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12th April 2013 Archive

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  • Mars orbiter finds remains of pioneering Soviet Mars 3 probe

    Red Planet's first semi-successful visitor spotted

    A crowdsourcing effort by Russian space enthusiasts appears to have found the remains of the first probe to successfully land on Mars, using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Mars 3 mission, consisting of a satellite and landing vehicle, was sent to the Red Planet by the then-Soviet Union in 1971 and …

    Science 12 Apr 00:03

  • Google: 'We'll track EVERY task on EVERY data center server'

    Chip-level performance tracking in thousand-server Googly clusters

    Google has wired its worldwide fleet of servers up with monitoring technology that inspects every task running on every machine, and eventually hopes to use this data to selectively throttle or even kill processes that cause disruptions for other tasks running on the same CPU. The search giant gave details on how it had …

    Cloud 12 Apr 00:17

  • ... time machine. Iranian Dr Who claims he invented a ...

    State media pulls report on PC-sized box with powers to see the future

    Not content with letting North Korea get all the “we're sooooo bad” headlines this week, fellow rogue nation Iran has let it be known one of its resident boffins has invented a time machine. And then deleted the story in state-run media that brought the world news of the gadget. The “time machine” in question wasn't of the “ …

    Bootnotes 12 Apr 01:11

  • Chinese boffins predict iPad-sized supercomputers

    Quantum physics discovery could spur even lower power consumption

    Chinese boffins are predicting iPad-shaped supercomputers could become a reality after observing for the first time a phenomenon known as the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect, which could pave the way for a new generation of low energy-consumption electronics. The QAH effect has never been observed in a laboratory …

    Science 12 Apr 04:19

  • Oz regulator “welcomes” debate on limiting net neutrality

    ACCC Chairman likes the idea of ISPs charging by time of day and quality of service

    The head of Australia's telecommunications regulator, the Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), has signalled he's open to new debate about network access regimes that back away from complete net neutrality. Speaking at a Brisbane event hosted by Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, ACCC Chairman Rod Sims noted that “ …

    Policy 12 Apr 04:55

  • Want to know if that hottie has HIV? Put their blood in the DVD player

    Crafty boffins hack sitting-room boxes into lab kit

    Cunning Swedish boffins have come up with a new use for the cheap technology in optical DVD drives: it can be used to carry out complex biochemical tests, even to the point of detecting HIV in a blood sample. See? It is basically a DVD player This isn't hyperbole - an actual DVD player has been converted into a laser …

    Science 12 Apr 05:04

  • 'North Korea Has Launched a Missile' tweet sent by mistake

    Red faces at Yokahama city government after slip of the mouse

    City officials in Yokohama were left feeling rather embarrassed earlier this week after jumping the gun on possible nuclear armageddon by mistakenly tweeting that North Korea had launched a missile. The over-enthusiastic managers of the @yokohama_saigai Twitter account were to blame for the incident, which happened just before …

    Government 12 Apr 05:24

  • GSMA: $11bn for 'universal service' UNSPENT, nations' poor still not connected

    Operators ask governments to probe stockpiled universal access levies

    Mobile operator mouthpiece GSMA is asking countries to re-examine their universal service funding, pointing out that India alone has stockpiled $4.1bn in unspent cash while the poor remain disconnected. Universal Service Funds are financed with a levy on network operators, both fixed and mobile, and are intended to cover the …

    Mobile 12 Apr 06:03

  • Handwriting beats PowerPoint's teaching power says MIT boffin

    To make a point online, do it with a pen

    Remember that feeling of struggling to stay awake during university lectures? And not just because of the previous night's imbibing? The same problem affects students in massive online open courses (MOOCs), the free university courses now offered by reputable institutions around the world. Anant Agarwal, a professor of …

    Applications 12 Apr 06:12

  • Check Point bakes anti-malware tech into firewall bricks

    Software 'blades' whisper from scabbards. En garde

    Check Point is baking in cyber-espionage defences to its enterprise firewall and gateway security products with the incorporation of sandbox-style technology. "Threat emulation" software blades for Check Point firewalls will be available later in Q2 2013 and will add to other threat prevention layers, such as anti-virus and …

    Security 12 Apr 06:35

  • Go-go Gadget watch? Apple posts job ad for 'flexible display' bod

    Recent posting sought 'senior optical engineer'

    Apple has pulled a job advert looking for a flexible display expert just a week after it was posted. The fruity firm placed an advert on its American site on 1 April which said it had a role as a "senior optical engineer" that needed to be filled. The notoriously secret firm has not revealed why it binned the message, but it …

    Applications 12 Apr 07:04

  • Technical architects ahoy!

