The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

The Week in Summary

  1. Monday, 29 October 2012arrow_down

    Pre-ordered a Microsoft Surface? So SORRY it's late, have a voucher

    Redmond positively désolé at your frustration

    Microsoft is dishing out vouchers to disgruntled Surface customers burned by delays and confusion over shipments of their pre-ordered fondletops. The company has been handing over vouchers worth £50 to those whose Windows-RT tablets have not arrived despite pre-ordering before Thursday’s launch. Surfaces went on sale on 25 …

    Stone shatters kid Rock: Gamers not as flush as they used to be

    PC builder parent says users will still get support

    Stone Group has killed off the Rock Group operation, which built hefty gaming laptops and notebooks, claiming it saw "no potential" in its future. Staffordshire-based PC builder Stone bought the assets of Rock Group in late May 2008 after the firm was placed into administration by Nick Boardman, who founded the business some …

    Hackers deface 'sinful' French Euromillions site

    You have to be in it to pwn it

    Hackers sprayed digital graffiti on the French Euromillions website over the weekend as part of a protest against the "sin" of gambling. A group identifying itself as the “Moroccanghosts” hacking crew posted messages decrying the lottery as the work of the devil in both French and Arabic after breaking into the euromillions.fr …

    Valve taps testers for Linux Steam

    Boost for Ubuntu gaming

    Valve is seeking participants for its Steam for Linux beta test and has asked experienced users of the open source platform to apply. The company confirmed it would launch Steam for Ubuntu back in July, but failed to hint at any release dates. It did, however, promise a port of Left 4 Dead 2, and a month later claimed that …

    iPhone owners sue Apple for locking Jesus mobe to AT&T

    Operator bypassed in new class action

    A new attack from disgruntled iPhone users is putting Apple in the dock for locking iPhones to AT&T's network, claiming that such a lock is illegally anti-competitive. The suit, filed in Northern California and picked up by CNet, argues that Apple's 2007 deal to lock iPhones to AT&T was in breach of the Sherman Act – a US …

    Jimmy Savile ringtones still selling like hot cakes on iTunes

    How's about that then?

    The theme tune to Jimmy Savile's Jim'll Fix It is one of the top selling iPhone ringtones. Now then, now then: the iTunes comedy chart Despite public outcry over revelations of Savile's child abusing past, the £0.99 jingle is outselling the "laughing chipmunk", a Jack Bauer 24 themed piece, and the explicit ditty "It's Your …

    Hurricane Sandy blows away Google Nexus launch in New York

    Chocolate Factory offers rolling crisis map instead

    Incoming storm Hurricane Sandy has forced Google to cancel its latest event in New York and closed the country's stock exchanges. Google has launched its own crisis map of the region, compiled from NHC and US Naval Research Lab data as well as alerts and evacuation notices from weather.gov and earthquake.usgs.gov. One of the …

    SpaceX Dragon podule back from ISS, successful Pacific splashdown

    First contracted cargo task done, despite rocket hiccup

    The SpaceX Dragon splashed down in the Pacific yesterday, marking the end of a mostly successful first contracted trip to the International Space Station. The reusable cargoship dropped into the ocean yesterday evening around 250 miles off the coast of Mexico after resupplying the ISS and its crew. The Dragon was ferried to …

    Rockstar unloads Vice City for smartphones

    Vercetti let loose on the mob

    Rockstar Games is celebrating the tenth anniversary of PS2 classic Grand Theft Auto: Vice City by releasing it on mobile platforms. The game - which hit shelves on 29 October 2002 - will be available for a wide range of iOS and Android devices, feature high-resolution graphics and include several enhancements for the mobile …

    Xbox SmartGlass hits Android ahead of schedule

    MS expels exclusivity

    Microsoft published the Xbox SmartGlass app for Android this weekend, giving those on Google's OS access before Windows Phone 8 even hits the market. The application - launched on Windows RT devices on Friday - was expected to hit Google Play in 2013 after a lengthy period of MS exclusivity. However, with the release of …

    China tosses New York Times into shredder in family fortunes row

    Great Firewall stoked ahead of power handover

    China’s censors have blocked the New York Times website after the paper ran a story alleging relatives of outgoing prime minister Wen Jiabao amassed a $2.7bn fortune. The article, which became unavailable in the country just hours after publication, claimed members of Wen's family benefited from regulatory and government …

    Microsoft aims to herd 70% of enterprise onto Windows 7 by mid-2013

    Exclusive 'Um, yeah, good luck with that' – partners

    Microsoft has set an aggressive target of 70 per cent of enterprise PCs running Windows 7 by the summer of 2013. The Reg has learned from sources close to Microsoft that the goal set by Redmond HQ is for an additional 20 per cent of enterprise PCs to move to Windows 7 by the end of its current fiscal year – on 30 June 2013. …

    Alienware assimilates Dell FROM THE INSIDE!

    Resistance is futile...

    Gaming notebooks are a secret hobby of mine. I don't actually game that much – even my wife logs more hours than I do – but gaming notebooks are the only way to get the best of the best in a luggable form factor. Alienware is the name to beat in this space, but I've always wondered how they managed to survive the Dell …

    Petition for Alan Turing on £10 note breaks 20,000 signatures

    Crypto-boffin fighting Branson and David Beckham

    A petition to get British wartime crypto-boffin Alan Turing on the next ten-pound note has broken 20,000 signatures on the government's e-petition site. At least 23,157 people have signed the pledge that praises his contribution to computer science, the nation and the world, and calls for Turing to replace Charles Darwin when …

    Granny upstages Microsoft, storms stage at Surface launch

    Vid Fondletop shindig chaos in Beijing

    The big launch of Microsoft’s Surface slab got off to an inauspicious start in Beijing after an elderly couple invaded the stage in an attempt to halt proceedings. Redmond launched the Windows RT tablet-cum-laptop device at a series of events starting at midnight across the country in partnership with retail giant Suning. …

    Philips eyes trendy homemakers for app-controlled e-lights

    1970s mood lighting revived for internet era

    Apple fans eager “to start experiencing light in a completely new way” - yes, that’s exactly what it says here - will soon ba able to to do so courtesy of Philips. Heralding what the Dutch electronics firm is calling “a new era in home lighting”, Apple Stores in the UK will this week begin selling the networkable LED …

    Premature balloon burst thwarts US paper spaceplane attempt

    Our Vulture 1 retains Guinness World Record

    The University of Southern Indiana has failed to wrest the highest launch of a paper plane crown from our Vulture 1 spaceplane, after suffering premature balloon burst. The Geronimo aircraft (pictured below) was carried aloft under a mighty meteorological globe from Marion High School in Marion, Illinois, on Saturday morning, …

    Bond's Walther PPK goes digital: A civilized gun updated

    Bond on Film 'A ladies' gun ... and not for very nice ladies, at that'

    It's the details that embellish James Bond's character: the martini, the Aston Martin, the Walther PPK. A bit of a handbag gun really ... but there's no point telling people We’re talking about an individual from a certain social background, somebody who possesses a deliberate and definite sense of choice and taste. But …

    Operators turn UK bonking consortium into Google-killer

    Project Oscar tries to make mobile advertising pay

    The UK's central clearing house for mobile advertising now has a name, and a logo. But you won't find any mention of NFC, despite that being the original intention of the consortium before its rebrand as Weve, a business-to-business service "primarily aimed at advertisers looking to engage in mobile commerce". Project Oscar – …

    Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid car review

    A huge leap forward for the world's most popular hybrid

    Extended electric-only driving range has been a long time coming to hybrid cars but with the arrival of the Vauxhall Ampera and now Toyota’s Prius Plug-in the breed may finally shake off the reputation of vehicles that only exist because Americans don’t like diesels. The mains attraction: Toyota's Prius Plug-in Hybrid In a …

    EC tells Euro rebels: Hike up your ebook tax to 15%, or else

    Lower VAT in Luxembourg, France distorts competition, says Commission

    Luxembourg and France must stop applying a reduced VAT rate to electronic books because doing so distorts competition across the rest of the EU and is in breach of EU tax laws, the European Commission has said. The Commission said it had issued both member states with "reasoned opinions" formally requesting that countries …

    NBN set to tap into Asian growth

    White paper sees NBN as white knight for Asian stimulation

    Australia’s National Broadband Network is being positioned as a key trump card in accelerating economic and technology traction in the Asian markets following the release of government white paper ‘Australia in the Asian Century’. The NBN is at the core of one the national objectives of the white paper to make Australia’s …

  2. Sunday, 28 October 2012arrow_down

    Android, heal thyself

    Podcast Android's security will be improved by users upgrading to newer versions

    Google's Android mobile operating system is now on a par with others when it comes to security, says Accuvant security researcher Joshua Drake, aka jduck. But there are still problems in the operating system, not least a staggered update process. Then there's webkit, which permeates the operating system but is developed …

    ANSTO confirms synchrotron rescue

    Takeover to be complete by January 2013

    The final piece in the Australian Synchrotron rescue puzzle has fallen into place, with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation confirming that it is to take over management of the facility. The future of the synchrotron was put in doubt last year following a change of government in Victoria. The incoming …

    Another systematic SCADA vuln

    CoDeSys environment gives World+Dog networked command-line root

    If it’s Monday, it must be time for a new SCADA vulnerability: this time, arising through the combination of a popular development environment and bad developer habits. Described in full by Digital Bond researcher Reid Wightman here, as many as 261 manufacturers and heaven-knows-how-many deployed systems may have created …

    British IT consultant talks of his three years as an Iraqi hostage

    Days of PlayStation, systems design and mock executions

    Peter Moore, the British IT consultant who spent 946 days as a hostage in Iraq, has been telling users of Reddit.com about the highs and lows of his stint as the country's longest-serving hostage. Moore, an IT consultant who specializes in overseas work in developing countries, spent 31 months as a captive of Shi'ite militia …

  3. Saturday, 27 October 2012arrow_down

    Fifa 13 game review

    Review Kicks balls

    Nearly a month has passed since EA kicked off sales for its latest Fifa release and, despite an influx of other impressive titles including PES 2013, the king of footie games remains firmly at the top of the UK charts. That's hardly a surprise in a population so grossly obsessed with the 'beautiful game'. Kept alive with a …

    Chrome extension blocks political speech on Facebook

    Never mind that rant, u can haz cats!

