Antibody transistor grabs gold

Antibody transistor grabs gold


Antibody transistor grabs gold

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:30 PM PST

Immune system response self-assembles electronic connection

The immune system response in which antibodies bind to specific molecules they recognize has been exploited to create a self-assembling protein-based transistor.…

Election hacked, drunken robot elected to school board

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:11 PM PST

Experts warn e-voting systems decades away from security

RSA 2012  Security experts have warned that electronic voting systems are decades away from being secure, and to prove it a team from the University of Michigan successfully got the foul-mouthed, drunken Futurama robot Bender elected to head of a school board.…

Paper plane world record disputed

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:03 PM PST

Soar heads say A4 flew six metres feet past old record.

An "unpure" paper dart has all-but claimed the world record for the longest paper airplane flight.…

EMC cranks Greenplum database to 4.2

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:01 PM PST

Goosing Hadoop links and warehouse backups

Big data is not just a problem because it is big, but because it keeps swelling. That goes as much for traditional data warehouses as it does for more modern Hadoop MapReduce data munchers. And with the latest update of its eponymous database, the Greenplum division of IT conglomerate EMC has made some tweaks to its homegrown database to make wrestling with big data a bit easier.…

Motorola unfazed by Apple photo-patent win

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:37 PM PST

'We expect no impact' from latest German court loss

Motorola Mobility (MMI) lost another round in its ongoing patent war with Apple when a German court ruled in Cupertino's favor in a photo-management patent case – but they're putting their best face on the setback.…

Sub-orbital rocket searches for first galaxies

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:37 PM PST

CIBER experiment to shed new light on first light

The universe's very first galaxies may be a little closer by the weekend, thanks to a planned March 2nd (US time) launch of a sub-orbital Black Brant IX rocket bearing the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER)that hopes to figure out which light comes from the earliest stars.…

Tubular cells: Georgia Tech demos nano-scale solar fab

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:30 PM PST

Solyndra dream lives on in miniature

The idea that got Solyndra into so much trouble – that a tube-shaped solar cell could be more efficient than a traditional flat design – didn't disappear when its highest-profile manufacturer collapsed. It remains a strong focus of research efforts.…

Premium mobile services face tougher laws

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:00 PM PST

Heavy-breathers must declare their costs

Premium mobile service providers are again under surveillance by the communications regulator over getting away with misleading practices.…

Atlassian seeks geeks in Europe

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 01:01 PM PST

'We're hiring, let's meet in the pub'

Atlassian, Australia's current darling-of-the-VCs, has orchestrated a European recruitment drive it says is designed to snare fifteen developers in fifteen days.…

Cray gets graphic with big data

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 12:17 PM PST

ThreadStorm appliance cries 'Urika!'

Supercomputer maker Cray has released an exotic appliance to help deep-pockets organizations find the relationships hidden in the torrent of information now being collected about, well, everything and everyone.…

Windows Server 8 beta ready for download

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 11:32 AM PST

Code rewritten for virtualization

Microsoft has released the beta build of its forthcoming Windows 8 Server operating system, a day after making its "Consumer Preview" of the Windows 8 client-side code available on Wednesday.…

Azure's storage cloud was never at stake, insists storage cloud biz

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 11:01 AM PST

It's the compute side that went titsup

Microsoft Azure's processing of bits in the cloud fouled up yesterday, but its storage of bits in the cloud was unaffected.…

MWC: Inscrutable slogans, Google toys and the invisible Apple

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 10:06 AM PST

'Claw grab' game + humbled, eager Nokia = A real treat

MWC 2012  I go to Mobile World Congress every year and come home bemused. A few observations to explain.…

Sacks of cash chucked at upstart dressed to the nines

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 09:03 AM PST

Object storage biz Amplidata banks $8m investment

Object storage startup Amplidata has grabbed $8m of funding to help stack up the products that it claims virtually eliminate data loss. Competitor Caringo, meanwhile, agrees that you don't need tape for archive storage, having integrated its CAStor product as back-end storage for Symantec's Enterprise Vault.…

G-Cloud bigwig says soz for Cloud Store outage

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 08:26 AM PST

Azure crash downed gov e-catalogue for 2 hours

The G-Cloud governor has apologised to public sector customers for the Cloud Store outage yesterday but pointed out that downtime is not confined to an off-premise delivery model.…

Indiana Jones flicks out on Blu-ray this Fall

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 08:16 AM PST

Dum-da-da-dum-dum. Dum-da-da-dum-dum. Dum-de-dada, dum-de-dum, etc, etc.

