Amazon cloud knocked out by violent storms in Virginia

Amazon cloud knocked out by violent storms in Virginia


Amazon cloud knocked out by violent storms in Virginia

Posted: 30 Jun 2012 01:55 PM PDT

Mother Nature huffs and puffs a derecho

A wave of "hurricane-like" thunderstorms ripped across Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia on Friday night, leaving more than 3.5 million people without power and knocking out the US-East-1 data center operated by Amazon Web Services.…

IBM trims Flex System prices

Posted: 30 Jun 2012 01:26 PM PDT

Global Services behemoth offers installation hand-holding

It looks like some customers are complaining a little about the pricing IBM's new PureSystems modular systems - and they want a little help to get the new iron and its systems and cloud management software up and running.…

Brits upscaling their TV buys

Posted: 30 Jun 2012 02:30 AM PDT

Bedroom or living room, sets are getting bigger

British homes may be generally smaller than those of, say, the US or Australia, but the nation's TV buyers are nonetheless increasingly keen on bigger and bigger tellies.…

TiVo plunges into Swedes after penetrating Virgin Media

Posted: 30 Jun 2012 02:00 AM PDT

Gets another pipe into the box

The announcement that Com Hem of Sweden has cut a deal with TiVo this week shows how the TiVo strategy is rolling out in Europe and points to more and more deals being likely in the future. Expect it to drift outside of Europe soon, as well.…

Ten... Androids for under 200 quid

Posted: 30 Jun 2012 12:00 AM PDT

The price is right?

Product Round-up  At the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona earlier this year, Google chief Eric Schmidt famously said that he expected Android smartphones to be as cheap as normal phones as soon as 2013. The current sub-£200 Sim-free sweet spot in 2012 means you can expect large screens and a variety of processors. Yet don't expect iPhone 4S Retina display crispness, those large screens inevitably come at a lower resolution.…

Second win for Apple as Galaxy Nexus sales banned in US

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:53 PM PDT

Bad week for Samsung's lawyers

Apple has scored its second legal victory of the week with a court ruling on Friday that effectively bans sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone in the US.…

Smart Strong Password Strategies

Smart Strong Password Strategies


Smart Strong Password Strategies

Posted:

Protect your personal data with strong passwords.You regularly update your anti-virus software, avoid giving out personal information to strangers online and wouldn’t dream of sharing your bank account information with someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince -- but how often do you change yo...

The fluctuation of compliance

The fluctuation of compliance


The fluctuation of compliance

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:12 AM PDT

After this weekend, all retailers accepting payment card transactions will be expected to either use a specialized firewall for protecting their Web applications or to have completed a Web application...

12% of Fortune 500 infected with DNSChanger malware

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:28 AM PDT

IID announced that 12 percent of all Fortune 500 companies and four percent of "major" U.S. federal agencies are still infected with DNSChanger malware. These findings come less than two weeks before ...

Radical reduction in online vulnerabilities

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:21 AM PDT

WhiteHat Security reviewed serious vulnerabilities in websites during 2011, examining the severity and duration of the most critical vulnerabilities from 7,000 websites across major vertical markets. ...

Scientists reveal new malware detection method

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:17 AM PDT

Scientists from NQ Mobile's Mobile Security Research Center, in collaboration with North Carolina State University disclosed a new way to detect mobile threats without relying on known malware samples...

Online behavioral tracking often violates privacy practices

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:16 AM PDT

Keynote Systems announced the results of an in-depth analysis of online behavioral tracking on 269 Websites across four industries – News & Media, Financial Services, Travel & Hospitality and Retail. ...

User activity monitoring for Windows and OS X

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 10:54 PM PDT

SpectorSoft released SPECTOR 360 7.4, user activity monitoring software for Mac and Windows networks. The software provides visibility into and analysis of the digital behavior of both Mac and Wi...