    With the US presidential election less than two weeks away, social networking users can be forgiven for having grown tired of reading online political rants. Now, thanks to a new Chrome extension, fed-up Facebook fans can nip their friends' tirades in the bud. When installed in the Chrome browser, Unpolitic.me sifts through …

    US Copyright Office approves phone jailbreaking and video remixes

    Tablets and consoles still locked down

    The US Copyright Office has published the latest exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and it's good news for phone jailbreakers and video remixers, who are now legal – well, until 2015, at least. The terms of DMCA lockdowns are reviewed every three years, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is …

  4. Friday, 26 October 2012arrow_down

    Yahoo! will! ignore! 'Do! Not! Track!' from! IE10!

    Default setting 'degrades the experience'

    Yahoo! has announced that it will ignore the default "Do Not Track" (DNT) signal broadcast by Microsoft Internet Explorer 10, on grounds that it does not accurately reflect user intent. "Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users' direction," a Yahoo! …

    Paintballs proposed as defense against ASTEROID ATTACK

    Just in time to to deflect Apophis, destroyer of worlds

    An MIT graduate student has devised a plan to save the world from destruction by an inbound asteroid using a novel weapon: interplanetary paintballs. Sung Wook Paek of the Cambridge, Massachsetts, brainiac academy's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics – affectionately known as AeroAstro – entered his asteroid-deflecting …

    Headaches, delays plague Windows Store, dev claims

    'Windows 8 doesn't want your app'

    Microsoft needs apps. The success of the new, touch-centric Start Screen of Windows 8 and Windows RT depends on building a thriving app ecosystem to compare with the iOS App Store or Google Play. But if one developer's experience is any indication, actually getting an app into the Windows Store is a lot harder than you might …

    Feds arrest Paul Ceglia over Facebook ownership claims

    Gumshoes go all Al Capone on alleged fraudster

    A wannabe billionaire who claimed to own 84 per cent of Facebook based on a contract Mark Zuckerberg signed as a student has been arrested and charged with fraud. Paul Ceglia was arrested after being indicted for two counts of fraud: one case of postal fraud and one of wire fraud. If found guilty he faces a possible 40 years …

    The new Mac mini eviscerated with ease

    Teardown Easily upgradeable Apple kit? An endangered species

    Apple's new Mac mini has been torn apart by the parts 'n' tools 'n' repair-advice folks at iFixit, who pronounce it highly repairable – a rare reversal of Apple's increasing tendency to create kit that's locked down tighter than Mitt Romney's tax records. The new mini scored an impressive eight on iFixit's one-to-10 …

    Tumblr and Google App Engine down as US traffic plummets

    Updated The sky is falling!

    There are a fair few people cursing their displays and tablets this morning after a series of outages took down Google's App Engine, as well as the Tumblr blogging site and a host of smaller operators. "Early this morning App Engine began experiencing slow performance and dropped connections," a spokeswoman told El Reg via …

    REVEALED: IBM's new DS3000-killing Storwise storage beast

    Exclusive Have a peek at specs of the V3700 array

    IBM has an entry-level Storwize V3700 array coming that, we are told, effectively replaces the existing DS3500 array. IBM's Storwize V7000 is a new array with SVC SAN virtualisation capability, an XIV-style GUI and enterprise-class features (background here.) The DS3500 is a low-end array that is part of the DS8000-DS6000- …

    Samsung posts record profits as Galaxy sales crush Apple

    Mobile biz powers 91% boost to Q3 bottom line

    Booming mobile sales have powered record profits at Samsung in Q3. Samsung published a preliminary statement of their financials yesterday [PDF] which shows a 91 per cent increase in net profit compared to the same three months last year. The South Korean firm drew in 6.56 trillion won profit ($5.9bn or £3.7bn) in the three …

    Emulex squeaks into profit: Chew on that, QLogic, 0.7 big ones

    Champagne all round! Hm, maybe cider actually

    A year ago Emulex recorded $118.4m revenues and a loss of $7.2m in its first fiscal 2012 quarter. A year later revenues are up 1 per cent to $119.3m and it has scraped a profit of $700k. Whew! Emulex makes network adapters, and more than 80 per cent of its revenues comes from products like Fibre Channel HBAs and Ethernet …

    Fujitsu to resell Violin 6000-series memory arrays

    Exclusive Loose lips slip on nippy flash

    Fujitsu has signed a deal to resell Violin Memory 6000-series networked flash arrays. El Reg storage desk understands from a well-placed source that Fujitsu has a tripartite strategy for solid-state storage: It will use flash drives and caching in its Eternus storage arrays in a very fast data vault. Fusion-io PCIe flash …

    EC watchdogs clear Tech Data gobble of SDG

    $350m deal gets green light, Tech Data raises funds, should all be tickety boo

    Tech Data's acquisition of Specialist Distribution Group (SDG) has been given the green light from competition regulators in the European Commission. As is customary with takeovers of large firms, the bureaucrats on the mainland wanted to consider the implications of the $350m (£217.4m) deal. "The Commission concluded that …

    LARGEST BELCH EVER SEEN devastates gassy GIANT Saturn

    Colossal ethylene eructation 'bigger than Earth'

    A titanic storm wracking the atmosphere of Saturn, ringed giant planet of the outer Solar System, resulted in an "unprecedented belch of energy" and an associated super-enormous emission of ethylene gas "the origin of which is a mystery", according to NASA boffins. "This temperature spike is so extreme it's almost unbelievable …

    GooPad's eight-incher gives Apple fans cheap relief

    Knock-off, early at work

    Knock-off iPad manufacturer GooPad has followed Apple and unveiled a mini version of its i-style slate. It packs similar specs, ish, but as you can imagine, has a far cheaper price than the real thing. The GooPad Mini may be devoid of the highly-sought fruit logo, but with an 8in display at 1080 x 768 pixels, a 1.4GHz dual- …

    Added flash fails to get network adapters out of QLogic's doors

    Server slump slams Biddiscombe right in the numbers

    QLogic reported revenues of $117.9m for its second fiscal 2013 quarter ending 30 September, down 13.5 per cent on the year-ago quarter, and down 9.6 per cent on the first 2013 quarter. It made a profit of $11.9m, way down on the year-ago quarter's $28.7m and the preceding quarter's $18.4m. The business is shrinking. President …

    Ingram's Monie on money: Murky outlook for IT world ahead

    Chief of World's Biggest Distie sees murky outlook

    Ingram Micro - the world's largest technology distributor - doesn't expect the global economy or the IT industry to pick up anytime soon. Last night the firm posted calendar Q3 numbers with a driving currency headwind almost wiping out sales growth not helped by the economy in Europe either. Turnover climbed 1 per cent year- …

    APPLE: SCREW YOU, BRITS, everyone else says Samsung copied us

    But we will apologise because the judge said we had to

    Apple has complied with a UK court order by admitting on its website that Samsung's Galaxy Tab did not rip off the patented iPad design. High Court Judge Birss had instructed Apple to publish a statement online and in print after ruling that the South Korean electronics giant had not infringed Cupertino's patent. The statement …

    EDF: We'll raise bills 11% - but only 2% is due to energy costs!

    Thank carbon emissions targets for the rest

    EDF Energy is the latest of the UK's Big Six energy suppliers to announce brutal price rises, in this case an increase no less than 10.8 per cent - yet the company openly admits that energy prices would call for a 2 per cent rise at most. Why on Earth does the firm think it's OK to implement a price rise almost six times that …

    Amazon lends e-books free to Prime subscribers

    Better to borrow than buy?

    Amazon’s UK wing is now a lending library, albeit a private one exclusive to folk willing to cough up £49 a year. Yes, Amazon Prime subscribers with Kindles can now borrow any of 200,000 e-books for no charge other than their annual Prime sub. They can pick no more than one book a month, but there’s no digital equivalent of …

    Wales: Let's ban Gibraltar-crazy Wikipedians for 5 years

    Too bad you're not the boss, Jimbo

    You could be forgiven for thinking the front-page of Wikipedia is sponsored by the Gibraltar Tourist Board, with the territory given the kind of product placement large corporations can only dream of. Now Wikipedia's self-styled "spiritual leader" Jimmy Wales has publicly stated that he wants the Wikipedians' curious enthusiasm …

    ICO fines council £120,000 for crypto email fail

    Take the money out of the bins budget

    Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been fined £120,000 for failing to use proper cryptography, resulting in the details of a child-protection case being shared with the wrong people. Last December a solicitor involved in a child-protection case sent 11 e-mails relating to the case to the wrong email address, a simple typo meaning …

    Microsoft: Just swallow this tablet ... the rest will take care of itself

    Open ... and Shut Redmond will win on the fondletop, not software

    The clearest sign that Windows 8 may have a fighting chance has nothing to do with the software, and everything to do with hardware. Microsoft's hardware, that is. The gods must be crazy. After all, Microsoft has spent decades printing money based on a booming software business. Despite the criticism leveled by the technorati …

    Cornwall chokes on £300m local gov deal with IT kingpins

    CSC doesn't like the smell of the pasty, BT eyes loot

    Cornwall Council has stalled a £300m ten-year deal to outsource its call centres and other IT systems to the private sector. The county's councillors voted 93-0, with seven abstentions, to put the brakes on the contract, snubbing BT and CSC which had each put in bids for the huge cash pot. The move came after 6,000 people …

    Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

    Bond on Film What do you mean, 'why don't we just nuke them, boss?'

