Microsoft bags two more Android patent deals

Microsoft bags two more Android patent deals


Microsoft bags two more Android patent deals

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 02:50 PM PDT

The rising cost of 'free'

Microsoft has inked two more patent licensing agreements with Android hardware manufacturers.…

Google's epic graph cruncher mimicked with open source

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 01:36 PM PDT

And then there was GoldenOrb

Unlike Facebook or Yahoo!, Google is loath to open source its back-end software. For many, this is a sore point, as the search giant has built its famously distributed infrastructure atop countless open source tools fashioned outside the walls of the Googleplex. But Mountain View does give back in less-direct ways.…

Testing time for updated Javascript standard

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 01:34 PM PDT

Improved web apps interop promised

A "minimal but needed update" to ECMAScript, also known as Javascript, has been ratified by standards chiefs who have promised greater consistency between browsers.…

Gartner forecast reinflates IT spending balloon

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 01:23 PM PDT

Cloud cash promised

For the second time this year, the prognosticators at market researcher Gartner have revised upwards their IT spending projections for 2011, and now are calling for a spending increase of 7.1 per cent worldwide, to $3.67 trillion.…

Xboxer SWATTED by armed cops after online spat

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 12:21 PM PDT

When games get (really) ugly

The family of a 15-year-old Xbox player was raided by heavily armed police after a disaffected online opponent made a hoax emergency call claiming there was a home invasion in progress.…

AMD gets in Intel's grill with desktop Fusion rollout

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 10:24 AM PDT

'We win', howls AMD

AMD's first desktop Fusion processors were detailed on Thursday, and the company marked their debut with a confident blast at its megacompetitor, Intel.…

Ballmer leaves investors speechless in Seattle

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:44 AM PDT

He won't go quietly, huh

The pressure must be getting to Microsoft's very own bald eagle Steve Ballmer as he issued a stinging public rebuke - for the first time - to dissenting investors calling for his head, and used the soon-to-be released fiscal 2011 results to back up his reputation.…

Intel takes CPU market share from AMD in Q1

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:29 AM PDT

Catches chipset bug bullet in teeth

The chip watchers at iSuppli say that Intel continued to gain processor market share even though it was hit by a bug in a chipset used with its "Sandy Bridge" desktop, laptop, and entry server platforms.…

Moderatrix in self-nix shock

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:00 AM PDT

Commentard scourge says emotional farewell

In news sure to send the massed ranks of Reg commentards running for the tissue box for the other reason, the Moderatrix is packing up her paddles and departing for dungeons new.…

Amazon throws tax hissy-fit, dumps California affiliates

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:50 AM PDT

Taxes are for the little people. And Wal-Mart...

Amazon and Overstock have severed their agreements with affiliates based in California, in an overnight response to the imposition of a sales tax for online retailers of physical goods. Online retailers are exempt from sales taxes, but dead-broke California introduced such a law on Wednesday night.…

Reg Hardware launches review looker-upper

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:30 AM PDT

Catch up on your kit-test reading

Site News  You asked for a more accessible read-out of the reviews published by Reg Hardware - and you've now got it.…

Big Blue offers staff Apples

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:25 AM PDT

Hey, You! It's Macs not ThinkPads

IBMers used to be famous for filing lots of patents and for uniforms of dark blue suits and white shirts, but an internal email seen by the Reg suggests black turtle-necks, faded jeans and berets might be more in order now.…

Wimbledon grunters turned down by viewers

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 07:18 AM PDT

Served over the 'net

If you've avoided the bustle of public strikes by putting your feet up in front of the telly, you'll undoubtedly spend your day surrounded by grunts of a different kind.…

Microsoft: Office 365 outages 'will' happen

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 06:59 AM PDT

Installs cash-back scheme to counter crappiness

Microsoft is confident that Office 365 – its second generation cloud service – will prove more resilient than the Business Productivity Online Suite but it cannot guarantee uptime.…

Solix offers application euthanasia services

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 06:25 AM PDT

Application morticians, when apps become ExAPPS

Applications come to their end of life and have to be retired along with their data; there's no point in backing up data from dead apps. Solix is a euthanasia expert for moribund applications.…

Gov piles pressure on News Corp in BSkyB bid

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 06:12 AM PDT

We're watching you, matey

An independent director will have to sit in on Sky News board meetings when editorial decisions are being made if News Corporation's bid to takeover BSkyB is successful and the news provider is spun off into a separate company, the Government said today.…

Spam volumes show massive drop - but why?

