The Week in Summary

1. Thursday, 02 May 2013

   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 …

   A10 ships new iron, OS

   Layer 4 connections per-second-per-Watt as a measure of green, anyone?

   A10 Networks has announced new gateway devices and a revision to its ACOS operating system. The three new chunks of metal are the 6430 / 6430S (same unit, with and without SSL support) and the half-the-power, half-the-price 5430S. A10's director of product marketing Paul Nicholson introduced El Reg to yet another measure of …

   Quantum researchers control qubit with light

   Diamonds are a girl's quantum computer's best friend

   As the hunt continues for ways to manipulate qubits in solid state devices, UC Santa Barbara researchers have demonstrated using a laser to manipulate a qubit in diamond. The qubit in question is actually considered a defect in a diamond's crystalline structure: it's called a “nitrogen-vacancy centre”, in which a nitrogen atom …

   Research explodes myth that older programmers are obsolete

   Old dogs can learn new tricks, if they're allowed to

   There's a prevailing ethos among IT hirers that younger is better when it comes to programmers, but a study by academics in North Carolina suggests that employers might be missing a trick by not hiring the grizzled veterans of the coding world. Research into how our brains evolve over time suggests our intelligence functions …

   Terabit trial gives Telstra some backbone

   Ericsson demos “fastest ever” long-haul link

   The 995 kilometre optic fibre link from Sydney to Melbourne has played host to Australia's first demonstration of a commercial terabit-per-second fibre system. Announcing the demonstration, Telstra's director of transport and routing engineering David Robertson noted that it owns the largest amount of fibre in the country, and …

   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 …

   Gaming app ENSLAVES punter PCs in Bitcoin mining ring

   Some secret software to go with your deathmatch, sir?

   A competitive gaming company has admitted that for two weeks in April its software client was hijacking league members' PCs to mine Bitcoins. In an eyebrow-raising turn of events, the company, ESEA Gaming, admitted on Wednesday that its software client had been running Bitcoin-mining algorithms on customer PCs since April 14, …

   SAP loses appeal in long-running $345m patent case

   Time to pay the piper

   A US federal court has rejected German software maker SAP's bid to overturn a $345m judgment against it, in a move that could finally end a patent-infringement lawsuit that has already dragged on for nearly six years. Versata, a maker of business rules engine software, first brought suit against SAP in 2007 over allegations …

2. Wednesday, 01 May 2013

   Facebook fails to wow Wall Street with slow profit growth

   Mobile users keep coming, but will they pay off?

   Facebook posted strong revenue for its first quarter of fiscal 2013, beating analyst estimates, but profits only inched ahead slightly as the social network continued to struggle with its transition to a mobile-first company. Total revenue for the quarter was $1.46bn, up 38 per cent from the previous year's Q1 but down 8 per …

   Report: IBM, Lenovo x86 server deal hits the skids

   Or, maybe the Great Wall of China

   Only late last week, the scuttlebutt was that IBM and Lenovo Group were moving along at a rapid pace so Big Blue could offload all or part of its System x x86 server business to the Chinese builder. Now, the latest word is that the deal has stalled as the two companies are haggling about the price. The first rumors about a …

   MapR revs up HBase queries with M7 Hadoop distro

   Solr search engine means elephants don't need to chew big data cud

   You are not just imagining it. Every commercial distributor of the Hadoop system for storing and chewing through unstructured data has come up with its own a different way to deliver something akin to SQL query functionality while at the same time boosting the speed of ad hoc queries. MapR Technologies is one of the earlier …

   Arista monster switches fluff up cloud with 1 million virty machines

   7500E mod box sports 100Gb/sec speeds and integrated optics on ports

   Data center switch vendor Arista Networks is giving the incumbent peddlers of switchery heartburn again with the launch of its 7500 E Series modular switches. The upstart company, which has Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim as its chairman and chief development officer, is taking switching up another notch on a few …

   VMware sells WaveMaker to Pramati

   That didn't last long

   VMware has got rid of WaveMaker, an open source tool that helps casual developers build Java apps, after spending two years trying to develop the technology The deal sees Java-specialist Pramati acquire "certain assets" of WaveMaker, according to a statement issued by the company. These assets include WaveMaker's core …

   EFF report identifies which internet firms 'have your back' on data

   Twitter is tops, but big-name fails from Verizon, Apple, and others

   The annual Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report on data protection among online firms has shown lax privacy standards among some of the biggest names in the business when the government comes knocking at the door. A total of 18 companies were assessed on their privacy policies and T&Cs, stated procedures for handling …

   VMTurbo trousers $7.5m to bring Adam Smith's hand to more clouds

   Gearing up engineering and sales for a future hybrid world

   Adam Smith-loving cloud biz VMTurbo has secured $7.5m in C-round funding from venture capitalists Globespan Capital Partners. That makes for $25m in funding in three rounds, with the second round hitting in November 2011 when Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital Partners kicked in $10m. The company did not announce …

   Former mobile-biz lobbyist Wheeler to become top US frequency cop

   FCC boss needs to be auctioneer and priest, too

   President Obama has nominated former CTIA boss Tom Wheeler to take over the FCC, putting the man who spent 12 years lobbying on behalf of network operators in charge of their regulation. The Wall Street Journal was first to the story, reporting that FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will act as chair while the Senate confirms …

   Picture this: Kodak could get out of bankruptcy as early as July

   Camera biz to become printing'n'imaging service

   Eastman Kodak has said that it's hoping to get out of bankruptcy as early as July this year, as it turns itself into a commercial imaging firm under the control of its creditors. The one-time camera company told the US bankruptcy court in Manhattan that it expects to issue new stock, with most of it going to folks it owes …

   Avnet welds services tentacles into one mighty arm

   Octupus looks to get some knuckle in its punch

   Distributor goliath Avnet Technology Solutions has rounded up its disparate portfolio of acquired service providers into one unit as traditional product sales continue to wane. The Avnet Services team was created to "increase operational efficiencies" by merging the firm's software, lifecycle and training services operations …

   US Labor Dept website serving malware to innocent visitors

   Blag bears signature of notorious Chinese DeepPanda

   The US Department of Labor's website has been hacked and malicious code stuck behind the scenes, security tools firm AlienVault says. Since yesterday, the DoL site has been serving out malicious code that installs malware on unsuspecting users' computers, AlienVault's labs director Jaime Blasco told The Register. The DoL said …

   Taxi app Uber's $1bn uber price tag: CEO speaks out

   Bigwig puts record straight

   Travis Kalanick, the chief of taxi service app Uber, has denied that his company is about to open a new funding round that would value it at over a billion dollars. Kalanick tweeted that the company hadn't spoken to a single investor about raising new cash injections since November 2011, after reports suggested that Uber was …

   Citrix: Hey channel, we're BAAAA-ACK. Can't flog clouds without you

   'Tried and failed', world has moved on. So sad

   Citrix is to again allow resellers to sell a portion of its cloudy wares. The vendor claims that the increased size of the market means supporting a channel is now economically viable. The Citrix SaaS Advisor programme is to be rolled out over the coming months with resell and referral elements for office software products …

   Reseller giant Systemax bleeds red ink in Q1 of 'turnaround year'

   CEO Leeds: 'Operating loss is unacceptable'

   Misfiring reseller big gun Systemax has seen poor results in the first quarter of calendar 2013 - which is supposed to be its turnaround year. In its efforts to recover, the business has slashed European jobs, shuttered US PC factories and axed retail brands. The ailing firm, branded as Misco in Europe, saw sales decline 3.6 …

   Mozilla accuses Gamma of dressing up dictators' spyware as Firefox

   Maker of spooks' fave FinSpy served cease-and-desist

   Firefox-maker Mozilla claims spook supplier Gamma International disguises its spyware as the popular web browser - and wants it to stop. The non-profit software foundation slapped a cease-and-desist demand on FinFisher developer Gamma. In the legal letter, Mozilla said its Firefox trademark is being violated and that this …

   Audio gumble biz Jawbone gobbles bag of 500 trillion body bits

   Human-watching BodyMedia snapped up for $100m

   Speaker and headset biz Jawbone has spent over $100m snapping up body sensor maker BodyMedia to get into the wild world of biometrics. Jawbone already sells the Up, a wristband which closely monitors your movements to estimate calories burnt, but its acquisition of BodyMedia gives it access to a whole load of body-monitoring …

   Hotel marketplace Airbnb: Show us your privates if you want to book a bed

   Hand over that Facebook ID and passport, Popeye

   San Francisco-based hotel-booking biz Airbnb wants a quarter of its users in the US to provide passports or driving licences when reserving a room. The company, which describes itself as a "trusted community marketplace" for people to list and book accommodation around the world, said that there was "no place for anonymity" on …

   Yahoo! scuppered! in! Dailymotion! buyout! attempt!