Texan team paints batteries onto beer steins

Texan team paints batteries onto beer steins


Texan team paints batteries onto beer steins

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 02:55 PM PDT

Flexible future power storage in the offing

Researchers in Texas have discovered a way to break down the components of a battery into liquid form and paint power cells onto everyday objects.…

Apple hardware fixer Bob Mansfield retires from Cupertino

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 12:58 PM PDT

Walks away from fortune in share options

Bob Mansfield, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, has announced his retirement from the company after 13 years in situ, and it seems he's also walking away from ten of millions in unclaimed share options.…

Mac-based Trojan targets Uyghur activists

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 09:27 AM PDT

Human rights attacked online

Security researchers have intercepted a Mac-based Trojan attack targeting Uyghur human rights activists.…

Two weeks 'til the internet disappears, for 58 Fortune 500 companies

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:52 AM PDT

Stand by for 4 per cent of the US gov to go dark, too

Even though the DNSChanger safety net deadline expires in just two weeks, 12 per cent of Fortune 500 firms still have at least one infected machine on their network, according to a new survey.…

Jaw-jaw no more-more as calls fall down tally of phone tasks

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:48 AM PDT

Talk to people on it? Don't make me laugh

You think phones are for making calls? No longer, if a poll conducted by O2 is anything to go by. Talking to people is not even in the top three activities folk spend most time doing on their handsets.…

Capita ITS asks to-be-axed staffers to pose for marketing pic

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:41 AM PDT

Want to present realistic image of company

Capita IT Services staff waiting to hear if they have a future at the integrator-cum-reseller have been invited to attend a photo shoot to be used in marketing material.…

Gov IT buying body: Mega hardware gig to save £6.5m in 2013

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:37 AM PDT

Margins driven to the bone, claims GPS

The forthcoming mega IT Hardware & Services public sector framework is expected to yield savings of £6.5m this year, according to Government Procurement Services (GPS).…

IBM chiefs order pay freeze at US services tentacle

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:29 AM PDT

Big Blue shivers - rumours that even bosses will be hit

Update  The employees at the Global Technology Services unit of Big Blue got some unwelcome but probably not unexpected news that there would not be a broad-based salary increase at the unit this year. There are also reports that IBM has frozen salaries of higher-level executives across the company, which the company has not confirmed.…

Behold: Today marks Year Five of the iPhone Era

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Fire. The Wheel. Steam engines. Just trinkets

Apple has been credited with the first smartphone, with creating the mobile application business and pioneering touch interfacing. None of these things are true: but actually the launch of the iPhone, five years ago, was a much bigger revolution than that.…

Stratfor settles class-action over Anon megahack with freebies

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 07:31 AM PDT

You want fries with that bucket-o-geopolitical-intel?

Stratfor has agreed to forgo $1.75m in income to settle a class action lawsuit arising from a high-profile hack by hacktivist group Anonymous against the global intelligence firm's systems last December.…

Mad fan-fitted mouse keeps mitts moisture-free

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 07:23 AM PDT

Play for hours, no sweat

Suffer from excessively sweaty palms when you're gaming on your PC? Accessory maker Thermaltake has a - rather bizarre, IMHO - answer: a mouse with its own tiny clip-on fan.…

Berkshire bigboy 2e2 in the pink - apart from crushing debt burden

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 07:14 AM PDT

Amphibious workforce gets its feet wet

Integrator 2e2 recorded steep losses in calendar 2011 caused by crippling interest repayments, discontinued operations and restructuring costs, but despite all this, healthy progress was made in the underlying operations.…

Ethiopia: we are not jailing Skype users

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 07:02 AM PDT

Western media 'mistaken'

The Ethiopian government has refuted reports that anyone caught using Skype in the country will go to jail. It insists the claims publicised by western media are completely groundless.…

HPC cloud belches from top UK universities

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 07:02 AM PDT

Rent yourself a rack at the (tera)FLOPhouse

At last, one can rent tens of thousands of cores-worth of HPC teraFLOPS on demand from an HPC cloud.…

Apple's Mountain Lion to offer automatic security updates

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:27 AM PDT

Crikey - now there's a thought

Apple is building in automatic update checking into the next version of Mac OS X – Mountain Lion.…

Do you work in IT at RBS? Or at the next place to get hit ...?

