Firm moves to trademark 'Python' name out from under the language
Open-sourcers struggle against hostile snake snatch
A trademark battle has erupted following a company’s bid to stake a Europe-wide claim to the name "Python" - that of many devs’ favourite scripting language.
The Python Software Foundation has said it’s wrestling UK-based web host Veber for its own name after the company informed the software people it was applying for Community …
Ready or not: Microsoft preps early delivery of IE10 for Windows 7
Try Windows 8 without the Windows 8
Get ready for Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 – it’s coming sooner than you might expect and faster than Microsoft had planned.
Microsoft’s IE team has accelerated its ship date for IE10 on Windows 7 and is now targeting “end of February/beginning of March”, sources tell The Reg.
According to the insiders, the IE unit had …
Virty giant VMware drags upstart Hortonworks to court over 'unfair practices'
Exclusive Who's hooked all the juiciest Spring fish?
VMware has taken Hortonworks to court along with four ex-VMers who now work at the startup - and among them is VMWare's former global sales chief.
Virtualisation juggernaut VMware is taking on the little elephant Hortonworks over claims that the Hadoop vendor committed "unfair practices" - the details of which were not confirmed …
Opera joins Google/Apple in-crowd with shift to WebKit and Chromium
Only Redmond left drinking out of own browser plumbing
Opera Software is throwing in with Apple, Google and open-sourcers by dumping its browser’s proprietary HTML rendering engine for WebKit and Chromium.
Opera is killing Presto in favour of the open-source WebKit 'ware used in Apple’s Safari and iOS plus Google’s Chrome, among other browsers and runtimes. New versions of Opera …
LIVE NOW: Never mind Windows 8, speak your brains on Server 2012
Live Chat 6 months on... how is it for you?
Windows Server 2012 was part of a Microsoft launch wave that included Windows 8 and Office 2013.
While the benefits of the latter two are debatable, on server Microsoft has delivered a solid performer that’s completely surpassed Windows Server 2008 and deserves attention. Among the biggest changes are advances in Hyper-V, giving …
Billionaire baron Bill Gates still mourns Vista's stillborn WinFS
Watching you sync your files with the cloud makes him cry (probably)
Five years after he stepped down from day-to-day involvement in Microsoft, co-founder and chairman Bill Gates has revealed his frustration that Windows Vista's database-like file system never saw daylight.
In a question'n'answers session on the wildly popular cat'n'chat board Reddit, the world's richest geek was asked: “What …
Samsung laptops can be NUKED by ANY OS – even Windows: new claim
'Guys, that's not what we meant by interoperability'
New Samsung laptops that destroyed themselves when booting Ubuntu Linux can be bricked by ANY operating system – including Windows – according to a top embedded developer.
Nebula programmer Matthew Garrett has shed new light on a baffling bug that renders shiny Sammy computers completely unusable by accident, and blamed the flaw …
Microsoft Surface Pro launch: It's easy to sell out of sod all stock
Frustrated fondlers: No desirable 128GB versions and too many 64GB ones
Microsoft’s Surface Pro went on sale on Saturday, but stockists almost immediately ran into shortages, provoking anger and frustration among potential fondlers.
Redmond officially launched the 64GB and 128GB versions of its Intel tablet chunkster online and at selected retail outlets in the US and Canada at the weekend.
But it …
Microsoft needs to keep visible under waves of Blue
Analysis New codename, new everything, and not just Windows....
Remember Microsoft's Blackcomb? Nor do I: it never happened. For years, Blackcomb was the code name for a “next” version of Windows after Longhorn. Longhorn became Windows Vista and when that lumbered out the working title for Windows 7 became Vienna.
Now we have a new codename: Blue. Only Blue isn’t a new version of Windows - …
Nemo cancels Microsoft's Surface Pro launch
No launch like a snow launch
Microsoft’s super-select, invitation-only Surface Pro launch event in New York has been cancelled thanks to a big fish.