    Keep it simple – if only the villains of James Bond had learned that lesson in Evil Medical School. All too often, though, the Ernst Stavro Blofelds and Karl Strombergs of 007’s world succumb to their maniacal tendencies and plot ridiculously complicated plans to off Bond or take over the world, where a simple bullet or well- …

    Inventor sues Google Wallet over NFC loyalty patent

    More than one billygoat headed across that bridge, though

    Loyalty scheme pioneer Peter Sprogis is taking Google to court, claiming that the search engine's NFC Wallet infringes his 2007 patent on adding loyalty to pay-by-bonk apps. Sprogis is based in Florida, but the case will be heard in patent-holder-friendly Delaware and was spotted by Startups and IP Strategy. The patent in …

    Surface RT: Freedom luvin' app-huggers beware

    Review A hybrid with potential for productivity types

    “It’s the ultimate expression of a Windows PC,” says Windows chief Steven Sinofsky... or “a compromised, confusing product”, according to Apple’s Tim Cook, who has not used one. This is Surface RT, Microsoft’s first own-brand tablet, which went on sale today. Along with the fact that it runs Windows 8, there are two notable …

    UK.gov unzips, pulls out £100m wad for its favourite suppliers

    Now if only civil servants could log into the CloudStore

    The UK Cabinet Office says as much as £100m of public-sector IT contracts are now up for grabs for the 458 cloud services providers approved by Whitehall. All the government needs to do now is teach IT buyers in the public sector how to actually use the newly launched UK.gov G-Cloud 2 CloudStore, Blighty's online procurement …

    Kick your computer... before it kicks you

    Something for the Weekend, Sir? Spleen to vent? Take it out on your tech

    My in-laws are a boisterous clan, or so it seems to a reserved half-Scot like myself. You see, they are French... well, more of a volatile Spanish-Italian-Latin mix with an explosive temper born from a Mediterranean climate, macho upbringing and unspeakable experiences in revolutionary Algeria. Meals are embellished with …

    America mounts attempt to top the Register's world record spaceflight

    Crack Indiana boffins challenge our epic PARIS project

    It's come to our attention that a crack squad of US students is poised to make an attempt on El Reg's Guinness World Record for the highest launch of a paper plane. On 28 October 2010, our Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) Vulture 1 spaceplane glided into the history books from a dizzying 89,591ft* (27,310m). Well, …

    Dr No, Thunderball, Casino Royale? Vote now for the best Bond film

    Poll There's got to be a Dalton fan out there somewhere

    Over the past couple of weeks, we've had an entertaining time deciding on the vilest Bond villain and the ultimate movie Bond, so the the time has come to pose perhaps the most critical 007 question: What's the best James Bond film? Sean Connery was voted your fave Bond, so we suspect one of his outings has to be in with a …

    4G: Bad coverage, crap battery life - but at least it's really expensive

    Comment Bonus feature: Can't handle voice calls

    Six weeks ago Everything Everywhere EE announced the UK's first 4G network. "A new era dawned over London," Daily Telegraph writer Matt Warman told us. Mourners shuffled into the streets of Leicester and Stoke, and buried an enormous dongle in a mock funeral. That weekend, travelling football supporters from those cities were …

    iPad Mini vs Nexus 7: inch makes all the difference, says Apple CEO

    Tim Cook and the mild-mannered inch

    To Apple CEO Tim Cook, an inch is everything. Apple’s iPad Mini has an 8in display - its closest Android-based rivals all have 7in screens. A big difference, says Cook. "We would not make a 7in tablet," he told financial analysts and journalist eavesdroppers during a conference call last night. "We don't think they're good …

    N00bs vs Windows 8: We lock six people in a room with new OS

    'It's like they tried to make my computer a mobile phone'

    The design of Windows 8's user interface - The Interface Formerly Known as Metro (TIFKAM) - leaves non-technical users yearning for the good ol' Start button. The Reg can report that finding after some rather non-scientific tests in which we offered different folks their very first experience of Windows 8. We chose …

    Samsung ships two smartphones for every one Apple sells

    Galaxy giant dominates handset biz in Q3

    We already knew smartphone shipments have never been higher, and now we know that, in Q3 at least, the beneficiary is Samsung. According to ABI Research and Strategy Analytics, market watchers both, the Korean chaebol - a multi-industry colossus - took more than a third of the market. According to SA, Samsung’s share was 35.2 …

    Brace yourselves, IT suppliers: You'll be squeezed HARDER next year

    It's no fun being an outsourcer

    IT law specialist Clare Murray of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that cost-cutting requirements and the changing needs of organisations are behind a rise in the number of IT outsourcing contract renegotiations. She said she expects the trend to continue. "Customers are under pressure to cut costs and are …

    WTF is... Microsoft Xbox SmartGlass?

    Feature Remote control on steroids, but not yet a Wii U beater

    Microsoft launches its Xbox 360 SmartGlass software today, a free app that allows the console's film, games and music services to be tapped from a mobile device. It becomes an informative second screen to display additional content, or simply acts as a helpful go-between twixt a user's console, mobile and PC platform. …

    Chinese e-cars to turn London cabs green

    Boris-backed deal will see 50 electric minicabs hit the capital's streets

    Chinese car manufacturer BYD will help to make the streets of London just a little bit greener after signing a deal with the capital’s second largest minicab service to supply the city’s first fleet of electric taxis. Greentomatocars, which describe itself as “London’s second largest quality minicab service”, signed a …

    China's largest rare earth supplier halts production

    PRC suffers slump as global demand slows

    China’s stranglehold on the world’s rare earth supply appears to be relaxing, with its largest producer of light rare earths forced to halt some of its operations for a month in an attempt to stop prices slipping further. The Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare Earth Hi-Tech Company is suspending its smelting and separation …

    Brainwaves hint at gamer glory

    Alpha brains will frag faster

    Boffins in Illinois say they can predict who will do well at a new computer game by reading their brainwaves. Using the research game Space Fortress on 39 people who weren’t regular game players, the researchers say that strong alpha oscillations are a “robust predictor” of how quickly the test subjects would improve at the …

    'Huawei partner' tried to sell US tech to Iran

    Updated More fuel for the anti-China lobby

    Chinese telecoms kit maker Huawei narrowly avoided the wrath of US investigators last year after a business described by Reuters as a Huawei supplier* offered to sell American-made equipment to Iran in a deal that would have broken sanctions, it has emerged. Tehran-based Soda Gostar Persian Vista was ready to sell 36 cell …

    ITU signs off on modular power supply proposal

    Let the committee meetings begin!

    Members of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU_) have signed off on the organisation's proposal to make power supplies for electronic gadgetry more modular. As The Reg noted in September, the ITU believes billions of power supplies are made each year. Many fail because of simple problems like broken cables. The …

    Australian Win 8 launch fails to mention business

    Connected to everything, except the desktop and sysadmins

    Microsoft has officially taken the wraps of Windows 8 in Australia, without ever once mentioning a reason businesses would consider an upgrade or showing a single pixel of the 'classic' desktop. Your correspondent has attended every Windows launch since the year 2001 and cannot recall one ever being so devoid of mentions about …

    Apple CEO: Microsoft Surface 'compromised, confusing'

    But Cupertinian kit is 'incredible, amazing, fabulous, jaw-dropping,' etcetera

    Apple CEO Tim Cook hasn't got his hands on a Microsoft Surface yet – which, frankly, would have been difficult, since it was formally announced just this Thursday – but he already doesn't like it. "I haven't personally played with the Surface yet," Cook said during a conference call with reporters and analysts after Apple …

    TSA fails again with adjustable boarding passes

    Lets passengers pick their own security rating

    The reputation of possibly America's least-favorite fondlers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), has taken yet another hit with the discovery that its shoddy security allows passengers in its PreCheck system to pick their own security status. PreCheck allows some frequent fliers willing to pay $100 for a …

    Surface tablet's touch cover is ZX81 REBORN

    FIRST FONDLE Hands on with Redmond's Typoslab

    The Surface tablet's Touch Cover is eerily reminiscent of typing on a ZX81, The Register can report after fondling one of the elusive (to non Microsoft-adoring press) computers at the Australian launch of Windows 8. To do so, we elbowed aside other media and scored a few minutes on a Surface running Windows RT. We were able to …

  5. Thursday, 25 October 2012arrow_down

    Can a new TCP scheme give wireless a 16-fold boost?

    Understanding MIT’s latest save-the-wireless-world technology

    A group of MIT researchers is touting a change to TCP – the transmission control protocol – that it says can yield sixteenfold and better improvements in performance in lossy networks. The claim, made by Muriel Médard’s Network Coding and Reliable Communications group at MIT, has been published in Technology Review. In this …

    Consumer group urges Aussies to spoof IP addresses

    Legally dodgy, but great for the hip pocket given down under price premium

    The official organ of the Australian Consumers Association (ACA), the nation's main consumer lobby group, has offered advice on how Australians can avoid geo-blocking regimes. It's more than a little controversial for the ACA to have done so, through this article in its publication CHOICE, inasmuch as the article itself admits …

    Sinofsky: Surface 'best tablet, best laptop' he's ever used

    So solid Redmond built a Surface skateboard

    After a brief pause for recuperation after the Windows 8 launch, Microsoft's Windows supremo Steven Sinofsky went straight out and started on Surface and how it measures up to competition. "It's not just a tablet. It's actually the best tablet that I've ever used," he said. "It's also not just a laptop, but it's the best …

    Apple squeaks over revenue estimates, misses earnings target

    Mac sales stall

    Apple reported revenues in its fourth fiscal quarter that topped the Wall Street moneymen's predictions – but only barely. Its earnings per share, however, came in lower than most predictions. Cupertino posted quarterly revenue of $36bn, which resulted in a quarterly earnings-per-share (EPS) of $8.67. According to the 47 …

    NBN Co awards satellite station contracts to locals

    Ten sites for regional satellites ready to roll

    NBN Co has selected two local Australian construction companies, Perkins and Cockram, to build ten satellite ground stations for its regional broadband deployment. Under contracts worth AUD$180 million, West Australian based Perkins will build four satellite transmission centres in WA while Cockram, based in Melbourne, will …

    Oracle rolls up and rolls out Solaris 11.1 update

    Tweaked Solaris Cluster 4.1 system lasher tags along

    As promised back at the OpenWorld shindig earlier in the month, Oracle has put the first update to its Solaris 11 Unix into the field. And no, it is not trying to ride on the wave of news relating to Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system for laptops, desktops, and tablets. Solaris 11, which debuted a year ago, was the first …

    Apple's 13-inch Retina MacBook torn asunder for your pleasure

    Bonus! Adorable kitten photos

    Mere days after Apple announced the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, the good folks at the parts, tools, and repair-guide website iFixit have torn one apart – carefully, carefully – and found some interesting innards. Not only that, but they also ratcheted up the teardown's cuteness level by including the globally …

    VMware helps Hadoop roam the Serengeti a little easier

    Hadoop World Virtual elephants chomping on real data

    VMware wants every workload to be virtualized, even high performance computing, data warehousing, and Hadoop data munching workloads. The server virtualization juggernaut will get around to HPC and data warehousing at some point, but it already has a start on Hadoop with Project Serengeti. That project got some tweaks this week …

    Windows 8 unleashed! Midnight launch for world+dog

    Will it be remembered as an XP or a Vista?