   French gov cries 'Non!' to $300m video slurp

   Yahoo! has had to give up its attempt to take a controlling stake in French video startup Dailymotion after the government intervened, according to media reports. The Purple Palace was forced to abandon its pursuit of a 75 per cent stake in the online video site when French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, part of the …

   Atoms star in ball-bothering boffins' Big Blue movie

   Vid Bantam blockbuster boy bewilders Reg bloke

   IBM Research has proved its worth by moving atoms across a screen to create the world's smallest movie. Big Blue has gone much better with its atomic animation A Boy and His Atom. The movie has 242 frames and lasts just under 100 seconds; any more and it would rapidly become turgidly boring, in your humble hack's opinion. Each …

   P2P badboy The Pirate Bay sets sail for the Caribbean

   Torrent freaks are off to the tropics

   The Pirate Bay has fled to the Caribbean after Swedish authorities launched yet another attempt to seize its domain name. Swedish prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad filed a motion at the District Court of Stockholm yesterday calling for the seizure of TPB’s Swedish addresses - thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se - as well as its …

   Google 'will be pulled back in front of MPs' on its UK tax affairs

   London Googlers 'aren't sales people', claims ad giant

   Enormous advertising firm Google has said that any suggestion that its veep Matt Brittin was less than accurate when testifying to Parliament on the firm's UK corporation tax affairs is "wilfully misleading". The Chocolate Factory told The Register that it has written to parliamentary Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret …

   Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves

   That makes the cheap-as-chips e-reader cool now, right?

   In a perhaps desperate bid to drum up sales, Barnes & Noble is selling its Nook E Ink-based e-book reader for a pound less than 30 quid - a discount of £50. If you want the version with an illuminated screen, it’ll be £69 - £40 less than it usually is. Oh, and the firm’s 9-inch Nook HD+ tablet has also had its price slashed, …

   Brit horologist hammers out ‘first’ ATOMIC-POWERED watch

   Pic The laughing gnomon

   Could this be the chronometrist’s ultimate timepiece, the peak of horological haute couture? British bespoke movement maker Hoptroff today claimed to have produced the world’s first personal chronometer with an on board atomic clock. The result, says Hoptroff, is a accuracy of 1.5 seconds every 3.15 x 1010 seconds - that’s …

   BlackBerry: THE TRUTH about that 5.1 per cent UK market figure

   Mobe maker is happy stroking its bronze

   BlackBerry has rebutted a claim that its UK smartphone market share was just 5.1 per cent during the first three months of 2013. It says independent sales figures show it notched up ten per cent of the market during that period. The smaller figure comes from Kantar WorldPanel ComTech, a market watcher, and was released …

   Plusnet's 'Everyone's a winner' claim is a plus-sized whopper

   Watchdog slaps ISP for Del Boy-like tactics

   BT-owned ISP Plusnet misled would-be customers by boasting in a telly ad that its broadband service was available to "everyone", says a watchdog. And the blurb wrongly gave the impression that all of its products were part of a half-price sale. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled the Plusnet ad in question, which stated …

   Give it up for Live 8-bit: Muso devs raise dosh for Bletchley Park kids

   Audio Electronica album sales pumped into programming lessons

   Synthesizer-loving programmers have released their very own electronica album to raise cash for kids' classes at Bletchley Park. Software developers Jason Gorman, Chris Whitworth, Brian Hogan, Lance Walton, Yuriy O'Donnell and Peter Camfield formed a band with the snappy name Music By Programmers and released their debut on 29 …

   Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack forms foraging party

   Can Mother Nature supplement meagre diet?

   It's been a tough winter here in the mountains of central Spain, so Mother Nature isn't lending much of a hand as I attempt to sustain myself spending just £1 a day for nosh in the "Live Below the Line" challenge. As many readers have pointed out, I should be able to venture forth into the countryside in search of free …

   Speaking in Tech: Explicit vid reveals hot tech stars in LIVE STRIP SHOW

   Podcast Topless VP shows some skin after losing 'humiliating bet'

   It's the first anniversary of El Reg's weekly enterprise podcast and hosts Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela have an incredible all-star lineup this week - plus an EXPLICIT VID of a topless EMC veep. Their special guests this week are Chad Sakac, senior VP Global Systems Engineering at EMC; John Troyer, director and …

   'I still get on the phone for a $5k deal' - NetSuite CEO's anti-SAP mission

   Interview Big cheese spells out tough world of Salesforce and other enterprise tech rivals

   California-based Salesforce has been an unstoppable force in Software as a Service (SaaS) for 14 years. It pulled in $3.05bn in revenue last year, and just booted rival enterprise tech maker SAP from its slot as the world's number-one customer relationship management software (CRM) company. But there’s another SaaS company …

   Is the IT industry short on Cobolers? This could be your lucky day

   Sometimes a CV needs a few fossils

   Let's make one thing clear: your previous jobs are not the reason why you were hired. You were hired for having skills that bosses need. People are employed because they are needed to do things that must be done, not because they can do something that is merely desired. It’s not all bad news. The current Big Data hype means …

   FalconStor on 13th quarterly loss: 'Unpredictable' OEM dragged us down

   And the previous 12 quarters?

   FalconStor has blamed "unpredictable performance" from one of its biggest Chinese OEM partners for the dent in its first quarter revenues. It has now totted up 13 loss-making quarters - although last quarter saw a boost in revenues - and the storage virtualisation supplier's lot is not a happy one. The company is trudging …

   Workload placement in a hybrid world

   The Register live It's where you put it that counts

   If you ask your Oracle team which infrastructure they want their databases and apps running across, they’ll tell you dedicated. Heaven forbid their IO is interfered with by a lagging virtual infrastructure. Your Windows camp will probably allow most of their apps on virtual and private clouds. But throw the networking guys …

   Leave keys to your data centre to a Grizzly? Brocade thinks: Yes

   Also whisks sheet off new software-defined networking toys

   Brocade has plunged deeper into the software-defined networks (SDN) pool with a couple of virtual networking products and a switch software revision. It's presenting this stuff under an "On-Demand Data Center" marketing blanket which, it says "represents another major evolution in networking toward a highly virtualised, open …

   Facebook Messenger tech to glue 50bn-strong Internet of Stuff

   Machine blabber protocol backed by Cisco, IBM et al

   A communications protocol for the Internet of Things - the posh name for a future global network of 50 billion interconnected gadgets - has been chosen by a top standards body. The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), best known for its OpenDocument format, will adopt and promote the …

   Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

   Sysadmin blog Top toolmaker told to stop installing crapware-free Flash

   Adobe wants the ability to easily roll out Flash updates removed from Ninite, the sysadmin Swiss army knife. I'm going to explain why this is a terrible thing. First, though, I would like to discuss the real-world practical uses of products such as Ninite. Ninite is used by systems administrators and ordinary folk alike to …

   Review: Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 WinPro 8 tablet

   Vid Fancy a shower with your fondleslab? Or booting it down the stairs?

   In the UK, Panasonic is not known as a high-street PC player - but the company’s Tough range of products makes quite an impression in the world of business. Out in the field you’ll spot them in the hands of BT engineers and the like where the manufacturer's rugged laptops, and now tablets, survive the rigours of white-van man …

   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 …

   CLIMATE CHANGE forces women into PROSTITUTION - US politicians

   Is there anything bad it doesn't cause?