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:15 AM PDT

Here's a handy guide to riding out the storm

Those nice people at RBS have provided me with a worked example for how you can best get through fan-hitting situations without having to take up minicab driving or going to work in local government.…

Gouged by cloud - but it's <i>so</i> convenient

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Last to know, first to pay

Open ... and Shut  Most everyone believes that cloud computing is taking off in a big way. Finding agreement on why it's booming is a bit more problematic. The issue becomes particularly nettlesome for private cloud adoption, which is either heavily driven by public cloud cost management... or the exact opposite, depending on whom you ask.…

Chrome hits iPhone and iPad, storms to top of download chart

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:43 AM PDT

Google slips new tentacle into fanbois' walled garden

Google's new Chrome browser for iOS has stormed the iTunes download charts - hitting the top spot for free apps worldwide. Announced at a dev meeting yesterday, the mobile browser was quietly released in Apple's App Store on 26 June.…

Tsinghua, NUDT flatten rivals in ISC cluster smackdown

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:29 AM PDT

Teraflop barrier busted across the board

ISC 2012  The 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge ended last week, and it's high time we take a look at the winners, the awards and some of the results.…

Ultrabook demand soars Stateside

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:08 AM PDT

But they're still a tiny percentage of the market

That Ultrabooks have grabbed almost 11 per cent of the $700-and-up Windows notebook market in the US during the first five months of the year sounds impressive, until you realise how small that market segment is.…

War On Standby: Do the figures actually stack up?

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Will you stop turning the TV off at the wall

Analysis  The War On Standby rumbles on: this week, courtesy of the UK government and "third sector" quangocracy, we heard yet again that gadgets left on standby suck vast, planet-wrecking, expensive amounts of energy from our electricity sockets.…

Android Jelly Bean won't get Flash Player

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 04:38 AM PDT

Never mind, there's lots of HTML5 porn content now

As part of the slow death of Adobe's Flash Player, the company has announced it won't be making a certified version for Android's new 4.1 OS – aka Jelly Bean.…

BMW, Toyota to build fuel cells for sports cars

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 04:19 AM PDT

Next-gen e-car tech partnership struck

BMW and Toyota are to work together on the development of fuel cell and electric powertrains, the two automotive giants said today.…

Just how do you build the perfect Olympic stadium?

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 04:15 AM PDT

What have the Romans ever done for us....

London Olympics  On 27 July, London will be transformed as the biggest celebration of sports in the world kicks off in the newly built Olympic Stadium in Stratford.…

Dimming the lights on smart(arse) TV

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 04:00 AM PDT

When consumer devices go bzzzt

Something for the weekend, Sir?  "The TV has stopped working."…

Governments probe domain land-snatch: many.gTLDs.suck

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 03:48 AM PDT

Patagonia? You mean that's a place?

Governments have started to put ICANN's massive top-level domain name expansion under scrutiny, after the revelation of 1,930 applications for new naming suffixes two weeks ago.…

Apple patent may foretell an end to iPhone autocorrect Tourette's

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 03:31 AM PDT

Intriguing new special asshole filing

An Apple patent application just published by the US Patent Office shows that the masterminds of Cupertino have figured out (or hope to figure out) a cunning way to work out what words you're going to tap into your little Jesus mobe before you type it.…

Open-source password keeper to get 'minor' weekend security fix

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 03:14 AM PDT

You'd need to make several dumbass moves to get bitten

The developer of KeePass, the popular open-source password management utility, has promised an update this weekend following the discovery of a "minor" security bug in the tool.…

B&O Beoplay A3

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 03:00 AM PDT

iPad entertainment centre

Accessory of the Week  Stick an iPad in B&O's Beoplay A3, take a step or two back and look at it square on. It looks like a mini B&O TV. Put it down on a kitchen worktop or office shelf and you have a video player or jukebox capable of producing rich, full-bodied audio which does iPad far more justice than its own tiny speaker.…

