12th March 2013 Archive

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Enormo-display Apple iPhone prototype surfaces

'You call that a big-screen phone? This is a big-screen phone!'

For you iPhone users who drool over the large displays of such Android handsets as ZTE's 5.7-inch Grand Memo or Samsung's 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II, cast your eyes on what could have been: The iPhone that could have kept RS-232 relevant for another decade (source: Ars Technica; click to enlarge) The beast pictured is an …

Phones 12 Mar 00:38
AWS plugs Node.js into Elastic Beanstalk

Opens another front in cloud language price war

Amazon has plugged Node.js into its free platform-as-a-service, Elastic Beanstalk. Elastic Beanstalk helps developers deploy applications by automating capacity provisioning, load balancing, health monitoring, and auto-scaling the company announced in a blog post on Monday It also promises some Node.js-specific support …

Developer 12 Mar 00:54
BlackBerry stock spikes on Lenovo buyout mumble

Chinese CEO says deal 'makes sense'

Shares in BlackBerry, the company formerly known as both RIM and a world leader in smartphone shipments, jumped up ten per cent on Monday after Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing said that a buyout "could possibly make sense." "External growth is all about opportunities," Yang told French financial newspaper Les Echos. "You can not rely …

Financial News 12 Mar 01:13
Amazon makes EC2 stickier with default virtual private clouds

Software stacks jump across AWS regions, but still can't live migrate

The evolution of the Amazon Web Services cloud has proceeded at a steady pace since 2006, and while a number of companies have built up cloud businesses and close the gaps, Amazon keeps moving ahead. Two recent tweaks to the Amazon cloud make it that more useful, and therefore more sticky for the applications running upon it. …

Cloud Infrastructure 12 Mar 01:16
ITU approaches Asia-Pac nations to support new ITRs

Still seeking allies for an unloved treaty

The ITU has reportedly sent a senior official to Bangkok to try and win votes for the new International Telecommunications Regulations which were proposed, argued over and ultimately voted down in December. According to CommsDay, the official is Malcolm Johnson, head of the ITU Telecommunications Standardization Bureau, …

Policy 12 Mar 01:23
Earthquake killed your network? Satellite-over-balloon to the rescue!

Softbank upgrades Japanese disaster recovery technology with space link

Two years after the devastating Sendai earthquake and subsequent tsunami rocked north-east Japan, mobile operator Softbank has updated its floating mobile phone base station system to include satellite comms for extra resilience. Networks faltered after the 2011 quake, with mobile phone towers knocked out of action. Softbank’s …

Networks 12 Mar 04:13
Riverbed rolling script language and SDK everywhere

GUIs waste so much time

Riverbed Technologies has announced its intention to open up its APIs and make its kit more consistently scriptable across all devices. The announcement today of FlyScript is as much the launch of a strategy as a finished product, but Riverbed sees it as an important move in two ways: ultimately, FlyScript will support the …

Data Networking 12 Mar 05:11
HP, SAP talking HANA-as-a-service

New acronym! IMCaaS (In-memory-computing-as-a-service)

HP and SAP are discussing the possibility of introducing an as-a-service edition of the software giant's Hana in-memory computing product. Anita Paul, senior director of HP's industry transformation consulting practice for Asia Pacific and Japan today told The Reg she will shortly meet SAP to discuss creating the service. …

Cloud Infrastructure 12 Mar 05:44
Elon Musk's 'Grasshopper' hover rocket scores another test success

Vid Another hop closer to the reusable-booster future

SpaceX, the radical upstart startup rocket firm helmed by PayPal hecamillionaire and geek visionary Elon Musk, has announced a further successful trial of its hovering "Grasshopper" test vehicle. According to the company: On Thursday, March 7, 2013, SpaceX’s Grasshopper doubled its highest leap to date to rise 24 stories …

Science 12 Mar 06:02
Japan's free public VPN project tunnels through Great Firewall

China and Japan make friends on the interwebs

Chinese netizens finding it increasingly difficult to bypass the Great Firewall after a recent crackdown on virtual private network (VPN) services have found an unlikely ally in a new public relay VPN service from Japan. The VPN Gate Academic Experiment Project (h/t TechInAsia) was set up by researchers at the Graduate School …

Networks 12 Mar 06:50
Rise Of The Machines: What will become of box-watchers, delivery drivers?

