-tap checkout to any …

    Mobile 27 Feb 11:23

  • Brit biz stops coked-up moist pocketstrokers ruining your pub lunch

    MWC 2013 Spray-on mobe coating coming to a store near you, probably

    Unlike digestive biscuits, mobile phones do not react well to being dunked. With perhaps this in mind, two companies at Mobile World Congress claim to have the best technologies for treating phones to make them waterproof. Ruggedised mobes at the bottom of fish tanks have appeared at MWC before, but what makes this particular …

    MWC 27 Feb 11:44

  • Ten smartphones with tablet ambitions...

    Product Round-up ...or small tablets that want to be phones...

    How we all laughed when Samsung launched the Galaxy Note toward the end of 2011. Who could possibly want a phone with a 5.3-inch screen? It turned out rather a lot of people did, and the unqualified success of the 4.8-inch Galaxy S III and 5.6-inch Galaxy Note 2 proved that what many punters want is a phone with a really, really …

    MWC 27 Feb 12:03

  • MasterCard tries to zap PayPal with own-brand mobe wallet

    MasterPass eyes lead in pay-by-mobe race

    Walk into any of Apple’s 400 shops, pick up an accessory, boxed software or any one of the other items the Mac maker’s stylish emporia have out on shelves, and, if you have an Apple ID and an iPhone, you can buy the products you want without having to interact with one of the firm’s happy-clappy minions. The system works with …

    Mobile 27 Feb 12:17

  • Investors fight off rivals to stuff money in Nexenta's pockets

    SDN is H.O.T.: 9 VCs join oversubscribed $24m funding round

    It seems software-defined storage is the storage world's "cloud", and Nexenta is bang on trend. The ZFS storage array software firm's CEO, Evan Powell, is now stepping aside to become chief strategy officer in the wake of a fourth funding round of $24m, and investors must be hoping the appointment of a seasoned CEO will take the …

    Financial News 27 Feb 12:31

  • It's the Peer 2.0: Martha Lane Fox now a crossbench baroness

    Arise, Baroness Dotcom. Fancy some peer-to-peer networking?

    "Dotcom dinosaur" and Whitehall's digerati darling Martha Lane Fox CBE has been made a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. The freshly entitled Baroness of Soho*, who is the face of the Cabinet Office's "digital by default" agenda, naturally took to Twitter to announce the news. Her non-party political peerage followed …

    Government 27 Feb 12:45

  • iPhones, 'droids go to WAR: US soldiers invade TOP-SECRET cloud

    Chiefs stop short of letting BYOD tech onto classified networks

    Spooks and soldiers will get iPhones and Android kit after the top brass promised to open up its top-secret communication networks to handsets beyond BlackBerrys. A new US Department of Defense implementation plan - which covers the Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA and tech research group DARPA - will allow employees of all levels …

    Government 27 Feb 13:04

  • Pro-Assad hackers break into AFP Photo wire Twitter feed

    #apicisworthapprox36tweets

    The Twitter feed of news agency AFP's photo department was hacked yesterday, apparently by supporters of embattled Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad. The agency's main Twitter account tweeted that any documents or images posted to the photo-dept feed from 16.45 had not come from Agence France-Presse: It appears our @afpphoto …

    Security 27 Feb 13:17

  • APT1, that scary cyber-Cold War gang: Not even China's best

    More B-team than elite team, say security experts

    Shanghai hackers APT1 - outed this month in a high-profile report that linked them to the Chinese military - may not be China's top cyber-espionage team despite its moniker. Security experts say the team is more prolific than leet. The gang, believed to carrying out orders from state officials, was accused of siphoning …

    Security 27 Feb 13:47

  • Microsoft unwraps sysadmin-friendly Office 365 for biz update

    Desktop Office apps included

    One month after lifting the curtain on the updated version of its Office 365 subscription service for home users, Microsoft has officially launched the equivalent service for business customers with three new offers for small and midsized companies. Microsoft debuted Office 365 in 2011 as a set of subscription-based, hosted …

    Cloud 27 Feb 14:03

  • AVG holds first Partner Advisory Council in Blighty

    'We thought we were engaging with the channel, clearly we weren't'

