17th January 2012 Archive

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• Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition Android tablet

  Size of relief

  Like Goldilocks with porridge, I’ve yet to find a tablet size that I think is just right. Seven inch models are too small, 10.1 inchers too big. The iPad with its 9.7in screen should do the trick but it’s just too square for me – physically and metaphorically.

  Tablets 17 07:00

• Taxman two months late on cyber-crimefighters deadline

  HMRC still wants our dosh on time though

  HMRC has missed a key deadline to create teams of cyber crime investigators and launch initiatives to counter the increased threat of web attacks on the authority's systems and customers.

  Security 17 08:04

• Olympics volunteers urged not to blab online

  A journo might be reading, fear organisers

  Volunteers at this year's Olympics should not "get involved in detailed discussion about the games online", according to guildelines issued by organisers, a report says.

  Security 17 09:02

• OCZ refunds punter for dud drive shortly after El Reg steps in

  Pure coincidence

  OCZ promises to refund purchasers of failed solid-state drives, but at least in one case it seemed unable to do so - until Vulture Central poked its beak in.

  The Channel 17 09:31

• First ever private rocket to space station in launch delay

  'We'll go when we're good and ready', say Musk rocketeers

  SpaceX, the private rocket firm helmed and in large part bankrolled by famous nerdwealth biz kingpin Elon Musk, has announced that its first attempt to send one of its Dragon capsules to the International Space Station will be further delayed.

  Science 17 09:51

• WikiHow

  The RTFM guide to life

  All you techies, spare a thought for the dumb-as-a-bag-of-spanners portion of humanity who don’t know how to use, maintain or get the most from the gadgets they already own.

  Phones 17 10:00

• GAME: Our website wasn't hacked!

  Leaked account login details are bogus, says chain

  Video games purveyor GAME says it has not been hacked after reports yesterday claimed that the retail biz had suffered a security breach.

  Games 17 10:18

• AMD readies answer to Intel's Ultrabook

  'Ultrathin' PC, anyone?

  How powerful is the Ultrabook brand? AMD is betting it is less important to punters - and laptop vendors - than price. The chip maker is to launch a platform for skinny machines in Q2.

  Laptops 17 10:33

• Symantec gobbles email warehouse LiveOffice

  Cloudy archiving for just $115m

  Symantec has gone and bought itself a cloud archiver, LiveOffice, for $115m, and is now integrating its archival storage and eDiscovering offerings more closely.

  Cloud 17 10:41

• Steve Jobs action figure kicks the bucket

  GI Jobs KIA

  The Steve Jobs action figure project has been killed, although this time there was no "Oh Wow" moment, and the move was hardly a shocker.

  Hardware 17 10:51

• Clouds must be transparent

  Customers want to see what they're paying for

  Public cloud computing won’t be successful unless its providers make the full breadth of services transparent and accountable. Customers must be able to see what they are getting and know it has been delivered.

  The Channel 17 11:00

• Zombie Olympics ticket resale site resurrected TODAY

  Oh, you want to buy a pass? Wait until April

  London 2012 organisers are finally, albeit partially, reanimating their swamped ticket resale website.

  Media 17 11:14

• Sony goes SuperSpeed with MicroVault Mach

  USB 3.0 Flash drives ahoy!

  Sony has upgraded its MicroVault line of USB Flash drives to USB 3.0.

  Hardware 17 11:23

• Apple will not kill iPad 2 at iPad 3 debut

  LCD orders suggest 25m old iPads to ship this year

  Apple is ordering fewer 9.7in, 1024 x 768 IPS LCD panels but it hasn't cut out the part entirely. That suggests it does indeed plan to continue selling the iPad 2 after the LTE-equipped iPad 3 has gone on sale in March.

  Tablets 17 11:23

• Iraq demands return of Saddam Hussein's arse

  Ex-SAS bloke in bronze rump rumpus

  The Iraqi government is demanding the return of a piece of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical arse "liberated" by a former SAS soldier during the fall of the dictator's regime in 2003.

  Government 17 11:31

• Xmas actually accelerates Dixons sales drop

  Hardware sellers record 5% quarterly fall in sales

  Dixons are facing a grim new year as it was revealed that the Christmas season actually accelerated their decline in sales. Takings across Dixons stores and the Currys and PC World outlets run by the company fell by 5 per cent compared to the quarter before, reveal figures published today.

  The Channel 17 11:43

• Japanese boffins fear virus nicked spacecraft blueprints

  Tokyo, we have a problem

  Japanese space engineers have admitted one of their computers has been infected by a Trojan that may have leaked sensitive data, including system login information, to hackers.

