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8th April 2013 Archive

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  • Mozilla floats payment simplification balloon

    Posts draft of Web payment spec, hopes world won't yawn

    The Mozilla Foundation is pitching the idea that Web apps need a common payments API, and has put just such an interface into Firefox OS to try and give the idea some momentum. The Foundation's argument, put forward in this blog post, is that the business of adding a payments button to a Web page is clunky and cumbersome for …

    Networks 8 Apr 02:34

  • CoreData fends off attack

    Red-tops get red faces

    Online analytics and research data company CoreData has had to pull systems associated with serving data to newspaperThe Australian after attackers compromised a server and tried to use it to host malicious code, early in the morning of 8 April. The attack showed as the familiar “This site may harm your computer” Google …

    Science 8 Apr 03:07

  • Windows XP support ends a year from … now!

    Official support ends April 7th, 2014, zombie support available at huge price

    Windows XP, we hardly knew ye! Yet by this time next year, the adolescent operating system will be headed for the big Recycle Bin in the sky, thanks to Microsoft's planned obsolescence policy and the inevitable march of progress. Introduced in 2001, XP was a big hit. But Microsoft will end support for XP on April 7th, 2014. …

    Operating Systems 8 Apr 03:41

  • Anonymous blitzes Israel in new attack

    OpIsrael rocked, says Anon. Nothing to see here, says Israel

    Anonymous claims to have disrupted more than 100,000 Israeli web sites and caused over $US3bn in damages with a new campaign, called OpIsrael, launched over the weekend. Israeli officials say the effort was largely unsuccessful in breaching the nation's online defences. In a typically understated piece of pre-op PR last …

    Security 8 Apr 04:33

  • Spooky action at a distance is faster than light

    Chinese boffins put the clock on information transfer between entangled particles

    As Einstein put it, it's impossible for anything – even information – to move faster than the speed of light. Yet the lower bound of that impossibility, the minimum speed at which entanglement can't possibly be transmitting information between two particles, appears to be around four orders of magnitude higher than c, the speed …

    Science 8 Apr 05:09

  • Canadian gov: Have half a million BlackBerrys now, pay later!

    We're NOT desperate, we've been doing this since 2006

    Telefonica will be spending another €200m with BlackBerry, borrowed from Export Development Canada (EDC) as part of its ongoing deal with the company and its supporting country. It's far from the first time Telefonica has taken advantage of low-interest loans from the government-backed agency. EDC has been lending to …

    Mobile 8 Apr 06:05

  • Oracle reveals strategy for internet of things

    Java on the edge, middleware shakes hands with Exadata … and the lights go on

    Oracle has clambered aboard the bandwagon for the internet of things, outlining a strategy for handling the torrents of data the company assumes will shortly flow from myriad smart-ish devices on the network's edge. The strategy was outlined last week at the Mobile IT Summit, where Oracle's Peter Utzschneider, a product …

    Datacenter 8 Apr 06:28

  • Hold on! Degrees for all doesn't mean great jobs for all, say profs

    Maybe ... just maybe ... some degrees are a bit useless?

    Over-qualified grads are being forced into unsatisfying jobs which don't suit their skills, a report has found. In an article published in the journal Human Relations, Belgin Okay-Somerville (PhD, Human Resource Management) from the University of Aberdeen and Professor (of Human Resource Management) Dora Scholarios from the …

    Jobs 8 Apr 07:02

  • Japanese boffins READ YOUR DREAMS with MRI

    Kyoto researchers claim 60 per cent success with dream mapping algorithm

    Japanese boffins say they can tell what you are dreaming about by analysing magnetic resonance imager (MRI) scans. Researchers at Kyoto’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories published their breakthrough findings in Science magazine in a paper titled Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery During Sleep. The boffins used …

    Science 8 Apr 07:19

  • Fujitsu looks to blast cloud silos with RunMyProcess buy

    Silicon Valley to be site of new cloudy hub

    Japanese ICT giant Fujitsu has announced plans to build out its cloud business with the acquisition of little-known French PaaS vendor RunMyProcess (RMP) and the development of a new Global Software Center in Silicon Valley. RunMyProcess, a member of the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps, essentially allows customers to build and …

