NetApp's Tour de France quest falls flat
Who wants to be cycling's 'secret sauce' anyway?
When big vendors take on major sporting sponsorships, the first thing that usually happens is lots of shiny happy marketing material about just how the vendor's technology will propel athletes to success.
So when NetApp in 2012 threw its name, technology and cash behind German cycling team Endura the group at the centre of the …
New NASA rover lands in frigid alien hell tomorrow
Welcome to Greenland, GROVER
NASA's newest rover, the Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research (GROVER), tomorrow (May 3rd) starts operations in a frigid alien hell with a climate utterly inimical to human life: the ice sheets of Greenland.
GROVER follows familiar design specs: NASA describes it as “tank-like”, an apt choice of words …
Oracle reveals secret recipe for free DIY storage cloud
How far will the virtual ZFS fun scale?
World+dog may be busy preparing Dropbox clones, but Oracle seems to think a better idea is to build your own domestic cloud storage rig and has therefore published a recipe for doing so.
Naturally the recipe includes lots of Oracle products – VirtualBox, Solaris 11.1 and ZFS are all required - but non-Oracle open source kit also …
Oz volcano's lava lake spills from crater
Steamed walrus, anyone?
Australia's only active volcano is rumbling fiercely, with new NASA photos revealing its lava lake has overflowed its crater.
The volcano in question, Big Ben, is happily located on Mawson Peak in the remote southern reaches of the Indian Ocean on Heard Island, an Australian territory. People only bother to visit Heard and its …
Apple to end support for original iPhone: report
RIP iPhone One, 2007-2013
Support for Apple's original iPhone will end on June 11, according to a report from 9 to 5 Mac which got its hands on an advisory (JPG) sent to Apple shops advising of products the fruity company will no longer support.
Announced in early 2007 and then released in June of that year, the first iPhone's breakthrough feature …
Pirates scoff at games dev sim's in-game piracy lesson
Dev seeds cracked version of 'Game Dev Tycoon', watches as Pirates run rampant
Australian games developer Greenheart Games has released a cracked version of its own product – a games business simulation called “Game Dev Tycoon” – as an experiment in education of pirates and their reaction to a game that tells them their software-pinching ways are evil.
The startup outfit detailed its exploits here, …
Pivotal a 'cult' led by charismatic visionaries
Asian head says talks already under way with VCE
Pivotal, the EMC-and-VMware spinout, is no ordinary company but is instead akin to a “cult”, according to Melissa Ries, the company's general manager for Asia Pacific and Japan.
Ries' domain covers nations including Australia, India and Taiwan and about 15 per cent of the company's 1250 staff. Most are in pre-sales, sales or …
Google Now lands on iOS
Siri: What's it like to have competition in your backyard?
Google has released its signature search app, Google Now, on Apple's iOS.
Google's search apps have been on iOS for years and have included voice search for quite some time. The new release is notable inasmuch as it brings some of Google's more advanced search services that resemble, challenge or surpass Apple's own voice-driven …
Harassed Oracle worker to appeal costs, damages decisions
Lawyers 'incredibly supportive concerning my legal fees'
The case of Australian Rebecca Richardson, the former Oracle employee who won an $18,000 settlement after being sexually harassed by a colleague, will return to court in an attempt to overturn a decision that Richardson must pay some of her harasser's costs. The appeal will also seek a new damages award.
As we have reported …
Pirate Party wins seats in Icelandic election
Three MPs to free MP3s
Not content with serving as a catalyst for the global financial crisis, Iceland has elected three members of the Pirate Party to its national Parliament.
Iceland's Alþingi (“Althing” in English) is a single-chambered parliament that has met since the tenth century and says it is the world's oldest such legislature. The nation is …
Apple to stage 'Tech Talks' roadshow
WWDC refugees will be served locally
After selling out its worldwide developer conference (WWDC) at a speed usually reserved for hit counters on Psy videos, Apple has hinted that those who want to get up close and technical with it will soon be served locally.
We're working on the basis of the tiniest of hints here, as the company has issued a statement about the …
The NBN questions Malcolm Turnbull won't answer
How you gonna call?
In the nearly three weeks since Australia's opposition parties released their policy for a faster-and-cheaper-to-implement national broadband network (NBN) reliant on VDSL to bring 50Mbps connections to most homes and businesses, oceans of digital ink have been spilled analysing the plan.
We've been trying to add to them in …
Pirate Bay docks in Iceland
Low odds on legal whack-a-mole resuming in Reykjavik real soon now
The Pirate Bay has found a new home in Iceland.
The tectonically-challenged nation has network information centre, ISNIC, which tends the .IS domain and also performs other unglamorous work necessary to keep bits flowing around the country.
