The Week in Summary

1. Thursday, 18 October 2012

   Tintri, it's the marmite of Virtual Desktops

   You gentlemen will relish my sauce, promises rival

   It seems that an ever-increasing number of companies are using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Gartner predicts that by 2012, penetration on the enterprise PC sector will be 60 per cent. The vendors which provide accompanying software and gear are likewise fighting for your investment, as evidenced by the flurry of …

   On-demand streamed music services compared

   Feature How Xbox Music stacks up against the competition

   As Microsoft Xbox Music upon the masses this week, streaming over 30 million songs to groovetastic gamers and Windows PC users, we decided to see how it stacks up against the competition. The market is awash with Spotify-style streaming services, which vary in catalogue numbers, mobile support, pricing and their respective …

   Ice sheets may stabilise for centuries, regardless of warming

   The tap filling up the oceans sometimes just turns off

   Ice sheets retreating due to global warming often suddenly stabilise for "decades to centuries" no matter that the warming is still going on, scientists have found. The new research would seem likely to have an impact on forecasts seeking to predict sea-level rise in coming times. Boffins at Cambridge, Durham and Sheffield …

   O2 to save the British High Street ... with money-off vouchers

   Freebies for free, if you're a SME

   O2 is opening its free voucher scheme to every small retailer in the UK, even those which aren't O2 customers, as long as they're not franchised from a megacorp and have a high-street presence. The free scheme, which allows retailers to offer money-off vouchers to O2 customers, was launched in July, but was only available to …

   Canonical flings out Ubuntu 12.10 – now with OPTIONAL Bezos suck

   Web-desktop love is our future

   Canonical is bowed but undaunted after the bashing it took from Penguins over its recent integration of Amazon searches with its Linux desktop. The company has promised further integration between web and desktop as it today released Ubuntu 12.10. Asked by The Reg whether there would be more tie-ins like the one between its …

   BOFH: Uninterruptible patsy supply

   Episode 9 'We are having a special this week on proton charging and storage of the beast'

   "What the fuck just happened?" the Boss garbles, crashing around Mission Control like a madman after dashing down two flights of stairs from the 4th floor boardroom. "Uh.... UPS failure," the PFY says calmly, glancing up from his monitor briefly. "Well aren't you going to do anything about it?" "I am," he responds. "I have …

   Users grumble after Adobe cancels Acrobat X Suite

   'Detailed analysis of product offerings' leads to more expensive software

   Adobe has cancelled its Acrobat X Suite – launched just 18 months ago - and now recommends its customers acquire a more expensive product. The company has buried slipped a statement about the cancellation of the suite into its FAQ for Acrobat. The suite bundled Adobe Acrobat X Pro, Designer ES2, Photoshop CS5, Adobe Captivate …

   Apple iPod Nano 7G review

   The quest for the correct compact form-factor continues...

   Having sold something like 350 million iPods in the last decade, Apple has quite sensibly stuck to pretty much the same basic designs for most of the iPod range. The glaring exception to that rule is the ever-changing, shape-shifing iPod Nano. This is the seventh version of the Nano in seven years, and in that time it’s …

   Chinese 'Thunder God' plant could crush cancer

   Traditional medicine zapped pancreatic cancer in mice

   Scientists believe a plant used for centuries in Chinese medicine may offer a cure for the pancreatic cancer that afflicted Apple talisman Steve Jobs and many others worldwide each year. Boffins from University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer Center have been testing Minnelide, a drug extracted from the lei gong ten or ‘thunder …

   IBM claims first with Hadoop data security suite

   Big Data tools bonanza from Big Blue

   IBM is launching what it claims is the first data security system for Hadoop, as part of its biggest product rollout of security software and services yet seen from the company. Big Blue's not the highest profile security firm, but it has been buying in a lot of talent over the last three years and last year grouped staff and …

   Air China passenger arrested for in-flight phone abuse

   Five days in Beijing slammer for unlucky punter

   Passengers on Chinese airlines were reminded this week that there’s no such thing as 'Airplane Mode' for mobiles in China, after one unfortunate passenger en route from Canada who repeatedly used his smartphone camera and music player was banged up on arrival by Beijing police. The unlucky passenger, surnamed Du, ignored the …

   Kiwi spook stood down after Dotcom SNAFU

   Dotcom talks up Megabox, Google, as only surviving movie studios

   A senior employee at New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to have been sent on gardening leave, as the Bureau and other government agencies investigate the Kim Dotcom affair. In recent works it has emerged that the GCSB conducted surveillance of Dotcom under laws that empower it to spy on …

   ZTE execs halve pay until profits return

   Top brass sacrifice as middle management fail to volunteer for own cuts

   Executives at Chinese telecoms kit maker ZTE have agreed to take a whopping 50 per cent pay cut until the beleaguered firm claws its way back into the black. The Shenzhen-based tech giant, which is the world’s fifth largest smartphone maker by shipments, earlier this week predicted a 260 per cent, or 1.75bn yuan (£174m), drop …

   Barley’s giant genome sequenced and open-sourced

   Boffins build better booze bible

   Better beer from genome sequencing is just one possible outcome from research that included the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) and the University of Adelaide. As well as the usual published-in-Nature for their research paper, the genome sequence and other resources have been published here and here, or …

   Boffins explain research with interpretive dance

   Dance your Ph.D. winner scores with 'The romantic revolution of Lightness & Strength'

   Australian scientists have won this year's Dance your PhD competition, an event boffins who explain their work with interpretive dance. Material scientist Peter Liddicoat, from the University of Sydney, took out the competition with a performance of A super-alloy is born: The romantic revolution of Lightness & Strength, …

   Man files FCC complaint over AT&T FaceTime blocking

   Fist shaken vigorously

   A San Francisco man has filed a complaint against AT&T with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the carrier's decision to charge customers extra to use Apple's FaceTime video conferencing on its 3G and 4G networks. The man, an architect who wishes to remain anonymous, told Business Insider on Wednesday that …

   Caltech shrinks optical accelerometers

   A light alternative to tracking mobes

   The practical limit to tracking a smartphone-owner’s movements in real time – beneath the resolution of GPS and associated location-tracking technologies – is the sensitivity of the motion sensor. Researchers at Caltech say they’ve taken a step towards very fine motion sensors, using nano-scale waveguides. Today’s smartphones …

   Huawei, ZTE probe showed no evidence of spying

   All they did was sell lousy equipment

   An 18-month investigation by the US House Intelligence Committee into Chinese networking vendors Huawei and ZTE revealed no evidence that either company has been involved in espionage, sources claim. As reported by Reuters on Wednesday, two sources familiar with the probe said that "certain parts of government really wanted" …

   Australia ponders patent refresh to restrain trolls

   Simple 'innovation patents' likely to get tougher regs to stop holders blocking rivals

   Australia’s patent system will be overhauled to make life harder for cynical abusers of the patent process. The review will focus on 'innovation patents', a type of patent introduced in 2001 to encourage IP protection for SMEs and function to protect “simple inventions and improvements to existing technologies”. Such patents …

2. Wednesday, 17 October 2012

   Big deals push Mellanox sales and profits in Q3

   Ready to cooperate or compete with Chipzilla

   In the quarter ended in September, Mellanox posted sales of $156.5m, more than double that of year ago period, and the $48.4m in net income the company raked in was ten times--as in 10X--that of the black ink it had in the third quarter of 2011, when the Xeon E5s were expected but did not come out. The InfiniBand and Ethernet …

   Roxon asking right questions at wrong time

   COMMENT Surely breach disclosure laws should come before data retention laws

   Australia’s Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, yesterday introduced a Discussion Paper on Privacy Breach Notification (PDF). The release of the paper almost certainly caused cheers in the vendor community, as The Reg is aware of at least one multinational software company that has made breach notification laws the centrepiece of …

   IE10 coming to Windows 7 sometime, maybe

   Yet another preview promised soonish

   Microsoft takes great pains to ensure that each new version of Windows remains backward compatible with older applications. But if Internet Explorer is any indication, writing a modern application for Windows 8 that still runs on older platforms is a lot harder than it sounds. Each preview release of Windows 8 shipped with two …

   APAC privacy group backs EU's Google stance

   Googleplex lawyers on a four month deadline to comply

   The Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities Forum (APPA) has backed the recommendations made by the Commission Nationale de I’Informatique et des Libertès Working Party’s investigation into Google’s privacy policy issues. In a letter from Australian Information Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, representing the APPA’s regional data …

   Facebook opens mobile apps advertising for all

   Expect more news feed spam ads

   Facebook is looking to make more money from its mobile users by opening up their smartphones to application developers looking to make a sale. The service, which went on beta trial in August, will see developers bidding on Facebook's advertising system to place adverts for their applications in the feeds of mobile users. These …

   Pirate Bay moves to the cloud to confound copyright cops

   Police left with very little to seize

   The Pirate Bay went down for about five minutes on Tuesday night as the group retired almost all of its servers and shifted onto the cloud. "So, first we ditched the trackers. Then we got rid of the torrents. Now? Now we've gotten rid of the servers. Slowly and steadily we are getting rid of our earthly form and ascending into …

   Teradata forges upgraded Aster, data warehouse appliances

   Smell the new Xeon E5 iron and unified data environment

   Data warehousing and analytics pioneer Teradata has managed to keep rivals IBM, Oracle, and EMC/Greenplum at bay through product evolution and acquisitions, and is taking the wraps off upgraded versions of its eponymous data warehouse and Aster analytics appliance to keep its share of the big data turf it helped plant decades …

   Enterprise servers go soft at Intel in Q3

   Cloud builders humming along, four-socketeers slowing

   Intel had a less than stellar performance in the third quarter, as El Reg reported yesterday, and the problem was enterprise servers as much as it was PCs. In the quarter ended in September, overall sales were down 5.5 per cent to $13.46bn, and thanks to a spike in research and development spending, net income was down 14.3 …

   Cops cuff tabloid computer hacking suspect in Newcastle

   Op Tuleta officers carve 17th notch on gunbutt

   Officers investigating claims of computer hacking in relation to alleged voicemail interception and other offences at Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper group - News International - arrested another suspect this morning. They said a 48-year-old man was manacled at a business premises in the Newcastle area earlier today. The …

   Northgate IS issues suppliers with Ts&Cs change ultimatum

   Public sector giant demanding supplier rebates based on turnover as it rationalises distie base

   Northgate Information Solutions (NIS) is sharpening up its axe act on procurement in a move that has gone down very badly with some suppliers. The IT giant has written to disties and vendors with a take it leave it offer - pay a nine per cent rebate based on volume of trade with NIS each year - the first instalment is …

   iPhone 5 is the 'most difficult, scratchy device Foxconn has ever made'

   Arguments between workers and QA CAUSED THOSE RIOTS

   We've heard it before, but this time a Foxconn exec said it straight to the Wall Street Journal: the iPhone 5 is really hard to make, the "most difficult device that Foxconn has ever assembled." Many words have been expended over the complexity of manufacturing the screen in the 5 but it seems as though its scratchiness is …

   Astroboffins map GIANT MASS of dark matter

   3D image shows ginormous filament of Big Bang batter

   Astrophysicists have mapped the first 3D image of a gigantic dark matter filament for the first time. Dark matter can't really be "seen" as such, it can only be detected by looking at the gravitational effects it has on the space around it. But by collating images from the Hubble Space telescope, the researchers now have a …

   Pandora boss urges 85% pay cut for musicians

   While steadily cashing himself out of the company ...