With Star Wars' Blu-ray and 3D conversions out of the way, Lucasfilm has turned to George's other creation: the Indiana Jones movies.…

Fujitsu array brags of quick thrust, modest cost

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 08:02 AM PST

Eternus DX80 S2 tops the benchmark chart

Fujitsu claims its Eternus DX80 S2 array is the SPC-1 golden child, with the best price-performance ratios in the mid-range dual controller storage arrays sector. There is no formal mid-range definition though.…

Blighty's Post Office computer system goes titsup

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 07:48 AM PST

Enough to make you go postal

Updated  The Post Office's computer system has crashed, crippling services at branches nationwide, Royal Mail has admitted. It is understood that all of the UK's 11,800 post offices are affected.…

Mobile whizzes tout gadgets that touch you, save your life

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 07:31 AM PST

Innovation hidden in the small stands

MWC 2012  A search around the MWC in Barcelona for something more interesting revealed a phone which can perform an ECG, a headset you operate by shaking it about like a loon, and a touchscreen that touches you back.…

ICO slaps Durham Uni for exposing staff, students' privates

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 07:02 AM PST

Training manual... on how to stalk that first-year

Durham University leaked the personal details of 177 staff and students in a training manual that turned out to reveal more than how to take out a library book. The university has just been given a slap on the wrist by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and has promised to reform its data protection policies.…

App cuts waiting out of call centre queues

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 06:44 AM PST

No charge, apparently

A free app that takes away the frustration of being kept on hold during phone calls to corporations has launched in the UK, saving mobile users a pretty penny in the process, its developer claims.…

China churns out homemade aircraft for global travel DOMINATION

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 06:32 AM PST

Look out Boeing and Airbus, there's a new kid in town

China is ramping up its plans for domination of international civil airspace with recent deals to flog its home-grown aircraft set to cause a few sweaty palms at Boeing and Airbus.…

Chancer punts cig pack case for Raspberry Pi

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 06:19 AM PST

Holey smokes

With the Linux-based Raspberry Pi now available for purchase, punters have started to push their own home-made chassis for the case-less computer. But one opportunist is touting this customised cigarette box.…

Moles say Sony will kill Cell CPU for PlayStation 4

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 06:08 AM PST

AMD Fusion the chosen successor?

Sony's PlayStation 4 will not use the PS3's Cell processor, it has been claimed, because the current chipset and rumoured next-gen variants are too complex for developers to work with quickly.…

Feds crack suspect's encrypted drive, avoid Constitution meltdown

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 06:01 AM PST

Digital age plays havoc with 5th Amendment

Investigators have cracked the encryption key for a laptop drive owned by a Colorado woman accused of real-estate fraud - rendering a judge's controversial order to make her hand over the passphrase or stand in contempt of court irrelevant.…

Google rolls out privacy policy, snubs Euro outcry

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:39 AM PST

Ex-FTC bigwig slams 'arrogant' Choc Factory

Google has defended its decision to combine around 60 of its privacy policies into one simplified document that makes it clear that users of the company's products and services will be more uniformly tracked by the Chocolate Factory.…

Auto-correct cock-up sends schools into lockdown

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:30 AM PST

'Gunman' on the way

Auto-correct is known to be the cause of many a hilarious text misunderstanding, but when one student sent a message to say they were "gunna be" at school and the word became "gunman", you can imagine the chaos it would cause. Particularly in America.…

Stolen NASA laptop had Space Station control codes

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:21 AM PST

And no encryption for supervillains to crack

A NASA laptop stolen last year had not been encrypted, despite containing codes used to control and command the International Space Station, the agency's inspector general told a US House committee.…

Ethics profs fret over cyborg brains, mind-controlled missiles

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 05:03 AM PST

Why can't boffins be allowed to BUILD KILLER ROBOTS?

A British ethics group has started a consultation on the morality of messing about in the human brain in ways that could result in thought-controlled weaponry and super-human capabilities.…

Bytes, Nettitude sales bods busted in IT invoice bung scam

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 04:38 AM PST

Bent procurement chief 'corrupted them', says lawyer

Former sales staff at resellers Bytes Software Services and Nettitude have been sentenced for their part in a scam involving an IT procurement director who created bogus invoices and hiked prices in return for cash bungs or "sweeteners" totalling more than £50k.…

Steve Jobs' death clears way for '7.85-inch iPad prototype'

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 04:16 AM PST

Apple's Kindle-killer rumoured for Q3 2012

Sample screens for a seven-inch Apple iPad have been delivered for testing, according to Taiwanese manufacturing bible Digitimes. That means that production lines could start knocking out baby fondleslabs as early as June.…

Motorola Defy Mini rugged Android smartphone

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 04:00 AM PST

Lifeproof caller gets smaller

Tick-like banking Trojan drills into Firefox, sucks out info

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:44 AM PST

Neloweg spreading across UK, Netherlands

A new banking Trojan is spreading in the UK and the Netherlands, Symantec warns.…

Facebook blamed for getting Thai teens up the duff

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:19 AM PST

Kids should be kicking balls instead

Facebook now has another social ill to add to the growing list of reprehensible things it has been blamed for: unwanted teenage pregnancies.…

Microsoft's free flight sim hits the clouds

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:08 AM PST

Wing wing situation?