TorrentFreak reports that ISNIC does not concern itself with the activities of those who …
Avoid nasty plugins with this extension, says Google
Boost to cloudy collaborators offers chaste hugs for Office
Google's ongoing attempts to harry Microsoft by nipping at the heels of the cash cow that is Office have thrown up some new irritants, and a new definition of "additional software".
Chrome Office Viewer is one of the ad giant's new tricks and allows those who use Beta versions of Chrome to open Microsoft Office documents …
NetApp taps Oz cloud lab for federation exploration
University of Melbourne's Cloud Lab cooks up SLAs for ops in multiple public clouds
NetApp has approached the University of Melbourne's Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory, seeking collaboration around the Labs' research specialties in federated public clouds.
The Reg has learned that senior NetApp employees from outside Australia visited the Lab last February. Now the Lab's Director, …
Galaxy S4 radiant, but has black holes
First Look Samsung's new flagship does a lot very well and tries hard at everything
Samsung's Galaxy S4 is as wonderfully polished as you would expect from the Korean manufacturer's latest flagship, but the software the company says turns it into a “life companion” will be an acquired taste for many.
Samsung yesterday officially launched the S4 for Australians at a lavish event staged at Sydney's Opera House. …
BitTorrent offers file synch tool for PCs and NAS
Peer-to-peer file sharing for backup and collaboration … honestly
BitTorrent has opened the Alpha testing program for its new BitTorrent Sync tool to all.
Announced last January but only available to a select few, BitTorrent Sync looks a bit like the numerous DropBox-without-the-cloud-in-the-middle contenders inasmuch as it lets you set up a source of data, then involve trusted third parties …
AWS says private clouds are vaporware
Veep flings darts at VMware, Windows Server, et al
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Adam Selipsky has told an event in Sydney, Australia, that private clouds aren't really clouds.
There's an element of “of course he would say that, wouldn't he” about Selipsky's remarks, which were made at an AWS Summit at which he preached to the choir by reciting AWS' well-worn mantra about low …
Nudge nudge, wink wink interface may drive Google Glass
Two-finger salutes also come in handy, as may patent lawyers
The user interface for Google's forthcoming tech specs, aka Google Glass, may feature a two-fingered salute and a wink.
The source for this supposition is a Redditor by the name of Fodawim who says he or she has peered into the code of the Google Glass companion app and found the following text:
"BROWSER_TWO_FINGER_ZOOM"
" …
Lenovo's mobile push stalls in China
Samsung steamrolls everyone, including Apple and Gartner
Lenovo's emergence as a smartphone player has stalled in China, where Samsung is eating everyone else alive, as indeed it is also doing around the world.
Lenovo last year entered the burgeoning Chinese smartphone market with Android-powered budget models priced at under $US200, the sweet spot for smartphones in the Middle …
New poll says Assange could win Australian Senate seat
26 per cent of Aussies “likely” to vote for Leaker-In-Chief
Julian Assange's bid for a seat in Australia's Senate may not be just a stunt, with a new poll revealing 26 per cent of Australians consider themselves “likely” to vote for the Leaker-In-Chief.
Assange has repeatedly announced his candidacy for a seat in the Senate, the upper chamber of Australia's national Parliament which …
Harassed Oracle employee wins case, cops huge legal bill
'A very high price to pay for her victory' says Judge
Rebecca Richardson, the former Oracle employee who recently won a case against the company over sexual harassment committed by a former colleague, found out late last week that it was a pyrrhic victory after being hit with a monster legal bill.
Richardson's case against Oracle, which was liable for the actions of a harassing …
DDOS strikes BitCoin exchange Mt.Gox
Virtual currency in real trouble
Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox has been attacked and its servers briefly taken offline.
The service confirmed the attack at 2:00 AM Japan time on April 22nd, posting a tweet to warn users of the outage.
UPDATE: This again appears to be another strong DDos attack. We are working hard to overcome it and will update... fb.me/14J8rINhm …
787 battery fix approved
Plastic planes still grounded as operators await repair manuals
Boeing's beleaguered 787 is a little closer to flying again after the USA's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). approved the plane-makers new battery system plans.
The 787 was grounded earlier this year after battery packs on two craft overheated and produced lots of smoke.
Boeing revealed the details of the two incidents …
Report: Apple returned 8M shoddy iPhones to Foxconn
Manufacturer feeling financial pain after botching a batch
Foxconn has apparently botched a batch of iPhones, which Apple returned to the contract manufacturer because they were not fit for sale.
Details of just what went wrong are sketchy, as the source for this tale is an anonymous Foxconn staffer chatting to China Business. That report, after being forced through a couple of …
Move over, Mythbusters: Was Archimedes an ancient STEVE JOBS?
