Nuke plants to keep PDP-11 UNTIL 2050!
Coders and their Zimmer frames converge in Canada
HP might have nuked OpenVMS, but its parent, PDP-11, is still spry and powering GE nuclear power-plant robots and will do for another 37 years.
That's right: PDP-11 assembler programmers are hard to find, but the nuclear industry is planning on keeping them until 2050 – long enough for a couple of generations of programmers to …
Huawei muses on Nokia's future
'Open minded' about acquisition
Growing its smartphone shipments by 94 percent from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013 might not be enough to satisfy Huawei: it's reportedly floated the idea of acquiring Nokia.
According to a report in the Financial Times, the rising Chinese giant would consider buying the veteran Finnish mobile phone vendor, but isn't impressed at its …
Kiwi telco Two Degrees to roll out 4G in 2014
BNZ backs Huawei kit buy
Junior New Zealand telco Two Degrees Mobile is getting ready to roll out 4G, with deployment to start in 2014.
The decision to launch into the 4G market follows confirmation of a funding facility from the Bank of New Zealand, worth $NA165 million. Chinese vendor Huawei, which built its current 3G network.
The BNZ funding will …
Spin doctors brazenly fiddle with tiny bits in front of the neighbours
Quantum computer address bus just nanometres wide
The University of New South Wales, working with Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, is celebrating what it hopes will be another step towards large-scale quantum computing: a technique that can address single electron qubits separated by mere nanometres.
Quantum bits - qubits - are the quantum-physics counterpart to the …
SAP users slack, slow and backward on security
Some systems unpatched since 2005, says researcher
Cross-site scripting, failure to check credentials, directory traversal and SQL injection make up more than three-quarters of vulnerabilities in SAP environments, according to a presentation by ERPScan's Alexander Polyakov to RSAConference Asia Pacific 2013.
And the vulnerable state of the SAP world is increasingly attracting …
PowerCloud launches new kit, partner program
WiFi upstart pitching cloudy management
WiFi upstart PowerCloud Systems (PCS) wants to give hotspots a dose of multiple personality, to make WiFi fit better in the world of multi-tenant networks.
The company says its aim is to solve a bugbear of public WiFi: sure, everybody can connect, but they're all on the same SSID, and security is less-than-ideal. Instead, PCS' …
Internet fraud still stings suckers
Australians twice as gullible as Americans
Australians fell prey to online scams to the tune of around $AUD93.5 million in 2012, and reported nearly 84,000 “scam-related contacts” to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The Commission has just released the results of its 2012 report on scam activity, published as part of Australia's National …
Australian unis to test quantum-comms-over-fibre
Tests to see if entangled photons can survive real-world networks
The University of New South Wales, one of the world's leaders in quantum computing research, will get the chance to put its work to the test in Australia's capital city, Canberra.
Within a few months, two nodes on Canberra's ICON network – one at the Australian National University, the other at the Australian Defence Force …
Swinburne starts design of pulsar-hunting supercomputer
Australian Uni plans LGM hunt with FPGAs
Back when they first discovered pulsars – in the “Little Green Men” era of the 1960s – astronomers were seeing big, loud and slow pulses. Today's pulsar-hunters are hunting subtler beasts and therefore need a lot more computer power, which is why Australia's Swinburne University has decided to spend more than $AU600,000 to …
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
Nearly the whole science and tech world is turning cartwheels at Google's “Project Loon”, Google's audacious “bring the Internet to the world using weather balloons” test that kicked off in New Zealand over the weekend.
As Wired notes, having flown to New Zealand for the launch, Project Loon came out of the same “Project X” …
'BadNews is malware' says outfit that found it
Google says code harmless but Lookout says code base is evolving
The BadNews malware debate continues to be batted back and forth, with Lookout, the company that first raised the alarm, maintaining that it is malware in the face of Google's assertion last week that it had seen no malicious activity associated with apps carrying the malware.
In conversation with The Register, Lookout's …
Nearly-transparent screen adds solar charge to phones
French startup hopes to market in 2014
“Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good” seems to be the motto of a French startup that believes it has a good-enough approach to adding solar charging to smartphones.
Rather than wait until fully-transparent solar cells are ready for prime time, SunPartner is using standard thin-film solar cells in an arrangement which …
ACMA mulls cloud regulation
Aussies don't really trust cloud providers
Dropping into the cloud privacy and security debate without even the slightest clang of irony, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has listed security, privacy and access to data as issues that might need regulation in the Australian environment.
