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9th April 2013 Archive

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  • US Navy blasts drones with ship-mounted LASER CANNON

    Star Wars defense planned for Persian Gulf debut in 2014

    The US Navy says it has successfully test-fired a ship-mounted laser weapon, and that it plans to deploy the device to an actual maritime staging area beginning in 2014. On Monday, the Navy released video and still images showing the somewhat-unimaginatively named Laser Weapon System (LaWS) firing on an unmanned drone, causing …

    Science 9 Apr 00:04

  • Microsoft's security apps still trip up on Windows 8

    Up to 20% of 0-day attacks evade Redmond's defenses, says AV-Test

    German independent security firm AV-Test has released evaluations of security software for Windows 8 for the first time, and – not entirely surprisingly – it once again found Microsoft's own products were among the weaker performers. The firm tested its usual batch of 25 antivirus products for consumers, plus eight aimed at …

    Security 9 Apr 01:09

  • News Corp prez threatens to pull Fox TV off the air

    Updated Miffed at court's refusal to block Aereo streaming service

    In response to a New York appeals court ruling that upheld the right of media mogul Barry Diller's fledgling Aereo streaming service to continue to provide its subscribers with broadcast television content, News Corp.'s president and COO Chase Carey says he might turn Fox television into a subscription-only cable service. "If …

    Media 9 Apr 01:16

  • Intel doubles Thunderbolt speed to 20Gbps

    Will anyone other than Apple care?

    Intel's speedy but seldom-used networking standard Thunderbolt will double in speed to 20Gbps by year's end. Revealed at the NAB show, an event for broadcasting and content creation types, Intel said the next generation “Falcon Ridge” Thunderbolt controller will run at 20Gbps and “Supports 4K video file transfer and display …

    Networks 9 Apr 03:02

  • Australia's coalition launches new broadband policy

    Fibre to the premises unlikely for most in cheaper, sooner, plan

    In Sydney's Fox Sports broadcast facility, a building supporting multi-gigabit connectivity, immediately following a demonstration of 3D television capabilities, and on the same day that the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced year-on-year Australian download growth of more than 63 percent, Australia's opposition announced …

    Broadband 9 Apr 04:03

  • Android FOUND ON TABLETS inscribed with WORD OF GOD

    O come all ye fondlers, joyful and triumphant

    A church has handed out tablets instead of hymn books - but not stone ones etched with the 10 commandments: these are Android fondleslabs whose pinch-to-zoom feature is a godsend for elderly parishioners, we're told. The first tab-equipped Church of England congregation at St John's Church in Mickleover, near Derby, clutched …

    Tablets 9 Apr 05:00

  • Rackspace cosies up to mobile developers

    Brews mobile gumbo from open source ingredients

    Texan cloud prospector Rackspace hopes to strike gold by partnering up with mobile-focused companies to mine a rich vein of developer services. The company announced on Tuesday a scheme that sees it offer free "mobile cloud stacks" service to developers, while partnering with mobile-specialist companies for additional services …

    Cloud 9 Apr 05:04

  • Boffins say flash disk demands new RAID designs

    Wear-levelling levels out

    Solid state disks (SSDs) are wonderfully fast, but every time you write to them, the semiconductors involved degrade just a little, a property that means you swap them into established storage rigs at your peril. That's the conclusion of a new paper, “Stochastic Analysis on RAID Reliability for Solid-State Drives” from a pair …

    Storage 9 Apr 05:40

  • Take a deep breath: No NORKS panic for ICT supply chain … yet

    Regional tech titans are keeping a close eye on situation

    It’s business as usual for the ICT supply chain in Asia despite heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula which have now seen the de facto closure of the symbolic Kaesŏng industrial zone, according to market watchers. The Reg has had its ear to the ground across the region to see if the recent escalation in threatening …

    Government 9 Apr 05:56

  • Virgin on London Underground Wi-Fi: O2's company, Three's a crowd

    Download that cat vid before entering the tunnel, though

    Mobile network O2 has become the latest to offer its customers access to free wi-fi on London's Tube platforms. It joins EE, Vodafone and Virgin Media in offering internet access on the Underground, leaving Three customers as the only mobe users who can't connect while commuting. However, Virgin hasn't managed to conquer the …

    Mobile 9 Apr 06:03

  • 'Til heftier engines come aboard, HP Moonshot only about clouds

    Analysis And those engines will come – as will FPGAs, DSPs, GPUs ...

