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8th June 2012 Archive

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  • Office 365 reaches for the sky with 80,000 seat FAA win

    CSC scoops $91m seven-year contract

    Troubled IT contractor Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has won a $91m contract to provide 80,000 employees in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and US Department of Transportation (DOT) with Office 365. The contract is for one base year's operation for 60,000 FAA staff and 20,000 at the DOT, with an option for six …

    Cloud Business 8 Jun 00:10

  • Climate scientists see 'tipping point' ahead

    'The Day After Tomorrow' may come the day after tomorrow

    An international group of climate scientists warns that a "tipping point" in the earth's life-support systems may be rapidly approaching, and that should we step over that as-yet-undetermined threshold, it may be too late to reverse course. "The science tells us that we are heading toward major changes in the biosphere," UC …

    Science 8 Jun 00:17

  • Apple to 'pay AUD$2.2m fine' for 4G claims

    Ruling hertz Cupertino’s hip pocket

    Apple is to pay an AUD$2.2 million fine for misleading the Australian public about the networking capabilities of the new iPad, reports The Australian. Apple was taken to court by Australia’s competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), after claiming the new iPad had 4G capabilities. …

    reghardware 8 Jun 03:04

  • China to extend real name registration rules

    Don't even think of trying to register @FakeMao behind great firewall

    Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, China is proposing updates to current internet censorship laws which could extend real name registration rules to all blogs and internet forums, tightening its control over user-generated content. Beijing already requires users of the country’s popular micro-blogging services to …

    Public Sector 8 Jun 03:47

  • M5 Networks acquired by Northrop Grumman

    Canberra security company off to the spookware big leagues

    Canberra security company M5 Networks has been acquired by US defence contractor Northrop Grumman. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but Northrop Grumman says “The acquisition is not material to Northrop Grumman's 2012 financial outlook” which means it is unlikely to involve colossal sums. M5’s team will remain in …

    Business 8 Jun 04:42

  • HTC locked out of Windows 8 tablet party

    If your name's not down you're not getting in

    HTC has been declined an invitation to the Windows 8 party after Microsoft apparently refused its tablet development team access to the forthcoming operating system, in yet another body blow to the ailing hardware firm. Redmond made the decision based on the fact that HTC doesn’t sell enough tablets or have enough experience …

    reghardware 8 Jun 04:50

  • HP Z1 quad-core Xeon 27in PC

    Review All in one workstation, anyone?

    PC users who secretly covet their cubicle neighbour’s 27in iMac but don’t want to leave the Windows world can begin to feel rather smug these days. HP's Z1 is its take on the all-in-one concept, but has the heart of a workstation. It's a handsome beast too, with a 27in display which also houses a Xeon server-class CPU as well …

    reghardware 8 Jun 06:00

  • China a lover, not a fighter ... IN SPAAAAAACE

    PRC wants 'sustainable common development' up there

    China has invited other countries to help it build its first fully-formed space station, in a bid to promote a more inclusive approach to the development of outer space. Cheng Jingye, China's permanent representative to the UN, told a conference in Vienna that the People’s Republic is committed to the peaceful use of outer …

    Science 8 Jun 06:20

  • Watchdog relieves iPhone 5 scammers of £10k

    Dodgy adverts earns fine from premium-rate line regulator

    A British company who offered "iPhone 5s" to punters has been slapped with a £10,000 fine by regulator PhonePayPlus, which ruled that the adverts for the non-existent phone were misleading. According to the judgment published today, the Bumbalee service run by Mobile Minded BV used "prizes" such as the iPhone 5 to lure punters …

    Crime 8 Jun 07:01

  • Xsigo pushes server fabric pill for cable and adaptor bloat

    Wants to get data centres hooked on cabling clutter cleanup

    Venture capital-funded startup Xsigo is looking to its latest Data Centre Fabric (DCF) version to become its killer product. The kit is aimed at bloated data centres, where it will remove network cable and adapter sprawl and channel I/O to servers running any of five hypervisors across a 56gig InfiniBand link. The idea is that …

