Chasing pack about to sink teeth into Amazon's AWS, says Gartner
Amazon Web Services' position as the leading infrastructure-as-a-service provider is under threat, as competitors target markets the organisation has to date ignored, according to Gartner research veep Lydia Leong.
Leong's expressed her opinion in a double-barrelled blog post, the first instalment of which says the source of AWS …
Storm slings water to Saturn's surface
Water has been spotted on Saturn for the first time.
Astroboffins believe that gas giants comprise layers of different substances, including water, but lacked substantial evidence to support that theory.
A colossal storm that hit Saturn's northern hemisphere back in 2010 has helped them out, because the Cassini probe was close …
Chrome turns five, gains new 'desktop apps'
Google's Chrome browser has turned five, and the Chocolate Factory has given it and us the mutant offspring of site-specific browsers as a present.
Chrome's 2008 launch was marked by the publication of a comic book penned by comics deconstructor extraordinaire Scott McCloud. At the time of launch world+dog was fascinated by the …
Oz government-in-waiting releases new online child protection policy
Australia's Liberal/National coalition, the right-of-centre political bloc likely to take power after Saturday's general election, has released its second "Policy to Enhance Online Safety for Children" in 24 hours, and this time it has omitted a proposed national smut filter that would have applied to every new mobile phone and …
Australia's anti-smut internet filter blueprint lasts LESS THAN A DAY
Australia goes to the polls on Saturday to elect a new national government - but the likely winners of the election have just suffered an embarrassing reversal after a day during which they proposed, then withdrew, a plan for a national anti-smut internet filter.
The proposal was contained in a policy document published today, …
VMware's latest trick: Virtual gyroscopes and compasses
File this one in the folder you use to contemplate the mysteries of marketing, because just a week after schlepping around 20,000 people to San Francisco and bundling them all into a room to hear about its latest and greatest wares, VMware has released three new products.
The three are the garden variety and professional cut of …
Australia's opposition cuts funds to IT research outfit
National ICT Australia (NICTA), the IT research organisation established by a Liberal/National coalition government in 2002 may not survive the next government of that political persuasion, after the body that funds it was earmarked to have its funding cut.
Australia goes to the polls on Saturday, with the right-leaning Liberal/ …
Bulging racks top of mind for Dell's new switch
Dell's march into every corner of the data centre continues, with the company revealing a new switch that plays nicely with the NSX software-defined networking software VMware revealed last week.
The switch is the S6000, which Dell's director of networking sales for Australian and New Zealand Vijay Valayatham said is designed as …
Qualcomm reveals 'Toq' smartwatch
Qualcomm has become the latest gadget manufacturer to decide a smartwatch is a jolly good idea, revealing the “Toq” to world+dog today.
The company says the name “Toq” is not supposed to the distinctive sound of a mechanical watch's gears moving, but is instead a riff on “talk”.
Just why is hard to say. Qualcomm's canned …
Apple throwing separate Chinese iPhone event
Chinese press have received an invitation to an Apple event, in Beijing, to take place just hours after the fruity phone factory does its usual thing in Cupertino.
Local news outlet Sina brought the world the news , and the image below that apparently translates as a promise of a “dazzling” day for China.
The event will take …
Microsoft gives TechNet a one-off reprieve
Microsoft has decided to extend the life of its TechNet service for 90 days, but will still kill the popular service and suggest subscribers migrate to the more expensive MSDN.
Microsoft has let subscribers know of the extension in an update to its Subscriptions page for the service.
The offer's only open to “customers whose …
VMware plans courseware on smartmobes for Asian sysadmins
VMware is working on courseware designed to download to and run on mobile phones, as a way of ensuring sysadmins in developing nations can get their hands on the knowledge they need to build virtualised data centres without having to acquire a ruinously expensive PC or leave the bandwidth-poor communities in which they live. …
ICANN destroys Google's dotless domain dream
Google's dream of “dotless domains”, already on the receiving end of a firm ”no” from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), has been killed off by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Dotless domains would allow web addresses like “http://search”, but would be tricky to implement without DNS jiggery …
Microsoft's Nokia plan: WHACK APPLE AND GOOGLE
Microsoft has posted the presentation it's used to explain its decision to acquire Nokia's mobile phone business and it reveals the key reason for the acquisition: hitting back at Apple and Google.