    The HP Moonshot hyperscale servers are not even fully launched, and Intel and Calxeda are already bickering about whose server node is going to be bigger and better when they both ship improved processors for the Moonshot chassis later this year. Other engines will be coming for the Moonshot machines, too, HP execs tell El Reg, …

    Cloud 9 Apr 06:04

  • Star Trek phaser sells for a STUNNING $231,000

    KHAAAAAANNNNNNNNN't believe I paid that much for it!

    Captain Kirk's phaser weapon from the second pilot of the 1960s Star Trek series has sold for an illogical $231,000 at auction. Phasers on stunned: Kirk, left, and McCoy The phaser, used by the character played by William "Khan!" Shatner, was expected to sell for about $50,000 but racked up more than four times that …

    Bootnotes 9 Apr 06:28

  • Fusion slips 1.6TB solid wedge into Hollywood scribblers' slots

    And that's the way HP likes it

    Fusion-io has fattened up its ioFX card that plugs flash storage into a workstation's PCIe bus: performance, we're told, is up fourfold and capacity is up from 420GB to 1.6TB. The technology allows processors to access data at flash speeds, which is very much faster than disk transfer rates. Lower-capacity cards typically act …

    Storage 9 Apr 07:03

  • Library ebooks must SELF-DESTRUCT if scribes want dosh - review

    Shovel UK taxpayer cash this way please, say publishers

    The UK government will consider paying writers each time their ebooks and audio books are borrowed from public libraries - just like scribes are recompensed when their dead-tree tomes are loaned. Culture minister Ed Vaizey announced a decision will be made after a formal review concluded libraries must stock digital titles or …

    Media 9 Apr 07:29

  • Mm.. you like RAID? Ooh, you want flash. Try this super-Hadooper

    Intel touts Nytro booster with cache controller

    Intel is integrating an LSI PCIe flash card and RAID adapter into its new RAID SSD Cache Controllers intended for caching data from direct-attached disks on servers. LSI Nytro MegaRAID card LSI offers its Nytro PCIe flash technology in its WarpDrive flash cards and MegaRAID adapters, in effect adding cache-based app …

    Storage 9 Apr 08:05

  • McDonalds-card-toting Softcat boss: I couldn't tell you how a computer works

    Feature Hellawell on being 'tight' - and his part in Thatcher's downfall

    The much-lauded chairman of software reseller Softcat has carved out a high-flying career selling tech - but paradoxically Martin Hellawell can't explain how a computer computes nor the inner workings of a mainframe. Still wet behind the ears and straight out of uni in 1988, Hellawell made an inauspicious entry into the world …

    The Channel 9 Apr 08:23

  • Quantum spring-cleans StorNext for file-hungry arty small biz

    When you need to juggle 500 million docs on a modest budget

    Storage biz Quantum had made its StorNext product suitable for small and medium-sized firms with a new metadata appliance, disk enclosure boxes and a low-end tape library. StorNext stores files on primary arrays, in slower-access object storage arrays, or even slower access tape vaults. Its users don't need to know exactly …

    Storage 9 Apr 08:44

  • The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME

    Product Round-up Gorgeous kit that looks as good now as it did the day it came out

    Does a computer need to look sexy? You might say that the looks of such a pragmatic gadget don’t matter. After all, most of us have, at one time or another, had to make do with bland, beige boxes almost exactly like everyone else’s bland, beige box, and it didn't hinder us from getting the job done, or made play any the less …