    Storage 8 Jun 07:29

  • GCHQ to encrypt your tweets with Enigma - for science

    Now you can make even less sense on Twitter

    The Enigma code, once used by the Nazis to send secret military commands, will be used by visitors to the Cheltenham Science Fair next week to send tweets. In a celebratory code-cracking session to mark 100 years since Alan Turing's birth, GCHQ has lent out one of its Enigma coding machines to the Science Fair from 12 to 17 …

    Bootnotes 8 Jun 08:01

  • You know what Google needs? Another Street View data-slurp probe

    London's man in Europe wants UK to launch an inquiry

    A UK inquiry should be held to determine whether Google knew that its Street View cars were collecting personal data over unsecure Wi-Fi networks for use in other projects, a politician has said. Claude Moraes, an MEP who represents London, said that allegations contained in a recent US regulator's report into the matter …

    Government 8 Jun 08:33

  • Hauppauge MyTV 2Go

    Accessory of the Week Freeview on the move

    There’s no shortage of TV tuners for either Macs or PCs. But Hauppauge’s MyTV 2Go is different in that it allows you to connect to it over Wi-Fi from an iPhone or an iPad, as well as a computer. In addition to freeing you from having an extra device plugged into the iPad, it also means you have much more freedom over placing …

    reghardware 8 Jun 09:00

  • Sepaton tarts up DeltaStor: Now hooks up with ANYONE

    Dedupes heterogeneous databases backups

    Sepaton has updated its software to back up and reduplicate DB2, Oracle and other databases, thus leap-frogging Data Domain, which is Oracle-bound. Version 6.1 of its DeltaStor software has a DBeXstream component that takes care of the database deduplication business and does so when a database is backed up through multiple …

    Storage 8 Jun 09:17

  • Gov exposes 8,000 GPs so punters can pick one

    Wait 0 minutes for a nasty doc, or 3 hours for a nice one?

    Data on more than 8,000 GP practices in England has been published in an effort to help patients choose the best GP surgery and to drive up standards. The Department of Health will use the information to measure patient experience for each surgery based on areas such as: How convenient it is to get an appointment. The …

    Government 8 Jun 09:38

  • Twitter bird reborn to the sound of whalesong

    LogoWatch Trending now: #freedom, #hope, #inanebanter

    Just when we all thought the interwebs had put the worst excesses of trendy Strategy Boutiques behind them, Twitter has proved there are still some who prefer to do their rebrandings to the sound of whalesong while sitting in the lotus position and enveloped in a thick joss-stick fug. Doug Bowman, Twitter's creative director, …

    Music and Media 8 Jun 10:02

  • Apple iPad sales drop by DOUBLE DIGITS in Europe

    SHOCK, HORROR: tablet heavyweight downed in April

    Apple fondleslab sales tumbled after the buying frenzy around its third generation iPad died down, Context numbers reveal. Stats from the bean-counter, which tracks distributor shipments, show that the total number of iPads flogged dropped 22 per cent in April across Western Europe compared to the previous month. Broken down …

    Channel Register 8 Jun 10:14

  • Google adds 'nuclear' AdWords to 'explosive' AdMob

    Mobile advertising goes BANG!

    Ad giant Google has opened up its AdWords system to mobile devices by slotting the network into its AdMob mobile app advertising platform. This means that the company's 1-million-strong ad partners can now run campaigns on 350 million smartphones and fondleslabs running hundreds of thousands of apps within its mobile network …

    Applications 8 Jun 10:28

  • Facebook tears wraps off its own app store

    Give us your cash... bitch

    Facebook has continued its quest to keep punters glued to the social network by opening an app store that mimics Apple's iPhone software supermarket. The move follows the web giant's failure to rake in cash from adverts on mobiles: it's hoped the new App Center will encourage users to stare at the website on their smartphones …

