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13th March 2013 Archive

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  • Devs tease early screenshots of Ubuntu Touch Core Apps

    Canonical's mobes and slabs may actually be useful soon

    Ubuntu developer Michael Hall has posted screenshots of early versions of what Canonical is calling the "Core Apps" for Ubuntu Touch, the new flavor of the popular Linux distribution that's being rewritten to run on mobile devices as well as PCs. There wasn't much you could actually do with Ubuntu Touch when Canonical released …

    Developer 13 Mar 00:44

  • Boffins build robo-CHIMP for DARPA challenge

    Four hands, four tracks, and big iron inside

    The latest entrant to DARPA's $2m Robotics Challenge is a four-limbed robot with near-human strength and the dexterity to climb ladders or use tools. Don't try and feed it a banana The CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform (CHIMP) from Carnegie Mellon University uses mounted tracks on each triple-jointed limb to move like …

    Hardware 13 Mar 00:51

  • Oracle’s cloud slowly condenses

    Vaporous apps are rising as point products for social big data mobility

    Oracle has started touring the world, throwing “CloudWorld” events at which it explains it’s not late to the cloud, but took its own sweet time getting there in good shape. That was the message at the Sydney event today, where the Big O’s chief communications officer Bob Evans predicted 2013’s “dumbest idea” has already been …

    Cloud Infrastructure 13 Mar 03:37

  • Japan to trial emergency 'calls' by Twitter in disaster zones

    Social networks could be used to trigger call-outs

    Japanese authorities will soon trial a new warning system that would allow imperiled members of the public to contact the emergency services by sending messages on social networking sites like Twitter. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said it will test the system this (northern) summer, Kyodo reported. The disaster …

    Networks 13 Mar 04:09

  • Take a temp job in Oz and become office pariah

    Temporary visas for skilled workers at center of political storm

    If you’ve contemplated a year or three working in Australia on a temporary visa, think again. A domestic political storm means the climate for temporary skilled workers is likely to worsen. Australia escaped the worst ravages of the global financial crisis, experiencing neither a technical recession nor a major bump in …

    Jobs 13 Mar 06:05

  • HEAVILY ARMED SEX CRAZED DOLPHINS on RAMPAGE in Black Sea

    Updated Naval cetaceans with guns on heads 'seeking females'

    Worrying news today for any Register readers who may be in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, as news has emerged that three elite Ukrainian navy killer dolphins, possibly armed with deadly weapons attached to their heads, have gone absent without leave in the region, apparently intent on nookie. As all habitués of these …

    Science 13 Mar 06:06

  • Twitter's Chinese foe is home to social media zombies

    More than half of Sina Weibo accounts inactive or unoriginal

    China’s social networks may not be as social as was first thought, after a new sample study found that over half of accounts on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo are inactive while fewer than 15 per cent of active accounts feature original posts. Hong Kong University researchers were keen to find out the truth about weibo, arguing …

    Networks 13 Mar 06:35

  • NetApp modifies benchmark system and - shock - comes out TOP

    Maybe it shouldn't be called 'Doing a Dot-Hill' any more

    NetApp's number crunchers at Sunnyvale have sweetened the firm's SPC-2 benchmark results in an attempt to help NetApp stand out from the crowd, emphasising the price/performance bennies of its latest E5500 disk array. The Storage Performance Council (SPC) is a storage industry benchmark body that helps the industry provide …

    Storage 13 Mar 07:09

  • Coca Cola in the dock over illegal China GPS map claims

    Sugar Daddy says GPS logistics tools were commercially available

    The perils of doing business in China were highlighted again recently after it was revealed that Coca Cola is under investigation following allegations it illegally mapped parts of Yunnan province. The FT translated a notice on a local government web site in the region apparently accusing the fizzy drinks giant of "illegally …

