US Senator introduces 'Patent Abuse Reduction Act'
Rackspace and industry groups like it, trolls maybe not so much
US Senator John Cornyn, who represents Texas, has introduced the “Patent Abuse Reduction Act of 2013”.
Cornyn says the Bill (PDF, brace for legalese) is intended to have the following effects:
“This bill would require plaintiffs to disclose the substance of their claim and reveal their identities when they file their lawsuit; …
'Catastrophic failure' of 3D-printed gun in Oz Police test
Panic on the streets of Sydney, as US says printed guns 'unstoppable'
The New South Wales Police Force, guardians of Australia's most-populous state, have gotten themselves into a panic over the Liberator, the 3D-printable pistol.
The Force's Commissioner Andrew Schipione today appeared at a press conference to denounce the Liberator and urge residents of the State not to download plans for the …
STROKE this mouse to make apps POP, says Microsoft
Windows 8 Start button comes to Redmond's rodents
Microsoft has unveiled two mice that for the first time pack a button that sends users straight to the Windows 8 Start screen, the unloved abode of The interface Formerly Known As Metro (TIFKAM).
The Sculpt Comfort Mouse and Sculpt Mobile Mouse are both unremarkable rodents, unless you get excited about wireless connections and …
Oz shared services collapse looks bad for NetApp
Central IT agency didn't deliver, likely to quit storage-as-a-service caper
Opponents of shared IT services in government have a new case study they point to, and NetApp's busy executives have another tricky item to consider after a major Australian shared services organisation failed.
That agency is CenITex, created in 2008 by the government of Australian state Victoria. CenITex's original vision …
Microsoft melds SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint
Local access still matters
Microsoft has released a new SkyDrive Pro client that offers users of Office 365 and SharePoint the chance to store files locally. The application is the heir to the My Site feature from previous incarnations of Office 365.
SkyDrive Pro has most of the the same functions as the consumer version of the service, which is one of …
Yahoo! Oz! PAYS! Punters! Pittance! To! Search!
Toolbar tie-up with supermarket yields 50 cents a month
Yahoo!'s Australian outpost, a joint venture with the Seven Television Network dubbed Yahoo!7, has teamed with a local supermarket chain in a scheme that pays punters to use its search engine.
The supermarket outfit is Coles, which has for years operated a loyalty scheme called Fly Buys that was doing Big Data before anyone had …
Fairphone goes on sale to all
The Android handset that's PC can be yours
When is a phone PC? When it's a Fairphone, the smartphone “that puts social values first” and has a rather politically-correct (PC) attitude.
The Android-powered mobe went on sale a couple of weeks ago to Fairphone's 17,000-odd email subscribers, around 2,000 of whom pledged €325 to acquire one of the handsets, which promise to …
Herschel Space Observatory spots galaxies merging
VIDEO A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away
The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory has beamed home pictures of two galaxies inexorably moving towards each other and boffins offered simulations of what happens next.
The galaxies concerned are known as HXMM01, the name given to a bright spot in the sky. Closer examination of HXMM01 tells us it is very old: …
WW II U-boat attacks prompt new US response
Rusting wrecks poised to pollute
May 1943 is held by many to have been the turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic.
“Black May”, as it has come to be known, saw 43 U-boats destroyed by allied forces. That number that reduced the size of the German submarine fleet to levels that meant later convoys stood a far better chance of successful Atlantic crossings. …
Anonymous threat shutters Gitmo WiFi
Legal black hole becomes internet black hole
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the enclave of Cuban territory leased by the US government, has switched off its WiFi service and cut access to social networks for fear of attack by Anonymous.
The hacktivist group recently set #OpGTMO in train, pledging to “shut down Guantanamo”.
That's probably not a reference to the whole of the …
Dev writes comments as limericks and other coding secrets
Coders confess their crimes, like the spam-bots they write in spare moments
An anonymous developer has admitted to writing comments in code as limericks.
The confession can be found at codingconfessional.com, a site devoted entirely to divulgements of developers' depravities.
Here, for example, is the limerick chap's work:
“I write most comments in limerick It makes all my coworkers sick My comments …
Opera rewrite comes to Android
Fat lady singing
Norway's gift to the world of technology, the Opera browser, is now available for Android in an entirely new version.
This cut of Opera for Android has been in beta for a while and has apparently done sufficiently well to be pushed out of the door and into the cold, hard world that is Google Play.
There it will find itself in …
Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report
Wyse up, suckers, could this be a new set-side-stick?
Dell's project Ophelia, an Android-PC-on-a-stick effort revealed at CES last January, is apparently set to debut in July.