  Science 17 12:03

• RIM BlackBerry Bold 9790

  Touch and type slimline smartie

  A recent rash of BlackBerry 7 handsets sees RIM's Bold 9790 sitting in the middle of the range and with a tempting feature set for BBM fans. For starters, the manufacturer's classic Qwerty keyboard is paired up with a touchscreen.

  Phones 17 12:03

• Darwin's lost fossils found down the back of a cupboard

  Always in the last place you'd look - a vault in Surrey

  Fossils collected by a young Charles Darwin have been discovered in a gloomy corner of a British Geological Survey vault.

  Science 17 12:11

• Apple offers cash for old kit

  iDevices, Macs, PCs even

  Apple has begun paying punters for any of its old products they own but no longer want.

  Hardware 17 12:14

• RIM readies 7in, 10in BlackBerry tablets for 2012

  Second time lucky?

  RIM seems unwilling to give up on tablets, if what's claimed to be a leaked roadmap is correct.

  Tablets 17 12:31

• Microsoft raises 'state of the art' son of NTFS

  Will join forces with Storage Spaces in Windows 8

  Microsoft has unveiled a "state of the art" file system for the next 10 years that builds on NTFS.

  Developer 17 12:46

• Google accused of vandalising OpenStreetMap

  But OSM admin dismisses claim as 'mountain out of tiny pimples'

  Google has once again been accused of underhand business tactics, this time by OpenStreetMap. The not-for-profit organisation published a light-on-detail blog post alleging that Mountain View was "moving and abusing" the mapping outfit's data.

  Developer 17 12:57

• Woz praises Android, blasts iPhone limitations

  Apple co-founder speaks out

  Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has underlined his love for Android handsets, stating his gripes with the iPhone and why in many ways he prefers Google's OS.

  Phones 17 12:59

• NSA constructs hardened Android, unleashes it on world

  Vicious apps squashed by super-spook mobile OS

  The US Defense Department's The National Security Agency (NSA) has released a security-hardened version of Google's mobile OS, Android.

  Security 17 13:23

• Work from home, find a new hobby, buy a fountain - UK.gov

  New advice site saves your boss cash while you stay in bed

  Anywhere Working, the government-backed initiative to get us chipping in towards the cost of offices, now has a working website hub portal and advice on picking the perfect fountain.

  Government 17 13:43

• Porno cyber-squatter landed in Branson pickle

  Richardbranson.xxx is Virgin on ridiculous, complains Sir

  Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson has filed a cybersquatting complaint over the domain name richardbranson.xxx.

  Hosting 17 14:01

• Fresh Apple lawsuits target 15 Samsung gadgets

  Design ethos nicked, allegedly

  Apple is having another go at Samsung, telling a German court that it thinks ten of the South Korean giant's phones ape its established design language.

  Phones 17 14:02

• Motorola strengthens Defy+ with JCB logo

  Do ya dig it?

  Motorola's Defy+ handset is already touted as a tough-as-nails smartphone, embracing the elements and surviving tumbles from great heights. However, for those who need to turn things up to 11, the company has teamed with digger maker JCB to launch an even more rugged version of the beefy blower.

  Phones 17 14:09

• White House shelves SOPA... now what?

  We can ditch the laws when the Valley's snotty web teens grow up

  I am going to propose something that may sound radical, but really isn't. Legislation like SOPA ideally isn't necessary in an ideal world, and this idea comes about through voluntary agreeement. The Stop Online Piracy Act was proposed because of a tragic impasse, a lack of agreement between two powerful and deeply entrenched sides. Although one side has moral force on its side, being 'right' doesn't mean it's going to 'win'. Like a classic game theory tragedy, both sides are losing.

  Law 17 14:23

• McDonald's punters offered sex in exchange for Chicken McNuggets

  Drive-thru strumpet cuffed for fast food indecent proposal

  A Los Angeles woman earned herself a cuffing for allegedly offering McDonald's drive-thru punters "sexual favours" in return for Chicken McNuggets.

  Bootnotes 17 14:42

• Samsung to raise $1bn in US bonds for Texas plant

  Punts MeeGo carcass into Bada fold

  Samsung is planning to raise a billion dollars to fund US expansion, and will be pushing Tizen onto Americans as a Bada-compatible platform, with Intel's help.

  Financial News 17 15:02

• Nekkid Tech: Why Amazon is the crack dealer of cloud

  Funk soul brother

  Greg Knieriemen and trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch have posted another Nekkid Tech classic. This week they chat to Mark Twomey (aka "StorageZilla") and "disruptive tech diva" Christina Weil.