    Policy 13 Mar 07:14

  • Sepaton lures Feds with TOP SECRET backup BEAST

    Adds encryption to its new 80TB per hour deduping monster

    Sepaton has brought out a new deduping backup storage array that it claims inflicts 80TB an hour on a floating lump of backup data. It's the S2100-ES3 2925 and it has near doubled its data ingestion rate over the -ES2 model, says the firm. It has also added an encryption feature that it says makes it the "safe choice" for mega …

    Storage 13 Mar 08:03

  • Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

    Feature The rise and fall of a 'revolutionary' storage technology

    They would, Clive Sinclair claimed on 23 April 1982, revolutionise home computer storage. Significantly cheaper than the established 5.25-inch and emerging 3.5-inch floppy drives of the time - though not as capacious or as fast to serve up files - ‘Uncle’ Clive’s new toy would “change the face of personal computing”, Sinclair …

    Vintage 13 Mar 08:26

  • Cluster padawans vie for place in Shanghai super showdown

    ASC13 Spotlight on undergrads' HPC coding skills

    The 2013 Student Cluster Competition season is off to a roaring start judging by the high level of interest in the inaugural Asia Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC13), which will kick off in Shanghai in mid-April. Right now, the judges are sorting through the 42 applications submitted by universities from a wide swath of …

    HPC 13 Mar 08:58

  • Disk drive kingpin WD whips out wallet for upstart Skyera

    It's not the first time it has given flash firm a cash injection

    Who'd have thought it? When flash array startup Skyera announced its $51m second round funding we knew Dell was leading it but what we didn't know was that disk drive bigwig Western Dig was in there too. WD appears to be lagging behind Seagate in adding a solid state drive dimension to its disk drive business. Seagate is …

    Storage 13 Mar 09:34

  • Perish the fault! Can your storage array take a bullet AND LIVE?

    Feature Sysadmin Trevor's gentle guide to protecting your data - and your career

    Storage doesn't have to be hard. It isn't really all that hard. If you ask yourself "can my storage setup lead to data loss" then you have already begun your journey. As a primer, I will attempt to demystify the major technologies in use today to solve that very problem. Certain types of storage technologies (rsync, DFSR) are …

    Storage 13 Mar 10:03

  • Outages plague Hotmail and Outlook users

    'Taking longer than we thought to fix', whimpers Redmond

    Microsoft's spanking new Outlook.com and creaking Hotmail service are experiencing prolonged outages around the world. Hotmail and Outlook.com users are complaining they are either unable to access email or unable to see all their email messages. The problem seems to have initially affected cloud storage service SkyDrive, too …

    Cloud Infrastructure 13 Mar 10:28

  • Black Tuesday patchfest: A lot of digits plug security dykes

    Adobe joins Redmond in game of vuln Twister

    Microsoft carried out a fairly comprehensive spring cleaning of vulnerabilities on Tuesday, fixing 20 vulnerabilities with seven bulletins, four of which are rated critical. Heading the critical list is an update for Internet Explorer (MS13-021) that tackles nine vulnerabilities, including a zero-day vulnerability in IE 8. " …

    Security 13 Mar 10:58

  • GoDaddy gone, daddy: Websites go titsup in server assault

    Globo-hosting biz battles DDoS attack

    A number of websites hosted by GoDaddy were blasted offline this week in a distributed denial-of-service attack. The company's servers in Europe struggled under the volley on Monday afternoon and continued to suffer until yesterday evening after GoDaddy installed network traffic filters to block the assaults. UK customers …

    Hosting 13 Mar 11:17

  • Eric Schmidt trousers his monstrous package at Google

    Extra big reinforced pants needed to contain massive wads

    Top Googler Eric Schmidt is getting a tasty $6m bonus for his performance at the Chocolate Factory this year, part of a package of $15m getting spread around among the C-suite Oompa Loompas. Neither of the firm's co-founders, chief exec Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are getting a 2012 bonus: but Google's top lawyer, the head …