    Cloud 8 Apr 07:43

  • Parking ticket firm 'exposed private info' - ICO making enquiries

    Exclusive Katie Price's throbbing ride apparently NOT revealed, though

    Britain's privacy watchdog will investigate a major car-parking contractor after its website allegedly leaked drivers' personal information. Readers will be relieved to know, however, that representatives of chesty TV princess Katie Price say she has avoided having any sensitive private information revealed during the affair …

    Security 8 Apr 08:03

  • Nokia Life touches down in Kenya, jingles pocketful of Microsoft money

    But only rich westerners, and Nokia, get stuff for free

    Nokia Life, the life services mobile app suite for the developing world, is launching the 18-pence-a-year service in Kenya, while Nokia throws another $250m into "the mobile ecosystem" elsewhere. The money goes to Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia's investment arm which has already made money out of Morpho, Inside Secure, Swype and …

    Mobile 8 Apr 08:19

  • New rules to end cries of 'WTF... a £10 online booking fee?'

    Excessive charges: Hopefully something to tell your grandchildren about

    The government has issued guidance that sets out the kind of costs businesses incur that they are legitimately able to claim back through payment surcharging. Under the Consumer Protection (Payment Surcharges) Regulations, which took effect on 6 April, businesses are prohibited from charging consumers excessive fees for using …

    Government 8 Apr 08:38

  • HDS CTO: Man, I could just throttle our array... er, in a good way

    Fat NAS box does dedupe, when it's got a sec

    Hitachi Data Systems has bunged primary deduplication into its network-attached storage (HNAS) kit and Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) mid-range array. That's according to the company's chief technology officer Hu Yoshida. HNAS is the hardware-accelerated filer HDS obtained when it bought BlueArc; the system relies on …

    Storage 8 Apr 09:04

  • Pyongyang to unleash NUKULAR horsemen of the Norkocalypse?

    Just how real is North Korea's missile threat?

    Last week, UK prime minister David Cameron raised a few eyebrows when he insisted North Korea has the capability to launch a missile strike against the the US and the UK. Just like Blighty was once warned of Saddam Hussein's terrifying Weapons of Mass Destruction, the PM forewarned: “North Korea does now have missile …

    SPB 8 Apr 09:26

  • '1337 hacker' scrawls all over careless coders' SourceForge sites

    'If others did this, they might not have been so nice'

    Someone claiming to be a "1337 hacker" has defaced programming projects hosted by SourceForge.net Web pages for the network utility Angry IP Scanner and other open-source software hosted by the online coding vault were altered by the infiltrator. The individual responsible claimed the websites were "hacked" using a "backdoor …

    Developer 8 Apr 09:43

  • Upstart $3bn forex trader dumps Oracle JVM for Azul's Zing

    A bad case of the jitters

    Financial services companies were among the early and enthusiastic adopters of Java - but the jittery Java virtual machines from Oracle and IBM (and others before Oracle ate them) have been a pain for some. Azul Systems is hoping to cash in on that grief among big banks, brokerages, high frequency traders, and others in …

    Developer 8 Apr 10:03

  • Facebook VOICE is what telco barons should fear - not a Zuckermobe

    Analysis Just killed a chicken, now your profits are next... bitch

    Facebook disappointed anyone expecting the unveiling of a "Facebook phone" last week - including me. But device manufacturers and mobile operators should watch their backs: it's barely the start of what the social-networking website can achieve. As a thought experiment, put yourself in Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg's Adidas …

    Mobile 8 Apr 10:27

  • Whatever happened to self-service computing?

    The administrator lives on

    According to Gartner's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle for 2012, cloud computing has passed the peak of inflated expectations and is heading for the trough of disillusionment at full speed. Cloud computing didn't live up to the overblown hype. We have to get over the disappointment before we start to rationally accept the …

    Datacenter 8 Apr 10:43

  • Review: HP ElitePad 900 Atom tablet

    'And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin Win8 slab... sort of'

    If HP’s ElitePad 900 is anything to go by, not everybody expects a business Windows 8 Pro Atom tablet to be a pocketable wafer. You only have to hold it in your hand to get the impression that this model has been built for endurance rather than designed as a fashion accessory. That’s not to say that it doesn’t look good, quite …

    Tablets 8 Apr 11:04

  • Everything faster than everything, boast soft flash wizards

    Your boots may be made for walkin' – ours are faster

    Caching software startup VeloBit came to our notice as a provider of server flash caching software that could turn bog-standard commodity SSDs into Fusion-io-class flash caches. Now it's using its software with added tweaks to turn ordinary servers into VDI drag racers with the highest-access VDI data, like master VM images, …