    Applications 8 Jun 10:44

  • LinkedIn dials 911 on password mega-leak hackers

    Biz network still silent on spate of spam

    LinkedIn has turned to the FBI for help after 6.5 million of its users' passwords were dumped online by hackers. The business network said "a small subset" of the hashed data had been deduced and revealed, but the rest is "hard to decode". Security biz Sophos estimated that as much as 60 per cent of the leaked list had been …

    Enterprise Security 8 Jun 10:58

  • Focus groups are for mugs

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? Unfortunately your product doesn’t work

    Journalists can be a contrary lot and IT journalists are no exception. Whatever we get asked to test and review, we’re never really happy with it. But that’s OK because the manufacturers and their PR companies, and often the readers too, are never happy with what we write either. While the risks that IT journalists run tend to …

    reghardware 8 Jun 11:02

  • Prime Minister faces grilling at Leveson Inquiry

    Osborne and Clegg will also be quizzed on closeness to news organs

    Prime Minister David Cameron will appear at the Leveson Inquiry next week. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and former Labour PM Gordon Brown will also face a grilling at the media ethics probe. According the inquiry's witness list [PDF], Cameron will be the sole person to …

    Government 8 Jun 11:14

  • HBO wants royal price for Iron Throne

    $30k for Game of Thrones replica chair

    Are you a Game of Thrones fan who dreams of marching an army to Kings Landing to take the Iron Throne? Dream no more. HBO's replica of the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones is available for $30,000 (£19,367). This is quite a knock up considering it isn't made from real swords, but constructed from hand-painted fibreglass …

    reghardware 8 Jun 11:20

  • Germany reveals secret techie soldier unit, new cyberweapons

    CyCon 2012 We have ways of making you pwned

    Germany has confirmed that its military maintains an operational cyberwarfare unit with offensive capabilities. The admission, which appeared in parliamentary documents published on Tuesday, gave no details of the size of the unit much less any operations that it might have run. However documents delivered to the German …

    Government 8 Jun 11:29

  • Pure pushes AirPlay enabled audio box

    Apple today keeps the dock away

    Pure rolled out the red carpet for Apple AirPlay last week with the Contour 200i Air, which supports the Wi-Fi share tech for streaming music without the need to continuously dock. The Contour 200i Air connects to a home Wi-Fi system and shares network settings with any iOS device placed in the dock, simply by pressing a …

    reghardware 8 Jun 11:32

  • Best Buy founder flees troubled tech supermarket

    Richard Schulze cashes in his microchips

    Richard Schulze, the man who built tech megastore chain Best Buy out of an audio store he set up in Minnesota in 1966, has exited the company abruptly - causing the shares to take a hit. Falling profits, a troubled a withdrawal from Europe and sex scandal allegations that took out Best Buy's CEO Brian Dunn have tamed the …

    Channel Register 8 Jun 11:43

  • Hands on with Nintendo's Wii U

    First look Give it to Mii...

    It's been widely discussed, dissected and generally accepted that E3 2011 was something of a misstep for Nintendo; last year's unveiling of Wii U was met by much scratching of heads as press and public alike tried to fathom what we might expect from the gaming firm's Mario Wii U console. How were we meant to hold such …

    reghardware 8 Jun 12:06

  • EMEA server sales downed by financial meltdown in Q1

    Not even the cloud can save us now

    European server sales slumped in opening three months of the year due to the economic meltdown, but HP managed to knock IBM off the top spot as its rate of decline was slower. This is according to abacus-stroker IDC, armed with stats that indicate factory revenues in Q1 were $3.1bn, down nearly 12 per cent year-on-year as unit …

