13th April 2006 Archive

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Sun buffs Opteron, SPARC and Sun Ray

Now try and get one delivered...

Sun Microsystems this week has gone through one of its sweeping product upgrades, freshening up its Opteron, SPARC and thin client lines. On the Opteron front, Sun has made the latest and greatest 156, 256 and 856 processors from AMD available. That gives Sun's server and workstation customers access to the 3.0GHz flavor of …

Servers 13 Apr 2006, 01:27
Is working at Cisco worth a 7-hour commute?

Midas man thinks so

Dave Givens knew a seven-hour roundtrip commute to and from Mariposa to Cisco's San Jose headquarters wasn't normal, but he didn't think it exceptionally unusual. Then Midas called. The auto repair firm this week handed Givens its "America's Longest Commute" award for his daily 372 mile trek. Givens had entered the contest on a …

IT Director 13 Apr 2006, 07:38
ATI updates Catalyst with Linux X1000 drivers

Benchmark-friendly frame-rate boosting tweaks too

ATI has posted the latest version of its Catalyst drivers. Release 6.4 incorporates Linux support for the chip maker's Radeon X1300, X1600, X1800 and X1900 GPUs, and tweaks video quality on Windows systems courtesy of a few adjustments to the Avivo engine. In particular, it's enhanced its edge-sharpening and noise-reduction …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 09:02
Brum reckons on Capita quality

Moving targets

Capita has just three years to turn a "middling" IT department seconded from local government into a "world-class" player that can compete in the cut-throat world of private sector outsourcers. Birmingham City Council has roped Capita into doubling the quality standards in the IT department it sold to the services company as …

Public Sector 13 Apr 2006, 09:17
Civil unrest closes UK ISP's Indian call centre

24-hour curfew trumps 24-hour support

Civil unrest in Bangalore, India, has led to the closure of a call centre used by UK-based LLU ISP Be. A 24-hour government-imposed curfew kicked in yesterday evening at 5.30pm (UK time) leaving Be's broadband punters without any cover. In an email to customers yesterday evening the firm explained: "As you are aware, the …

Telecoms 13 Apr 2006, 09:27
iRiver E10 said to sport TV remote control

Fast forward between channels?

iRiver will ship its latest hard drive-based MP3 players, dubbed the E10, into the South Korean market later this month, pitching the machine's 6GB capacity, 1.5in colour screen and 32-hour playback period against Apple's iPod Nano. It's claimed the device also operates as a TV remote control. The company hasn't officially …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 09:50
Ethiopian bone-anza buttresses human family tree

Awash with hominids

Paleontologists have unearthed an unprecedented cache of early human fossils in Ethiopia. The discoveries, reported in Nature, bone-up the story of our ancestors in the cradle of humanity. The remains belong to hominids – the collective term for humans and human-like apes – of the genus Australopithecus, a forerunner to our own …

Biology 13 Apr 2006, 10:06
Sony preps PS2 price cut

Down to $129 by the end of the month, analyst claims

Sony is close to announcing PlayStation price cuts, in the US at the very least. Stateside, the price will fall from $149 to $129 before April is out, an industry analyst forecast yesterday. Citing "industry checks", Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian told clients the price-cut would be made to "bring the current- …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 10:14
End user support: the bumper Reg survey

Reg Reader Studies Your invaluable input required

If you're involved in end user support and your end users can do without your support for about ten minutes, then we'd be grateful if you'd use that valuable time to complete out latest tap on the IT barometer, unenticingly but accurately titled: "Supporting the End User". You know the drill: enter survey, complete questions, …

Reg Technology Panel 13 Apr 2006, 10:15
Fujitsu-Siemens peddles new SMB storage kit

FibreCATs Ho!

Fujitsu-Siemen's storage division is hawking a new tape storage solution for SMBs. It says its groovily-dubbed FibreCAT TX24 eliminates human error in the backup process. The TX24 has a capacity of 19.2 terabytes, running for five weeks without needing to change tapes. Data transfer rates for the machine's up to 24 slots are 24 …

Storage 13 Apr 2006, 10:21
DSG snaps up Euro photo etailer

Snaps up, geddit?