    Storage 8 Apr 11:24

  • Capita slurps crashed 2e2's ex-flack-in-chief to bolster sales

    Ex-BA Ian Thomas starts today

    Troubled integrator-cum-reseller Capita IT Services (CITS) has hired fallen channel giant 2e2's former sales and marketing director. Ian Thomas rocks up at CITS today as sales boss in a move that was confirmed to staff by managing director Peter Hands. "Ian has a background in travel, telecoms and IT services and spent 14 …

    The Channel 8 Apr 11:45

  • Website which 'could have prevented Rwandan genocide' goes live

    Anyone ever called you a cockroach? Sperg? Swingbelly?

    A genocide prevention charity and a campaign software development house have joined forces to create an all-encompassing database of online hate speech. The insults are collected together on a site called HateBase, which aims to provide NGOs and governments with the ability to "use hate speech as a predictor for regional …

    Policy 8 Apr 11:59

  • BT boss barks at TalkTalk for being 'copper Luddites'

    Even though most of telecom giant's new fibre network is mainly FTTC

    BT boss Ian Livingston has blasted TalkTalk for grumbling about the cost of fitting fibre-optic broadband - and accused the budget ISP of clinging to its copper network. The chief exec took to the pages of the Daily Telegraph after TalkTalk complained the national telco was creating a monopoly due to the amount it charges to …

    Broadband 8 Apr 12:43

  • Kissinger and tell: WikiLeaks scrapes 1.7m US diplomatic reports from the '70s

    Six-fingered* Assange republishes America's national archives

    WikiLeaker-in-chief Julian Assange, who is languishing in self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, has kept himself busy by scraping more than one million documents from the US national archives. The latest collection of reports to be published on his news leaks website - some of which are labelled "NODIS …

    Government 8 Apr 12:59

  • Tick-tock! 40% of PCs start Windows XP malware meltdown countdown

    In 365 days, you'll be on your own against the hackers

    With one year to go until Microsoft kills free support for Windows XP, if you haven’t got a migration plan in place it’s time to start doing something about it... but don't panic, say the migration experts. One year from today, on 8 April 2014, Microsoft will stop fixing broken code and no longer release security patches for …

    Operating Systems 8 Apr 13:31

  • Office for Mac 2008 support umbilical chopped off

    But you can buy it again, and keep on buying it

    Mac fans wedded to Microsoft Office face a stark choice on April 9 – upgrade or continue running the unsupported Office for Mac 2008. April 9 2013 is the date when Microsoft will stop providing new code and security fixes for Office for Mac 2008, which launched in January 2008. Redmond is urging Mac users to take out an …

    Applications 8 Apr 14:04

  • What'll we do tonight, Kieran? Same thing we do every night, Tintri....

    ... try to take over the VM storage world

    Hybrid VM-aware array upstart Tintri is adding array-side, per-VM replication in a version 2.0 VMstore product software release, hoping to enjoy the success established storage player NetApp has had in purpose-built storage systems for virtual machines. CEO Kieran Harty says Tintri has been having phenomenal quarters, …

    Virtualization 8 Apr 14:28

  • Channel firms, rejoice: You're not going out of business nearly so often

    Anyone would think we are talking up recovery

    Channel insolvencies have fallen for the third consecutive quarter, according to official stats from credit reference agency Graydon UK. Sixty-four tech suppliers hit the wall in Q1, down a whopping 28 per cent on the same period a year ago. Broken down by type there were 45 voluntary liquidations, four compulsory …

    The Channel 8 Apr 15:07

  • German court says nein to Apple's slide-to-unlock patent

    Appeal is on its way

    Apple's slide-to-unlock patent has been ruled invalid by a German court because it's not really an "innovation" in the eyes of European patent law. The Bundespatentgericht (federal patent court) in Munich ruled that the famous patent is invalid because European law doesn't allow for the patenting of software that doesn't …

    Developer 8 Apr 15:27

  • London Boroughs join forces in mighty £1bn IT procurement framework

    This enormous purchasing juggernaut will devour us all

    A collective of London borough councils are pulling together their purchasing power in a mega IT products and services framework worth up to £1.1bn over four years. An invitation to tender was sent to prospective suppliers late last week covering three lots - distributed computing, service desk and data centre services. …

    The Channel 8 Apr 15:59

  • Network Goliaths and upstart Davids join in on OpenDaylight SDN project

    Trying to pull a Linux maneuver for malleable networks

    Linux is the dominant open-source operating system because of the strong community it has developed and the cross-platform nature of the OS. OpenStack is rapidly becoming the de facto uber-controller for infrastructure clouds, again thanks to a vibrant open-source community. And now, the established networking giants and the …

    Cloud 8 Apr 16:04

  • Cloud disaster-recovery startup gets pre-IPO VC cash slurp

    Need a catcher in the cloudy rye?

