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1st May 2013 Archive

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  • Opportunity rover stuck in standby mode after Martian blackout

    Updated Have they tried turning it off and then on again?

    NASA is trying to reactivate its Martian rover Opportunity after it switched itself into standby mode during a communications quiet period, but engineers have had no luck as yet at restoring control. The space agency hasn't been communicating with its Martian rovers for the last few weeks as there has been a solar conjunction …

    Science 1 May 00:09

  • Ultra-hackable Google Glass could be a security nightmare

    Easy root access opens spyware floodgates

    Google's high-tech Glass headsets might be a gadget enthusiast's dream, but in their current form they're far too vulnerable to malicious hacking, according to one developer who has had access to the devices. In a lengthy blog post on Tuesday, technology consultant Jay Freeman – who goes by the hacker handle "Saurik" – gave a …

    Hardware 1 May 00:20

  • Apple to end support for original iPhone: report

    RIP iPhone One, 2007-2013

    Support for Apple's original iPhone will end on June 11, according to a report from 9 to 5 Mac which got its hands on an advisory (JPG) sent to Apple shops advising of products the fruity company will no longer support. Announced in early 2007 and then released in June of that year, the first iPhone's breakthrough feature …

    Security 1 May 00:43

  • Is it me or did cloud marketing suddenly get really weird?

    Comment PR bods are going ga-ga on cloudy fumes

    As cloud computing shakes up the IT industry, marketing departments are going into overdrive attempting to somehow – no, anyhow – gain what they call "traction." And it's starting to get weird. We here at Vulture West appreciate that companies need to get the message out there, but everyone is prone to cock-ups, and the …

    Cloud 1 May 01:03

  • Cisco clambers aboard gig Wi-Fi bandwagon

    Product catapult loaded with 802.11ac kit

    Cisco has joined the growing list of vendors putting the 802.11ac “gigabit WiFi” standard into live kit, launching a “Wave 1” module for it Aironet 3600 series of access points, and promising “Wave 2” support in a future upgrade module. The current kit, quoth the Borg, supports WiFi speed up to 1.3 Gbps, which in deployment …

    Networks 1 May 01:04

  • SGI tax bennies push bigger profit in Q1

    Wraps up LMDs of profit destruction, shows decent sales growth

    Jorge Titinger, the CEO who was brought into Silicon Graphics last year to clean up the mess made by $87m in low-margin deals that wrecked the company's bottom line for a few quarters, is probably breathing a little easier now that the most recent quarter has ended. Not just because revenues were up, but because the remaining $ …

    HPC 1 May 01:12

  • AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough

    Upcoming Kaveri processor will drink from shared-memory Holy Grail

    AMD has released details on its implementation of The Next Big Thing in processor evolution, and in the process has unleashed the TNBT of acronyms: the AMD APU (CPU+GPU) HSA hUMA. Before your eyes glaze over and you click away from this page, know that if this scheme is widely adopted, it could be of great benefit to both …

    Hardware 1 May 01:17

  • Cameras leak credentials, live video

    D-Link scrambles upgrade, Vivotek silent says Core Sec

    D-Link and Vivotek have submitted their entries for “dumbest security vulnerability of 2013”, with Core Security turning up a variety of daft bugs in their IP cameras, including hard-coded backdoor passwords. The advisories are here for Vivotek and here for D-Link. D-Link has told Core Security it is preparing a fix, but the …

    Security 1 May 01:51

  • Linux kernel 3.9 lands

    Power management, new processors, SSD caching and more

    Linus Torvalds has unleashed version 3.9 of the Linux kernel. Key features in the release include caching for SSD storage, new processor architectures, power management improvements targeting tablets and phones, Chromebook support, and a nod towards Android. The caching change, present as the dm-cache target and currently …

    Operating Systems 1 May 03:23

  • Red faces as Pentagon leases Chinese satellite

    It's ok, we've added 'additional transmission security'

    US lawmakers are up in arms after it emerged that the Pentagon has leased a Chinese commercial satellite to support non-classified communications with its African bases. The details of the one-year, $10m contract were revealed at a House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill last week. The Apstar-7 satellite is owned and …

    Government 1 May 04:04

  • Oz volcano's lava lake spills from crater

    Steamed walrus, anyone?

