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Grooveshark blocked in Denmark by copyright warriors
DNS-level barrier appeal expected A Danish copyright group has won a court order to block music streaming site Grooveshark from the nation's pastry-munching pirates.…
Daniel Craig like Connery, <i>Skyfall</i> helmsman suggests
Sam Mendes risks wrath of 'Best Bond' bores The director of forthcoming 007 romp Skyfall has provocatively suggested a certain similarity between Daniel Craig and Sean Connery - something which will no doubt give "Best Bond" pub bores something to bang on about all week.…
Heatmiser PRT-TS Wi-Fi RF thermostat
Hot property Review With fuel bills ever rising, keeping an eye on your heating makes good sense, and Heatmiser’s Wi-Fi thermostat is intended to help you do just that. It’s based around a large, 3 x 2.5in touchscreen, which controls a timer/thermostat with its wireless features enabling configuration from an iOS device.…
Unknown fault darkens Australia’s Internet
Australia’s critical dependency: too few outbound routes Customers of major Australian ISPs are stranded with no connection to the outside world this afternoon, taken out of action by an as-yet-undiagnosed routing fault.…
Aus visual search start-up goes global
Oops there it is Adelaide based start-up Thereitis.com has raised the funds to commercialise its patented user interface technology.…
Innovation aborted in South Australia
Innovate SA gets shut down One of Australia’ more progressive government initiatives for start-ups and tech entrepreneurs Innovate SA has been dumped by the South Australian state government, which has pulled essential funding.…
Dimension Data takes on all cloud comers
Public, private, any way you want it South Africa–based systems integrator Dimension Data is launching a mashup of its IT services and the cloudy infrastructure it acquired last year along with OpSource, in a new offering it calls Cloud Solutions.…
HP insists Whitman is new broom to clean up execution
Damns Apotheker with faint praise With HP’s latest quarterly earnings looking so poor, you’d expect the traditional financial analyst’s call to be dominated by concerns on the minutiae of performance. But every question was on leadership.…
Harvard boffins cause buzz with robot bee
Our new insect overlords will come in a flat pack Instead of building a robot, why not print it? That’s more-or-less the approach demonstrated by Harvard engineers with an ingenious and attention-grabbing miniature robot bee.…
HP earnings fall 44% on Whitman's debut quarter
Revenues crash in key markets Meg Whitman’s earnings statement from the first quarter of 2012 doesn’t look good, as she tries to clean the Augean stable left by Léo Apotheker.…
Spitzer spots first solid buckyballs in stellar disc
Stacks the size of 10,000 Everests found The first solid “buckyball” Carbon-60 molecules have been spotted forming a ring around a star 6,500 light-years away, according to data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.…
OPERA grabs spanner, fixes kit, and slows down neutrinos
Ye canna break the laws of physics, it seems According to a breaking report from Science, last year’s famous faster-than-light neutrino finding has been attributed to a cable fault.…
Global DNS takedown plotters disowned by Anonymous
Alleged power grid threat also cobblers, say hacktivists Anonymous has distanced itself from a plot to knock out critical systems in the backbone of the internet.…
CIA tells big biz to serve up bite-size software
Spies want latest shiny tech on pay-as-you-go The CIA has told big software firms that it plans to ditch long-term licenses in favour of a slurp-as-you-go approach to new technology.…
Grumble-flick chat site exposes flirts' privates
Oh, put it away - no, too late The email addresses and passwords of more than a million users of the YouPorn sex chat site were exposed to all and sundry this week following a coding error that went undetected for years.…
Planet-wide cloud dream burst by nations' laws - BSA
Report huffs at privacy safeguards and trade rules A US software industry report has warned that certain countries are threatening the future of cloud computing with regulations and policies that stifle the fluffy atmosphere.…
India seeks new supplier for $35 Android tablet
Performance grumbles The Indian Government is seeking extra manufacturers for the Aakash, the $35 Android tablet that launched in the sub-continent in 2011.…
Microsoft blasts 'web video killer' Motorola Mobility in EU gripe
Googorola patents complaint probe launched Updated Microsoft filed a formal antitrust complaint against Motorola Mobility this morning in Brussels, following the European Commission's decision to clear Google's takeover of the mobile biz earlier this month.…
GPS jamming rife, could PARALYSE Blighty, say usual suspects
'Sometimes a jammer goes by EVERY FEW DAYS' Technical experts are once again predicting imminent doom caused by interference with Global Positioning System (GPS) sat-nav receivers. A nationwide UK network of detectors has reportedly discovered widespread employment of GPS jammer devices, and calls are being made for a harsh crackdown on users of such devices.…
Labour targets Tories' Google problem
