25th January 2012 Archive

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• Apple CEO: 'Amazon Fire didn't dent our sales'

  'Year of the tablet? Nope. Year of the iPad'

  If purchases of the successful-if-flawed Amazon Fire bit into iPad sales during the holiday season, Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't see it.

  Tablets 25 00:47

• Orange Tahiti 7in Android tablet

  Freshly squeezed fondleslab, anyone?

  Tablets 25 07:00

• Judges probe minister's role in McKinnon extradition saga

  Pentagon hacker's medical files ignored

  The long-running case of Gary McKinnon returns to court on Friday.

  Government 25 08:02

• Outside-the-box thinking literally can't be done inside a box, say profs

  Trick cyclists in fridge-carton tomfoolishness

  Time-rich trick cyclists in Singapore and America have determined to their own satisfaction that it is actually much more difficult to think outside the box if you are, in reality, inside a large box at the time.

  Small Biz 25 09:02

• Facebook 'contributes' €15.3bn to EU economy... bitch

  Tells small biz world to join social network army

  The UK economy might be down in the dumps, but there is a ray of sunshine from an unlikely source: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has supposedly helped to contribute £2.2bn to the country's GDP in 2011.

  Small Biz 25 09:27

• Dr Who phone game puts Daleks in your living room

  Augmented extermination

  Robotics toy tycoon WowWee is down at the Toy Fair 2012 in London this week with its range of smartphone games based on the notion of augmented-reality.

  Phones 25 09:43

• Infinity Blade II

  In need of a quick slash?

  I liked the original Infinity Blade when it arrived just over a year ago, but it seemed to fall short of classic status due to the repetitive nature of the combat, the rigidly linear exploration and threadbare fantasy storyline.

  Phones 25 10:00

• Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU

  Big changes to Terms of Service due in March

  Mountain View's Chocolate Factory is putting its vast userbase on notice of major changes to its privacy policies.

  Cloud 25 10:14

• Nokia exec praises Brazilian...

  ...for purchase of 1.5 millionth S40 handset

  Nokia has shipped 1.5bn Series 40 handsets, the milestone unit being snatched up by a Brazilian lass, 21-year-old Mayara Rodrigues.

  Phones 25 10:19

• Winners and losers in the information race

  Information management: Is IT being asked the impossible?

  Involved in information management? Then join us live today at 11:00 GMT, as we discuss the findings from the latest Reg research and offer tips and techniques on good information practice.

  Management 25 10:31

• New Euro IP law promises artists torpedoes to sink pirates

  Commissioner wants to stop biz making cash off others' slog

  A revised EU anti-piracy laws will provide content creators with "solid legal certainty" when developing new ways for consumers to legitimately access their works, an EU Commissioner working on the legislation has said.

  Small Biz 25 10:34

• Scalextric restarts space race with Star Wars craft

  X-Wings race TIE Fighters

  Hornby is at the London Toy Fair 2012 this week putting the Force into slot racing classic Scalextric with a series of Star Wars race kits.

  Hardware 25 10:41

• London Underground Wi-Fi pusher to be announced in spring

  Tube's wireless delivered in time for 2012 Olympics

  Transport for London (TfL) is in the final stages of the tender process for the supply of Wi-Fi to up to 120 of its underground stations.

  Broadband 25 10:49

• Megaupload master loses Call of Duty crown

  Dotcom bubble burst

  Being held in custody is bad enough for anyone accused of a crime, but when it means you'll lose the number one position on the Call of Duty ranking boards, it's really gonna hurt.

  Games 25 10:52

• Remote-controlled Star Wars kit blown up

  Inflatable Empire

  Gadget specialist Bladez Toys is to cater for the Star Wars collective with a handful of officially-licensed remote-controlled inflatables based on characters from the films.

  Hardware 25 10:55

• Acer bids to raise prices after levelling inventory mountain

  'Back to the old ways of working,' says UK boss

  Acer has said it expects ASPs to continue to climb this year as the market shifts to ultrabooks – even as the vendor finally levels the inventory mountain that bedevilled it last year.

  The Channel 25 11:06

• Super-powered 'frankenmalware' strains detected in the wild

  Virus-worm crossbreeds will trash systems faster than ever before

  Viruses are accidentally infecting worms on victims’ computers, creating super-powered strains of hybrid software nasties.

  Security 25 11:17

• O2 leaks 3G users' mobile numbers to every website visited

  Telco launches probe

  O2 UK is dishing out its customers' mobile numbers like free sweeties to every website they visit over a 3G connection.

  Mobile 25 11:32

• Pope praises Twitter and your 'profound' tweets

  Lol! Pontiff tries to get down with the kids, smh!!