Microsoft's latest flight simulator officially took off this week, with aircraft enthusiasts and anyone else who wants to take to the skies able to download and play the game free of charge.…

ISP Be admits crippling iPlayer demand burst its pipes

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 03:01 AM PST

Capacity overload caused 'weeks of packet loss'

ISP Be Broadband has admitted demand for iPlayer jammed its punters' net connections - leaving parts of the web unusable and subscribers fuming.…

Sony exec: quad-core CPUs bad for today's phones

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:50 AM PST

Chips are battery hogs, and apps don't need 'em

Sony has said quad-core processors are not appropriate for smartphones - they're too great a drain on the battery, and apps just don't need them yet.…

Tata flirts with Cable & Wireless Worldwide buyout

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:38 AM PST

Suitors line up for troubled carrier

Indian company Tata Communications confirmed this morning that it was considering a cash offer to acquire troubled telco Cable & Wireless Worldwide.…

GIANT blood-guzzling Jurassic fleas ambushed dino prey

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:24 AM PST

Boffins uncover critters armed with piercing straws

Hollywood producers will be on high alert for the next Jurassic Park blockbuster script after boffins found fossils of giant prehistoric fleas. The monster bloodsuckers were thought to have used ruggedised straw-like mouths to prey on dinosaurs.…

Beat Sneak Bandit

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 02:01 AM PST

Clock rock

iGamer  Tap your finger to the beat. On the face of it, Beat Sneak Bandit's mechanic doesn't promise compulsive gaming. But developer Simogo squeezes more innovation from this single-finger iOS puzzler than many console and computer games manage by tying your hands in knots.…

Watchdog hits out at malware racking up premium-rate charges

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 01:33 AM PST

Regulator horrified permission isn't being sought

The premium rate phone regulator says it might disregard evidence of consumer consent from paid-for mobile applications if those apps turn out to contain malicious code.…

Dot-brand explosion will shell-shock lazy coders - ICANN

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 01:01 AM PST

Devs urged to swot up on parsing new domain extensions

Millions of internet users face being locked out of popular websites unless software developers pay attention to the forthcoming explosion in new top-level domain names.…

Risky child-support plans rely too much on new IT system – NAO

Posted: 01 Mar 2012 12:02 AM PST

Cost cuts hinge on delayed, overbudget mega-IT overhaul

Plans by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission to cut spending are risky and rely too much on the introduction of a new IT system, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO).…

Ten... top iOS games

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 11:00 PM PST

Play away

Data.gov.au loses dedicated staff

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 08:13 PM PST

Former staffer says Gov 2.0 losing momentum

One of the key elements of Australia's Gov 2.0 effort, the data.gov.au website, no longer has dedicated staff and is now a "mature capability" that is part of the Australian Government Information Management Office's IAGIMO's) "business as usual" efforts.…

Firm Dick sales excite buyers

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 06:45 PM PST

Woolies stroking queue of purchasers for soft-core business

"A number of potential purchasers have expressed interest" in acquiring Dick Smith from Woolworths, according to half-year results released today.…

Oz Square Kilometre Array bid picks DataDirect for storage

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 06:11 PM PST

Boffins pick Big Data specialists for exabyte-a-day array

Australia's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has signed an agreement with DataDirect Networks to "develop the extraordinary new data storage capability" needed to cope with the Square Kilometre Array's (SKA's) expected exabyte-per-day output.…

US shuts down Canadian gambling site with Verisign's help

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 05:43 PM PST

Got a .com URL? US law applies

The Department of Homeland Security has seized a domain name registered outside of the US, by individuals who are not American citizens, and who registered with a Canadian registrar.…

Neat nanoparticles could bring 10TB disks

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 05:37 PM PST

5D DVD researchers spurned by Samsung try again

One of the Australian researchers behind a 2009 Nature paper outlining how optical media could reach 1.6 terabytes says Samsung has decided not to commercialise the technology, but has also published a new paper outlining how 12cm shinies could hit ten terabytes.…

NASA snaps show Arctic melt

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 03:59 PM PST

Oldest ice disappears faster

NASA's latest study into Arctic sea ice concludes that the oldest, thickest ice is disappearing faster than the thinner ice at the edges of the Arctic Ocean.…

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