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10th April 2013 Archive

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  • NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

    FDR for the stars

    NASA, and plenty of private individuals, want to put mankind on Mars. Now a team at the University of Washington, with funding from the space agency, is about to start building a fusion engine that could get humans there in just 30 days and make other forms of space travel obsolete. Rocket fuel is just so last century " …

    Science 10 Apr 00:40

  • Intel hints at server processor plans for the rest of this year

    New chippery all around, from tiny Atom to big bad Xeon E7

    The Intel Developer Forum is kicking off in Beijing, China on Wednesday morning, and knowing that everyone can't make it to the Middle Kingdom to talk tech, Chipzilla gave El Reg a preview of what Diane Bryant, general manager of its Data Center and Connected Systems Group, would reveal during her keynote focusing on processors …

    Servers 10 Apr 01:00

  • Two new supers go live in Oz

    Igor pulls the big switch

    The Pawsey Centre in Western Australia – which among other things will carry the computational burdens of the country's contribution to the Square Kilometre Array Telescope – has begun commissioning its 69 Teraflop Sandy Bridge-based Cray machine due to go live in July 2013. For iVec and the CSIRO (which is acting as …

    HPC 10 Apr 01:04

  • Mozilla devs plotting to put a stake in <blink> tag – at last

    Firefox last browser to support offending text style

    Mozilla developers are considering dropping support for the <blink> tag from future versions of the Firefox browser, in a move that would see the web rid of the scourge of blinking text once and for all. Firefox's Gecko HTML rendering engine is currently the only one to support the blinking effect, which usability expert Jakob …

    Developer 10 Apr 01:05

  • Boffins propose photon-swapping entanglement experiment on ISS

    Spooky in space

    Hard on the heels of a Chinese claim to have measured the speed at which entanglement can transfer information, a group led by Austrian Academy of Sciences professor Rupert Ursin proposes testing “spooky action's” speed between Earth and the International Space Station. The researchers note that the only kit required on the …

    Science 10 Apr 02:06

  • Australia gets a space strategy

    'Bruce in space' not on the table

    Australia has itself a space strategy of sorts: nothing grand, but a signal that the dearth of space applications research down under might finally come to an end. The focus of the government strategy, launched yesterday, is going to be on satellites rather than the scary stuff like launch platforms. In part, it appears to be …

    Science 10 Apr 03:14

  • Free online Uni courses pressure vendors to drop training costs

    Cisco man says certification courses and content may be gratis, exams won't

    The popularity of massive online open courses (MOOCs) could significantly disrupt vendors' certification models, to the point at which it is no longer possible to charge for education. Several speakers at an event titled “The Future of Higher Education and Skills Training” in Sydney, Australia, today, pointed to the …

    Jobs 10 Apr 04:10

  • Microsoft follows Apple into the dock over warranty terms in China

    Surface Pro under the spotlight after state-run radio report

    Hot on the heels of Apple’s well publicised run-in with the Chinese authorities over alleged deficiencies in its customer service, Microsoft is now being targeted by state-run media which claims its Surface Pro warranty terms do not comply with local laws. A China National Radio report on Monday claimed that Redmond is only …

    Policy 10 Apr 04:28

  • US spies' crazytech branch asks chip firm for 8-BIT-PER-CELL memory

    Triple level cell? Pah! So yesterday

    The blue-sky researchers who work for the US intelligence branch have handed a contract to magnetic semiconductor firm Crocus Technology to develop memory that stores a whopping 8-bit-per cell memory to help keep the United States' intel secure. IARPA, the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, has commissioned …

    Storage 10 Apr 05:05

  • German boffins aim to burn natural gas - WITHOUT CO2 emissions

    Der Flüssigmetall-blasensäulenreaktor kommt

    Top boffins based in Germany - including a Nobel Prize laureate - believe they may be able to largely eliminate carbon emissions while nonetheless permitting the human race to use cheap and convenient fossil fuels as much as it likes: and this doesn't involve any tricky and probably expensive capturing of CO2 which must then be …

