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14th March 2013 Archive

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  • Redmond to skip Patch Tuesday for Windows Store apps

    All updates, all the time for touchy-feely tiles

    Microsoft has announced that it will ship fixes and updates for the Windows Store apps that come bundled with Windows 8 and Windows RT as soon as they are available, rather than issuing them in batches as it does for the rest of Windows. "We are committed to adapting our policies as the world evolves and with the new Windows …

    Applications 14 Mar 00:38

  • VMware NSX mashes up Nicira and homegrown network virt

    Virtualizing entire data centers, including admins for systems and networks

    Having let go of its aspirations to be a player higher up in the systems stack – now that application frameworks, caching software, and other elements of the business have been shuffled off to the new Pivotal group established by parent EMC – VMware is doubling down in the virtualization business, and its top brass were banging …

    Data Networking 14 Mar 00:48

  • US national vulnerability database hacked

    Malware infection forces government vuln catalog offline

    The US government's online catalog of cyber-vulnerabilities has been taken offline – ironically, due to a software vulnerability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's National Vulnerability Database's (NVD) public-facing website and other services have been offline since Friday due to a malware infection on two …

    Security 14 Mar 01:17

  • Google shreds Reader in new round of 'spring cleaning'

    Update Petition under way, 'Downfall' vid too

    Google is killing off Reader, its web-based RSS reading service, as part of its latest round of culling little-used or unprofitable products. A spring clean, if you will. The service will disappear on July 1st, 2013. Google’s reason for the termination, revealed in a blog post, follows: “There are two simple reasons for …

    Networks 14 Mar 01:26

  • Micro-drum acts as quantum memory

    NIST puts qubits in a spin

    Memory is one of the difficult bits of quantum computing. For example, while the polarisation of a photon encodes a quantum state, it's very difficult to get photons to stay where they're put. A group of researchers from JILA – a joint institute between the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and …

    Science 14 Mar 02:30

  • Fake fingers fool Brazilian biometrics

    Whole new frontier for giving someone the finger

    Doctors at Ferraz de Vasconcelos hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil, have reportedly fabricated fake fingers to fool biometric scanners. The scam came to light on Globo Television, whose text and video report shows one of the fake digits and a disguised interviewee. Sadly, your correspondent’s Portuguese language skills only …

    Security 14 Mar 05:02

  • Euro satellite ‘heard’ Japanese megaquake in SPACE

    Infrasound waves travelled 270 kilometers into the heavens

    The European Space Agency (ESA) is claiming a world first after releasing evidence that its GOCE gravity satellite picked up sound waves produced by the Sendai earthquake of March 2011. The ESA explained that particularly large ‘quakes – like the magnitude 9.0 incident that hit Japan – cause the planet’s surface to vibrate, …

    Science 14 Mar 05:32

  • Plucky Swede glides spaceplane to Earth from edge of stratosphere

    Pics+Vid Not quite 'to his feet', but top footage

    The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team would like to raise a pint or two today to David Windestål - a Swedish radio-controlled aircraft enthusiast who recently pulled off an impressive "Space Glider" flight from a dizzying 33,000m. David's audacious mission involved taking an off-the-shelf Muliplex FunJet ( …

    SPB 14 Mar 06:02

  • Groupon deal spam slapped by Australian regulator

    When 'unsubscribe' means 'we'll still send you email'

    Groupon's troubles just got a little deeper and more widespread, after Australia's Communications and Media Authority (which likes to be called 'the ACMA') issued a “formal warning” that the floundering group buying outfit needs to get its email house in order. The ACMA issues formal warnings as a prelude to unholstering its …

    Law 14 Mar 06:32

  • Blue Coat, Skype and QQ named despots' best friends

    Reporters Without Borders slams "enemies of the internet"

    Blue Coat Systems, Microsoft’s Skype and Chinese IM service QQ have all helped repressive states labelled "enemies of the internet" to snoop on their citizens, according to a new cyber censorship report from press freedom group Reporters Without Borders. Given China’s increasingly rigorous censorship of web-borne content and …

    Security 14 Mar 06:42

  • Flashman and the Mountain of Disk

    Musings Data, data everywhere and only a tiny drop of SSD

    Flash, flash and more flash seems to be the order of the day from all vendors; whether that is flash today or flash tomorrow; whether it’s half-baked, yesterday’s left-overs rehashed or an amuse-bouche; 2013 is all about the flash. Large and small, the vendors all have a story to tell but flash still makes up a tiny amount of …