The presentation is available as a PDF or a slow HTML slideshow here and gets interesting at slide 15, depicted below.
Slide 15 in …
Returning Acronis CEO plans Parallels universe
Returned Acronis CEO Serguei Beloussov has extended his planned tenure at the company, in part to ensure it melds technologies from virtualisation player Parallels to create a backup-as-a-service product.
Beloussov founded both Acronis and Parallels, left both to pursue other interests including a pair of venture capital funds, …
Science fiction titan Frederik Pohl dies, aged 93
Science fiction Grand Master Frederik Pohl has died, aged 93.
Pohl was one of last survivors of Science Fiction's “golden age” of the late 1930s and early 1940s, a time when he contributed to and edited pulp fiction magazines. He was also an important figure in the emergence of fandom, founding the “Futurians”.
A contemporary …
Redmond's certification chief explains death of MCM and MCA
Microsoft's late Friday afternoon decision to ”retire” some of its highest-end certifications has been explained by the chap who made the decision to do so.
News of the certifications cancellation has enraged those who hold or were studying for the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM), Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MCSM), …
Google chap reverse engineers Sinclair Scientific Calculator
A Google employee named Ken Shirriff has delved into computing history by reverse-engineering the code running Sinclair Radionics' 1974 scientific calculator.
Shirriff's story of the calculator's genesis notes that in the early 1970s a scientific calculator was an expensive and extraordinary tool for which the likes of HP could …
Australian coalition promises digital pigeonhole for all
Australian coalition promises digital pigeonhole for all Policy document outlines procurement, industry assistance plans Australia's government-in-waiting opposition parties have released their “Policy for E-Government and the Digital Economy”.
Available here as a PDF, the policy offers the following four “policy measures”: …
Microsoft cans three 'pinnacle' certifications, sparking user fury
Microsoft has again enraged some of its most committed users, by “retiring” the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM), Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MCSM), and Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) certifications. The decision comes just weeks after Microsoft closed its TechNet service, angering users forced into more expensive …
Private UK torrent site closes, citing 'hostile climate'
British private BitTorrent site thebox.bz has decided to close its doors.
The site specialised in television shows from the United Kingdom and advises it will disappear as of September first, with the following message to members posted to numerous torrenting fora:
“It is with great sadness that we must announce the closure of …
Microsoft fattens Exchange Online mailboxes to 50GB
Microsoft's Exchange Online service now comes with bigger mailboxes.
Redmond has let it be known that henceforth Exchange Online mailboxes will offer 50 gigabytes of capacity, up from 25. Kiosk mailboxes go from one to two gigabytes. Shared mailboxes and those for Resources now have 10GB to play with, more than twice their …
BYOD is boring - how about working on a games console instead?
Some grumble that the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept deserves to be called Spend Your Own Money in recognition of the cost of providing a computer hitting workers' hip pockets instead of employers'.
Such grumbles may be less sustainable now that NVIDIA's $US299 SHIELD portable gaming console can run Windows applications. …
Apple tries to trademark the term 'startup'
Apple is attempting to gain a trademark on the word "startup", and may gain exclusive use of the word in Australia next week.
Apple has also applied for a trademark on "startup" in the USA, but the Australian application offers lots more detail.
The Australian page, hosted by the nation's overseer of patents and trademarks IP …
VMware CEO Gelsinger: How we'll beat Amazon Web Services
VMware is at a crossroads.
Few doubt the benefits it has brought to the data centre, or even to smaller organisations who appreciate how virtualisation helps to simplify operations of a more modest server fleet.
But the technology world is also fascinated by the public cloud, which offers fast and cheap access to servers on …
Boffins' keyboard ELECTROCUTES Facebook addicts
Cunning MIT student boffins have come up with something marvellous: a keyboard that sends a jolt of electricity into those who spend too much time on Facebook.