Blocks and Files Recession + mechanisation = Neo tech Luddites

In the world of storage tech, progress is a holy grail, never questioned, never doubted. Anything that adds data access capacity, data access speed and data access security is a good thing. Who can doubt it? The world has a seemingly insatiable appetite for storing and accessing data and as we feed the ravening beast, so our …

Storage 12 Mar 07:03
Godzilla wreaks revenge on Pakistani government web sites

Monster hacker takes out key sites to protest terror attacks

An Indian hacker known as "Godzilla" taken down several Pakistani government web sites. The hacker told The Hacker News that it acted in retaliation for the government's alleged support of terrorist activities, adding: "all network owned including switches because they deserve it, I have not touched any innocent website …

Security 12 Mar 07:22
How UK gov's 'growth' measures are ALREADY killing the web

Analysis A digital landgrab for Google, everyone else can find the EXIT

Yesterday the House of Lords debated measures smuggled into the proposed Enterprise and Regulatory Reform law - measures that would lead to fewer photographs on the web and potentially cripple British businesses. Allow ace aerial photographer Jonathan Webb to explain. Webb runs an aerial photography business and deals with …

Government 12 Mar 07:29
Sony chairman Howard Stringer set to retire, explore 'new world'

First foreign CEO leaves for good

Sony chair and former CEO Howard Stringer is set to retire from the firm completely this June. The Welsh-born businessman already left his CEO seat last year after seven years on the job and will now leave the board entirely. Stringer spent 15 years at Sony after a three-decades-long stint at US broadcaster CBS and rose to …

Business 12 Mar 08:03
Hitachi and Siemens data-stalking firm not bugged by security bods' report

IT monitoring outfit should be more bovvered, claims infosec firm

An open-source IT monitoring software firm has clashed with a security consultancy over the seriousness of a security bug in its technology. GroundWork's technology provides a platform for IT operations management (network, system, application, and cloud monitoring) that is used by customers including Hitachi Data Systems, the …

Security 12 Mar 08:32
Intel's Centrino notebook platform is 10 years old

The brand and the technology that made the world mobile

Ten years ago, Intel decided notebook computers needed a boost. The technology wasn’t new, but while a fair few mobile workers had portable computers, and some even had modem cards or were using Bluetooth-connected phones to reach the internet, laptops weren’t seen as a truly mobile networkable device. And so the chip maker …

Laptops 12 Mar 09:00
Philips pushes out SDK for multicolour Zigbee LED lights

How many devs does it take to change a light bulb?

Software engineers can finally switch lights on and off, and change their colour, without resorting to hardware controls - thanks to the Philips Hue SDK and its RESTful interface. The Philips Hue is an LED light bulb with a Zigbee interface which connects to a supplied bridge and thus can be addressed though the home's IP …

Developer 12 Mar 09:33
VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus: An El Reg deep dive

Review Trevor Pott feels the big business end of virtual machine giant

Given the plethora of virtualisation kit on the market, VMware customers – and potential customers – just want an answer to this very simple question: are VMware's offerings worth the money? A truthful response is fantastically complicated. VMware has many levels of offerings; what's more there are a lot of different companies …

Virtualization 12 Mar 10:04
Czechs check cheques, reject £680m 4G auction

Watchdog halts spectrum sale, fears high costs'll be pushed onto punters

As bidding topped £680m, the Czech regulator pulled the plug on the 4G auction, saying that to continue would risk pushing cripplingly high prices onto the winner's customers as well as delaying deployments - both to the detriment of the country's citizens. The Czech Republic was hoping for a fast deployment, and the regulator …

Mobile 12 Mar 10:37
Computacenter profits tumble after German 'stumble'

Flat revs, but still divvies out £75m to shareholders

UK IT outsourcing giant Computacenter saw pre-tax profit fall more than 10 per cent in the 12 months ended 31 December. The company reported to the City this morning that revenues for 2012 were relatively flat, up 2.2 per cent to £2.91bn compared to £2.85bn a year earlier. Profit before tax stood at £64.8m - a fall from £72. …

The Channel 12 Mar 10:59
BYOD: Bring Your Own Device - or Bring Your Own Disaster?