    Ziv and Oded Kedem's latest venture, Zerto, provides hypervisor-based replication for VMware. Thanks to lashings of venture capital dollars it has been growing steadily since its stealth beginnings in 2009. The company emerged from stealth in July 2011, having started with $6 million of seed and A-round funding. A $15 million …

    Cloud 8 Apr 17:04

  • USPTO backs down on iPad mini trademark objections

    'The examining attorney apologizes for any inconvenience caused'

    The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has withdrawn its primary objections to Apple's trademark filing for the term "iPad mini" – but Cupertino is not completely off the hook quite yet. "Upon further review of the application, the examining attorney has determined that the following refusals issued in the initial Office …

    Tablets 8 Apr 17:44

  • Get lost, drivers: Google Maps is not for you – US judge

    California clamps down on furtive fingering

    Checking Google Maps has been placed on the list of things you're not allowed to do while at the wheel – at least in the US. A court in California has ruled that accessing a GPS app on a mobile phone while driving is illegal. In January last year, plods pulled over Steven R. Spriggs and slapped him with a charge of driving …

    Law 8 Apr 17:46

  • HP's 'historic' Project Moonshot servers aim at hyperscale future

    First Atom nodes, then ARM and others to 'change the server market'

    HP didn't invent the rack-server business, but Compaq – the company it acquired more than a decade ago – did. HP can't buy its way into the next system era, which is why it is trying to create that era itself with its second-generation Project Moonshot servers. The initial "Redstone" Moonshot boxes were development machines …

    Servers 8 Apr 18:36

  • Tax man to take a bite of tech employees' free meals?

    Gratis grub should be counted as income, say experts

    The free meals doled out by Silicon Valley titans such as Facebook and Google may soon carry an additional burden for employees: the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly weighing whether to count them as income for tax purposes. The agency itself is keeping mum on the topic, but The Wall Street Journal cites tax …

    Management 8 Apr 19:56

  • Microsoft hosts bar mitzvah for mature Azure

    Little fellow is growing up, now ready to get a job

    Windows Azure is growing up, and Redmond is telling the world that many components of it are now ready to be put to work in production environments. The company made several announcements on Monday relating to Azure's maturation, including the shift of Azure Active Directory into general availability, the launch (in preview) …

    Cloud 8 Apr 20:19

  • US judge: no class action against tech giants' 'wage-control pact'

    Disgruntled unpoached bods can continue battle, however

    A US judge is refusing to allow tech employees to band together and sue Apple, Google, and other tech firms in a class-action suit over those companies' alleged "no-hire pact" to keep wages down. District Judge Lucy Koh said that the pact affected workers in too many different ways to allow them to be lumped together, and …

    Law 8 Apr 20:20

  • Dell ready to pay Icahn $25m to behave himself during buyout deal

    Flashing cash all around to get a deal done quickly

    The board of directors at Dell are so eager to look like they are doing their jobs selling off the company to the highest bidder that they are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to cover the expenses for due diligence that three different groups – one led by company founder Michael Dell, and others lead by Blackstone …

    Business 8 Apr 21:24

  • Australia's coalition reveals bits of broadband plan

    Turnbull as fiscal conservatism beats Turnbull as philosopher prince

    Australia's shadow communications Malcolm Turnbull releases an alternative plan for the nation's national broadband network (NBN) today, an important moment in the network's evolution given the coalition Turnbull represents is likely to win government in September. IT media haven't been told where or when, in what seems to be …

    Broadband 8 Apr 23:03

  • Climate change set to bumpify transatlantic flights, say researchers

    Flights across the pond won't be pleasant mid-century

    Rising sea levels, droughts, torrential downpours, "superstorms" – climate change has been blamed for a flood [Ahem...—Ed.] of calamities, but new research shows that an even worse global warming–induced fate might soon befall us all: an inflight glass of wine spilling onto our lap when our airliner encounters increased …

    Science 8 Apr 23:32