    Vintage 9 Apr 08:59

  • Avere releases FXT3800 speed filer

    Rival still some Huawei in front

    Avere has upped its accelerated edge filer game with the FXT 3800, which is 40 per cent faster on the SPECsfs2008 benchmark than the existing FXT 3500. FXT products started out as filer accelerators and evolved into small (or edge) filers as well, relegating existing filers to be bulk file stores with hot files served from the …

    Storage 9 Apr 09:30

  • Operators look on in horror as Facebook takes mobe users Home

    We don't care that you've been buying them drinks all night ... bitch

    Facebook Home reskins a phone much the same way that operators have been trying - and repeatedly failing - to do for more than a decade. But can Zuckerberg really lock the the mobile customer down into its UI and achieve the operators' nirvana of customer ownership? Facebook Home, announced last week, takes a vanilla phone and …

    Mobile 9 Apr 09:59

  • Protect your data with a cloudy mixture

    Where should it live?

    Many organisations today are facing the challenge of fast-changing operating conditions. At the same time, they are ever more dependent on the data and information they hold. How can they best store and protect corporate data? Is cloud the right answer or only part of it? Securing and protecting data has been a major issue for …

    Cloud 9 Apr 10:06

  • MoneySupermarket: Google never warned us about payday loan AD BAN

    Mountain View rival says it now complies with Brit trading rules

    Google temporarily pulled every single one of the pay-per-click ads of a major UK-based online price comparison firm from its search results over the weekend. According to Mountain View, the 24-hour ad-yank - which included the removal of ads comparing home and car insurance products - was a reaction to MoneySupermarket.com's …

    Media 9 Apr 10:24

  • Citi to file claim with Nasdaq over Facebook IPOcalypse

    Joins UBS in tussle for cash from teeny compensation pot

    Citigroup is planning to file a claim for its piece of the $62m compensation pot Nasdaq is required to dole out after the Facebook IPOcalypse. The bank is all set to apply for the existing compensation, but it's still leaving its other options open, according to the sources whispering to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. …

    Financial News 9 Apr 10:46

  • Microsoft leads charge against Google's Android in EU antitrust complaint

    'Failure to act will only embolden Google'

    Microsoft and Nokia have added Google's Android operating system to their list of antitrust grievances against the ad giant, and have filed a formal complaint with European regulators. According to analysts, Android is currently the dominant smartphone operating system and Google also takes the biggest slice of mobile search …

    Government 9 Apr 11:27

  • Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

    Obituary Who loves their fibre broadband? Now you know who to thank

    Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister who worked alongside the world's first business computer and who privatised the UK's phone network, has died. She was 87. When Britain's Iron Lady came to power in 1979, your average Brit had just one phone, which was fixed to a wall by a wire and connected to a network …

    Government 9 Apr 11:44

  • Salesforce cuts app development steps

    Customer-oriented company does something for its customers

    When you're a company that produces the tech that salespeople, customer relationship managers, and general biz-types use, it'd be astonishing if you did not have a mobile device strategy. Therefore, Salesforce's announcement on Tuesday that it has a great big mobile toolkit did not surprise us. The "Salesforce Platform Mobile …

    Developer 9 Apr 12:04

  • MISSING LINK between HUMANS and MONKEYS FOUND

    Smart simians ape pub banter, says bio-boffin

    Scientists claim to have identified the missing link between human speech and monkey chatter. Researchers analysed the distinctive "lip-smacking" sounds made by wild gelada baboons of the Ethopian highlands and found striking similarities to human speech. Their noises are so human-like that Thore Bergman, an assistant …

    Science 9 Apr 12:14

  • iQuit: Apple union boss chucks grappling hook up garden wall

    Cory Moll leaves after 2 years battling Cupertino

    The founder of a union for Apple retail workers has quit his job after two years spent battling for better pay and job prospects. Cory Moll, who works in San Francisco, founded the union in 2011 and has been an outspoken critic of the fruity firm's treatment of its staff. At the time of writing, no one had stepped up to fill …

    Media 9 Apr 12:32

  • Damn you, world! WHY can't I have an object store on my desktop?