   A group of American politicians has introduced a resolution into Congress saying that climate change (among many other bad things it does) forces women into prostitution, and that as a result the USA should use "gender sensitive frameworks" in battling the scourge of global warming. House Concurrent Resolution 36 of the 113th …

   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 …

   Red faces as Pentagon leases Chinese satellite

   It's ok, we've added 'additional transmission security'

   US lawmakers are up in arms after it emerged that the Pentagon has leased a Chinese commercial satellite to support non-classified communications with its African bases. The details of the one-year, $10m contract were revealed at a House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill last week. The Apstar-7 satellite is owned and …

   Linux kernel 3.9 lands

   Power management, new processors, SSD caching and more

   Linus Torvalds has unleashed version 3.9 of the Linux kernel. Key features in the release include caching for SSD storage, new processor architectures, power management improvements targeting tablets and phones, Chromebook support, and a nod towards Android. The caching change, present as the dm-cache target and currently …

   Cameras leak credentials, live video

   D-Link scrambles upgrade, Vivotek silent says Core Sec

   D-Link and Vivotek have submitted their entries for “dumbest security vulnerability of 2013”, with Core Security turning up a variety of daft bugs in their IP cameras, including hard-coded backdoor passwords. The advisories are here for Vivotek and here for D-Link. D-Link has told Core Security it is preparing a fix, but the …

   AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough

   Upcoming Kaveri processor will drink from shared-memory Holy Grail

   AMD has released details on its implementation of The Next Big Thing in processor evolution, and in the process has unleashed the TNBT of acronyms: the AMD APU (CPU+GPU) HSA hUMA. Before your eyes glaze over and you click away from this page, know that if this scheme is widely adopted, it could be of great benefit to both …

   SGI tax bennies push bigger profit in Q1

   Wraps up LMDs of profit destruction, shows decent sales growth

   Jorge Titinger, the CEO who was brought into Silicon Graphics last year to clean up the mess made by $87m in low-margin deals that wrecked the company's bottom line for a few quarters, is probably breathing a little easier now that the most recent quarter has ended. Not just because revenues were up, but because the remaining $ …

   Cisco clambers aboard gig Wi-Fi bandwagon

   Product catapult loaded with 802.11ac kit

   Cisco has joined the growing list of vendors putting the 802.11ac “gigabit WiFi” standard into live kit, launching a “Wave 1” module for it Aironet 3600 series of access points, and promising “Wave 2” support in a future upgrade module. The current kit, quoth the Borg, supports WiFi speed up to 1.3 Gbps, which in deployment …

   Is it me or did cloud marketing suddenly get really weird?

   Comment PR bods are going ga-ga on cloudy fumes

   As cloud computing shakes up the IT industry, marketing departments are going into overdrive attempting to somehow – no, anyhow – gain what they call "traction." And it's starting to get weird. We here at Vulture West appreciate that companies need to get the message out there, but everyone is prone to cock-ups, and the …

   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 …

   Ultra-hackable Google Glass could be a security nightmare

   Easy root access opens spyware floodgates

   Google's high-tech Glass headsets might be a gadget enthusiast's dream, but in their current form they're far too vulnerable to malicious hacking, according to one developer who has had access to the devices. In a lengthy blog post on Tuesday, technology consultant Jay Freeman – who goes by the hacker handle "Saurik" – gave a …

   Opportunity rover stuck in standby mode after Martian blackout

   Updated Have they tried turning it off and then on again?

   NASA is trying to reactivate its Martian rover Opportunity after it switched itself into standby mode during a communications quiet period, but engineers have had no luck as yet at restoring control. The space agency hasn't been communicating with its Martian rovers for the last few weeks as there has been a solar conjunction …

3. Tuesday, 30 April 2013

   Cray peddles more iron than expected in Q1

   Not enough to keep it from booking a loss, though

   It is tough to find a choppier business than the supercomputer market, and Cray CEO Peter Ungaro had to remind Wall Street once again to not judge the company on a single quarter, and particularly on the first quarter that it has just turned in. While the company's top line was a little better than expected, issues with the …

   One of the world's oldest experiments crawls towards a fall

   Fever pitch excitement at planet's most boring webcam

   Grab a coffee, fire up the browser, open the webcam, and wait: sometime soon – perhaps within days – a drop of pitch will fall, and for the first time, the event might actually have spectators. One of the world's longest continuous scientific experiments, at Queensland University, lives under a bell jar in a university foyer. …

   Alibaba splurges half a billion on a slice of 'Chinese Twitter'

   E-tailer sees commercial opportunity in Weibo

   Alibaba has moved into social media with a $586m splurge on an 18 per cent stake in China's Twitter, Weibo. The Chinese e-tailer nabbed the microblogging site stake from Sina on Monday, valuing Weibo at more than $3.2bn. The companies reckon that their alliance will generate $380m in advertising and other revenue for Weibo in …

   ESA retires Herschel space telescope as too hot to handle

   Lonely star-spotter stranded 1.5 million km from Earth

   The European Space Agency has formally retired the Herschel space telescope after nearly four years of operation, and has placed it in a parking orbit that will keep it out of Earth's way. Herschel's at rest at last Hershcel, along with the Planck space telescope, was launched on May 14, 2009, and is stationed 1,500,000 …

   Amazon goes legit with cloud certification plan

   'Enterprisey enough for ya?' bellow Bezos & Co.

   Watch out Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, and HP. There's a new reassuringly dull certificate in town, and it's coming for your devs. Amazon Web Services has launched a global certfication program so that technologists can get something to stick on their CV and use as a lever to extract more cash from current and future employers …

   Budweiser's bonkable Buddy Cup brings Facebook to the pub

   Toast now, stalk later – no convo required

   Are you spending so much time on Facebook that the prospect of actually going out and socializing has become a little unnerving? Don't worry; mega-brewer Budweiser has got you covered, with a new beverage cup that helps merge the physical and online worlds. "The Buddy Cup brings together the in-bar experience with Facebook, …

   Cloudera revs up Impala SQL for Hadoop

   Big-data elephant to pronk like a gazelle - or roar like a Chevy

   Commercial Hadoop distributor Cloudera is first out of the gate with a true SQL layer that sits atop Hadoop. It lets normal people – if you can call people who've mastered SQL normal – perform ad hoc queries in real time against information crammed into the Hadoop Distributed File System or the HBase database that rides atop …

   Feds want to fine companies that refuse wiretap requests

   Apparatchiks whine that technology's making it too tough

   Draft legislation to impose fines on companies that refuse to provide wiretap facilities to US federal agents is in the planning stages, government officials have told the Washington Post under condition of anonymity. Initial plans are for an automatic fine for refusal in the range of tens of thousands of dollars, an amount …

   BlackBerry CEO: Tablets will be dead in 5 years

   PlayBook, anyone?

   BlackBerry chief Thorsten Heins reckons slabs will be dead in half a decade, by which point his firm will be the front runner in mobile computing. Two predictions in a Bloomberg report, both of which might come back to the haunt Heins, who replaced former joint CEO's Jim Balsilie and Mike Lazaridis at the start of 2012. The …

   Fujitsu sells off microcontroller and analog chip biz to Spansion

   Japanese giant books a loss in 2012, optimistic about 2013

   It's been a busy day at Japanese IT giant Fujitsu, with the company reporting its financial results for its fiscal 2012 year ending in March (that's not a typo) and also announcing that it has spun off its microcontroller and analog device business to the flash-memory maker Spansion. Back in February, Fujitsu announced a …

   MongoDB gets incremental restores ... for a price

   10Gen cranks monetization handle to lift MongoDB into the cloud

   MongoDB steward 10Gen is trying to squeeze money out of heavy users of the open source NoSQL database, and has set aside almost a petabyte of raw storage to deal with initial demand for a new backup-and-restore service. Like other companies that shepherd an open source product (Canonical – Ubuntu, Basho – Riak, et cetera), …

   Apple: You thought Google dodged taxes? Get a load of THIS

   'The market is going to be all over it...'

   Apple has embarked on one of the biggest bond offerings in history as part of a ploy to avoid tax. Cupertino will soon begin issuing bonds in what will be one of the biggest debt sales of all time, it announced today. The plan is part of a scheme to funnel cash back to investors over the next three years. After its stock …

   Intel supremo backs biz pal SoftBank's billion-dollar bid for Sprint

   Otellini: Japanese have made a 'very compelling' offer

   Intel chief Paul Otellini has told a US regulator that he backs SoftBank's bid for Sprint rather than Dish Network's counter-offer. Otellini said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, seen by Reuters, that the $20.1bn offer from Japan's SoftBank for the US's third largest cell network operator would be good for …

   Bechtle's double digit sales, profit hike in UK? Satisfactory, says parent firm

   Wait a sec, isn't there a Euro meltdown on?