    Microsoft has finally launched its new touchy-feely Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT operating systems, along with grandly opening its Windows app store; they'll all be available beginning 12:01am on Friday in a rolling rollout that's likely to mean a minute after your midnight, wherever you are on God's green earth. "Windows 8 is a …

    Windows RT still haunted by the ghost of Microsoft's 2001 tablet fiasco

    Comment Make laptops or fondleslabs: the fondletop can't work

    Microsoft's Windows is coming to tablets again, showing that a fondleslab can do anything a laptop can. Yet not all Windows tablets are equal, and Microsoft is relying on our ongoing obsession with physical keyboards to ensure that Windows RT remains secondary to the flagship full-fat Windows 8 operating system. It's not the …

    Avnet looking to cut costs AGAIN

    Fiscal Q1 profits slide by nearly 30 per cent

    Avnet CEO Rick Hamada has described fiscal Q1 numbers as a "disappointing setback" with profits falling steeply and further cost cutting required. The distie titan already revealed plans to lop a load of costs to help out the bottom line when it unveiled preliminary Q1 figures early this month, with sales down nine per cent to …

    LSI puts on brave smile, blames sales droop on 'soft' PC biz

    Don't panic, it's nabbed a social network as a customer

    LSI's revenues and profits were both higher in Q3 2012 than in the same period in 2011 - but lower than the figures for the previous quarter this year. Revenues for the storage electronics biz in the third quarter, ended 30 September, were $623.9m, down 5.5 per cent on last quarter but 14 per cent higher than a year ago. Net …

    HP's 'strained' relations with Violin: Vulture-on-the-windowsill account

    Exclusive Our sources don't cry over spilt beans

    It has only been a few days since HP decided to curtail its reselling agreement with Violin Memory to concentrate on its own 3PAR product. Big-mouthed bankers also had plenty to say on the move as it pertained to a rumoured IPO by Violin. But El Reg has since heard a bit of inside information from various players close to the …

    Mysterious galactic glow caused by Hitchhikers' Krikkit style stars

    Lone darkness-wrapped suns fingered in infrared conundrum

    The mysterious background glow of the universe is probably caused by "orphan" stars leading an isolated existence wrapped in clouds of dark matter, according to a new analysis by top boffins reviewing data from NASA's Spitzer telescope far out in space. Scientists have long been puzzled by the levels of background infrared …

    Bookeen lights up Odyssey e-reader screen

    Let's glow

    Bookeen has become the latest e-reader maker to offer a device with a ‘backlit’ screen. Enter the Cybook Odyssey HD, a version of Bookeen’s existing reader, this time with a 1024 x 758 screen and an array of LEDs that shine light through the panel to reflect off the screen’s rear surface, highlighting the text. That's the …

    Symantec CEO takes over global sales chief's job, shows him door

    'Best position to win' is with Bennett in every position

    Incoming Symantec CEO Steve Bennett has reason to be pleased; he's inherited a quarter with moderately positive results, not that he's thanking ousted CEO Enrique Salem for them. Instead he's told all geographical sales bosses to report to him after announcing the exit of the global sales head, William Robbins. He has also …

    Facebook's stock rally may be shortlived: Small advertisers enraged

    These fake bisexual girls aren't helping my business!

    Facebook users are complaining that Facebook has intentionally downgraded services for owners of Pages on its social network platform because it wants them to pay for the reach they used to receive for free. In what users have called a "bait-and-switch" scheme, Page owners - from small shops to blogs to brands – have reported …

    Dyson alleges spy stole 'leccy motor secrets for Bosch

    Clean up your act, says vacuum maker

    British vacuum cleaner magnate Dyson has started High Court proceedings against German industrial giant Bosch, claiming its rival swiped its designs for a new generation of electric motor. Mark Taylor, Dyson's R&D chief, said: “Bosch’s VP for engineering employed a Dyson engineer and benefited from our confidential know-how …

    Why is 4G so expensive? Answer: The Post-Voice Era is coming

    Analysis The money will go where the bandwidth is

    EE, the UK's largest mobile operator, makes most of its money from voice calls - but that's coming to an end with the launch of 4G tariffs that allow unlimited chitchat and text. Those tariffs start at £21 a month, with no handset subsidy and capped at 500MB of mobile data, but they impose no limits on texting and calls. The …

    No GPS in the iPad Mini Wi-Fi: People are right to criticise

    Comment Characteristically evil move by Cupertino

    Wi-Fi-only iPads have never featured GPS, but the lack of satellite-navigation tech in the new Mini fondleslab's non-cellular version has provoked a mild backlash: and rightly so, though not many people understand why. The new gizmos do have a "digital compass", a magnetometer which is aware of the direction the slab is being …

    Ballmer has plans for more Microsoft own-brand hardware

    Mmmm, this Windows 8 dogfood is tasty

    Steve Ballmer has re-iterated Microsoft’s commitment to making more hardware. Promoting Windows 8 ahead of today's launch in New York, Microsoft’s chief executive has repeated the undertaking he gave shareholders in October. Asked the obvious by enquiring technology minds at the BBC – whether his software giant would make …

    Quantum blames LTO-6 switch-hit for crappy tape sales

    But revenues on the mend as firm does well on disk-based dedupe, cuts spending

    After a three-quarter revenue decline trend, Quantum seems to be turning a corner: revenues are up, losses are down, and the outlook for the next quarter is more good news. Quantum makes tape and disk and software data protection and file management and access hardware and software products. It earned revenues of $147m in its …

    Carphone Warehouse outs LG-made Google Nexus 4 smartphone

    Premature evaluation

    Carphone Warehouse has inadvertently pre-announced the Google Nexus 4 handset, a 4.7in, 1280 x 768 smartphone made by LG. It will run Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean - possibly 4.2; both versions are mentioned on the page - on a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU. There’s 2GB or Ram and 8GB of on-board storage but seemingly …

    Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks

    What you really, really need to know

    [Note: We received this FAQ document anonymously and cannot confirm its authenticity. However, it has such dead useful advice, we thought we'd share it with you - Eds] Q. Who is this guide for? A. This guide is for users who want to take advantage of new technologies in Windows® - such as faster performance, shorter boot …

    Renault Clio IV and R-Link Android console hands-on preview

    Behind the wheel with the Google-based in-car system

    To say Renault needs the new Clio to be a hit is an understatement. With its non-’leccy UK range now pared back to just Twingo, Clio, Megane and Scenic, Renault needs the new Mk. IV Clio to sell in greater numbers than the MK. III, which if not a bad car was a little vin ordinaire. Even after just 48 hours of charging around …

    Chinese boffins discover bizarro fish-oid creature with FOUR LIMBS

    The THING that crawled OUT OF THE SWAMP

    Chinese boffins have discovered fossil remains of what they believe is the world’s oldest stem tetrapod – a four-limbed fish-like creature. The discovery could provide vital clues about the evolutionary path of vertebrates from sea to land. Zhu Min and his research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of …

    Who is it that makes pots of cash from Apple and Facebook?

    Putting the flash into the pan

    Growth continues unabated at Fusion-io as the server flash storage hardware and software vendor reports record quarterly revenues 59 per cent higher than a year ago plus a $3.9m profit. But growth is about to stop as the economy slams the brakes on. For its first fiscal 2013 quarter revenues were $118m, compared to $74.4m a …

    James Bond doesn't do CGI: Inside 007's amazing real-world action

    Bond on Film Invisible Aston? We don't like to talk about it

    The Aston Martin; a martini, shaken not stirred; the Walther PPK; cool one-liners. These are the four elements of the James Bond films that have become established in our collective psyche as trademarks of Ian Fleming’s secret agent. But there’s something else that’s also become a Bond trademark, and transformed what could …

    'Regular' PS3 gamers who've cancelled credit cards? You FOOLS!

    'Network still secure' despite firmware hack and decryption key leak – security expert

    The appearance of a Sony PlayStation 3 firmware hack will only affect hardware modders, according to a gaming security expert. Chinese hacker group BlueDisk-CFW has published a tool that circumvents the console's firmware. This was followed by the release of "LV0 decryption key." The decryption keys allow PS3 firmware packages …

    The Big Debate: OK gloomsters, how can the music biz be FIXED?

    Battle of Ideas 2012 Technology is sinking to the occasion

    I was an a panel at The Battle of Ideas conference on music at the weekend, and it went a bit beyond your usual digital music panel. There was a good turnout - considering there were six concurrent panels, all of them interesting. Everyone got to make a six-minute opening question. Here's mine, and the highlights of the rest …

    Rackspace stream from the Clouds to you 'will out-flow the Amazon'

    Behold our uncapped data torrents, Bezos, and despair

    Rackspace is using OpenStack to build out its own Cloud Block Storage service, butting up against Amazon's EBS and offering cheaper standard storage and much faster SSD storage. The Cloud Block Storage (CBS) service offers "consistent and reliable" performance for file systems, databases or other storage intensive applications …

    Amazon ships Kindle Fire HD, Paperwhite to Brits

    Lovefilm leaps for Fire too

    Amazon would like you to know that its Fire HD tablet and Paperwhite e-readers are now available to us Brits. And that Lovefilm, Amazon’s film streaming and DVD rental service, can be accessed on the former. The Fire HD, with its 7in, 1280 x 800 display - a rather higher pixel density than the iPad Mini - comes in 16GB and …

    Vaunted Windows 8 RTM updates 'actually featured from Win2000'

    Ex-Microsofties dispute Sinofsky's blogpost claim

    Has Microsoft’s Windows chief Steven Sinofsky gone too far in stating the brilliance of his team's work on Windows 8? “Yes,” say some ex-Microsofties, who reckon Sinofsky is taking credit for something that’s not new on Windows 8, due on Thursday. What’s got them riled is a 10 October Sinofsky blog where he boasted Windows 8 …

    Acronis reveals plan to bust out of backup biz, thrust growth sideways

    Plenty of room in enterprise sync 'n' share, right?