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 05:52 AM PDT

Botnets switched to denial of service duties. Yay!

Spam levels have dropped massively in recent months, though researchers fear this is simply because botnet operators have switched their attention to more lucrative activities.…

Radio society responds to radio selloff

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 05:46 AM PDT

Difficult details, dodgy premise

The RSGB reckons that 500MHz of spectrum, which the Ministry of Fun wants to see sold off by 2020, isn't empty, and hasn't much application anyway.…

The freakonomics of smut: Does it actually cause rape?

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 05:42 AM PDT

Plenty of reasons for thugs never to leave the house

Comment  Does porn cause rape? It could do: rape fantasies causing porn is a certainty. While there are many who would argue that porn causes rape, what we would really like to know is whether it is true.…

Star Wars fans want Sony sued over game shutdown

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 05:29 AM PDT

Fear of loss, a path to the dark side is

Fans of the LucasArts' MMOG, Star Wars Galaxies, are so upset by Sony Online Entertainment's decision to axe the title this December, that they claim they're planning to file a lawsuit.…

T-Mobile to tout 'truly unlimited' mobile data plan

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 05:13 AM PDT

Surf's up

T-Mobile has made a complete Scrooge-around on its mobile data allowances, announcing a "truly unlimited" deal for new and existing customers.…

Pricey Apple Thunderbolt cable inner chippery exposed

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 05:02 AM PDT

40 quid for wires... and 12 chips

Want to know why Apple is charging £39 - $50 in the US - for its Thunderbolt cable?…

Feds shut down poker site

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:59 AM PDT

With a bit of help from wee Channel Island

One of the world's most successful poker sites, FullTiltPoker.com, has been shut down by the FBI.…

Strike hits police, ICO and the Rev

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:48 AM PDT

HMRC not looking good either

The Information Commissioner's Office has had to shut its helpline today because of industrial action.…

Patriot hackers disrupt al-Qaeda websites

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:45 AM PDT

Ellen Degeneres teaches bombers to bake cupcakes

Patriot hackers have interfered with al Qaeda's ability to issue videos and messages to supporters via a series of apparently coordinated denial of service attacks against Jihadist websites.…

Skype brings cross-platform video to Android

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:43 AM PDT

No more pretending to be in the office

Skype's Android client now supports cross-platform video calling, so mobile users can see desktop users and no one has to feel jealous of Apple's FaceTime any more.…

New plan: Send humans into space, keep the robots on Earth

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 04:41 AM PDT

Usual space exploration model topsy-turvinated by ESA

Barring certain exceptions, as everyone knows, the usual way for humanity to explore other planets or astronomical bodies is that we send out sophisticated robots to have a look round, controlled by teams of humans here on Earth.…

The Cube: Apple's daftest, strangest romance

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:40 AM PDT

Ten years on, we remember the bonkers box

This Old Box  Ten years ago on Sunday, Apple called it quits on one of its oddest products ever, the G4 Cube. The Cube was a strange and wonderful machine that continues to fascinate today - but it was widely perceived to have failed. Some people thoroughly enjoyed the failure, thinking it served Apple right.…

Feds on trail of LulzSec raid Ohio house

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:26 AM PDT

And Lulzers turn on m_nerva

The international investigation into the notorious LulzSec hacking crew has moved from the UK to the US Midwest with the search of a house in Hamilton, Ohio by FBI agents.…

Brainscan breakthrough: Working robot limbs come closer

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:25 AM PDT

Brains in jars controlling cyber colossi, too, of course

Canadian brain boffins are chuffed to announce a new breakthrough in the tricky business of machine mind-reading: they have developed a method of working out from brain scans what physical action a person is about to carry out – before he or she can actually do it.…

Lego lover builds big Barad-dûr replica

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:13 AM PDT

Tower record?

Some folk have got too much time on their hands. Then again, sometimes those people deserve to be applauded for their efforts.…

Apple's white MacBook drought set to flip to gush

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:06 AM PDT

Entry-level device to flood European channels next week

The constraint on channel bully boy Apple's low-end white MacBook is set to end next week, according to well-placed sources in the vendor's supply chain.…

Spikes in demand get lost in the cloud

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Which service is best?