The general manager of Microsoft’s Surface team Panos Pany tweeted that he wouldn’t be able to attend the event at Best Buy in Times Square because of blizzard warnings hanging over the New York City area. …
JBoss is juicy, but Vert.x could bring sexy back to Red Hat
Linux shop man on app servers, business and keeping devs interested
Seven years after Red Hat snatched JBoss out from under Larry Ellison’s nose, the enterprise Linux distributor is continuing to squeeze the juice from the open-source application server.
Red Hat spent $350m buying JBoss in 2006 and today it forms the technology backbone and the brand-name basis of Red Hat’s enterprise middleware …
Friends with money: Dell's big bet on private finance
Analysis Memo to Michael: Don't be like HP
If not a gambler, Michael Dell seems certainly a born showman. With his 50th birthday on the horizon, when most people his age and with his billions might be thinking of slowing down or going philanthropic, he and his PC company have begun a brand new phase.
Dell, a native of the brassy US state that lends its name to a brand of …
Cisco joins $8m gang, shovels cash into ex-NASA OpenStack cloud upstart
Floating in a sea of green
Cisco has joined a trio of investors committing $8m to OpenStack startup Piston Cloud, which has a tech team led by an ex-NASA brain.
The networking giant is committing the money as part of Series B funding with the Data Collective and Swisscom Ventures. They join existing investors Divergent Ventures, Hummer Winblad and True …
BlackBerry: Aaah, Microsoft, we meet again.. for another deathmatch
Ballmer: Bring me the head of Alicia Keys, and let's end this
What is it with technology giants plonking award-winning pop vixens into top jobs to tout their new gear? Are they a mere distraction or underrated business executives?
RIM, sorry, BlackBerry made Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys its global creative director for its BlackBerry OS 10 launch along with two new mobes.
According …
Microsoft Dell deal would restore PC makers' confidence
Analysis Things don't get much worse than 'bad-to-neutral'
The PC business could experience not one but two seismic events on Monday.
First, the world’s third biggest PC maker is expected to announce a $20bn leveraged buyout, taking it off the stock market and putting it back into private hands.
Twenty-five years after Dell floated, the PC maker’s management would no longer be …
Boffins prep tasty data-cramming 3D metal-sandwich chip
Turns your world upside-down
Boffins have constructed a microprocessor architecture capable of packing in up to 1,000 times more data than today’s generation of processors.
Crucially, the data in the chips is recorded and stored using the spin of electrons.
Physicists at the University of Cambridge have built a 3D microchip that crams data into a three- …
Java open-source frameworks 'pose risk' to biz - report
Hibernate and don't mingle your Java and C/C++, warns software analyst
Open-source programming frameworks revolutionised Java development during the last decade, but not enough people know how to use them properly.
That’s according to the CRASH Special Report by CAST that sampled 496 applications with 152 million lines of code and found most apps had been misconfigured. This increased the degree of …
Microsoft's Dell billions have Windows 8 strings attached
If you can't convince them, buy them...
If you can't beat them, join them, or - if you're Microsoft - infiltrate them. Just be careful not to go in too deep.
Microsoft has recently developed a clever approach to launching into markets where it has previously failed or is currently failing: rather than buy an existing name, Microsoft has become its partner.
To boost …
Lotus 1-2-3 turns 30: Mitch Kapor on the Google before Google
Surviving tech's bubble, but not Microsoft
Before Apple and Google turned computing into a webified, personalised and mobile experience, there was Microsoft. It was Microsoft that set the computing paradigm with a layer of software called Windows, which made computing personal, powerful and affordable when married with Intel chips. But before all of them, there was Lotus …
Microsoft blasts PC makers: It's YOUR fault Windows 8 crash landed
Exclusive Slab builders ignored Redmond, claims Reg source
Microsoft blames PC makers for underwhelming Windows 8 sales over Christmas, The Register has learned. The software giant accused manufacturers of not building enough attractive Win 8-powered touchscreen tablets.
But the computer makers are fighting back: they claimed that if they’d followed Microsoft’s hardware requirements and …
Microsoftie's tell-all on 'rival-flinging' Ballmer: The politics of disbelief
Analysis Corporate cut-throats, bluster... but what about the tech?
