21st March 2013 Archive

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Fukushima switchboard defeated by rat

NON-MUTANT RODENT in NUKE PLANT ELECTRO-SHOCKER

A careless rat is being blamed for a power outage that left the Fukushima nuclear plant's storage tanks without cooling. Late on Monday, March 18, TEPCO experienced a power cut at cooling equipment serving the nuclear fuel storage tanks, in an incident that took 30 hours to overcome (the company emphaised that during the …

Bootnotes 21 Mar 00:25
GoPro accused of using DMCA to take down product review

Company insists it's all a big misunderstanding

This was supposed to be a great week for extreme camera manufacturer GoPro but instead it has stumbled into a PR nightmare. On Wednesday the Winter X Games kicked off in the French skiing haven of Tignes and with GoPro involved the company was expecting lots of favorable views of its products. Now thanks to the actions of some …

Business 21 Mar 00:26
Insourced staff paid a pittance but don't want to leave

What's more important to you: cash or work/life balance?

After the scourge of outsourcing rampaged across the industry in the 1990s and 2000s, you'd think any news of insourcing would be good news for IT professionals, especially those who prefer to work in a nice, warm, in-house IT department rather than the measure-every-minute world of consultancy. At Australia's Yarra Valley …

Jobs 21 Mar 00:59
Another iPhone passcode bypass spell revealed

Turn off Siri, remove SIM, add unicorn blood, phone and contacts are yours

Apple's recent release of iOS 6.1.3, complete with fix for the weird keypress sequence that allowed access to and export of iPhone address books, seems to have been just a little bit futile after a new bug with the same effects emerged. The source of the new method is someone or something called Vbarraquito, whose youTube …

Phones 21 Mar 03:39
HP re-elects all directors

Billions lost, board absolved

The decisions to acquire Palm, Autonomy and EDS, all of which are hard to qualify as qualified successes, have failed to result in any of Hewlett Packard's board members losing their seats. The eleven-strong board all survived yesterday's annual general meeting, despite previous rumblings that some were likely to feel …

Business 21 Mar 04:45
Council offers free iPads

It's a library loan, so you'll have to return it

A Sydney library is claiming a world first: it's going to add Apple iPads and Samsung Galaxy tablets to its lending shelves. Perhaps regrettably, the chance to borrow a tablet will only be available to residents of the City of Canterbury – a local government area to the south-west of Sydney's central business district – at …

Government 21 Mar 05:20
Refusal to swallow scuppers woman's tadpole-smuggling plan

Chinese airport staff unimpressed with gobful of porwigle

A South Korean woman's refusal to swallow scuppered her cunning plan to smuggle tadpoles out of China, Shanghaiist reports. The unnamed frog-lover was pulled over at Guangzhou Airport on 16 March, when security operatives spotted she had a bottle of liquid in her luggage, contrary to anti-improvised-exploding-trouser …

Bootnotes 21 Mar 06:02
EMC spits out high-end offsite biz cloud after chugging down Syncplicity

Enterprise edition of swallowed sync 'n' share kit

Dropbox beware: Biz juggernaut EMC has launched an enterprise edition of its file sync 'n' share Syncplicity product. What this does is add an enterprise pricing layer to the acquired Syncplicity product, which provides secured file synchronisation and sharing between users' intelligent devices ranging from smartphones through …

Storage 21 Mar 07:04
Google extends trademarks-in-ads policy to whole world

Insert usual blather about search quality and choice as motive

Google has altered its policy on the use of trademarks on AdWords, extending permission for advertisers to use rivals' trademarks in their ads to every nation on earth. The text ads giant has posted a trademark policy update in which it offers the following explanation for the change: Google's goal is to provide our users …

Networks 21 Mar 07:15
NASA chief: Earth is DOOMED if we spot a big asteroid at short notice

Action on REAL threat to the planet 'put off for decades'

Billions of dollars are needed to keep the Earth safe from asteroids like the one that smashed into Russia last month, experts have told the US government. While NASA has made good progress cataloguing nearly 93 per cent of larger Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), smaller meteorites like the Chelyabinsk one - which was around 17m …

Science 21 Mar 07:33
Time to put 'Big Data' on a forced diet

There ain't nothing cheap about big storage

Data is big business. These days they've even started calling it “Big Data”, just in case its potential for unbridled magnitude had escaped anyone. Of course, if you have Big Data you need somewhere to put it. Hence storage is also big business. On the one hand this is a good thing, but that's just because several of my …

Management 21 Mar 08:02
Brit web biz waves white flag in Python trademark bout

Veber flees snake pit of online attacks and death threats

UK website hoster Veber has binned its bid to exclusively trademark the word “python” in Europe following talks with the Python Software Foundation (PSF). In an agreement described by both sides as “amicable”, Veber will also rebrand its hosting and online backup service that it had called Python. The British company and the …