    Channel Register 8 Jun 12:19

  • AMD palms PCs with LiveBox miniature desktop

    Size of relief

    AMD is making a splash at Computex this week with its own mini PC setup, the AMD LiveBox. Powered by one of AMD's X86-based Fusion chips, the LiveBox boasts 1GB of RAM and Radeon HD 6200 graphics. The model on display features 64GB of SSD storage, which can be expanded through the Box's memory card reader. One standout …

    reghardware 8 Jun 12:25

  • Euro 2012: England is semi-final probability

    Euro 2012 stats Stats-cruncher lifts nation's hopes

    Ahead of the first ball being kicked at the Euro 2012 tournament, England is the third-ranked team and has a 68 per cent chance of getting out of the group stage according to the UK's top academic soccer statistician. You read that right. With one of its best players unavailable for the first two matches, a manager who's had …

    reghardware 8 Jun 12:42

  • 'Unnamed' HP biz unit developing mystery object storage

    Secret's in the COS service source

    HP is developing an object storage product, basing it on technology used in its Cloud Object Storage service. Object storage is designed for storing massive amounts of unstructured information in a highly scalable, scale-out infrastructure of linked nodes with a flat object address space instead of in a file:folder system with …

    Infrastructure 8 Jun 13:02

  • Apple-Moto patent gripe almost thrown out the door

    US judge 'tentatively' dismisses IP lawsuit

    A US judge has finally gotten as sick of patent cases as the rest of the world and all but thrown out an Apple v Motorola Mobility lawsuit. Judge Richard Posner has issued a tentative view that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, which would mean that neither of the companies could bring up their whinges again, and …

    Law 8 Jun 13:18

  • Average selling price of tablets drops 21% in three months

    Report: Slabs for the masses as ASP drops to £250

    The average price of a tablet computer dropped 21 per cent in the first three months of 2012 - making $386 (£250) the average amount that customers pay for a slab. Figures compiled by IMS research show the striking drop, which the tracker company attributed almost entirely to Apple. Apple's price cut on its iPad 2 model in …

    CIO 8 Jun 13:41

  • 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook flushed away by RIM

    Disties and retailers flogging last dregs

    Ailing Canadian device maker Research In Motion (RIM) is killing off its entry-level BlackBerry PlayBook. In a mailed statement to The Channel, RIM confirmed it is halting the production line for the 16GB version. "The 16 GB PlayBook will continue to be available for distributors and retailers while quantities last," said RIM …

    Channel Register 8 Jun 13:55

  • Psst, want to make a killing? Flog clouds to small biz. Trust me

    Analysis Enterprise-grade tech at non-enterprise prices

    Unless you've been living in a supplies cupboard for the past year, you'll know that the buzzword de jour is cloud computing. It seems everywhere you look, somebody is promoting or trying to sell a cloud solution. Ball gazers at IDC estimate that by 2020, the cloud will generate a worldwide services and enablement market worth …

    Channel Register 8 Jun 14:14

  • Raspberry Pi safe and warm in TINY Lego fortress

    Block and load

    While punters have been crafting their own homemade Raspberry Pi cases since the miniature Linux box was first revealed, one inventive youngster has now shown how Lego can be a perfect fit too. 12-year-old student named only as "Biz" has had her Raspberry Pi Lego case instructions posted on the company's official blog, …

    reghardware 8 Jun 14:18

  • EU gives Google till July to offer fix for search dominance

    Antitrust chief - 'Remedies better be good, or else'

    The EU's antitrust head honcho has said that Google has until early July to tell him how it's going to change itself enough to sort out its dominant position in the marketplace. Google has repeatedly made out that it doesn't know what the EU's antitrust division is going on about, but is of course open to conversations with …

    Law 8 Jun 14:36

  • Olympus confirms rumoured job losses in restructuring

    Camera firm will axe 2,700 and close factories

    Scandal-hit camera firm Olympus has announced a five-year plan to turn itself around, including axing 2,700 workers and merging or getting rid of some of its 30 factories. Rumours of the restructuring started circulating a couple of weeks ago, but Olympus wouldn't comment at the time. The Japanese company said it would be …

    Financial News 8 Jun 14:56

  • Rogue kebab provokes Carlisle post-pub car deathmatch

    Booze + dropped doner = prang

    A Carlisle building labourer has been relieved of his driving licence for 27 months after a drunken kebab retrieval manoeuvre ended with him piling his car into a stationary vehicle. Colin Watson, 27, left the house he shares with his parents on 18 May, following a row with mum and dad. According to the Telegraph, he drove to …

    Bootnotes 8 Jun 14:58

  • E3 2012: Prepare to have your buttons pushed

    Show Roundup Shoot 'em, zap 'em, hack 'em, RULE THEM!