A former Microsoft executive has sketched an unflattering portrait of Steve Ballmer that depicts him as a cut-throat Machiavellian schemer, and claimed in his new book that the top man at Redmond has forced out rivals who challenged his authority.
Joachim Kempin, a former head of Microsoft's OEM business, claims chief executive …
Beware the coming of the ROGUE CLOUDS, wails Symantec
Some of your firm's vital data is already on Dropbox
With one eye on Larry Ellison's Oracle in 2011 Salesforce chief Marc Benioff attacked “fake clouds” saying they aren’t the future.
Oracle - late to clouds - threatened to challenge Benioff’s message of using public clouds that house your data next to other customers' data in a secure, multi-tenant model with the idea of keeping …
Game over for Atari? One life left as biz files for bankruptcy protection
Hey, anybody got a quarter?
Atari Interactive Inc has sought protection from US creditors, 41 years after Nolan Bushnell’s gaming legend was born with Pong.
Atari has entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a provision in US law that’ll enable the struggling biz to operate and potentially restructure without those it owes calling in their debts.
The …
Mozilla picks JavaScript titan Eich to lead charge against 'Droid, iOS
Must race Ubuntu, Tizen and Sailfish onto the battlefield
JavaScript daddy and Mozilla chief technology officer Brendan Eich is taking over Firefox’s dive into mobile as the open-source shop hits an important juncture.
He’s taking over as Mozilla fights for the hearts and minds of devs who might once have defaulted to Firefox, but are now being dazzled with open-source choices.
As CTO …
LIVE TODAY: Windows 8 licensing - Speak your brains, believe your eyes
The fine print explained: today at 14:00 GMT, 9.00 Eastern, 6.00 PT
Taking a snow day today? You might want to join your fellow Reg readers in assessing what Windows 8 actually costs. We don’t mean in the sense of estimating the financial fallout of poor Q4 sales for Microsoft and the PC makers, but rather: what do you get for your money?
Putting Metro aside and forgetting the fact you must buy …
Google's JavaScript assassin: Web languages are harder than VMs
Dart daddy Lars Bak: JavaScript? I have no problem with it
The problem with programming languages is that everybody’s got an opinion - just ask Lars Bak, the Virtual Machine guru who is building Google’s planned (by Google at least) replacement for JavaScript.
Bak has spent 15 years working on object-oriented VMs (virtual machines) at Google and Sun Microsystems and notched up 50 …
Hey HP: You may not rate Autonomy, EDS, but buyers do
VCs are circling, true, but so are tech firms - reports
Potential buyers are probing Hewlett-Packard over EDS and Autonomy, according to reports.
Bloomberg reports that HP has received an “increase in enquiries” following a recent regulatory filing saying it would dispose of businesses that don’t meet goals.
The Wall St Journal says overtures have come mainly from other US tech …
Top Brit Penguins spurn London Stock Exchange for NYSE
Silicon Valley HQ to wag 50 per cent Blighty-based dog
Blighty-based open sourcer Alfresco is going public on the New York stock markets under a new, US-based chief executive.
The content management software vendor has named former SuccessFactors CEO Doug Dennerline its new chief with the goal of stewarding the company through a successful IPO and growth in the US, former CEO John …
Adobe's Flex grabs top project slot at Apache
Shrinking future ahoy
Adobe’s Flash-friendly Flex application development framework is now a grown-up Apache Software Foundation (ASF) project.
Flex has been granted Top-Level Project (TLP) status by the ASF open-source group, "signifying that the Project's community and products have been well-governed under the ASF's meritocratic process and …
Now Microsoft 'actively investigates' Surface slab jailbreak tool
'Appropriate action taken as necessary' against Windows RT hack
Microsoft is suddenly serious about tackling RT Jailbreak, a slick tool that unlocks Surface tablets using a hack publicised just days earlier.