   A double digit hike in sales and profits at the Brit arm of reselling powerhouse Bechtle was merely described as "satisfactory" by its German owner. Coming in the middle of the steepest economic downturn ever, The Channel - suggests the parent firm is perhaps being a little too ruthlessly rational. Sales for calendar 2012 at …

   BT and O2 ink deal to build mega 4G network

   Prodigal child needs paternal backend support

   BT has reached out to its prodigal child O2 and offered to help build it a flashy new 4G network - for a few hundred million quid. It has signed a 10-year deal with O2 owner Telefonica UK to work on a 4G network which will be used by millions of O2 mobile customers. The deal is said to be worth around £500m over the next …

   What's that noise upstairs? It's a shakeup at enormo reseller Insight

   Welcome back, boss, your temp replacement did an excellent job...

   The EMEA division of reseller giant Insight Enterprises has welcomed back former UK boss Emma de Sousa on a permanent basis. She vacated the role from early 2012 to go on maternity leave, and EMEA veep for partner management Justin Griffiths babysat the position until her return as UK and Ireland managing director. But …

   Credit safety net ripped from under elder IT distie Northamber

   Sliding trade at Surrey-based wholesaler fingered

   QBE Insurance has removed entire lines of trade credit insurance on Surrey-based distributor Northamber, The Channel can reveal. Declining trade at one of the oldest wholesalers of IT gear in Blighty is understood to be the reason behind indemnifier QBE's decision, say our sources. Disties Computers Unlimited (Janson Group) …

   Judge sets the date for Patent Smackdown 2: The Damages

   Apple and Samsung go toe-to-toe again in November

   US Judge Lucy Koh has told Apple and Samsung they'll be back in court in November to try to decide whether the fruity firm deserves an extra $450m damages for alleged patent infringement. The judge has set trial dates for the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 18th of the month in front of eight new jurors, after a previous jury found …

   Huawei boss: Next CEO won't be member of my family

   Company won't go public either, Ren confirms in leaked internal email

   The Chinese telecoms giant won't be listing itself on any public exchange, and the founder's kids won't be taking up the reins either - as their dad reckons they're not up to the job. Ren Zhengfei, who founded Huawei with a fistful of cash back in 1988, is now 68 years of age. Rumours have been circulating that he'd pass …

   SoftLayer hoists Riak NoSQL datastore onto its cloud

   Basho hopes to mine rich seam of cloudy dev gold

   Open source NoSQL datastore specialist Basho has teamed up with SoftLayer to hoist the free and paid-for versions of Riak into the cloud. The availability of Riak and Riak Enterprise on SoftLayer's mid-tier infrastructure cloud sees Basho try and open up another shaft to let it tap the seam of cash that it, like other open- …

   Brits on benefits: 'Dole office site only works on PCs over 10 YEARS OLD'

   UK.gov snubs blind, disabled and pensioners

   Benefits claimants signing up for disability living allowance online are told they cannot use modern browsers, smartphones or even Macs. The Department for Work and Pensions' microsite - available at www.dwp.gov.uk/eservice - states that folks should use it for claiming attendance allowance, disability living allowance and …

   Yahoo! tries! to! tempt! TV! crowd! with! tiny! dick!

   Original comedy telly and sex-talking celebs coming to the Purple Palace

   Yahoo! is taking a leaf out of Netflix and Amazon's books and beefing up its media offerings with six original TV shows, including one about a bite-sized private detective. It has also partnered up with pro-wrestling outfit WWE in a bid to lure in internet TV watchers. Just a week after bagging the exclusive rights to stream …

   Oi, journos. Try NOT to get hacked again. Lots of love, Twitter

   Hackers have painted a bullseye on hacks' heads, chat site warns

   Twitter has warned news agencies that hackers could strike again unless journalists take basic precautions - like using a decent password. The micro-blogging site wrote to a number of news outlets warning that hackers consider them "high value" targets. Their note of caution comes as the Syrian Electronic Army continued their …

   2,000km-wide Eye-of-Sauron MONSTER hurricane spotted on Saturn

   Cassini craft spots massive swirler atop planet's north pole

   Stargazing NASA scientists have snapped an image of a massive hurricane on Saturn whose vortex is 20 times larger than the average size of the eye of its earthly cousins.* The blowy behemoth boasts an eye estimated to be over 2,000km (1,250 miles) wide, which is more than large enough to spot any troublesome hobbits heading …

   Is this the first ever web page? If not, CERN would like to know

   Eggheads recreate what could be the original website

   Boffinry nerve-centre CERN has attempted to recreate the very first website to mark 20 years since the official launch of the World Wide Web. It is feared the first ever web page is lost to the sands of time as it was changed daily and any backups are few and far between. However the team has pulled up a snapshot of the very …

   Salesforce boots SAP from customer-wrangling software top slot

   SaaS outsold on-premises in 2012, says Gartner

   Software-as-a-service provider Salesforce has beaten on-premises incumbents to become the biggest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software. CRM software is used to organise and automate customer service, marketing and sales. Marc Benioff’s company stole the number-one spot from SAP last year, beating the …

   IBM storage crew: Why bury your BEST kit at the back of the larder?

   Storagebod One jar of exquisite truffles hidden behind 20 different brands of baked bean

   El Reg storage man Chris Mellor’s pieces on IBM’s storage revenues here and here make for some interesting reading. Things are not looking great with the exception of XIV and Storwize products. I am not sure whether Mellor’s analysis is entirely correct as it is hard to get any granularity from IBM. But his take on Big Blue …

   Quid-a-day nosh challenge hack in bullet-hard chickpea drama

   Obstinate legume resists force of steaming cauldron

   Day two of my "Live Below the Line" challenge has kicked off with another two fried egg sarnies and a couple of cuppas, following a long, hungry cooking slog yesterday thanks to some particularly obstinate chickpeas. To recap, I'm subsisting until for five days on just £1 a day for nosh as part of "an innovative awareness and …

   Fanbois vs fandroids: Punters display 'tribal loyalty'

   Buying a new mobe? You'll stick with the same maker - survey

   Does how you feel about your current smartphone really inform the handset you’ll acquire two, three or four years hence? The Yankee Group, a market watcher, thinks it might. And that’s good news for Apple. Possibly. Apple currently sits just behind Google in the future purchasing stakes. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech …

   Crap computers in a crap box: Smart-meter blackouts risk to UK

   Analysis Sniff a device's wireless, pwn a power plant, warns Brit biz

   You'd be forgiven for thinking this is the plot of a Saturday night BBC2 drama: hackers tinkering with smart electricity meters deliberately cut the power to whole neighbourhoods. But, according to a UK computer security biz, weak authentication checks and a lack of other security controls on said equipment could allow just …

   Object Storage: A solution in search of a problem?

   Blocks and Files This industry deserves an OSCAR

   Generally, it seems to me that object storage is suffering from a failure to launch despite more than a dozen suppliers pushing it. Many of these same vendors seem to have their heads in the sand with regard to their place in the marketplace - they seem to ignore the fact that end-user buyers are confused about what object- …

   Stealthy storage startup PernixData picks up VMware guru

   Flying Dutchman weighs anchor for accelerated seas

   Early-stage US start-up PernixData has decided it needs a European evangelist and persuaded VMware's Frank Denneman to jump ship. Denneman is, or rather was, a senior architect in technical marketing at VMware, based in the Amsterdam area. He has co-authored three VMware-focussed technical books, and is widely acclaimed as a …

   T-Mobile UK punters break for freedom in inflation-busting bill row

   What do you mean, the small print doesn't apply?