    Promo Big discounts for London event

    We’ve teamed up with IASA, the Global IT Architect Association,to promote its April event and have bagged a sizeable discount for any current or aspiring technical architects who’d like to attend. The event is in London this month, on April 25 and 26, at the Cavendish ConAndrew Searle, High Performance Computing, Jaguar Land …

    Management 12 Apr 07:16

  • Half of US smartphone owners have no idea which mobe to buy next

    What was that about platform lock-in?

    Were "ecosystems" of apps and developers ever the clincher in the smartphone wars? The conventional wisdom is that once users are locked in an online software store they will never leave. Perhaps this stickiness has been oversold. Now 44 per cent of 1,500 smartphone owners surveyed by MKM Partners in the US aren't sure which …

    Mobile 12 Apr 07:33

  • AVG: That World of Warcraft hack? RIDDLED with malware

    Freebie scanner firm drapes arm 'round defenceless PC, smartphone users

    A new cross-platform security product that covers desktops, smartphones and tablets is likely to be a key area of development for desktop freebie virus-scanner firm AVG during 2013. AVG is best known for its free anti-virus scanner for Windows PCs, but over the years it has broadened its range to include more functional PC …

    Security 12 Apr 08:04

  • Geolocation tech to save 60 Londoners from being run over next year

    Look out there's an accident hotspot just ther - Aarghh

    The Metropolitan Police will be using software from Croydon-based GGP Systems to analyse road traffic accidents in the capital, continuing a 30-year-old process to minimise road deaths. The plan is to reduce the number people being killed and seriously injured on London's roads by 40 per cent by 2020. That's Mayor Boris …

    Government 12 Apr 08:19

  • 'Sorry, I don't get the drama around having an always-on console'

    Quotw Plus: 'I buy my lunch with after-tax dollars'

    This was the week when former British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher died, setting the Twitosphere alight with opposing deluges of vitriol and veneration. The passing of the woman the media insists on referring to as "divisive" inspired a whole slew of people to post "Ding dong the witch is dead" tweets, while others …

    Games 12 Apr 08:38

  • Flash-pusher sTec coughs $36m to settle class action suit

    That's a whole quarter's worth of revenue

    Flash storage supplier sTec is paying more than its latest quarter's revenue to settle a class action lawsuit. The settlement fee is $35.8m. sTec earned $35.135m in revenue in its last quarter. The lawsuit concerned allegations that STEC, as it then called itself, had given an "inflated impression" of STEC’s revenue growth and …

    Financial News 12 Apr 09:06

  • How to introduce modern architectures and best practice to the data centre

    Easing the pain

    We asked three experts, an analyst, a sysadmin, and a vendor consultant, to give us their views on how best to introduce major changes to data centre operations. Their contributions are below. Tony Lock, programme director, Freeform Dynamics It is a standing joke in IT that the answer to the question of how to arrive at the …

    Datacenter 12 Apr 09:30

  • IT salaries: Why you are a clapped-out Ferrari

    Skills shortages? The thing in short supply is cash

    As a tech careers writer I regularly receive noise about the UK IT “skills shortage", which makes as much sense as saying there’s a shortage of Ferraris. I know this because, according to Blighty's Office for National Statistics, the average weekly pre-tax pay in “computer programming, consultancy and related activities” in …

    Jobs 12 Apr 10:04

  • LOHAN chap to launch Raspberry Pi eye in the sky

    Live stratoimages promised as minicam invades European airspace

    High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) geezer Dave Akerman will tomorrow dispatch a Raspberry Pi camera into the stratosphere, promising live images from altitude as the diminutive snapper drifts from Blighty into European skies. Dave, who's head hydrogen handling honcho for our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission, …

    SPB 12 Apr 10:19

  • The Man Who Fell to Earth: Plane plummet plod probe phone

    SIM chip IDs stowaway who completely went to pieces

    The man who spread himself across a street in Mortlake, London, after falling from an aircraft undercarriage has been identified. Police finally managed to crack open the SIM in his pocket and study it to discover who he was. Jose Matada was the chap's name and he was 30 years old, the BBC tells us. He landed on Portman Avenue …

    Phones 12 Apr 10:39

  • Tech Data Mobile UK boss Michel resigns after 18 months

    Plans to take some time off for 'personal reasons'