   Here's an example of what the new 'internet economy' really looks like, in practice. The leading backer of a bill passing through US Congress that will slash musicians' pay by 85 per cent, as well as effectively outlawing them from bargaining collectively with their paymasters, has been selling stock worth $1m in his own …

   Big data? Big challenge

   Eating the data management elephant, one bite at a time

   Do you find dealing with data like drinking from a fire hydrant? Even as existing data silos continue to grow, an increasing range of external information sources offer new opportunities to understand customers better, to make better decisions or improve service delivery. No organisation is working in a vacuum, however. Time …

   Argos flyer confirms incoming 32GB Nexus 7

   Yours for 200 quid

   Argos is so confident there’s a 32GB Nexus 7 tablet on the way it has put the machine into a Christmas brochure. Spotted by a recipient, photographed and emailed to Teck [sic] Comes First, the Argos rag shows the same old Asus-shot pictures of the Nexus 7 we’ve all seen before but with 32GB capacity clearly there in black and …

   Violin Memory in SECRET $2bn FLOAT PLAN, whisper snitches

   Hm, a technology float that isn't just a website?

   Flash array start-up Violin Memory has filed for an initial public offering* worth up to $2bn, according to Bloomberg, which quoted two undisclosed sources. The report says three banks are involved: JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Bank America Corp. Violin Memory is led by CEO Don Basile, formerly the CEO of Fusion-io, …

   O2 kicks out Ericsson server for breaking its network

   No third strike for dodgy database

   Ericsson's Centralized User Database has been fingered by O2 for a second network outage which hit the operator last week, and will thus be given the boot despite the £10m cost of a replacement. Last week's outage wasn't as serious as the 21-hour downtime which hit O2 customers in July, but it was down to the same bit of kit …

   Calxeda plots server dominance with ARM SoCs

   Prepping a MEEELLION-NODE fleet services enema for data centers

   ARM server chip upstart Calxeda just bagged $55m in funding last week, and now we know what the company is going to do with the dough: plot a steady course to boost the performance of its ARM processors and the scalability of its on-die integrate Layer 2 distribute switch fabric until there is no reason to buy an x86 server chip …

   Oracle squashes 109 bugs in quarterly patch batch

   Hot fresh Java will flush parasites from your system

   Oracle published the latest edition of its quarterly patch update on Tuesday, addressing 109 vulnerabilities in 10 products. The patch batch coincided with a release of a new version of Java, tackling 30 vulnerabilities. The Oracle Java SE critical patch for various supported versions of the software is important because Java …

   Pints all round as Register Special Projects hacks hack off feet

   Poll Result Going the extra 1,609.34 metres for our readers

   It's official: El Reg's Special Projects Bureau will henceforth be operating almost exclusively in SI units. Yup, it's pints all round today as our imperial versus metric poll found readers overwhelmingly in favour of permanently chopping off feet and consigning quarts and ounces to the dustbin of history. No less than 1,773 …

   No Chinese rescue for bankrupt battery-making golden child A123

   One-time techbiz darling shops self to Milwaukee instead

   Electric car battery maker A123 Systems has filed for bankruptcy in the US and plans to sell its automotive business to American rival Johnson Controls. The new plan for the Chapter 11 firm scuppers a proposed rescue from a Chinese company, Wanxiang Group, which wanted to take an 80 per cent stake in A123 for $465m. "We …

   Apple appeals Samsung patent getaway in Tokyo

   Cupertino's Sam-a-rama ding-dong rages on

   Apple is appealing a Tokyo ruling that got Samsung off the hook on patent infringement just after the fruity firm won big in the US. A week after Apple's epic infringement win in California, the Tokyo District Court said that Samsung wasn't violating a Cupertino patent for synching music and video data with servers and ordered …

   Speaking in Tech: 'Calling it a cloud doesn't make it so'

   Podcast Software Defined Bullsh*t, cloudy judgment and more

   In this week's enterprise techcast, Ed Saipetch is steering the ship solo - live from Amsterdam. The lucky sod is in North Holland for Structure:Europe 2012, and has left Greg Knieriemen and Sarah Vela languishing in the States while he tears up canal-lined streets in the name of tech. His special guests this week are Derrick …

   Theresa May gets a smile out of Gary McKinnon at last

   'British justice is all we ever wanted', says mum

   Gary McKinnon's mother smiled and cried as she thanked everyone from the Home Secretary to Bob Geldof for saving her hacker son from extradition to the United States. She said that McKinnon had smiled for the first time in years on hearing the judgment today. Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, thanked Theresa May for her …

   Mission to Pluto faces DEEP SPACE DEBRIS PERIL

   Profuse cloud of objects lurks around icy dwarf-world

   The additional moons discovered around Pluto are putting the visiting spacecraft New Horizons at risk, prompting mission organisers to plot bail-out trajectories and consider turning shields to maximum. Not that New Horizons has any shields as such, but it has got a radio dish which could be rotated to soak up micro meteorites …

   Microsoft Surface priced up for Blighty

   Compares well with rivals

   Advanced orders for Microsoft's Surface tablet are now being taken in the UK. Prices starting at £399. That'll get you a 32GB version of the ARM-based slate without the touch-to-type keyboard-equipped Touch Cover, which comes bundled for an additional £80. Buy the cover on its own and you'll pay £100. Alternatively, those …

   Facebook finally has some non-sales employees in the UK

   'Engineering centre' with 12 real techies opens in adland

   Facebook's first engineering office outside the US opened in London on Tuesday, after the company announced in July this year that it was looking to hire 22 techies in the UK. The dominant social network chose not to move East to the British government-lauded Silicon Roundabout, instead preferring to keep its engineers within …

   ASA shakes finger sternly at naughty eBuyer over hard drive promo

   Toothless watchdog gives web shop vicious gumming

   Gummy mouthed watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority has again told web shop eBuyer to stop misleading customers over hard drive promos. This is the fourth time in less than a year that the toothless independent regulator has put Huddersfield-based eBuyer on the naughty step for making unjustified savings claims. The …

   Free WiFi in London Tube stations extended until end of 2012

   Great the way it cuts off when you go in the tunnel

   More than 660,000 commuters are now accessing Virgin Media's wireless network from ticket halls to platform level on the London Underground, the telco claimed today. It said it was extending free access to the service, which doesn't reach into tunnels and requires users to register with an email address, until the end of 2012 …

   Slideshow: A History of the Smartphone in 20 Handsets

   The devices that made a market

   With the news that world smartphone usage total has passed the billion mark in 20 years, we present 20 of the most important smartphones from the past 20 years. From the very first devices - IBM's Simon and Nokia's Communicator - to the defining products from the major platforms - RIM's BlackBerry 5810, HP's iPaq h6315 and …

   A lesser-known new feature in iOS 6: It's tracking you everywhere

   iJust want to alert you to opportunities!

   Apple has enabled user tracking of its customers once again, with the recently released iOS 6 enabling advertisers to see which apps users have run, and which adverts they've seen – all for the benefit of the users, of course. The feature wasn't highlighted by Apple at the launch of iOS 6, as Business Insider points out in its …

   Plucky orangutan rescued from encroaching biofuel plantations

   Ook! The fearful cost of highly saturated vegetable fat

   A critically endangered orangutan has been rescued after wandering into an area of forest in western Indonesia where palm oil companies have been illegally destroying the environment, a conservation group said. The Sumatran simian had been trapped for days in a diminishing spot surrounded by palm oil plantations and isolated …

   Snoopers Charter is for 'incompetent criminals, accidental anarchists'

   Data chief says gov spynet would snare only dunderheads

   The Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has characterised the Home Office's proposed law to massively increase surveillance of the internet in the UK as one that would only be capable of capturing stupid criminals. Graham told a committee of MPs and peers on Tuesday that the draft Communications Data Bill as it stands …

   Barrall's baby gets bundle of cash for scale-out filer tech

   Gridstore scores $12.5m to embiggen sales

   Grid-based scale-out filer storage startup Gridstore has landed $12.5m in funding to expand its sales channels. Gridstor, background here, provides a scale-out filer, the GS100, in a grid – a trademarked kind, called The Grid – using low-cost Atom-powered nodes and VCT (Virtual Controller Technology), which provides simpler …

   Billion people now own a smartphone

   Twenty years of growth

   The world smartphone usage total has passed the billion-unit point, the first time it has done so. It has taken 20 years, from the first appearance of the device in November 1992 to today. Strategy Analytics, a market watcher, today said it reckons one in seven members of the world’s population has owned a smartphone during Q3 …

   Payment protection tops list of SMS spam scams

   d lads frm Lagos lov txt 2

   AdaptiveMobile, a company which spends most of its time filtering out junk SMS messages, has written up a list of the scams hitting GSM handsets, with mis-sold payment protection insurance topping the list. The spam texts differ significantly from the usual email spam in being more direct, claiming intimate knowledge of the …

   Axe falls on Directgov as GOV.UK launches

   A taxpayer service that saves taxpayer money... Hmm

   The government's new £4.6m-and-counting public services single domain website GOV.UK officially replaced Directgov this morning. Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude confirmed in late 2010 that New Labour's garishly orange-coloured site would be killed off in favour of a new online service that followed Martha Lane Fox's …