    Storagebod Who will rid me of these hostile cloud mutterings

    Another year, another conference season sees me stuck on this side of the pond watching the press releases from afar, promising myself that I’ll watch the keynotes online - or "on demand" as people have it these days. I never find the time and have to catch up with the 140 character synopses that regularly appear on Twitter. I …

    Storage 9 Apr 12:44

  • Malware-flingers target gullible corporate bods with office printer spam

    LOL, that's not a picture of my cat

    Sneaky cybercrooks are disguising links to malicious sites in spam emails posing as messages from Hewlett-Packard ScanJet printers. The attack takes advantage of the fact corporate users often receive emailed messages from scanners and multi-function printers located in their own offices, which contain attachments of the scan …

    Security 9 Apr 13:04

  • EE extends network: Soon, 1 million users will pay us for 4G

    No really... We've doubled the speed and everything

    A million mobile subscribers will be paying the 4G premium on EE's network by year's end, according to the operator. EE is doubling its network's speed in 10 UK cities so it can keep boasting about being the UK's fastest provider. The million subscribers will be eight per cent of EE's customer base, which it reckons is a …

    Mobile 9 Apr 14:04

  • WhatsApp exec: Google takeover? It's news to me

    Choc Factory not chucking rumoured $1bn at messaging app

    WhatsApp's business development head Neeraj Arora has squashed rumours that Google was keen to spend $1bn on popular mobile messaging service WhatsApp. Arora spoke to All Things D after furious speculation that the Chocolate Factory had been negotiating with the cross-platform messaging app. The gossip was sparked by tech blog …

    Financial News 9 Apr 14:24

  • CAE Tech Services top and bottom lines slide in fiscal 2012

    Project drop-offs, competitive sales landscape and higher overheads fingered

    Rising overheads and a slowdown in project work hit the top and bottom lines at Watford-based CAE Technology Services in fiscal 2012 ended June. The Cisco and HP Gold certified reseller saw sales dip five per cent on a year ago to £47.3m, according to a filing at Companies House late last week. "This was as a result of 2011 …

    The Channel 9 Apr 14:33

  • Mutant array upstarts feast on EMC, NetApp's leavings

    Blocks and Files Should've rewritten the software lads...

    Mainstream storage vendors have a potentially huge blind spot in their product strategy and hybrid array startups are now eating away at their customer base. Nimble Storage, Tegile and Tintri, specifically, appear to be benefiting at the expense of mainstream storage giants EMC and NetApp. When the storage array mainstream met …

    Storage 9 Apr 15:04

  • US Air Force reclassifies 6 cyber tools as weapons

    What, these? These are guns. Can we have some money now?

    The US Air Force has classified six cyber tools as weapons to help them compete for scarce funding from the Pentagon's budget, an official has said. Lieutenant General John Hyten, vice commander of Air Force Space Command, didn't give any details on the new cyber weapons, but said that redesignation would help the military's …

    Government 9 Apr 15:25

  • Google U-turns on exclusive snatch of .app AND .search addys

    Ad giant may have to admit there are other search engines out there

    Google has been forced to abandon its bid to grab exclusive use of the web address extensions .app, .blog, .search and .cloud - after it was warned the move was anti-competitive. Late last year, the advertising giant applied for the four generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to internet overseer ICANN, which is charging companies …

    Hosting 9 Apr 16:28

  • British LulzSec member pleads guilty

    Hacker to be sentenced next month

    A 26-year-old British man pleaded guilty to one count of computer hacking today after admitting he was a member of Anonymous splinter group LulzSec. Ryan Ackroyd, 26, from South Yorkshire, appeared at Southwark Crown Court, where he faced charges of launching attacks on the websites of high-profile companies including Nintendo …

    Security 9 Apr 17:06

  • VMware sells off Shavlik patch management tools to LANDesk

    Forget hardware nannying, we're all about software-defined everything

    With new sheriff Pat Gelsinger now running the company for the past six months, VMware is getting more focused on its software-defined data center product line, extending up from basic server virtualization to the heavens, and is spinning off anything that is not directly supportive of its goals for virtualized data center and …