    Tech Data Mobile veep Jim Michel has resigned for "personal reasons" but says he is staying on board for a couple of months during the handover period. The former head of LG's mobile biz in the UK and Ireland is to be replaced by Stephen Nolan, the EMEA head of vendors at the distie. "We are going through a handover period …

    The Channel 12 Apr 10:56

  • Oh S**T, here comes a ROBOT to take my JOB

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? Workers of the world, dump on your masters' doorsteps

    The enormous lump of shit sat steaming directly outside the publisher’s door facing the first-floor landing, welcoming early morning office workers as they arrived with a cheeful “Hello! I’m a giant turd! And I smell really bad!” Each member of staff who had chosen to begin work at 7.30am that day reacted the same way: …

    Hardware 12 Apr 11:04

  • Most brain science papers are neurotrash: Official

    Don't believe everything you read

    A group of academics from Oxford, Stanford, Virginia and Bristol universities have looked at a range of subfields of neuroscience and concluded that most of the results are statistically worthless. The researchers found that most structural and volumetric MRI studies are very small and have minimal power to detect differences …

    Science 12 Apr 11:24

  • I salute Lady THATCHER - Shoreditch's SILICON GODMOTHER

    ¡Bong! Investor Steve directs the baroness's funeral

    "No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had the majority of voting shares as well" - Motivational poster at Bong Ventures London HQ. I am dictating this sotto voce from the nerve centre of Operation True Blue at an undisclosed location in Whitehall STOP My assistant มาลัย (which means ' …

    Bootnotes 12 Apr 11:44

  • Brit cops blow £14m on software - then just flush it down the bogs

    Plods lose love for Siren, decide to go with another system

    Surrey Police has pulled the plug on a multi-million-pound computer system it spent years developing. Way back in 2005, the force began overhauling its criminal intelligence setup. Since then it has spent £14.8m developing gear called the Surrey Integrated Reporting Enterprise Network (Siren). It is unclear how much of this …

    Software 12 Apr 12:06

  • ScanSource will axe Euro staffers to save itself $3.1m a year

    US distie plonks man in MD's chair, closes Euro service centre

    Distie ScanSource is slashing jobs in Europe in a bid to shed $3.1m in costs a year. The US wholesaler of point-of-sale kit, barcode scanners, comms stuff and security has elevated senior director of merchandising Rudy Meirsman to a newly created role as MD for Europe. This will "provide focused leadership and operational …

    The Channel 12 Apr 12:08

  • Winklevoss twins claim to have enormo $11m Bitcoin stash

    Zuck's arch-nemeses say they keep virtual coinage in, er, the bank

    The Winklevoss twins are claiming that they own one per cent of all the Bitcoins in circulation - which, if true, would be one of the largest portfolios of the e-currency. Mark Zuckerberg's former arch-nemeses told the New York Times Dealbook that they hold nearly $11m worth of the digital money in the first publicly disclosed …

    Financial News 12 Apr 12:26

  • Space elevators, vacuum chutes: What next for big rocket tech?

    Pic special How boffins hope to escape long shadow of the V2

    We recently suggested that even the most advanced rocket currently slipping the surly bonds of Earth is nothing more than glorified V2, over 70 years since Hitler's Vergeltungswaffe 2 first lifted off the pad at Peenemünde. Today, we'll have a look at some technologies that may one day allow us to escape V2 designer Wernher …

    SPB 12 Apr 12:37

  • Nasdaq chief's large package shrinks after terrible Facebook blow

    IPOcalypse slashes CEO's bonus, still takes home $1.3m in extra dosh

    Nasdaq OMX has brutally slashed its chief's 2012 bonus by over half a million dollars because of the Facebook IPOcalypse. The market said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Robert Greifeld's bonus for last year would be shaved by 62 per cent, although naturally that still leaves him with a not- …

    Networks 12 Apr 13:05

  • 'You can keep it' - Brit's nicked laptop turns up on Iranians' sofa

    Tracking app on swiped PC snaps pics of family

    A British animator who used tracking software to trace his stolen laptop to Iran has apologised to its “innocent new owners” after pictures of them were splashed all over the internet. Dom Del Torto's Macbook Pro was nicked from his London flat in February and he was able to watch its 3,000 mile odyssey to the Islamic Republic …

    Security 12 Apr 13:32

  • Windows 7 'security' patch knocks out PCs, knackers antivirus tools

    Job done, lads. Now no one's getting infected

    Windows 7 users should uninstall a security patch Microsoft issued on Tuesday because some PCs failed to restart after applying the update. The software giant advised users of Win 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2* to roll-back a patch within MS13-036, a security update that closed two vulnerabilities in the Windows file system …

    Security 12 Apr 14:09

  • Workloads? It's not just what you do, it's where you do it...