    Acronis is making a break-out move from the data protection business, looking to expand sideways into file access, synch 'n share. Why is it doing this? Competing in the backup market is a bit like trench warfare. There's a lot of hunkering down, lots of noise and smoke but nothing much changes overall because the proprietary …

    Sky staffer plundered database to benefit naughty false firms

    Keep your enemies close, your DBAs closer still

    A former Sky employee who took Sky customers' information from its databases and passed it on for use by others was guilty of misusing the company's confidential information and infringing the firms' database rights, the High Court has ruled. Steven Lee, who worked for Sky In-Home Service for more than five years, was also …

    Lenovo IdeaPad U410 14in Ultrabook review

    Cheaper by design

    As a MacBook Pro owner, and yet a fan of the ThinkPad range since the early IBM days, it would be easy for me to assume Lenovo's new IdeaPad U410 Ultrabook fills the gap as the ultimate middle ground model. Indeed, it's a ThinkPad descendant that looks like Lenovo desperately wants an Apple lawsuit. Lenovo's IdeaPad U410 …

    NSW public servant's email hacked, used to criticise leader

    'Source' of explosive missive about education policy was on holiday

    The Director-General of the Australian State of New South Wales' Department of Education has had her holiday ruined by parties unknown who gained access to her email account and used it to send a message critical of her political masters. New South Wales has cut funding to some areas of public education, a decision that has …

    China's Goophone unveils US$99 Android iPad Mini clone

    Every inch a GooPad mini with none of that Apple taste

    Apple’s Chinese nemesis Goophone is no slouch when it comes to launching fruity tech clones powered by Android – it’s just taken the covers off an iPad Mini lookalike running Jelly Bean which will sell for just $99. The infamous handset maker, which is already selling devices that bear more than a passing resemblance to the …

    Boeing recipe turns cooking oil into jet fuel

    Come fry with me...

    Aircraft maker extraordinaire Boeing has joined forces with its Chinese equivalent to engineer a way of converting discarded cooking oil into aviation fuel. The project is being overseen by Hangzhou Energy Engineering & Technology, an alternative energy specialist, at a brand new R&D centre set up by Boeing and Commercial …

    ESO's nine-gigapixel galactic image has 84 MILLION stars

    A portrait of the Milky Way bulge in the infrared

    The European Southern Observatory has captured and catalogued a giant image of the centre of our galaxy that, if printed at “normal resolution”, would measure 9 x 7 meters. The nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory – this is just a Web version – has been catalogued by an international team of …

    Boeing zaps PCs using CHAMP missile microwave attacks

    Kills power, leaves IT admins intact

    Boeing has successfully conducted a test of a missile capable of blasting a building's electronics with an energy beam without harming the structure itself. The era of EMP weapons has arrived it seems. The Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) is an air-launched device that uses a high-powered …

    Fujitsu assigns team of women to design PC for women

    'All-out-pursuit of elegance' produces jewelled power supplies and mice

    Fujitsu Japan has announced a range of PCs “planned and developed primarily under the direction of female employees” and “aimed at female users”. The 'Floral Kiss' range of computers is an extension of the LifeBook line and will go on sale in Japan next Friday. Fujitsu says the Floral Kiss was created because women make …

  6. Wednesday, 24 October 2012arrow_down

    Imation cutting 20 per cent of workforce amid losses

    'Exploring option for CE biz' says CEO Lucas

    Imation is slashing one fifth of its workforce as part of a cost cutting programme and exploring "strategic options" for its consumer electronics biz. The troubled maker of tape, disk and optical media has reported yet another quarter of losses - it hasn't posted a profit since the end of 2009 - and needs to take corrective …

    Corruption claims put IT contracting under the spotlight

    Boils lanced in NSW, Victoria

    Two corruption scandals in the Australian tech sector came to a head yesterday, turning a harsh spotlight on how government bodies go about contracting out IT services. Victoria’s Ombudsman released a damning report into that state’s IT body CeniTex, while in NSW, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) released …

    US-CERT warns DKIM email open to spoofing

    Mathematician accidentally spots flaw

    US-CERT has issued a warning that DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) verifiers that use low-grade encryption are open to being spoofed and need to be upgraded to combat attackers wielding contemporary quantities of computing power. You might think this is no big deal – after all the value of strong cryptography has been …

    MYOB users didn't want no steenking cloud

    Let them eat hybrids, says Australian accounting software vendor

    Australian accounting software vendor MYOB* has released the newest version of its much-used small business bean-counting app. Sage fancied MYOB last year, but was beaten to an acquisition by Mitt Romney's old outfit, Bain Capital. The new release, AccountRight Live, lets users run their accounts on a PC or in the cloud. Or …

    Australian volcano starts to blow

    Don't worry: only penguins are in danger as it's in the middle of nowhere

    One of Australia's two active volcanoes seems to be erupting. We say seems because the volcano in question, on Heard Island, is located in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, 2000km north of Antarctica and closer to Africa than to Australia. That's about as close to the middle of nowhere as it is possible to be. Heard …

    Microsoft mixes Hortonworks Hadoop with Windows and Azure

    Hadoop World Redmond's Big Data play makes Yahoo money

    After a year of beta testing, Microsoft is rolling out the first preview editions of its Apache Hadoop integration for Windows Server and Azure in a marriage of open source and commercial code. "This lowers the bar in terms of what it takes to set up and manage Hadoop in a Windows and Azure environment," Doug Leland, general …

    Dell lends Apache ARM software efforts a hand

    Forges 'Zinc' custom Calxeda ARM server

    The hardware engineers at Dell's Data Center Solutions custom server unit have bent some metal around Calxeda's EnergyCore ARM server processors and donated a box to the Apache Software Foundation so it can tweak and tune the Apache web server as well as the Hadoop data munching stack and the Cassandra NoSQL data store to run on …

    Super Micro bends metal for Super Hadooper data munchers

    Server sales carry on, but face headwinds

    King of the whiteboxers Super Micro, which is also one of the dominant suppliers of raw system components to other whiteboxers, has launched a line of clusters preconfigured to run the Hadoop big data muncher at the same time that it has reported its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 ended in September. …

    Surface tablets snapped up on pre-order, but no camping in the street

    Brits loving it, Americans and Frenchies holding back

    They may not be sleeping on the street in hopes of being the first to get their mitts on it, but Brits do seem enthusiastic about the new Microsoft Surface tablet. Preorders of the device have already sold out in the UK, the Microsoft UK site shows – at least the £399 32GB version. The £599 64GB version is still available. A …

    EMC flat-lining as economy continues to circle drain

    You may find your sales rep is more willing to deal ...

    EMC has scraped year-on-year revenue and profit hikes for its third 2012 quarter but reported ever-so-slightly lower numbers than the second quarter, a pattern not seen in the past two years. Quarterly revenues were $5.28bn with net profits of $626m. This revenue was up 6 per cent year-on-year and down 0.56 per cent …

    Latest PS3 hack hits Sony with massive migraine

    Master key leaked, pirates rejoice

    News that the PlayStation 3 has been jailbroken, again, is hardly a shocker. However, the latest hack makes Sony's battle against piracy a very tricky task, experts claim. While fresh custom firmware hit the web earlier this week, it's the leak of the so-called LV0 decryption keys which leaves Sony with a serious headache. …

    Judge GIVES APPLE THE FINGER in multitouch iDevice patent case

    Or more accurately, lets Samsung give Cupertino two

    Samsung is allowed to make phones that enable users to use two fingers on the screen at once, ruled a Dutch judge today, kicking out Apple's infringement claim over its multitouch patent. Apple's claim was dismissed and it was ordered to pay Samsung's litigation costs this morning by Judge Peter Blok and two other judges at …

    Unisys tastes red ink in mouth after pension chop-slap

    Tough out there in Services Land

    Mainframe and services provider Unisys has spent years cleaning up its finances, getting its debt reduced and costs in line with sales so it can show Wall Street some profits. And in the third quarter, weaker demand for short-term services engagements and continuing softness in business with the US federal government held down …

    Apple retail boss Browett bags $1.74m of shares

    First wave of signing bonus - now another $59.2m to come

    The allure of leading Apple's store strategy, coupled with a generous restricted stock package of 100,000 shares, currently valued at $623 a unit, saw Browett flee the CEO's office at Dixons Retail in January. In the SEC document, Apple revealed the Brit received 5,000 shares but 2,159 were sold for tax withholding purposes. …

    Equanet asks Propaganda firm to help it shed box-shifter tag

    'We don't just sell tin you know'

    Mid-market reseller Equanet has charged brand consultancy Propaganda with helping to shake off its box-shifter image. The Dixons Retail-owned business recently underwent a change at the top, with Phil Birbeck becoming chief of the group's ailing web shop PIXMANIA and biz development head Felix Stauber replacing him. A "brand …

    Wonder why you live longer than a chimp? Thank your MOTHER IN LAW

    And your mum, other grandmas. Grandads not mentioned

    Grandmothers are the secret behind humans' living such long lives compared to our near relatives the apes, a computer simulation has revealed. “Grandmothering was the initial step toward making us who we are,” says Kristen Hawkes, anthropology prof at Utah uni. Hawkes and colleagues of hers have long sought to advance their …

    SAP happy enough, despite lack of massive lawsuit win this year

    McDermott boasts of huge bulge into the cloud

    German software maker SAP reported a massive plunge in Q3 profits but an operational slip was not to blame, just a one-off gain from its lawsuit with Oracle a year ago. This still left the vendor with a bottom line of €618m, albeit 51 per cent lower than the €1.25bn ($1.62bn) it banked 12 months ago when earnings were boosted …

    Live Chat: Windows 8 and Surface unboxed at last!