    Australia's only active volcano is rumbling fiercely, with new NASA photos revealing its lava lake has overflowed its crater. The volcano in question, Big Ben, is happily located on Mawson Peak in the remote southern reaches of the Indian Ocean on Heard Island, an Australian territory. People only bother to visit Heard and its …

    Science 1 May 04:26

  • CLIMATE CHANGE forces women into PROSTITUTION - US politicians

    Is there anything bad it doesn't cause?

    A group of American politicians has introduced a resolution into Congress saying that climate change (among many other bad things it does) forces women into prostitution, and that as a result the USA should use "gender sensitive frameworks" in battling the scourge of global warming. House Concurrent Resolution 36 of the 113th …

    Science 1 May 05:06

  • Oracle reveals secret recipe for free DIY storage cloud

    How far will the virtual ZFS fun scale?

    World+dog may be busy preparing Dropbox clones, but Oracle seems to think a better idea is to build your own domestic cloud storage rig and has therefore published a recipe for doing so. Naturally the recipe includes lots of Oracle products – VirtualBox, Solaris 11.1 and ZFS are all required - but non-Oracle open source kit …

    Cloud Infrastructure 1 May 05:26

  • Review: Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 WinPro 8 tablet

    Vid Fancy a shower with your fondleslab? Or booting it down the stairs?

    In the UK, Panasonic is not known as a high-street PC player - but the company’s Tough range of products makes quite an impression in the world of business. Out in the field you’ll spot them in the hands of BT engineers and the like where the manufacturer's rugged laptops, and now tablets, survive the rigours of white-van man …

    Tablets 1 May 06:03

  • Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

    Sysadmin blog Top toolmaker told to stop installing crapware-free Flash

    Adobe wants the ability to easily roll out Flash updates removed from Ninite, the sysadmin Swiss army knife. I'm going to explain why this is a terrible thing. First, though, I would like to discuss the real-world practical uses of products such as Ninite. Ninite is used by systems administrators and ordinary folk alike to …

    Applications 1 May 06:37

  • Facebook Messenger tech to glue 50bn-strong Internet of Stuff

    Machine blabber protocol backed by Cisco, IBM et al

    A communications protocol for the Internet of Things - the posh name for a future global network of 50 billion interconnected gadgets - has been chosen by a top standards body. The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), best known for its OpenDocument format, will adopt and promote the …

    Mobile 1 May 07:03

  • Leave keys to your data centre to a Grizzly? Brocade thinks: Yes

    Also whisks sheet off new software-defined networking toys

    Brocade has plunged deeper into the software-defined networks (SDN) pool with a couple of virtual networking products and a switch software revision. It's presenting this stuff under an "On-Demand Data Center" marketing blanket which, it says "represents another major evolution in networking toward a highly virtualised, open …

    Cloud Infrastructure 1 May 07:31

  • Workload placement in a hybrid world

    The Register live It's where you put it that counts

    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 1 May 07:43

  • FalconStor on 13th quarterly loss: 'Unpredictable' OEM dragged us down

    And the previous 12 quarters?

    FalconStor has blamed "unpredictable performance" from one of its biggest Chinese OEM partners for the dent in its first quarter revenues. It has now totted up 13 loss-making quarters - although last quarter saw a boost in revenues - and the storage virtualisation supplier's lot is not a happy one. The company is trudging …

    Storage 1 May 08:03

  • Is the IT industry short on Cobolers? This could be your lucky day

    Sometimes a CV needs a few fossils

    Let's make one thing clear: your previous jobs are not the reason why you were hired. You were hired for having skills that bosses need. People are employed because they are needed to do things that must be done, not because they can do something that is merely desired. It’s not all bad news. The current Big Data hype means …

    Jobs 1 May 08:37

  • 'I still get on the phone for a $5k deal' - NetSuite CEO's anti-SAP mission

    Interview Big cheese spells out tough world of Salesforce and other enterprise tech rivals

