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29th April 2013 Archive

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  • Apple to stage 'Tech Talks' roadshow

    WWDC refugees will be served locally

    After selling out its worldwide developer conference (WWDC) at a speed usually reserved for hit counters on Psy videos, Apple has hinted that those who want to get up close and technical with it will soon be served locally. We're working on the basis of the tiniest of hints here, as the company has issued a statement about the …

    Developer 29 Apr 00:44

  • Cat ladies turned brand-squatters poke fun at religious right

    Redditors, Tweets duped as well, what's not to like?

    Redditers in Australia – and others – got a giggle out of one of the better bits of brand-squat-spoofing to arise on the Interwebs in recent times. The Australian Christian Lobby, a lobby group with sufficient influence to regularly regale Canberra politicians about the country's inevitable slide towards ungulate matrimony by …

    Networks 29 Apr 01:09

  • Move space junk with laser shots

    A little 'light' nudge

    More than a decade's work could be closer to payoff for Canberra company EOS Space Systems, which last week told the Sixth European Conference on Space Debris that its laser systems could help move space junk out of the “danger zone”. Before you start imagining orbiting satellites bristling with enough weaponry to knock out …

    Science 29 Apr 02:56

  • Australian Bureau of Statistics denies hacking report

    A login isn't a 'hack' states stat specialist

    The Australian Bureau of Statistics has been forced, by dint of a misreading of 'attack statistics', to deny that hackers (including the ubiquitous Chinese variety) have accessed pre-release sensitive data such as unemployment or inflation rates. Last week, the Australian Financial Review offered its readers a tale titled …

    Government 29 Apr 04:18

  • Chinese cops shutter PRC's biggest pirate movie site

    Symbolic move but country remains an IP Wild West

    The Chinese authorities’ ongoing efforts to crack down on piracy have claimed another big scalp after police shuttered the nation's largest online source of not-entirely-properly-sourced movies last Friday, cuffing eight execs along the way. Siluhd.com is said to have over 140 million members, who each pay 50 yuan (£5) every …

    Law 29 Apr 04:22

  • Pirate Party wins seats in Icelandic election

    Three MPs to free MP3s

    Not content with serving as a catalyst for the global financial crisis, Iceland has elected three members of the Pirate Party to its national Parliament. Iceland's Alþingi (“Althing” in English) is a single-chambered parliament that has met since the tenth century and says it is the world's oldest such legislature. The nation …

    Government 29 Apr 04:49

  • Tight White Spaces to be penetrated in Blighty this year - Ofcom

    And you can get your hands on it by 2014, fingers crossed

    White Space networking kit will get large-scale trials later this year, to see if multiple databases and radio protocols can be deployed without knocking TV off the air. Ofcom hasn't decided who'll take part in the trials, or what parts of the country they'll cover, or even how long they'll last, but they will run this autumn …

    Mobile 29 Apr 05:05

  • Harassed Oracle worker to appeal costs, damages decisions

    Lawyers 'incredibly supportive concerning my legal fees'

    The case of Australian Rebecca Richardson, the former Oracle employee who won an $18,000 settlement after being sexually harassed by a colleague, will return to court in an attempt to overturn a decision that Richardson must pay some of her harasser's costs. The appeal will also seek a new damages award. As we have reported …

    Law 29 Apr 05:23

  • Crims take to Facebook to flog ZeuS kits

    Dark networks meet social networks

    Not content with hawking their wares in underground forums and other insalubrious parts of the darknet, criminals are now advertising their wares on Facebook, says RSA. The Facebook page in question is now unavailable, but appears to have been packed full of handy info for the budding cyber criminal, according to Limor Kessem …

    Security 29 Apr 05:41

  • Japan forgot data wipe on ship sold to Pyongyang

    Former coast guard ship's navigation records reach NORKS

    The Japanese government's data protection policies have been called into question after it emerged that a decommissioned coast guard vessel was sold to a pro-North Korea organisation without any checks as to whether key data on board was first deleted. The 106-ton Japan Coast Guard patrol boat Takachiho was taken out of …

    Security 29 Apr 05:48

  • Reduxio plots 'revolutionary' hybrid array tech: It will need it

    Storage startup has to compete in increasingly crowded space

    You've got to be an optimist to found a startup, especially when you come from one that crashed and burned. Three such optimists have risen from the ashes of scale-out filer startup Exanet and started up scale-out hybrid flash firm Reduxio. As reported by Globes, the CEO, Mark Weiner, and co-founders Nir Peleg and Amnon …