    Live Chat Readers speak their brains on remote desktop, Metro apps, boot times, durability and more

    This Thursday Microsoft officially tried to become just a little bit more like Apple. For nearly three decades, support for a wide range of hardware and the freedom to install whatever software you want helped Windows to dominate on PCs. But, stung by Apple’s success with the iPhone and iPad, Microsoft has decided on a new …

    EC: Microsoft didn't honour browser-choice commitment

    Millions weren't offered chance to bin IE in Windows 7, says commission

    Microsoft has failed to comply with its commitments to offer people the chance to ditch Internet Explorer, the European Commission has said in a preliminary Statement of Objections that it has fired off to Microsoft HQ. From 2009, Microsoft has been legally obliged to show EU Windows users a "choice screen" so they can decide …

    Cloudera's Project Impala rides herd with Hadoop elephant in real-time

    Hadoop World Life's no longer a batch

    There are a lot of gripes about the Hadoop Big Data muncher, and one of them is that it was designed as a batch-oriented system. A number of different add-ons to Hadoop have been created to try to make it more like more familiar relational databases (such as HBase) and their SQL query languages (Hive). But even these do not …

    Adobe plugs up buffer overflow holes in Shockwave update

    Nobody using them yet - but they will be now

    Adobe released a patch for its Shockwave Player software on Tuesday, addressing six security vulnerabilities that might easily lend themselves to malware-pushing exploits. Shockwave Player 11.6.7.637 and earlier versions on both Windows and Mac need updating to the latest version: Shockwave Player 11.6.8.638. Adobe said it …

    Raspberry Pi SoC drivers now fully open source

    World first

    The Raspberry Pi is now host to the “first ARM-based multimedia SoC with fully-functional, vendor-provided fully open-source drivers”, the organisation behind the credit-card sized computer said today. The little PC uses the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC and the RaspberryPi Foundation’s lead Linux developer, Alex Bradbury, praised the …

    How Bodyform's farting 'CEO' became a viral sensation

    Man complaining over non-skydiving ladies was REAL

    Our story last week on just how the "CEO" of sanitary towel firm Bodyform set one traumatised man straight on the truth about women's periods raised a few eyebrows among cynical Reg commentards. Just how, they wondered, did the company manage to respond to Richard Neill's Facebook post of 8 October... Hi, as a man I must ask …

    Panel production problems may stop iPad Minis getting into fans' mitts

    Researcher warns of supply chain strains

    Woe to you, Apple fanboy, you may not be able to get your hands on a shiny new iPad Mini because Apple may not be able to ship enough of them to go round. So says DisplaySearch, a market watcher, which reckons supply will be constrained by LCD panel makers’ inability to sent enough 8.9in, 1024 x 768 screens to Apple. Screen …

    Apple slips bomb into ITC filing: Samsung being PROBED by US gov

    Korean firm under investigation over use of standards-essential patents

    The United States government is investigating whether Samsung is misusing the standards-essential patents that it holds, rival Apple said in a document it filed with the International Trade Commission on Monday. Samsung holds several standards-essential patents covering data transmission from mobile devices, which it is under …

    Facebook donates cash seized from spammers to cyber CSI lab

    Ill-gotten $250k for Koobface, GhostClick takedown team

    Facebook has donated $250k it seized from spammers to an academic centre of excellence in the fight against cybercrime. The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research will use the cash to build an expanded version of the faculty, due to open next year. The centre helped …

    Can a 'one-trick' software firm survive in era of converged engorgement?

    Staff-owned software SAN appliance firm DataCore on why it's the last man standing

    Why is DataCore the only dedicated software SAN virtualisation appliance vendor left standing? The answer lies in a skewed revenue geographic model, staff majority ownership of the company and a fair amount of luck. It's also down to a solid product, though other companies with great products have failed where DataCore did not …

    Noisy whales made FAR MORE oceanic racket than humans do

    Early 19th-C Atlantic was a cetacean 'rock concert'

    Interesting news today on the whale/ocean-noise beat, as boffins have calculated that back when the oceans were full of whales they were hugely noisier than they are today. Rising levels of human-caused noise in the oceans, which have long been theorised to be a source of distress for cetaceans, are very quiet by comparison to …

    Speaking in Tech: What's it LIKE to be snarfed by Microsoft?

    Podcast Plus: When lightning actually strikes, UPS is kind of bullshit

    This week on Speaking in Tech, there's something for everyone: from electronics, storage and OpenStack playas to tape-heads and enterprise biz types. Tune in to hear Ed Saipetch, fresh from Structure Europe 2012, and Greg Knieriemen with another of El Reg's enterprise tech-casts. This week, Sarah Vela is playing away, so Greg …

    Hackers get 10 MONTHS to pwn victims with 0-days before world+dog finds out

    Tell no one, compromise everyone

    Hackers exploit security vulnerabilities in software for 10 months on average before details of the holes surface in public, according to a new study. Researchers from Symantec reckon that these zero-day attacks, so called because they are launched well before vendors are even aware of the vulnerabilities, are more prevalent …

    Publicity Stunt of the Week: Ten bizarre phone insurance claims

    How did it get there?!?

    Here, apparently, are the UK’s ten oddest insurance claims made regarding mobile phones. We offer them without comment on their veracity, though the mobile phone insurance go-between that sent them to us in the hope of some free publicity* insists the claims “were investigated fully”, presumably by the insurer it represents. …

    Windows 8: Is Microsoft's new OS too odd to handle?

    Not ready installing on drive C: abort, retry or fail?

    The big question. You are happily trundling along with Windows 7 and everything is fine. Should you upgrade to Windows 8, at Microsoft's tempting price of £24.99, or $39.99, for a downloadable copy? There is always the safe option of leaving well alone, but tell that to anyone who regretted installing Windows Vista and had to …

    Amazon quietly un-wipes remotely wiped Kindle

    But no apology or explanation for account suspension

    Never let it be said posting your woes on the internet doesn’t yield results. After Linn Nygaard allowed Norwegian blogger Martin Bekkelund to reveal that Amazon had not only wiped her Kindle without warning but had refused to explain precisely why it had done so, the online retail giant has grudgingly relented and re-instated …

    Ailing French memory maker Dane-Elec granted bankruptcy protection

    We shall totally reorganise within two months - bosses

    French memory manufacturer and distributor Dane-Elec has bought itself some time to plot a turnaround strategy after being granted bankruptcy protection by a court in its native country. The firm was spooked by a string of nasty half year results and entered the "safeguard procedure" on 17 October, which gives it six months to …

    BYOD for our own staff? That would be 'embarrassing' – HP exec

    Exclusive Candid Cador may not be alone there

    HP will not offer a BYOD programme internally, presumably because it can't take the ignominy of employees potentially turning up with shiny Apple kit: or devices from any other vendor for that matter. The US tech monster, which continues to stagger, has a raft of "BYOD solutions", including security and storage solutions, but …

    Microsoft has no plans for a second Windows 7 Service Pack

    Exclusive You don't like it? Hey - had you thought of Windows 8?

    Waiting for a second Windows 7 Service Pack? Keep waiting – it doesn't sound like Microsoft will be releasing one. Sources close to Microsoft's sustained engineering team, which builds and releases service packs, have told The Register there are no plans for a second Windows 7 SP – breaking precedent on the normal cycle of …

    Big Data? There's an App Store for that

    Open ... and Shut No data scientist? No problem

    A few months back Cloudera chief executive Mike Olson speculated that the real power of Hadoop "will be delivered through cloud apps vendors." This week Datameer brought Olson's vision to life, releasing a marketplace for buying and selling Big Data analytic applications. While a great deal of work remains for making Hadoop and …

    Gaping network port with easy-to-guess password? You ARE the 79%

    Nearly all 2011 hack victims selected themselves

    High-profile, sophisticated hackers stealing industrial secrets tend to hog the headlines but opportunistic hackers searching for routine vulnerabilities can create a world of hurt for victims, often small businesses. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report found that 79 per cent of attacks during 2011 were classified as ‘ …

    How to get your bust in good shape

    Feature Got a 3D printer – now what?

    A 3D printer is a great toy, but only if you have something to print. If you want to address the big issue of “yes, but what can you do”, then just downloading models isn’t any more personal than buying the finished thing online. The bust is back in vogue You need to make your own. To this end I looked at 3D scanning. This …

    Dell flashes more hints about flashy servers

    Virtual SANS also on the agenda

    Dell has dropped more hints about just what it will produce as a result of its June 2011 acquisition of RNA networks, again saying server-based flash goodies will enter its storage lineup during 2013. Speaking at the Dell Storage Forum in Sydney today, Dell's general manager and executive director for PowerVault Data …

    Oh dear: Apple kicks out South Korea boss

    Dominique Oh gets the push as iPhone struggles

    Apple kicked out its head honcho for South Korea just days before the grand unveiling of the much-anticipated iPad Mini and despite the upcoming launch of the iPhone 5 in the country, according to local reports. General manager Dominique Oh was abruptly relieved of his duties last week, spokesman Steve Park told The Korea …

    Lenovo snaps up ex-Moto staff in mobile push

    Scores defect to Chinese PC giant

    In a sign of its growing ambition in the mobile device space, Lenovo has recruited scores of ex-Motorola employees made redundant after Google’s decision to close down the firm’s R&D plant in Nanjing. The Beijing News reported that the Chinese PC giant – which this month jumped to number one in the world rankings according to …

    Huawei says US stance is 'protectionism'

    Australian Chair says security debate “distorted” by trade war

    The Chairman of Huawei's Australian operations, John Lord, has proposed the nation create a national “cyber security evaluation centre” at which “all equipment implemented into major or critical Australian networks can be subjected to the same thorough security assessment.” Lord said such a centre would mirror the UK's Cyber …

    Speech systems lawsuit sours Apple's day

    What does prior art mean, Siri?