    California-based Salesforce has been an unstoppable force in Software as a Service (SaaS) for 14 years. It pulled in $3.05bn in revenue last year, and just booted rival enterprise tech maker SAP from its slot as the world's number-one customer relationship management software (CRM) company. But there’s another SaaS company …

    Management 1 May 09:05

  • Speaking in Tech: Explicit vid reveals hot tech stars in LIVE STRIP SHOW

    Podcast Topless VP shows some skin after losing 'humiliating bet'

    It's the first anniversary of El Reg's weekly enterprise podcast and hosts Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela have an incredible all-star lineup this week - plus an EXPLICIT VID of a topless EMC veep. Their special guests this week are Chad Sakac, senior VP Global Systems Engineering at EMC; John Troyer, director and …

    Cloud 1 May 09:30

  • Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack forms foraging party

    Can Mother Nature supplement meagre diet?

    It's been a tough winter here in the mountains of central Spain, so Mother Nature isn't lending much of a hand as I attempt to sustain myself spending just £1 a day for nosh in the "Live Below the Line" challenge. As many readers have pointed out, I should be able to venture forth into the countryside in search of free …

    SPB 1 May 09:59

  • Give it up for Live 8-bit: Muso devs raise dosh for Bletchley Park kids

    Audio Electronica album sales pumped into programming lessons

    Synthesizer-loving programmers have released their very own electronica album to raise cash for kids' classes at Bletchley Park. Software developers Jason Gorman, Chris Whitworth, Brian Hogan, Lance Walton, Yuriy O'Donnell and Peter Camfield formed a band with the snappy name Music By Programmers and released their debut on 29 …

    Bootnotes 1 May 10:24

  • Plusnet's 'Everyone's a winner' claim is a plus-sized whopper

    Watchdog slaps ISP for Del Boy-like tactics

    BT-owned ISP Plusnet misled would-be customers by boasting in a telly ad that its broadband service was available to "everyone", says a watchdog. And the blurb wrongly gave the impression that all of its products were part of a half-price sale. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled the Plusnet ad in question, which stated …

    Broadband 1 May 10:44

  • BlackBerry: THE TRUTH about that 5.1 per cent UK market figure

    Mobe maker is happy stroking its bronze

    BlackBerry has rebutted a claim that its UK smartphone market share was just 5.1 per cent during the first three months of 2013. It says independent sales figures show it notched up ten per cent of the market during that period. The smaller figure comes from Kantar WorldPanel ComTech, a market watcher, and was released …

    Phones 1 May 11:05

  • Brit horologist hammers out ‘first’ ATOMIC-POWERED watch

    Pic The laughing gnomon

    Could this be the chronometrist’s ultimate timepiece, the peak of horological haute couture? British bespoke movement maker Hoptroff today claimed to have produced the world’s first personal chronometer with an on board atomic clock. The result, says Hoptroff, is a accuracy of 1.5 seconds every 3.15 x 1010 seconds - that’s …

    Hardware 1 May 11:19

  • Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves

    That makes the cheap-as-chips e-reader cool now, right?

    In a perhaps desperate bid to drum up sales, Barnes & Noble is selling its Nook E Ink-based e-book reader for a pound less than 30 quid - a discount of £50. If you want the version with an illuminated screen, it’ll be £69 - £40 less than it usually is. Oh, and the firm’s 9-inch Nook HD+ tablet has also had its price slashed, …

    Hardware 1 May 11:38

  • Google 'will be pulled back in front of MPs' on its UK tax affairs

    London Googlers 'aren't sales people', claims ad giant

    Enormous advertising firm Google has said that any suggestion that its veep Matt Brittin was less than accurate when testifying to Parliament on the firm's UK corporation tax affairs is "wilfully misleading". The Chocolate Factory told The Register that it has written to parliamentary Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret …

    Government 1 May 11:59

  • P2P badboy The Pirate Bay sets sail for the Caribbean

    Torrent freaks are off to the tropics

    The Pirate Bay has fled to the Caribbean after Swedish authorities launched yet another attempt to seize its domain name. Swedish prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion at the District Court of Stockholm yesterday calling for the seizure of TPB’s Swedish addresses - thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se - as well as its …