    Storage 14 Mar 07:03

  • Bromium launches security-through-virtualisation tech in the UK

    Xen dads' spookware uses VM swarms to isolate foulness

    Bromium has arrived as a sales force in the UK market with its strategy for making desktop computers secure using virtualisation technology. The firm, which already employs a R&D/engineering team in Cambridge, has now added sales and support operations for the UK and wider European market. It's also looking to recruit channel …

    Virtualization 14 Mar 07:29

  • Applications to run more white-space Local TV stations invited

    Button 8 placement perhaps to reflect number of viewers

    Ofcom is looking for more aspiring telly barons, with another 28 Local TV franchises up for grabs along with the two that no-one wanted last time around. Those two are Swansea and Plymouth, but the other 19 Local TV channels from round one have been awarded and should be on air around the end of this year. Now, anyone who …

    Broadband 14 Mar 07:57

  • What's most important? Bandwidth over kilo-miles, or milli-watts?

    Big Blue boffins, AT&T brainboxes beg to differ

    AT&T boffins reckon they can fling 400Gb/sec down 12,000km of fibre using a new modulation technique. Meanwhile, IBM's bods say they managed 25Gb/sec over just a few millimetres - but using just 24 milliwatts. Both teams will present their research at next week's OFC-NFOEC conference in Anaheim, California, where the future of …

    Broadband 14 Mar 08:26

  • Bye-bye Telinco - death warrant finally issued by TalkTalk

    Exclusive How long until they come for YOU@*.co.uk?

    An eight-week notice of the final end has been issued to any remaining customers of ancient ISP Telinco by its owner TalkTalk - which inherited the mail and hosting servers after it bought Tiscali in 2009. Legacy email addresses have tended to do a fairly good job of surviving multiple buyouts of a company and its underpinning …

    Hosting 14 Mar 08:58

  • These mobile devices just aren't going away. What'll we do, Trevor?

    I'm a busy man, lads, but pull up a chair for a bit

    Mobile Device Management (MDM) has become an important sector of the IT industry, but is also something of a moving target. Companies from the level of my own three man shop to the largest enterprises are weighing their options for securing mobile devices. For many, Microsoft's System Center 2012 is the barometer by which all …

    Management 14 Mar 09:28

  • Ten pi-fect projects for your new Raspberry Pi

    Feature Set the cig-pack sized micro to work doing something useful

    There was an article a while back, in Scientific American I think, that posed the question: given a super-powerful computer, with infinite computing power shoe-horned into a coke can, what would you do with it?* The arrival of the Raspberry Pi (RPi) prompted a similar sort of question: given an (almost) disposable PC with late …

    Hardware 14 Mar 10:05

  • BT pockets more gov broadband millions. This time: Lincolnshire

    Another fibre job that won't be completed until 2016

    BT has inked a deal to roll out fibre broadband in Lincolnshire, scooping up yet more cash from the British government. The telecoms giant will deploy mainly fibre-to-the-cabinet technology for the rural county's council, and the work won't be completed until 2016. This follows on from other council jobs BT has won in what has …

    Broadband 14 Mar 10:25

  • Attention, CIOs: Stop outsourcing or YOU will never retire

    Youth must have its fling, says biz forum chief

    Walk down the hall. Look into the IT room. How old are the people in there? How are they getting on? Or are they just getting on? Would you trust them to keep the server lights on in a couple of years? Is there anybody actually in there at all? If there isn’t, your company may be part of the problem that’s keeping John Harris …

    Management 14 Mar 10:44

  • Scality commits to Big Data, puts a RING on Hadoop elephant

    Also adds plug-in for OpenStack's Cinder

    Object storage start-up Scality has added its storage to Hadoop so users can avoid loading data through Hadoop's own file system. It has also unveiled a plug-in for Cinder, the block storage layer within the OpenStack project. The RING is an object storage infrastructure based on a set of X86 server nodes that store objects, …

    Storage 14 Mar 11:04

  • HOT SWEATY RACKS blamed for Outlook.com, Hotmail MELTDOWN

    Firmware cock-up cooked servers in data-centre oven

    Microsoft has admitted a dodgy firmware upgrade cooked its servers and knocked its Hotmail and Outlook.com email services offline for 16 hours. In a postmortem examination of the disaster, the Windows 8 giant said a software upgrade for its data centre equipment - an update that had worked successfully in the past - failed …