    Science 10 Apr 06:05

  • HGST unveils 12Gbit/s SAS SSDs for bankers, gamers and cloud-pushers

    Subsidiary of mega-corp punts twice-as-fast kit

    Western Digital subsidiary HGST has slapped 12Gbit/s SAS interfaces on three solid-state drives - which it claims is a storage industry first - and they fly, with one model boasting prolonged endurance as well. The SSD800 and SSD1000 drives store up to 800GB and 1TB respectively, using enterprise grade 2-bit multi-layer cell …

    Cloud Infrastructure 10 Apr 06:23

  • Seoul plans anti-GPS jamming system to thwart NORKS

    Naughty North Korea has been disrupting signals since 2010

    South Korea is finalising plans to track down and block GPS jamming signals emitted by its increasingly belligerent northern neighbour. Unnamed official government sources told Yonyap news agency that the GPS surveillance system would be co-ordinated by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning. However, relevant …

    Government 10 Apr 06:26

  • GE shows off tank-tough tech

    GTC 2013 Sorry, Sarge... I just backed over the new PC

    Do you have employees who habitually bust up perfectly good tech? These are the people who have a different problem every other week, and they always say, “I don’t know what happened, it just suddenly stopped working. It’s just so weird...” Then they show you a desktop with a motherboard swimming in Coke Classic or a notebook …

    HPC 10 Apr 07:07

  • Mali to give away .ML domains for free

    Gormless circumlunar HTML slumlord primly gimlets bottomless hamlet

    African nation Mali will give away domains in its .ML digital demesne for nothing. The giveaway starts in May, when Freedom Registry will open the floodgates, a term we use because “There will be no restrictions to registrations of free domains and anyone can claim its own .ML domain,” according to Freedom Registry's press …

    Policy 10 Apr 07:10

  • Microsoft: Here's some cash, channel. PLEASE sell Office 365

    Resellers bunged $40 per seat for first 3,000 sales

    Microsoft is hurling cash at enterprise channel partners to persuade them to convince customers to sign up to Office 365. Under an Enterprise Agreement licence promo, large account resellers get $40 per seat for the first 3,000 seats they sign up and $5 for each additional one. The offer, which applies to a minimum order of …

    The Channel 10 Apr 07:35

  • Microsoft's telly-over-the-net tech gobbled by Ericsson for mobes

    Just as everyone gets used to watching TV via the Wii

    Sweden's telecoms giant Ericsson has bought Mediaroom, the Microsoft-built technology that pipes TV over the internet. It gives the world's largest maker of mobile network gear the keys to a quarter of the world's video over IP (IPTV) market - and 400 staff to improve the delivery of telly to pockets, palms and living rooms. …

    Mobile 10 Apr 08:04

  • EMC dishes up 8 times more cache to hungry Isilon PAN

    Pushing out faster go-faster box

    EMC is adding more performance grunt to its Isilon scale-out cluster Performance Accelerator Node (PAN) by replacing it with a new box featuring eight times more level 1 cache. The 256GB of L1 cache in the forthcoming A100 PAN means more data can be held in memory. The aggregate throughput per node is 1,100MB/sec. It's not a …

    Storage 10 Apr 08:24

  • Your consent 'almost always' needed when firms use your data to profile you

    Watchdog, er... reassures Euro punters

    Organisations "almost always" require individuals' "free, specific, informed and unambiguous 'opt-in' consent" in order to make use of personal data they have previously collected in Big Data projects that involve analysing or predicting the "personal preferences, behaviour and attitudes of individual customers", an EU privacy …

    Law 10 Apr 08:44

  • French spies do a Barbara Streisand over secret nuke radio base

    Sacrée vache! Violoneux-wiki ont laissé échapper le force de frappucino

    A Wiki page about a French military base has gone viral after Gallic spooks tried to censor it. French internal spies at the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur called in a volunteer Wiki editor to their Paris office and ordered him to spike an entry about the Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute, a …

