The Register

Eight... HD camera smartphones - Sharp shooters for parties and protests Product round-up You know that really annoying person who is videoing the gig with their camera phone to stick on Facebook when they get home? That's me. These days my TV is HD and my games console is HD, so it only makes sense that my phone – the device I use the most, day in and day out – should be HD too. Luckily, HD on smartphones is becoming more commonplace and so rather than judge these handsets on their mobile merits, this round-up focuses on their HD video camera performance.…

Zuckerberg's 2011 personal income tax bill: $1.5 billion - That's 'billion', with a 'b' If all goes according to plan, Facebook founder, chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's share of the profit in his company's upcoming initial public offering will result in him facing a tax bill of around $1.5bn for 2011.…

Study links dim wits to conservative ideology - US, UK research: Thick kids more likely to become bigots British and American children who are less intelligent are more likely to grow up to be conservative and/or bigots, according to new research published in Physiological Science.…

Micron CEO Appleton dies in plane crash - Expert pilot, experimental aircraft Steven Appleton, the long-time CEO at memory chip maker Micron Technology, died this morning in a crash of an experimental plane in the company's hometown of Boise, Idaho. He was 51 years-old and one of the youngest CEOs and chairman in the Fortune 500.…

Opinion poll: Anti-regulatory 'hype' unwarranted - Rival small-business boosters, Obama foes disagree One advocacy group has published a survey it says proves that US small-business owners aren't unduly concerned with government regulations. Another group says that the first group's opinion poll is tainted by bogosity.…

Facebook post-IPO: Free not fee will make Zuck a buck - Dam friction-less sharing and the company is toast Open ... and Shut No sooner did Facebook file its S-1 in preparation for an IPO than speculation kicked into high gear on how Facebook could possibly sustain its $75bn to $100bn valuation. After all, despite its hugely impressive revenue and profit numbers, key components of its revenue model – like advertising revenue – are decelerating. So should we expect Facebook to impose a paywall on some or all of its users, as MyLife.com chief executive Jeff Tinsley suggests it could?…

European revolt over ACTA treaty gains ground - Poles stall, Slovenian ambassador calls for protests The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty, signed by most European countries last week, may not be a done deal after all, as governments across the continent face a storm of protest.…

US adds more jobs than expected in January - Lots of IT workers get pink slips The US economy added 243,000 net new jobs in January and the unemployment rate has ticked down two-tenths of a point, according to statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.…

Apple iPhones, iPad back in German online store - Take 'em down, put 'em back – a busy morning for Apple IT A German court has suspended the injunction that required Apple to remove its iPhone 4 and 3Gs, and iPad Wi-Fi + 3G from its online store in that country.…

Biz urged to blast DNSChanger Trojans before safety net comes down - 8 March cutoff following Operation Ghost Click Half of all Fortune 500 companies still contain computers infected with the DNSChanger Trojan, weeks after a FBI-led takedown operations targeting the botnet's command-and-control infrastructure.…

Dead gamer sat unnoticed for nine hours in net cafe - Stiff competition A Taiwanese gamer sat dead in a chair at an Internet cafe for up to nine hours before fellow players noticed the poor guy had popped his clogs.…

Mother charged with selling fake Facebook stock - Bogus shares also allegedly given out as Christmas presents A Wisconsin woman has been charged over claims she tried to sell $1m worth of Facebook shares that she didn't own.…

Steve Jobs sighted in Taiwan flogging Android tablets - Rumours of PlayBook Elvis discounted In the cut-throat tablet market, a Taiwanese company has found one way to make its product stand out: paying an actor to dress up as Steve Jobs and make tasteless jokes about how he's dead.…

Anonymous hackers leak Scotland Yard-FBI conference call - Were you talking about us? Members of Anonymous have released an intercept of a conference call between investigators at the FBI and Scotland Yard during which operations against hacktivist group were discussed.…

IBM snatches back SPC-1 benchmark crown - SVC does the business IBM's SAN Volume Controller has done the benchmark business, again, and passed the half million SPC-1 IOPS mark using Storwize V7000 storage.…

