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Australia ponders 160,000-seat ERP possibilities
Australia's government has released an information paper titled “Investigation into optimising ERP Systems across the public service” that will consider how the nation's government can best procure, and wield, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
The release of the information paper (regwalled PDF here should come as no …
City of Munich throws Ubuntu lifeline to Windows XP holdouts
Windows XP users in Germany’s third largest city are being offered free upgrades to Ubuntu ahead of termination of Microsoft support for the OS next Spring.
Administrators in the City of Munich have distributed 2,000 CDs carrying Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to libraries across the City, for users to borrow and download the Linux distro. …
Apple named in criminal lawsuit over Premier League–streaming app
Apple has been summoned to court in Thailand for approving an app which streams UK Premier League football games to an iPhone, in breach of the exclusive contract signed by local telly firm Cable Thai Holding.
CTH paid $300m for the exclusive rights to show chaps kicking a ball around a pitch on a Saturday afternoon, according …
Sloppy call data gets Telstra an ACMA wrist-slap
Telstra is on notice that its data roaming billing isn't up to scratch, courtesy the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
At fault : billing systems with a persistent penchant for plugging multiple flagfall fees on a single data session. This, the ACMA says, put the incumbent in breach of the Telecommunications …
Dominant web ad giant (Google) possibly 'weeks' away from Euro slapdown
Google will learn within weeks if its alleged abuse of dominance in the European search market will earn it a formal complaint from the EU's competition regulator.
Sanctions and fines of up to 10 per cent of Google's annual worldwide turnover could yet be imposed on the company, antitrust commissioner and EC veep Joaquin Almunia …
Huawei CTO insists: 'We are not a threat to UK and US national security'
Exclusive A top Huawei exec has dismissed claims that his company poses a threat to British and US national security - despite Western government officials' fears over Huawei's alleged connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
Professor Sanqi Li - speaking in an exclusive interview with The Register at the multinational's R&D centre in …
French ministers told to use only secure comms post-PRISM
French newspaper L'Express has published a memo it says comes from Christophe Chantepy, chief of staff to French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, and which recommends French cabinet ministers stop using smartphones for phone calls because they are not secure.
The paper's report includes three images of the memo, one for each of …
European Commission plans net neutrality push
The European Commission (EC) has proposed to enshrine net neutrality in its statute books, with President José Manuel Durão Barroso signalling his intention to adopt the “connected continent” agenda proposed by commissioner for the Digital Agenda and veep Neelie Kroes.
Barrosso yesterday delivered the European Union's State of …
NORKS fingered for APT on South Korean think tanks
Security researchers have unearthed yet another highly targeted advanced persistent threat (APT) attack, this time launched by suspected North Korean attackers against a small group of South Korean think tanks.
The Kimsuky campaign, which can be traced back to April this year, was analysed by researchers at Kaspersy Lab in a …
Corel re-animates zombie brand for patent case
Google, Motorola and Samsung are fielding new patent suits from Corel-owned Micrografx over graphics rendering, covering a slew of Android-based products as well as the Chocolate Factor's Google Maps.
Micrografx – a brand that faded from view more than a decade ago after its acquisition by Corel – is claiming that both Samsung …
US plaintiffs can seek damages over Street View data slurp - court
A US appeals court has rejected Google's efforts to dismiss a lawsuit over the data it grabbed from Wi-Fi networks while collecting snapshots for use in its Street View program.
The Chocolate Factory is being sued by a number of plaintiffs who want to hold it accountable under the Wiretap Act for the data it intercepted from …
Dyson takes Samsung to court in UK over vacuum cleaner
British vacuum cleaner firm Dyson is suing Samsung for "ripping off" one of its inventions for its own Motion Sync hoover.
Dyson claims that the new model, which the South Korean chaebol showed off at the IFA technology show in Berlin last week, infringes on its patent for a steering system for cylinder vacuum cleaners.
"This …
MoJ: Hey, hungry PC bods. Get ready to battle for this JUICY £200m contract
The Ministry of Justice has redrafted a tender to vet suppliers seeking to win its End User computing contract worth up to £200m over the next five years.
The contract was first tendered in May and was worth £300m at the time, but bidding was scrapped in June after suppliers had been whittled down to a shortlist of four …
WAIT! Don't you dare send that ad-spaff email without 'specific' consent
Organisations need to obtain "extremely clear and specific" consent from individuals in order to conduct direct marketing to them via email or through any other form of electronic marketing message, according to new guidelines.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that rules set out in the UK's Privacy and Electronic …
China tunes out Soundcloud for a weekend
Fans of online music sharing platform Soundcloud living in China were left scratching their heads over the weekend after the site appeared to have become the latest blocked by the authorities.