    Government 10 Apr 09:05

  • Vinyl sales reach 15 year high, Blighty becomes No. 3 music buyer

    You just can't trust that singing fat lady

    The UK overtook Germany as the world's third largest music market last year, according to the yearbook from trade association IFPI. The USA and Japan remain the largest two music nations. Revenues from music recordings were about the same as last year - $16.4bn - but a slow shift from physical (down 5 per cent) to legit …

    Media 10 Apr 09:28

  • How to decide when to pass on PaaS

    A changing cloudscape

    Most forms of cloud computing are starting to find a place in mainstream IT delivery. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), for example, is providing greater flexibility and better economy for those wanting to grab server or storage capacity from the cloud. It might not be totally replacing other forms of infrastructure hosting …

    Datacenter 10 Apr 10:04

  • Capita's top brass bags 20% rise - as IT bods shiver in wage freeze

    Staff and bosses locked in salary talks for 2013

    Capita's top bosses' annual compensation packages rose by a fifth last year - at the same time the UK outsourcing giant's IT Services (ITS) workers had their wages frozen and bonuses scrapped. Hard-pressed ITS staffers, who are thrashing out a pay deal for 2013, were furious when they learned of the windfall enjoyed by execs …

    The Channel 10 Apr 10:24

  • Finance bods probe RBS over bank-crippling IT cock-up

    Bank could face fine for outsourced system collapse

    A banking watchdog has launched an investigation into the IT meltdown that crippled bank accounts held by millions of NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank customers in June last year. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has begun a probe into the disaster, which saw the RBS group unable to process payments following a catastrophic …

    Business 10 Apr 10:39

  • UK ad-slingers spent TWICE as much smearing sales-bluster on mobes in 2012

    Google and other ad firms laugh and laugh and laugh

    The amount of cash splurged on mobile advertising in Blighty more than doubled last year to £526m, as the global recession continues to have little effect on the eagerness of marketers to fill folks' every screen with ads. According to beancounters at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, who totted up the numbers for the Internet …

    Mobile 10 Apr 11:04

  • Who wants a smart meter to track'n'tax your car? Hello, Israel

    Avoid the rush hour, avoid higher rates. Oh and something about privacy

    Israel is drafting a tender for smart meters to be mandated in every vehicle in the country, tracking drivers to allow for differential taxation, but only once the privacy issues have been resolved. The plan is to vary vehicle tax based on usage, so drivers who don't drive during peak times, or stay out of city centres, get …

    Government 10 Apr 11:19

  • Stop with that LTE-B nonsense... it's NOT a thing - mobe standards guardian

    4G, dude... as if it weren't confusing enough

    The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), global custodian of mobile telephony standards up to and including LTE Advanced, has issued a statement insisting that "Advanced" is as, er, advanced as the naming system will go. LTE is the preferred 4G technology, and is currently being deployed around the world. Standards …

    Mobile 10 Apr 11:44

  • Review: Kobo Arc Android tablet

    Apps and books done right, eventually

    As pocketable Android tablets gather momentum and e-reader manufacturers look to offer a more flexible platform, the twilight zone where both meet is certainly looking lively. A criticism of Amazon’s Kindle Fire e-book-meets-Android offerings is the company’s imposition of a walled garden for installing apps: you have to …

    Tablets 10 Apr 12:04

  • Frightening fondleslabs branded Hannibal Lecter of UK PC market

    'Cannibalising' tablets chomp on desktop, notebook jugulars

    The classic PC industry in Blighty is down but not yet out for the count, according to the latest IT distribution channel data. Prelim numbers from Context SalesWatch shows 960,000 notebooks, desktops, x86 servers and workstations were sold in Q1 2013, a decline of 4.8 per cent on a year ago. Market revenues fell 3.4 per cent …

    The Channel 10 Apr 12:44

  • EU competition chief stays in touch with Google via TEXT MESSAGES

    'Get real, Eric' - Sent from my iPhone

    Google is on the verge of submitting proposed changes to its business practices to avoid sanctions over allegations it abuses its dominant position in the EU's search market. It is understood the ad giant will this week hand in its homework to the competition watchdog wing of the European Commission, which is mulling claims …