PC World brings us news that Dell will bring the product to the world in a few short weeks at around $US100.
The idea behind the device is to offer user a very lightweight client device that users can chuck …
Azure hops into Australia
Redmond promises a 'major region' real soon now
Microsoft has announced "the planned expansion of a new Windows Azure major region for Australia"
Details are scanty: Redmond is saying only that the "Windows Azure major region in Australia will consist of two sub-regions located in New South Wales and Victoria. These two locations will be geo-redundant, offering our customers …
UTS Business School bakes SAP into courses
Standalone and Masters units at Oz uni get SAP's take on accounting
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is poised to offer courses in SAP.
The courses will be offered as either standalone subjects or as part of a Master of Business in Accounting. Bean-counting is the focus on the new courses, two of which are “foundation” level affairs consisting of a “Certificate 1 in Accounting with SAP …
Intel releases 'Beacon Mountain' Android-on-Atom dev tool
Indroid Inside
Indroid Inside Intel has released “Beacon Mountain” a development environment for Android apps on both its own Atom silicon and ARM chippery.
Beacon Mountain emerged over the weekend, promising “productivity-oriented design, coding, and debugging tools for apps targeting … smartphones and tablets.”
The software's in version 0.5 …
US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster
Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC
Boise University PhD candidate Joshua Kiepert has built a 32-way Beowulf cluster from Raspberry Pis.
Kiepert says his research focuses on “developing a novel data sharing system for wireless sensor networks to facilitate in-network collaborative processing of sensor data.” To study that field Kipert figured he would need a …
Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans
All your walk-through vid revenue are belong to us
Nintendo has contacted fans who post walk-through videos of its games to YouTube, claiming all revenue from their efforts.
Gamer Zack Scott brought the practice to light in a Facebook post. Scott is a member of Let's Play, a community in which folks post "videos in which the author records the complete gameplay of a video game, …
EMC vuln gives mere sysadmins the power of storage admins
Time to patch VNX and Celerra software before non-experts do something silly
EMC has warned a flaw in the Control Station software for its VNX and Celerra arrays could allow just about anyone logged into them to do just about anything.
EMC's described the fault as stemming from “Script files in affected products exist with ownership permissions for the nasadmin group account.”
The nasadmin group is …
Bureau of Stats releases educational SimClone game
Hey kids! Why bother with Minecraft when you could play an evidence-based policy sim?
Australia's Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released a game, Run That Town, that borrows heavily form SimCity to give players the chance to learn about the way statistics are used to shape policy.
The iOS-only game, offers the chance to pick an Australian postcode, then assume a quasi-mayoral role and juggle competing fiscal and …
US government wants security research on car-to-car nets
Car crashed? Have you topped up its anti-virus or turned it off and on again?
David Strickland, Administrator of the USA's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has told that nation's Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he plans to research the security requirements of automated cars and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) networks.
Strickland appeared before the …
Foxconn still flogging iWorkers, but more lightly
Fair Labor Association finds better safety, more loos, but also overwork
The Fair Labor Association's (FLA's) latest report on workers at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn, Apple's preferred source for many iThings, has found many staff are still working longer hours than is allowed under Chinese law.
The report (PDF) is based on audits of Foxconn plants in Guanlan, Longhua and Chengdu. The report was …
Yahoo! May! Buy! Tumblr! For! One! BEELLION! Bucks!
Hipster favourite could make Yahoo! cool again
Yahoo! has reportedly opened its chequebook, pencilled in nine zeroes with a one in front, and waved it around in the general direction of blogging site Tumblr.
Adweek says Yahoo! is willing to write the billion-dollar cheque because Tumblr is so cool it will excite advertisers.
The Wall Street Journal quotes Yahoo! officials …
Australia's net filter sneaks into operation through back door
Regulator's ban on dodgy shares site wipes out hundreds, exposes censorship mechanism
Australia's national internet filter has re-emerged as an incompetence-powered zombie, after the nation's corporate regulator mistakenly blocked access to hundreds of sites.
The regulator in question is the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which says its role is “ensuring that Australia’s financial …
Australian Gartner chap slams gov-funded IT education boost
IT is not a beautiful or unique snowflake and does not deserve help
Government spending to develop folks with the IT skills business wants is a waste of time and money, according to Gartner analyst Rolf Jester.
Australia-based Jester popped out a blog post carrying that opinion today, in response to the release of Australia's annual federal Budget.