The Pavlov Poke is the brainchild of MIT PhD candidates Robert R. Morris and Daniel McDuff, who are trying to complete their dissertations but find obsessive Facebook is …
Another big SAP project hits the rocks in Oz
Fujitsu has become the latest service provider to be associated with a failed SAP project in Australia, after a project it led saw the buyer underwhelmed despite going over time and over budget.
The project in question was an asset management system for the government of Australia's Northern Territory. The Territory is huge – …
Telstra in VMware's sights for hybrid cloud delivery
VMware will approach existing members of its VMware Service Providers Program (VSPP) as it extends its vCloud Hybrid Service (VCHS), CEO Pat Gelsinger said today. And in Australia that means Telstra is likely to receive an invitation to get into the VMware hybrid cloud business.
Speaking exclusively to The Register at the …
Snowden is great news for hybrid cloud says VMware
Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of the online snoopery in the US are good for business, say VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and COO Carl Eschenbach.
Speaking today at VMWorld 2013 the, pair were asked if Snowden's leaks are changing customers' attitudes to public clouds. Both answered in the affirmative.
“We have clearly …
Apple's Siri 'hurls insults' at Google Glass
Apple's oft-ridiculed virtual assistant Siri is saying apparently saying nasty things about Google's Glass tech specs.
Twitter user @seambrage noted the response depicted below when he invoked Siri and said “Okay Glass”, the phrase used to ready the tech specs for action.
Siri trash talking Google Glass. Love it. pic.twitter. …
Marc Andreessen, Pat Gelsinger in verbal VMworld brawl
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and graphical-browser-inventor-turned-venture-capitalist Marc Andreessen have engaged in a feisty debate at Vmworld 2013, during which the pair clashed on a number of topics.
Speaking in a session titled “The Data Center is Dead, Long Live the Data Center”, Andreessen asserted that no-one in their right …
VMware teams with Savvis to expand vCloud footprint
VMware has struck a new partnership with Savvis that looks as if it will bring the virty giant's hybrid cloud to nations beyond the USA.
News of the relationship was revealed during the VMworld 2013 keynote, when VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger announced that VMware's hybrid cloud is officially open for business. Senior veep and …
HP to offer SAP's HANA-as-a-service
HP has announced it will offer SAP's in-memory database HANA in as-a-service mode, an offering The Reg revealed was under discussion back in March 2013.
Details of just what is on offer are sketchy for now. HP has not made a price list available, saying only “Pricing will vary according to client need.” Nor has the company …
Google testing 'Helpouts' video support service
Google has started testing “Helpouts”, a new service that it says is “a new way to connect people who need help with people who can give help, over live video, anytime, anywhere.”
The Chocolate Factory's public Helpouts sub-site doesn't offer a lot of data, but the support section does, suggesting it will be possible to make …
Delta Air Lines makes mass Windows Phone 8, Lumia 820 buy
Microsoft finally has something it must have craved for ages: a colossal, enterprise user of its Windows Phone platform, with a super-recognisable brand to boot. But the announcement about the buy uses the most optimistic number possible to describe the sale.
The buyer is Delta Air Lines, which has let it be known that as August …
ASIO seeks new hires for telecoms interception teams
Australia's security intelligence organisation (ASIO) is hiring a clutch of telecoms intelligence staff.
The agency is after a new “Assistant Director Telecommunications Interception” , a pair of ”Telecommunications Investigations Officers (we've linked to the better-paid of the two positions) and also a “Telecommunications …
Bulgarian bloke blabs LG's smart watch plan
Korea's other giant electronics manufacturer, LG, has let slip that it too plans a smart watch, if Bulgarian outlet Dnenvnik Is to be trusted.
Dnenvnik this week carried an interview with Dimitar Vulev, manager for mobile communications products at LG's Bulgarian outpost.
The interview meanders towards the topic of smart …
Space-walker nearly OPENED HELMET to avoid DROWNING
Back in July, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano went for a spacewalk from the International Space Station.