    Government 10 Apr 13:04

  • The Register guide to Windows Server 2012: Hyper-V

    Virtualisation explication

    In February we published the The Register Guide to Windows Server 2012 as a free ebook. (You can get it here via our ebooks page.) To date there has been about 8,000 downloads. To give you a flavour of the book, co-written by Trevor Pott and Liam Proven, we are publishing our third and final extract, about Hyper-V - but to …

    Datacenter 10 Apr 13:26

  • Yahoo! chats! up! Apple! for! lots! more! iPhone! lovin'!

    Seen the scrolling Y! Finance bar in iOS? Purple Palace wants more of that

    Yahoo! and Apple are reportedly in secret talks to take their relationship to the next level with more iThing integration. Industry sources muttered to the Wall Street Journal that the two tech firms have been chatting about how Yahoo! gear could be more prominent on iPhones and iPads. The pair already have some integration …

    Applications 10 Apr 14:00

  • Achtung! German Amazon workers out on strike

    In a very orderly and efficient manner

    Hundreds of workers at web bazaar Amazon’s central depot in Germany have walked out on strike in protest over working conditions and pay. Around 500 people protested on Tuesday at the box-crammers' Bad Hersfeld site, which is one of seven distribution points in the country. It is the first time Amazon workers have launched …

    Business 10 Apr 14:27

  • Therapy for 2e2 survivors: Online confab on 12 April at 2pm BST

    Live Chat Relive the pain and learn with The Channel ed Paul Kunert

    IT contractor 2e2 collapsed under the weight of more than £270m in debt in January. Creditors had grown tired of backing an ambitious 10-year acquisition spree that saw 2e2 pay top dollar and left its management saddled with a debt they couldn't pay. The final blow, while anticipated, was jaw-droppingly swift. One of the …

    The Channel 10 Apr 14:59

  • 'Close to one in three - sorry, one in eight - SMEs are software pirates'

    Check your shoulders for parrots, lads

    More than one in ten of Blighty's small biz owners admit to being shameless software pirates, the Business Software Alliance reckons. The industry organ arrived at this stat by extrapolating research from Vanson Bourne covering just 250 SMEs, finding that 12 per cent admitted to side-stepping licensing rules. It found that 18 …

    The Channel 10 Apr 15:19

  • Attack of the CYBER NORKS! Pyongyang in frontal assault online

    Jong-un's a WRONG 'UN, claim southerners

    As the Korean peninsula flirts with supposed nuclear war, North Korea has been accused of launching cyber-attacks on banks and TV broadcasters in the south. Investigators in Seoul said Pyongyang was behind the hacking of tens of thousands of computers last month. Tension is already running high on the peninsula after North …

    Bootnotes 10 Apr 15:59

  • Inuit all along: Pirate Bay flees Sweden for Greenland

    Tip-off of imminent domain seizures sends pirates scurrying

    The Pirate Bay has set sail for Greenland after receiving a tip-off suggesting the Swedish authorities were about to seize its current domain. Owners of the world’s largest file-sharing site lifted anchor on Tuesday night and moved from their current address to the .gl domain in a bid to evade Swedish cyber-cops. British …

    Hosting 10 Apr 16:58

  • Dell shareholder: 'Rush' is because Michael D wants to buy

    Pell-mell Dell sell = 'Like hell' yell from SAM

    Dell shareholder Southeastern Asset Management has said that the board's assessment of the buyout deal offered by Michael Dell and Silver Lake is flawed and it's only rushing to sell because Michael Dell wants to buy. The shareholder published an open letter accusing the board of focusing disproportionately on the computing …

    Business 10 Apr 18:11

  • Oracle to resell Fujitsu 'Athena' Sparc64-X servers ... worldwide

    The more Sparcs, the merrier, apparently

    Solaris customers looking to upgrade their Sparc server iron will have a second set of choices now that Oracle has admitted that it will be reselling the Fujitsu "Athena" servers that use the Japanese company's Sparc64-X processor. Oracle's launch today of the Fujitsu Sparc M10 server lineup is not really much of a surprise. …