    Small biz security specialist AVG has run its first Partner Advisory Council (PAC) in the UK after admitting it needs to brush up on channel comms, particularly in light of partners who are moving exclusively to the cloud. The inaugural event was held last week for six channel partners including Vivid Clouds, Pro-Logic, …

    The Channel 27 Feb 14:23

  • EyeSight tries to please MWC crowd with touch-free fingering

    MWC 2013 Next-gen interface tech for TV, PC and mobe

    Israeli gesture tech specialist EyeSight is in Barcelona demonstrating how one finger can take control of a phone, TV or computer without so much as a caress, using the already-present camera. EyeSight's hand-level gesture detection is already being used in TVs from HiSense and phones from ZTE, but the company has refined the …

    MWC 27 Feb 14:32

  • Colombian boffins reconstruct flight path of Russian meteor

    Trajectory apparently began in near-Earth asteroid group Apollo

    Astroboffins have figured out where the Chelaybinsk meteorite came from using the power of maths and videos shot by witnesses in Russia. Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin of the University of Antioquia in Colombia have come up with a preliminary reconstruction of the orbit of the meteor, which smashed into the city in the …

    Science 27 Feb 14:46

  • Hey, software snobs: Hardware love can set your code free

    Comment The two go hand in hand when scaling data-crunching systems

    In computing there are many, many different ways to run down other people’s work, not the least of which is: “OK, so they removed the bottleneck, but only by throwing faster hardware at it.” The implication is that tackling an issue just with software is intrinsically better. When did you ever hear anyone say: “OK, so they …

    Management 27 Feb 15:25

  • Live from New York, it's Speaking in Tech

    Podcast 'Proper' snapshots, backup bugbears and, um, Pretty Woman moments

    It's a another piping hot episode of Speaking in Tech, brought to you live from CommVault's Data Management Summit by your host Greg Knieriemen, who is flying solo this week in the Big Apple. The podcast was recorded live in New York City with special guests W Curtis Preston of media company Truth in IT and David West, VP of …

    Storage 27 Feb 15:53

  • Anonymous leaks 'Bank of America secrets' in spy revenge hack

    Hacktivists enraged by suggestion financial giant snooped on them

    Miscreants affiliated with hacking collective Anonymous have dumped online a huge cache of data supposedly lifted from insecure systems at a Bank of America contractor. The self-styled Anonymous Intelligence Agency (Par:AnoIA) leaked 320MB of emails and other information that suggests the banking giant is running an online …

    Security 27 Feb 16:34

  • Judge bins Apple's plea to slash $368m FaceTime patent damages

    iPhone maker told to spend face time with slighted VPN biz

    Apple has lost a bid to reduce its $368m damages bill owed after its video-call service FaceTime infringed VirnetX's VPN patents. The fruity firm wanted to reduce the cash it would have to hand over following a jury verdict of infringement or, failing that, a new trial. But the judge in the Texan court case denied both …

    Law 27 Feb 17:03

  • Rackspace swallows ObjectRocket for MongoDB smarts

    Looking to scale up cloudy NoSQL database services

    If you are going to take on Amazon Web Services, like Rackspace Hosting is doing with its eponymous cloud, then you'll need a lot more than raw infrastructure services. Rackspace requires various platform services, and it also needs the expertise to run them. Pat Matthews, vice president of development at Rackspace, tells El …

    Financial News 27 Feb 17:34

  • cPanel: Reset your root passwords! Hackers broke into our system

    Website tools biz hits red alert after help-desk server pwned

    Website administration firm cPanel has told The Reg that one of its proxy servers was hacked, potentially exposing customers' administrator-level passwords. cPanel discovered that one of its systems, used to handle technical support tickets, was infiltrated nearly a week ago. The biz, which provides tools for managing Unix- …

    Security 27 Feb 18:06

  • Apprenda adds Java to its .Net PaaS

    Touts single- to multi-tenant conversion features

    Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider Apprenda has come up with a way to morph single-tenant Java applications into multi-tenant hydras without developers having to do much legwork. The company announced on Wednesday it had added Java support to its previously .Net-only PaaS. Apprenda's technology abstracts the IT runtime …

