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18th April 2013 Archive

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  • Vint Cerf endorses software-defined networks

    Is this the fall of the stupid switch?

    One of the reasons for the rise of the Internet was that it was stupid: by throwing buckets of bandwidth at any problem, and attaching the intelligence to the network edge, it could ship bits around vastly cheaper than telco carrier networks. That competition was documented back in 1998 in David Isenberg's famous paper, The …

    Networks 18 Apr 00:03

  • Applicants sought for one-way trip to Martian Big Brother house

    Must be willing to die off-planet and on-air

    A Netherlands-based non-profit group called Mars One is seeking video applications from pioneers willing to take a one-way trip to Mars and become stars in a new interplanetary reality show. "This will be the biggest thing that humanity has ever done. In 15 years people will still be watching," Mars One's co-founder Bas …

    Media 18 Apr 00:06

  • Study: Most projects on GitHub not open source licensed

    Kids these days, they just don't care

    Code-sharing website GitHub has grown so popular that it and open source are practically synonymous for many developers. But new research shows that most of the projects now on GitHub are released under license terms that are unclear, inconsistent, or nonexistent, leaving their legal status as open source software uncertain. …

    Developer 18 Apr 01:22

  • Apple branded porno-peddling perverts by Chinese Pravda

    State rag claims it found Cupertino's XXX stash

    A state-run Chinese newspaper has attempted to name and shame Apple for allegedly spreading smut in the People's Republic. The Foxconn rebrander appears on a rundown of 198 dodgy and mostly obscure websites accused of breaking obscenity laws that ban the online distribution of XXX material. The list was published today in …

    Media 18 Apr 05:04

  • Project Savanna tames Hadoop big data muncher with OpenStack control freak

    Mirantis, Hortonworks, and Red Hat pull out the whips and peanuts

    Batman and Robin. Peanut butter and chocolate. OpenStack and Hadoop. These are things that go together, with the latter pairing being something that commercial OpenStack distie Mirantis, commercial Hadoop distie Hortonworks, and commercial KVM and Linux distie (and soon to be OpenStack commercializer) Red Hat are putting …

    Cloud Infrastructure 18 Apr 06:14

  • 'Fastest storage in the WORLD' plugged into mighty boffinry Cray

    Phwoar, get a load of these figures

    DDN claims it has sold the fastest storage system in the world to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for its Titan superduperwhoopercomputer, shooting data out faster than 1 terabyte a second. Colourful Titan storage racks The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a US Department of Energy facility managed by UT-Batelle. …

    Storage 18 Apr 06:24

  • Black hats attack popular Russian stock-trading software

    Also used in Cyprus, as it happens ...

    Security researchers have discovered a strain of malware that targets the QUIK stockbroking application. The malware has been used in a string of attacks since November 2012, according to Russian security firm Group-IB. Cyber-criminals have traditionally targeted private and corporate banking accounts, using malware (such as …

    Security 18 Apr 07:03

  • The politics of the data centre

    The right infrastructure for the right reasons?

    If you ask your Oracle team which infrastructure they want their databases and apps running across, they’ll tell you dedicated. Heaven forbid their IO is interfered with by a lagging virtual infrastructure. Your Windows camp will probably allow most of their apps on virtual and private clouds. But throw the networking guys …

    Datacenter 18 Apr 07:30

  • Londoners in mass test of telly tech savvy as 4G filters mailed out

    Come on granny, you must know where your booster is?

    Some 28,000 London suburbanites will have 40 days to fit their free 4G filters, before Freeview television frequencies are swamped with faked 4G networking signals in a mass test of the British public's ability to plug stuff in. The filters come from at800, the orgainisation tasked with spending £180m of telco cash to mitigate …

    Media 18 Apr 07:43

  • Hardware hacker unifies 15 retro consoles in format frenzy

    One box to play them all, etc

    Most fans of old-skool videogame hardware rely on emulators for their retro gaming kicks. But not some fellow going by the handle Bacteria. Three years ago, he decided he needed 15 original games consoles in his living room and that he wanted them all in a single box. Game cube: the console offering a feast of formats The …

    Games 18 Apr 08:06

  • UK's first copyright swap-shop for cat pics (etc) still yonks away

    You know you need to buy the rights for that, yes?

