21st March 2008 Archive
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Toshiba goes multi-cell with new flash drives
Cheaper, fatter, slower
Toshiba has begun mass production of multi-level cell NAND flash drives, which the company will first stick into its own notebooks sold in Japan. The first solid-state drives will be 128GB models used in its Dynabook SS RX and similarly slim mobile PCs. The drives will likely find their way to other PC manufacturers outside …
Channel Register 21 Mar 2008, 01:52
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FBI agents lured suspects using fake child porn hyperlinks
'Click here for an armed raid on your home'
CNET has uncovered an unusual and controversial investigative technique in which FBI agents post hyperlinks that purport to lead to illegal videos of minors having sex and then raid the homes of people who click on them. The links directed users to a secret, government-controlled server that had no illegal images on them. But …
Crime 21 Mar 2008, 01:56
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Australian man killed by suicide robot
The last best thing you'll ever build
An elderly Australian man apparently shot himself dead Tuesday, using an elaborate suicide robot of his own construction, according to media reports. The 81-year-old man who lived alone in Burleigh Heads left a note detailing his macabre machinations, as well as his grievances over his relatives demanding he be committed to a …
Bootnotes 21 Mar 2008, 01:59
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IBM waterboards PA-RISC Superdome from HP
Power6 charged with crimes against hamster wheels
The fierce Unix server market will sometimes drive vendors to madness. Just look at IBM, which has taken to skinning corpses so that it can prove the toughness of Power6-based gear. IBM will usually engage in mostly fair fights, pitting Power-based servers against HP's Itanium systems. Big Blue's most recent assault, however, …
Servers 21 Mar 2008, 02:50
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Telco firm, Coke sponsor Filipino crucifixion festival
It really is the real thing
Filipino phone outfit Smart Telecommunications and Coca Cola will be soaking up the goodwill today as key sponsors of a mass Good Friday crucifixion in the Philippines. The City of San Fernando’s annual Good Friday re-enactment of Christ’s Passion is set to include not one, not three, but 23 real live crucifixions, as eager …
Bootnotes 21 Mar 2008, 06:02
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Ariane 5 and the Denver luggage handling system
Reg Tech Panel And other unheroic failures
What do these monster cock-ups have to do with you? Hopefully, absolutely nothing, because they’re all examples of major software system failures which resulted in major loss of kit (a space rocket) or hard cash ($200m in project overrun). But in your organisation, how sure are you of the resilience, protection and ‘proper …
Tech Panel 21 Mar 2008, 07:02
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Shoebox man-tracker radar flies in nimble drone
UK pork-fed flying dinosaur era over before it begins?
US wartech behemoth Boeing, in partnership with robocraft specialist Insitu and radar company ImSAR, has announced successful flight trials of a two pound man-tracking radar system "about the size of a shoebox". Shoebox man-tracker radar fitted to ScanEagle miniplane. The "NanoSAR" lightweight synthetic aperture radar made …
Science 21 Mar 2008, 09:02
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Mac OS X Tiger out, Leopard back in
Upgrade follows downgrade follows upgrade
I couldn’t resist. I went back to Leopard. I’ve been running Apple’s latest operating system for well over a month now, originally 10.5.1 and now 10.5.2, with no untoward effects. This wasn’t always the case. In a past post, I explained why mysterious Spotlight crashes had forced me to downgrade to Tiger. But I found myself …
Reg Hardware 21 Mar 2008, 09:02
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Cambridge boffins draw map to Free Our Data
Campaign to open up Ordnance Survey adds up
Top boffins have given economic backing to a campaign to relax access restrictions on government-collected databases, such as the Ordnance Survey's unrivalled stash of UK mapping information. The Department for Business, Employment and Regulatory Reform (BERR, formerly DTI) released the analysis, commissioned from a team at …
Government 21 Mar 2008, 10:02
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Android tunes into OSGi
EclipseCon Mechanized, mobile modularity
The Eclipse Foundation's announcement of a runtime project got a lot of coverage, as the one-time tools-centric initiative moved deeper into runtime deployment and management. OSGi on mobile was one area that generated particular interest at EclipseCon. And not just any mobile: we're talking Google's Linux-based Android. …
Mobile 21 Mar 2008, 11:02
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Soviet-era JCP needs change, concedes top commissar