    Cloud 27 Feb 18:30

  • MiniDuke miscreants whip out old-school tricks to spy on world+dog

    The '90s called... they want their malware back

    A new strain of malware designed to spy on multiple government entities and institutions across the world has been discovered by anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab. MiniDuke has infected government entities in the Ukraine, Belgium, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic and Ireland. In addition, a research institute, two think-tanks …

    Security 27 Feb 19:03

  • Samsung Wallet slavishly copies inspired by Apple Passbook

    MWC 2013 Iconic imitation: The surest form of flattery

    Samsung has unveiled a developer preview of its upcoming Wallet app, and to say that it was inspired by Apple's iOS Passbook app may be a gross understatement. Like Passbook, Samsung's Wallet stores retail coupons, airline boarding passes, membership cards, and event tickets, according to The Verge. Also like Apple's offering …

    Applications 27 Feb 19:19

  • Spook-clouds ahoy! Panzura cloud storage cleared for restricted data

    Goal: Help government agencies trim IT staff

    Panzura's global cloud-storage controller has been cleared to handle restricted data, which should make it easier for the US government to move to private clouds and get rid of IT staff. Panzura announced on Wednesday that its 1U and 2U physical and virtual "Quicksilver Cloud Storage Controllers" have been certified to Level 1 …

    Cloud 27 Feb 19:58

  • The server racket recovers from the Great Recession

    Hyperscale data center vigor makes up for enterprise skittishness

    Sales and shipments of servers are both approaching levels seen in the run-up ahead of the Great Recession in late 2007. This was thanks in large part to the voracious appetite for iron of hyperscale data center operators such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, and despite cautious investments by enterprises outside of the …

    Servers 27 Feb 20:26

  • Sony lifts skirt on Firefox OS with developer ROM for Xperia E

    Ubuntu's not the only half-baked mobile OS around

    The Mozilla Foundation doesn't expect the first phones running its Firefox OS to appear until this summer – and even then, only in select markets – but developers can start tinkering with the platform on real hardware today, thanks to Sony Mobile. Just days after Mozilla announced the first commercial release of Firefox OS at …

    Developer 27 Feb 20:44

  • Music industry raises NBN fears as legal digital sales take off

    Fast broadband will kill us

    As Australians turn from freetards into digital music buyers, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) (IPFI) and Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) have responded by bleating that the National Broadband Network will destroy them unless the government revises copyright law in their favour. In …

    Business 27 Feb 23:07

  • Apple, Facebook, Google: Same-sex marriage 'a business imperative'

    Updated HP's Whitman and top GOPpers also prod Supremes on marriage equality

    Apple, Facebook, Intel, Google, Oracle, Cisco, Verizon, eBay, and Qualcomm are among at least 60 top US companies that will file a brief with the US Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs in a case that seeks to invalidate as unconstitutional laws banning same-sex marriages. "Recognizing the rights of same-sex couples to …

    Law 27 Feb 23:12

  • Canonical scraps in-person Ubuntu planning, heads for cloud

    Future developer meetings to be held on Google+

    Ubuntu Linux maintainer Canonical has canceled its semiannual Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) conferences in favor of a new, more-frequent series of events to be conducted online only. In the past, Canonical has organized a new UDS event at a different city around the world every six months, to coincide with the beginning of …

    Operating Systems 27 Feb 23:15

  • 'New' Canadian BlackBerry security scare emerged in 2011

    Hypegasm points to crisis for democratic process, not deadly new flaw

    Reports that Canada has just awakened to the perils of BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN messaging in government should be taken with a pinch of salt – the nation knew about the problem back in 2011. PIN-to-PIN messages take advantage of the fact that every BlackBerry device is issued with a unique eight-digit PIN. If a BlackBerry user …

    Mobile 27 Feb 23:32

  • Vint Cerf: 'The internet of things needs to be locked down'

    RSA 2013 Your air conditioner is a national security threat

    Device manufacturers who are sticking internet connections into everything from TVs to toasters need to lock down their systems with strong authentication, Google's chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf warned the RSA keynote audience. Cerf said he was "frankly astonished" at the range of devices that now come with an internet …

    Security 27 Feb 23:58