A spokesperson for Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group, tasked with Windows security, told The Register that Redmond is “actively investigating” the RT Jailbreak Tool v1 cooked up …
New tool jailbreaks Microsoft Surface slabs in 20 SECONDS
Bam! Run any desktop app. Pow! Samsung kills Win 8 tab
Microsoft was quick to brush off the debugging hack that allows locked-down Windows RT Surface slabs to run any unauthorised desktop software. But now the exploit has been packaged into a slick jailbreaking tool that can unlock a Redmond fondleslab in seconds.
A programmer going by the name of Netham45 has released RT Jailbreak …
Fatty French Kilogram needs a new-year diet, say Brit boffins
Methanol, Soxhlet and an ozone detox is what's needed
The world's official kilogram has put on weight according to boffins who fear the mass needs a new-year diet.
Researchers at the University of Newcastle reckon the reference kilogram artefact, kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris and used to calibrate the world's weights, has put on less than …
Dell, Intel and pal pump $10m into OpenStack biz Mirantis
Chip titan and Chinese sugar daddy help bankroll PC giant's cloud dream
Michael Dell’s computer giant, Intel and WestSummit have joined forces to inject a new open-source cloud vendor with $10m so that the startup can develop and sell its delayed OpenStack public cloud.
The investment arms of the three tech giants - Dell Ventures, Intel Capital and China-based WestSummit Capital - awarded the cash …
Microsoft spin-out floats Azure for open-sourcers
All the Linux you want, as long as it's Ubuntu
A Microsoft spin-out is trying to tempt open-sourcers to its owner’s cloud with a catalogue of Azure-friendly open code.
Microsoft Open Technologies has announced VM Depot, a site it calls: “A community-driven catalog of preconfigured operating systems, applications, and development stacks that can easily be deployed on Windows …
Red Hat Linux: Now with Microsoft's Hyper-V drive
Menace of Umbongo, VM sees Hatters engage Redmond warp
Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5.9 has landed with some cloudy love from Microsoft.
The latest version of the Linux distro, released Tuesday, introduces drivers for Microsoft’s closed-source Hyper-V hypervisor rival to VMware’s vSphere.
The inclusion of Microsoft’s drivers means improved interoperability and manageability for RHEL …
Hey Lenovo, want to kill Apple? Look to Samsung hitman for tips
Analysis If it walks like a ThinkPad and quacks like a ThinkPad it's not an iPad
IBM's decision to sell its PC business to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo in 2004 seemed rather curious.
Yes, hardware wasn't quite as profitable as software or services, but this was years ahead of the recession, before the advent of the iPhone and iPad; sales of PCs were ticking along and the imperial success of the netbook was …
Windows RT jailbreak smash: Run ANY app on Surface slabs
No need for Microsoft's software store
The security mechanism preventing unauthorised software running on ARM-powered Windows RT tablets - such as Microsoft's Surface slabtops - can be easily defeated.
The Redmond giant wanted only cryptographically signed executables, ideally those obtained from the official Windows application store, to run on its hardware. But, we …
'SHUT THE F**K UP!' The moment Linus Torvalds ruined a dev's year
Top tip: Don't break users' apps
A Linux kernel developer found himself in a perfect storm of Linus Torvalds' sharp tongue and his intolerance for bad code.
Red Hat's Mauro Carvalho Chehab was told by Linux kernel chief Torvalds to "shut the f**k up" and fix his "approach to kernel programming" after Chehab passed off a bug in the kernel as something at fault …
Sinofsky's new blogski: Windows 8 king reborn as management guru
Ex-Microsoft exec knows all about 'bringing products to market'
What next for the technology executive who saddled his previous employer with a controversial flagship operating system, polarised management and swiftly left under a cloud? Telling others how to build successful products, of course.
Former Windows chief Steve Sinofsky has launched himself as a product development expert with a …
US military nails 'best ever' Microsoft deal, brags size does matter
'No one comes close to our scale'
US Department of Defense personnel will get their hands on Microsoft’s latest software in a deal officials claim is their best yet from Redmond.