It's discussion paper, The cloud – services, computing and digital …
Boffins fire up old dish to send interstellar SMS
LO aliens of Gliese 526, DIS iz erth. How R u?
In just under a week from now, Earth is going to start deliberately advertising itself to any ETs that might be out there, via the Lone Signal project. And if you've got 99 cents to spare, you can join in.
Lone Signal will use retired-and-repurposed dish in California, originally built to support the Apollo 11 moon landing and …
Boffins read memory bits with light
Non-destructive reads for FRAM
Researchers from the US and Singapore have demonstrated a form of ferroelectric RAM that can be read with light instead of electricity – along the way overcoming a problem that has kept the technology locked away in a relatively small niche.
FRAM is attractive as a memory technology because, unlike dynamic RAM (DRAM), it only …
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
With texting so clearly dangerous while driving, users and vendors have turned to speech-to-text technologies as a safe alternative, perhaps to no avail.
According to a study published by US road safety group the AAA Foundation, speech-to-text technologies are more distracting than talking to other passengers in the car. The …
Vodafone Oz launches '100 Mbps' 4G service
Nice speed if you can get it
Vodafone Hutchison Australia is putting its newly-secured debt funding to work, becoming the last of Australia's three mobile carriers to launch 4G services.
The carrier says its two blocks of contiguous 20 MHz spectrum mean it's able to offer speeds reaching 100 Mbps (presuming that there aren't too many other users in the cell …
Google to punish sloppy mobile webmasters
Sick of 404s on mobiles? So's Mountain View
The Chocolaterie has decided, probably correctly, that users are sick of Webmasters that can't talk and chew gum at the same time. It's therefore issued an edict: if you're trying to run a Web-and-mobile site, do it right or get de-ranked in search.
It's not put quite so bluntly, but that seems to be the implication in Mountain …
Cisco hints at possible new security standard
Platform Exchange Grid to IETF in 2014
Cisco is hoping that a framework it created for its Identity Services Engine (ISE) could offer the basis for a standard for multivendor security integration.
The Borg created the Platform Exchange Grid – pxGrid – to allow third-party developers to integrate with ISE, and has told told NetworkWorld it intends to put the …
Australia ponders easier share options, crowdfunding
Startups' wish list ticked off, in a good way
Australia's tech sector will probably miss out on one of its longest-standing Christmas wishes. Although communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy has announced a review of the treatment of employee share schemes – a major gripe in titsup startup land – he's doing so from the point of view of a government already hearing …
India forges ahead with fibre-to-the-village
Six contracts let in ambitious broadband plan
India is readying a plan to connect 250,000 villages to fibre backhaul, announcing winning bids to connect six regions to what will ultimately be a national network.
Under the Rs 2,500 crore project – more than $US420 million – the Indian government has set up a body called Bharat Broadband Networks to oversee deliver of the …
Wireless mics to clear Oz 4G bands by end 2014
Check, one, two, check, says ACMA
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has begun the groundwork for clearing wireless microphones out of the 700 MHz band, and hopes to get its new technical standard adopted by October this year.
The ACMA has issued a discussion paper (linked here) covering its plans to bump wireless mics from frequencies between 694 …
Cray cracks Oz military for super simulating silent subs
Computational fluid dynamics off the port bow
Cray has strolled off with a $AU2.27 million contract to provide a supercomputer to the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO).
When installed, the machine will be used to run CFD (computation fluid dynamics) simulations for submarine design. The contract is solely for compute hardware – Cray will have to integrate …
Boffins hide cute kitty behind invisibility shield
Vid No polarisation or microwaves needed, yet the cat and fish disappear
It's not going to actually fool everyone, but a China-Singapore partnership has demonstrated an “invisibility cloak” that works with natural light.
While still pretty crude, the demonstration beats prior work in one key characteristic: it doesn't need polarised light (or microwaves) as previous cloaking demonstrations have done …
BIND 9 patched against remote crash vuln
Protection against DoS
Time to get patching, sys admins: ISC (the Internet Systems Consortium) has issued a fix for a BIND 9 denial of service vulnerability.
The defect and patch, published last week, “allows an attacker to crash a BIND 9 recursive resolver with a RUNTIME_CHECK error in resolver.c”, the ISC says in its announcement.