The release of that document is always a cue …
Verizon starts selling VMware's split personality phones
Bring your own device provided it's one of these two Androids
VMware has notched up a significant achievement in its quest to reduce its dependence on server virtualisation - by striking a partnership with Verizon Enterprise that gives its BYOD-ware Horizon Suite a better chance of finding its way into users' hands.
VMware is mad for what it calls end-user computing, largely because growth …
Tech startups, Silicon Valley, not all they're cracked up to be
Business think tank finds $100m companies more likely to emerge in other places, sectors
Technology startups are not quite the growth engine they're assumed to be, according to a 30-year study by economic think-tank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The Kaufmann Foundation, to give the organisation its commonly-used short name, happily describes itself as “the world's largest foundation devoted to …
Bing uncloaks Klingon translator
'Dujeychugh jagh nIv yItuHQo', says Redmond to Google
Microsoft's ongoing efforts to top Google have seen it approach the final frontier, with a new service that translates written text from various terrestrial languages into the fictional language of Star Trek's Klingon race.
The translator service will also be available from Bing's Windows Phone app.
The introduction of the …
Australia's 2013/2014 budget full of sci/tech goodies
Cash for gamers, ERP reviews and nuclear waste handling
Australia's budget for 2013/2014 contains plenty of interest to the technology community.
One of the Budget's centrepieces is $AUD9.8 billion of funds, over six years, with the aim of ensuring “Australia to be placed in the top five countries internationally in reading, mathematics and science by 2025”. That investment in maths …
Budget could mean more paperwork for contractors
Sole traders may have to pay tax monthly, not quarterly
Australia's 2013/2014 budget could mean extra work for IT contractors.
Such workers are often considered “sole traders” or “independent contractors” for tax purposes and are currently required to submit quarterly payments for the goods and services tax (GST) and personal income tax. Australia has around 750,000 independent …
Torvalds unveils first Linux 3.10 release candidate
Download, then be nice to your mother, Linux Lord advises
The first release candidate for version 3.10 of the Linux Kernel is upon us.
Linus Torvalds released RC1 of the new kernel on the eve of Mother's Day (in North America and Australia), together with some advice on how to treat Mum/Mom right on the occasion.
“So this is the biggest -rc1 in the last several years (perhaps ever) at …
Drone to deliver beer-as-a-service
GPS-guided Octocopter to parachute cans into South African music festival
Organisers of South Africa's OppiKoppi Music Festival are promising attendees the chance to order a beer and have it parachuted out of a drone and into the campground.
The festival takes place from August 8th to 10th. The lineup is dominated by local acts and therefore doesn't look like it's worth booking a flight to South …
Amazon launches own currency
Web bazaar now 'coining it', for self and devs
Amazon.com has started printing its own money.
The company's effort, dubbed Amazon Coins, will be familiar to anyone that has acquired Microsoft Points or Nintendo Points, as the Coins require consumers to stump up real-world cash in return for a balance of online-only credit tied to a single store. Coins can be spent in Amazon' …
Google pools cloud storage
Limits to inbox size are no more
Google has changed its approach to cloud storage, with individuals and business users of its apps now offered a pool of storage rather than silos dedicated to different services.
Announced in an inevitable pair of blog posts, the Chocolate Factory is calling the new arrangement “unified storage”. Storage wonks wondering why …
Analysts brawl over 'death' of markup language
Help us out here – does XACML matter?
XACML doesn't exactly roll off the tongue or set hearts racing – El Reg has seen fit to mention it one whole time in our web history.
But the standard, which reached version 3.0 in January 2013 and is billed as an authentication-enabler “that describes both a policy language and an access control decision request/response …
Obama orders gov data must be 'open and machine-readable'
Get busy, US government IT folk, you've got six months to show progress
US President Barack Obama has issued an Executive Order, decreeing that “Government information shall be managed as an asset throughout its life cycle to promote interoperability and openness, and, wherever possible and legally permissible, to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, …
ZX Spectrum cassette player lost? There's an app for that
Retro gone screechingly mad
Those with a working ZX Spectrum in their cupboards but lacking a working cassette deck with which to load programs need fret no more: there's an app for that.
The app in question, Speccy Tape for iOS, allows users to access the World of Spectrum database of abandonware. Once loaded into an iOS device, it then plays back the …
AT&T drops Facebook phone to 99 cents
Home is where the apathy is as $99.99 price slashed by 99 per cent
Facebook's long game looks to be an attempt to create a shadow web by making the site a reasonable substitute for almost anything one does online.
Why wade through Reddit when your friends share content on Facebook? Or bother with Flickr or Picasa when Facebook will store your snaps? Messaging also happens quite happily within …
India joins list of nations vetting Huawei, ZTE
Report says new lab will test all “foreign” telecom kit
India has joined the list of countries concerned about allowing the installation of telecoms kit from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE.
