The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

1st March 2013 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • CloudFlare's Railgun protocol gets buy-in from web giants

    Byte-level caching cuts dynamic content loading times by 90 percent

    Web hosters and cloud operators have charged up their infrastructure with CloudFlare's 'Railgun' WAN optimization technology, giving developers the 'net over an easy way to dramatically speed the loading of dynamic pages. The wide-area network optimization technology makes it possible to cache content at the byte level within …

    Cloud 1 Mar 00:53

  • Big Blue touts superfast analogue-digital converter

    SKA-inspired project could reach into your smartphone

    We’re nowhere near the limits of optical fibre capacity: the bottlenecks exist in the electronics that connects to the fibre. One part of this is the analogue to digital converter (ADC) and IBM is touting a prototype that it says could deliver a billion conversions per second. The company says its technology doubles current …

    Networks 1 Mar 01:04

  • BlackBerry juices Z10 handset with OTA software update

    Here comes the first batch of fixes improvements

    BlackBerry spent months touting the virtues of its new Z10 smartphone before its launch, and now it says the Z10 is even better than ever, thanks to the device's first over-the-air (OTA) software update. In a blog post announcing the update on Thursday, Michael Clewey, BlackBerry's director of handheld software product …

    Mobile 1 Mar 01:45

  • Google signs Rightscale to resell Compute Engine

    Counters AWS' OpsWorks release

    Google has signed RightScale as the first reseller for Compute Engine, the ad giant's cloudy CPUs-for-hire service. RightScale is a management vendor that can manage machines, virtual or otherwise, running in nine public clouds. The company can also help with private clouds and juggle virtual machines between the public and on …

    Cloud 1 Mar 03:43

  • Baidu offers English-speaking devs chance to crack China

    Fortune and glory await in world's largest smartphone market

    Chinese search giant Baidu is stepping up efforts to engage with the international developer community with a new English language web site that might just help mobile app devs outside the Great Firewall crack the huge domestic market in the People’s Republic. The Baidu Cloud Developer Center is for the time being limited to …

    Developer 1 Mar 04:06

  • Facebook buys bits of written-off MSFT adware

    User T&Cs probably re-written already as House of Zuck promises marketers good data

    Trivia time: What was the reason for Microsoft's first-ever loss? The answer is the $US6.2 billion the company splashed on ad technology company aQuantive back in 2007, which by last July was judged a sufficiently dud investment that Redmond wrote it off, resulting in a loss for the quarter. What to make then of the fact that …

    Business 1 Mar 04:50

  • Japanese boffins produce solar power paper

    Lightweight, flexible sheets of cellulose nano-fibres

    Green tech boffins at Osaka University have developed new highly efficient solar panel “paper” technology made from wood pulp, and says it is lighter, more flexible and eco-friendly than traditional clunky solar energy collectors. The solar paper can be less than one millimetre thick thanks to its basic components: transparent …

    Science 1 Mar 05:44

  • Google open sources very slow compression algorithm

    Your server will hate it but your mobe will love it

    Google has open sourced a new compression algorithm called Zopfli that it says is a slower-but-stronger data squasher than the likes of zlib. The product of Googler Lode Vandevenne's 20 per cent time, the day a week Google allows its staff to work on side projects, Zopfli is said to reduce files to sizes 3.7–8.3 per cent …

    Software 1 Mar 05:59

  • One titsup server kills Brit-hosted Donhost websites for THREE DAYS

    Where was the back up?

    A fault in just one server at Brit web hosting biz Donhost took out thousands of websites and emails for more than three days. The service slowly found its feet again on Wednesday afternoon after the company officially confirmed it fell over on Monday at 7am. Affected customers posting in a help forum put the start of the …

    Servers 1 Mar 06:02

  • Cambridge boffins reveal prehistoric prawn monster

    Chinese fossil 'Fuxianhuiid' shows earliest nervous system extending beyond the head

    Scientists in China are celebrating another key discovery after unearthing the fossilised remains of a 520 million year-old arthropod, with what they claim is the earliest example of a nervous system extended beyond the head. The prawn-like sea creature was found preserved sideways on, enabling Javier Ortega-Hernández and his …

