20th > March > 2012 Archive
7
Victorian Taxi Directorate exposes 400+ email addresses
The Victorian Taxi Directorate has earned the ire of people it was trying to placate, after it put more than 400 email addresses in the “To:” field of an email it sent to ask about its complaints resolution process.
Facebook 'cloaking' flaw allows unexpected snooping
University College London research student Shah Mahmood and Chair of Information Communication Technology Yvo Desmedt have told a conference of what they call a “zero day privacy loophole” in Facebook.
AMD aims lower with Opteron 3200s
It's World Hosting Days in Germany this week, a conference that bills itself as the biggest trade show devote to hosting and Internet service providing, and x86 chip maker AMD is using the opening day of the event to showcase its "Zurich" Opteron 3200 series processor aimed at single-socket servers.
Spider venom to be tested for pesticide potential
Australia's Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) has asked researchers to replicate peptides, the nastiest bits of spider venom, in the hope they make pesticides to which insects do not develop resistance.
Asian online shopaholics to drive internet economies
Asian nations including India and China are set to drive unprecedented levels of internet-related economic growth among G-20 countries in the next four years, although the UK will remain top dog, according to new research from the Boston Consulting Group.
Twisted Metal
Review
David Jaffe's vision for car-based deathmatching has always split gamers down the middle. Its love-it-or-hate-it mix of crass humour, barely there vehicle handling and everything but the kitchen sink approach to weaponry won't appeal to everyone. Nevertheless, Twisted Metal still garnered a sizeable following in its heyday.
Fragmentation bomb wounds Android in developer war
A new study conducted by IDC and mobile-developer platform and services company Appcelerator has determined that as Google's open source Android operating system becomes more and more fragmented, fewer and fewer developers are putting it on their "must-code-for" list.
UK drivers' privates fondled overseas in new outsource plan
Transport for London (TfL) has proposed that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency's (DVLA) vehicle keeper data - which includes names, addresses and registration plate numbers - should be accessed outside the UK by contractors working on the capital's congestion charge scheme.
Dot Hill dismounts NetApp, searches for new hard partners
OEMing drive arrays to mainstream vendors is a risky business because big contracts can go away just like that, leaving you with a damaged revenue stream and losses. That's what's happened to Dot Hill, which has exited a NetApp supply contract.
Oz billionaire says CIA backs Greenpeace
Australian Mining Magnate Clive Palmer has declared the CIA is behind a Greenpeace campaign that aims to slow the growth of Australia's export coal industry.
Blighty's 'leccy power plant reform deals gas a winning hand
The most significant reforms to the electricity market in 30 years will include measures designed to provide "long-term certainty" to gas investors, the government has said.
Tape eats dust of spinning rust, says object data biz
Object storage suppliers tend to look at tape storage like a real ale fan looks at cheap fizzy lager: "I'm not going to touch that!"
Confirmed: iPad 3 runs hotter than iPad 2
Thermal camera imagery has confirmed what iPad 3 owners already knew: the new Apple fondleslab runs hotter than its predecessor did.
The Register obtains covert snaps of Google's new London offices
Exclusive
Undercover Register snappers have penetrated Google's new London offices to bring you an early look at the type of working conditions the Chocolate Factory offers its London-based Ooompa Loompas.
Now CHINA complains of surge in cyber-attacks
China is claiming attacks on public and private organisations from outside of its borders have rocketed in the past year - from five million computers affected in 2010 to 8.9m in 2011.
Giant planet pileups in far-flung star systems: Computer says yes
Top brainboxes armed with a British supercomputer say that they've cracked the riddle of just why it is that massive planets - spied across the vasty interstellar gulfs in recent times - tend to prefer certain orbits around their faraway parent stars.
Seagate strikes trillion bit HAMR blow
Seagate has demonstrated heat-assisted magnetic recording technology with 1 trillion bits per square inch, a 30 per cent improvement in Toshiba's production record of 744Gbit/in2 with its MQ01ABD drive – a 2.5-inch, 5400rpm, SATA II drive.
New iPad sales hit 3 million in first 4 days
The glow-screened 3.1million pixel iPad has been flying off shelves even faster than either of the two previous iPads on its opening weekend. Apple has announced sales of 3 million new iPads in the four days since the tablet's launch in 12 countries on 16 March.