Happy 2,300th, old man... Beware of turtleneck-wearing Greeks?
Happy birthday Archimedes! The Syracusan mathematician, engineer and philosopher came into the world in 287BC. We don't know the exact date of his birth 2,300 years ago, but an appreciation of the twenty-third centenary of his birth seems apt.
An engraving from 1824 edition of Mechanics Magazine. Source:Wikimedia (public domain …
Handwriting beats PowerPoint's teaching power says MIT boffin
To make a point online, do it with a pen
Remember that feeling of struggling to stay awake during university lectures? And not just because of the previous night's imbibing?
The same problem affects students in massive online open courses (MOOCs), the free university courses now offered by reputable institutions around the world.
Anant Agarwal, a professor of …
Oz regulator “welcomes” debate on limiting net neutrality
ACCC Chairman likes the idea of ISPs charging by time of day and quality of service
The head of Australia's telecommunications regulator, the Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), has signalled he's open to new debate about network access regimes that back away from complete net neutrality.
Speaking at a Brisbane event hosted by Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, ACCC Chairman Rod Sims noted that “ …
... time machine. Iranian Dr Who claims he invented a ...
State media pulls report on PC-sized box with powers to see the future
Not content with letting North Korea get all the “we're sooooo bad” headlines this week, fellow rogue nation Iran has let it be known one of its resident boffins has invented a time machine. And then deleted the story in state-run media that brought the world news of the gadget.
The “time machine” in question wasn't of the “ …
IBM Australia on the stand over $1bn blowout
Inquiry asks why ex-IBMer wanted Big Blue in the race for payroll system
In 2007 the Australian State of Queensland decided it needed shared services arrangements to streamline its affairs and reduce costs.
One shared service was a new payroll system that would be used, in part, by the State's health department. IBM won a deal to do the job for an initial payment of $AUD6.19m. But by the time the …
StreetView spots possible roadside nookie down under
NSFWish A boy, a girl, Google, suspiciously-placed pants and a national highway
Google's privacy-invading StreetView machines may have captured their most embarassing moment yet, after images of what looks an awful lot like a couple indulging in some horizontal folk dancing on the hood of a car emerged on Reddit.
The photograph was taken here, on the Dukes Highway in the Australian State of South Australia …
Oracle embraces NetApp and Cisco's FlexPod
Oracle virtualisation, Linux and apps coming to rivals' stack-in-a-box
A couple of weeks back, Gartner told The Reg that Oracle has more room for growth in virtualisation than just about any other player, perhaps including Microsoft.
That prediction looks a little sounder today, after LarryLand let it be known it has teamed up with NetApp to create an Oracle-centric of the storage vendor's FlexPods …
Australia's alternative NBN plan: some taxpayer-friendly questions
Puncturing political promises with practicalities
Last Tuesday, Australia's coalition announced its alternative national broadband network (NBN) plan, offering fibre to the node as the dominant mode of delivery.
The plan appears comprehensive, but like any such document, it doesn't answer every conceivable question.
With an election fewer than six months away, El Reg's Sydney …
Mali to give away .ML domains for free
Gormless circumlunar HTML slumlord primly gimlets bottomless hamlet
African nation Mali will give away domains in its .ML digital demesne for nothing.
The giveaway starts in May, when Freedom Registry will open the floodgates, a term we use because “There will be no restrictions to registrations of free domains and anyone can claim its own .ML domain,” according to Freedom Registry's press …
Free online Uni courses pressure vendors to drop training costs
Cisco man says certification courses and content may be gratis, exams won't
The popularity of massive online open courses (MOOCs) could significantly disrupt vendors' certification models, to the point at which it is no longer possible to charge for education.
Several speakers at an event titled “The Future of Higher Education and Skills Training” in Sydney, Australia, today, pointed to the …
Boffins say flash disk demands new RAID designs
Wear-levelling levels out
Solid state disks (SSDs) are wonderfully fast, but every time you write to them, the semiconductors involved degrade just a little, a property that means you swap them into established storage rigs at your peril.
That's the conclusion of a new paper, “Stochastic Analysis on RAID Reliability for Solid-State Drives” from a pair of …
Intel doubles Thunderbolt speed to 20Gbps
Will anyone other than Apple care?
Intel's speedy but seldom-used networking standard Thunderbolt will double in speed to 20Gbps by year's end.
Revealed at the NAB show, an event for broadcasting and content creation types, Intel said the next generation “Falcon Ridge” Thunderbolt controller will run at 20Gbps and “Supports 4K video file transfer and display …
Australia's coalition reveals bits of broadband plan
Turnbull as fiscal conservatism beats Turnbull as philosopher prince
Australia's shadow communications Malcolm Turnbull releases an alternative plan for the nation's national broadband network (NBN) today, an important moment in the network's evolution given the coalition Turnbull represents is likely to win government in September.