First lady taikonaut and pals plunge into the dirt after space mating

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 02:43 AM PDT

Smack down after withdrawing from Heavenly Palace

The three taikonauts aboard Shenzhou-9 have returned safely to Earth, touching down in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region as planned.…

Vodafone to let you roam in Europe at UK prices

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 02:41 AM PDT

Plus, of course, a small daily consideration

New European Commission-imposed EU mobile data roaming price regulations kick in on Sunday, and Vodafone has announced a modification of its European roaming package.…

<i>Reg</i> hack attempts gutsiest expenses claim EVER

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 02:28 AM PDT

Napkin hieroglyphs leave top beancounter ROFLing in tears

We're certain that plenty of Reg readers have at one time or another been given short shrift by the company finance department for presenting a dodgy receipt as part of an expenses claim.…

Join the gov consultation on net porn ... and have your identity revealed

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 02:14 AM PDT

Tick 'confidential' if you like: it means simply nothing

A parental internet controls consultation document released by the Department for Education yesterday is currently exposing the email addresses, unencrypted passwords and sensitive answers of members of the public who fill in the associated form.…

Nexus 7 and Surface: A bonanza for landfill miners

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:56 AM PDT

The fish aren't going to get on the bicycles

Comment  It would be charitable (that is, untrue) to call the consumer electronics strategies of Microsoft and Google coherent today. But what they lack in coherence they make up for in er, … sheer recklessness. That's OK, then.…

Teleconferencing 'shifts hundreds of NHS bed-blockers out the door'

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:47 AM PDT

Virtual meeting re-ablement triumph saves £150m

The Whittington hospital NHS trust is speeding its discharge rates and saving about £150,000 a year by using teleconferencing, according to Jar O'Brien, team leader for Islington's community rehabilitation services.…

'Backing out of a failed update really ought to be a trivial matter...'

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:30 AM PDT

Plus: 'I'm not panicking AT ALL about Surface. No'

QuotW  This was the week when there was an almighty tech disaster at RBS and Natwest that froze millions out of their bank accounts. Stories abounded of houses lost because sales hadn't gone through, people stuck in prison because their bail hadn't been paid and legions of folks just plain old p***ed off because they couldn't put their hands on their own money.…

PS3 fans buy more digital content than Xbox buffs do

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:22 AM PDT

Sony supporters splash out

British PS3 owners are more willing to splash the cash on digital content than their Xbox 360 counterparts, it has been claimed.…

UK spectrum row: What we need is more national disasters

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:14 AM PDT

Only that way will there be proper emergency comms

Future of Wireless  The problem with UK radio spectrum policy, apparently, is that we have too much competition and not enough proper disasters, which means our emergency services won't get enough radio spectrum until people start dying.…

The Open Rights Group gets rights wrong again

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Defender of parody is becoming a self-parody

Opinion  When Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock opens his mouth, his foot soon disappears inside. The UK's leading digital rights advocate has just demonstrated still more difficulty understanding the "rights" the group campaigns about.…

DataCore orchestra tunes up for the Ninth SANsymphony

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 12:38 AM PDT

Thats SANsymphony, not sans symphony

DataCore has pushed out its ninth SANsymphony release, which is orchestrated for the cloud, large data centre deployments, and storage-as-a-service.…

Free tool inspects all your personal 'ware automatically

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 12:17 AM PDT

Can't tell your wife you're doing updates any more

Secunia has taken the wraps off a new version of its consumer patch management tool, Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) version 3.0.…

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

Posted: 29 Jun 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Gotham bricky

Review  The only Batman I have ever cared about is the cynical desperate anti-hero of Frank Miller's The Dark Night Returns but Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes may have just changed my mind.…

Pigment powered gadgets

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:32 PM PDT

Queensland Uni trailblazers in melanin infused electronics

The natural pigment, melanin, which endows humans and animals eye, skin and hair colour is set to be the driving force behind a new generation of bio-powered gadgets.…