Blizzard ponders World of Warcraft for iPad
Blizzard has hinted it may bring World of Warcraft to smartphones and tablets, saying it believes a developer would be "foolish" not to be planning such a move.
Mobile biz bigwigs crack heads over Wi-Fi roaming charges
The Wireless Broadband Alliance has joined forces with mobile operator clique GSMA to put the most important part of Wi-Fi roaming in place: ensuring that everyone gets billed properly.
Trial finds EIGHT WAYS to defeat Google, PayPal and other SSOs
US security researchers have unearthed flaws in the single sign-on (SSO) services operated by a number of portals, including Google and PayPal.
Symbian smacked by Windows Phone
Microsoft's smartphone operating system, Windows Phone 7, is now outselling Symbian - and it's all thanks to former Symbian stalwart, Nokia.
Tiny pile of Windows 8 ARM slabs slated for October
It’s not the timing but the numbers that are really interesting when it comes to Windows 8’s planned delivery.
N7Player
Android App of the Week
It’s not often that I come across an application that displaces a default choice on my phone within minutes of me downloading it, but the N7Player music player is just one such. I think it’s brilliant.
GiffGaff gaffe charity spaff to quell miffed riffraff
GiffGaff, the O2-owned mobile network that collapsed for eight hours last week, will give £10,000 to a customer-selected charity to say sorry, and promises free calls next time its service goes titsup.
Adobe can't penetrate punters' tight wallets: Users holding out for CS6
Adobe's first quarter profits took a bashing as customers of its legacy desktop software deferred purchases in anticipation of forthcoming Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud.
Is private cloud the next step for the data centre?
The Register has constructed a lovely survey about Private Cloud, which will form the basis of a freely available report that will be published in the coming weeks. The survey is, admittedly quite a chunky, one-pager and will take maybe 10mins of your time.
Big Media drags 142,000 through UK's courts IN A YEAR
Comment
Not one Hollywood studio or record label company has ever incarcerated anyone merely for not paying for media consumption. A few years ago the entertainment industry filed civil suits against individuals, but received so much criticism it stopped. Now they target industrial-scale pirates, or push for milder sanctions such as speed slowdowns and contract termination.
WTF... should I pay to download BBC shows?
Feature
The outgoing Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, recently announced plans for Project Barcelona, a download store for material from the BBC archives.
US teens confess to 60-a-day texting FRENZY
A rise in boys and older teens texting has pushed the average number of text messages American youngsters send to 60 a day, ten more than in 2009.
WD intros 'world's first' 2TB portable HDD
WD has outed what it claims is the world's first portable hard drive with a 2TB capacity.
BT fibre-to-the-cabinet rollout penetrates 73 more exchanges
BT has named the next 73 exchanges to be upgraded to its broadband fibre technology with all of them running optic cable as far as the street cabinets.
Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market
Elite co-creator and Raspberry Pi backer David Braben reckons the secondhand games market is detrimental to the development of core-gamer and single-player titles because most retailers won't give them long-term sales support.
Russian cops cuff 8 in Carberp Trojan case
Russian police have arrested a group of eight men suspected of making millions in electronic banking fraud using the Carberp Trojan and other strains of malware.
Horny VIKING MICE raped and pillaged Euro pipsqueaks
Virile Norse mice rampaged through Scotland, Ireland and Iceland impregnating locals and mixing their Viking mouse genes in the native rodent populations, according to research published by the BMC Evolutionary Biology journal.
Integrator Tieto slashing 1,300 jobs
Finnish IT services house Tieto is axing 1,300 jobs in a bid to wipe €50m from its overheads.
Xoreax grids up Windows to goose apps
Grid computing is nothing new, but Xoreax, a company that created a set of tools to distribute the job of building and compiling applications across a network of PCs and servers, has come up with a new twist on the idea. It's called process virtualization, and when implemented in a more general purpose "virtual supercomputer" service, the company calls it Xoreax Grid Engine, or XGE for short.
LightSquared hits FCC right where it hurts
LightSquared has issued a formal response to the threatened suspension of its licence, accusing the FCC of political bias and riding roughshod over precedent and Constitutional rights.
French data watchdog bends Google over for rigorous frisking
This month Google - in the face of widespread criticism in Europe - implemented changes to its privacy policy even though French info watchdog CNIL declared that the tweak would violate the EU's data protection law.