    Cloud Infrastructure 14 Mar 11:18

  • AdBlock Plus BLOCKED from Google Play

    Apps 'for rooted phones only' still on shelf of software shop - for now

    Google has zapped the Android app version of AdBlock Plus from its Play store. The ad giant has also kyboshed other ad-blocking applications from its online shop. Adblock Plus revealed the Chocolate Factory's snub in a blog post: In a rather surprising move, Google removed Adblock Plus and other ad blocking apps from the …

    Mobile 14 Mar 11:36

  • SimCity 4

    Antique Code Show Well, burgher me backwards

    There’s a prevalent feeling throughout the whole of SimCity 4 that this is the game that Will Wright and Maxis would have liked to have made from day one. That is if graphics technology and PC hardware had been up to the task when the original SimCity was in development. The 2003 release was expanded in both the macro and the …

    Games 14 Mar 12:04

  • Oracle pinches Nirvanix's marketing VP

    Joins ex-boss Scott at San Fran hangout

    Oracle has lured Steve Zivanic away from his marketing VP position at enterprise cloud startup Nirvanix. He joins the technology juggernaut as a VP in its Storage Hardware Systems Business Group - home to the Exastuff stuff and storage arrays. Nice digs: Oracle HQ at Redwood Shores Zivanic started work at Redwood Shores in …

    Storage 14 Mar 12:14

  • Software seer shows companies path to cheaper databases

    DBSeer cuts through clouds with predictive database performance model

    Anticipating where bottlenecks are going to develop in a live database has been one of the most bankable skills any self-respecting database administrator can have, yet researchers may now have figured out a set of algorithms that can do this automatically. The DBSeer predictive modeling method, described in two academic …

    Cloud 14 Mar 12:47

  • Copper load of that: Ofcom claims HUGE jump in 'average' broadband speed

    What do you mean you don't believe it?

    Britain's communication watchdog claimed today that "average" broadband speeds had "doubled" in the space of two years. The data published by Ofcom was fairly limited in scope given that, for example, it only included ADSL customers within 5km of the exchange but not outside of that range. The regulator used broadband …

    Broadband 14 Mar 13:15

  • We shall CRUSH you, puny ROBOT... with CHESS

    Zugzwang, overlords: Chess puzzle acts as CAPTCHA

    An online forum is using chess puzzles as CAPTCHAs rather than the more traditional challenge-response tests which ask the user to identify distorted text. The CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a way for a website or online service to establish that a human has come calling …

    Security 14 Mar 13:38

  • Freeview telly channels face £240m-A-YEAR shakedown by Ofcom

    Watchdog keeps death of broadcast TV by 2026 on track

    Freeview broadcasters in the UK face annual fees that could add £240m a year to Blighty's coffers by 2020. Ofcom wants to, effectively, charge telly stations every 12 months to transmit over the airwaves, just like mobile phone networks must regularly cough up cash to continue using their licensed radio frequencies for chatter …

    Government 14 Mar 13:55

  • And for BlackBerry's next trick: Sawing Android, iOS IN HALF

    'Secure' biz app and data on mobes to fall under BES spell

    BlackBerry has built software to split apps and files on Android and iOS phones into so-called "Secure Work Spaces" to prevent workers from mixing business with pleasure. These protected containers of data and applications will be managed by installations of BlackBerry Enterprise Server, effectively bringing BlackBerry OS 10's …

    Mobile 14 Mar 14:48

  • $1.5k per complaint. Up to 1,900 gTLDs. Brand owners, prepare to PAY

    ICANN's new regime won't account for 'typosquatting', says expert

    Brand owners may face a costly battle to fight 'typosquatters' under a new top-level domain regime, an expert has warned. In 2011 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body that oversees the identification of websites, voted to expand the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that are in …

    Hosting 14 Mar 15:12

  • First Samsung Galaxy S4 review leak: Stop FONDLING, start FINGERING

    No need to stroke screen, claims embargo-busting journo

    Samsung's new Galaxy S4 smartphone isn't being launched until 2300 GMT today - but the first review is already online with technical specifications and videos of it in action. And it suggests there's no need to touch the mobile's touchscreen to make it work. A few journalists bagged early access to the new handset on …