RIM delays BlackBerry 10 launch, bins 5000 bods

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:59 PM PDT

What's that smell? Yes, it's death

RIM has reported disastrous quarterly results and is delaying the launch of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system until next year. The company will also shed 5,000 staff.…

Nextgen connects data centres for cloud boom

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:55 PM PDT

Australia loves big, fat data

The rise of cloud based services and data centre proliferation has prompted Nextgen Networks to launch a premium grade transmission service connecting nominated data centres in mainland capital cities.…

Ex-NASA group plans private, crowd-funded asteroid hunter

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:34 PM PDT

Sentinel sparks space hypegasm

A group of former astronauts, astronomers, engineers, and the ubiquitous Tim O'Reilly (presumably for the publishing rights) are getting together to try and punt a privately-funded space telescope to scan for dangerous asteroids.…

Dixons and Best Buy start selling Google Chromebooks

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:13 PM PDT

Whether people will buy them is another issue

Google I/O  Google is trying to get its Chromebook into the mainstream and is starting to push it in retail stores, signing up Best Buy in the US and Dixons in the UK to distribute the ChromeOS systems.…

Google downshifts App Engine to infrastructure cloud

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:11 PM PDT

Half the cost of the competition

Google I/O  Microsoft just downshifted its Azure platform cloud so it could support raw virtual machines and any old applications companies want to cram into them, and now Google has followed suit with Compute Engine.…

Secunia PSI 3.0 released

Secunia PSI 3.0 released


Secunia PSI 3.0 released

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 05:06 AM PDT

Secunia announced the availability of Secunia PSI 3.0, a free computer security scanner which identifies software applications that are insecure and in need of security updates, or patches. Whether...

Do passwords matter?

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT

You don't have to look very hard to find an article discussing password breaches. Recently, there was a lot of buzz around LinkedIn, Last.fm, and eHarmony, three very large sites suffering from passwo...

Fake e-ticket from Delta leads to multiple infections

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:29 AM PDT

Bogus emails supposedly coming from Delta Airlines and delivering an e-ticket in the attachment have recently been targeting users around the world: The message instructs the recipients to unzip ...

Cristiano Ronaldo is the most dangerous player in cyberspace

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:22 AM PDT

Increasingly, cybercriminals are exploiting the names of popular sports stars and celebrities to attract people to sites that actually conceal malicious software. Anyone looking for the latest vide...

ISO 27001 implementation: How to make it easier using ISO 9001

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:16 AM PDT

ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 may seem like quite different standards, but when you take a closer look at both, you can find a lot of similarities. They have the same Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, four man...

Companies routinely share sensitive information via email

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:00 AM PDT

PhoneFactor announced a new survey data regarding the vulnerability of company email systems. The majority of respondents reported that highly sensitive information about their corporate strategy or c...

Red Hat introduces open hybrid cloud solutions

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 10:01 PM PDT

Red Hat announced a set of solutions that the company plans to roll out in the coming months that are based on Red Hat products and technologies and are designed to enable enterprises to build and man...

Hack This: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 09:03 PM PDT

Hack This is your passport to the world of hackerspaces: your invitation to share knowledge, master tools, work together and build amazing stuff. Twin Cities Maker co-founder John Baichtal explai...

Security still slack in WA government agencies

Security still slack in WA government agencies


Security still slack in WA government agencies

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 02:53 PM PDT

Auditor General highlights payment security concerns

While not as utterly hopeless as last year, IT security is still troublesome in Western Australia's government agencies.…

Google claims Chrome is the world's most popular browser

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:53 PM PDT

Apple targeted with Chrome and Drive builds for iOS

Google I/O  Google has been shouting the praises of its newly patched Chrome on the second day of its I/O developer conference, and is claiming that Chrome is undoubtedly the world's most popular browser.…

Berkeley Lab to air-cool Cray Cascade super

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:50 PM PDT

2 petaflops, 6 petabytes for a mere $40m

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, which runs the big and unclassified science projects for the US Department of Energy, is sticking with Cray for its next-generation supercomputer, tentatively called NERSC-7.…