  Pope Benedict XVI has given a tentative thumbs-up to micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, but explained to his followers that they may reap more spiritual reward by just piping down a bit online.

  Bootnotes 25 11:48

• Loyal NASA rover Opportunity enters 9th year of Mars boffinry

  Plucky robot to sniff Endeavour's rim

  NASA’s exploration rover Opportunity entered its historic ninth year of service on Mars today, having already driven over 21 miles and helped boffins make groundbreaking scientific discoveries on the unforgiving world.

  Science 25 12:00

• Toshiba Qosmio DX730 PC TV combo

  Touchscreen desktop entertainer

  Hardware 25 12:00

• Reding's 'right to be forgotten' bill polarises Euro biz world

  Rewriting data protection law in internet age

  EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding will imminently table a draft bill that will – if passed in Parliament – require internet firms to be upfront about the user data they hold.

  Law 25 12:11

• Punters to pick up cheap laptops not Ultrabooks

  Consumers too price-wary for skinny tech, says analyst

  Ultrabooks are still too darn pricey for punters, with the new skinny laptops' average selling price during Q4 2011 63 per cent higher than that of regular notebooks.

  Laptops 25 12:23

• iPad users 'risk shoulder pain', say US gov, Microsoft boffins

  Too much time fondling your slab will leave you stiff

  Boffins employed by the US Department of Environmental Health and Microsoft (among others) say that users of tablet computing devices – an area almost completely dominated at the moment by Apple's iPad, selling in unbelievable numbers – run a more serious risk of "neck and shoulder discomfort" compared to people using normal desktop kit.

  Hardware 25 12:47

• Paramount opens Cloud-based movie shop

  PayPal support good news for non-US viewers

  Hardware 25 12:51

• Acer unleashes account managers on corporate customers

  Uses Olympics gloss to burnish biz credentials

  Acer will capitalise on its Olympics prominence this year by ratcheting up its SMB channel and setting an end-user sales team on the UK's biggest companies.

  The Channel 25 13:03

• Lego readies kit for Minecraft lovers

  Block party

  Lego has given the green light to a set of the famous building bricks based on the world of the cult cyber-block game Minecraft.

  Hardware 25 13:09

• EU commissioner unleashes draft data protection bill

  Fines for fumbling punters' privates 'not watered down', Reding insists

  European Commission vice-president Viviane Reding was forced into a defensive corner today, after putting forward her proposed rewrite of the EU's 17-year-old data protection law.

  Law 25 13:18

• Groupon banned from selling SNAKE OIL

  Site unable to 'substantiate' serpent serum claims - ASA

  Groupon has been rapped for selling snake oil after the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ruled that the online deals giant couldn't substantiate their claims about the reptile juice.

  Small Biz 25 13:29

• Microsoft to cash in chips on virtual currency

  Points break

  Microsoft will call time on its virtual currency, Microsoft Points, with a switch to real money on the cards later this year, it has been claimed.

  Hardware 25 13:47

• O2 3G stops giving punters' mobile numbers to websites

  HTTP header blooper stamped out within hours after outcry

  After a flurry of complaints, O2 engineers appear to have shut off the proxy server quirk that leaked to websites the phone numbers of punters browsing the net on 3G connections.

  Mobile 25 13:53

• Google plays the long game with Chrome OS

  First the kids, then the commercial sector

  Google is betting that slow and steady will prove a winning strategy for its Chrome OS platform, and is reporting some successes for the system in the education sector.

  Operating Systems 25 14:17

• The Pirate Bay torrents printable 3D objects

  Yarr! Getting physical with small plastic models

  Tremble, thing-makers, because The Pirate Bay has started to share the source files for physical objects.

  Media 25 14:44

• Apple's soaraway growth is Google's pain - and here's why

  The Martian test - Mountain View FAIL

  Compare these two headlines: "Google shares tank after disappointing financial report" (here) and "Apple tops estimates with earnings leap of 118 per cent" (here).

  Financial News 25 14:48

• Pwn2Own 2012 touts bigger prizes, drops mobile hacks

  Make $60,000 with a few carefully injected bytes

  Organisers of security conference CanSecWest have changed the rules for the next outing of its Pwn2Own computer hacking contest.

  Security 25 15:02

• Try a 'shroom before ruling on chill pills, boffin tells gov

  Ministers 'irrational' on depression-busting hallucinogen

  The government may never be able to “think rationally” about the therapeutic properties of hallucinogenic drugs, says Professor David Nutt. The top boffin was speaking on the publication of two new studies that show the anti-depressant qualities of magic mushrooms.