    Science 1 Mar 06:34

  • Truck-maker CAT flogs smartphone spawn to butter-fingered fondlers

    MWC 2013 Gorilla-glassed monster for people who, er, drop a lot of calls

    It’s all very well making a phone waterproof, but over 70 per cent of smartphone deaths are down to a cracked screen. With that in mind, the first smartphone from CAT - yes, Caterpillar, the mechanical digger, truck, footwear and sunglasses manufacturer - sells itself on being drop-proof. From head height onto concrete. It …

    MWC 1 Mar 07:04

  • Mind-melded rats could herald organic BRAIN-COMPUTERS

    Rodent thoughts transmitted over 4,000 miles

    Neuroboffins at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have managed to link the brains of two rats on different continents in an experiment they claim could pave the way for organic supercomputers built from networked animal brains. In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday, Duke researcher Miguel …

    Science 1 Mar 07:57

  • Now even MORE 'interns' make iPhones - Chinese labour watchdog

    Apple: We're improving... Besides, look at Samsung

    The number of students forced to "intern" on iPhone assembly lines has increased, says a new report from a China-based labour rights watchdog. The report 'Apple Fails in its Responsibility to Monitor Suppliers', published on 26 February by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) also says that Apple …

    Phones 1 Mar 08:03

  • NASA probes spots temporary third Van Allen radiation belt

    This'll driver the lunar deniers crazy

    For over fifty years schoolbooks have been teaching about the Van Allen belts, two torus-shaped zones of charged particles that encircle the Earth. Now, a NASA mission has discovered that there is a third – but only when conditions are right. Three belts for the price of two Last August, NASA fired a pair of Radiation Belt …

    Science 1 Mar 08:11

  • ARM servers: From li'l Acorns big data center disruptions grow

    Shuttleworth says 'vast tracts' of legacy apps 'just don't matter'

    The ARM collective doesn't just want to get into the data center. It wants to utterly transform it and help companies "manage down the legacy" of existing systems, as Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth put it during a live chat hosted by ARM Holdings to close out the Mobile World Congress extravaganza in Barcelona on Thursday. " …

    Servers 1 Mar 08:27

  • Spies in the sky: The leaps and bounds from balloons to spook sats

    Picture special A brief history of aerial surveillance around the globe

    In just 230 years, humanity has progressed from its first faltering flights to the capability to photograph from space an object the size of a grapefruit - a testament both to technological progress and our need to keep a close eye on the world around us. The advancement of aerial surveillance and imaging has been driven in …

    SPB 1 Mar 08:34

  • Hey, media barons: The noughties called, they want their mobile tech back

    Media types with mobes bore Reg hack to tears

    The last major keynote of Mobile World Congress saw speakers from ratings giant Nielsen, advertising agency Tribal DDB Worldwide, CNN International and developing world mobile firm Jana take the crowd through how the media - that is to say advertising - relates to mobile. If listening to the speakers from NTT DoCoMo is like …

    MWC 1 Mar 08:58

  • Texan contends iPod EXPLODED IN HER FACE

    One moment music, then a life consumed by 'mental anguish'

    Apple is being sued by a Nacogdoches, Texas, woman who claims that her iPod touch exploded in her face. We'll let the cool and dispassionate language of her complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and repeated word-for-word for your perusal, recount the frightening tale of the unfortunate …

    Hardware 1 Mar 09:04

  • IBM runs OLTP benchmark atop KVM hypervisor

    To heck with that TPC-VMS server virtualization spec

    IBM has performed benchmark tests that provide some clarity on how transaction processing will perform in real-world virtualized environments – today's real world, that is. One of the things that El Reg complained about when the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) trotted out its TPC-VMS server virtualization benchmark …

    Servers 1 Mar 09:13

  • Sinkholes reveal more Chinese-hacked biz - and piggybacking crims

    It's not just state-backed spies using snoop-ware armies

    Researchers have identified yet more high-profile organisations attacked by spying Chinese hackers after seizing hold of the miscreants' command-and-control servers. Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said that its tactic of "sinkholing" spyware-controlled systems is great for identifying custom malware and warning …

    Security 1 Mar 09:27

  • Apple takes aim at accessory makers, files iPad stand patent

    Just what the world has been clamoring for – now with magnets

    If you were among the 25,000 or so Apple faithful who crowded the exhibit hall at this year's Macworld/iWorld "Ultimate iFan Event" a couple of weeks back, you're certain to agree that the last thing the iMarketplace needs is yet another iPad stand. Apple, however, disagrees. As part of its weekly patent-application release, …

    Tablets 1 Mar 09:33

  • SimCity 2000

    Antique Code Show Spline of the times

    The summer of 1995, I remember it well. I was but a slip of lad at the time, slightly console obsessed perhaps, but about to embark on a period of PC gaming that would put me at the forefront of cutting-edge videogame technology, nearly bankrupting my parents as I went. It was my birthday and I’d just finished hooking up my …

    Games 1 Mar 10:04

  • 'It's common for freelancers to farm out work to cheap coders'

    Quotw Plus: 'I'm supposed to release an enterprise platform on Azure?'