    The UK's Copyright Hub, designed for high-volume legit trading of copyrighted material, will launch in July. Ultimately the service will allow individual Brits to, for example, easily license music to use in wedding videos, cat photos for calendars or illustrations for books. But not just yet. Its chairman Richard Hooper …

    Law 18 Apr 08:23

  • T-Mobile UK ordered into humiliating Full Monty strip

    Cap mobe speeds all you like BUT DON'T TOUCH BITTORRENT

    T-Mobile UK can no longer describe its "Full Monty" mobile broadband tariff as "unlimited", thanks to a ruling by the advertising watchdog. And all because the network operator slowed down BitTorrent traffic during the day. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decreed that "unlimited" can legitimately be applied to …

    Mobile 18 Apr 09:05

  • TREELLION DOLLAR mobe bonk-bank alliance goes for barcodes

    Stripey bonanza - if everyone can get into bed together

    The consortium of US retailers hoping to own pay-by-bonk have signed Gemalto to process their payments, revealing that on-screen bar codes lie at the centre of the scheme. The consortium, branded the Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX, was launched last August with the intention of hosting a standard platform for mobile-phone …

    Mobile 18 Apr 09:29

  • Manual override: Raspberry Pi beginners' books

    Feature Do the 'getting started' guides make your first slice of Pi more tasty?

    The Raspberry Pi has been out for just over a year now. It has undergone a couple of revisions during that time, most recently around October 2012, but a short while ago I decided it was time I ought to try it out and see what the diminutive, Linux-running micro can do. Entirely coincidentally, the Raspberry Pi Owners’ …

    Hardware 18 Apr 10:04

  • Software designers: Lose your inhibitions, embrace complexity

    Opinion And mind the gap...between business and IT

    One of the most persistent reasons quoted for software project failures is the gap between Business and IT – the lack of common understanding, clear communication and shared culture between those that commission solutions and those that design and deliver them. The discipline of Systems Thinking can narrow the gap by envisaging …

    Management 18 Apr 10:24

  • Dell shuts down channel biz Cheriton over unpaid debt

    Texan PC baron 'pulled rug from under us' says boss

    IT reseller Cheriton Computers has been wound up by US giant Dell over an unpaid five-figure debt. Alton-based Cheriton - which is a Lenovo Premium Business Partner, Microsoft small-biz specialist and Dell registered dealer - celebrated its ten-year anniversary this month, but it won't be toasting an eleventh. A winding-up …

    The Channel 18 Apr 10:32

  • TomTom brandishes new strap-on in Amsterdam: The wristnav

    Pics A satnav smartwatch for sporty types

    Satnav maker TomTom guided the press - along with automotive and retail partners from all corners of the globe - to Amsterdam on Tuesday for the launch of its next gen satnavs and a new sporty lifestyle product range. The company has form with fitness gear, having teamed up with Nike to deliver its strap-on range of Nike+ GPS …

    Hardware 18 Apr 10:45

  • Review: Asus PadFone 2 phone-tablet combo

    Can't decide on a tablet or a phone? Have BOTH IN ONE!

    I thought the first Asus PadFone was a jolly good idea the moment I clapped eyes on it. Sadly it never made it to these shores but the PadFone 2 has. In a nutshell, what we have here is an Android smartphone that can be docked into a dumb tablet giving you not only a choice of two screen sizes but also the convenience of one …

    Phones 18 Apr 11:00

  • Ofcom fines TalkTalk AGAIN - a whopping £750k over 'abandoned calls' gaffe

    Budget ISP's call centre teams were SilentSilent

    Ofcom has once again fined telco TalkTalk, after the company swamped potential customers with silent calls. It now has to pay £750,000 for failing to comply with UK law. The ISP was hit with a massive £3m penalty from the communications watchdog in 2011 for wrongly billing tens of thousands of customers for services they never …

    Networks 18 Apr 11:18

  • Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay

    Techno-specs are for life, not just for Christmas

    Buyers of Google Glass have been warned they cannot sell their pricey new techno-spectacles on eBay or anywhere else. In terms of sale posted on its website, the advertising giant said a Google Glass was for life, unless you wanted to give it away for nothing. Anyone who failed to follow the rules will have their devices …

    Hardware 18 Apr 11:38

  • PEAK APPLE: Fondleslab giant no longer world's biggest biz

    Share price shenanigans nudges ExxonMobil ahead

    Apple has lost the title of world's biggest company after a share slide allowed oil giant ExxonMobil to take the top spot. Fears over future sales for iPhones and iPads sent shares in the fruity firm falling on Wednesday from $420.27 to a low of $398.11, before recovering to end the day at $402.80 - a drop across the day of 4. …

    Financial News 18 Apr 11:56

  • Boffins build ant-sized battery, claim it's tough enough to start a car

    High power, high energy microbatteries, anyone?