Only Amazon Kindle Fire can grab share from Apple's iPad
Apple may cede some fondleslab market share in 2012 but this will likely be largely at the hands of Amazon rather than traditional PC vendors.
Bankrupt DRAMurai survivor seeks cash-laden Samsung rival
Japan's Nikkei paper is reporting (paywall) that Japan's sole and now bankrupt DRAM manufacturer, Elpida, is soliciting bids to rescue it from bankruptcy, with Micron and Intel identified as potential white knights for the stricken DRAMurai chip-maker.
Report: Feeble spam filters catch less junk mail
Enterprise spam filters are blocking less junk mail, according to independent tests from Virus Bulletin.
Foxconn is world's 10th biggest employer: 1.2 MILLION on payroll
iPad-maker Foxconn is the world's 10th biggest employer, and can count staff members over half those of China's Red Army, according to a new piece of research by the BBC.
Supercomputers sold like hotcakes in 2011
Sales of supercomputers last year were a bit better than the prognosticators at IDC expected, with sales up across all types of systems by 8.4 per cent to $10.3bn. IDC's earlier projections had called for sales to jump by 7.2 per cent from the $9.5bn level set in 2010.
Verizon unveils offspring surveillance service
Verizon Wireless had added a new service that puts a 21st century spin on Orwell's Big Brother, ushering in a brave new world of surveillance monitored by Big Mother and Big Father.
Avere attacks filer VDI boot slowdown
NAS accelerator supplier Avere can make NetApp VDI boot storm delays go away, and it has the numbers to prove it.
Symantec buys mobile app management firm
Symantec has bought privately held mobile application management firm Nukona. Terms of the deal, announced Tuesday, were undisclosed.
Big data enters open-source hype cycle
Open ... and Shut
As breathless projections go, IDC's big data market forecast may be in for a serious asthma attack. The venerable analyst firm pegs the brave new world of big data at $16.9bn by 2015. Yet it's unclear just how new this market is and whether anyone but big data start-ups are really cashing in on the gold rush.
Microsoft fires Bing execs after biz probe
Two senior Microsoft executives have been fired after an internal investigation into the use of corporate resources.
EMC-Isilon swallows software storage firm Likewise
EMC's Isilon business unit has splashed out and bought a fast-growing startup, Likewise, whose software both EMC and other OEMs and enterprises use to NAS-enable Unix- and Linux-based storage devices.
Google cools data center with bathtubs, dishwashers
Google has partnered with a local water-treatment utility to cool a massive data center using greywater – that's water recycled from residential bathtubs, showers, washing machines, and the like.
EMC wants to be the Linux of big data
To broaden its reach in the big-data arena, disk-array maker EMC's Greenplum division, which peddles data warehousing and Hadoop appliances and software, announced that it will open source its Chorus management and collaboration tools. EMC also has acquired Pivotal Labs, experts in agile programming, to help it build better big-data software and, equally importantly, help others do so.
Testicle-boiling new iPad ignites fanboi fury
US consumer organization Consumer Reports has backed punters’ assertions that the new iPad can overheat in normal use.
TPG surges, plots IPTV future
TPG, fast becoming the standard-bearer of Australia’s “tier two” ISPs, has announced a 17 percent lift in EBITDA to $AU131.9 million and is preparing to follow iiNet into the IPTV set-top-box market.
Fruit Ninja bites into multi-platform games tech
Australian wunder-game developer Halfbrick Studios is in acquisition mode, snapping up Spanish games technology developer Onan Games.
Elsevier's backpedalling not stopping scientist strike
Dutch publishing house Elsevier is facing increasing pressure from the scientific community, with the company's 2,000 journals now being blacklisted by over 8,600 academics.
HP poised to merge printer, PC divisions?
HP's boss-for-six-months Meg Whitman is about to make her first big strategic move since she took the reins at that reeling company, merging its Imaging and Printing Group and Personal Systems Group.
Hong Kong scientists claim 'self-charging' graphene battery
Scientists from Hong Kong Polytechnic claim to have demonstrated a graphene-based battery that harvests ambient energy and turns it into electricity.
Oracle systems group slammed again in Q3
Oracle has gotten its software business back on track and is fixing to get its systems house in order soon as well, the top brass at the software giant and hardware maker have declared.