    This was the week when Mobile World Congress was going on in Barcelona, but although the products were fun, the chat was better at RSA's conference. In the opening keynote, exec chair Art Coviello lambasted industry people for going on and on about a "Cyber Pearl Harbour" and frightening the ordinary folk of the world with their …

    Bootnotes 1 Mar 10:33

  • Sergey Brin emasculated after HORROR smartphone disaster

    I was just fondling my slab, minding my own business and...

    Seething mass of testosterone and Google co-founder Sergey Brin has stated that smartphones are emasculating. Speaking at the Technology, Education and Design TED conference series on the subject of Google Glasses and the future of Google, Brin let drop that he finds the fastest growing technology of the past decade to be " …

    Phones 1 Mar 10:56

  • Official: Sky to buy O2 and BE's home broadband product in £200m deal

    Acquisition plan revealed exclusively by El Reg in January

    BSkyB has swooped in on the consumer broadband and fixed-line biz of Telefónica UK-owned O2 and BE with a proposed deal worth up to £200m. The Register exclusively uncovered in January that Sky execs had been spotted sniffing around O2's office. We also revealed that the mobile telco was effectively squeezing all it could out …

    Broadband 1 Mar 11:04

  • Microsoft Surface Pro will land in UK in WEEKS*

    Updated That pricing with those channels? Good luck, Redmond

    Microsoft struggled to fill retailers' shelves with the 128GB Surface Pro in North America but is rolling out both this and the little-loved 64GB version in Blighty later this month. In a statement last night, Redmond confirmed the Pro will start shipping to Australia, China, France Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK …

    The Channel 1 Mar 11:31

  • Enterprising 'early adapter' tries to hawk Google Glass on eBay

    Specs get a $15,900 bid before auction is pulled

    Online bidding for a set of Google Glass nerd specs reached $15,900 on eBay before the auction site took the listing down. A seller in Cleveland, Ohio, claimed to be one of the few invited to take part in the Google goggles pilot programme, set up to see how folks will use the kit, and said he would hand over the hardware for …

    Mobile 1 Mar 11:48

  • MWC 2013: The Chinese are coming - and you ain't seen nothing yet

    MWC 2013 Who can possibly stop Huawei's new mobile hardware?

    When the signs at an international trade event are in Chinese first, you know things have changed. This was only true of the photocopied signs posted all around Hall One at this year's Mobile World Congress, home to the giant Huawei hospitality booth - but expect to it spread. The Chinese have barely got started. "Why are we …

    MWC 1 Mar 12:03

  • Keyboard, you're not my type

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? How we tap in text stubbornly resists improvement... still

    When I chose to wave goodbye to wage slavery by turning freelance some (cough) 19 years ago, it was during an era in which the principal means of electronic communication between IT journalists was called Cix. Computers were powered by coke burners and required a team of navvies to work the bellows; monetary currency comprised …

    Vintage 1 Mar 12:14

  • Raspberry Pi-powered Tardis blasts off from 'Blighty's Baikonur'

    Video LOHAN team members in high-altitude Time Lord geekgasm

    The diminutive Raspberry Pi celebrates its first birthday today, and by way of a toast to the million-selling miniature kit, we bring news of high altitude geezer Dave Akerman's latest Rasberry Pi In The Sky tomfoolery - a geekgasmic combination of ARM power and Time Lord tech. On Wednesday, Dave and Anthony Stirk - they of …

    SPB 1 Mar 12:29

  • Prepare for 'post-crypto world', warns godfather of encryption

    Shamir: US quadrupling size of cyber-combat unit for a reason

    Cryptography is 'becoming less important' because of state-sponsored malware, according to one of the founding fathers of public-key encryption. Turing award-winning cryptographer Adi Shamir (the S in RSA) said the whole basis of modern cryptography is under severe strain from attacks on security infrastructure such as the …