    Electronics continue to shrink to ever smaller sizes, but researchers are having a tough time miniaturising the batteries powering today’s mobile gadgets. Step forward, bicontinuous nanoporous electrodes. Smartphones use smaller power packs than they did five years ago, it’s true, but that’s because their chips and radios are …

    Science 18 Apr 12:18

  • Cyberthugs put YOUR PC to work as Bitcoin-mining SLAVE

    E-currency just went mainstream

    The recent volatility in the value of Bitcoins hasn't prevented cybercriminals from cooking up new ways to distribute malware engineered to mine the currency using compromised computers. Security researchers at ThreatTrack Security have uncovered examples where the infamous Blackhole exploit kit is being used to distribute a …

    Security 18 Apr 12:44

  • Magic mystery malware menaces many UK machines - new claim

    Who exactly is spying on thousands of Brit biz PCs?

    Security researchers have found malware that communicates using an unknown protocol and is largely targeting UK businesses. The mystery software nasty has infected thousands of machines at organisations in finance, education, telecoms and other sectors, we're told. It initially phones home to its masters by establishing a …

    Security 18 Apr 13:11

  • Shuttleworth: Canonical is fast and easy with OpenStack clouds

    You don't just build a cloud, you have to maintain it

    Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, has wanted to turn his creation into a cloud platform for years, he said during his keynote at the OpenStack Summit in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday. He started the process with the Eucalyptus cloud controller, which is only partially open source and not really …

    Cloud 18 Apr 13:29

  • EMC jazzes up its archive offerings

    Is your data attic crammed to bursting yet?

    EMC's released a spring boost for its Data Domain backup deduping package as well as updating its SourceOne file and email archiver. Data Domain stores deduplicated backups and archived files. SourceOne software discovers and indexes file and mail content and archives it to a storage setup, such as a Data Domain system. Data …

    Storage 18 Apr 14:04

  • Zycko shown door after Meraki Euro distie review

    Parent Cisco turns to old pal Ingram Micro

    Meraki - which was recently swept off its feet by Cisco - has given distie Zycko the heave-ho and replaced it with Ingram Micro across Europe. The maker of wireless access points, switches and security appliances was acquired by Cisco in November for $1.2bn, and its new parent soon set about reviewing the channel line-up. Jon …

    The Channel 18 Apr 14:08

  • Nokia: OK, Q1 has been weak, but there's 'underlying' profit

    Budget phone lines might yet save the day

    Nokia warned of a weaker first quarter last year and duly delivered. Sales were €5.85bn in Q1 2013 with an operating loss of €150m. Net phone sales were down 32 per cent year on year, with 6.1 million smartphones shifted in the first three months of the year, of which 5.6 million were Lumia Windows phones. In Q4 Nokia shifted …

    Financial News 18 Apr 14:31

  • Gridstore does classic founder-to-CTO jive

    New boss has $12.5m to splurge on growth

    Scale-out filer storage start-up Gridstore's founder is shuffling sideways to the CTO spot as his firm recruits a new CEO. Gridstore was founded by its previous CEO, Kelly Murphy, and its chairman is Geoff Barrall of Drobo and BlueArc fame. Now, Murphy has stepped back to the chief technology officer role and brought aboard …

    Storage 18 Apr 15:04

  • 'Leccy-stealing, grid-crippling hackers could TAKE DOWN EV-juicing systems

    Hack in the Box A computer on the street. What could possibly go wrong?

    Hackers may soon starting abusing electric car charger systems to cripple the electricity grid or as part of money-making scams, a security researcher warns. Ofer Shezaf, product manager security solutions at HP ArcSight, told delegates at the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam that if the industry fails to start securing …

    Security 18 Apr 15:26

  • Facebook launches data center ticker tape

    Bit barn efficiency metrics on a minute-by-minute basis

    Facebook has heaped pressure on major data center operators to be more transparent, publishing a dashboard that gives up-to-the-minute figures on the efficiency of the social network's gigantic bit barns. The dashboards for the company's Prineville, Oregon, and Forest City, North Carolina, datacenters were made available on …

    Datacenter 18 Apr 17:00

  • South Korean gov splashes $22m on memory R&D project

    Samsung et al gaze at HUGE MOUNDS of cash

    Samsung and five other South Korean tech firms are set to team up on a $22 million government-backed project to research new memory chip technology. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced the initiative, which will feature Korean tech behemoth Samsung as well as memory chip maker SK Hynix, according to Korean …