   T-Mobile UK punters reckon they can avoid the mobile network's latest price rise - after the operator swelled its prices beyond inflation. The T-Mobile contract states that its bills may increase in step with the Retail Price Index, a government-calculated rate of inflation. When this figure reached 3.3 per cent, T-Mobile and …

   British biz walking around with 'Hack Me' sign taped to its back

   Gov cyber strategy? There is one? Good lord

   Britain’s businesses are being left vulnerable to crippling cyber attacks due to a severe lack of security skills, according to a technology trade body. The Institute of Engineering and Technology found that barely one in ten small to medium enterprises (SMEs) had “sufficient skills and resources in place” to repel threats …

   Red-hot students, an all-day romp and an £11,000 bonanza

   ASC'13 Yup, China's cluster-crafting combat contest concludes

   Red-hot cluster-building students from Tsinghua University in Beijing stepped up their already high-level game - and took two of the three awards up for grabs at the inaugural Asia Student Cluster Challenge (ASC’13) finals last week in Shanghai. ASC’13 is the first leg in 2013’s Student Cluster Competition Triple Crown - a …

   Another negative climate feedback: Warmer plants cool the planet

   Tree hugging really does fight global warming

   Another powerful negative-feedback mechanism which acts to reduce the effects of global warming has been identified, as scientists say that rising temperatures cause plants to emit higher levels of planet-cooling aerosols. "Aerosol effects on climate are one of the main uncertainties in climate models," explains Pauli Paasonen …

   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, …

   Japan's naughty nurses scam free meals with mobile games

   Hungry women trick unsuspecting otaku into paying for grub

   Japan’s male mobile gaming geeks are being taken for a ride in ever-greater numbers by hungry, cash-poor women who befriend them online before tricking them into paying for an expensive dinner for two. This particularly devious scam is on the rise in the Land of the Rising Sun as single Japanese women struggle to pay the bills …

   Continued lack of women in tech bemoaned by ex-techie lady MP

   'Women would never have made automated supermarket tills'

   The number of women enrolled in training courses preparing them to work in the tech industry has not changed for 30 years, an MP has told the House of Commons. Ahead of a debate last Friday on “attracting girls to ICT careers”, Labour MP and former shadow minister for innovation Chi Onwurah warned that Britain's tech sector …

   Apache attack drives traffic to malware

   Blackhole redirect served by modified daemon binary

   A security researcher is warning that an attack on the Apache Web server is increasingly showing up in the wild, and has published a free Python tool to check their configurations. The attack is designed to avoid leaving disk footprints, according to this post analysing the backdoor. It exists as a modified httpd file that …

   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 …

   China became world's BIGGEST PC market in 2012

   PRC yokels have a penchant for desktops and 14-in notebooks

   China has surpassed the US as the world’s largest PC market, in terms of annual sales, with the nation's huge untapped rural market offering manufacturers a rare growth opportunity, according to industry watcher IHS iSuppli. PC shipments in China during 2012 reached 69 million units, three million more than the States could …

   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- …

   The Chromebooks are coming! New models due late 2013

   Will battle head to head with Android notebooks

   While sales of Windows PCs and notebooks continue to disappoint, Acer, Asus, and other hardware makers are readying a new volley of Chromebooks to launch in the second half of 2013, sources close to the companies' Asia-based supply chains claim. According to a report in Taiwanese tech pub DigiTimes, the new push will be …

   BT unleashes SIP licensing troll army

   Small players collateral damage in Google-versus-BT patent drone-war

   VoIP-to-PSTN termination providers and SIP vendors will be watching their inboxes for a lawyer's letter from BT, which has kicked off a taxing licensing program levying a fee on the industry, based on a list of 99 patents. As noted in Australian telco newsletter Communications Day, the move seems to have caught the VoIP …

   Azure is Microsoft's billion-dollar baby – maybe

   More like a whole lot of software sold to partners

   Curt Anderson, CFO for Microsoft's Server & Tools Business, was feeling chatty during an interview with Bloomberg, bragging that in the past year Redmond topped the $1bn sales mark with Windows Azure. Or, maybe not. The Bloomberg story doesn't quote whatever Anderson said directly, and if you read down a bit further into the …

4. Monday, 29 April 2013

   Branson's SpaceShipTwo succeeds in first rocket-powered flight

   55,000 feet? Check. Break sound barrier? Check. Safe landing? Check

   Finally. Sir Richard Branson's long-delayed commercial spaceliner, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, has successfully completed its first rocket-powered test flight. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during its first rocket-powered test flight (click to enlarge) "For the first time, we were able to prove the key components of …

   Surprise! Republican bill adds politics to science funding

   'Forget peer review, let's get the experts at Congress involved'

   The chairman of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Lamar Smith (R-TX), is planning new legislation that would limit the scope of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the biggest research-funding organization in the US, and bring funding decisions under political oversight. Smith - you might remember him …

   Google to Glass devs: 'Duh! Go ahead, hack your headset'

   'We intentionally left the device unlocked'

   Google might not want people selling its Google Glass Explorer Edition high-tech specs, but it has no problem with developers hacking on the hardware and software, if recent developments are any indication. The Chocolate Factory released the GPL-licensed portions of the source code to the software that powers Glass over the …

   Combover King Donald Trump: 'I miss Steve Jobs'

   Tim Cook wouldn't last long on All-Star Celebrity Apprentice

   Never being a man to shy away from whatever current controversy might get his name into headlines*, the indefatigable Republican presidential candidate, Obama-baiting birther, and TV "personality" Donald Trump has weighed in on whether Apple should offer an iPhone with a larger display. I have a lot of @apple stock--- and I …

   AppFog PaaS drops Rackspace IaaS

   Low demand leads to shutdown as PaaS runs to private clouds

   Platform-as-a-service provider AppFog is evaporating its cloudy bridge to Rackspace due to poor customer demand, in yet another case of the fluffy industry coming to terms with hard business realities. AppFog provides an application infrastructure automation service – otherwise known as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) – that …

   HP mashes up ProLiant, Integrity, BladeSystem, and Moonshot server businesses

   New appliance server group to peddle 'converged systems'

   It's a time of transition in the systems business. And HP, the world's largest server maker in terms of volumes and possibly soon (again) in terms of sales if IBM doesn't stop the decline in mainframe and Power system sales or sells off its x86 server biz to Lenovo, is tweaking its server units and the executives who run them …

   LG beats Samsung to OLED flexi-TV with hella pricey 55-incher

   Norks get another excuse to invade the South

   At this year's CES, both LG and Samsung proclaimed that concave OLED screens are the next big thing in televisual entertainment, and promised working systems. Now LG has began taking orders for a 55-inch model and will begin deliveries next month. Great curves, shame about the price The curvy EA9800 1080p model has a carbon …

   Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users'

   Tabbed Finder windows, multiple display improvements, more

   Apple's next version of OS X may provide welcome relief to users dismayed by the company's seemingly inexorable evolution from computer manufacturer to consumer-electronics company, if unnamed sources speaking to 9to5Mac are to believed. According to those sources, OS X 10.9 – oddly codenamed "Cabernet"* in the closely guarded …

   Opera sues designer for leaking trade secrets to Mozilla

   Simplified browser UIs in the dock

   Norwegian browser maker Opera Software has filed suit against Trond Werner Hansen, one of its former developers, alleging that Hansen took trade secrets with him when he went to work with Opera rival Mozilla. As first reported by The Next Web, Hansen worked at Opera from 1999 through 2006. There he led design and UI …

   NATO proclaimed winner of Locked Shield online wargame

   Games without frontiers, war without tears

   NATO has – not surprisingly – been named the winner of the Locked Shield online wargames held last week at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. The 48-hour exercise, which has been held annually for the last five years, simulates a coordinated attack by "Red" forces (a continuing …

   Fat boxes keep Super Micro from slumping

   Behemoths boost server ASPs in March quarter, working on Moonshot killa

   Super Micro – king of the whitebox server makers – turned in a pretty good quarter ended in March, the third quarter of its fiscal 2013, not by pushing more iron, but by peddling a smaller amount of much heftier iron. In the quarter, sales were down a bit sequentially – which was no surprise at all, given the traditional bump …

   GreenBytes' data smite knight gets Citrix green light

   IO Engine approved for cloudy virtual desktops

   GreenBytes' all-flash IO Offload Engine has been certified by Citrix as compatible with XenServer, clearing the way for it to accelerate the cloudy outsourcer's virtual desktops. The GreenBytes strategy has been to retire from the general-purpose all-flash storage array market - and concentrate on the virtual desktop (VDI) …

   Take a deep breath: This is THE year of 'end-user computing'

   Comment Er, what does that mean? Anything you want it to

   What exactly is end-user computing (EUC)? There are so many different definitions that even vendors can’t agree on a single version of the truth. These range from VDI technology to file sharing across multiple devices to platforms that let you access cloud-based apps. What is clear is that just like cloud computing, …