TechInAsia was tipped off last Friday that the site was down.
Although Berlin-based Soundcloud would appear to pose little threat to the …
Beginning of the end for Cenitex
Victorian IT agency Cenitex is to become a broker of services rather than a direct provider of services, under an expression of interest released today by the state government.
The change was foreshadowed in May in a document posted to Scribd.
Victoria's minister for technology Gordon Rich-Phillips said the new tender marks the …
Declassified documents show NSA staff abused tapping, misled courts
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has declassified 1,800 pages of documents that indicate that the NSA routinely overstepped its authority and misled oversight bodies about the surveillance of US citizens.
"In June of this year, President Obama directed me to declassify and make public as much …
Qld public safety IT&T needs overhaul
A review into Queensland's police and emergency services will have the IT sector cracking open its tendering boilerplates, with a recommendation that the state create common platforms to link police to other agencies.
The review, conducted by former Australian Federal Police head Mick Keelty, recommends a compete overhaul of IT …
Boris Johnson floats idea of 'London visa' to attract tech talent
London's tousle-haired ultra-blond mayor, Boris Johnson, has called for the creation of a special "London visa" to tempt the world's tech and fashion superstars to the capital.
The London Mayor's office has submitted an application to be given an allocation of 100 of the "exceptional talent" visas that the Home Office hands out …
Shop-a-suspect web security system: 'We've helped cops nab 100 suspects'
Earlier this year, The Register revealed how a massive security breach accidentally allowed access to thousands of images of people suspected of petty crimes. Now the private company behind that CCTV and image database is claiming its technology has led to the arrest of 100 suspects.
London's Metropolitan Police has spent the …
Jail time promised for false tweets in China
Use of social media in China just got more dangerous after the country’s Supreme Court announced tough new guidelines which could see untrue posts which are viewed more than 5,000 times land their author in jail for several years.
The court document stated that any post containing so-called “online rumours” viewed 5,000 times or …
Turnbull floats e-vote, compulsory ID
Incoming communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has offered up his first post-election policy thought-bubble, suggesting that Australia should adopt electronic voting kiosks and compulsory identification for voters.
Speaking to ABC TV, Turnbull said the high level of informal (that is, invalid or incorrectly-cast) votes is so …
Google scrambles to block backdoors
The ongoing revelations about NSA snoopery have prompted The Chocolate Factory to accelerate its effort to encrypt user data at every possible point.
Mountain View had already announced that its Google Cloud Storage platform was adding server-side encryption to reassure users. User data uploaded to the service is now being …
Tech titans team up to complain about US government spy requests
Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! have all filed petitions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) asking for a relaxation of rules that would allow them to give customers more of an idea of what data is being collected by the US intelligence agencies.
"Working with others in the industry, we’ve been …
Telstra's Thodey is NBN kingmaker after Oz election
With Saturday's emphatic election result putting almost certain to put Malcolm Turnbull into the communications ministry, the business of rejigging the National Broadband Network is about to begin in earnest.
Step one, once Turnbull assumes the ministry, will be a promised “100 day” review of the NBN. This will presumably …
'Beat the lie detectors' trainer sentenced to 8 months in jail
An Indiana man was jailed for eight months on Friday for charges arising from allegations he coached federal job applicants and criminals on how to beat lie detector tests.
Chad Dixon, 34, Dixon had previously pleaded guilty to the charges of wire fraud* and obstruction of an agency proceeding** on 17 December last year, but was …
Verizon finally drags FCC into court fisticuffs to end one-speed internet for all
Broadband provider Verizon and US watchdog the FCC will face off in court today in a crunch battle for net neutrality – a longstanding principle that guarantees a fair and level playing field for all on the web.
Verizon and fellow ISPs want to charge websites and other online businesses a premium for piping their data faster to …
NSA slides reveal: iPhone users are all ZOMBIES
Spooks at the US National Security Agency (NSA) can't believe we're all paying for the equipment it's using to spy on us, describing Steve Jobs as Big Brother and iPhone buyers as "zombies".
That assertion comes from NSA documents leaked to Germany's Spiegel Online.
The self-promoting presentation, purportedly an internal NSA …
Ofcom's head Ed may yet run the Beeb: UK gov 'mulls axing BBC Trust'
Is Ofcom boss Ed Richards' middle name "Lucky"?