  Science 25 15:27

• Dell fluffs up fatter Microsoft private clouds

  More huffing and puffing later this year

  Dell is hedging its bets in the private cloud war that is ranging between VMware and Microsoft and has crafted two different versions of its vStart prefabbed clouds: one to run the vSphere stack (and thus ending with a "v") and another the Hyper-V-Systems Center stack (and thus ending with an "m"). Dell is today rolling out the largest Microsoft vStarts and promising to build even larger machines later this year to support both stacks.

  Cloud 25 15:58

• Telly makers aim to put OLED in your lounge in 2012

  Another five years to wait for the tech to mature?

  Hardware 25 16:12

• OpIreland hackers spank gov sites as 'Irish SOPA' nears

  Angry hacktivists land on Irish shores

  Anonymous took out several key Irish government websites last night and promised more disruption to come in retaliation for new SOPA-like legislation which it claimed would make it easier for copyright-holders to block access to file sharing and other sites in the country.

  Government 25 16:18

• pcAnywhere let anyone anywhere inject code into PCs

  Symantec plugs holes in desktop remote-control tool

  Symantec is urging users to patch pcAnywhere, its remote control application, following the discovery of a brace of serious security flaws.

  Security 25 16:29

• Quad-core Samsung Galaxy S III set for April launch

  Rumour with a view

  The unannounced Samsung Galaxy S III will hit shelves in April with some meaty specs, including a quad-core processor and a 12Mp camera, it has been alleged.

  Phones 25 16:37

• EE and BT get LTE extension

  180 lowenek Kernewek* won't have to give up their broadband

  Ofcom has granted BT and Everything Everywhere an extension to their test licence for cohabited LTE spectrum until the end of 2012, much to the relief of the trialists.

  Broadband 25 16:43

• Nvidia hit by GPU slump, too

  Tegra 2 stepped on by Tegra 3

  Microprocessor and GPU maker Advanced Micro Devices said yesterday that its financial results had been whacked by an unexpected downturn in discrete graphics processor sales in the fourth quarter, and Nvidia now says it had the same problem.

  Servers 25 16:59

• Why O2 shared your mobile number with the world

  And why they'll probably do similar again

  O2 has been sharing customers' phone numbers with every website they visited, but O2 isn't the only offender - it's just the one that slipped up and got caught.

  Mobile 25 17:14

• Amazon bridges enterprise IT with cloud backup

  Official at last: book-seller goes corporate

  Amazon has become an official supplier of enterprise IT by turning its cloudy Simple Storage Service (S3) into a back-up option for earth-bound data.

  Cloud 25 17:32

• Super Micro awaits the Xeon E5 launch

  Disk shortage bites box shipments

  The shortages of disk drives due to flooding in Thailand continues to take its toll on IT suppliers, with motherboard and whitebox system maker Super Micro joining the club of companies adversely impacted by the shortages.

  Servers 25 17:43

• Tucci to hang around another year as EMC earnings soar

  Record-breaking dosh, but info intelligence not so clever

  EMC recorded record revenues and profits for the full year and final quarter of 2011, although Information Intelligence results didn't look so clever.

  The Channel 25 18:01

• Nekkid Tech: Pricey frocks, Duran Duran and VMware power users

  Live from New England VMUG

  Greg Knieriemen fought through a 1,000-strong crowd at the New England Area VMware User Group (VMUG) to bring El Reg readers a piping hot dose of Nekkid Tech.

  Storage 25 18:33

• Intel issues dividend, Apple sits on $97.6bn

  A tale of two companies

  Intel has quietly announced that it will pay a quarterly dividend of 21 cents per share on March 1, just as they did last September and December, and in earlier quarters at lower rates.

  Financial News 25 18:52

• Fusion-io revenues flash upwards

  Market punishes Fusion for margin fall

  Server flash array vendor Fusion-io saw stonking quarterly revenues but disappointed with a loss despite unexpected higher sales. Did it under-price its ioDrive 2 products?

  Storage 25 19:02

• O2 apologizes for 'unintended' number-leak cockup

  Will cooperate with Information Commissioner's probe

  O2 has issued a public apology for leaking the phone numbers of some 3G customers in header information sent to website managers.

  Mobile 25 19:04

• HP outlines schedule for full WebOS open source release

  Full development system out by September

  HP has announced the schedule for the open sourcing of WebOS tools and source code, and said it will be continuing to push development hard to build a truly open platform.

  Developer 25 20:35

• Two million-degree matter from SLAC laser

  PICOSECOND PULSE OF DOOM!

  From “wow, that’s cold” we now get to meet a “wow, that’s hot” laser application, courtesy of the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: its X-ray laser has created and probed matter as hot as the Sun’s corona.

  Science 25 21:06

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• 26th January 2012 →