    Storage 29 Apr 05:58

  • Brocade, wake up: Cisco is here, and it ALSO has 16 gig FC

    Unstoppable Ethernet proved stoppable

    Cisco has waited two years, watching while competitor Brocade launched and sold 16Gbit/s Fibre Channel, before finally doubling the speed of its own Fibre Channel switch products, belatedly announcing 16Gbps MDS switches. It's quite possible the networking giant had been hoping that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) take-up …

    Cloud Infrastructure 29 Apr 06:36

  • Canadian TV station wails: NFC bonking... it's not SAFE

    Credit card cloning? Sigh, we've been here before

    Another North American TV network has discovered credit card numbers can be read using a phone, and whipped itself into a media frenzy due to its failure to understand how NFC works. This time it's Canadian outfit CBC News, last time it was Memphis-based News Channel 3, but the facts remain the same: an NFC-equipped card will …

    Mobile 29 Apr 07:03

  • UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

    Everyone = Silicon Valley ad platforms tech companies

    Have you ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, Instagram or Flickr? If so, you'll probably want to read this, because the rules on who can exploit your work have now changed radically, overnight. Amateur and professional illustrators and photographers alike will find themselves ensnared by the changes, the result of lobbying by …

    Media 29 Apr 07:27

  • Judge of EU beauty contest for 'sexy' startups is VC backer of winner

    Comment 'Oh dear', says EC after Steelie Neelie blush gush

    The European Commission has sponsored an award in which a VC was part of a panel that gave the top prize to one of his firm's investments. The first ever Europioneers Awards, presented by EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes, crowned the founders of two European startups, SwiftKey and SoundCloud, as "Young European Tech Entrepreneurs …

    Small Biz 29 Apr 08:04

  • Ten ancestors of the netbook

    Feature Doomed category has a long history thanks to Atari, Poqet, Psion et al

    Come 2015, we’re told, the netbook will be dead and gone, out-evolved by the more fleet of foot, more desirable media tablet. We shouldn’t mourn the netbook’s passing, though. It has had, in one form or another, a good innings. While some folk may look back to the category’s debut in 2007 with the launch of Asus’ Eee PC 701 - …

    Laptops 29 Apr 08:29

  • Serial killer hack threat to gas pipes, traffic lights, power plants

    Analysis 'You could shut down the electricity grid' warns security biz

    Medical systems to traffic light boxes are apparently wide open to hackers thanks to a lack of authentication checks in equipment exposed to the internet. That's according to research from security toolmaker Rapid7, which says it found plenty of essential electronics that can be freely remotely controlled via public-facing …

    Security 29 Apr 09:04

  • How Google lost the trust of Europe’s data protection authorities

    Opinion The days of teensy fines may be over for Mountain View

    Over the last two years, various European data protection commissioners have taken action against Google. Hardly a month goes by without something being reported: a €145,000 (£121,000, $189,000) StreetView fine here or a court case about jurisdiction there. So it is important to understand: “Why is Google on the receiving end …

    Government 29 Apr 09:36

  • Next Xbox to be called ‘Xbox Infinity’... er... ‘Xbox’

    We don’t know. Maybe Microsoft doesn’t (yet) either

    The next Xbox will be called the Xbox Infinity, if a piccy of an allegedly leaked logo is to be believed. Or perhaps it’ll just be plain Xbox, as a separate, equally unofficial, just as questionable logo suggests. The Xbox Infinity - not actually a name, just the word XBOX with an infinity symbol superscript - and the tagline …

    Games 29 Apr 10:06

  • Fried-egg sarnies kick off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge

    An egg-shell-ent start - but bacon, booze is off the menu

    Coffee, bacon and black pudding were strictly off the menu this morning as this hack kicked off his "Live Below the Line" challenge with a couple of fried-egg sarnies and a mug of builders' tea. Until Friday, I have to subsist on just £1 a day for food as I participate in "an innovative awareness and fundraising campaign that' …

    SPB 29 Apr 10:35

  • iPhone 5 totters at the top as Samsung thrusts up UK mobe chart

    But older Apples are still holding their own

    Apple’s three most recent mobiles together took more than a quarter of smartphones sales in Britain during the first three months of 2013, we're told. The iPhone 5 was the period’s most popular handset, but the Cupertino giant's UK market share continues to be eroded by Android - and even Windows Phone 8. Google’s Linux- …

    Phones 29 Apr 11:04

  • Peak txt: 1.5 BEELLLION more chat app msgs sent than SMSes a day

    Only spam and robots save phone texts from IM stampede

    WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger and other online chat apps handled more messages than telcos handled texts, says market research biz Informa. And by the end of 2013, the number of online messages will be double the number of SMS texts, leaving the phone network operators scrabbling for revenue. Informa pegged 2012's global SMS …

    Mobile 29 Apr 11:44

  • Science of the lambs: Boffins grow GLOW-IN-THE-DARK sheep

    Baa baa hacked sheep, why the day-glo wool?