    Regcast Mixing it up in a hybrid world

    Reg research shows that you are going to be mixing your platforms and deployment models in the future. So, the next question is, which apps and workloads run on which platforms? You have never had more choice. Our next Regcast examines how you make those decisions. You're constrained by resources, technology and politics, but …

    Cloud Infrastructure 12 Apr 14:52

  • Moist iPhone fanbois tempted with golden Apple shower offer

    Brouhaha over water-sniffing warranty tech 'settled for $53m'

    Apple has reportedly agreed to shake $53m (£35m) in change out of its pockets to settle a lawsuit accusing it of wriggling out of gadget warranties using a water-detecting tool. Fanbois who brought their busted iPhones and iPods into Apple Stores for repair watched employees check the status of a Liquid Contact Indicator - …

    Phones 12 Apr 15:05

  • XMA back on its feet after 2011 public sector knockdown

    Sales rise in calendar 12 but profits dip

    XMA staged a top line recovery in calendar 2012 as it reduced its reliance on the public sector by drumming up more business with commercial customers. The Nottingham-based reseller upped revenues by 5.1 per cent in the year - to £122m from £116m in 2011 - but this was still short of the £140m turnover it racked up back in …

    The Channel 12 Apr 15:44

  • Anons torn over naming 'n' shaming of 17yo's gang-rape suspects

    Updated Rogue hacktivists may snub family plea for peace

    Anonymous hacktivists have withdrawn threats to expose the identities of boys accused of gang raping a 17-year-old girl before her death. But rogue Anons may defy the decision and publish the information anyway. Rehtaeh Parsons, from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, was allegedly sexually assaulted while drunk by four lads in …

    Security 12 Apr 16:12

  • BlackBerry slams Z10 returns report as 'false and misleading'

    Seeks investigations by US and Canadian securities agencies

    BlackBerry president and CEO Thorsten Heins has fired back at an article in The Wall Street Journal which cites a report that returns of the Z10 are outnumbering sales – and that report was just the latest bad news for the beleaguered smartphone manufacturer. "Return rate statistics show that we are at or below our forecasts …

    Phones 12 Apr 17:55

  • Amazon: We cut prices to scare ourselves into innovation

    Bezos outlines thinking behind own-goal margin destruction

    Amazon Web Services' campaign of price cuts and rapid product development is part of a customer-first strategy designed to prevent stagnation, the company's chief executive has said. In the e-retailer's annual report released on Thursday, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos told investors that Amazon's customer-centric strategy should …

    Cloud 12 Apr 19:17

  • New York cops testing Big Brother crime-data Android app

    'Funny, you don't look like your photo'

    Watch out, crooks! The New York Police Department is trying out a new weapon in the war on crime – namely, putting its own intelligence in the hands of patrol officers. As The New York Times reports, the NYPD has issued around 400 specialized Android smartphones to officers as part of a pilot program begun last summer. The …

    Security 12 Apr 20:14

  • Netbooks projected to become EXTINCT by 2015

    Farewell, underpowered li'l fellows, we hardly knew ye

    Proving yet again that fame and fortune are fleeting – even for computer hardware – the analysts at IHS are projecting that the netbook, the New Hotness just a few short years ago, will disappear completely by 2015. "Once a white-hot PC product that sold in the tens of millions of units annually," IHS writes in an email …

    Laptops 12 Apr 20:57

  • Nearly a quarter of all books sold in US in 2012 were ebooks

    Hard times for dead-tree booksellers

    Sales of standalone e-readers might be declining, but ebooks make up a growing portion of sales for US book publishers, according to the latest stats from the Association of American Publishers (AAP), a trade association. The AAP's annual "StatShot" report for 2012, released on Thursday, shows ebook sales accounting for 22.55 …

    Media 12 Apr 21:46

  • Amazon cloud gobbles Microsoft data

    Storage Gateway sucks up Hyper-V info

    Admins of data centers virtualized using Hyper-V can now mirror data up into the AWS cloud, making Bezos & Co.'s big yellow repository a more tempting proposition for Microsoft shops. This new feature means that Amazon's "Storage Gateway" technology can now speak to Windows-virtualized systems as well as ones based on VMware's …

    Cloud 12 Apr 22:49