Developer 21 Mar 08:34
UK bloke collared at home by bank-raid Trojan probe cops

Brit cyber-plod on the case of software nasty's masters

A 36-year-old from South Croydon, London, has been arrested by cops investigating allegations of fraud involving the bank-account-raiding Tilon Trojan. The as-yet-unnamed man is suspected of conspiring to defraud and breaking drug laws. He was collared by officers from the Police Central eCrime Unit (PCeU) and the Serious …

Security 21 Mar 09:06
Young model ruthlessly fingers upskirt iPad petshop pervert

Fruity fondleslab pant-snapper in LinkedIn giveaway

A 22-year-old model used LinkedIn to track down an iPad perv who used the fruity fondleslab to film some upskirt footage of her as she visited a Los Angeles pet shop. Britannie Weaver According to the New York Daily News, San Diego native Brittanie Weaver (pictured) nipped into Puppy & Me on Ventura Boulevard last Friday …

Bootnotes 21 Mar 09:29
Review: HTC One Android smartphone

The ~~Apple iPhone 5~~ Samsung Galaxy S4 killer

A year ago, I finished off my review of HTC’s One X by predicting great things for it and its maker. And then Samsung’s Galaxy S3 merrily outsold it ten to one. Thing is, that wasn’t a case of me being a colossal twit. The One X is the better phone - it’s better made, better looking and better to use. Luckily for HTC, the new …

Phones 21 Mar 10:00
300 UK domains pilfered, MASSIVE security lapse blamed

Exclusive 123-Reg, Nominet investigate website control-panel bug

What appears to be a glaringly obvious security hole has been blamed for the snatching of 300 domains hosted by one web-hosting firm last year, The Reg has discovered. A source told El Reg that anyone with a hosting package from 123-Reg, and hence an account control panel, simply had to change the final section of the URL …

Hosting 21 Mar 10:29
Dragons' Den badboy's Expansys burns sales, profits up in smoke

Peter Jones' tech bazaar tells of wobbly six months

Marlow-based online smartmobe dealer Expansys - owned by Dragons' Den moneybags Peter Jones - issued a profit warning this morning citing weaker-than-expected trading conditions. The AIM-listed wireless tech web retailer, which also distributes SIM cards for mobe networks and operates ecommerce and other software projects on …

The Channel 21 Mar 10:56
Steve Jobs' death clears way for Adobe CTO defection

WTF: Why The Flash did Macromedia bloke join Apple

Long-standing chief technology officer Kevin Lynch has left Adobe, but why? Adobe has just announced first quarter 2013 results that were a little ahead of its target and show strong take-up of Creative Cloud - by which it offers up its cloudy software services for subscription rather than one-off purchase - roughly akin to an …

Developer 21 Mar 11:26
Nvidia's skirt-chasing chips ogle babes, eyeball Twitter and YouTube

GTC 2013 Like what that stranger's wearing? Snap a pic for image-matching GPU

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s GPU Technology Conference 2013 keynote was a typical whirlwind slideshow of all the pies the graphics processor maker has its fingers in these days. These addresses are usually chock-full of demonstrations showing where we are in terms of state-of-the-art graphics, scientific and technical computing …

HPC 21 Mar 11:46
Cyberspies send ZOMBIES to steal DRUGS from medical research firms

They're flinging RATs at us too, say US spooks

Cyber-espionage crews have been targeting the lucrative medical and life science industries using custom malware and spear-phishing, according to new research. According to a current US counterintelligence report which it delivered to US Congress, healthcare services and medical equipment are expected to be two of the five …

Security 21 Mar 12:03
Boffin road trip! The Reg presents Geek's Guide to Britain

Geek's Guide to Britain Brains that made Britain exposed, mapped and viewed

Which country is credited with designing more than half of the world’s most important inventions. Is it Germany, home of the VW? Japan, birthplace of the Walkman? The US, land of NASA and Google? No: Britain. Scientists, engineers, architects and inventors in Britain have made their mark on the world with trains, jet engines, …

Science 21 Mar 12:26
Give Google a COLD HARD SLAP - web rivals' plea to Euro watchdog

Antitrust commish urged to bring charges against search giant

The European Commission is under fresh pressure to stop Google from allegedly stifling rivals by favouring its own products in its search engine results. Almost a dozen web companies want Brussels to issue a Statement of Objections, which would be a first step in bringing charges against the advertising giant. In a joint …

Government 21 Mar 12:53
QLogic: 3 words - caching SAN adapter. Just blew your mind, didn't we?