    With current-gen consoles entering their twilight years and most next-gen consoles still merely dots in the distance, you'd expect 2012's Electronic Entertainment Expo in LA to be a fairly quiet show in comparison to last year. Fortunately, this wasn't the case and there was plenty to keep gaming's fanbois drooling. Super …

    reghardware 8 Jun 15:13

  • Samsung's projector phone beamed up to Blighty

    Hit the wall

    Samsung's Galaxy Beam - the smartphone with a built-in projector - is set to hit UK shelves this month after retailers revealed its expected release date. The Samsung Galaxy Beam was on show at Mobile World Congress in February, sporting a 4in, 480 x 800 display and a 1Ghz dual-core processor running Android 2.3. The obvious …

    reghardware 8 Jun 15:13

  • Pint-size gizmo shoots X-RAY LASER for first time

    Boffins spew rainbow of radiation from table-top tech

    It was thought that it would take an atomic bomb to produce enough power to generate an X-ray laser, but a team of boffins have fired one from a table-top box of tricks. X-ray lasers need astonishing amounts of power and huge equipment to create extremely short-lived yet coherent beams with a wavelength in the tens of …

    Physics 8 Jun 15:25

  • Buffalo bundles USB 3.0 AND Thunderbolt in single drive

    Speedy storage

    Buffalo Technology launched the world's first portable Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 dual-interface drive this week at Computex. The bus-powered MiniStation Thunderbolt/USB Portable Hard Drive comes in both 500GB and 1TB versions and features the lightening-quick connection ports of both USB 3.0 - said to handle speeds of up to …

    reghardware 8 Jun 15:34

  • At last! The Wi-Fi chip that'll beam video from mobe to telly

    Stick two antennas up at your router

    Marvell's latest Avastar chipset and TI's next-generation silicon will stream video to a TV, projector or similar over Wi-Fi Direct while maintaining a separate wireless network connection. But why? So you can ensure what's being shown on your touchscreen tablet can be seen on the family telly or lecture hall wall, provided …

    reghardware 8 Jun 15:45

  • Barnes & Noble files official complaint over ebook settlements

    Won't somebody please think of the American public?

    Barnes & Noble has lodged a complaint over the ebook settlement proposed by the Department of Justice, claiming that it will be bad news for booksellers and the American public. The bookseller, which has been competing in the market with its Nook ereader, said that the DoJ's antitrust case against Apple and five publishing …

    Law 8 Jun 15:46

  • Mr Sulu causes DDoS panic after posting link on Facebook

    ISP can't believe George Takei has so many fans

    Star Trek hero George Takei unleashed such a wave of interest after posting a link on his Facebook page – to a website which was selling a 'Takei T-shirt' – that the site's ISP assumed that the traffic was a DDoS attack and took the site down for several hours. The Star Trek star posted a link to a gay-pride T-shirt with a …

    Music and Media 8 Jun 15:51

  • Logitech slashes 450 jobs

    Peripherals maker 'saddened' by cost cutting programme

    PC peripherals maker Logitech is axing 450 jobs to help it slash some $80m (£51.9m) from annual overheads. The company told investors the lay-offs, part of a restructuring plan, equate to 13 per cent of the "non-direct labour workforce". The execs said the plan would result in a pre-tax charge in the current fiscal year of …

    Channel Register 8 Jun 16:03

  • Microsoft's Azure cloud slides onto OCZ flash

    Cheap-as-chips service strokes solid disk

    Microsoft is taking the fight to Amazon, cutting Azure cloud storage transaction prices by 90 per cent. A statement on Microsoft's Windows Azure team blog says: "We heard you loud and clear that you want cheaper transaction costs for Windows Azure Blobs, Tables, Queues, and Drives. We are therefore very pleased today to slash …

    Platform 8 Jun 16:18

  • HP still NOT porting HP-UX to x86?