    Security 1 Mar 12:47

  • Architect pitches builder-bothering 'Print your own house' plan

    Open source DIY domicile project to 'do for building what Linux did for software'

    WikiHouse, the "print your own open source pad" project, has called for contributors and cash to help it establish an online archive of downloadable dwelling designs. The site’s aim is nothing short of the democratisation of the construction industry: to allow, in short, “anyone to design, download and 'print' CNC-milled …

    Hardware 1 Mar 13:00

  • Zerto unzips to reveal ROBO replicating factory

    Automated hypervisor-resident disaster recovery

    Zerto (zero RTO, geddit?) produces Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) which is a hypervisor-resident and VM-aware replication facility providing VM-level disaster recovery (DR). Version 3.0 has just come around the block and it produces a set of goodies to make VM DR easier and more certain. Version 1.0 ZVR was a single site …

    Storage 1 Mar 13:18

  • Tech bazaar Aria puts £10K bounty on heads of DDoS varmints

    Wanted preferably alive

    Manchester-based reseller Aria PC is offering a £10,000 bounty for information leading to the conviction of miscreants who hit its websites with a sustained denial-of-service attack this week. In a forum post, Aria said it had already reported packet-flooding assaults against its main site and forum to the police, but wanted …

    Security 1 Mar 13:44

  • Euro watchdog bares teeth at Microsoft over browser gaffe

    Redmond could feel bite of a painful fine next month - report

    Antitrust watchdogs in Europe could soon slap Microsoft with a massive fine for the software maker's browser-choice gaffe last year. The company was caught steering its Windows operating system users into loading up Microsoft's Internet Explorer even though Redmond had previously agreed - in an earlier regulatory ruling - to …

    Applications 1 Mar 14:07

  • Arise, Lord BONG

    ¡Bong! My helpful GNOMES will slay these PEERS

    What is a vanguard role? It means taking the lead - Enver Hoxha Enterpreneurs!! Imagineers!! Emergent social nodes!! I bring you great news. A New Britain is emerging - thanks to Conservative 2.0 and its Digital by Default thinking. The old elites based on profits, exports and industry and R&D are falling by the wayside as a …

    Bootnotes 1 Mar 14:28

  • HP to partners: Flog our public clouds ... don't worry, you'll get paid

    VARs and SIs must wait until summer for billing control

    HP has rolled its public cloud services into a referral programme for resellers and global systems integrators but those channel partners will need to wait until the summer before they can bill customers directly. Private and managed cloud services are already available to partners but to date the public cloud under the Cloud …

    The Channel 1 Mar 14:30

  • Megaupload extradition bid - Feds WON'T have to hand in their evidence

    Summary of the data enough for Dotcom decision, says court

    A New Zealand court has ruled that the Feds don’t have to turn over all their evidence against Megaupload kingpin Kim Dotcom to get him extradited. The Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that the FBI had to tip its hand to Dotcom so that he could fairly contest the case against him, Reuters and others reported. Dotcom faces …

    Law 1 Mar 15:04

  • 'Brit Bill Gates' was powerless to stop HP's Autonomy acquisition

    Lynch suggests HP mega-bucks forced marriage

    Mike Lynch didn't fall out of love with Hewlett-Packard, it was HP which didn't know what it wanted. So says "Brit Bill Gates" Mike Lynch, who has even suggested HP's initial advances under then chief executive Leo Apotheker were unsolicited - possibly even unwanted - and that he was powerless to stop the acquisition. …

    Financial News 1 Mar 15:33

  • SpaceX rocket reaches orbit but Dragon fails to spit fire

    Cargo for ISS 'nauts may be Lost In Spaaace

    Upstart startup rocket biz SpaceX has had a seemingly successful launch on its second resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), but as the Dragon capsule reached orbit the company announced there was an "unspecified problem" and cut its webcast of the mission. The announcement was made about 12 minutes into …

    Science 1 Mar 16:04

  • Amazon, Facebook, Google attempt to cure cancer with Big Data

    Making game of deadliness this weekend

    Amazon, Facebook and Google have all pitched in to help Cancer Research UK run a weekend hackathon, to see how mobile apps might help cure cancer through gamification of cell analysis. The event runs over this weekend, and will see 40 of Silicon Roundabout's finest holed up in Google's East London Campus for a couple of days …

    Cloud 1 Mar 16:27

  • Bank Muscat hit by $39m ATM cash-out heist

    Duplicated cards fingered

    Cybercrooks have pulled off a $39m ATM heist against a bank in Oman using pre-paid travel cards. Bank Muscat put out a statement through the Muscat Securities Market admitting the loss: 12 Bank Muscat prepaid Travel Cards were compromised on February 20, 2013. The gross value of transactions on these cards, which were …

    Security 1 Mar 16:56

  • VMware execs shake fists at Amazon Web Services cloud

    'How can we be losing to a jumped-up bookseller?'