   'No cutting off people's internet based on secret evidence'

   Consumer group calls for MPAA to publish its methods

   Ofcom should force rights-holders into publishing most of the details about how their systems for identifying cases of online copyright infringement work, a consumer watchdog has said. In a letter (6-page/1.71MB PDF) to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Consumer Focus said that it would seek "full transparency …

   Panasonic gets second chance with £4.7 BEEELION bailout

   Banks rescue ANOTHER ailing Japanese electronics firm

   Panasonic has persuaded Japanese banks to throw it a lifeline after a record loss of ¥772.1bn (£6bn, $9.8bn) last fiscal year. The heavy loss dropped the electronics group's cash reserves to ¥554.7bn (£4.4bn, $7bn) which still sounds like a fair amount but not when compared to the ¥1.97trn (£15.9bn, $25bn) it could lay its …

   Valve's Half-Life

   Antique Code Show Our very own Tesla Girl recalls a year in physicist Gordon Freeman's company

   I’m not a fan of modern first-person shooters, which is a shame because there used to be a massive soft spot in my heart for Half-Life and its head crabs. When then small, independent developer Value announced it was basing its first game around the exploits of a theoretical physicist, most gamers were understandably …

   Fujitsu beams URLs to mobes through your TV

   Smartphone users can capture coupons or URLs direct from TV

   Boffins at Fujitsu Laboratories have come up with a way of embedding digital coupons and URLs in video transmissions, in what could be a brand new way for firms to flog their products and services and engage more closely with their smartphone-toting customers. The patent-pending technology allows for the transmission of …

   Facebook offers just a week of free Android AV

   Adds free antivirus for mobes and more security partners to AV Marketplace

   Facebook has extended its security program, adding another seven vendors to the list of folks offering free anti-virus software through its AV Marketplace and also including Android security products for the first time. But one of the Android malware zappers, McAfee’s Mobile Security, is free for just seven days, a far shorter …

   Map law could see China confiscate mobes at Customs

   If your maps app gives disputed islands the wrong name, prepare to surrender!

   Travellers to China would be well-advised to check their mobile mapping clients before embarking, after it emerged that customs officers have been given the power to confiscate any device featuring illegal maps, such as those mislabelling important islands. The new policy would see any mobiles or tablets seized at the border …

   ZTE drops spy tech subsidiary

   Still struggling with Iran links

   Chinese telecoms kit maker ZTE has sold its majority stake in ZTE Special Equipment (ZTEsec) – a company that sells surveillance systems. The under-fire Shenzhen-based firm said in a little-publicised filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the end of September that it would “dispose of its 68 per cent equity interests” in …

   Pacemakers, defibrillators open to attack

   Crims could send 830 volts straight to your heart

   Pacemakers and implanted defibrillators are vulnerable to wireless attacks that could kill tens of thousands, says the security researcher best known for "jackpotting" an ATM on stage at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas in 2010. The researcher in question, Barnaby Jack, today told the Ruxcon Breakpoint security …

   Steam spawns vulnerabilities, say researchers

   Gamers can be fragged by 'undocumented features'

   A new security research outfit called ReVuln has presented its letter of introduction to the world in the form of a paper that analyses how the Steam protocol can expose gamers to attacks. In this document (PDF), the company analyses what happens when a URL using the protocol steam:// is redirected. Of the major browsers, …

   Microsoft adds iOS support to cloudy mobile services

   Data and messaging options improved, as well

   Microsoft has rolled out the first major update to its Windows Azure Mobile Services offering, adding support for new data storage and communications methods and making it possible to connect Mobile Services with iOS apps. Redmond debuted Mobile Services in August as an easy way for developers to deploy backend services for …

   Microsoft slurps up StorSimple to boost cloud chops

   Redmond gets further into cloud storage game

   Microsoft has bought out integrated cloud storage vendor StorSimple, giving Redmond some extra-special sauce to add to its Azure cloud service. StorSimple has made a good business selling appliances that use traditional hardware storage while dumping bulk data that's seldom needed off into cloud archives, then pulling it back …

3. Tuesday, 16 October 2012

   Earth-sized planet found at Alpha Centauri B

   ‘Scorched rock’ is just 4.37 light years away

   Astronomers have spotted an Earth-sized exoplanet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. At just 4.37 light years away, the stars of the Centaurus constellation are Earth’s nearest neighbours. That makes the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet rather exciting. Sadly, the planet is even closer to its star than Mercury is to Sol, …

   Intel CEO: PC market slogging along at half speed

   Windows 8 the savior? Wait 90 days. What will it run on? Wait a year

   Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini knows that the PC business is in the tank, believes that Windows 8 might lift it out of its funk, and can't predict which form factor will be The Next Big Thing – tablets, convertibles, or Ultrabooks. "We do believe that when the numbers are all in," he told analysts and reporters during a …

   Big Blue down on all fronts in its third quarter

   Retail system divestiture can't save profits

   Its third financial quarter was not an easy one for IBM, with sales down across most product lines and in many geographical regions, and profits down even after selling off its retail-store systems business to Toshiba. Total sales in the quarter were off 5.4 per cent to $24.75bn, and every part of IBM, including the Software …

   EFF warns of ACTA redux

   Canada, EU clone criminal provisions into new treaty

   America’s Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning that Canada and Europe are in talks to copy-paste the criminal provisions of the notorious ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) into a new treaty called CETA. With the multi-lateral ACTA stumbling towards an unmarked grave, the world’s copyright enforcers appear to have …

   Google releases 'Disavow links' tool to fix SEO spam

   Use with care Google warns

   Google has used the PubCon conference in Las Vegas to release a "Disavow Links" tool, allowing webmasters dump links into their site that are hurting search rankings. "Most people should not need to use this," said Matt Cutts, head of webspam at Google. "We build our algorithms such that in most cases we handle things just …

   Australia mulls data breach notification laws

   Law enforcement agencies may be exempt

   The Attorney-General’s department has released a discussion paper seeking public input on whether Australia should have mandatory data breach notification laws. The discussion paper emerges while debate about the department’s proposed data retention regime – under which carriers and ISPs would be required to hold data about …

   Google's 'JavaScript killer' marks first birthday with update

   New Dart SDK brings speed boost, language revamp

   Just over a year after it first unveiled the Dart language for large-scale web programming, Google has announced that its purported "JavaScript killer" has hit its first major milestone. "Today, after plowing through thousands of bug reports and feature requests from the web community, a new, more stable and comprehensive …

   Microsoft gouges Australia lightly on Surface

   Windows 8 tablet prices AUD$25-$41 higher than in USA

   Australian punters frustrated by the fact they pay more than their North American brethren for Apple gadgets, despite the Australian Dollar currently buying more than one US Dollar, can now get just a little bit mad with Microsoft too, after the company today announced prices for its Surface tablets that exceed US prices. …

   Intel inches above Wall Street's earnings expectations

   Stock drops anyway

   On the day that the Dow notched its first triple-digit gain in over a month, Intel joined the party – well, in a minor way, to be sure – by beating Wall Street's lowered expectations for its most-recent quarter. The company reported quarterly revenue of $13.5bn, net income of $3bn, and earnings per share of 58¢. While those …

   US weather boffins fire up 'Yellowstone' 1.5 petaflopper

   Don't expect the short-term forecast to improve

   The US National Center for Atmospheric Research admitted a year ago that it had fallen behind in the flops race versus the weather boffinry in other countries, and shelled out tens of millions of dollars to build a new massively parallel Xeon E5-based cluster. The machine, dubbed "Yellowstone" because it is installed in a shiny …

   Kaspersky Lab to create new OS 'to save the world'

   Aims to shield industry, infrastructure from malware

   Kaspersky Lab, the Russian security firm that has garnered headlines with its research into Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu, Gauss, and other sophisticated malware, says it is working on a new operating system designed specifically to shield against attacks by cyber-weapons. The as-yet unnamed OS – internally it's known only as "11.11" …

   Microsoft Surface: Designed to win, priced to fail

   Analysis Rival fondleslabs have little to worry about

   Microsoft has at last released some more details on its Surface tablet – including pricing – but based on what we've seen so far, Apple and Android-tablet makers don't have much to worry about. First the good stuff: Microsoft appears to have created a system that, on the face of it, could give Apple a run for its money – at …

   Foxconn: THESE child workers were NOT making Apple products

   What do they teach them in schools nowadays?

   Apple manufacturer Foxconn has admitted that child labourers were working at one of its factories in China. The Taiwanese firm said an internal investigation found employees as young as 14 working at its plant in Yantai in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, according to China Labour Watch. The US-based NGO said Foxconn …

   SGI munches MarkLogic database, hatches Dataraptor appliance

   Having big data for lunch

   Silicon Graphics knows a thing or two about handling huge amounts of data, but it doesn't have its own database or NoSQL data-store software. It needs to partner to be able to feast on the big-data carcass, and its latest partnership is with NoSQL database maker MarkLogic to create a big-data appliance called Dataraptor. Not …

   Got loads of old databases clogging up your company's storage?

   Let us hoover up that old Oracle info, pleads CEO

   Delphix is a start-up whose software technology effectively makes a copy of a database, such as Oracle 10, and then presents virtualised instances of it for test and development, recovery or any other purpose. It's generally thought there can be 10, possibly 20 or even more copies of production databases scattered throughout …

   It's official: Apple will reveal 'a little more' on October 23

   iPad mini? 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display? Even a little more?