Live Chat Quiz Intel and Reg staff on the merits of either side

In most discussions of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and consumerisation the experts' mistrust of users is evident. Typically, IT departments are not keen on people bringing their own devices into work with the expectation that apps, services and support will just magically work. But some organisations have decided to trust the …

Management 12 Mar 10:59
Comixology cloud fails to Make Mine Marvel

Comment Free first issue promo frozen after servers kerpowed

Digital comic fans are a fairly honest lot, generally prefering to buy their sequential art reading matter than pinch it. But that doesn’t mean they ignore the regular weekly batches of new issues shared online. An apology from Dave Steinberger, head of Comixology, the largest digital comics retailer, reveals one reason why. …

Media 12 Mar 11:10
Starlight-sifting boffins can now spot ALIEN LIFE LIGHT YEARS AWAY

Pics New method filters out glare for rapid chemical analysis

Boffins have made a breakthrough in the search for alien life with a new technique for determining the colours, chemical composition and even physical characteristics of exoplanets that are light years away. Chemical analysis progression of HR8799 planets Credit: American Museum of Natural History An international …

Science 12 Mar 11:26
UK Serious Fraud Office queues up to probe HP's Autonomy allegations

...using Autonomy's own software

The UK Serious Fraud Office has told The Register it is investigating allegations of accounting irregularities at Autonomy, the Brit software house gobbled by HP for $10.7bn in 2011. In November last year, Hewlett-Packard claimed Autonomy "outright misrepresented" its value in the months before its acquisition, causing HP to …

Business 12 Mar 11:44
Ten ten-inch tablets

Product Round-up When only five-sixths of a foot will do

Does it make sense to own both a smartphone with a 5-inch screen and a 7-inch tablet? Arguably not. I can’t think of anything that I can do on my Nexus 7 that I couldn’t do equally well on a Samsung Galaxy Note II. Granted, the Nexus 7 makes a perfect partner for my Motorola Razr i, but if I used a Note II as my ‘phone’ I’d want …

Tablets 12 Mar 12:04
Oops, they did it again? Britney Spears, Paris Hilton 'LAID BARE ALL OVER THE WEB'

FBI boss, Beyonce and Sarah Palin also in toxic doxing

A rogue website has leaked what's claimed to be the detailed financial records of US celebs, politicians and other public figures. The site has published the alleged financial lowdown on US first lady Michelle Obama, blowhard Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger and both Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, among many others. Vice …

Security 12 Mar 12:36
Stats-crunchers toss ebooks into Blighty's 2013 inflation basket

Leave Freeview box and champers balanced on sweeties rack by the till

The Office for National Statistics has added ebooks to the basket of goods and services used to calculate Britian's rate of inflation, while Freeview boxes have been tipped out. The ONS said that ebooks were needed in the shopping basket that represents the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and Retail Prices Index (RPI) in the UK, …

Media 12 Mar 13:14
BT denies spiralling engineer no-shows - Reg readers DISAGREE

Telco claims missed appointments have fallen

BT has denied that its Openreach engineers are increasingly failing to turn up to fit or fix customers' broadband - even though complaints about the number of no-shows appears to be rising. In the past few months, more and more readers of The Register have complained to us that they've waited at home all day in vain for an …

Broadband 12 Mar 13:32
Smartphone users prefer LOVELY apps to fiddly mobe websites

They'd better load in 2 seconds or less, though

A whopping 85 per cent of smartphone users reckon local apps are better than websites, but they're an impatient bunch and expect a gentle touch to be rewarded within seconds or they'll go elsewhere. The numbers come from Compuware APM, which hired Equation Research to quiz three-and-a-half thousand global smartphone users and …

Mobile 12 Mar 14:03
Muso scrapbook Soundcloud gets $50m, corporatespeak makeover

Comment Megabucks investment? Must talk shite

Soundcloud, a long-time favourite site of musicians and DJs where they can post their doodles, demos and remixes, has raised $50m in venture capital funding. And you know what that means: it’s now obliged to talk new media marketing gibberish with a straight face. The website announced revised payment plans for musicians …

Media 12 Mar 14:33
Cash-strapped AMD drills for green gold in Lone Star State

Chip biz flogs campus for $164m, but wants to stay put

Processor bakery AMD will sell off and lease back its offices in Austin, Texas, to raise $164m in much-needed cash. The chipmaker will sign a 12-year lease on the "Lone Star Campus", with an optional extension clause if the firm decides to stay on at the location. It's not the first time that AMD has shifted some real estate …

Business 12 Mar 15:16
Curiosity's MYSTERY MARS find: NASA reveals THE TRUTH

Pic Strange dust may today unlock secrets of Martian life

NASA will show the world today just what its Curiosity rover discovered in its study of the first Martian rock powder sample. SCOOP! Yes, Curiosity scooped up this soil from Martian surface The space agency will hold a press conference at 1700 GMT (1000 PDT, 1300 EDT) to reveal the results of the roving robotic science lab' …