   SMART Storage, Diablo brew a wee DRAM of MYSTERY tonic

   All we needed is some flash, some system memory and $36m

   SMART Storage and Diablo Technologies have promised to glue SMART's flash drives and Diablo's memory-channel storage (MCS) electronics into a combined product. Diablo's website says MCS is "where the memory and flash subsystem are fused together". Well, what does that actually mean? It goes on to say: "MCS will ... allow …

   Google Plus minus Meebo Bar equals Google minus $100m

   'Buy 'em out, boys'

   Google will axe the website widget Meebo Bar just one year after buying the company that built it. The advertising giant said it scrapped the tool to focus on its Google+ plugins. Google bought Meebo on 4 June reportedly for $100m, before proceeding to strip away much of its functionality. It started as an instant-messaging …

   Hard drives snatch hold of semi giant LSI, jump right off a cliff

   Dying disks weigh down sales

   LSI's latest results paint a gloomy picture for the storage giant, revealing both its revenues and profits were down last quarter. Revenues for LSI's first fiscal 2013 quarter, ended March 31, were down to $569m. They were $600m in the previous quarter, a 5 per cent fall. A year ago revenues were up at the $622m mark, meaning …

   Eucalyptus clones more AWS features for cloud control freak

   Auto scaling, elastic load balancing, and CloudWatch for the private cloud

   Amazon Web Services will not build you a private copy of its own cloudy infrastructure for your own use, and it believes, as its top brass reiterated again last week, that there is no such thing as a private cloud. But don't tell Eucalyptus Systems that. The company was founded to try to clone AWS, and with its 3.3 release, it …

   Fund-a-mental: The real problem with clouds and managed services

   Comment Get your money up front if you want money up front

   It’s all very well dodging the economic downturn by hopping on the cloud bandwagon, but you might find this also puts you out of reach of the industry’s established funding models. It’s a truism that one of the problems holding back British business is getting access to credit and other forms of funding. The government has …

   Chinese cyber-spook crew back in business, say security watchers

   Who can tell the spies from the robbers?

   The widely feared Chinese cyber-espionage crew known as APT1 is back in business two month after a high profile report that lifted the lid off its activities, according to security researchers. Cyber Squared has been tracking numerous Chinese cyber espionage threat groups within ThreatConnect.com and crowd-sourcing threat …

   Science of the lambs: Boffins grow GLOW-IN-THE-DARK sheep

   Baa baa hacked sheep, why the day-glo wool?

   Shepherds who watch their flocks by night could soon have a much easier job: South American scientists have successfully reared fluorescent sheep. Boffins at the Animal Reproduction Institute of Uruguay implanted a glow-in-the-dark gene from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish into nine of the woolly animals. The bright-minded …

   Peak txt: 1.5 BEELLLION more chat app msgs sent than SMSes a day

   Only spam and robots save phone texts from IM stampede

   WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger and other online chat apps handled more messages than telcos handled texts, says market research biz Informa. And by the end of 2013, the number of online messages will be double the number of SMS texts, leaving the phone network operators scrabbling for revenue. Informa pegged 2012's global SMS …

   iPhone 5 totters at the top as Samsung thrusts up UK mobe chart

   But older Apples are still holding their own

   Apple’s three most recent mobiles together took more than a quarter of smartphones sales in Britain during the first three months of 2013, we're told. The iPhone 5 was the period’s most popular handset, but the Cupertino giant's UK market share continues to be eroded by Android - and even Windows Phone 8. Google’s Linux- …

   Fried-egg sarnies kick off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge

   An egg-shell-ent start - but bacon, booze is off the menu

   Coffee, bacon and black pudding were strictly off the menu this morning as this hack kicked off his "Live Below the Line" challenge with a couple of fried-egg sarnies and a mug of builders' tea. Until Friday, I have to subsist on just £1 a day for food as I participate in "an innovative awareness and fundraising campaign that' …

   Next Xbox to be called ‘Xbox Infinity’... er... ‘Xbox’

   We don’t know. Maybe Microsoft doesn’t (yet) either

   The next Xbox will be called the Xbox Infinity, if a piccy of an allegedly leaked logo is to be believed. Or perhaps it’ll just be plain Xbox, as a separate, equally unofficial, just as questionable logo suggests. The Xbox Infinity - not actually a name, just the word XBOX with an infinity symbol superscript - and the tagline …

   How Google lost the trust of Europe’s data protection authorities

   Opinion The days of teensy fines may be over for Mountain View

   Over the last two years, various European data protection commissioners have taken action against Google. Hardly a month goes by without something being reported: a €145,000 (£121,000, $189,000) StreetView fine here or a court case about jurisdiction there. So it is important to understand: “Why is Google on the receiving end …

   Serial killer hack threat to gas pipes, traffic lights, power plants

   Analysis 'You could shut down the electricity grid' warns security biz

   Medical systems to traffic light boxes are apparently wide open to hackers thanks to a lack of authentication checks in equipment exposed to the internet. That's according to research from security toolmaker Rapid7, which says it found plenty of essential electronics that can be freely remotely controlled via public-facing …

   Ten ancestors of the netbook

   Feature Doomed category has a long history thanks to Atari, Poqet, Psion et al

   Come 2015, we’re told, the netbook will be dead and gone, out-evolved by the more fleet of foot, more desirable media tablet. We shouldn’t mourn the netbook’s passing, though. It has had, in one form or another, a good innings. While some folk may look back to the category’s debut in 2007 with the launch of Asus’ Eee PC 701 - …

   Judge of EU beauty contest for 'sexy' startups is VC backer of winner

   Comment 'Oh dear', says EC after Steelie Neelie blush gush

   The European Commission has sponsored an award in which a VC was part of a panel that gave the top prize to one of his firm's investments. The first ever Europioneers Awards, presented by EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes, crowned the founders of two European startups, SwiftKey and SoundCloud, as "Young European Tech Entrepreneurs …

   UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

   Everyone = Silicon Valley ad platforms tech companies

   Have you ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, Instagram or Flickr? If so, you'll probably want to read this, because the rules on who can exploit your work have now changed radically, overnight. Amateur and professional illustrators and photographers alike will find themselves ensnared by the changes, the result of lobbying by …

   Canadian TV station wails: NFC bonking... it's not SAFE

   Credit card cloning? Sigh, we've been here before

   Another North American TV network has discovered credit card numbers can be read using a phone, and whipped itself into a media frenzy due to its failure to understand how NFC works. This time it's Canadian outfit CBC News, last time it was Memphis-based News Channel 3, but the facts remain the same: an NFC-equipped card will …

   Brocade, wake up: Cisco is here, and it ALSO has 16 gig FC

   Unstoppable Ethernet proved stoppable

   Cisco has waited two years, watching while competitor Brocade launched and sold 16Gbit/s Fibre Channel, before finally doubling the speed of its own Fibre Channel switch products, belatedly announcing 16Gbps MDS switches. It's quite possible the networking giant had been hoping that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) take-up …

   Reduxio plots 'revolutionary' hybrid array tech: It will need it

   Storage startup has to compete in increasingly crowded space

   You've got to be an optimist to found a startup, especially when you come from one that crashed and burned. Three such optimists have risen from the ashes of scale-out filer startup Exanet and started up scale-out hybrid flash firm Reduxio. As reported by Globes, the CEO, Mark Weiner, and co-founders Nir Peleg and Amnon …

   Japan forgot data wipe on ship sold to Pyongyang

   Former coast guard ship's navigation records reach NORKS

   The Japanese government's data protection policies have been called into question after it emerged that a decommissioned coast guard vessel was sold to a pro-North Korea organisation without any checks as to whether key data on board was first deleted. The 106-ton Japan Coast Guard patrol boat Takachiho was taken out of …

   Crims take to Facebook to flog ZeuS kits

   Dark networks meet social networks

   Not content with hawking their wares in underground forums and other insalubrious parts of the darknet, criminals are now advertising their wares on Facebook, says RSA. The Facebook page in question is now unavailable, but appears to have been packed full of handy info for the budding cyber criminal, according to Limor Kessem …

   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 …

   Tight White Spaces to be penetrated in Blighty this year - Ofcom

   And you can get your hands on it by 2014, fingers crossed

   White Space networking kit will get large-scale trials later this year, to see if multiple databases and radio protocols can be deployed without knocking TV off the air. Ofcom hasn't decided who'll take part in the trials, or what parts of the country they'll cover, or even how long they'll last, but they will run this autumn …

   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 …

   Chinese cops shutter PRC's biggest pirate movie site

   Symbolic move but country remains an IP Wild West

   The Chinese authorities’ ongoing efforts to crack down on piracy have claimed another big scalp after police shuttered the nation's largest online source of not-entirely-properly-sourced movies last Friday, cuffing eight execs along the way. Siluhd.com is said to have over 140 million members, who each pay 50 yuan (£5) every …

   Australian Bureau of Statistics denies hacking report

   A login isn't a 'hack' states stat specialist

   The Australian Bureau of Statistics has been forced, by dint of a misreading of 'attack statistics', to deny that hackers (including the ubiquitous Chinese variety) have accessed pre-release sensitive data such as unemployment or inflation rates. Last week, the Australian Financial Review offered its readers a tale titled …

   Move space junk with laser shots

   A little 'light' nudge

   More than a decade's work could be closer to payoff for Canberra company EOS Space Systems, which last week told the Sixth European Conference on Space Debris that its laser systems could help move space junk out of the “danger zone”. Before you start imagining orbiting satellites bristling with enough weaponry to knock out …

   Cat ladies turned brand-squatters poke fun at religious right

   Redditors, Tweets duped as well, what's not to like?