   Apple has sent out invitations to what world+dog assume will be the introductory event for the oft-rumored iPad mini. And as expected, said soirée will be held on October 23. 'A little more'? How coy, Cupertino, how coy... The invitation's tag line certainly hints towards the introduction of the expected 7.85-inch iPad: "We …

   China to get 20,000 4G base stations ... just for starters

   China Mobile trusts ZTE, even if the Americans don't

   China Mobile has gone domestic and awarded ZTE the contract to deploy 20,000 TD-LTE base stations, putting the company at the leading edge of TD-LTE development. Not that Chinese users will get any 4G goodness for another year or perhaps two, as China Mobile is still trying to realise its investment in the home-grown 3G …

   Santander downplays risk of 'personal data-stuffed' cookies

   'If compromised', cookies would not allow access to online services 'on their own'

   The Spanish banking giant Santander has downplayed growing concerns over its alleged inclusion of "sensitive data" in its cookies. The bank did not deny including personal data in cookies. In a post on widely read security mailing list Full Disclosure, an anonymous contributor details a number of alleged problems on Santander …

   WD escapes $630m hit over Seagate 'trade secrets' ... for now anyway

   Lot more secrets in a hard drive than you thought

   Western Digital is off the hook for a cool $630m in an arbitration case it initially lost over the alleged misuse of Seagate's confidential information, including trade secrets. Back last year, Seagate complained about the activities of WD and a former Seagate employee who had joined WD, alleging that WD was using Seagate …

   Game over for legendary 1980s games designer Mike Singleton

   Obituary Lords of Midnight coder pops clogs

   Classic videogame designer Mike Singleton - famed for titles such as the ZX Spectrum's The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge - has died aged 61. Singleton will be best remembered as a trendsetter, developing popular 1980s titles such as Dark Sceptre and Midwinter, and building hundreds of games for systems from the …

   Apple hires top Amazon search exec to take over Siri

   Stasior to take another function behind the garden wall?

   Apple has reportedly nicked top Amazon exec and search maestro William Stasior to head up its Siri division. Adam Cheyer, who co-founded Siri before it was slurped by Apple in 2008, and CEO Dag Kittlaus both left the company in the last two years, leaving an empty spot at the helm. Stasior will step in to run the fruity firm's …

   'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

   Damn you and your evidence-based science

   Veteran Campaigner Against Stuff Arthur Firstenberg won a case last week, and lost one too, but there won't be much celebrating as even the victory was a false one. The case he lost started in 2010, when Firstenberg claimed his neighbour's Wi-Fi was sneaking through the mains wires into his house to keep him awake at night. …

   Power and cooling: The Oak Ridge way

   Video 25 Megawatts, 6.6 tons of cooling, more on the way

   You think you have power and cooling issues? Slip into the shoes of Arthur ‘Buddy’ Bland, Project Director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, and learn how they keep one of the largest computing facilities in the world powered up, yet cool enough to prevent melting. I talked to Buddy recently about how Oak Ridge …

   Manchester plods cop £120k fine for USB-stick-inna-wallet data gaffe

   Serious Serious Crime crime 'sends shivers down spine'

   The Greater Manchester Police Force have paid a £120,000 fine after losing the details of more than a thousand people under investigation for serious drugs crime. The personal details were kept on an unencrypted memory stick with no password protection, belonging to an officer with the Serious Crime Division team. Kept in the …

   Microsoft Surface ad targets preppy, Glee-watching youngsters

   Kids just wanna get in touch with each other

   Is it an Apple advert, a commercial for insurance, or an episode of Glee? No, it’s the first Surface commercial from Microsoft. Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s Windows 8 ad – which seemed to bury the tablet and emphasise the traditional PC – Microsoft's latest ad flogs its own hardware: the Windows 8-based Surface. The ad is …

   McKinnon will not be extradited to the US, says Home Secretary

   Whole US extradition system may be 'streamlined'

   The Home Secretary has blocked Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US. In a statement to Parliament on Tuesday, Theresa May said that long-running extradition proceedings against the 46 year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer would be withdrawn on medical and human rights grounds. Psychiatrists warned that the Scot was likely to …

   Why Google and Amazon could end up cooking their own chips

   Open ... and Shut Good lord, 'tech' firms doing technology!

   It used to be that the ante for being a serious player in the technology game was your own data centre. Or several. On this basis, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and very few others have constructed hugely expensive data centres that centre much of the web's activity on them. But among these web giants, it may no longer …

   Asus doubles up phone-slate combo's specs with Padfone 2

   It's a phone! No, it's a tablet! No, it's a phone!

   Asus has refreshed its three-in-one smartphone, tablet and notebook concept and unveiled the all-new Padfone 2. As with many products that take far too long to materialise, the original Padfone was a great idea on paper that never quite lived up to its hype. By the time it was eventually launched, at Mobile World Congress (MWC …

   EU data bosses order Google to sort out privacy

   Gmail, YouTube, Google+, search - they all know you

   EU data regulators have told Google that it has to make changes to its new privacy policy due to "incomplete information and uncontrolled combination of data across services". The regulators, led by France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique (CNIL), have spent several months investigating the policy, which basically …

   OCZ's SEC filing fail gives stockholders the fear

   Even we don't understand our customer incentive scheme

   OCZ has announced that it won't be able to file its quarterly report with the SEC on time, leading to doubts about its cash position. The struggling SSD and PCIe flash card vendor appears perhaps to have loosed off a shot or two into the vicinity of its foot by expanding too fast, failing to secure reliable NAND chip supplies …

   Amazon seeks 50,000 temporary elves to wrap up America's Xmas

   Just 76 boxing days left before Boxing Day

   Amazon will be taking on over 50,000 seasonal staff in the US to pack up the nation's Furbies, Lego and video games for Christmas. The mega-etailer is already hiring 10,000 short-term staff in the UK and said today that it would need five times that for its centres in America. “We’re hiring at our sites across the US for …

   CAPTCHA-busting service relies on CAPTCHA to block bots

   Can you use to it to spam itself?

   An automated CAPTCHA circumvention service has decided to use CAPTCHAs to restrict access to its own contact us services. It's unclear whether or not its possible to use bypasscaptcha.com to, err, bypass bypasscaptcha.com "contact us" page CAPTCHA. The automated CAPTCHA solving service is likely to be of interest primarily to …

   Windows 8 and the ‘Dad test’ stunts

   Comment Let's get real

   Out and about shopping yesterday, I spotted a PC magazine in the newsagent advertising the ‘ultimate guide’ to Windows 8 in the form of a ’33 page special’. As well as reminding me of reports that Microsoft is planning to spend over $1.5bn on Windows 8 marketing, it made me think of those horribly contrived YouTube videos in …

   Mini-Me, stop humping the laser: Littler Flame cyber-spy tool found

   Updated Tiny agent nips through backdoor, nicks your files

   Kaspersky Lab has discovered a cut-down version of the infamous Flame cyber-espionage weapon. MiniFlame, like its big brother, is also an information-slurper well suited to cyber-spying. The malware, also known as SPE, was found by Kaspersky Lab’s experts in July 2012, and originally labelled as a Flame module. Two months of …

   Carphone Warehouse lauds Nexus 7 while eagerly eying iPad Mini

   And Google updates seven-incher's Android

   Asus’ Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet is “the best selling Android tablet ever”, at least according to Carphone Warehouse. Incidentally, Google has now posted the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update that triggered headlines last week but failed to show up. Not ‘best selling tablet’, you’ll note - the Nexus has some way to go to …

   Quite contrary Somerville: Behind the Ada Lovelace legend

   Lovelace Day Behind every famous woman there stands ... another woman

   Ada Lovelace is a compellingly romantic figure, irresistible in today’s age of equal geeky opportunities. The daughter of "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron, her mathematics-loving mother Annabella Milibanke purportedly beat the poet out of her with relentless studies in science, maths and logic. A beauty enthralled …

   Now pay attention, 007: James Bond's Q re-booted

   Bond on Film What makes an HM Secret Service tech guy?

   There were others, but Desmond Llewelyn defined the part of Q in James Bond, appearing in 17 films and nailing the shtick with the wayward agent who invariably broke or lost his toys. Q perfected the long-suffering dad to Bond’s fidgety teen, who pressed the wrong buttons to earn an exasperated: “Pay attention, 007!” Skyfall …

   UK.gov spunks £500k to create jobs in startup marketing businesses

   'Sustainable growth' from 'brand engagement'

   A pot of £1m has been promised to 10 UK start-ups as part of a "business accelerator" plan managed by Creative England. Funding for the venture has been partly provided by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, whose Regional Growth Fund poured £500k in loan capital into the pot. The other £500k is equity …

   When cookie spewers single you out, it IS personal, barks watchdog

   Identifiers should be classed as 'personal data' – EU body

   Information that can lead to individuals being "singled out and treated differently" should generally be classed as "personal data", an EU privacy body has recommended. The Article 29 Working Party has outlined changes (45-page/410KB PDF) to how it wants 'personal data' to be defined, and to what information the term should …

   Ukraine navy to deploy DOLPHINS WITH GUNS ON THEIR HEADS

   Sharks? Lasers? Pshaw. Let's get realistic

   The Ukrainian navy is to deploy specially trained dolphins equipped with "pistols fixed to their heads" against possible enemy frogmen, according to reports. Russian newswire RIA Novosti broke the news last week, reporting from the naval base of Sevastopol on the Black Sea. This was formerly home to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet …

   Final decision by Home Sec on McKinnon extradition due today

   May be, May be not

   The Home Secretary is expected to announce whether or not the government will block Gary McKinnon's US extradition in Parliament today. Theresa May is due to deliver a decision on whether the Scottish sysadmin's medical problems as an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer are sufficiently severe to block extradition. A possible appeal …

   Chinese arrest 9,000 cyber-crims

   Halts online PR racket flooding net with negative reviews

   Chinese police have smashed over 700 cyber crime gangs and arrested nearly 9,000 alleged criminals. The Ministry of Public Security – or police force, to you and me – announced confidently that it had cracked 4,400 criminal cases in its bid to "earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the masses of the people …

   Dishonored game review

   Review Steampunk rocks in this tour de force of adventure gaming

   Remember those Fighting Fantasy "choose your own adventure" books penned by the likes of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone - now whatever happened to them... - in the mid-1980s? Well, Dishonored plays like the ultimate version of one of those, offering choice in terms of strategy and approach at every turn. Dolly mixture …

   Gartner spells out magic behind quadrants

   Blogger smackdown leads to reveal of research methods

   Analyst group Gartner has detailed how it prepares its sometimes-controversial magic quadrants, revealing that a two-hour demo is sometimes part of the research process. Gartner already offers a detailed explanation of how it compiles its Magic Quadrants here. But in an exchange with governance, risk management and compliance …

   Apple supplier AU Optronics suffers IP theft blow

   Former execs accused of selling Amoled secrets to China

   Two former execs from Taiwanese flat panel-maker and Apple supplier AU Optronics have been arrested on suspicion of carrying out industrial espionage for their new employer, Chinese electronics firm TCL. The two – surnamed Lien and Wang – were pulled in for questioning by the Taiwanese Bureau of Investigation last month, …