    Servers 9 Apr 18:27

  • Amazon widens .NET to catch Windows cloud devs

    Psst, hey you, Bezos has some cloud for you

    Amazon has broadened the ways in which .NET users can fiddle with its platform-as-a-service cloud AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The expansion of the technology was announced on Tuesday and sees Elastic Beanstalk for .NET now support Amazon's enterprise-focused Virtual Private Cloud technology. It follows an announcement by Amazon …

    Cloud Infrastructure 9 Apr 18:59

  • Google goes big with Play store redesign

    Apps for a bigger-screen world

    Google is rolling out an update to its Play storefront from Tuesday, with bigger images for Android 2.2 users and an improved checkout system to help them pay for what they fancy. Bigging it up (click to enlarge) "The new design focuses on bigger images that jump off the page," enthused Michael Siliski, group product …

    Mobile 9 Apr 19:04

  • Microsoft ships Surface firmware fixes with April patch batch

    Wi-Fi, other issues addressed

    Along with the usual Patch Tuesday fixes for Windows, Internet Explorer, and other software, Microsoft's April 9 updates also include hardware driver and firmware fixes for its Surface RT and Surface Pro fondleslabs. The releases mark the fifth time Redmond has issued fixes for hardware issues with Surface RT, which shipped in …

    Tablets 9 Apr 19:47

  • Hard luck lads, todger size DOES matter: Official

    NSFWish Being tall and masculine also helps, says stiff stiff

    Boffins bearing tape measures appear to have confirmed that in the trouser department, size really does matter. But it's not the only thing prospective mates are eyeing when they give chaps the once-over. In fact, todger size "interacts with body shape and height to determine male sexual attractiveness", so that a "greater …

    Bootnotes 9 Apr 20:32

  • Microsoft squashes 9 bugs with Patch Tuesday fixes

    Plugs holes in IE10, locks down privilege escalation vulns

    Microsoft has issued nine patches for vulnerabilities in its software on the computer-murk jamboree day that is Patch Tuesday. The updates plug two "critical" vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Windows that allow for remote code execution, and seven "important" vulns that allow for privilege escalation, denial of service …

    Security 9 Apr 20:39

  • Piston ready to capture 'waves of customers' coming off AWS

    Puts out Enterprise OpenStack 2.0 as bait

    Many of the core OpenStack developers who worked on the Nebula cloud at NASA ended up at cloud controller appliance maker Nebula or at Rackspace Hosting, the other initial collaborator for the OpenStack project. But more than a few of them ended up at Piston Cloud, which has come up with its own twist on the OpenStack cloud …

    Cloud Infrastructure 9 Apr 20:46

  • Mozilla's Persona beta adds password-free Yahoo! logins

    Identity Bridging makes your email addy your only ID

    The Mozilla Foundation has shipped a second public beta of its Persona web-login technology featuring a new capability called Identity Bridging, which makes it easier for users to access sites using only their email addresses and no additional passwords. "The goal of Persona is simple: we want to eliminate passwords on the Web …

    Security 9 Apr 22:20

  • Google: 'Austin is our next Fiber city.' AT&T: 'Us, too – maybe'

    Big Phone horns in on Googly gigabit internet announcement

    Google has officially announced what had already become an open secret: that Austin, Texas, will be its next "Google Fiber" city, where the online ad peddler will offer gigabit internet connections to homes and institutions. Soon after Google's announcement, AT&T chimed in with a copycat communiqué – albeit one with caveats. …

    Broadband 9 Apr 23:14

  • Amazon lofts Hadoop into GovCloud

    Regulation-approved problem solving

    Amazon has flung its implementation of Hadoop, Amazon Elastic MapReduce, onto its "GovCloud" data center hub. The launch of EMR atop GovCloud was announced by Amazon on Tuesday, and sees the Seattle-based infrastructure farmer give US government agencies an easy way to access Hadoop without breaking regulatory protocols. EMR …

    Cloud 9 Apr 23:31