    Financial News 13 Mar 11:39

  • Every SECOND there are EIGHT more Seagate drives in the world

    There's now one for every four humans alive today

    Seagate boasts that it has shipped a billion drives in just four years after taking nearly three decades to build its previous billion. The company shipped its first billionth disk in 2008; its inaugural product, the 5MB ST-506, hit the market in 1980. Now Seagate's factories - busy spewing drives to a world enthusiastically …

    Storage 13 Mar 12:04

  • Rugby club doomed by 2e2 disaster rescued by Manx reseller

    Balls still taken in hand after integrator disintegrates

    A small reseller on the Isle of Man has not only snapped up collapsed 2e2's operations on the island, but also agreed to sponsor a rugby club previously backed by the crashed integrator. All eyes were on 2e2's staff, customers and creditors when the biz hit the skids six weeks ago, but Douglas Rugby Union Football club - whose …

    The Channel 13 Mar 12:30

  • Google to pay laughably minuscule fine over Wi-Fi slurp across US

    Quick rummage down back of sofa for $7 meeellion

    Google has reached a peanut-sized $7m settlement with 38 US states, after its controversial Street View prowl cars deliberately collected payload data including emails and passwords from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks across America. The company said in a statement that it was pleased to have inked an agreement with Connecticut …

    Mobile 13 Mar 12:52

  • IT chiefs choose Choose-YOD over full fat BYOD for now

    BYO: Sounds great but security corkage wipes out saving

    Insight EMEA boss Stuart Fenton says BYOD is failing to set the world alight: but a half-fat version is gaining some traction within enterprises. Talking at the annual Insight Technology Show 2013, attended by some 2,000 representatives at 1,500 customers, Fenton told The Channel that "Choose YOD" is whipping up some interest …

    The Channel 13 Mar 13:27

  • Microsoft unveils even more tempting Kinect offering: Open source

    This has people up in arms, in a good way

    First it was developer tools, then Kinect for the PC, now Microsoft's given hackers a shot at the Kinect code under an open-source license. Specifically, Redmond has now released samples of the Kinect code under an Apache license to serve as a template for hackers building apps for the hands-free motion controller that's been …

    Games 13 Mar 13:58

  • JPMorgan Chase is latest US bank in MYSTERY web savaging

    Islamic 'Cyber Fighters' back for more dotcom beatings?

    JPMorgan Chase's website went kaput yesterday when the bank became the latest US financial institution to find itself on the business end of a distributed denial-of-service assault. Visitors to chase.com were shown a "website temporarily down" message on the front page, although the bank's mobile apps were said to be working …

    Security 13 Mar 14:31

  • Foundering OCZ snatches megabuck lifeline in white-knuckled grip

    Can the money tugboat tow this leaky ship off the reef?

    OCZ, drowning in a sea of cancelled products, its banker missing overboard, revenues leaking from its deflating financial rubber ring and burdened by an inability to understand its own condition has been hurled a last minute $30 million cash and credit lifeline. The SSD startup company almost submerged under previous CEO and …

    Storage 13 Mar 15:03

  • VMware and partners to build uber-vCloud to take on Amazon

    Project Zephyr wasn't just whispers on the wind

    Rumors have been going around since late last year that server virtualization juggernaut and cloud wannabe VMware was working on building its own infrastructure public cloud, said to be called Project Zephyr, and it turns out to be true. Mostly. Maybe. In a financial analyst meeting held in New York by EMC, VMware's majority …

    Cloud Infrastructure 13 Mar 15:23

  • eBay: Our paid Google advertising was a total waste of money

    The buck stops there. Well, 75¢ of it does anyway

    eBay has claimed that Google's paid search ads aren't worth the money for big-name brands, after it conducted a study showing that found it was only getting 25 cents back for every dollar it spent. eBay Research Labs looked at the online bazaar's sales after it gave up on search ads in some regions but left them on in others. …

    Media 13 Mar 15:54

  • Speaking in Tech: Cloud, yes. Doughnuts, yes! Five-mile run, NOO!