   HP prosecuted by Australian consumer regulator

   Tough warranty conditions alleged to mislead and deceive punters

   The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the nation's guardian of consumer rights and regulator of competition and consumer law, has commenced legal action against HP over its warranty and repair practices. The ACCC is upset with HP for five reasons, namely: The remedies available for a faulty HP product …

   Chinese e-tailer to build 1,000 empty stores

   Walmart-owned Yihaodian will fill them with QR codes

   Chinese e-commerce giant Yihaodian has hit upon a novel approach to food retail – open 1,000 supermarkets which don’t contain any actual food, but instead feature images of items alongside scannable QR codes. Shoppers will scan the codes for the products they desire, and the goods will be delivered to their homes. The …

   Study finds file sharers buy more music

   American Assembly research also finds copies of friends' tunes rivals piracy

   A preview of research conducted by The American Assembly, a “national, non-partisan public affairs forum” attached to Columbia University, has found that file sharers who acquire music also pay for more tunes than their non-freeloading brethren. Copy Culture in the US and Germany concludes “The biggest music pirates are also …

   NASA's Cassini spacecraft turns 15 while spying on Saturn

   Awaiting springtime on the ringed planet

   NASA's Cassini spacecraft celebrated a very lonely 15th birthday on Monday from its orbit near the planet Saturn, roughly one billion miles from Earth. Cassini was originally launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on October 15, 1997. Since then, it has logged more than 3.8 billion miles in a tour around the …

4. Monday, 15 October 2012

   Rackspace touts OpenStack private cloud prowess

   When will OpenStack split into enterprise and development releases?

   The OpenStack Design Summit kicked off today in San Diego, California, and Jim Curry, who had been managing the development effort for the OpenStack cloud control freak for the past two years, tells El Reg that he is enjoying not frantically running around running the show, and instead participating, along with the entire …

   Engineer designs glass slipper on Quora

   You shall go to the ball, Cinderella

   This is merely a diversion, but a delightful one nonetheless: a mechanical engineer has answered a question posed on Quora, “What qualities would the glass in Cinderella's slippers need to have in order for her to walk and dance comfortably (and hold her weight)?” In the kind of what-if that probably has Randall Munroe over at …

   Last month ties for WARMEST September on RECORD

   'Is it hot in here, baby, or it just you?'

   If you found last month to be a mite toasty, the data is now in: you were right. "The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2012 tied with 2005 as the warmest September on record, at 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F)," reports the National Climatic Data Center …

   Planet hunters double down with FOUR-STAR SYSTEM

   Amateurs pluck nugget from Kepler data

   A group of amateur astronomers trawling through the vast store of data captured by the Kepler spacecraft has helped turned up a gem: a planet orbiting a double star, with another two stars in a more distant orbit. The discovery was made by Planethunters.org which, led by Yale University, lets “citizen scientists” (aren’t …

   Yahoo! hires! top! Googler! to! revamp! operations!

   Marissa Mayer gets her man – for a price

   On her first day back in the office after just two weeks of maternity leave, Yahoo! CEO Marisa Mayer has announced that she's wooed a senior Google employee to join her management team. Henrique de Castro, currently Google's president of Global Media, Mobile & Platforms, will join Yahoo! in January as chief operating officer …

   Android app dev dashboard update eases headaches

   Reworked Google Play Console brings better UI, more stats

   Google has overhauled the developer dashboards for its Google Play online store, with the aim of making it easier and faster for Android developers to publish, manage, and track the performance of their apps. According to a blog post by the Google Play team, the search giant first demoed the new Google Play Console at its …

   NZ blogger names source for data leak tipoff

   Kiwi self-serve privacy outrage continues

   Blogger Keith Ng, who went public over the deeply-careless kiosk implementation in New Zealand’s Ministry of Social Development job-seeker kiosks, has named the man that gave him the tip-off as Ira Bailey. The revelation, which Ng writes was made with Bailey’s permission, adds a certain spice to the story, since Bailey is an …

   Cisco rolls up its own OpenStack distro

   Cloud control freaking on UCS rackers, Nexus switches

   Cisco's software engineers have rolled up a distro of the open source OpenStack cloud controller for its "California" Unified Computing System blade and rack servers and related Nexus converged switches. Cisco Systems might be very tight with storage juggernaut EMC and its VMware server virtualization minion, but that doesn't …

   Kindle DX delisted by Amazon

   Large-screen e-ink reader quietly retired

   Amazon has begun rolling out its latest Kindle e-readers in the UK and other international markets, but it seems the large-screen Kindle DX will no longer be part of the line-up, either in the US or abroad. Beginning on Monday, the online retailer's Kindle e-reader family now includes only the bargain-basement, ad-subsidized $ …

   Global notebook sales tank in recent months

   One company bucks the trend big-time. Wanna guess which one?

   Global notebook shipments took it on the chin in the third quarter of this year, with Acer, Asustek, and Toshiba seeing sales plunge by 15 to 25 per cent when compared to the previous quarter. One notebook vendor, however, bucked the trend, with sales of its notebooks climbing nearly 30 per cent during the same period. Care to …

   GIANT EYEBALL PANIC ends: Oceanic peeper identified

   Sadly, alien origin debunked

   The giant eyeball that washed up on a Florida beach last week has been identified, quelling fears of a new monster swimming in the vasty deep. Researchers at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) report that the eye has been positively identified as coming from Xiphias gladius, or as it is more commonly …

   Mellanox etches software-defined networking onto SwitchX-2 chips

   Working on OpenFlow controller for fabric manager

   Networking chip and switch maker Mellanox Technologies is ramping up its efforts to play in the software-defined networking (SDN) world. The company will create its own OpenFlow controller and work to ensure that its switches work well with controllers from other vendors. The company is also rolling out a new switch ASIC that …

   Leaked AT&T files show planned anti-piracy measures

   Blocking websites and handing over repeat offenders

   A series of what are claimed to be leaked training manuals show that AT&T will get a lot more aggressive with its customers over suspected internet piracy, beginning this November. The documents, allegedly obtained by TorrentFreak, say that AT&T will contact customers who have been identified as pirates by copyright owners. …

   13-inch 'Retina Display' MacBook Pro to uncloak next Tuesday?

   Unconfirmed notebook to join unconfirmed tablet at unconfirmed event

   Today's Cupertinian rumeur du jour: a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display will share the stage at next week's introduction of the much-anticipated iPad mini – or whatever that shrunken fondleslab may be dubbed. That is, of course, if there really is an event, as reported, on October 23 to introduce a svelter sibling of …

   Watchdog: Gov bods should rummage through BINS for FOI data

   Files sitting in electronic trash cans fair game for disclosure – ICO

   Public sector bodies will generally be required to disclose information even if it is stored in computer 'recycle bins', the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said. The watchdog has issued new guidance (25-page/350KB PDF) to help public bodies which are subject to the UK freedom of information (FOI) or environmental …

   AMD to decimate workforce several times over?

   Plus maybe the first born male children - reports

   With AMD announcing lowered expectations for the third quarter and CFO Thomas Siefert shown the door or finding the exit on his own a month ago, the talk has turned to what the company will do to get to profitability - and the prospect of deep job cuts. The Wall Street Journal jumped out in front with the layoff rumors, citing …

   Paid secur-o-ware is generally better than free, but not always by a lot

   Some big names well down the rankings in lab test

   Antivirus tests that assess the effectiveness of security products from the moment users visit infected websites have exposed widely differing performances among the various anti-malware products. The unsponsored tests by Dennis Technology Labs, which were run over a three-month period, revealed that the efficacy of paid-for …

   Investors shovel another $10m of 'fuel' onto the SkyFire

   Whose side are you on? Server side?

   Cloud-optimised browsing company SkyFire has landed another $10m investment, on top of the $30m it has already spent, to push its mobile browsing solution into Europe and Asia. Mobile browsing optimisation company SkyFire has raised another $10m from investors, on top of the $30.5m that has already been poured into the company …

   Affected by ebook price-fixing? Amazon has a few shiny pennies for you

   Publishers' settlement cash will go to customers

   Amazon has gleefully started contacting US ebook customers about the funds they're entitled to claim after three publishers settled price-fixing lawsuits. The Kindle-maker told customers that they'd be getting partial refunds of $0.30 to $1.32 for each eligible ebook bought between April 2010 and May 2012. Ebooks will be …

   Second LulzSec member pleads guilty to Sony hack

   HideMyAss didn't hide his ass

   A second suspect has admitted involvement in high profile attack last year against Sony Pictures website by notorious hacking crew LulzSec. Passwords and personal information leaked as a result of the breach in May 2011. The site was breached using an SQL injection attack, a common hacking technique, to extract personal …

   iPad voice app back after patent spat: Mute kids get 'voices' back

   You WILL think of the children, judge insists

   A judge has saved an app that helps disabled children to make themselves understood, ruling that the two warring sides in a patent dispute will have to come to a business agreement. iPad app Speak For Yourself will return to the App Store, after a year-long patent lawsuit from patent-holder Prentke Romich that has seen the app …

   Retailer leaks iPad Mini price list starting at £200

   But inventory leaker admits catalogue could be filled with placeholders

   Apple's new iPad Mini will sell for £200, if screenshots on a German site are to be believed. Mobilegeek.de is showing images of an inventory spreadsheet from the German gadget store Media Markt, which shows various models of iPad Minis listed alongside their prices. The cheapest iPad Mini, an 8GB Wi-Fi-only device, is listed …

   Femto fail: Vodafone's Sure Signal gets a bit shaky again

   Requires occasional square-wave in power supply, says Voda

   Vodafone's femtocell offering, Sure Signal, is up the spout again. The UK's third largest operator said it was investigating and has recommended that disconnected punters try power-cycling the kit. Vodafone reckons the problem, which surfaced last week, is only hitting a small number of customers, but it's more than enough to …

   Amazon reportedly looking to buy TI chip-maker at heart of Kindle Fire

   If you want something doing ...