The government department has signed a three-year enterprise licence agreement with Microsoft worth $617m, giving its two-million-plus civilian and military staff access to Windows 8, …
Open-source attack dog enters Ballmer's inner ring
Microsoft's Research chief steps aside before retirement
The head of Microsoft’s research has quietly stepped aside ahead of his retirement next year to join CEO Steve Ballmer's inner circle.
Craig Mundie, a 20-year Microsoft veteran, is now a senior advisor to Ballmer after six years as the company's chief research and strategy officer. Mundie took that role as Microsoft co-founder …
30 years ago, at flip of a switch, the internet as we know it WAS BORN
Analysis How TCP/IP nearly fell at the first hurdle
Thirty years ago this week the modern internet became operational as the US military flipped the switch on TCP/IP, but the move to the protocol stack was nearly killed at birth.
The deadline was 1 January, 1983: after this, any of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network's (ARPANET) 400 hosts that were still clinging to the …
HP itching to flog flaccid biz units: Are Autonomy, PSG in firing line?
Titan wants cash for dead men walking
Hewlett-Packard is considering selling or spinning out its weak business units but warned investors that any deals may not go smoothly.
The troubled tech titan stated in its latest paperwork filed to US financial regulator the SEC: “We continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer …
2012 in tech: Apple up the Cook without a paddle, ARM, slab wars... and MORE
Review of 2012 Navigate the year safely, without Google Maps
Great Britain reminded the world who invented the web at London 2012 Olympics, Apple cocked up its maps, Microsoft returned to hardware with Surface, we saw a rise of the machines on Wall Street and many of us rubbed our hands with glee as Facebook IPO's deflated. This was the last 12 months in technology. So put the in-laws on …
Outlook 2013 spurns your old Word and Excel documents
No love for legacy .doc and .xls files
Microsoft is cutting support for exporting and importing legacy Office documents in the latest version of its Outlook email client.
Outlook 2013 won’t let you import or export data to or from .doc or .xls files for Word 1997 to 2003 and Excel versions 1997 to 2003, the company has revealed in a blog.
Also getting canned are ACT …
Windows Firefox stiffs Adobe Flash, plays H.264 YouTube vids
Any HTML5 site using patent-heavy codec welcomed
Users of the Firefox web browser on Windows can now dump Adobe Flash and still watch H.264-encoded videos online.
Fresh overnight builds of Firefox 20 will now play footage found on HTML5 websites, such as YouTube and Vimeo, that use the patent-encumbered video codec - without the need for Adobe's oft-criticised plugin, which …
Boffins cook raw numbers, hope to bake PERFECT kilogram
Say watt? Pass the foil, my balances don't balance....
A “recipe” to deliver the perfect kilogram as a mass standard that the world can trust is coming closer to completion as the physicists behind the project bake their raw numbers.
International scientists met in late November and pushed forward a 21-page document that'll eventually instruct boffins responsible for managing …
Muppets launch app store guide for little fingers
Big Bird's tips: Less interactivity is more
App stores from Apple, Google and Microsoft are choked with hundreds of thousands of apps, with the most popular being free games.
The App Store debate is shaped by techies and entrepreneurial types. As such, it mostly breaks down into choice of technology - HTML5 versus native – and, for the VC types, finance - specifically how …
Bankrupt Kodak misses $2bn target, flogs imaging patents for $525m
Intellectual Ventures and RPX play hardball
Iconic camera-maker Eastman Kodak has reached an agreement to sell its portfolio of imaging patents for $525m.
Patent shop Intellectual Ventures is among the buyers, and together with RPX Corporation leads a consortium of 12 unnamed licensees to buy a portion of the patents.
IV, considered by critics to be a patent troll, is …
Samsung grabs 'World's biggest handset-maker' title off Nokia
'The coffee mugs too, mate. Hand 'em over...'
Nokia’s 14-year reign as world’s largest handset maker is finished. The Finnish mobile firm must now hand the crown to Samsung following the publication of preliminary market numbers.
Samsung will account for 29 per cent of worldwide cellphone shipments for the whole of 2012, putting it atop the global leader board, analyst IHS …