US tweet deportation: Chilling behind-the-scenes photos - The shock truth of what really went down at LAX The story earlier this week on the deportation from the US of A of two Brits who ill-advisedly tweeted they were off to "destroy America" left a few readers pretty shaken up at the way the Department of Homeland Security handles potential terrorist threats.…

Gun controlled lamp hits the spotlight - Taking the pistol One Taiwanese manufacturer took aim at traditional light switches this week and unveiled a lamp that can be turned on and off with the shot of a gun-shaped remote.…

Sysadmins: Don't get in your own way - Be prepared to try new and irritating things Sysadmin blog I remember the first time I saw these automated supermarket tills. They intrigued me. Yet I was also afraid of the things. I was afraid that despite all of my knowledge and training I wouldn't be able to figure it out and I would end up looking like a fool. I avoided them for three years; the basis of this avoidance nothing more than irrational fear of that which I might not understand.…

ARM rains on x86 as smartphones outship PCs - Netbooks cop a hiding Netbooks are so yesterday's technology. Shipments of the small, not-so-cheap computers plunged during 2011 by 25 per cent, figures from market watcher Canalys show.…

IBM bit-twiddlers want point releases for big iron - Software gurus to 'refactor' Big Blue's systems The bit-twiddlers took over IBM's server business a year and a half ago, and it appears that they are starting to think about systems as if they were code, as if they could do dot releases in a nearly steady stream and keep their revenues from spiking up and crashing down all the time.…

Sony throws smartphone party with Billabong - Blower out the water Sony has gone surf-tastic, announcing a partnership with Aussie outdoors outfitter Billabong, which sees its Xperia Active handset branded with the extreme-sports logo and pitched towards the cool-dude generation.…

Troubled Game wins reprieve on debt, mulls axing more stores - High street chain told to shape up Game Group has been given a reprieve by its lenders, but the retailer may have to sell its overseas stores to secure it.…

iPhones yanked from German shelves in Motorola patent war - Apple takes down 4 and 3G models - for now Apple has removed the iPhone 4 and 3Gs from its stores in Germany, almost certainly in response to Motorola's December action rather than today's patent win.…

BT reveals ultra-fast cable blowing plan for homes, biz - 'Fibre-to-the-premise on demand' in 2013 BT is talking up plans to bring its ultra-fast fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband network to more of its customers in early 2013.…

Apple FileVault cracked in under an hour by forensics biz - Passware scratches Lion's belly, penetrates fruity disk Apple's FileVault disk encryption can be circumvented in less than an hour, according to a computer forensics firm.…

Nokia pours oil on burning Symbian - Rips up roadmap, axes development Exclusive Nokia is said to be hastening the demise of its legacy Symbian platform, cancelling the development of all but one new Symbian-based device. Although Nokia Belle updates will continue to ship to existing customers, only one new model – a successor to the N8 high-end camera phone – will reach the market, the Register understands.…

Boffins crack superconducting graphene's melting mystery - Next-gen high-speed transistors go 3D to slash leaks Scientists in Manchester appear to have solved a problem with graphene that has plagued the super-material's fans since it was sliced into being in 2004.…

Fibre-gobbling punters help BT deposit solid profit - Cuts also counter revenue dip in Q3 BT reported this morning that its sales had fallen 5 per cent for the three months ended 31 December, however earnings and cash generation remained steady, the company added.…

Understanding the make-up of information management - Time to stop beating up IT On demand On January 25th, Regcast presenter Jon Collins was joined by Freeform Dynamics’ Martha Bennett, Jason Frost from Blueprint, and Will Thompson from Microsoft for our very first live event of 2012.…

Euro watchdog asks Google to HALT privacy tweak - Take a pause while French DP officers frisk you, Larry A European Union watchdog has written to Google boss Larry Page asking him to explain how personal data will be safeguarded when the search giant puts its revised privacy policy into effect on 1 March.…

Apple iPad beats Amazon Kindle Fire in satisfaction survey - Fanboys happier than Fireboys? iPad owners are happier with their tablets than folk with other fondleslabs are with theirs, recent research reveals.…

Satellite phones lift skirt, flash cipher secrets at boffins - Security though obscurity fails yet again Researchers at the Ruhr-University Bochum have managed to extract the secret encryption algorithmns used by satellite phones, and discovered that it's a lot less secure than one might hope.…