   Mega-etailer Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy a mobile chip business from Texas Instruments. TI's mobile chips, which are used in Amazon's Kindle Fire fondleslab, could be in the market as the company moves away from smartphones and other mobile devices and into industrial clients like carmakers. If the talks lead to a …

   Windows 8 ads hit US screens: Death Metal, exploding laptops

   Someone get a small kid in here, I can't work this

   Microsoft’s Windows 8 TV ads have started running in the US. Microsoft started running the spots during peak-time viewing for US sports audiences on Sunday, just 12 days before the launch date of the Windows 8 OS on 26 October. Pre-orders have been open since Friday. The ad pushes touchscreen PCs hard – showing off only one …

   Japan's Softbank offers $20.1bn to take big gulp of Sprint

   CEO: We're coming to America

   Japanese operator Softbank wants to buy Sprint, and has confirmed that it is prepared to pay more than £12bn ($20.1bn) for a 70 per cent stake in the US operator, assuming the US regulator will let it. Rumours of the deal were swirling around last week, leading to a drop in Softbank's own share value as investors balked at the …

   Microsoft Halo 4 launch countdown continues as game leaks online

   Master Chief makes premature ejection

   Code for Microsoft's upcoming shooter Halo 4 has leaked online three weeks ahead of the game's launch, prompting investigation and action from team Xbox. Images of Halo 4 game disks appeared up on the NeoGaf forums last Friday and footage of the eagerly awaited FPS being played has since flooded the net. Fans are warned to …

   Water, water everywhere on the Moon: But not a drop to drink

   Solar wind doesn't bring on the rain

   Astroboffins have discovered more and more water on the once-thought barren surface of the Moon in the last five years, but the question of where that water comes from is still a mystery. The ice at the poles of the Moon is one sort of water long known to be present on the Earth's major satellite, but water has also shown up …

   Win 8 ready for slate ... but biz customers can wait

   Who needs to be touchy-feely in the corporate IT world?

   In a fortnight you’ll start to hear Microsoft's marketing machine crunching into overdrive as Windows 8 is driven onto the market. Not only will you hear from them, but also from the hardware manufacturers who are primed and ready to simultaneously release a slew of products that will support and embrace the new functionality …

   Apple extends fail-prone Seagate HDD swap scheme

   Own an iMac bought in or after October 2009?

   Apple has extended its 2011 iMac hard drive replacement scheme. Originally pegged to all-in-one desktop maps purchased between May and July 2011, the programme now runs from October 2009 to July 2011. If you own a 21.5in or 27in iMac bought new during that period, you may qualify for a free hard drive replacement. At issue …

   Spiceheads keep Austin weird at IT's Comic Con

   Sysadmin blog I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want

   Spiceworld 2012* was in Austin, Texas. I spent my time there grilling vendor reps at the booths, talking to attendees and collaborating with Spiceworks employees. I'll save the article on "what's new in Spiceworks" as well as the feeds and speeds for later, after I've done some compare-and-contrast in the lab. Instead, I bring …

   Jam today: Raspberry Pi Ram doubled

   All boards now ship with 512MB

   The Raspberry Pi Foundation has upgraded its credit card-sized computer: it now sports 512MB of memory rather than 256MB, but still costs $35 (£22). Foundation founder Eben Upton promised that anyone who has an outstanding order will receive the upgraded board. “Units should start arriving in customers’ hands today, and we …

   The 3D die stack tack: Toshiba builds towering column of flash

   Resistance is futile

   Toshiba is building high rise flash and ReRAM chips, with prototypes coming next year and volume shipping in 2015. The idea of high-rise or 3D chips is that we can sidestep limitations on increasing the storage density of flash or memory chips by stacking them one on top of the other, increasing the storage density on a Mbits/ …

   Miniature Baumgartner jumps from 128,000ft

   Playmobil Lego or it didn't happen

   On Sunday, Austrian Felix Baumgartner leapt into the record books when he skydived from 128,100 feet (39,045 meters), possibly going supersonic as he plunged earthwards over New Mexico. Simultaneously, somewhere in Holland, his diminutive twin made his own bid for glory, albeit from a slightly less heady height: Good stuff …

   Sky support dubs Germany 'Hitler's country'

   Told you not to mention the war

   It seems that it's not just the Greeks who are comparing German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Nazi-leader Hitler: Sky support seems to share the view that Germany is still in thrall to the long-dead dictator. An El Reg reader preparing to move to the country of lederhosen and oompah bands was explaining his decision to Sky's …

   Microsoft launches ad-funded Xbox Music audio streaming

   Consoles, Win 8 kit even iDevices to be covered

   Having failed to take on Apple and win in the music download business, Microsoft is hoping it can dominate - or, at least, stay relevant - with a streaming offering, this one free to users - provided they’re willing to accept advertising. With a library extending to some “tens of millions” of tracks in a catalogue claimed to …

   British car parks start reading number plates

   And tell the world you went to see Twilight

   UK car parks are now reading number plates to ensure everyone pays their due, with payments deducted from the account and unregistered parkers getting a ticket while everyone gets tracked. The system is called SwishPARK and already operational in eleven car parks, six in Welwyn Garden City, the rest scattered around England. …

   Tremble, operators: UK gets ACCURATE mobile coverage guide

   Who is this stranger come to free us from your lying maps?

   A US company mapping mobile coverage has jumped the pond – nimbly bypassing the operators – and is now providing detailed UK coverage maps by combining professionally gathered data with cloud-sourced samples. Root Metrics was set up in 2008 and has been happily plotting US network coverage since then, using researchers with …

   NURSES' natural DESIRES to be SATISFIED, by technology

   No more drinking tea and filling forms, empty that bedpan

   Nurses will get £100m worth of mobile tech including digital pens and other handheld tools, Prime Minister David Cameron and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt have just announced. It is hoped that the digi pens and other piece of comms tech will let nurses spend more time with patients and less time sitting around filling in …

   SAP customers fancy licence payments 'holiday'

   No staff = no users = no usage

   SAP customers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the German giant’s software charges and want a payments “holiday”. A UK and Ireland SAP User Group poll found 95 per cent think the rules on SAP's licensing are out of control, with 67 per cent blaming SAP’s expanding product line. As the catalogue of …

   OFT writes volley of stern letters to naughty web retailers

   You are in serious danger of getting another letter

   The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has warned well-known online retailers trading in Britain that some of them could face formal enforcement action from the watchdog if they failed to comply fully with consumer protection law. It said the regulator had, ahead of the busy Christmas shopping period, written letters to 62 leading …

   Asus N56VM 15.6in notebook review

   Audio enhanced entertainer complete with a separate sub

   A good journalist always tries to avoid clichés, but sometimes when I’m writing laptop reviews I do find myself reaching for a few stock phrases, such as: the speakers are crap. Imagine my relief, then, to discover that the speakers on the Asus N56VM don't fall into the crap category, but are actually rather good, no doubt …

   Iran blamed for ZTE's 260 PER CENT profit slump

   Chinese tech giant will close loss-making offices

   Under-fire Chinese telecoms kit maker ZTE has warned it will report a loss of up to 1.75bn yuan (£174m) for the first nine months of the year, blaming a slowing global economy and the Iranian market, where US investigators are probing its activities. The Shenzhen-based firm’s preliminary financials for the first three quarters …

   Free games for all after EA discount code goes viral

   SNAFU meant one code worked multiple times, for multiple people

   Electronic Arts (EA) has endured a difficult weekend after a poorly-coded promotion saw a discount code that could be used many times find its way into the public domain, where it sparked a free games downloading spree. The incident seems to have started with this post to a gaming forum, which includes a discount code good for …

   Big Blue Fellow lured aboard by Dell

   RAID inventor to give Austin a good beefening

   Dell has recruited IBM fellow and CTO Jai Menon to be the chief technology officer for its Enterprise Solutions Business, meaning servers, storage and networking. Menon spent 25 years at IBM, becoming a Big Blue vet, a career which culminated as the chief technology officer (CTO) and VP for technical strategy for IBM's Systems …

   China's tech elite crack Forbes' Rich List

   Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba founders in with the big boys

   China’s growing army of tech entrepreneurs have consolidated their position at the apex of the country’s elite, according to the latest Forbes rankings, although most still have some way to go before challenging the likes of Gates and Ellison. Forbes Asia officially released its China Rich List on Monday, and although the Top …

   Japan's Renesas set for £1.6bn rescue plan

   Japanese microcontroller-maker to receive government rev-up, says report

   Ailing Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics is set to receive a ¥200bn (£1.6bn) investment boost to help prop up the company, the majority of which will come from the government, according to new reports from the Far East. The state-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) will plough around ¥150bn (£1.2bn) in …

   US wireless downloads hit 1.1 trillion MB/year

   37% increase in smartphones helps wireless subscriptions top US population

   There are now more wireless subscriptions in the USA than there are citizens, according to the latest data from The Wireless Association (CTIA). The Association's latest count of all things wireless, The Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey, (PDF) covers July 2011 to June 2012, and found: 321.7 million wireless subscriber …

   Protestors target Google over that video

   Thousands insist YouTube should take down offensive film

   Google's London office was barricaded on Sunday, after thousands of protestors marched in protest against youTube's continued hosting of the controversial film, The Innocence of Muslims. London's Daily Telegraph says 10,000 protestors participated. The BBC preferred a figure of “up to 3500” and says the peaceful protest aimed …

5. Sunday, 14 October 2012

   Fukushima operator feared shutdown if risks revealed

   TEPCO ignored chance of big tsunami, 'fesses up to fear of regulation

   The operator of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, TEPCO, has admitted it was ill-prepared to cope with the tsunami of March 2011, and promised to do better in future. That promise is articulated in a new document, Fundamental Policy for the Reform of TEPCO Nuclear Power Organization (PDF), released last Friday. The …

   Australian boffins have a ball with lightning maths

   St Elmo will spin in his grave

   Scientists at Australia’s CSIRO have put forward a mathematical model which they believe could help explain the origin of ball lightning. While people have observed ball lightning for centuries – at least – explaining it has been so troublesome that it’s attracted a variety of strange hypotheses – all the way to microwave …

   Successful launch readies Galileo satellites for test

   Positioning satellite constellation takes shape

   The European Space Agency’s Galileo satellite positioning system is soon to enter its “service validation phase”, following the successful launch of the third and fourth satellites in the system. The two satellites were hoisted to their orbit at around 22,300 km by a Soyuz ST-B launcher operated by Arianspace. With four …

