Microsoft's cloudy Windows Virtual Desktop: It fills a gap, but there are plenty of annoyances

You shall not PaaS? An Ask Me Anything reveals common gripes

Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), an Azure-hosted VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), plugs an obvious gap in the company's cloud offerings, but comes with its fair share of annoyances too, many of which came up in a recent Ask Me Anything laid on by the team.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/30/microsofts_cloudy_windows_virtual_desktop_fills_a_gap_but_with_plenty_of_annoyances/

We're great, boasts Huawei in founder's Little Red Book - but isn't that a video game screenshot?

As resilient as a bullet-riddled piece of, er, video game artwork

An intensely dreary Little Red Book of media quotes from Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei uses photos to boast of the company's grit and resilience to damage – illustrating the concept with what looks remarkably like a screenshot from computer game Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/30/huawei_il_2_sturmovik_game_screenshot_oddness/

Vodafone hurls sue ball at Ofcom over plans to relax BT leases

Claims loosening BT's price cap will cost businesses £230m

Vodafone has lobbed a sue ball at regulator Ofcom for relaxing regulation of BT's wholesale fibre leases - a move it claims could cost British businesses £230m.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/voda_throw_sue_ball_at_ofcom/

Hong Kong ISPs beg Chinese govt not to impose Great Firewall on them

'Network censorship will only accelerate the loss of HK to competing cities'

The Hong Kong ISP Association has said any moves by China to shut off the semi-autonomous territory's uncensored internet connection, African dictator-style, "would immediately and permanently deter international businesses" from staying in the one-time British colony.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/hong_kong_isps_great_firewall_protests_china/

UK.gov: Huge mobile masts coming to a grassy hill near you soon

Bad news for Nimbys and 5G health cranks, good news for 4G

The British government has raised the spectre of giant mobile masts looming large over the English countryside in its 5G consultation review paper as a furhter loosening of planning regulations is considered.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/huge_mobile_masts_coming_to_a_hill_near_you_soon/

Never tell me the odds! Oracle makes fresh appeal against $10bn JEDI ruling

Out of options we are running

Oracle is having one last shake of the dice by going back to court to try to force the Pentagon to reconsider kicking it out of the running for the $10bn contract to run cloud services for the US Department of Defense.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/28/oracles_last_ditch_jedi_appeal/

American ISPs fined $75,000 for fuzzing airport's weather radar by stealing spectrum

FCC also moves, albeit glacially, on robocalls

Three ISPs will be fined $25,000 apiece by America's broadband watchdog, the FCC, for interfering with weather signals in Puerto Rico.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/24/fcc_spectrum_fines/

Wait a minute, we're supposed to haggle! ISPs secretly want folk to barter for broadband

11?!! This cost me 12! Do you want to ruin me?!

Just like the market stall owner in the The Life of Brian, it turns out internet service providers want customers to haggle with them to cut better deals.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/23/isps_secretly_want_customer_to_barter_over_broadband/

What is it with hosting firms being stonewalled by Microsoft? Now it's Ionos on naughty step

Email issues dog the company formerly known as 1&1

Ionos, the hosting company formerly known as 1&1, has found itself on Microsoft's naughty list as emails from its servers won't reach Outlook.com accounts.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/22/ionos_outlookcom_email_issues/

Gartner awakens from trance, tells huddled villagers: 5G revenue will almost double to $4.2bn next year!

It has been foretold!

IT prophesier Gartner has performed its ritual reading of market omens to foretell next year's global 5G network infrastructure revenue. The hype wizards reckon that in 2020 the market will hit $4.2bn, an 89 per cent increase from 2019 revenue of $2.2bn.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/22/5g_revenue_will_double_to_nearly_42bn_next_year_gartner/

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, internet, and more

FCC delivers postmortem after blunder crippled US fiber links

A handful of bad network packets triggered a massive chain reaction that crippled the entire network of US telco CenturyLink for roughly a day and a half.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/20/centurylink_outage_report_fcc/

TSO Host no closer to solving customers' email issues as Brit firm pops up on more blacklists

Punters bemoan comms silence with no fix in sight

Customers of Brit hosting outfit TSO Host are suffering from a cluster of issues leaving them without email services for a prolonged period or a clear idea when they'll get them back.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/20/tsohosts_still_struggling_to_fix_email_issues/

RIP Danny Cohen: The computer scientist who gave world endianness meets his end aged 81

He also developed one of the first ever flight simulators

The computer scientist who created the first visual flight simulator, gave us the compsci concept of endianness and whose pioneering work blazed a trail for modern VOIP services has died at the age of 81.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/20/danny_cohen_obituary/

Generous Google gives Chrome users Inbox Zero: Sign-in outage boots own browser out of webmail, services

Baffling bug forces folks to use Safari, IE, etc

A bizarre outage left unlucky Chrome users unable to sign into Google services, from Gmail to Google Docs to even Chromebooks, earlier today.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/19/google_signin_outage/

US government blinks again in its trade-deal bluff-fest with Chinese mobe maker Huawei

You'll never get Huawei with it… but here's another 90 days

The US Commerce Department has granted another "extension" to Huawei, allowing the telecoms company to continue to buy American goods despite being on an "entity list" of banned companies.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/19/us_government_huawei/

Workplace collaboration, secure systems, privacy regulations obeyed – pick two? Nope, it's possible to pick all three

Your biz needs a flow of information... just not flowing out the door

Sponsored  Giving employees fast, convenient access to mission critical data from wherever they happen to be, and from whatever device they are using, is a fundamental principle of digital transformation, which in most cases cannot be compromised. And the parallel, explosive growth in the use of online content sharing and collaboration services by teams within and between companies has been sufficiently pronounced for Gartner to declare the enterprise content management (ECM) market “dead (kaput, finite and ex market name)”.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/19/data_storage_regulations/

Alibaba: There's a trade war going on? Could've fooled us – just check out these swollen digits

Cloud biz still dwarfed by retail but everything's up

Alibaba, China's nearest equivalent to Amazon, is weathering the "uncertain economic" landscape caused in part by the "trade war" between the US and Middle Kingdom governments.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Cloud
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/16/alibaba_results/

Fancy a career exposing cloud data leaks? Great news, companies are still largely clueless

Unit 42 crew tours the cloud security hellscape, finds admins have learned nothing

Anyone hoping to halt the flood of data leaks stemming from cloud services got bad news this week when Palo Alto's Unit 42 found little sign companies were improving their security practices.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/16/cloud_security_sucks/

Salesforce takes the multi-signer DNSSEC ball and runs with it

Extending DNS security protocol to multiple platforms takes root

A plan to expand the current DNSSEC security protocol to cover multiple DNS platforms has received the backing of Salesforce, with a first proof-of-concept implementation of the approach announced on Thursday.…

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http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/salesforce_multi_signer_dnssec/

Cisco axes hundreds, shares tumble amid China cut-off – but we're winning the trade war, right? So much winning

Small percentage of workforce but sign of the times

Cisco has laid off 500 programmers in its home state of California amid disappointing financial results and a sagging share price.…

via The Register - Data Centre: Networks
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/15/cisco_job_cuts/