    VMware executives have lashed out at Amazon Web Services, warning partners that if they let workloads go to the cloud, they are unlikely to come back. In a high-octane speech at the virtualization giant's worldwide partner conference, VMware chief Pat Gelsinger warned attendees of the threat posed by Bezos's cloud. "If a …

    Virtualization 1 Mar 17:26

  • iPrefs-seeking shareholder Einhorn drops Apple lawsuit

    'Silly sideshow' folds its tent, moves on

    David Einhorn and his hedge fund Greenlight Capital have dropped their lawsuit against Apple. Einhorn had sued to block a vote at Apple's investor meeting, held this Wednesday, that would have forced a shareholder vote on the issuance of higher-dividend preferred shares. Einhorn is promoting the idea of that class of shares, …

    Law 1 Mar 18:44

  • Yet another Java zero-day vuln is being exploited

    Disable Java, wait for patch, you all know the drill...

    A new Java zero-day vulnerability is being exploited by attackers, and until it is patched everyone should disable Java in their browser. The vulnerability targets browsers that have the latest version of the Java plugin installed – Java v1.6 Update 41 and Java v1.7 Update 15 – malware researchers FireEye reported on Thursday …

    Security 1 Mar 18:55

  • Flexy 'iWatch' glass said to be three years away

    But buck up, fanbois: There are other rumors to lift your spirits

    If you're jonesing to slap down a chunk o' change for a flexible Apple iWatch, you've got plenty of time to save up – products using the requisite flexy glass won't appear until 2016. According to Apple's all-but-certain iPhone glass supplier, Corning, companies won't start manufacturing products using their flexible Willow …

    Hardware 1 Mar 20:23

  • Big Blue to embiggen itself even more on your big data

    Transmuting torrents of bits into gushers of cash

    IBM hosted its annual Investor Briefing at the Almaden Research Center in Silicon Valley on Thursday, and the top brass of the company spent many hours trying to prove to Wall Street that Big Blue was not going to have another near-death experience as the IT industry goes through another gut-wrenching transformation. Having …

    Management 1 Mar 20:53

  • SpaceX: 'We have control, it's just a glitch' Musk tells world+dog

    Updated Dragon thrusters back online

    The Dragon capsule is ready to flame, with all four boosters operational and ready for firing in an hour or so, SpaceX boss Elon Musk has told a press conference. The Falcon 9 rocket worked as planned, he said, and fired the Dragon capsule successfully into orbit. But SpaceX found it could only power up one of the four …

    Science 1 Mar 21:09

  • Judge slashes Apple's pile o' cash Samsung judgment

    'Hmmm... $1bn? How 'bout, say, $600m, give or take a few bucks?'

    Last August, a jury awarded Apple $1.05bn in a patent-infringement case against Samsung. On Friday, the US District Court judge who presided over that case slashed those damages by $450m. Judge Lucy Koh found that the jury had improperly calculated the amount of damages awarded to Apple, and trimmed the total down to under $ …

    Law 1 Mar 21:47

  • HGST: Nano-tech will double hard disk capacity in 10 years

    Self-assembling molecules to boost drive density

    HGST, the Western Digital subsidiary formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, says it has developed a method of manufacturing hard-disk platters using nanotechnology that could double the density of today's hard drives. The new technique employs a combination of self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting, …

    Storage 1 Mar 22:16

  • RSA roundup: Big trouble in not-so little China

    RSA 2013 Another year over and what have you done?

    This year's RSA conference is winding down. The expo hall is closed, most presentations are getting only sparse audiences, and there's only the jokey keynotes left to run this Friday afternoon. Once again Dr. Hugh Thompson (a man described by one delegate as "irrepressibly perky and with a face made for punching") is doing his …

    Security 1 Mar 23:32