   NZ government network leaking data like a sieve

   Updated: Ministry apologises, launches investigation

   A row has broken out in New Zealand after a blogger exposed serious security flaws in that country’s job-seeker network. The blogger, Keith Ng, demonstrated that public job-seeker kiosks had unauthenticated access to the corporate network of the Ministry of Social Development (MND). His posting raised concerns that attackers …

   UNSW offers free online Computing 1 class

   Australian University joins global rush to give it away online

   The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has jumped on the international bandwagon of Universities giving their courses away for free, with a 12-week Computing 1 course starting today. Available here, the course will be taught by Associate Professor Richard Buckland, an academic who specialises in security, cyber crime and …

   Skydiver Baumgartner in 128,000ft plunge from brink of space

   Updated Steely-sphered Austrian breaks records

   Skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped 128,000 feet (24 miles, 39km) out of a balloon today, to complete the highest skydive in history. It took just under 10 minutes for the Austrian to reach the desert surface below. The Red Bull Stratos space capsule finally got off the ground at Roswell, New Mexico, following two aborts on the …

6. Saturday, 13 October 2012

   Google readying on-device malware scanner for Android

   Could block bad apps from any source

   Android malware is on the rise, but the good news is that Google isn't sitting still for it. The search giant is reportedly readying a comprehensive anti-malware system for its mobile OS that will soon be able to spot malicious apps not just in the Google Play store, but also on Android devices themselves. According to a …

   SpaceX satellite burns up on re-entry after Falcon FAIL

   50 per cent success rate for latest Falcon flight

   The satellite that made up the secondary cargo of SpaceX's latest orbital mission has burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere after failing to make it into the correct orbit. The OG2 satellite, a prototype communications platform built by Orbcomm, was carried by the Falcon rocket as a secondary payload and was due to be boosted up …

   Swiss photographer sues Apple for pilfering her eyeball

   What is it with Apple and Swiss image larceny?

   A Swiss photographer has filed suit against Apple in a US District Court in New York, alleging that Cupertino's marketeers used one of her photos without her permission in its MacBook Pro with Retina Display flack attack. "Despite representing that it did not intend to use the photo and knowing that it had not obtained a …

7. Friday, 12 October 2012

   Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing

   Patent hoarder Myhrvold & Co. could control nascent tech

   A division of Intellectual Ventures, the IP-holding company founded by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former CTO, has been granted a patent on a system for introducing digital rights management (DRM) controls to 3D printing. Under the system described in the patent, files containing plans for printed objects would be encased in …

   FTC nearing decision in Google antitrust probe

   Four out of five officials agree

   The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is nearing a decision in its 16-month-long investigation into Google's search and advertising businesses, and sources say things are not looking good for the Mountain View–based company. According to Reuters, three separate sources have confirmed that four of the five FTC commissioners are …

   Endeavour: donuts and a Toyota ease shuttle's drive through L.A.

   Trundling to its final resting place at two miles per hour

   If you're reading this right after we clicked The Reg's Publish button at 2:13pm Pacific Time on Friday, know that the Space Shuttle Endeavour is leaving its parking place near the corner of La Tijera Avenue and Sepulveda Eastway in Los Angeles, and continuing its journey to the California Science Center in that city's downtown …

   Apple pays up for stealing design from Swiss Railways

   Cupertinian cash covers clock copyright cockup

   Apple may be willing to spend millions in court over some copyright fights, but it has learned the lessons of history and has decided not to mess with the Swiss. Last month, Switzerland's railway operator SBB took Cupertino to task for stealing the design of its clock for iOS 6's Clock app. Now the world's favorite fondleslab …

   Windows 8 pricing details announced as preorders begin

   Wacky retail packaging revealed

   Microsoft revealed full pricing details for Windows 8 on Friday as Redmond and its retail partners began accepting preorders for the new OS, which will begin shipping on October 26. Starting on Friday, customers can preorder an upgrade edition of Windows 8 Pro for $69.99 in the US or £49.99 in the UK. That's for the full …

   Incompatible IT systems blamed for bank sale collapse

   RBS £1.7bn branch sale to Santander is off

   Royal Bank of Scotland's $1.7bn sale of 318 branches to Santander has gone titsup. The Spanish bank pulled out, largely "because of problems over integrating the two banks' IT systems", The BBC reports. The Telegraph has a teeny bit more detail, reporting a "series of IT problems that have resulted from a lack of …

   Apple to drop chip-baking partnership with Samsung?

   TSMC said to forge Apple's next-gen 20nm, quad-core ARM chips

   Apple is planning to shift production of its ARM-based microprocessors from Samsung to the Taiwanese chip-baking giant TSMC as early as next year, according to a report by the China Economic News Service (CENS). The report, spotted by MacRumors, cites CitiGroup Global Markets analyst J.T. Hsu as saying that TSMC will be Apple' …

   Tosh grabs 2.5-incher, heads for single platter party

   500 gig spinner

   Toshiba has joined Seagate and WD with a single platter 500GB drive for thin notebooks, DVRs and the like. The MQ01ABF is essentially half an MQ01ABD, a 2-platter 2.5-inch drive storing up to 1TB. Like that drive it spins at 5,400rpm, has an 8MB cache and a 6Gbit/s SATA interface. Unlike that 9.5mm thin drive it is 7mm thin, …

   Kissane to mould NetApp: Time to turn off the tap on ONTAP

   Comment Stuck faucet? Force it

   NetApp has sharpened its focus on corporate strategy by moving incumbent product strategist Jay Kidd to a chief technology officer role and recruiting Jonathan Kissane from CA to a new chief strategy officer role. Kidd, previously SVP for product strategy and development at the storage firm, and an ex-CTO at Brocade, now …

   Small biz scrappers urged to take the fight to hackers

   RSA Europe Active defence in a hostile world

   Small businesses should consider the possibility of developing well formulated plans for "hacking back" at aggressors in the event of a hack attack. Presenting an "active defence" would not be a form of vigilantism and could even work within the law, argued two speakers at a presentation at the RSA Europe conference. …

   Microsoft sues Google directly in German Maps-on-Moto lawsuit

   These manufacturers are only Mountain View pawns

   Microsoft is taking the rare step of suing Google directly for something, tacking it onto a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility over Google Maps. Yesterday in Munich court, Microsoft's general counsel Dr Tilman Müller-Stoy told Moto that it was going to amend its complaint to add its parent Google as an additional defendant. Dr …

   Orally urinating turtle boffin in nominative-determinism classic case

   Shit Fun Chew probes mouth-excreting chelonian

   We're obliged to reader Roger Denholm for alerting us to the best example of nominative determinism we've seen for many moons - the case of Shit Fun Chew and the orally urinating turtle. New Scientist reports that Alex Yuen Kwong Ip of the National University of Singapore has been studying Pelodiscus sinensis, known to its …

   'Stop-gap' way to get Linux on Windows 8 machines to be issued

   You'll still be able to pick up a Penguin

   The Linux Foundation is temporarily supporting a Microsoft security policy to ensure Linux isn’t blocked from running on PCs installed with Windows 8. The Foundation plans to obtain a Microsoft key to sign a pre-bootloader from core Linux kernel maintainer James Bottomley. Together, the key and pre-bootloader will allow users …

   Online mutterings foretell iPad Mini on October 23

   BEHOLD ye fanboiyim, the Pocket Stroker™ cometh

   Rumours about the new iPad Mini have fixed the date for its launch on October 23rd, which would put the miniature slab in stores in time for Christmas. Mutterings had previously set the mini-tablet launch as sometime in October: and AllThingsD and Apple Insider are betting on 23rd October as the day. The other touted date - …

   Jimmy Wales: It was Wikipedia that ended the evil of SOPA

   RSA Europe And we shall battle Blighty's snooper charter

   Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the site's blackout played a key part in defeating the USA's controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The English version of Wikipedia, Reddit and hundreds of other smaller websites coordinated a notional service blackout for a day in mid-January to raise awareness of SOPA. Wales …

   British computing biz going stronger than Continent - Computacenter

   Services-based economy?

   Computacenter's (CC) UK biz was the group's major growth engine in Q3 fuelled by the realisation of infrastructure services contracts and to a lesser extent product sales. This performance just about offset the challenges elsewhere in the organisation - difficulties in Germany and currency headwinds across the continent - that …

   O2 network staggers across UK

   Good job it's not really as vital as oxygen

   O2 has been hit by a serious failure, with reports coming in from around the UK of the network disappearing and its status page conceding some network problems. The trouble started mid-morning with phones dropping off the network, but the problems aren't location specific so it seems some sort of central server is again …

   Anonymous turns on 'one man Julian Assange show' Wikileaks

   Bond of chumship between DDOSers and Assange™ broken

   Members of hacker collective Anonymous have stopped supporting Wikileaks after the site put up a paywall, saying that Wikileaks is more bothered about Julian Assange™ than getting information to the public. In a statement on Pastebin, linked through from Anonymous Twitter account AnonymousIRC, the group said Wikileaks had …

   Stone's veteran CEO Bird flies the nest

   Board has shortlist of successors

   Stone Computers has confirmed that longstanding chief exec James Bird has left the building. The search for a successor is well underway but these are big boots to fill - Bird founded Stone in 1991 and has been pretty much at the helm ever since, save a year's absence in 2005. That was the year Bird sold the business to the …

   Take away bad drivers' mobile phones, they still crash their cars

   Jalopy-jabber crackdown achieves diddly squat - study

   Chinese researchers reckon its bad drivers who cause accidents, not the phones they're using at the time, and that banning in-car use doesn't reduce accident figures significantly. The state-sponsored study was triggered by disappointing results from bans on mobile usage, which haven't reduced accidents as much as had been …

   Samsung, not Nokia, fans' most favoured WinPho brand

   Survey suggests Microsoft could triple is market share

   Nine per cent of folk thinking of getting a new phone in the next six months say they’re likely to go for a Windows Phone 8 device. So suggests research data from ChangeWave, a US pollster, after asking 4300-odd North Americans and assorted other peoples in September about their near-term smartphone purchasing plans. If you’ …

   'Mapsgate' fails to dislocate iPhone 5 demand

   Widely reported geo-glitches 'not a problem', say buyers

   Were you steered away from the iPhone 5 by Apple’s ‘Mapsgate’ controversy? Were you tied by the introduction of a new, incompatible Lightning cables? If so, you're not like most potential buyers of Apple's latest phone, it seems. New research suggests these issues have had little or no impact on demand for the iPhone 5. In …

   GreenBytes brandishes full-fat clone VDI pumper

   VMworld Barcelona 'Focused on an enormous pain point'

   GreenBytes, a flash-array storage vendor, appears to have re-focused on virtualised server I/O offload – and most punters here at VMworld on the Catalonian shores are asking themselves why. It all started when Stephen O'Donnell became GreenBytes' chairman in July this year, with an executive aspect to the role we understand. …

   Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?