   Redditers in Australia – and others – got a giggle out of one of the better bits of brand-squat-spoofing to arise on the Interwebs in recent times. The Australian Christian Lobby, a lobby group with sufficient influence to regularly regale Canberra politicians about the country's inevitable slide towards ungulate matrimony by …

   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 …

5. Sunday, 28 April 2013

   Boffins strap turbocharger to BitTorrent

   P2P that goes FASTER as load increases

   Cue a new round of fast-network scare-mongering from the world's content owners: a group of information theorists from the US, France and Finland believe that with a bit of tweaking, P2P networks can become even more efficient. In fact, if their maths is correct – and their ideas could be deployed on a large scale – their …

   It was the Reg what won it: Online Hitchhiker's Guide thriving

   Douglas Adams' vision h2g2 still needs contributors

   A cheering tale of triumph over adversity reached Vulture Central this week to warm the heart of even the frostiest soul. The online encyclopaedia h2g2 - after the famous Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books - launched by author Douglas Adams in 1999 has survived its amputation from the BBC and is doing well. The Beeb cut …

6. Saturday, 27 April 2013

   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 …

7. Friday, 26 April 2013

   LivingSocial admits major hacking attack on customer database

   Credit card info is safe, company insists

   Up to 50 million customers of the Amazon-funded daily deals site LivingSocial are getting an apologetic email from CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy explaining that their information may have been stolen. "LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data …

   If you spend THIS much on cloud, perhaps you need a rethink

   Cloud makers reveal tipping point from public to private

   There's only so much you should spend on commodity cloud services before you consider other options like getting a discount, moving back to your own servers, or to a private managed cloud, according to cloud providers and customers. If you're spending more than $10,000 (£6,500) a month or so, then it's probably worth …

   New Google Play terms ban non-store app updates

   Rug pulled from under Facebook's auto-updates

   Google has amended the policies of its Play app store for Android to prohibit third-party app update mechanisms, in a move seemingly designed to put the kibosh on a contentious feature being tested by Facebook. As of Friday, the "Dangerous Products" section of the Chocolate Factory's Google Play Developer Program Policies - …

   Police arrest suspect in BIGGEST DDoS ATTACK IN HISTORY

   Dutch suspect snatched in Spain

   The Dutch police have confirmed the arrest of man suspected of taking part in a massive DDoS attack against the anti-spam group Spamhaus back in March. The 35 year-old man is a Dutch national but was arrested at his home in Barcelona under a European arrest warrant, the Netherlands National Prosecution Office told the BBC. His …

   What work? Tablet owners prefer to slack off with their slabs

   Their kids like to play with them, too

   Tablet owners love their fondleslabs, but hardly anybody thinks of them as tools for business, according to a new report from JD Power and Associates. The study, based on a survey of 1,857 tablet owners that was conducted in February 2013, found that just 20 per cent of them admitted to using their devices for "business …

   Lenovo deal to buy IBM x86 server biz moving along fast

   Time for Ginni to make a call to GloFo or TSMC for fab spinout

   It is becoming increasingly clear that IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is annoyed with the performance of the company's systems business. Annoyed enough to spin off all or part of its System x server business to China's Lenovo Group, according to rumors that surfaced last week. The US channel trade rag CRN broke the story of an …

   Senate clears bill to block warrantless email searches

   But CISPA still trumps it

   The Senate Judiciary Committee has cleared the way for an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) that will require the police to get a warrant before rummaging through your emails. Under the existing terms of the 1986 EPCA legislation, police investigators only need a subpoena, which can be issued …

   Microsoft off the hook for billions in Motorola Mobility payout

   Court case hinges around patents used in Xbox

   Microsoft has triumphed in a court battle after a judge dismissed claims it owed Motorola Mobility billion-dollar royalties for technology used in the Xbox 360. The judge broke new ground by determining specific royalty fees to be paid for the use of standard-essential patents, which he said should amount in the millions rather …

   T-mobile US in invisible handset handcuff contract smackdown

   'No restrictions' ads caused nose growth, pant fires - AG

   T-Mobile USA's no-restriction contract turns out to have restrictions, and while they might seem obvious to some the state Attorney General in Washington feels they weren't obvious enough. The tariffs are designed to separate airtime and handset subsidy, which T-mobile described as coming without a two-year commitment. But …

   Scan Source lifts cover off 'disappointing' Euro numbers

   Workers pushed out door to improve profits

   Scan Source sucked down on some bitter tasting fiscal Q3 numbers last night with both its top and bottom lines taking a knock. Sales dropped 3.5 per cent to $683m in the quarter to 31 March and net profit fell to $14m from $14.8m in the same period a year ago. Business was driven by North America said Mike Baur, CEO, who …

   Ubuntu without the 'U': Booting the Big Four remixes

   Review Raring Ringtail without the OS X/Unity stuff

   It's the end of April, so that means that there's a new release of Ubuntu. Well, actually, no - it means that there are eight of them. Don't like standard Ubuntu's Mac-OS-X-like Unity desktop? Here's where to look. There are umpteen "remixes" alongside the eponymous distro. These mostly differ by having a different desktop - …

   CURSE you, EINSTEIN! Humanity still chained in relativistic PRISON

   'Collapsar jump' from Forever War seemingly not on cards

   Disappointing news on the science wires today, as new research indicates that a possible means of subverting the laws of physics to allow interstellar travel apparently doesn't work. Curses! Can nothing pierce this damned rubber sheet? As we are told in a new paper just published in hefty boffinry mag Science: Neutron …

   You hear that, Mr Cook? Samsung's profits have gone UP

   Remember when Apple's used to do that?

   Samsung Electronics is toasting a massive hike in its Q1 profits fuelled by sales of smartmobes and tabs but warned cheaper kit flooding the market may "dampen" its next quarterly numbers. Sales for the period ended 31 March climbed by 16 per cent to 52.87tn won (£30.7bn), boosting operating profits by 50 per cent to 8.78tn …

   Texan stitches stratosphere into stunning panoramas

   One mighty orb and six vid cameras for fully spherical imagery

   Take one mighty hydrogen-filled orb, six panoramic vid cameras, hours of image-stitching jiggery-pokery and you too can produce fully spherical panoramic imagery from the stratosphere... The 360 degree view at 29,000m ...or capture a 360 degree movie of your balloon burst at a breathtaking 29,378m (96,383ft): The …

   PEAK iPHONE? Apple mobe growth slumps to ‘lowest in its history’

   What won't appear on Tim Cook's WWDC 2013 slides

   Samsung has extended its lead over Apple by shifting considerably more smartphones than its adversary during the first quarter of 2013. The South Korean giant also managed to ship 56 per cent more mobes in those three months than it did in the same period a year ago. Among the world’s top five smartphone vendors, Apple - …

   HP's StoreVirtual gets a bit older, decides it needs some Fibre

   LeftHand turn for Palo Alto

   HP is adding Fibre Channel connectivity to its previously iSCSI access-only StoreVirtual range of arrays. These are the re-branded LeftHand Networks iSCSI arrays and HP is introducing a new mid-range product as well as adding Fibre Channel access. The new StoreVirtual models are: 4630 for the mid-range with 6Gbit/s SAS, a …

   Hey, monkey: Just 'cos your mates eat FOUL corn, YOU have to eat it too?