    Shepherds who watch their flocks by night could soon have a much easier job: South American scientists have successfully reared fluorescent sheep. Boffins at the Animal Reproduction Institute of Uruguay implanted a glow-in-the-dark gene from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish into nine of the woolly animals. The bright-minded …

    Science 29 Apr 12:20

  • Chinese cyber-spook crew back in business, say security watchers

    Who can tell the spies from the robbers?

    The widely feared Chinese cyber-espionage crew known as APT1 is back in business two month after a high profile report that lifted the lid off its activities, according to security researchers. Cyber Squared has been tracking numerous Chinese cyber espionage threat groups within ThreatConnect.com and crowd-sourcing threat …

    Security 29 Apr 13:13

  • Fund-a-mental: The real problem with clouds and managed services

    Comment Get your money up front if you want money up front

    It’s all very well dodging the economic downturn by hopping on the cloud bandwagon, but you might find this also puts you out of reach of the industry’s established funding models. It’s a truism that one of the problems holding back British business is getting access to credit and other forms of funding. The government has …

    The Channel 29 Apr 13:24

  • Eucalyptus clones more AWS features for cloud control freak

    Auto scaling, elastic load balancing, and CloudWatch for the private cloud

    Amazon Web Services will not build you a private copy of its own cloudy infrastructure for your own use, and it believes, as its top brass reiterated again last week, that there is no such thing as a private cloud. But don't tell Eucalyptus Systems that. The company was founded to try to clone AWS, and with its 3.3 release, it …

    Cloud 29 Apr 13:36

  • Hard drives snatch hold of semi giant LSI, jump right off a cliff

    Dying disks weigh down sales

    LSI's latest results paint a gloomy picture for the storage giant, revealing both its revenues and profits were down last quarter. Revenues for LSI's first fiscal 2013 quarter, ended March 31, were down to $569m. They were $600m in the previous quarter, a 5 per cent fall. A year ago revenues were up at the $622m mark, meaning …

    Cloud Infrastructure 29 Apr 13:59

  • Google Plus minus Meebo Bar equals Google minus $100m

    'Buy 'em out, boys'

    Google will axe the website widget Meebo Bar just one year after buying the company that built it. The advertising giant said it scrapped the tool to focus on its Google+ plugins. Google bought Meebo on 4 June reportedly for $100m, before proceeding to strip away much of its functionality. It started as an instant-messaging …

    Networks 29 Apr 14:29

  • SMART Storage, Diablo brew a wee DRAM of MYSTERY tonic

    All we needed is some flash, some system memory and $36m

    SMART Storage and Diablo Technologies have promised to glue SMART's flash drives and Diablo's memory-channel storage (MCS) electronics into a combined product. Diablo's website says MCS is "where the memory and flash subsystem are fused together". Well, what does that actually mean? It goes on to say: "MCS will ... allow …

    Storage 29 Apr 15:09

  • Take a deep breath: This is THE year of 'end-user computing'

    Comment Er, what does that mean? Anything you want it to

    What exactly is end-user computing (EUC)? There are so many different definitions that even vendors can’t agree on a single version of the truth. These range from VDI technology to file sharing across multiple devices to platforms that let you access cloud-based apps. What is clear is that just like cloud computing, …

    The Channel 29 Apr 15:54

  • GreenBytes' data smite knight gets Citrix green light

    IO Engine approved for cloudy virtual desktops

    GreenBytes' all-flash IO Offload Engine has been certified by Citrix as compatible with XenServer, clearing the way for it to accelerate the cloudy outsourcer's virtual desktops. The GreenBytes strategy has been to retire from the general-purpose all-flash storage array market - and concentrate on the virtual desktop (VDI) …