    While the world glued itself to its iPad Mini press conference and complained that being an early adopter isn’t what it used to be, a Texas company filed a patent infringement complaint against Cupertino over Siri. Dynamic Advances alleges patents from the venerable Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York – to which …

    Apple unsheathes MacBook 13-incher

    Thinner, lighter, pricier, more pixelicous, less optically inclined

    When Apple released the inelegantly named 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display this June, every Cupertino-watcher knew that it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped and its 13-inch sibling got the same retinal treatment – and on Tuesday it did. No surprise. The 13-inch version was first rumored mere days …

    Facebook beats analyst estimates, talks up mobile plans

    Zuck: 'We'll make more on mobile than on the desktop'

    Mobile was the big topic for Facebook during its second quarter as a public company, and execs spent much of their Q3 earnings call on Tuesday trying to convince analysts and investors that the social network has a strong future beyond the desktop. "I think our opportunity on mobile is the most misunderstood aspect of Facebook …

    While sea ice grows, Antarctica sheds land ice

    The airstrip is MELLLLTING!

    A new satellite survey of Antarctica suggests that some of the continent’s contribution to sea-level rise may be overestimated. However, the land ice melt on the frozen continent is still sufficient to put Australia’s multi-million dollar airstrip at risk. However the University of Tasmania-led study, based on GRACE (Gravity …

  7. Tuesday, 23 October 2012arrow_down

    VMware profits pinched in Q3, but not as pinchy as expected

    New CEO Gelsinger gets a new CFO to match

    Despite the fact that the economic conditions in Europe and Australia weakened in the third quarter and that the company didn't launch its updated virtualization and cloud software until late August, VMware turned in numbers that more or less met expectations. Just the same, profits were down 11.7 per cent to $156.8m against a …

    FTC issues guidelines on facial recognition technology

    Watching them, watching you

    The Federal Trade Commission has issued a staff report on best practices for companies using facial recognition technology in their businesses. "Fortunately, the commercial use of facial recognition technologies is still young," the report states. "This creates a unique opportunity to ensure that as this industry grows, it …

    Judge says PSN hack can't spark class action

    They never promised you a rose garden

    The notorious Sony PlayStation Network hack, which saw millions of accounts compromised in May 2011, doesn’t give grounds for a class action, according to a US judge. The ruling, available from Courthouse News, dismisses most of the grounds for the lawsuit against Sony, which was first filed in June last year. The judge, …

    New Mac mini: Business in the front, party at the back

    Still cute, and with upgraded insides and extra ports

    Remember the Mac mini? That cute li'l system that found its way into everything from server closets to DeLoreans? Well, Apple remembers it as well, and at Tuesday's "a little more" event, Cupertino gave the little fellow its first upgrade in well over a year. The new Mac mini desktop model is available in two versions, one …

    Apple's skinny new iMac line: Farewell, optical drives

    Adds 'Ivy Bridge' processors; removes built-in CD, DVD spinners

    The new 7.85 7.9-inch iPad mini and the upgraded fourth-generation iPad weren't the only bits of kit featured during Apple's "a little more" event this Tuesday in San José, California. Also announced was Apple's new eighth-generation iMac lineup. Sadly, the event also signaled the end of the presence of optical drives built …

    Windows RT OEMs unveil pricing for Surface wannabes

    Analysis Don't expect to save much money

    With the ARM-based version of Microsoft's Surface tablets due to launch in less than three days, rival PC makers are only now beginning to unveil details of their own Windows RT devices. If you were hoping Microsoft's partner OEMs would rise to the occasion and beat Redmond at its own game, prepare to be disappointed. On …

    Apple's iPad Mini mishap: scratching out the retina screen

    Analysis 1024 x 768 may be handy for developers, but it's no good for readers

    Apple will undoubtedly sell more than enough iPad Minis to keep its shareholders happy. Its fans might be less impressed with the diminutive tablet. Sure, the new, small slate looks smart, but Apple seems to have taken little account of the competitive landscape. It’s true, in most respects its 9.7in iPad is well ahead of the …

    Rackspace to ride Hortonworks elephant into the clouds

    Hadoop World Yahoo! should! buy! back! Hadoop! spinout!

    Rackspace Hosting has spent the past two years helping craft the OpenStack cloud control freak and getting it running its public and private cloud services. And now, to get more of the IT wallet, Rackspace wants to peddle more services atop OpenStack, whether it is humming in your shop or in its own glass houses. And one of the …

    Apple unveils iPad mini, upgrades its big brother

    No, it's not cheap – it's from Cupertino, remember?

    Yes, it's called the iPad mini – and that was one of the few heretofore unknown facts about the new iPad that Apple rolled out at its "a lttle more" event on Tuesday in San José, California. That and its price: $329 for the entry-level, Wi-Fi model. Pre-announcement speculation was somewhere in the $299 range, with some overly …

    Apple adds Fusion Drive IO to iMac

    Cupertino gets behind hybrid drives

    Apple's new and thinner iMac has a Fusion Drive combining flash speed and disk capacity. At a launch event today introducing a roster of new Apple products, there was an iMac refresh featuring the deletion of the optical drive and the addition of a Fusion Drive; a twin drive configuration with 128GB of flash storage and a 1TB …

    Cisco: Data centers are getting their cloudy acts together

    Mobile networks – not so much

    When you are trying to take over the data center moving out from the switch and into servers, as Cisco Systems is trying to do, you have to try to figure out the lay of the land so you can pick your targets and start shooting. That, in a nutshell, is why Cisco has put together its latest Global Cloud Index, complete with lots of …

    Greenplum opens up Big Data control freak: Chorus for all of us

    Hadoop World Ties up with Kaggle to head hunt algorithm geeks

    As promised, the Greenplum Big Data subsidiary of IT conglomerate EMC is opening up the Chorus control freak that it created to span the Greenplum data warehousing database and its two implementations of the Hadoop Big Data muncher. At the Hadoop World extravaganza in New York, Greenplum is taking the wraps off the OpenChorus …

    Apple to live-stream Tuesday's 'a little more' event

    One catch: avalable only on Macs, iOS devices, and Apple TV

    In a break with recent practice, Apple will provide a live video stream of its "a little more" event to be held Tuesday morning at 10am Pacific Time at San José's California Theater. As world+dog must know by now, the event is widely expected to feature the debut of the oft-rumored iPad mini. Other candidates for announcement …

    US patent office prepares to kill off Apple's bounce-back patent

    'Tentatively' declared invalid

    The US Patent Office (USPTO) appears to have provisionally invalidated one of the major patents that Apple was using against Samsung... And it's possible that large parts of the case will go “kablooie” as a result. Given that it's not Friday afternoon yet, everyone will remember that the Cupertinians were most insistent that …

    FISH IN SPAAACE: New 'nauts and piscine pals head for Xmas on ISS

    Baikonur blastoff boosts Soyuz to station

    The latest crew of 'nauts are on their way to join their crewmates on the International Space Station after the Soyuz TMA-06M blasted off safely this morning. The Soyuz capsule set off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10.15am BST, carrying flight engineers Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin. The NASA and …

    Save hefty Dr Who and Bond girl 'Flossie', pleads vintage computer man

    5-ton ICT1301 boasts 1 MHz clock speed, 2kB RAM

    Engineer and vintage computer enthusiast Ron Brown is struggling to save Flossie, one of the world's oldest working computer mainframes and a bonafide movie star, from extinction. The '60s era ICT 1301, which was a prominent feature in Scaramanga's lair in Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun, is currently being housed in a …

    'Petrified' insurers slam wallets shut as more resellers go titsup

    Channel insolvencies edge up in Q3

    The small sequential rise in reseller insolvencies in Q3 - in line with seasonality - will do nothing to calm credit insurers' general uneasiness about the IT sector. Data from credit reference agency Graydon UK, shows 75 channel firms bit the dust during the summer quarter, up from 64 in Q2 but dramatically lower than the 93 …

    BBC's Incurious George vows to 'calibrate systems' after Savile affair

    Strangely uninquisitive 'for a journalist'

    The BBC's new director general provoked derision from MPs today after spending most of two hours explaining why he had failed to follow up information, as well as having to answer questions about BBC decisions. Entwistle came across a polite man, but no leader, and the picture of the BBC that emerged was more surreally …

    iPad Mini: Why is Apple SO SCARED of the Kindle?

    Analysis Pocket stroker device may be cursed by Jobs' ghost

    It's a small, cheap plastic device that people use to download Jane Austen and spanking porn. Why would Apple be scared of it? If we wanted to, we could see the iPad Mini as a product that Apple always wanted to make, a revolutionary resolutionary device, a magic original product that will change the world. "Boom! Boom!", as …

    Black hole spews out 2-million-light-year-long stream of WTF

    Boffins spot X-ray blasting, star-stopping cosmic jet

    Astronomers have spotted a supersonic cosmic jet blasting two million light years from the centre of a distant galaxy's supermassive black hole. The jet, which looks like the afterburner of a fighter plane, is moving at nearly the speed of light and its origins and composition are a mystery. A picture snapped by the CSIRO- …

    'Deceptive' web tracker settles with FTC over personal data slurp

    Compete had been charged with sneakily grabbing names, credit card numbers

    Web analytics firm Compete has settled with the Federal Trade Commission over charges that it was slurping users' personal data without permission and wasn't adequately protecting that information. The company tracks the browsing habits of people who download its software and then sells that data to clients so they can improve …

    Riverbed Cascade appliances peek into VDI, SDN, CIFS

    No more finger pointing between server and net admins

    Riverbed Technology's Cascade network monitoring appliances, which come in physical and virtual form, have been flying a bit blind on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and software-defined networks (SDN), but with the Cascade 10.0 software stack, the network busybody is being tweaked so it can peer inside of the protocols …

    Ubisoft forgets to ship activation codes for music game

    Cock-up stops rock-up

    Whoops. Ubisoft has shipped a number of European copies of Rocksmith for PC without activation codes. The omission was, of course, a blunder. However, gamers affected by the codes' absence have still been struck by Ubi's strict security and asked to provide a clear digital image of purchase receipts. Hordes of affected …

    WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped

    Startled diver 'given orders in English,' say boffins

    A young Beluga whale spent four years apparently trying to speak English recently, according to scientists in California. The cetacean's enunciation was apparently clear enough that it was actually discovered when the creature ordered a startled diver to get out of the water. “The whale’s vocalizations often sounded as if …