The UK watchdog's supremo could yet end up running the BBC without leaving his desk at Southwark Bridge. Last year, the former Labour policy wonk – who helped create Ofcom – applied to get the top job at the Beeb, only to lose out to George Entwistle. Now it's claimed the …
Google submits YET ANOTHER offer to fix 'search dominance' in EU
Google, in an effort to resolve the European Commission's competition concerns relating to the company's strong grip on the search market in the EU, has submitted yet another revised set of proposals to Brussels' officials.
Antitrust commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Bloomberg that he had received the rejigged offer from Google …
Ofcom set to fatten up London's White Space TV spectrum
Next year Londoners will get access to 72MHz of unlicensed radio spectrum, all in the prime sub-1GHz band, as Ofcom prepares to open the TV airwaves to anyone with a database handy.
Ofcom's new consultation on opening up White Space frequencies shows London as the biggest winner thanks to the presence of the Crystal Palace …
BAN THIS SICK FILCH: Which? demands end to £1.50-per-min 'help' lines
Consumer campaigners at Which? are calling for a ban on costly helpline and customer call-lines.
Executive director Richard Lloyd said it was "outrageous" to force people with questions or complaints to call higher-rate numbers - such as those starting with 09, 0845, 0844, and 0871 - that could charge up to £1.50 a minute.
"It' …
Indian spooks snooping without ISP knowledge
India's authorities are carrying out wide-ranging and indiscriminate internet surveillance of their citizens thanks to secret intercept systems located at the international gateways of several large ISPs, according to The Hindu.
The Chennai-based paper claimed after an investigation that Lawful Intercept and Monitoring (LIM) …
Hack Yahoo gave up to China is released from prison
Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was arrested in 2004 after Yahoo China handed over key data to the authorities, has been released from prison 15 months before the end of a 10 year sentence.
Writers’ group the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC) announced the news and called for the release of others in a similar position.
"We …
China's corruption crackdown killing off Unix
China's crackdown on Bo Xilai and other scandal-hit Communist Party outcasts may be making Unix systems less attractive behind the Great Firewall.
That's the opinion of EMC's president for Greater China, Denis Yip, who last week told attendees at an EMC Forum event in Hong Kong that the “political environment” across the border …
Assange fails in bid for election to Australian Senate
Wikileaker-in-Chief Julian Assange's campaign to win a seat in Australia's Senate has almost certainly failed, with the Wikileaks party securing just 0.62 per cent of the nine million votes counted in the nation's election.
Assange has done a little better in the State of Victoria, with his party picking up a little over 25,000 …
US intelligence: Snowden's latest leaks 'road map' for adversaries
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has issued a response to the latest revelations from Edward Snowden with a warning that the information is "not news," but has nevertheless harmed the agency's ability to keep America and its allies safe.
On Thursday ProPublica, The New York Times, and The Guardian …
Apple spanked by judge in price-fixing injunction – but not too hard
The federal judge overseeing the ebook price-fixing case between Apple and the US Department of Justice has issued her remedy, and although it slaps Cook & Co. upside the head, the DoJ didn't get all it wanted.
After winning the case in Judge Denise Cote's court this July, the DoJ proposed a sweeping set of suggested remedies, …
Yahoo! Comes! Clean! On! Global! Government! Data! Requests!
Yahoo! has joined such companies as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter in pledging to release semiannual reports on how often it responds to requests from governments for information about its users.
The first such report, published on Friday, summarizes data compiled from January 1 through June 30, 2013, and it shows …
Now we know why UK spooks simply shrugged at SSL encryption
Analysis In July 2012, Britain's top spook Charles Farr made a rare public appearance: sat across a table from MPs in Parliament, he was quizzed by backbenchers scrutinising Home Secretary Theresa May's widely criticised plan to snoop on Brits' internet connections.
At the time, the government was trying to get politicos to agree that …
Phone-blab plod breaks PRIVACY law after crash victim's 5hr ditch ordeal
A Norfolk police official broke a privacy law after blurting out "sensitive information" to the relative of a 54-year-old bloke – who had been seriously hurt in a car crash and left unnoticed in a ditch for five hours.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission today said that one of the force's control room operators had …
'Unreliable, shambolic' ... a top CompSci prof slams Serco's UK crim tag tech
Updated The electronic tags used to keep tabs on criminals and suspects in the UK are "unreliable" - and the systems monitoring them are "shambolic". That's according to a dynamite report by Ross Anderson, a leading computer scientist.
The University of Cambridge professor said he compiled his findings after he was called in as an …