   Something for the Weekend, Sir? Flash, ooh-err

   No matter how much storage space you get, and no matter how much you free up later on, it always gets stuffed to the gills. I am, of course, talking about my attic... and the garage, and indeed the garden shed. Many reasons for this have been mooted, including the need to do something with my kids' childish belongings as they …

   And the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is ... the EU?

   Prevented Germans invading anyone for record period

   The European Union has won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. The 27-member-states bloc won the famous award today for having contributed, during its six decades of existence, "to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said today. Prominent recent Peace Prize …

   MYSTERIOUS GREEN GLOW seen on iPhone 5s

   'What can it mean?', wondering fanboys ask

   Days after Apple explained the purple haze invading iPhone 5 photos as a holding-it-wrong problem, a new strange colour is tripping out 5-owners. This time a green glow described as a plasma bleed from the edges of the screen is appearing on some of the new handsets. The green light is momentary, and appears on the unlock …

   Unrootable: Mash these bits together to get a CLASSIFIED spyphone

   Sysadmin blog Someone kind of already has - but who?

   What does it take to build a classified smartphone? Demand clearly exists Given how readily every iPhone and Android device is rooted, infected, and otherwise compromised, the answer isn't simply "better software." In the battle to secure our mobile endpoints, operating system tricks and mobile device management will only take …

   Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

   Poll Mostly in kilos: Hobbits and suchlike to be exterminated

   Our suggestion earlier this week that El Reg's Special Projects Bureau get with the program(me) and convert entirely to SI Units prompted the traditional lively debate among our beloved commentards. The consensus seems to be we should indeed kick imperial into touch, with a couple of exceptions, which we'll come to later. …

   Dolly the Sheep creator scientist Keith Campbell dies

   Obit RIP cell biologist who first cloned a mammal

   Biologist Keith Campbell, famous for creating the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, has died aged 58, the University of Nottingham said. Professor Campbell's creation of a live Ovis aries clone in 1996 was an incredible event, thrilling scientists with a breakthrough that paved the way for other successful cloning …

   El Reg VULTURE logo FOUND ON MARS

   Playmobil or It Didn't Happen This is how you do it, Red Hat

   Seriously underwhelmed is the only way to describe El Reg's reaction earlier this week to Red Hat's guerilla marketing stunt which saw the Linux outfit flash a giant ad at punters flying into Barcelona airport for VMWorld Europe: The Special Projects Bureau quickly scrambled an astroturfing SWAT team which moved with …

   HP veep: 'Lenovo won't be No 1 in PCs... oh wait...'

   Quotw Plus: 'Hackers used a spell they call Aura of God, I think'

   This was the week when someone laid waste to the World of Warcraft, decimating city populations and leaving behind weeping masses of MMORPG-ers who no doubt dropped to their knees, shook their fists at the heavens and screamed, "Whyyyy?". An "exploit" was duly exploited, resulting in the deaths of both in-game characters and …

   Samsung shoots Galaxy S III with shrink ray, unveils 4in Mini

   Size flatters

   Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S III Mini, the widely predicted compact version of the firm's flagship Android smartphone. As revealed earlier this week, the Mini boasts a 4in, 800 x 480 display plus a dual-core 1GHz ST-Ericsson Novathor U8420 chipset powering Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The blower features a 5Mp rear …

   Winston Churchill's personal papers digitised, available online

   Madam, if I were your husband I should read them

   The man who famously stated that the British would "fight them on the beaches" in the event of a German invasion has had some of his less-often quoted words including his private letters (and his receipts for cigars) fully digitised and made available online in the Churchill archive. Winston Churchill's private musings, …

   UK.gov tries to close site giving home addresses of badger cull figures

   Animal libber reveals opponents' details, keeps his secret

   The British government has unleashed a legal threat against a website hosted in the US that is currently displaying the names, home addresses and personal telephone numbers of MPs, farmers and others who are said to be in support of the controversial UK badger cull. The Register spoke with a man going only by the name "Jay", …

   Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain

   Poll I've been expecting you, 007

   In the 50 years since Her Majesty's Secret Service first let 007 loose on the silver screen, James Bond has faced some truly fearsome adversaries. Menaced by steel-toothed giants, Koreans wielding killer bowler hats, and dagger-shoed Russian madwomen, it's fair to say that the world's favourite spy has survived some of the …

   Amazon's Bezos confirms content pays for Kindle

   Finally admits hardware sold at cost

   That Amazon makes little or no money selling its Kindle e-readers has been a popular assumption for some time. But assumption no longer - company chief Jeff Bezos has confirmed Amazon is after content sales profits instead. The first Kindle was launched in April 2008 and cost $399 - £248 at today’s exchange rate - and follow- …

   Flashboys: HEELLLP, we're trapped in a process size shrink crunch

   How can we escape the dreaded NAND-woes?

   The NAND flash industry is facing a process size shrink crunch and no replacement technology is ready. Unless 3D die stacking works, we are facing a solid state storage capacity shortage. The NAND flash foundries are pumping out more and more sub-20nm NAND. Previously they'd mostly produced 2Xnm dies – that is NAND dies with a …

   Hands on with BB10: Strokey dokey

   Preview No time for 'Back' buttons - we're headed into the FUTURE

   There is no back button in BB10, BlackBerry's long-awaited new operating system, because all the screens flow so intuitively you won't need one - at least according to Canadian mobe-makers Research in Motion (RIM). Instead, a series of swipes and pulls will let the user navigate the OS upon which RIM has pinned the survival of …

   Amazon prices up Kindle Paperwhite for Blighty

   Always-on backlight, higher res display

   Amazon has priced up the Kindle Paperweight - sorry, Paperwhite; Freudian slip there - for the UK. The Paperwhite is Amazon’s first e-reader with a backlit E Ink display, the notion being that the illumination doesn’t merely make it possible to read books on the gadget in the gloom, but also that it makes for a higher contrast …

   Inside the mind of a Bond supervillain: Psychotic, autistic - or neither?

   Bond on Film Also - 007's Dr Who style differing personalities

   Without villains there'd be no James Bond. SPECTRE, SMERSH, megalomaniacal industrialists and media tycoons have all contrived fiendish, intricate plots to take over the world, seize its wealth, provoke nuclear war, destroy London’s financial system, eliminate the human race etc etc. These people and their plots have needed to …

   Regulator spanks quiz line with record £800k fine

   Kept eldsters hanging on the line at premium rates

   UK premium-line regulator PhonepayPlus has slapped Churchcastle Limited with the largest fine it has dished to date, ruling the phone-quiz host guilty of misleading and bamboozling callers with impenetrable terms and conditions. After it received 15 complaints, PhonepayPlus found Churchcastle guilty of targeting the elderly, …

   Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight e-reader review

   Review Backlit screen casts Kindle into the shade?

   It’s not hard to imagine how Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch initial design meeting went. Assorted hardware engineers, industrial designers and marketing types assemble to examine Amazon’s Kindle Touch and work out how they can make something better. And they have. On almost all points, the Simple Touch - and the Simple …

   South Korea on top of the IT world

   UK climbs to fifth as Australia, USA, also take big leaps up league table

   South Korea has once again been named the world’s most advanced ICT economy according to the latest annual study from the International Telecommunications Union, which had good news for the UK too as it crept up into the top ten. The ITU’s Measuring the Information Society 2012 report is intended to provide a snapshot of …

   VR pioneer invents 'illumination-as-a-service'

   VRML man Mark Pesce puts LAMP into lamps that REST at home

   In the wild, early, days of the web, hopes were high that it would spawn or host virtual realities along the lines of those imagined by the likes of Vernor Vinge and William Gibson. One of the most notable aspirants from those days was Mark Pesce, who worked on virtual reality headsets and authored Virtual Reality Markup …

   Asia skills shortages attract job-hunting IT project managers

   Opportunities aplenty if you don't mind long hours

   There was good news today for IT pros keen on a move to Asia, with new data suggesting hiring expectations in the technology sector better than any other and a notable skills shortage emerging in Hong Kong. It's not all happy days out East, though, as experts also warned of long working hours and risk of employee burn-out for …

   Japanese cubesat to flash Earth with Morse message

   Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's a small metal box

   Scan the night sky next month and you may witness a rather unusual phenomenon – an tiny Japanese satellite using LEDs to beam a Morse code message earthwards. The message will come from FITSAT-1, or Niwaka, a 10cm cubed satellite weighing just 1.3kg and recently released from the from the International Space Station. Built by …

   Harvey Weinstein wants US to adopt French piracy laws

   Google and Apple get paid - not the actors

   Hollywood power player Harvey Weinstein has urged Big Content to take a “hang ‘em first and talk about it later” stance when it comes to piracy. Keynoting at the BFI London Film Festival, he railed against the online industries approach to piracy, and slammed Apple and Google for “getting paid, not the actors.” "I think we …

   Office 2013 hits RTM, will ship starting in November

   Buy Office 2010 now, get a free upgrade

   Microsoft has put the finishing touches on Office 2013, paving the way for the latest version of Redmond's flagship productivity suite to reach general availability in the first quarter of 2013. An early preview of Office 2013 has been available for download since July, but that trial version lacked some features, including …

   Boffins baffled: HUGE EYEBALL washes up on Florida beach

   Does Cthulhu need an eyepatch?

   A Florida beachcomber has discovered what appears to be a huge eyeball washed up on the beach, and experts are stumped as to what kind of sea creature it came from. Eye, eye, what's all this then? Local resident Gino Covacci found the giant eyeball washed up at the high-tide mark of Pompano Beach on the southeast tip of …

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