CVE-2013-3919 …
BadNews not so bad, says Google
Android malware not installing SMS-spreading-spamware
Google has broken its six-week silence on the BadNews malware, telling a US security conference that while it was justified in removing infected apps from Google Play, it had no evidence that BadNews was playing a part in the distribution of SMS-borne frauds.
Announcing its discovery of the malware, security company Lookout …
Meet your new martyr: Edward Snowden
PRISM whistleblower's not the new Assange, not even a very naughty boy
So, we have a name for the PRISM leaker: Edward Snowden. Now his name is public, the US government and the military-infosec complex are going to work really hard at blowing smoke around the whole thing.
In that, I think Snowden made a tactical error – not because of the danger he's in (his name would have been found out by his …
Microsoft and FBI storm ramparts of Citadel botnets
Next: The hunt for evil botnet overlord 'Aquabox'
The ZeuS-derived Citadel botnet, which rose to public prominence last year, is being progressively disabled by Microsoft and the FBI is on the hunt for its masters.
Microsoft says Citadel was used to raid bank accounts around the world and netted more than $US500m. Redmond's Digital Crimes Unit says 1,000 of the estimated 1,400 …
Smart TVs riddled with DUMB security holes
Fake content, snooping, LAN attacks and more
It's been known for some time that “smart TVs” are dumb about security, but a German researcher has demonstrated that the stupidity goes so far as to enable remote snooping or even a takeover of the in-set computer.
Nruns researcher Martin Herfurt has taken work begun at the Darmstadt University of Technology to demonstrate a …
Boffins develop 'practically free' sulphur-powered batteries
Scientists suck batteries dry
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the USA have demoed a battery technology that makes two radical departures from the past: the main material is the superabundant sulphur, and it's an all-solid battery without a liquid electrolyte.
Lithium-sulphur combinations have all the characteristics needed to create …
Copyright troll Prenda Law accused of seeding own torrents
Web of companies formed an end-to-end production, piracy and lawsuit-filing machine
Prenda Law – whose odious scam was to find porn downloaders, and humiliate them into a payoff with the threat of exposure – may have been dismembered by the US legal system, but there's still some fun to be had dancing on its grave.
Prenda's attorney principals John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, Paul Duffy, and Brett Gibbs have …
Telstra mulling asbestos-free future
'Will consider' complete removal
In a move likely to last just as long as it takes for its bean-counters to beat its lawyers into submission, Telstra has reportedly told the government it is willing to consider the removal of all asbestos from its network.
According to the ABC, Telstra's offer to consider the idea came during a meeting with workplace relations …
Signatures no good at protecting databases, says Juniper
A cookie, a box, a stick and a string can trap attackers
One of the most common forms of attack is the SQL injection, and although the vector is ancient and well-understood, it's notoriously difficult to defend against.
Kevin Kennedy, senior director of product management for Juniper Networks' security business unit, is in Australia to demonstrate Juniper's latest shot at defeating …
Boffins build gesture recognition using WiFi
'HELP! Every time I move, the lights go out!'
Skip the sensors, skip the cameras: if you watch the signals closely enough, you can build gesture recognition using only WiFi signals.
That's what's just emerged from the University of Washington, where computer scientists say their WiSee technology can accurately recognise 94 percent of gestures from a sample of 900. They also …
Schneider moves on ancient SCADA vuln
Patch those building systems
Schneider Electric has begun patching a hard-coded Ethernet credential vulnerability in its kit, a mere 18 months after it was discovered and published.
The original vulnerability, discovered by Rubén Santamarta and published in December 2011, provided access over Ethernet to the telnet, FTP and Windriver debug ports of …
Australia's de-facto Internet filter may block 250k sites
Baldrick's cunning plan turns into live grenade
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), has told a hearing of the Australian Parliament's Senate Estimates committee that its attempt to block access to the IP address of one investment scam site could have blocked 250,000 sites in total.
The Commission told Estimates yesterday that it first conceived of the …
No FTTH under alternative Oz NBN plan, says Oppn. leader
Did Tony Abbott forget his own policy or re-write it on the fly?
The last possible imitation of sanity has abandoned Australia's National Broadband Network debate, with opposition leader Tony Abbott accused of abandoning his party's “DIY fibre” policy to save Australians from exposure to asbestos.
Which it cannot possibly achieve.
The FTTN-plus-DIY policy was already subject to criticism on …
Petascale powerhouse cracks important HIV code
Cray's Blue Waters simulates 64 million atoms
The Blue Waters petascale computer at the University of Illinois' National Centre for Supercomputing Applications is being credited with cracking part of the code of HIV – and possibly helping point the way to new treatments.