    Podcast Balancing loads: not just apps, but stuffed bellies on fun-runs too

    It's time for the weekly Speaking in Tech podcast, hosted by Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela - although Sarah is out and about yet again enjoying SXSW 2013. But the guys are joined by special guest Brian Gracely, vice-president of solutions at enterprise-grade cloud software maker Virtustream and co-host of the …

    Cloud Infrastructure 13 Mar 16:26

  • Public-sector biz Civica UK flaunts fit figures to keep sugar-daddies sweet

    Will 3i float or flog outsourcing champ?

    If investors at venture-capital biz 3i are considering floating or selling UK public-sector tech giant Civica this year, then its decent financial results will focus a few minds. Paperwork filed at Companies House show Civica's operations in Blighty turned over £109.6m in the 12 months to 30 September 2012, up from £99.6m in …

    The Channel 13 Mar 17:05

  • Oracle acquires Nimbula, buys way into open clouds

    Ellison & Co. to serve up cloud control freak with lashings of open source

    Oracle has announced plans to acquire Nimbula, an purchase that gives the database company a route into the open source OpenStack cloud management system, and a private cloud software stack as well. The strategic buy was announced on Wednesday morning by a brief statement posted on Nimbula and Oracle's websites. Nimbula …

    Cloud 13 Mar 17:06

  • Report: Amazon dominates global cloud spend

    IBM and BT follow, Google and Microsoft struggle

    Amazon Web Services dominates the infrastructure-as-a-service cloud computing market, and is dramatically growing its share in platform-as-a-service as well, according to reasonably-believable research figures. Amazon took in around 35 percent of the $1.2bn spent globally on infrastructure-as-a-service clouds in Q4 2012, with …

    Cloud 13 Mar 20:46

  • Adobe thinks outside box, nixes retail Creative Suite packaging

    Downloads only for Photoshop and family

    Adobe is moving ahead with plans to phase out the boxed, retail versions of its Creative Suite and Acrobat software families, in favor of a distribution model based exclusively on digital downloads and subscriptions. Word that the graphics software maker had set a hard date to stop selling its wares on physical discs first …

    Applications 13 Mar 20:52

  • Father of Android Andy Rubin steps down for Chrome OS boss

    Pichai building one OS to rule them all?

    It's all change at Google as Andy Rubin, the man who shepherded Android into becoming the world's biggest mobile operating system, is stepping down in favor of Chrome OS boss Sundar Pichai. "Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android – and with a really strong leadership team in place – Andy’s …

    Business 13 Mar 21:06

  • EMC launches its cloudy Federation with Pivotal big data spinoff

    Just don't call it The Family, Wall Street tells CEO Tucci

    Wall Street events can be pretty boring unless you like money and profits, but there was a moment of levity during EMC's financial analysts meeting that marked the birth of the Pivotal Initiative, the gathering up of big data and application framework assets from EMC and its virtualization minion, VMware. Joe Tucci, EMC's CEO …

    Cloud Infrastructure 13 Mar 22:16

  • Oz Bank share price dives after reveal of IBM/Oracle plan

    National Australia Bank investors don't like the look of its IT plans

    Is it feasible that investors are belatedly learning that a technology refresh might involve spending huge amounts of money on risky projects? If the National Australia Bank's experience yesterday (13 March) is any guide, the answer might be a tentative “yes”. The bank, which suffered some high-profile outages during 2012, …

    Management 13 Mar 22:59

  • Photonic router vendor exits stealth-mode, sparks hypegasm

    Integrated photonics comes of age?

    Without the obligatory hype from the "every great business starts with venture capital" press, it is an interesting proposition: that turning integrated electro-optical chips into the basis of a router yields a faster device that's smaller, uses less power, and generates less heat. That's what's being claimed by US-Israeli …

    Networks 13 Mar 23:15