The USA has banned the pair from winning contracts connecting phones from sea to shining sea, citing security concerns (although many feel its real worry is protecting local companies). …
Annular solar eclipse LIVE!
PICS 'N' VID The sun is a mass of incandescent gas and the moon's in the way
Today, folks living in remote parts of Australia's north and some Pacific islands will experience an annular eclipse, the type of eclipse just one grade below a total eclipse.
That means the sun will just remain visible as the moon passes between it and Earth.
The result will be a view of a “ring of fire” as Sol's hellish …
Melbourne IT admits hack, says 'twas but a flesh wound
Report says Oz outfit hacked to harm Twitter's DNS
Australian domain registrar Melbourne IT admits “an unauthorised third party” has attacked the company, but says the incident was minor.
Domain name registrars have been copping it of late, with name.com yesterday forced to reset its customers' passwords after an attack and Linode taking the same precaution in mid-April.
Online …
'No discernible increase in piracy' from DRM-free e-books
SciFi imprint Tor UK's verdict on a year without copy restrictions
A little over a year ago, Speculative Science Fiction publisher Tor decided to do away with digital rights management (DRM) for its e-books.
The company's publisher Tom Doherty said that the time that authors were supportive because DRM frustrates readers. “It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly …
TARDIS materialises in Sydney
Whovians rather less excitable than Apple fanbois as Who merch store opens
A bright, early, morning, a long line of fans queued outside a soon-to-open shop, and a Reg reporter.
No, dear readers, you haven't missed an iPhone release, but instead the public emergence of the Dr Who pop-up store, a merchandise outlet erected by the avaricious cunning folk at BBC Licensing, who've decided to give Australian …
'Ring of fire' eclipse to burn Australia
Tune in from 22:00 GMT May 9th for the non-Johnny-Cash-related cosmic action
Sol and Luna's eternal cosmic dance reaches one of its regular peaks tomorrow, when an annular eclipse will be visible from Australia, Papua New Guinea, and several small Pacific nations.
Annular eclipses are known as “ring of fire” eclipses, because while the sun and moon line up Luna appears smaller than the sun, leaving a …
BitTorrent goes straight (to email hell) with 'Bundles'
New format marries web apps with torrents
BitTorren's ongoing efforts to convince the world it's not just a tool for evil have produced “Bundles”, a “new type of torrent file where fan interaction, like email collection or donation, happens inside the torrent.”
BitTorrent says Bundles can make “every single piece of content could function as a flyer, and a standalone …
Oz chap blows his own Google Glass
'FLASS' uses Android, Bluetooth, tiny screen pinched from video goggles
A 20 year old Australian tech support chap named Nathan Myers has built his own version of Google Glass.
Dubbed “FLASS”, a contraction of “fake Google Glass”, the device uses a screen pinched from a MyVu Crystal 701, a short-lived late noughties gadget that tried to convince the world to watch video in a pair of glasses whose …
FTTN cabinet survives Kiwi car crash
Update Malcolm Turnbull's FTTN NBN plan now proven to be physically robust
Maclolm Turnbull will be smiling today. The communications spokesperson for Australia's opposition recently advanced a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) plan for the nation's multi-billion National Broadband Network. That plan calls for tens of thousands of roadside cabinets to be constructed as the node to which fibre connects, before …
Windows Blue preview to land at end of June
Redmond also plans Android access to Office WebApps
Start-button refugees wandering through the wasteland of Windows 8 trying to find a way to open an application can circle June 24th in their calendars, after Microsoft let it be known that a “public preview” of Windows Blue will emerge at the end of June.
Microsoft's leaking hints that Blue will bring back the Start button, but …
Don't bake your Raspberry Pi - now you can WATER COOL it
Pic Brit's compressed cooler for turbo-charged micro PCs
The Raspberry Pi is supposed to help teach kids how to code, but one Londoner has used it to learn how to fabricate a water-cooling rig, after building a liquid-filled radiator to cool his Pi.
Does a Pi need water cooling? The device can certainly be overclocked, and its designers, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, last year added a …
BMC successfully sells self
Private equity mob shells out $US6.9bn for management software outfit
Enterprise software company BMC has agreed to be acquired by a troika of private equity companies, who will hand over $US46.25 of cash for each outstanding share in the company.
$6.9bn will therefore change hands to make the company the joint property of Bain Capital, Golden Gate Capital, GIC Special Investments and Insight …