One approach to smoothing out application demand is a load-balanced server farm. Another is virtualisation to bring extra resources to bear when needed.…

Everything is converging on the network

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Keep traffic moving

According to my dictionary (a book, not one of those new-fangled online jobs), convergence is "the act of coming together".…

HP TouchPad 9.7in WebOS tablet

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 02:42 AM PDT

The true alternative to Android and Apple?

Hands On  HP has learned from Apple. Not simply by mimicking - or judging it to be the correct size in any case - the iPad's 9.7in screen defined dimensions, but by avoiding the obvious operating system: Android.…

German vulture detective hits turbulence

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 02:26 AM PDT

Bird-brained search-and-rescue scavenger

German police in Lower Saxony hoping to train a vulture to seek out dead bodies are having issues with the bird's training.…

How that Oracle and Pillar earn-out really works

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 02:25 AM PDT

Losses need reversing

Comment  Pillar investors will only receive cash from Oracle for the Pillar acquisition if Pillar revenues in 2014 exceed net losses from 2011 to 2014.…

Efficiency and Reform Group 'has saved over £3bn'

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 02:24 AM PDT

It's all about understanding

The Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) has helped to save government £3bn-£4bn over the past few months, its lead official has told a group of MPs.…

17 flock to see Gordon Ramsay turkey

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 01:46 AM PDT

Love's Kitchen takes £121 in opening week

Sweary chef Gordon Ramsay looks a likely Razzie candidate after his film debut attracted just 17 cinemagoers in its opening week.…

Lloyds aims 15,000 job cuts at IT and back office

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 01:38 AM PDT

Banking group to withdraw from 15 countries

LloydsTSB is cutting another 15,000 jobs but will not be shutting branches as part of its strategic review.…

Oracle's Java plan trapped in last century

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:09 PM PDT

Clouds leave Ellison behind

Oracle's roadmap for Javas 7 and 8 shows it recognizes the world is pulling away and leaving Java with last-century concepts and ideals. Java 7 is meant to set the foundation for a cloud-friendly platform, but the real cloud-ready features won't make an appearance until Java 8 in 2013 at the earliest.…

Lenovo Thinkpad X220T 12.5in tablet PC

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:05 PM PDT

A fondleslab too far?

Review  A recent business profile of Lenovo in a national newspaper made an interesting assertion. "Anyone you spot on the Tube using a ThinkPad has almost certainly obtained it from their employer," claimed the reporter.…

Koreans visit Tesco through subway hoardings

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:00 PM PDT

Fresh fruit and veg from the underground

Tesco is causing quite a stir in South Korea with a virtual shopping experience that encourages customers to scan billboards on the subway.…

Yahoo! tech boss gazes beyond Hadoop

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:16 PM PDT

MapReduce goes only so fast

Hadoop underpins everything from Facebook to eBay to Yahoo!, but it's not designed for online applications.…

Digital Rupert’s bumper $545m loss

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:10 PM PDT

MySpace sold to Specific Media with Timberlake as star investor

The very expensive, sorry tale of how to turn a cool digital business into a boring corporate leper has ended with a painful US$545 million loss for News Corp and perhaps a chance at resurrection for MySpace.…

Hackers steal personal data of military, gov personnel

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 10:03 PM PDT

Please don't feed the spear phishers

Hackers breached the security of a defense industry news website and stole sensitive subscriber information that could be used in attacks targeting the US military and its contractors.…

IBM boffins claim phase change memory breakthrough

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 09:26 PM PDT

Catch my drift

Fast and reliable non-volatile memory of some sort that will replace flash memory is the dream of more than a few semiconductor researchers and chip makers. And boffins at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland, think they have come up with a new encoding technique that will allow for multi-level cell (MLC) phase change memory to be commercialized at some point in the not too distant future.…

Microsoft floats 'site-ready' IE10 preview

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:10 PM PDT

Firefox kerfuffle rolls on

Microsoft has released another preview version of Internet Explorer 10, and it has used the occasion to once again explain how it loves the enterprise more than Firefox.…

CA coughs up $330m in cash for apps dev house

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:46 PM PDT

Interactive TKO borged

Software conglomerate CA Technologies has borged another company in its ongoing effort to make its wares relevant in an increasingly virtual and cloudy IT world.…

Chess crown stripped in plagiarism furore

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 07:31 PM PDT

Computer champion copied code

Knights and pawns are being brandished in the rarified world of computer chess, with program Rybka and its developer Vasik Rajlich stripped of the world title on a charge of plagiarism.…

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