    Mighty Acer still weaving after 2011's knockdown punch

    Bells still ringing for PC titan

    The once unstoppable sales juggernaut Acer still hasn't regained the momentum that carried it close to the top of the PC market, certainly if its Q3 prelims are anything to go by. Revenues for the calendar third quarter slid 5.6 per cent to NT$104.4bn (£2.22bn), down 11.4 per cent on the same period a year ago. The problem is …

    MapR simplifies and extends HBase for Hadoop

    Hadoop World And clones Google's Dremel to drill into big data

    Back before the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) came out of stealth mode in May 2011, Hadoop distie MapR Technologies didn't like the way it worked, so it rejigged it to look more like a Unix file system from the outside and beefed up its availability. Now, MapR is taking aim at Hadoop's HBase distributed database layer, …

    Nokia flings low-end Lumia at developing world

    WinPho 7.5 for all

    Nokia has officially unveiled the Lumia 510, a budget Windows Phone handset unlikely to excite enthusiasts of the latest tech. With us Westerners distracted by incoming Windows Phone 8 kit, the Finnish firm today set its sights on flooding the developing market with more of yesterday's tech. And after the company pulled the …

    Big labels try for ISP blocking on 3 more 'pirate' sites

    BPI wants Fenopy, Kickass and H33T on blocked pirate list

    Blighty's internet providers have been asked to voluntarily block another three sites accused of piracy by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The BPI, which represents major UK record companies, has asked the ISPs to stop people accessing Fenopy, Kickass Torrents and H33T. “Like The Pirate Bay, these websites are …

    Hero police robot back on duty after 'unstable man' blasts it with shotgun

    Tin cop 'did its job', laughs off leaden hail from 12-bore

    A heroic police robot has returned to duty with a Nebraska force after being put out of action by an "unstable man" who blasted it repeatedly with a 12-bore* shotgun at point blank range during a tense siege this summer. The story begins in Bellvue, Nebraska, on August 10. Ordinary fleshy plods responded to reports of an " …

    Windows 8: An awful lot of change for a single release

    Windows 1.0, Windows 95, Windows NT - the road to Windows 8

    Microsoft released Windows 1.0 on 20 November, 1985, a year later than first promised. Now, nearly 27 years on, Windows 8 is on the shelves. The operating system was chugging away full-steam ahead as Windows XP established itself - then it jumped the tracks at Vista. Where is Microsoft's OS going now and where did it come from …

    Music streaming service Rara slips off cloak, jumps into ring with Spotify

    Subscription music services for squares

    Stealth streaming service Rara is slightly less stealthy today. The Omnifone-backed brand launched 10 months ago and operates in 20 countries. Today it’s adding iPhone, iPad and Windows 8 MetroNotro apps, and beginning to market itself in the UK and Europe, as well as expanding into Latin America. Mexico and Brazil will get Rara …

    Everything Everywhere prices up UK 4G

    Big-ticket speeding

    Everything Everywhere has announced what it will charge for 4G mobile broadband today. Prices for the snappy connection starting at £36 a month. Unfortunately, that'll only feed punters 500MB of data a month, which could be gobbled quickly on a connection with download speeds ten times that of HSPA 3G. That allowance can be …

    Natwest biz banking service goes titsup overnight

    'Upgrade' biffs customers out of accounts

    Natwest's business banking site Bankline went down last night after undergoing "maintenance" for a little longer than expected. The service that helps businesses manage their finances bobbed back up circa 10.20am this morning. The consumer facing side of the site displayed this message: One biz customer was told "an upgrade …

    Five go wild with the Administration Tools Pack

    Stob Nobody owns the Linuxes, Julian

    As you have surely heard, it’s Alan Turing’s centenary this year, and the Bletchley Park museum is celebrating by releasing a game of Monopoly themed on the life of that mathematical genius. I’ll pause for a sentence or two here, while you let your boggle levels equalise, because, given Turing’s life story, this is a quite a …

    Arduino barebones board upgraded with 32-bit ARM

    Eying the Pi in the sky?

    Arduino, the microcontroller-based board for DIY electronics fans, has become dipped its finger into the ARM Pi. The group behind the board has announced the Arduino Due - pronounced ‘doo-ay’, the Italian for ‘two’ - which has an Atmel 32-bit ARM-based CPU in place of the original board’s ATmega microcontroller, also from …

    WD blames hard drive woes on dominant mobile gear, feeble PCs

    Platter patter foretells a bleak midwinter

    Western Digital's disk sales slumped in its last quarter, leading to lower revenue and profit than in the previous three months. Its next quarter is going to be even worse. Revenues in WD's Q1 of fiscal 2013, ended 28 September, amounted to $4bn, 17 per cent less than the $4.8bn a quarter before. And Q1 was the first quarter …

    BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

    Teletext service's final page number dialled

    Ceefax, the BBC’s Teletext service, is no more. First broadcast on 23 September 1974 following its announcement two years previously, Ceefax comprised pages of text and crude block graphics transmitted as codes embedded in unused, off-the-screen lines of the 625-line PAL TV signal. Some 30 pages were provided at first, each …

    Microsoft: Welcome back to PCs, ARM. Sorry about the 1990s

    Analysis Come in from the cold, we've got Windows RT tabs to flog

    More than two decades after the alliance of Intel and Microsoft drove ARM from the battleground of personal computing, Microsoft is warmly embracing the low-power processor designer for Windows 8. ARM was squeezed out of the then emerging and subsequently dominant platform of the time, the desktop PC, as computer makers …

    'Looming menace' of evil browser extensions to be demo'd this week

    The way you'll get pwned next

    A security researcher has developed a proof-of-concept browser botnet extension to illustrate the perils of what he describes as a "looming menace". Zoltan Balazs of Deloitte Hungary developed the code to illustrate the risk from malicious browser add-ons, which he argues anti-virus vendors are ill-equipped to defend against …

    Brazilians strip Google News bare: News barons decide to pull out

    Google News 'presence' in Brazil is 'small'

    Members of the National Association of Newspapers in Brazil (ANJ) have decided to stop Google from displaying snippets of their content on the internet giant's 'News' service. ANJ, which represents publishers making up approximately 90 per cent of the newspaper circulation market in Brazil, said that the appearance of its …

    A hundred Brit IT bods' jobs under threat at Direct Line

    Exclusive Outsourcing on the agenda, says Reg source

    Insurance group Direct Line is considering cutting up to 100 IT jobs in its plan to save £100m a year, some of which may go to outsourced employees. The Direct Line Group confirmed to The Register that 100 jobs are in the middle of a 90-day consultation period that started on 5 September and that outsourcing in general was an …

    LG Vu 5in Android phone-tablet review

    Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 meets its Tegra 3-powered match

    Mercedes vs BMW, Boeing vs Airbus, Asda vs Tesco: the world is full of directly competing commercial entities locked in a bitter struggle for market share. In Korea, Samsung and LG go head-to-head in much the same way, so it's no surprise that LG has cooked up a rival to Samsung’s Galaxy Note. The LG Vu doesn't seem so odd at …

    Man rummaging for lost laptop in skip gets tipped into garbage truck

    Escapes DEATH BY TRASH COMPACTOR after screams heard

    A man in Perth, the capital of West Australia, has survived a spell in the back of a garbage truck after trying to find his laptop in a bin. The West Australian and WA Today both report the man was looking for a lost laptop in a skip bin when a garbage truck tipped the bin into its fetid maw. At this point, as you would, the …

    Oldest unreadable alphabet yields to 'tablet' computer

    Translation breakthrough close, thanks to camera-in-LED-dome boffinry

    A new apparatus called the Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Ancient Documentary Artefacts developed by the University of Southampton has brought Oxford boffins closer to deciphering the world's oldest unreadable alphabet. Described in this paper (PDF), the RTI machine comprises an off-the-shelf Nikon D3X …

    AMD uncloaks 4GHz-and-up FX Series 'enthusiast' chippery

    All unlocked for your overclocking pleasure

    AMD has unveiled its latest FX Series processers, aimed squarely at the enthusiasts' market – the hardcore gamers and other speed demons who want the snappiest possible performance but don't want to spend an arm and a leg on their systems. "We're looking at users who are spending over a hundred dollars on a graphics card," AMD …

    Hong Kong's lucky mobile number hawkers revealed

    Superstitious Chinese snap up auspicious digits

    It takes just a few minutes and a handful of metro stops to travel from Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon neighbourhood Sham Shui Po (SSP), but the journey takes you to a different world. Hong Kong Island is a shining consumer paradise. SSP offers a bustling market where Hong Kong's entrepreneurial streak has collided with …

    Mayer wants Yahoo! to be the world's mobile portal of habit

    Company still unfocused with user data

    Marissa Mayer gave a confident performance at her first full quarterly results call, laying out her plan to make Yahoo! the site of habit for tomorrow's internet users. "We're committed to going back to our roots as a consumer internet company focused on user experience," Mayer told analysts on Monday. "The excitement and …

    Telerik uncloaks Icenium cloudy mobile app dev suite

    Build iOS apps with no SDKs and no Mac

    Tools vendor Telerik has unveiled a new, cloud-enhanced development environment aimed at making it possible for coders to build cross-platform mobile apps without juggling multiple software development kits (SDKs) and build environments. Called Icenium, the new tool allows developers to build sophisticated mobile app UIs using …

Spotlight

Bond on Film 'A ladies' gun ... and not for very nice ladies, at that'
Colossal ethylene eructation 'bigger than Earth'
Credit: Hans Hillewaert. Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
Thank carbon emissions targets for the rest
Microsoft Surface tablets
Open ... and Shut Redmond will win on the fondletop, not software
Bond on Film What do you mean, 'why don't we just nuke them, boss?'
Review A hybrid with potential for productivity types
Alistair Dabbs
Something for the Weekend, Sir? Spleen to vent? Take it out on your tech
'It's like they tried to make my computer a mobile phone'
Photo of HP Tablet PC running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Comment Make laptops or fondleslabs: the fondletop can't work