Red Hat snaps up open source SOAer FuseSource

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:38 AM PDT

Shadowman gets the message on integration

Red Hat Summit  A bunch of open-source Apache projects relating to application integration and messaging protocols have found what will very likely be their final commercial home, as Red Hat has just bought the FuseSource subsidiary of Progress Software.…

Obama is best Pres 'to beat alien invasion'

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:25 AM PDT

But Americans would rather leave it to Batman

Two-thirds of Americans reckon Barack Obama would be better than his Republican presidential rival, Mitt Romney, at defending the Land of the Free when Mars attacks.…

London cops order Julian Assange to turn himself in

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 09:02 AM PDT

Erratic leaker too busy boning up on Ecuadorian anthem

WikiLeaker-in-chief Julian Assange was served with an extradition notice by the Metropolitan police this morning.…

News Corp proposes divorce, Murdoch will look after TV biz

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:49 AM PDT

Doesn't he love his red-topped kids anymore?

News Corp has confirmed the heavily rumoured plan to split Rupert Murdoch's empire in two, with the company's publishing wing parting ways with the broadcasting and entertainment division. It also means Murdoch is further distancing himself from his beloved newspaper biz.…

Techies evac'd as raging wildfire menaces $100m Colorado data centre

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 08:37 AM PDT

Thousands flee as flames eat into city

A massive HP data centre in Colorado Springs is in danger of being destroyed by a wildfire raging near by.…

Viviane Reding says imitate US and form FEDERAL EUROPE

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:53 AM PDT

Stand by for the War Against The South

Viviane Reding, VP of the European Commission, has published an open letter calling for a Federal Europe, modelled on the USA, claiming the only way out of the financial crisis is consolidation of all the participating countries into a single administration.…

Multimillion-pound hoard of 50BC GOLD PIECES found in Jersey

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:28 AM PDT

Iron Age was a golden era for someone

Two tenacious metal-detector enthusiasts have unearthed a record hoard of Iron Age coins in a field in Jersey.…

Ministers consult public on 'opt in for smut' plans

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:01 AM PDT

Just tick here, sir, in the 'I am a pervert' box

Imagine a future where you are demanded to declare to your ISP that you wish to view pornography online?…

FileMaker Bento 4

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Make your tablet productive

iOS App of the Week  When the iPad was first launched it was very much considered to be a device for content consumption, rather than a proper computer that could be used for work. Apps like Bento show that the iPad is, in fact, a very practical work tool.…

SImply nobody is rushing to beat the Microsoft licencing price hike

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 05:53 AM PDT

Redmond sets up barrel, customers refuse to bend over

The expected hordes of customers gathering to renew Microsoft volume licensing agreements before the planned price hike next month failed to show up, say a bunch of reseller sources.…

Maude to gov IT suppliers: If you are rubbish you will be binned

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 05:29 AM PDT

Speaking of rubbish, those public sector buying frameworks...

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude will today warn some of the largest IT suppliers to government they may find themselves in the metaphorical public sector waste bin if their performance is rubbish.…

Panasonic chief says no to low-cost OLED TVs

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 05:08 AM PDT

LCD prices? Not for years

Cheap-ish OLED TVs? Don't make me laugh.…

UK.gov: Some Open Data are more open than others

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:59 AM PDT

Greatest Living Briton's star ratings will show you which

The government's long-awaited Open Data white paper, published this morning, introduces standards for "higher data usability", according to the minister in charge.…

Unilever revamps IT for agility

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:44 AM PDT

And tells us how it's getting on

On the 11th of July at 10:30am we're broadcasting live with Garry Meaburn, the operations effectiveness and tooling manager at Unilever, dishing out practical tips on how to build a dynamic IT operation using private cloud principles. Garry's currently a good way through this sizable project.…

Brit global warming skeptics now outnumber believers

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:29 AM PDT

Nothing like a taste of climate policy to put you off

Fewer Britons than ever support the proposition that global warming is caused by human-driven CO2 emissions, according to the latest survey.…