DSG international (Dixons to you and me) has snapped up a 75 per cent stake in European etailer Fotovista Group for €266m (£185m). Fotovista is the Paris-based parent company of Pixmania, which flogs digital camera stuff and other consumer electronics products in 25 European countries. Its operations also include online …

Channel Register 13 Apr 2006, 10:23
Averatec touts 3G, Wi-Fi UMPC

Built-in keyboard too

Notebook specialist Averatec will ship its take on the ultra-mobile PC concept this autumn, offering a handheld Windows XP Home Edition-based machine with a keyboard that sits underneath a slide-out 5in, 1,280 x 1,204 touch-sensitive screen. Dubbed the AHI, the handheld is based on an Intel Celeron M ultra-low voltage …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 10:42
Black helicopters circle .eu domain

Letters Plus RPG-busting tech meets owlselling African

Black helicopters have been circling this week over the .eu domain landrush. The TLD has just been made available to the unwashed masses after a sunrise period for companies and organisations to stake their legitimate claims. Naturally, it's all gone titsup: I would like to give you the heads up on what really happened with …

Letters 13 Apr 2006, 11:05
BOFH: Dear Valuable VIP Customer

Episode 14 Licence renewal

"Have you read the memo from those software people?" the Boss asks, tapping some paper on my desk. "It's in my In Tray, I just haven't got round to reading it yet." "It's on your DESK!" "Yes, and my desk is my In Tray." >Sigh< "Well can you read it now please?" "Sure." "RIGHT now please?" "It's that urgent?" "It wasn't …

BOFH 13 Apr 2006, 11:10
Info Commissioner draws FOIA flak

Implementation issues

The Freedom of Information Act has produced wider access to information – but the legislation has been implemented in a way that hinders requests, and the Information Commissioner is partly to blame, a House of Commons committee has heard. Oral evidence was presented to the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the House of …

Music and Media 13 Apr 2006, 11:15
BT runs out of broadband in Hemel Hempstead

Oops!

BT has run out of broadband capacity in Hemel Hempstead. It means orders for new broadband connections have been put on hold while the UK's former phone monopoly installs new kit to meet demand. One business punter who was supposed to have a new broadband connection up and running at the beginning of the month has spent the …

Telecoms 13 Apr 2006, 11:16
Samsung UMPC to ship worldwide 1 May

Q1 expensive everywhere - even in Santa Fe...

Samsung's upcoming ultra-mobile PC, the Q1, will be pricey enough when it hits the UK's shores, but buyers in the company's native land of South Korea will have to splash out even more if they want one. According to local reports, they will have to pay the best part of KRW2m - equivalent to $2,100/£1,198. They won't even …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 11:20
Alleged Pentagon hacker fears Guantanamo

McKinnon fights extradition

Lawyers for a Briton fighting extradition to the US on charges that he perpetrated the biggest ever hack against US government systems fear their client could end up in Guantanamo. Gary McKinnon, 40, might be tried under US anti-terror laws over alleged attacks on military and NASA systems between 2001 and 2002. A hearing in …

Enterprise Security 13 Apr 2006, 11:20
Bulb busting light source invented

Edison rotates in poorly-lit grave

Researchers working on organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) have made a critical jump that could finally call lights out time for the humble bulb. Since OLEDs are transparent when switched off, the prospect is of whole surfaces like walls, windows, or even curtains flooding rooms with brilliant white light. University of …

Physics 13 Apr 2006, 11:46
MiniDAB handheld digital radio to debut at £180

You know Oono?

UK digital radio company Oono will ship its first handheld offering, the iPod-esque MiniDAB, in June. The asking price? A mere £180, the company told Reg Hardware today. The MiniDAB sports a 2in, 160 x 96, six-line mono display. It's got 128MB of Flash memory on board, but you can boost its storage capacity by up to 2GB by …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 11:49
Help wanted, apply within

Imagine Cup A quick question for our readers

Just a quick follow up to yesterday's entry, we mentioned ward sister Mel and her insights into friends, family and patients. We think it would be interesting to open the floor to you guys. Imagine you were taken away from your life, placed into an Intensive Care Unit and you had no recollection of the past month. As you …