Simulations carried out on Blue Waters allowed researchers to determine the precise structure of the HIV …
EU-US nets get 100 Gbps Atlantic connection
Educational networks get fast link
The European educational network community is feeling pleased with itself, switching on a single 100 Gbps link across the Atlantic.
While submarine cables these days routinely have aggregate capacity in the Terabit range, this is the first time Europe's educational networks have had a single 100 Gbps link to play with. The test …
Quantum boffins send data ACROSS TIME AND SPACE
Destroyed photon communicates with another that didn't exist at the time
Researchers in Israel have pulled a trick that makes quantum physics seem even stranger than an episode of Doctor Who – they've created a pair of photons that was briefly entangled not across space, but across time.
The last time El Reg discussed time-like entanglement it was being proposed as a theoretical construct. The idea …
Netherlands Supremes squash iPad design patent
If mugs can tell the difference, it's not a copy, says Dutch court
If even the ordinary man in the street can tell the difference between an Apple iPad and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, then Samsung hasn't infringed on Apple's design rights, according to a court in The Netherlands.
It's not a killer blow in the international patent war-of-running-skirmishes between the two companies: this decision …
Optus: Australian telcos are RUBBISH
No wonder customers hate us
Optus has fetched out the hair shirt with CEO Kevin Russell taking the role of public penitent, adding in a scathing attack on the entire telco industry for good measure.
Russell's public mea culpa began with a speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in late May, and was expounded on the ABC's Inside Business …
Cisco nearly ready with next giant router
The terabit-per-slot barrier may soon be behind us
Cisco is reportedly close to pushing the start button on manufacturing for a router to surpass its current CRS-3 core router.
According to Light Reading, which says it's seen a Cisco document outlining the as-yet-unannounced “CTR” router, the new iron will support 1 Tbps per 10x100 Gbps ports slot. That would put the per-slot …
Asbestos finds interrupt NBN preparations
Updated Telstra calls in PwC, government calls in Telstra, politics calls in NBN Co
The rollout of the National Broadband Network has uncovered some nasty secrets: the use of asbestos cement in old Telstra pits, and the endemic dodginess of Australia's construction sector.
Asbestos has been turning up in pits all over the country, with reports coming in from Penrith in NSW, Ballarat in Victoria, Launceston in …
ACCC settles backhaul price regulation
Down, not up
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has announced a new – lower – price for regulated backhaul services sold with Telstra's wholesale ADSL.
The ongoing inquiry into AGVC (aggregated virtual circuit) prices had previously proposed an increase in the service price, to $AU36.08 per megabit per second, per month. ISPs …
Watch quantum entanglement – IN REAL TIME
Photons do the spooky action dance on YouTube
It doesn't actually demonstrate any new properties of entanglement, but it's cool anyhow: a group of Austrian physicists have produced a video showing entanglement in real time.
Yep, what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” is now on YouTube (below).
It took a fair amount of work for the scientists from the University …
Australia's de-facto net filter has ZERO regulation
Updated Work starts on approval process and oversight for web-ban law
A couple of weeks back, Australia's Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) made a mistake: by trying to take down a Website promoting an investment scam*, it accidentally blocked 1,200 sites using the same IP address as the scammer.
ASIC was able to attempt the take down thanks to a "Section 313 Notice", a legislative …
Who did Apple LIE TO: Australia or America?
Testimony to US Congress contradicted statements made to Australia's parliament
Australian parliamentarians, already hostile to international IT vendors over their pricing practices and use of transfer arrangements to offshore their tax obligations, are now at the point of grabbing torches and pitchforks and heading in the direction of Cupertino.
At issue is what looks like a contradiction between the …
Private equity signals interest in Optus satellites
$AU2 billion price tag mooted for fleet of tough old birds
Reports are emerging that Optus' satellite division, for sale if the price is right, is being eyed by a brace of private equity firms and a French telco.
Back in March 2013, Optus appointed Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse to conduct a strategic review of the satellite business, sparking speculation that the division would be …
Wonder substance pulses QUADRILLION lasers per second
Is there anything graphene can't do?
Light covers a very wide spectrum, making its potential communications capacity nearly infinite, so why does the world stick to a few wavelengths for communications? The reason is that currently available amplifier components only work in the 1330 and 1550 nm wavelengths.
However, adding yet another string to its already- …