What's good for the Chocolate Factory is good for us Labour has chastised the Conservatives for digital economy policies - and is targeting what may be the Conservatives' closeness to Google.…
Inside Apple
More than just a Jobsworth Review While Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs was notable for the contribution, by way of hours of interviews, of the man himself, it could hardly be described as revelatory. The darker side of the way Apple was run by Jobs, for example, was glossed over. By contrast, Adam Lashinsky’s Inside Apple aims to get under the skin of the world’s sometime largest company.…
Nekkid Tech: I am Virtual Man
Slicing and dicing, virty tech, Symantec's sueball and more ... Podcast This week Greg Knieriemen and trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edasi) go virtual, chatting to special guest Steve Kaplan – Vice President Data Center Virtualization Practice at Presidio (@roidude) – about everything from Nix's rib-cracking antics to VMWare's push into the cloud.…
Biz bazaar Alibaba goes private, watches shares soar
Firm exits market while mulling Yahoo! stake slurp Shares in China's Alibaba.com jumped 43 per cent today when it announced it was going private.…
Finally a use for PlayBook: Tab bodged into Windows, PS3 remote
RIM's fondleslab needs all the love it can muster The updated OS pushed out to PlayBooks yesterday can turn a BlackBerry handset into a remote control for Windows 7, or even Android, thanks to the wonders of Bluetooth.…
For those thinking Private Cloud
Here’s your project check list Live event Our very own Tim Phillips is dragging some clever sorts from the industry and beyond into a studio to talk about building private clouds. They’re remit is ‘be helpful’ and to give us a, ‘check list for building a private cloud.’ We’re hoping by the time they're finished you'll have something of a weighty steer on what it takes to do a private cloud project.…
Court claim slapped on bloke via Facebook in landmark case
Solicitors' messages - another reason for an unlike button Facebook messages will become a common way to serve court documents, reckons lawyer Jenni Jenkins, after a judge allowed a legal claim to be sent to a bloke via the social network.…
Will Windows 8 sticker shock leave Microsoft unstuck?
Metro and ARM threaten Vista-like compatibility badges "Sticker shock" is a US phrase that denotes a shopper’s surprised and generally disgusted reaction upon discovering the true price of an item they’re buying.…
Top Euro beaks to probe ACTA for rights breaches
Reding wants court to check anti-counterfeiting treaty's small print Europe's Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has asked the European Court of Justice to peruse the small print of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to ensure that it is "fully compatible" with fundamental rights.…
Logica profits slump in 'much more difficult' 2011
2012? Could be up, could be down Logica said its 2012 revenues could go up or down as it turned in full year 2011 figures that showed a massive drop in profits.…
Samsung Series 9 skinny laptop priced for Blighty
'World's thinnest' claim Samsung's refreshed Series 9 laptop has been given a release date, with the compact notebook set to land on consumers' laps as early as next week.…
Spam crashes to historic low as malware explodes on mobiles
Android Trojans soar, Mac viruses fall off a cliff The volume of malware samples detected by McAfee passed the 75 million milestone late last year, the Intel-owned security firm reported this week.…
Fujitsu flaunts Tegra 3 for future phones
High five core Fujitsu aims to blow the roof off Mobile World Congress (MWC) next week when it formally launches its latest smartphone, which packs the five-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor - the best a man can get.…
Freedom-crushing govts close to ruling our web, fears FCC boss
Baffled ITC denies plotting internet land-grab Foreign governments are lining up to wrest control of the internet from freedom-loving hippies, thunders FCC commissioner Robert McDowell in a call to arms in the Wall Street Journal.…
Cameras roll on 'blockbuster' new <i>Who</i> series
'Our craziest adventures yet,' promises Amy Pond The BBC's spinners have worked themselves into a right state over the news that filming has kicked off on the seventh series of Doctor Who. Viewers are promised 14 "blockbuster-movie episodes" as Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan embark on "their final, rollercoaster voyage" with Matt Smith's Time Lord.…
NASA sniffs little black hole's 20-million-MPH wind
Flatulent fallen star farts supermassive-grade hurricane NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has caught a whiff of the fastest ever wind blowing from the gases around a stellar-mass black hole.…
Proview offers Apple peace talks amid Shanghai iPad ban bid
Tech titan faces tablet knockout in dozens of China's cities In a predictable move, Asian monitor minnow Proview has decided that it is in fact now ready to hold talks with Apple over the IPAD trademark dispute which threatens to throttle global supplies of Cupertino’s shiny fondleslab.…
We're! not! a! social! network! yells! Yahoo!