    Servers 10 Apr 19:04

  • ACLU documents shows free access to emails for IRS tax police

    If it's opened, or old, then no warrant needed

    With the US Tax Day less than a week away, the ACLU has released a not-very-comforting Freedom of Information Act request return from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) showing just how easy it is for the tax agency to read people's online communications without a court-issued warrant. Last year, the ACLU asked the IRS for …

    Government 10 Apr 19:57

  • Speaking in Tech: Facebook's BETTER than Twitter ... for stalking your ex

    Podcast Plus: Putting a bounty on keyboards of tweet-happy Cisco bods...

    Facing another tedious commute home with only the dead-eyed grumblings of your fellow passengers - or the blaring radio of other motorists - for entertainment? Download this banter-packed episode of El Reg's one-and-only podcast and you could be catching up on everything that has happened this week in tech, happily tuning out …

    Cloud Infrastructure 10 Apr 19:58

  • DropBox adds single sign-on

    Amazon-dependent storage provider goes for the enterprise

    DropBox has implemented single sign-on as the company strives to get inside enterprises before larger companies commodify its file storage technology. Single sign-on (SSO) gives enterprise IT admins a way to manage use of DropBox by employees, the company announced on Tuesday. Alongside its introduction, DropBox has changed …

    Cloud 10 Apr 20:39

  • Office for Android, iOS pushed back to late 2014?

    New apps for Windows slabs to come first

    Post-PC professionals who are hoping for a version of Microsoft Office for their Android or iOS fondleslabs may have to wait another year or more, if new information purportedly leaked from Redmond proves to be correct. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reports that a confidential source has shown her what looks to be an authentic roadmap …

    Applications 10 Apr 21:06

  • Foxconn's revenue down on slowing iPad, iPhone sales

    More disappointing results ahead for Apple?

    Earnings are down at Hon Hai Precision Industry, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant better known as Foxconn, leaving analysts wondering whether the slump bodes bad news for the company's biggest partner, Apple. Foxconn's revenues for the three months ending March 2013 were 808.97bn Taiwanese dollars ($26.99bn/£17. …

    Financial News 10 Apr 22:57

  • Google brings in blue-chip VC firms for 'Glass Collective'

    KPCB and Andreessen Horowitz commit VC funds

    Google is hoping its Project Glass augmented-reality headsets will be the next big thing and has convinced two of the most venerable VC firms to put their money behind the venture, creating what they're calling the "Glass Collective." Welcome to the Collective "We've formed the Glass Collective, an investment syndicate …

    Business 10 Apr 23:04

  • Windows 8 has put the world's PC market to sleep - IDC

    Double-digit shipment fall 'both surprising and worrisome'

    The global PC market is dwindling, and Windows 8 could be to blame, according to the beancounters at IDC. The analyst firm released its rundown of global PC shipments on Tuesday, and the year-on-year double digit decline blows a cold wind for traditional PC makers like Dell and HP, and OS-slinger Microsoft. "It seems clear …

    Business 10 Apr 23:05

  • Oracle cuts down Big Data Appliance to make pilots cheaper

    Talks up zippier Oracle apps – and new apps – tuned for Exadata engineered systems

    It is hard to imagine a rack of servers and switches being too much of a machine for a pilot Hadoop system, but that is exactly what prospective customers have been telling Oracle. And so it is offering a cut-down "starter" version of its Big Data Appliance with a much lower price point. George Lumpkin, Oracle's vice president …

    Cloud Infrastructure 10 Apr 23:24

  • Australia's alternative NBN plan: some taxpayer-friendly questions

    Puncturing political promises with practicalities

    Last Tuesday, Australia's coalition announced its alternative national broadband network (NBN) plan, offering fibre to the node as the dominant mode of delivery. The plan appears comprehensive, but like any such document, it doesn't answer every conceivable question. With an election fewer than six months away, El Reg's …

    Policy 10 Apr 23:45