IT media haven't been told where or when, in what seems to be …
Oracle reveals strategy for internet of things
Java on the edge, middleware shakes hands with Exadata … and the lights go on
Oracle has clambered aboard the bandwagon for the internet of things, outlining a strategy for handling the torrents of data the company assumes will shortly flow from myriad smart-ish devices on the network's edge.
The strategy was outlined last week at the Mobile IT Summit, where Oracle's Peter Utzschneider, a product …
Windows XP support ends a year from … now!
Official support ends April 7th, 2014, zombie support available at huge price
Windows XP, we hardly knew ye! Yet by this time next year, the adolescent operating system will be headed for the big Recycle Bin in the sky, thanks to Microsoft's planned obsolescence policy and the inevitable march of progress.
Introduced in 2001, XP was a big hit. But Microsoft will end support for XP on April 7th, 2014. That …
NASA rules out leading new human lunar expedition
Asteroids, Mars, take priority
NASA isn't interested in leading any new human expeditions to the Moon - but the space agency may help other nations put boots on Luna under the right circumstances.
The news of the NASA's, and therefore the USA's, disinterest in new human-crewed Lunar expeditions comes from spacepolitics.com, whose staff last week reported on …
Australia IS NOT educating more personal trainers than IT pros
Mythbusting Real data shows more people study IT than The Biggest Loser
A little over a month ago, Nigel Dalton, CIO at the REA Group and blogger, popped out a post titled “Australia is training more personal trainers than IT professionals – really?”
That blog post has since been reported by another IT news outlet.
There’s nothing wrong with basing a news story on a blog post. Except when the post …
Australian Feds charge 17-year-old 'Anon' with four crimes
Ten years in chokey on the cards for defacement and intrusions
Australia's Federal Police (AFP) has announced a 17-year-old has been charged for alleged crimes undertaken in the name of Anonymous.
The AFP has issued a statement about the arrest, but won't say anything else on the matter.
The statement “A 17-year-old youth appeared in Parramatta Children's Court on Friday (5 April 2013) to …
Aussie AI boffins let fly with Angry Birds automation code
See pigs squashed by scrolling code
Java code used in last year's Angry Birds artificial intelligence competition has been released into the wild.
The Australian National University's Artificial Intelligence Group last year decided the game would be a fine way of testing just how brainy artificial intelligences have become, because as anyone who's played the game …
OLPC shuns Indian founder after anti-tablet screed
That guy who thinks cheap student tablets are bad idea? He don't work here no more
The One Laptop Per Child Association has posted a statement distancing itself from Satish Jha, an entrepreneur who founded the Association in India.
The Association's beef with Mr Jha relates to what it describes as “certain recent statements”.
It seems highly likely this piece about India's Aakash project, which aimed to give …
'Pong' ported to 29-storey skyscraper 'screen'
Game on at Philadelphia's Cira Center
Seventies gaming classic 'Pong' will reach a hitherto undreamed of scale later in April, when a version of the game is launched for play on lights adorning a skyscraper.
The building in question is Philadelphia's Cira Center, a 29-storey edifice opened in 2006. The building features a programmable array of 1500 light emitting …
NORKS closes South-Korea-run industrial enclave
Tension is no threat to tech supply chain, says international business boffin
North Korea has cut off access to the Kaesŏng Industrial Park, a manufacturing precinct on North Korean soil that is run by South Korean companies.
Kaesŏng opened in 2004 and has since become home to several South Korean technology manufacturers, although big names have stayed away due to the Park's precarious position ten …
‘Unstoppable WEEE Tsunami’ staunched by PPP plan
Governments, ITU, want to transform waste electrical and electronic equipment
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and several Central American Governments have decided waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is both a threat to and an opportunity for the region.
A dictionary’s worth of lengthily-be-acronymed groups convened for the ITU/United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) …
Boffins shine new light on dark matter
Giant magnet in space shows 'existence of new physical phenomena'
The LHC may have found the Higgs Boson, but overarching theories of everything have another hole: the observable universe weighs rather less than it ought if all those equations – and all the galaxies - are to hang together.
The inconvenient absence of so much matter gave rise to a theory that all the energy and matter needed to …
Swedish judge explains big obstacles to US Assange extradition
Wikileaker's bizarre bonking behaviour revealed, along with likely legal escapes
A senior judge from Sweden’s supreme court, Justice Stefan Lindskog, has told an Australian audience that Julian Assange’s argument he cannot stand trial in Sweden without being extradited to the USA is not as black and white as the wikileaker would have us believe.
Lindskog yesterday told an audience at the University of …