    Phones 14 Mar 15:39

  • EMEA server market struggles to find its footing

    Decline in Q4 not as bad as in Q3, at least

    The austerity in Europe over the past several years is taking its toll on the server makers of the world and the companies in the region that most assuredly would love to be spending lots of dough on new software projects and the iron to support it. But they're not – and it's not just Western Europe that's putting a drag on the …

    Servers 14 Mar 16:03

  • Google sidelines Maps bloke, shifts him from 'A' to 'X'

    Jeff Huber loses geotag

    Google has reportedly drop-kicked its mapping and commerce chief Jeff Huber into Sergey Brin's vanity project 'X' unit. The move apparently came within hours of Android boss Andy Rubin being shifted away from the mobile operating system he developed in 2003. Rubin was similarly plonked in with the GoogXer's. However, Google …

    Applications 14 Mar 17:09

  • Downed US vuln catalog infected for at least TWO MONTHS

    Adobe software vulnerabilities blamed for NIST NVD infection

    Adobe's ColdFusion web development software is to blame for the downtime of the US Government's National Vulnerability Database. The malware infected two servers, and caused the National Institute for Standards and Technology to take the NVD database and other US government sites offline on Friday. The servers were …

    Security 14 Mar 17:55

  • Aaron Swartz prosecutor accused of 'professional misconduct'

    Lawyers claim he hid evidence and abused plea bargaining

    The legal team acting for now-deceased internet activist Aaron Swartz has filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice alleging two counts of professional misconduct by Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heymann in his handling of the case. Heymann knowingly suppressed evidence that could have been used to dismiss the …

    Law 14 Mar 19:10

  • Apple's marketing honcho Schiller attacks Android, Samsung

    Iffy data right before Galaxy S IV intro? What a coincidence...

    When a company says that it's not worried about a competitor, it's a safe bet that it's worried about a competitor. And when that company is the notoriously close-mouthed Apple and its competitor, Samsung, is about to release a new version of its successful Galaxy S smartphone, you can double-down on that bet. "At Apple we …

    Phones 14 Mar 19:17

  • OpenSUSE 12.3 ships, project back on track

    OpenStack, Secure Boot, and kernel 3.7 among upgrades

    Following a shorter-than-usual development cycle, the popular openSUSE Linux distribution has released openSUSE 12.3, bringing a host of updates and improvements for the desktop, servers, and the cloud. The previous release, openSUSE 12.2, was plagued by various delays and ultimately shipped two months late. For the new …

    Operating Systems 14 Mar 20:03

  • Netflix cracks wallet to spur open source cloud development

    $200,000 of prize money for devs building 'the missing piece of AWS'

    Netflix wants its open source software to become the preferred platform for massive cloud-based applications, so it has launched a cash-conferring contest to generate developer enthusiasm for its technology. The Netflix OSS Cloud Prize was announced by the company at an event in Los Gatos, California, on Wednesday evening. The …

    Developer 14 Mar 20:23

  • New nuke could POWER WORLD UNTIL 2083

    Salt reactor runs on nuclear waste

    A company spun off from MIT is claiming it has cracked the holy grail of nuclear technology: a reactor design that runs on materials the industry currently discards as waste and which could meet all of the world's power demands for the next 70 years. It's also "walk-away safe," the designers claim, making it immune to the kind …

    Science 14 Mar 20:51

  • Foxtel cries wolf at the threat of fast broadband

    IFPI script gets the megaphone treatment

    Foxtel Australia boss Richard Freudenstein has picked up the IPFI megaphone and asked Australia's federal government to protect his business model from the rampant piracy that will doubtless emerge from the rollout of the National Broadband Network. Speaking to the ASTRA (Australian Subscription Television and Radio …

    Networks 14 Mar 21:37

  • Modder hacks SimCity for unlimited offline play

    DRM the only reason for game launch disaster?

    A server glitch that rendered the latest version of SimCity virtually unplayable mere hours after its launch could have easily been avoided, players say – because contrary to its publisher's claims, the game doesn't actually require network access at all. SimCity fans have been fuming over the outage, leading Amazon to pull …

    Games 14 Mar 22:03

  • Report says #Facebook #to #adopt #hashtags

    Get ready for a SHIFT-fight with Twitter

    Facebook is preparing to adopt hashtags, the folksonomy feature beloved of Twitter users and the microblogging service itself. Hastags grew out of a practice employed by gossipers on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), who used the “#” character to group discussions into channels. Twitter users started doing the same in around 2007, …

    Networks 14 Mar 23:06