Science 12 Mar 15:39
PayPal privates exposed after breach on SECURITY shop

Aghast Avast: It was a reseller, not us

Antivirus firm Avast has said that it was not responsible for a breach on a website of a German reseller selling its security products that resulted in the apparent leak of the payment details of thousands of consumers over the weekend. Turkish hacker Maxn3y defaced avadas.de on Saturday (archive here) before dumping what the …

Security 12 Mar 16:03
Scalding clouds too hot to touch? Newvem adds heat map to AWS

Now you can see where you are wasting money and making Bezos richer

Not everyone thinks visually, but a lot of us do. And for those of us who think in pictures better than tables of data, Newvem - which has launched a set of monitoring tools for the Amazon Web Services cloud - has created a new heat map tool that rides on its cloudy service. Newvem was founded in 2010 by Zev Laderman and Ilan …

Cloud Infrastructure 12 Mar 17:06
AMD releases new 'Elite' laptop chips

'Richland' APUs a step above last year's 'Trinity' – but not a giant step

AMD has released its latest A-Series laptop chips, codenamed "Richland" and replacing the "Trinity" chips released last spring. Is it a giant leap from Trinity to Richland? Well, no, but the new chips are clearly a step forward – if, in some cases, only incrementally. Before we dig into Richland's upgrades, a refresher course …

Hardware 12 Mar 18:35
On Amazon, cloud service companies put themselves at risk

Analysis It's a risky business to swim in Bezos's petri dish

The power that Amazon Web Services wields over its cloud partners illustrates the new business reality brought about by pay-as-you-go rentable IT – and it's not a pretty picture. Last week we reported on allegations made by Amazon partners that the cloud king was using its third-party ecosystem as a proving ground for products …

Cloud Infrastructure 12 Mar 19:12
Curiosity succeeds – Mars was wet enough for life!

David Bowie still waiting for an answer

Test results from NASA's Curiosity rover's drilling and chemical analysis of Martian rock show that the Red Planet could have supported life as we know it. "A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration …

Science 12 Mar 19:33
France demands Skype register as telco

Emergency calls, interception and tax

The French telecommunications regulator ARCEP has turned a critical eye on Microsoft's Skype and decided – more than a decade after the service was created – that it should register as a communications operator. ARCEP believes the service is eluding “the duties and obligations” of a telecommunications operator, and according …

Networks 12 Mar 21:43
Taiwanese giant Quanta sold one out of every seven servers last year

Exclusive 'Hyperscale serving came to us, and we own it'

Taiwanese server maker Quanta is sick of people misrepresenting or guessing about the size and might of its server business, and so it is setting the record straight. And as it turns out, Quanta has an absolutely huge and absurdly fast-growing server business that should make all of the server incumbents quake with trepidation …

Servers 12 Mar 21:59
Medicos hack iPhone into lab 'scope

Peering into poop to spot worm eggs? There's an ~~app~~ hack for that

Take an iPhone, a cheap camera lens, double-sided tape and lab slides and what do you get? In Tanzania, a device that helps diagnose intestinal worms. While it may sound trivial, the medicos say that there are infections in around two billion people worldwide, mostly children, and they can cause malnutrition. It's easy to …

Phones 12 Mar 22:10
Retailer challenges Visa penalty fees in data security dust-up

Claims it was charged despite 'no evidence' of breach

In a payment industry first, a sporting-goods retailer has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Visa, arguing that the penalties the credit card company charges its members for data security breaches are unfair. As reported by Wired, retailer Genesco alleges that Visa seized some $13m in funds from its merchant bank …

Business 12 Mar 22:31
Dell floats Boomi master data management into the cloud

Agent in the sky to assure on-premise data reliablity

Dell Boomi has put a new twist on master data management (MDM), by asking dev-starved organizations to keep their critical information in the cloud. The Boomi MDM technology was launched by Dell on Monday and is meant for medium-sized businesses that dabble in cloud services along with on-premise software, but which lack the …

Cloud Infrastructure 12 Mar 23:26
Dell, Canonical tag team on Ubuntu Server tune-up for PowerEdgies

Expanding official support from cloudy boxes to general-purpose workhorses

Enterprises don't want to just know that an operating system will run on a piece of iron, they want to know who they are entitled to yell at when it stops working properly. And that's why a new support agreement has been inked between Canonical, the commercial entity behind the Ubuntu Server distribution of Linux, and Dell, one …

Servers 12 Mar 23:50