    Cloud 29 Apr 16:04

  • Fat boxes keep Super Micro from slumping

    Behemoths boost server ASPs in March quarter, working on Moonshot killa

    Super Micro – king of the whitebox server makers – turned in a pretty good quarter ended in March, the third quarter of its fiscal 2013, not by pushing more iron, but by peddling a smaller amount of much heftier iron. In the quarter, sales were down a bit sequentially – which was no surprise at all, given the traditional bump …

    Cloud Infrastructure 29 Apr 16:51

  • NATO proclaimed winner of Locked Shield online wargame

    Games without frontiers, war without tears

    NATO has – not surprisingly – been named the winner of the Locked Shield online wargames held last week at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. The 48-hour exercise, which has been held annually for the last five years, simulates a coordinated attack by "Red" forces (a continuing …

    Security 29 Apr 18:48

  • Opera sues designer for leaking trade secrets to Mozilla

    Simplified browser UIs in the dock

    Norwegian browser maker Opera Software has filed suit against Trond Werner Hansen, one of its former developers, alleging that Hansen took trade secrets with him when he went to work with Opera rival Mozilla. As first reported by The Next Web, Hansen worked at Opera from 1999 through 2006. There he led design and UI …

    Developer 29 Apr 19:08

  • Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users'

    Tabbed Finder windows, multiple display improvements, more

    Apple's next version of OS X may provide welcome relief to users dismayed by the company's seemingly inexorable evolution from computer manufacturer to consumer-electronics company, if unnamed sources speaking to 9to5Mac are to believed. According to those sources, OS X 10.9 – oddly codenamed "Cabernet"* in the closely guarded …

    Operating Systems 29 Apr 19:46

  • LG beats Samsung to OLED flexi-TV with hella pricey 55-incher

    Norks get another excuse to invade the South

    At this year's CES, both LG and Samsung proclaimed that concave OLED screens are the next big thing in televisual entertainment, and promised working systems. Now LG has began taking orders for a 55-inch model and will begin deliveries next month. Great curves, shame about the price The curvy EA9800 1080p model has a carbon …

    Hardware 29 Apr 20:26

  • HP mashes up ProLiant, Integrity, BladeSystem, and Moonshot server businesses

    New appliance server group to peddle 'converged systems'

    It's a time of transition in the systems business. And HP, the world's largest server maker in terms of volumes and possibly soon (again) in terms of sales if IBM doesn't stop the decline in mainframe and Power system sales or sells off its x86 server biz to Lenovo, is tweaking its server units and the executives who run them …

    Management 29 Apr 20:31

  • AppFog PaaS drops Rackspace IaaS

    Low demand leads to shutdown as PaaS runs to private clouds

    Platform-as-a-service provider AppFog is evaporating its cloudy bridge to Rackspace due to poor customer demand, in yet another case of the fluffy industry coming to terms with hard business realities. AppFog provides an application infrastructure automation service – otherwise known as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) – that …

    Cloud 29 Apr 20:35

  • Combover King Donald Trump: 'I miss Steve Jobs'

    Tim Cook wouldn't last long on All-Star Celebrity Apprentice

    Never being a man to shy away from whatever current controversy might get his name into headlines*, the indefatigable Republican presidential candidate, Obama-baiting birther, and TV "personality" Donald Trump has weighed in on whether Apple should offer an iPhone with a larger display. I have a lot of @apple stock--- and I …

    Phones 29 Apr 20:47

  • Google to Glass devs: 'Duh! Go ahead, hack your headset'

    'We intentionally left the device unlocked'

    Google might not want people selling its Google Glass Explorer Edition high-tech specs, but it has no problem with developers hacking on the hardware and software, if recent developments are any indication. The Chocolate Factory released the GPL-licensed portions of the source code to the software that powers Glass over the …

    Hardware 29 Apr 21:59

  • Surprise! Republican bill adds politics to science funding

    'Forget peer review, let's get the experts at Congress involved'

    The chairman of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Lamar Smith (R-TX), is planning new legislation that would limit the scope of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the biggest research-funding organization in the US, and bring funding decisions under political oversight. Smith - you might remember him …

    Science 29 Apr 22:57

  • Branson's SpaceShipTwo succeeds in first rocket-powered flight

    55,000 feet? Check. Break sound barrier? Check. Safe landing? Check

    Finally. Sir Richard Branson's long-delayed commercial spaceliner, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, has successfully completed its first rocket-powered test flight. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during its first rocket-powered test flight (click to enlarge) "For the first time, we were able to prove the key components of …

    Science 29 Apr 23:44