  Cloud 17 15:29

• Amazon blows $95m on Chinese warehouse

  Parks more gift-laden tanks on China's lawn

  Amazon is reportedly pumping $95m (£61m) into an e-commerce distribution centre in the Chinese city of Nanning, Guangxi Province.

  The Channel 17 16:01

• HP hawks huge 132in 'tablet'

  Monster multi-touch fondle... wall

  HP unveiled a behemoth this week, catering for the BFGs of the world with a 132in multi-touch display.

  Hardware 17 16:24

• Women pick the family's mobile tech - and pay for it too

  Sit down chaps, it's nothing for you to worry your little heads about

  American women are increasingly selecting their families' mobile tech, and paying the bills too, according to the latest figures from US wireless trade body CTIA.

  Phones 17 16:33

• Enterprise IT's power shift threatens server-huggers

  Users get what they need, not what you want

  It's not that the role of enterprise IT is dying. It's just that it's changing so much that it may soon be virtually unrecognisable from its golden age of installing servers and managing data centres.

  The Channel 17 17:02

• Cloudy servers shoot to the stratosphere

  Rise of the ODMs

  Building out cloudy server and storage services as well as support the gazillion of apps running on iOS and Android devices has the cloudy server business absolutely exploding, say the box-counters at market researcher iSuppli.

  Cloud 17 17:34

• Boffins quarrel over ridding world of leap seconds

  What should set the time - atomic watches or the sunrise?

  The measurement and regulation of time could start to change this week if an ITU meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, gives the nod.

  Science 17 18:02

• ScaleXtreme makes cloud hopping easier

  Xpert system, Xpress freebie take on the big boys

  Cloudy toolmaker ScaleXtreme has rolled out an easier-to-use update to its Xpert server-admin tool in its continuing effort to take on the big initials of systems management: IBM, HP, BMC, and CA.

  Cloud 17 18:11

• Rumoured 'GarageBand for e-books' to bulldoze textbook biz

  Apple hype machine powers up for Thursday

  A new app from Apple will emerge this week allowing users to create their own books - and steamroller the textbook industry - according to moles claiming to be close to the fruity tech titan.

  Applications 17 18:34

• Nissan unveils 'self-healing' iPhone case

  Magic auto paint vanquishes scratched shiny-shiny

  Japanese automaker Nissan's European arm is migrating the company's "pioneering self-healing paint" to the world of pocketable shiny-shiny, introducing an iPhone case that removes its own scratches with nary a buff nor a polish.

  Phones 17 20:43

• Southern Cross Cable offers discount bandwidth

  Beefs up network for NBN and UFB action

  The Southern Cross Cable network has increased capacity and dropped its prices by 44 percent to keep up with competitive projects.

  Business 17 21:30

• NEC claims terabit-plus record with 10,000 km hop

  High capacity for oceanic links

  NEC has demonstrated a single fibre link – with no repeaters – running at 1.5 terabits per second over 10,000 km. The company says this is the first time that a single laser source has sent a terabit channel over such a distance.

  Business 17 22:00

• Google to join Wednesday's anti-SOPA protest

  No blackout, though other website shutdowns multiply

  Google will join Wednesday's anti-SOPA and anti–PROTECT IP Act (aka PIPA) protest by noting its opposition to the bills on its home page.

  Media 17 22:06

• Yahoo! cofounder! Jerry! Yang! quits!

  End of an era for internet portal

  In a surprise announcement, Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang has said that he’s stepping down from all positions in the company, and from the board of directors of Alibaba, effective immediately.

  Cloud 17 22:16

• Microsoftie takes over HP's strategy

  Veghte to keep Meg & Co 'on top'

  Bill Veghte, the former Microsoft hotshot that was brought in to run HP's small but important software business back in May 2010, has been named the company's chief strategy officer.

  Business 17 22:24

• Data centers to cut LAN cord?

  60GHz wireless links ease east-west traffic jams

  People are using cell phones and killing their landlines. We have wireless networks in the home to connect our myriad devices. And maybe wireless is coming to the data center, as well.

  Cloud 17 22:38

• Microsoft aims at VMware with System Center 2012

  Offers future-proofing with unlimited VMs

  Microsoft is taking the fight to VMware with a new release candidate of Systems Center 2012 which includes a new pricing structure and eight management tools that run on a unified interface. Ever humble, Microsoft is billing it as the future of private cloud systems.

  Cloud 17 22:56

• Oz domain regs running at 60k per month

  Deloitte forgets history

  Deloitte Access Economics has announced an ‘explosion’ in Australian domain registrations compared to ten years ago, in a report released today.

  Business 17 23:30

• ↑ January 2012
• ← 16th January 2012
• 18th January 2012 →