BT Vision beats rivals to honour of being worst UK Pay-TV

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:13 AM PDT

TalkTalk grip on worst-broadband place remains firm

BT Vision is the most complained about pay TV service in the UK, regulator Ofcom said, receiving nearly four times as many whinges in the first quarter of this year as Virgin Media and nine times as many as Sky.…

Seattle: we built this city, we built this city in Ram'n'Rom

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:07 AM PDT

Washington PC

Old circuit boards clutter up landfill across the world, but with creativity and a little time on your hands, you could turn discarded computer parts into miniature cities instead. Check out this Ram-packed replica of Seattle's skyline.…

D-Link DHP-1565 802.11n router with integrated powerline

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 04:00 AM PDT

One box, three networking technologies

Review  Running network traffic over the data-unfriendly environment of mains wiring is a trick Reg Hardware has been enthusing about for some years now. Only once in that time has anyone integrated it into another product.…

Menage á tablet: Apple vs Amazon vs Google

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:50 AM PDT

The three-way fight for the 7in form-factor

Analysis  The new tablet battleground is the seven-incher. The biggest names in the business are lining up to fight it out for dominance: Google, Amazon and Apple.…

Google Chrome update plugs score of security bugs

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:44 AM PDT

It's version 20 'cos it closes that many vulns

Google has updated its Chrome browser to address 20 vulnerabilities, none of which are deemed critical.…

Half the team at the heart of the RBS disaster WERE in India

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:36 AM PDT

Chiefs warned repeatedly on quality of offshored work

Exclusive  Cost-cutting RBS management had halved the team within which the banking group's recent data disaster happened, sources have told The Register. The sacked British employees were replaced by staff in India, and there had been concerns about the quality of the work done in India for a lengthy period prior to last week's catastrophe.…

BT to fibre up another 98 exchanges, puffs 'FTTP on demand' offer

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:16 AM PDT

You have to demand to pay some of the installation bill

Earlier this week, BT announced the company's latest phased rollout of its fibre optic-cabling technology in the UK. Blighty's national telco has said that BT's Openreach engineers will be upgrading another 98 exchanges. However, the national telco declined to tell The Register the exact split between fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology.…

FalconStor settles with feds for $6m

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 03:01 AM PDT

We'll be good boys from now on. Extra good for 18 months

FalconStor has settled a two lawsuits regarding alleged improper customer payments by coughing up $5.8 million and signing up to a deferred prosecution agreement.…

Sysadmins: Your best tale of woe wins a PRIZE

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 02:46 AM PDT

Hey users, it's Sysadmin Day next month. We want cake

Competition  I'd like to share with you the plight of a good friend of mine. He's a systems administrator for a mid-sized American accounting firm. His story isn't particularly remarkable, but all the more important because of it.…

Brits get to fondle Google Nexus 7 slab in just a fortnight

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 02:32 AM PDT

Apples are not the only fruit

Now that Google is in tablets, it's clearly hoping to make its mark quickly, lining its Nexus 7 tablet up for shipping in the UK in two to three weeks.…

Darwin alarmed by six-legged mutant cane toad

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 02:23 AM PDT

Beast sprouts extra legs in Oz's Northern Territory

Anyone who doubts that the cane toad will ultimately gain supremacy over Australia is directed to the Northern Territory News, which has a chilling story on a hexaped mutant Bufo marinus captured south of Darwin.…

Price Waterhouse Cooper: Only mobile comms can SAVE HUMANITY

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 02:13 AM PDT

Cables will take too long, we'll all be dead

Future of Wireless  Speaking at the recent Cambridge Wireless conference Price Waterhouse Cooper's Director of Product Management issued a stark warning - unless governments invest massively in mobile telephony we're all going to starve to death.…

Ubuntu Shuttleworth: Space nerd, penguin, millionaire - live on <i>The Reg</i>

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 02:00 AM PDT

Any plans for an action figure, Mark?