   Science: Um, well... yes

   Monkeys are just as prone to peer group pressure as humans, according to new research. Boffins at the University of St Andrews found that primates are heavily influenced by the behaviour of their peers, just as humans are. The discovery has been hailed as a rare example of "cultural transmission" in non-human animals. …

   AT&T debuts 'Digital Life' robo-home and security tech

   Step into Internet of Things: Give us keys to homes in 15 US cities

   AT&T is pushing into home automation and security with Digital Life, a new service rolling out across 15 cities, which should carve out yet another niche for the US telecom giant. The initial sell for Digital Life is security, but the upsell is home automation, all managed through an AT&T website and an AT&T hub connected over …

   Apple fanbois get one last chance to see spectre of Steve Jobs

   Extra tickets printed after WWDC 2013 sells out in SECONDS

   Apple has taken pity on fanbois who were too slow to buy a ticket to its 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference, which sold out in seconds. The iPhone giant has now coughed up a few more passes to keep its choked-up coders sweet. Software programmers hoping to attend this year's annual love-in were floored after all the $1,599 …

   Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

   Something for the Weekend, Sir? Hear, there and everywhere

   Returning from a school trip to New York, my son handed back most of the $350 spending money we’d given him. Yes, I too thought it was a lot of dosh for a four-day tour but then I have no experience in the matter. When I was a kid, a school trip involved walking up to the pond to catch tadpoles for biology class, not …

   Can't find your motor? Apple patents solve car park conundrums

   Cupertino to enable world+dog to find its lost Ladas

   Apple has filed a series of patents which will help people find their motors in a crowded car park and then open the doors without using a key. The patents that emerged today are called "method for locating a vehicle" and "accessing a vehicle using portable devices". The first sets out a system for anyone who wants to leave …

   Review: Nokia Lumia 520

   At last - an alternative to Landfill Android

   A few years ago the late music magazine The Word coined the phrase "landfill indie" to describe the thousands of generic groups it encountered. Today the shops are full of "landfill Android": utterly generic, non-too-inspiring handsets. It’s into this Valley of Death that Nokia tosses its new Lumia 520. In the UK, the average …

   Hunt on NHS data sharing: Obviously we HAVE TO let people opt out

   Patients who've already said no will be safeguarded... How? Who knows

   Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted this morning that NHS patients who have refused to give consent to existing data-sharing mechanisms would be safeguarded under the government's new plans to open up information across the service. The Cabinet minister confirmed to The Register that the 750,000 patients throughout England …

   'Your infernal cable pipes come up from Hell, Virgin!'

   Quotw Plus: 'I suspect some DDoS skid on his Mum's Windows box'

   This was the week when Virgin Media was forced to grovel publicly after a deceased man's family posted the firm's demand for a £10 "late payment" when his direct debit was denied because of his death. The new bill clearly states that the direct debit was denied because the payer was deceased, but that didn't stop Virgin from …

   El Reg drills into Google's search biz offer to Europe

   Analysis Mountain View wants to choose its EU inspector

   Google's formal offer of concessions to European Commission competition officials - over allegations that the ad giant had abused its dominance of the search market in the EU - have finally been made public. As we reported on Thursday, rivals now have one month to scrutinise Google's proposals and then tell antitrust chief …

   Caldicott: NHS workers should 'have the confidence to share information'

   'As important as duty to protect patient confidentiality'

   Dame Fiona Caldicott, who is scrutinising the government's plan to hand NHS patient records to private companies, today gave the proposals the thumbs-up - with a few caveats, naturally. The noted psychiatrist's review [PDF] of the data-sharing scheme was published just minutes ago. Her report, drafted in March, follows Health …

   Even world's most MASSIVE distie takes punch to wallet

   Profits down by over 40% but sales boosted by acquisitions

   Restructuring costs, higher taxes and aggressive pricing on both sides of the pond throttled Ingram Micro's profits for calendar Q1 but acquisitions allowed the world's largest tech distie to post double-digit sales gains. Turnover climbed 19 per cent to $10.26bn including a $1.1bn contribution from Brightpoint and $75m from …

   DARPA looks for a guided bullet with DEAD reckoning navigation

   Not only has your name on it, but your address too

   Madcap Pentagon tech shop DARPA is looking again at the Global Positioning System (GPS, which makes almost all the world's satnav systems work) in a bid to reinvent the tech which used to be cutting edge military gear but these days is tracking dogs and finding golf balls. DARPA's director Arati Prabhakar has announced that …

   Mosaic turns 20: Let's fire up the old girl, show her the web today

   Grandmother to IE and Firefox, the web's first popular browser

   NCSA Mosaic - marking its 20th anniversary this week - was not the first web browser, but it was the first to be widely used. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, describes its early days in his book Weaving the Web. Berners-Lee states that the first browser - WorldWideWeb - was text-based, and he had an early version …

   'Facebook, Twitter, Google: Ad companies masquerading as tech ones'

   Says cross advertising man (not pickled herring)

   The boss of Britain's largest advertising company has slammed Google, Facebook and Twitter for being "media owners masquerading as tech companies". Speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference in London today, Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, said his company spent $2bn on buying advertising from Google last year, up …

   Titsup 2e2's data centre dustup gave UK users the CLOUD FEAR

   Vendors struggling to reinflate the bubble

   When 2e2 Group suddenly collapsed earlier this year, owing over £400m to trade creditors and stranding a rake of customers from NHS trusts to the Bank of England, a gigantic question mark instantly formed over the cloud. Many customers already had concerns about keeping control of their assets in the cloud. 2e2's rapid …

   Announcement of 'churnalism detector' gets furiously churned

   From the secretive mob who gave you the Min of Truth

   "Churnalism" - it's terrible stuff, isn't it? When so-called journalists pick up a press release or announcement from an organisation and simply reprocess it (perhaps even cutting and pasting chunks or the whole thing verbatim), adding nothing and doing no useful analysis or investigation before placing it in front of their …

   Samsung to block mobile app store in Iran as sanctions bite

   Tells users 'legal barriers' are reason for canning Farsi service

   Samsung is blocking access to its mobile app store in Iran from next month, an action believed to be part of international sanctions over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. Customers of the Korean tech giant in Iran received notification on Wednesday night by email that the online marketplace would be out of action as of …

   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 …

   Reg hack to starve on £1 a day FOR SCIENCE

   Signs up for 'Live Below the Line' charity subsistence challenge

   As of next Monday, this hack will live for five days with just £1 a day to spend on food, having rather recklessly signed up for the "Live Below the Line" challenge. Inspired by the news that Ben Affleck will starve himself for charity - and also we presume in penance for his part in cinematic outrage Pearl Harbor - I decided …

   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 …

   Apple loses again in Chinese App Store copyright case

   Beijing judge throws the book at Cupertino as writers triumph

   Apple has lost another copyright case in China after it was held responsible for content third parties uploaded to the bookish corner of its App Store. The company was ordered to pay three Chinese writers more than 730,000 yuan (£76,600) in compensation after allowing their content to be uploaded and sold on the App Store …

   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, …

   Amazon's cloud on track for $2bn in revenue in 2013

   Analysis AWSome cloud swells with cash, objects

   Bezos & Co's cloud looks likely to turn over at least $2bn in 2013 and potentially much more – a fact sure to put the frighteners on traditional IT suppliers scrabbling to come up with their own as-a-service infrastructure products. Amazon recorded revenues of $750m within its "Other" category in the first quarter of 2013, up …

   Study suggests US companies use overseas workers to cut wages

   Skills shortage? What skills shortage?

   An extensive study of the US labor market has shown that the skills shortage which technology firms are constantly complaining about is overstated and firms may instead be using overseas workers to drive down wage costs. In a paper for the Economic Policy Institute by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University, Daniel Kuehn of American …

   SkySQL nabs Monty Program to form MariaDB powerhouse

   Merger unites veteran MySQL developers, consultants

   Open source database consultancy SkySQL has announced a merger with Monty Program Ab, the company that develops the MariaDB database, in a move that reunites key members from the original MySQL development and services teams. The merged company, which will keep the SkySQL name, will continue to market MariaDB, a drop-in …

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