    Financial News 18 Apr 17:05

  • Feds urged to probe four US cell big boys over Android holes

    Updated Security threat means 'unfair and deceptive business practices'

    The four biggest US cell networks could face a government probe, following allegations that security updates for Android smartphones have been held back, leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to hackers. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has formally asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct an …

    Mobile 18 Apr 17:06

  • US House of Representatives passes CISPA by 288-127

    Co-sponsor dismisses opponents as '14 year-olds tweeting'

    The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has been approved by the US House of Representatives, despite a last-minute gaffe from its co-sponsor. #CISPA passed the House with a decisive bipartisan vote of 288-127 with 92 Democrats supporting. This is a good day for Americans. — Dutch Ruppersberger (@ …

    Government 18 Apr 18:55

  • Amazon: S3 cloud contains two trillion objects

    'We've doubled our big number in a year'

    Amazon Web Services now has over two trillion objects within its S3 storage cloud, just one year after Bezos & Co. smashed through the one-trillion ceiling. Each Amazon object, they say, can range from "range from zero to 5 TB in size," but Amazon does not disclose the size distribution of stored objects. An object consists of …

    Cloud 18 Apr 19:15

  • Java 8 release date slips again, now planned for 2014

    Oracle engineers too busy battling vulns to add features

    Oracle has redoubled its efforts to address the recent spate of vulnerabilities related to Java running in web browsers, but the renewed focus on security has had an unfortunate side effect – namely, that Java 8 will no longer ship by its planned September 2013 release date. According to Mark Reinhold, chief architect for …

    Developer 18 Apr 20:05

  • Microsoft CFO quits as quarterly results fail to sparkle

    Klein steps down, Ballmer's future looking uncertain

    Microsoft has released its financial results for the third financial quarter of 2013 and the results make uncertain reading for CEO Steve Ballmer, who is also about to lose his chief financial officer Peter Klein. Redmond reported revenues of $20.49bn for the three months ended 31 March, up 17.2 per cent year-on-year, and …

    Financial News 18 Apr 20:48

  • AMD posts mediocre numbers, cites 'difficult market environment'

    Updated Not so bad, not so good, restructuring 'largely completed'

    AMD released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2013, which bracketed the Wall Street moneymen's predictions with revenues a tad higher than forecast and the all-important earnings per share (EPS) a tad lower.* For the quarter, AMD's EPS number came in at negative $0.19 on revenues of $1.09bn, the …

    Financial News 18 Apr 20:54

  • Kepler continues exoplanet bonanza

    Three “habitable zone” discoveries keeping the boffins happy

    Data from the Kepler space telescope has yielded yet more Earth-like planets, with a University of Washington researcher identifying a second “habitable zone” super-Earth orbiting the star dubbed Kepler-62. The rocky Kepler 62f is estimated at 1.4 times the size of Earth, and receives a solar flux about half as much as Earth, …

    Science 18 Apr 21:04

  • Another quarter, another $14bn in revenue for Google

    Profits up despite sagging ad rates

    Google announced an impressive start for its fiscal 2013 on Thursday, reporting first-quarter revenues of $13.97bn – an eyebrow-raising 31 per cent increase from the same quarter last year. That growth was perhaps not quite so remarkable, however, when you consider that the online ad giant also pulled in $14.42bn in Q4 of 2012 …

    Financial News 18 Apr 23:09

  • Big Blue misses Q1 targets big-time thanks to systems shortfall

    $1.4bn in charges for "workload rebalancing" – aka layoffs – coming in Q2

    Big Blue did not turn in the numbers that it expected in the first quarter thanks to more than $400m in mainframe systems, related software, and intellectual property licensing deals that rolled over into the second quarter. In the quarter ended in March, revenues were off 5.1 per cent, to $23.41bn, and net income fell by 1.1 …

    Financial News 18 Apr 23:32

  • Microsoft betting on smaller Windows 8 devices and subscriptions

    Plans for double-digit decline in traditional PCs

    Microsoft's current financial team has been laying out the company's future strategy, and is hoping that a new rash of smaller Windows 8 PCs and cloud revenues will secure Redmond's future. During a call with financial analysts after reporting Microsoft's financial results for its third fiscal 2013 quarter on Thursday, …

    Software 18 Apr 23:59