Doesn't want to be lumped in with riffraff like Facebook, Google Despite spending most of the past few years trying to make its services more social, Yahoo! is now claiming that it is definitely NOT a social network - and resents being lumped in with Google and Facebook to face charges in India of hosting “objectionable content” online.…
Wang charged in inappropriate electricity socket use
Battery top-up threatened metro station's power supply Electricity thieves beware: if the battery charge in your phone or laptop is getting a little too low for comfort, don’t just stick your tech gear into the first available plug socket or you could find yourself in the back of a police van.…
Crap PINs give wallet thieves 1-in-11 jackpot shot
What are the odds? Cambridge boffins work it out Four-digit banking PINs are almost as insecure as website passwords, according to a study by Cambridge University computer scientists.…
Councils spunk £515m in 4 years on CCTV
Hey big spender, Birmingham UK local authorities spent a total of £515m installing, operating and maintaining CCTV between 2007-11, according to the privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch.…
Toy Story: Mystic Met needs swanky new kit, swoon MPs
Media to blame for believing us reporting our forecasts Analysis The Mystic Met has bewitched MPs who have recommended the forecasters are given the swanky new supercomputer they want.…
Ericsson flashes wallet, beds hot Wi-Fi and billing bizes
Now it's spoiling for a fight against Chinese rivals MWC Ericsson, freed from Sony and getting in its retaliation first, used a Mobile World Congress pre-event briefing to set out its Far East battle plans - which included mobile wallet payments and buying billing biz Telcordia and carrier-cosy Wi-Fi company BelAir Networks.…
ICO 'enquiring' about Google's serving of tracking cookies
Questions after Microsoft slams Chocolate Factory on privacy Microsoft has claimed that Google has been serving third-party cookies capable of tracking users' online behaviour even when those users have adjusted settings in the Internet Explorer browser to prevent it happening.…
Ten... sub-£100 mono laser printers
Read the fine print Review Mono laser printers still produce better black text than any inkjet. If you want clean, pin-sharp characters on the page and don’t print colour, buy a laser. If you have a limited budget, look for one at under £100. Here are 10 you should consider, which can print fast, don’t take up much room on the desk and are very easy to use and maintain. They produce waterproof, black print, as good as anything you can produce at home or in a small office.…
IBM arms robo-sysadmin QRadar with virus know-how
X-Force gear combs through 13 billion threats a day IBM is beefing up its enterprise security offerings by creating a security platform that is aware of real-time virus information, meaning that the system will be much quicker at recognising new threats.…
SanDisk daddy: Flash to 'checkmate' hard drives by 2020
Next on the hit list: DRAM ISSCC Although some industry observers – as The Reg recently noted – say that flash memory is approaching a technical brick wall, the cofounder and former CEO and chairman of SanDisk sees things differently.…
NASA seeks cooks for Mars trip simulation
No bean or cabbage recipes, please NASA is looking for volunteers to prepare foods during a simulated Mars mission that will see six lucky people locked in close proximity for 120 days.…
Dell misses profit goals in fiscal Q4
Revenues up a bit, though Despite growing sales in all six of its product categories and all four of its business units, and despite having an extra business week in the quarter, hardware supplier and software wannabe Dell was not able to pull the profits it expected down to the bottom line in its fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended on February 3.…
File sharing arrests move to Germany
Skyload.net gone, operators arrested German-language news sites and blogs are reporting that file locker site Skyload.net has been shut down and its operators arrested.…
Australia to make health research open access
What the public funds, the public gets to use While America seriously considers the insane Research Works Act (banning the open publication of publicly-funded research), Australia is moving in the other direction. Its National Health and Medical Research Council has announced that all funded research will be made available to the public starting July.…