    Media 1 May 12:28

  • Atoms star in ball-bothering boffins' Big Blue movie

    Vid Bantam blockbuster boy bewilders Reg bloke

    IBM Research has proved its worth by moving atoms across a screen to create the world's smallest movie. Big Blue has gone much better with its atomic animation A Boy and His Atom. The movie has 242 frames and lasts just under 100 seconds; any more and it would rapidly become turgidly boring, in your humble hack's opinion. Each …

    Science 1 May 13:04

  • Yahoo! scuppered! in! Dailymotion! buyout! attempt!

    French gov cries 'Non!' to $300m video slurp

    Yahoo! has had to give up its attempt to take a controlling stake in French video startup Dailymotion after the government intervened, according to media reports. The Purple Palace was forced to abandon its pursuit of a 75 per cent stake in the online video site when French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, part of the …

    Media 1 May 13:28

  • Hotel marketplace Airbnb: Show us your privates if you want to book a bed

    Hand over that Facebook ID and passport, Popeye

    San Francisco-based hotel-booking biz Airbnb wants a quarter of its users in the US to provide passports or driving licences when reserving a room. The company, which describes itself as a "trusted community marketplace" for people to list and book accommodation around the world, said that there was "no place for anonymity" on …

    Business 1 May 14:04

  • Audio gumble biz Jawbone gobbles bag of 500 trillion body bits

    Human-watching BodyMedia snapped up for $100m

    Speaker and headset biz Jawbone has spent over $100m snapping up body sensor maker BodyMedia to get into the wild world of biometrics. Jawbone already sells the Up, a wristband which closely monitors your movements to estimate calories burnt, but its acquisition of BodyMedia gives it access to a whole load of body-monitoring …

    Business 1 May 14:34

  • Mozilla accuses Gamma of dressing up dictators' spyware as Firefox

    Maker of spooks' fave FinSpy served cease-and-desist

    Firefox-maker Mozilla claims spook supplier Gamma International disguises its spyware as the popular web browser - and wants it to stop. The non-profit software foundation slapped a cease-and-desist demand on FinFisher developer Gamma. In the legal letter, Mozilla said its Firefox trademark is being violated and that this …

    Security 1 May 15:04

  • Reseller giant Systemax bleeds red ink in Q1 of 'turnaround year'

    CEO Leeds: 'Operating loss is unacceptable'

    Misfiring reseller big gun Systemax has seen poor results in the first quarter of calendar 2013 - which is supposed to be its turnaround year. In its efforts to recover, the business has slashed European jobs, shuttered US PC factories and axed retail brands. The ailing firm, branded as Misco in Europe, saw sales decline 3.6 …

    The Channel 1 May 15:27

  • Citrix: Hey channel, we're BAAAA-ACK. Can't flog clouds without you

    'Tried and failed', world has moved on. So sad

    Citrix is to again allow resellers to sell a portion of its cloudy wares. The vendor claims that the increased size of the market means supporting a channel is now economically viable. The Citrix SaaS Advisor programme is to be rolled out over the coming months with resell and referral elements for office software products …

    The Channel 1 May 16:04

  • Taxi app Uber's $1bn uber price tag: CEO speaks out

    Bigwig puts record straight

    Travis Kalanick, the chief of taxi service app Uber, has denied that his company is about to open a new funding round that would value it at over a billion dollars. Kalanick tweeted that the company hadn't spoken to a single investor about raising new cash injections since November 2011, after reports suggested that Uber was …

    Financial News 1 May 16:06

  • US Labor Dept website serving malware to innocent visitors

    Blag bears signature of notorious Chinese DeepPanda

    The US Department of Labor's website has been hacked and malicious code stuck behind the scenes, security tools firm AlienVault says. Since yesterday, the DoL site has been serving out malicious code that installs malware on unsuspecting users' computers, AlienVault's labs director Jaime Blasco told The Register. The DoL said …