Developer 13 Apr 2006, 12:26
Actor's death sparks Bangalore unrest

Let's be careful out there

A number of technology companies in Bangalore, India, have shut up shop for the day following the death of the famous septuagenarian Indian actor Rajkumar. Thousands of people flocked to attend the funeral of Rajkumar, who died of a heart attack, and shops and businesses were shut down as a mark of respect. However, pockets of …

IT Director 13 Apr 2006, 13:11
Las Vegas hotelier to test inflatable space motel

Crikey

A Las Vegas hotelier is to test two one-third scale versions of an inflatable space motel, New Scientist reports. Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace has secured space aboard two Russian Dnepr rockets (converted ICBMs otherwise known as SS-18s) for his prototype low-Earth orbit habitats - dubbed "Genesis". The project is based …

Space 13 Apr 2006, 13:48
Review round-up Reg Hardware's Critical Mass

This week's no-holds-barred product assessments from around the web... Rock Xtreme SLI notebook "The limitations of notebook processors and motherboards are such that you're never going to get 100 per cent of desktop performance in a 'portable' system, but with this you really are getting about as close as is humanly …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 13:48
Browser crashers warm to data fuzzing

IE under attack

Last month, security researcher HD Moore decided to write a simple program that would mangle the code found in web pages and gauge the effect such data would have on the major browsers. The result: hundreds of crashes and the discovery of several dozen flaws. The technique - called packet, or data, fuzzing - is frequently …

Enterprise Security 13 Apr 2006, 14:58
Asus EAX1600XT SILENT passively-cooled graphics card

Review Gaming performance without the noise?

These days there isn’t much difference between one manufacturer’s graphics card and another’s, mainly because the standard reference designs from ATI and Nvidia work just fine. That leaves card makers scrambling around for differentiators, and with ever increasing concerns about noise, some manufacturers are trying to figure out …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 15:02
D-Link accused of 'killing' time servers

Time to stop freeloading

Networking manufacturer D-Link is facing an escalating row over how its kit queries internet time servers. Critics claim the way D-link equipment polls NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers is impairing their operations, leaving operators to carry unsustainable excess bandwidth charges. NTP servers handle a variety of functions …

Data Networking 13 Apr 2006, 15:24
Buffalo boosts home NAS box capacity to 2TB

TeraStation Pro's storage space upped too

Buffalo has upped the capacity of its TeraStation Pro network-attached storage (NAS) boxes to 2TB, an increase in data-archive space of 25 per cent. It also announced a 2TB version of its TeraStation Home Server (HS) unit, doubling the product's current capacity. The HS box is pitched at consumers looking to store all their …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 15:37
Virtualization for security

Vista of fluffy white clouds

Sometimes we don't really see what our eyes are viewing. That's true with your computer screen, and it's true in nature as well. Oh sure, we can say what we think we're seeing, but we're missing the big story such as the man behind the curtain, to recall a famous phrase from an even more beloved movie. For instance, it's a …

Enterprise Security 13 Apr 2006, 15:56
DLO ships 'first' UI-on-a-TV iPod dock

HomeDock Deluxes out ahead of Griffin's TuneCenter?

iPod accessory specialist DLO has begun shipping what it claims is the first ever iPod dock that uses a TV screen to let you navigate through your player's music collection from a distance. In short, no more squinting at the iPod's screen. The HomeDock Deluxe provides bays not only for the iPod but also the accessory's …

Reg Hardware 13 Apr 2006, 15:59
Investors practice tough love with AMD

Earn our trust

Wall Street's fling with AMD officially ended today with investors deciding the company has milked all it can out of a performance, price and power consumption edge on rival Intel. AMD's shares dropped more than ten percent during Thursday's trading to $31.80. That's hardly the reception AMD had been hoping for after positing a …

Servers 13 Apr 2006, 21:19
Microsoft flips Atlas a second time

Scrubs cleaner

Microsoft has made its latest thrust into the internet futurama that is Web 2.0, by issuing a second batch of pre-release code for its Atlas technology along with a toolkit for Visual Studio developers to build Atlas controls. Atlas is Microsoft's client and server framework intended for developers constructing applications …

Software 13 Apr 2006, 23:11