Toshiba Regza 40RL858 40in LED TV - Smart, but no mortarboard Review Toshiba is a bit of a wild card when it comes to TVs. While some of its screens are genuinely exciting, others are merely bargain bin fillers. Buying a cheaper Tosh is a classic case of caveat emptor.…

RIM shot at Android: Free PlayBooks for devs - Knock up an app before Valentine's, get 16GB love-slab RIM is offering a free PlayBook tablet to developers who submit an Android application to RIM's App World before Valentine's Day, though the T&Cs have yet to be revealed.…

TV tuner maker intros mobile Freeview pick-up - Streams digital telly over its own Wi-Fi TV tuner maker Hauppauge has introduced a mobile gadget that streams Freeview content to you phone, tablet or computer over its own wireless network.…

Apple Europe poaches Xbox PR mastermind - Prepares for battle against Microsoft's 'everything' boxes Apple has poached Microsoft's top product marketing bod in the UK to front up its app store in Europe.…

Samsung 'Galaxy 4S' pic posted - Is S III stand-in snap real or Photoshop? The Samsung Galaxy S II Plus, the smartphone the South Korean giant is said to be unveiling at this month's Mobile World Congress (MWC) show in place of the Galaxy S III, will be a skinny white boy.…

Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 DNA splice is on - report - Apple-flavoured future features leaked Windows 8 and Microsoft's next major phone operating system will merge, if reports are correct.…

Next-gen Asus Eee Pad Transformer spied - TF300T snapped A previously unseen Asus tablet has surfaced on the web prompting speculation that the Taiwanese company is working on the successor to the Eee Pad Transformer Prime.…

100 MEEELLION .com domains now registered - Ready for those new gTLDs yet? There are now over 100 million .com domain names on the internet.…

Brit space agency sends up 1st satellite - Yes, this is news So far, the UK space agency hasn't gone in for any of that headline-grabbing stuff like landing people on the Moon or launching Martian probes that get stranded in orbit before plummeting back to Earth – it leaves that sort of stuff to NASA and Roscosmos.…

Fujitsu out bog standard 7in tab for big biz - Gingerbread do you? Fujitsu has outed a non-descript 7in Android tablet that it'll be pitching at big business when the gadget goes on sale later this month.…

'We're totally in LA pissing people off' - Plus 'The horror!' Quotw This was the week when Facebook finally filed for its IPO.…

Second 'Blue Marble' NASA sat pic apes Apollo 17's stunner - Earth-snapping Suomi gets its kit out for the labs After popular demand NASA's Suomi NPP satellite has beamed down another "Blue Marble" vision of the Earth in high definition.…

Facebook's Googly IPO delivers on Sun man's vision - Selling data ain't like shiftin' boxes, boy History may record Scott McNealy as a straight-dealing leader of a major Silicon Valley tech company.…

BT Vision throws Microsoft Mediaroom under a bus for Linux - Set-top box software to be torn out and replaced over the net UK hybrid TV service BT Vision plans to be the first customer to discard Microsoft's Mediaroom software, almost imminently, after at least a year-long effort to put in completely new software building blocks to rejuvenate the service.…

Orange San Francisco 2 - More hails of the city Review The Orange San Francisco was the smartphone bargain of 2011. For £99 you got a solid little handset with a 3.5in 480 x 800 screen, Android 2.1 and a 3.2Mp camera. The fact it was falling-off-a-wet-log easy to root and change ROMs – even I managed it – was the icing on the cake.…

Judges retire to consider Assange’s last chance on extradition - Supreme Court is final shot for WikiLeaker-in-chief The UK Supreme Court judges have retired to consider their verdict in Julian Assange’s last shot at escaping extradition to Sweden, with a final verdict possible within weeks.…

SpaceX successfully tests SuperDraco rescue rockets - Aims to build the safest spacecraft ever SpaceX has confirmed the successful test of its SuperDraco rocket engine, which will form the backbone of safety and landing systems for its Dragon spacecraft.…

Riverbed virtualizes Cascade network monitor appliance - Spying on virtual iron with virtual iron Riverbed Technology upgraded a whole bunch of its appliances this week, including its Cascade Shark network-monitoring products and its Steelhead WAN optimizers.…