The sortie broke a record for the shortest spacewalk of all time because his helmet filled with water, leading to a swift termination lest he suffer the bizarre fate of drowning in space.
Parmitano's now blogged details of …
Intel bakes super-snooper to stop industrial espionage
Intel has created a Hadoop-based rig that analyses just about every network event in the company – four to six billion of them on business days - in close to real time so it can spot threats including industrial espionage.
Intel officials declined to name the tool, saying it would not be "productive" to disclose its name, but …
Intel adds Lustre support to Hadoop
World+dog agrees that Hadoop is a very fine tool with which to tackle map reduce chores, but the software has a couple of constraints, especially its reliance on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
There's nothing wrong with HDFS, but its integration with Hadoop means the software needs a dedicated cluster of computers on …
Rackspace to fire up VMware hybrid cloud
VMware's world has just become a little more complicated, after Rackspace announced it now offers “Dedicated VMware vCenter Servers”.
Rackspace's new service will allow VMware users to “migrate existing VMware workloads out of their on-premise data center into a Rackspace data center” in an arrangement that “will look and feel …
Taiwanese spill on Zuck's racks: Servers powering Facebook REVEALED
Facebook runs on four different server designs, each created to fulfil a specialist task, according to Mike Yang, a general manager and vice president of Taiwanese OEM Quanta.
Quanta makes about a quarter of the world's laptop computers and has, of late, branched out into custom servers for big operators like Facebook.
Speaking …
Gartner to VMware: Rock out with your socket out
The wizards at Gartner have penned a pre-VMworld suggestion to VMware: go back to being teenage rebels.
Research veep Chris Wolf likens VMware to a band at a crossroads: does it essentially give up and resign itself to playing greatest hits tours to a dwindling base of fans, or try to once again turn the world on its head?
Wolf …
LinkedIn lowers age of consent to 13
LinkedIn, generally regarded as the premier social network for grown ups with jobs, has decided 13 year olds are now welcome as members.
The reason is a new creation called “University Pages” that LinkedIn feels “will be especially valuable for students making their first, big decision about where to attend college.”
As of …
IiNet creates cut-price diffusion brand 'Jiva'
iiNet has launched what looks an awful lot like the telephony market's equivalent of a budget airline.
Dubbed “Jiva”, the product is simple: “For $AUD79 per month on a 24-month plan, Jiva customers will get an ADSL2+ broadband connection, unlimited broadband data, all local and national landline calls, and a wireless modem.” All …
Wholesale telco IspONE goes titsup, Kogan mobile going dark
Wholesale telco ISPOne appointed administrators who have cancelled its contract to resell Telstra mobile connections and appointed administrators, leaving some of its wholesale customers without a network connection with which to serve their customers.
ISPOne's been tottering for some time, but has tried to negotiate with …
Open Rights Group revives 'unavailable for legal reasons' HTTP error code plan
The UK's Open Rights Group has revived the campaign to create a new HTTP error code to protest censorship.
The campaign to do so has burbled along for a few years, partly thanks to a Google employee named Tim Bray who created a draft for ”An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles ”. Bray has revised the draft a couple of …
Boffins claim Voyager has already left the Solar System
There's a boffin battle brewing at the fringe of the Solar System.
At issue is whether the venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the region where Sol's electromagnetic winds blow, or is still in the tiny pocket of space we call home.
The “we're outta here” camp has penned a letter in The Astrophysics Journal titled “A porous …
Oz High Court says streaming music is not a 'broadcast'
Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) has been denied permission to appeal to the High Court in an attempt to overrule decisions in lower courts that will force it to pay twice for music it broadcasts – once for over the air and another for simultaneous internet broadcast.
The case over just how radio broadcasters should pay for …
Microsoft DMCA takedown requests targeting OpenOffice
The vigilant folk at TorrentFreak think they've found something odd: among the hundreds of thousands of sites Microsoft has recently asked Google not to index are requests to remove references to sites that in no way infringe Microsoft's rights but instead mention the the free OpenOffice suite.
TorrentFreak's report on the …