    Security 1 May 16:27

  • Avnet welds services tentacles into one mighty arm

    Octupus looks to get some knuckle in its punch

    Distributor goliath Avnet Technology Solutions has rounded up its disparate portfolio of acquired service providers into one unit as traditional product sales continue to wane. The Avnet Services team was created to "increase operational efficiencies" by merging the firm's software, lifecycle and training services operations …

    The Channel 1 May 16:32

  • Picture this: Kodak could get out of bankruptcy as early as July

    Camera biz to become printing'n'imaging service

    Eastman Kodak has said that it's hoping to get out of bankruptcy as early as July this year, as it turns itself into a commercial imaging firm under the control of its creditors. The one-time camera company told the US bankruptcy court in Manhattan that it expects to issue new stock, with most of it going to folks it owes …

    Financial News 1 May 16:58

  • Former mobile-biz lobbyist Wheeler to become top US frequency cop

    FCC boss needs to be auctioneer and priest, too

    President Obama has nominated former CTIA boss Tom Wheeler to take over the FCC, putting the man who spent 12 years lobbying on behalf of network operators in charge of their regulation. The Wall Street Journal was first to the story, reporting that FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will act as chair while the Senate confirms …

    Mobile 1 May 17:27

  • VMTurbo trousers $7.5m to bring Adam Smith's hand to more clouds

    Gearing up engineering and sales for a future hybrid world

    Adam Smith-loving cloud biz VMTurbo has secured $7.5m in C-round funding from venture capitalists Globespan Capital Partners. That makes for $25m in funding in three rounds, with the second round hitting in November 2011 when Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital Partners kicked in $10m. The company did not announce …

    Cloud Infrastructure 1 May 17:56

  • EFF report identifies which internet firms 'have your back' on data

    Twitter is tops, but big-name fails from Verizon, Apple, and others

    The annual Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report on data protection among online firms has shown lax privacy standards among some of the biggest names in the business when the government comes knocking at the door. A total of 18 companies were assessed on their privacy policies and T&Cs, stated procedures for handling …

    Business 1 May 19:35

  • VMware sells WaveMaker to Pramati

    That didn't last long

    VMware has got rid of WaveMaker, an open source tool that helps casual developers build Java apps, after spending two years trying to develop the technology The deal sees Java-specialist Pramati acquire "certain assets" of WaveMaker, according to a statement issued by the company. These assets include WaveMaker's core …

    Business 1 May 20:07

  • Arista monster switches fluff up cloud with 1 million virty machines

    7500E mod box sports 100Gb/sec speeds and integrated optics on ports

    Data center switch vendor Arista Networks is giving the incumbent peddlers of switchery heartburn again with the launch of its 7500 E Series modular switches. The upstart company, which has Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim as its chairman and chief development officer, is taking switching up another notch on a few …

    Cloud Infrastructure 1 May 21:55

  • MapR revs up HBase queries with M7 Hadoop distro

    Solr search engine means elephants don't need to chew big data cud

    You are not just imagining it. Every commercial distributor of the Hadoop system for storing and chewing through unstructured data has come up with its own a different way to deliver something akin to SQL query functionality while at the same time boosting the speed of ad hoc queries. MapR Technologies is one of the earlier …

    Cloud Infrastructure 1 May 22:06

  • Report: IBM, Lenovo x86 server deal hits the skids

    Or, maybe the Great Wall of China

    Only late last week, the scuttlebutt was that IBM and Lenovo Group were moving along at a rapid pace so Big Blue could offload all or part of its System x x86 server business to the Chinese builder. Now, the latest word is that the deal has stalled as the two companies are haggling about the price. The first rumors about a …

    Servers 1 May 22:43

  • Facebook fails to wow Wall Street with slow profit growth

    Mobile users keep coming, but will they pay off?

    Facebook posted strong revenue for its first quarter of fiscal 2013, beating analyst estimates, but profits only inched ahead slightly as the social network continued to struggle with its transition to a mobile-first company. Total revenue for the quarter was $1.46bn, up 38 per cent from the previous year's Q1 but down 8 per …

    Financial News 1 May 23:03