Live chat  Just as the internet was becoming reality for most of us, Mark Shuttleworth sold his first technology venture - the second largest provider of digital certification, Thawte - to VeriSign for $575m. It was 1999 and he was 26 years old.…

Gov ICT strategy for system upgrades needs a system upgrade

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 01:44 AM PDT

Menace of PIECEMEAL STRANDS must be ENDED

The Institute for Government (IfG) has urged the government to "broaden out" its ICT strategy to demonstrate more clearly how to turn the strategy from a collection of technical strands into a "clear articulation of how it will help citizens".…

Exotic proto-mineral 'panguite' from before the planets found in meteor

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 01:29 AM PDT

Used to be all fields round here. Of space rocks

Boffins have discovered a primitive mineral in an ancient meteorite that pre-dates the formation of planets.…

Fujitsu raises UK minimum wage to £14k

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 01:13 AM PDT

Union temporarily happy, but sees trouble ahead

Fujitsu has agreed to up its minimum wage for its British workers following sustained pressure from union Unite.…

No need to comply with data laws if it's too difficult - EU ministers

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:54 AM PDT

If you don't know data is personal, maybe it isn't?

Organisations will not have to abide by data protection laws if it would be too difficult, time-consuming and use up too many important resources to check whether information they hold is personally identifiable, the EU's Council of Ministers has proposed.…

Microsoft to open UK retail store early next year

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:30 AM PDT

Springtime for Ballmer and Redmondy

Microsoft is laying the foundations to open up a retail store in the UK with a launch date marked for early next Spring.…

Mighty ROBOT achieves total SUPREMACY over feeble humans

Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:17 AM PDT

At rock-paper-scissors, today. Tomorrow ...

No matter how many John-Wayne-inspired moments you've had in front of the mirror, you're not as quick on the draw as the Janken robot.…

AMD and Intel mainstream desktop CPUs

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 11:00 PM PDT

Cheap as chips?

Review  It's fair to say that Intel has the very high end desktop processor market pretty much to itself, however, it's a different story in the lower end of the food chain. Although Intel – through the sheer number of different processors it offers – seems to have it all its own way, AMD does make a good fight of it at a number of price points. Indeed, the sheer number of affordable CPU's to choose from presents the consumer with a bewildering choice.…

Breaking: Megaupload seizures illegal says NZ High Court

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 10:50 PM PDT

Case in disarray

America's case against Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom is looking increasingly shambolic, with a New Zealand High Court judge finding that the property seizures in January raid were illegal.…

WIPO signs new treaty for cross platform performers

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 09:45 PM PDT

ISOC welcomes recognition of the interwebs

A new treaty for the rights of audiovisual performers has been finalised by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) after 12 years of negotiations.…

'Evil' hacker gets two and a half years in the slammer

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 06:12 PM PDT

cyber crime motivated by ego and unemployment

Australia's most notorious country town, truck driving, cyber criminal David 'Evil' Cecil has been handed a two-and-a-half year prison sentence after being arrested nearly a year ago.…

US nuke lab goes back for BlueGene/Q seconds

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 05:49 PM PDT

A Vulcan rated at 5 petaflops

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the big nuke labs funded by the US Department of Energy, does a lot of super-secret classified nuclear weapons design and management work but it also lets the scientific community play with its biggest machines during shakedown phases and keeps around some iron that they can use on a regular basis.…

Red Hat Storage Server NAS takes on Lustre, NetApp

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 04:27 PM PDT

A veritable Gluster, fsck

Red Hat Summit  Red Hat has a server operating system, middleware, virtualization, and a cloud fabric – and now it has production-grade, scale-out clustered network-attached storage now that it is shipping its Storage Server 2.0 software.…

Australia goes cold on ACTA

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 03:30 PM PDT

This dead cat won't even bounce properly

Another bit of flesh dropped off the decaying zombie that is ACTA, with the Australian parliamentary Treaties Committee recommending that ratification be deferred - partly because of its near-collapse in Europe.…