    Plus: the defunct 'Kinetic' server strategy for Itanium-Xeon hybrids

    The Oracle and Hewlett-Packard lawsuit over the fate of Oracle's software support for Itanium processors, and therefore HP's HP-UX Unix variant, is under way in the Santa Clara County courts. New HP CEO Meg Whitman is making the rounds in the press and making her case to HP customers and partners at the Discover 2012 shindig in …

    Servers 8 Jun 16:21

  • EU lurches behind copyright free-for-all landgrab

    Using a picture without paying for it? That won't be a problem

    The European Parliament has agreed to bless draft proposals on orphan works that are similar to a compulsory purchase order with minimal compensation. It's essentially an argument about using other people's stuff without their permission. In May last year, the European Commission floated proposals to allow the "non-commercial …

    Government 8 Jun 16:32

  • NetApp leapfrogs IBM in storage race for second place

    EMC retains top slot

    NetApp overtook IBM in IDC's latest quarterly storage tracker, reversing several quarters of market share decline In the first calendar 2012 quarter IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker reports global external disk storage systems factory revenues rose 7.1 per cent year-over-year growth to almost $6bn. EMC …

    Storage 8 Jun 16:41

  • Stanley Black & Decker picks up Wi-Fi tracking tools

    Putting real-time locations under the knife

    Stanley's healthcare division has scooped up Wi-Fi tracking leader AeroScout, with a view to pushing the technology into hospitals – for use where RFID isn't good enough. Stanley Healthcare will spend the next year adding AeroScout's Wi-Fi based real-time location system to its product portfolio, as well as integrating the …

    Wireless 8 Jun 17:03

  • US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet

    Ground control to Uncle Linus

    The US Navy has signed off on a $27,883,883 contract from military contractor Raytheon to install Linux ground control software for its fleet of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones. The contract covers the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River in Maryland, which has already spent $5,175,075 beginning to install Linux …

    Operating Systems 8 Jun 18:40

  • Americans stand against UN internet-tax plan

    Comment Can't find any reds, so socialists will have to do

    The idea of taxing internet traffic has got the twitterverse into a tizzy. Apparently socialists monsters want pay for their carriage, and the UN has cooked up a secret plan to get the money. Having failed to find evidence that blue-helmeted geeks are poised to invade cyberspace, the US internet community is now up in arms …

    Networks 8 Jun 19:25

  • Rats with GPS backpacks prepare to sniff out landmines

    Parachuting rodent Skinner squad training to deploy

    Scientists in the US have developed a novel system for detecting landmines by training rats equipped with GPS and wireless rucksacks to sniff out explosives and map them for destruction. A team of boffins at Bucknell University has trained the Rattus recruits to identify the chemicals that seep into the ground from land mines …

    Biology 8 Jun 20:29

  • Global warming helps Arctic algae suck CO2

    Massive phytoplankton bloom solves missing carbon mystery

    There's good news for folks worried that atmospheric CO2 levels in the Arctic have passed 400ppm for the first time: a vast CO2-sucking phytoplankton bloom has been discovered beneath Arctic ice – and it may thank global warming for its presence. "This wasn't just any phytoplankton bloom," Stanford University marine scientist …

    Biology 8 Jun 20:36

  • Intel to target TV viewers with facial recognition ad tech

    Watching you, watching it

    Intel is pitching a set-top box to media companies that can recognize the viewer in order to pitch more-targeted advertising. Luckily, it's reportedly running into problems. Multiple sources told Reuters that Intel is developing the hardware and software to allow facial recognition of the viewer, including their age and gender …

    Music and Media 8 Jun 23:25

  • NASA cuts inspire 'Planetary Exploration Car Wash & Bake Sale'

    National effort on Saturday to shine light on planetary plight

    Planetary scientists across the US will bring attention to NASA budget cuts on Saturday by mockingly hosting their own fundraising event: the National Planetary Exploration Car Wash & Bake Sale. "Join us and make Congress and the American public aware of the planetary cuts and the damage they are doing!" the organizers exhort …

    Space 8 Jun 23:26