FabricCache slots into SAN

QLogic has announced its transparent adapter-based flash caching aimed at accelerating applications that access a SAN for data. FabricCache is the first product implementation of its Mount Rainier technology and, as well as adding a flash cache to QLogic's Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), it shares that cache between clustered …

Storage 21 Mar 13:32
Joyent tools up for Amazon battle

Hopes CouchDB will lure devs away from Bezos's Dynamo

After almost a year of continuous technical development, Cloudant is taking the wraps off of a database-as-a-service product served out of data centers operated by Joyent – a product that looks to be technically superior to its nearest as-a-service rival, Amazon's DyanamoDB. The deal was announced on Thursday and will see …

Cloud 21 Mar 14:04
Stop excluding vulnerable Brits from digital agenda - MPs

'Is digital by default not simply digital exclusion by diktat'

MPs are pushing for a parliamentary debate on the large number of elderly, disabled and poor Brits who don't have access to the internet. So far, 44 politicos from all sides of the House - but heavily weighted towards Labour MPs - have signed an Early Day Motion in support of airing their views with the government in the …

Government 21 Mar 14:58
Syrian hacktivists hijack BBC Weather feed

Hang on, so should I put the washing up or not?

Syrian hacktivists took over the BBC Weather Twitter account on Thursday afternoon. Instead of getting the usual updates such as "partly cloudy over the British Isles with a chance of rain later" the 60,000 followers of the @BBCWeather account on Twitter were confronted with a series of bizarre messages. These updates included …

Security 21 Mar 15:34
Space probe spies MYSTERY 'Cold Spot' in very fabric of cosmos itself

Cosmic soup glow anomaly 'weirder than we ever thought'

Top international boffins poring over a newly-produced sky map of the microwaves released when the entire universe exploded into being out of soup have confessed themselves baffled by a mysterious "cold spot" on the chart whose existence today's science cannot explain. MYSTERY of the cosmic soup blast shine cold spot enigma …

Science 21 Mar 16:03
VC firm asked Mark Hurd if he wants to run Dell - report

Hasn't even made a bid for Michael's shop yet

Former disgraced HP chief Mark Hurd is the man VC Blackstone would plonk at the top of Dell should it scupper a bid by Michael Dell and chums to take the enterprise tech firm private again. This is according to a report by Bloomberg, which states Blackstone is considering matching the $24.4bn offered by Dell the man and his …

Financial News 21 Mar 16:35
TeamSpy snooped on governments, big biz undetected for 10 years

Experts lift lid on hacking crew

Computer security researchers say they have uncovered a decade-long espionage campaign against governments, businesses and human-rights activists in Eastern Europe and beyond. We're told the spying operation was partially pulled off by subverting TeamViewer - a legitimate tool for remotely controlling computers and holding …

Security 21 Mar 16:56
EMC rakes in more of the world's storage, others struggle

IBM lags, Oracle division continues to shrink

EMC is controlling more and more of the world's disk storage and Oracle is controlling less and less, according to trackers at Gartner. In a report on the worldwide external controller-based disk storage market released on Thursday, EMC had 34.2 per cent of the market in the quarter and recorded revenues of $2.067bn – a 6.7 …

Storage 21 Mar 18:23
Schmidt calls China's attempts to take over internet 'egregious'

After all, that's Google's job

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has told an audience in India that China is the worst example of a nation trying to take over and censor the internet. "As the internet has emerged in many of these different countries, there's quite a few countries that have no laws that pertain to the internet at all and those …

Policy 21 Mar 20:07
Apple: Our data centers are green. The other 98% of what we do ...

Foxconn keeps churning out smog like there's no tomorrow

After a vigorous campaign by Greenpeace to highlight the carbon-spewing computer halls of the cloud giants, Apple has announced it is feeding its data centers entirely with renewable energy. Apple's flagship Maiden, North Carolina data center is now supplied by 100 per cent renewable energy, with 42 million kWh coming from an …

Datacenter 21 Mar 21:25
Microsoft reports on how often it helps police with their enquiries

Promises half-yearly reviews going forward

Microsoft has joined the list of companies opening up about its cooperation with THE MAN with its own report on how often it helped out the police last year, and says it'll issue updates on the situation every six months. Redmond came in for some stick in January when a coalition of activists, privacy organizations, and …

Government 21 Mar 21:47
Bitcoin prices spike on Euro woes

Spanish citizens hiding their currency under the bed

The well-publicised idea that Cyprus could pinch ten per cent of all local savings accounts to help pay for its government's budgetary woes seems to have sparked a rush of interest in the crypto-currency Bitcoin. According to Bloomberg, Bitcoin apps are soaring up the download charts in Spain, of all places, based on BGR …

Financial News 21 Mar 22:16
NBN collapses^* into chaos^*

*If 'collapses' and 'chaos'= <5 per cent delay

Australia's National Broadband Network, due for completion in 2021, has announced a three-month delay in its fibre-to-the-premises construction schedule, which if not recovered would represent a miss of a couple of percent on the project's timing. While declining to direct blame outwards, NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley told a media …

Broadband 21 Mar 22:22
Apple exec says music labels, Hollywood, 'old fashioned' on copyright

Head of Apple Australia says music, movies, price gouging is Big Content's fault

The head of Apple's Australian operations, Tony King, has told an Australian Parliamentary inquiry into information technology pricing that rights holders of music and filmed entertainment have an “old fashioned” attitude to retailing. Australia is running the inquiry to figure out why locals often pay more for software, …

Law 21 Mar 23:26