Time to tear down this wall
Just over six months into the job, Java Community Process chairman Patrick Curran has reached a firm conclusion on his organization: "We have to change," he said. "No more smoke-filled rooms." The context for Curran's comments was the recent QCon event, where Spring framework father Rod Johnson had just likened the JCP to a …
Applications 21 Mar 2008, 12:02
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The LSE's Freetard fiasco
When creator-haters flock together
"one last fag, then bop, bop, bop" - Wolfie Smith I've been to some strange events in my time reporting for El Reg. But yesterday at the London School of Economics I saw one of the most disturbing of all. If you thought people don't behave in real life like they do online, think again. Here were all the most unpleasant aspects …
Music and Media 21 Mar 2008, 14:17
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BOFH: Impatience
Episode 10 The PFY goes nuclear
"You’re not listening to me!" the Boss snaps. "Hmm?" "You’re not listening to me!" "Course I am," I say distractedly. "What did I say then?" "The users are unhappy." "I… What about?" the Boss asks, temporarily foiled by my Geller-like guesswork. "Some user thing or the other – their stupidity, the computer doing what …
BOFH 21 Mar 2008, 14:18
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X Prize comes to earth
$10m for most efficient car
The X Prize Foundation - which helped kickstart commercial passenger space travel - is funding another $10m prize to find the most fuel-efficient car. The Automotive X Prize, or rather the "Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE", aims to find a realistic super-efficient vehicle. It aims to find cars which actually just go …
Environment 21 Mar 2008, 14:18
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SP1 drops, iPlayer falls over and Phorm is less than legal
Comments And bees as far as the eye can see
On Friday the BBC's iPlayer went down because of a back-end database failure. It has since come back online, but the Beeb nevertheless earned your scorn: The irony is that while they are doing all they can to stop the likes of me from using an illicit method to get the programmes, if they produced a Linux version, with the 30 …
Bootnotes 21 Mar 2008, 16:02
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Ubuntu does bird beta
Hardy Heron all Wubily
The folks at Canonical are asking the faithful to get their bird on with the release of Ubuntu 8.04 – Hardy Heron. Both the desktop and server versions of the LTS (long-term support) operating system have been put up for grabs. In addition, you’ll discover beta versions of the various Ubuntu offshoots such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, …
Servers 21 Mar 2008, 18:35
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Bain and Huawei bail on 3Com buyout
You can't fight city hall
Claiming an inability to stifle US government concerns over a 3Com acquisition, Bain Capital Partners and Huawei Technologies are now taking their ball and going home. The private equity firm and its Chinese partner late Thursday pulled out of a joint $2.2bn bid to acquire 3Com. Bain said despite its best efforts to …
Channel Register 21 Mar 2008, 19:25
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US auto-emissions cleansed in urine-tech shower
Mercedes basks in blue-green-golden glow
German motor titan Mercedes Benz says it will be the first to introduce European-style "AdBlue" clean diesel technology to US consumers. AdBlue involves fitting cars with a tank of special urine-like liquid, which is used to clean the exhaust emissions. In a statement last week, the company said: The diesel engine has proved …
Environment 21 Mar 2008, 21:44
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ClearSpeed floats - ouch - 3.0 flagship code
For the Random Number Generator Librarian in you
Floating point whiz ClearSpeed continues to try and make coding for its specialized hardware easier. The company this week touted the release of Version 3.0 of its mainline code. As you might expect, the package includes a variety of additions to simplify the process of moving code off a general purpose x86 chip and onto …
Servers 21 Mar 2008, 22:32
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State Department workers snooped on all three prez candidates
'Imprudent curiosity' runs amok
In an incident underscoring the insecurity of many government records, the State Department revealed that at least four workers snooped into supposedly private passport files of all three presidential contenders. The breaches involved electronic files that contained personal information about Senators Barack Obama, Hillary …
Government 21 Mar 2008, 23:21
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SGI slots 'Seaburg' chipset into blades
Adds Altix ICE casings
SGI this week is pushing a fresh batch of hardware into its Altix ICE blade server lineup. The company announced two new blade enclosures and new blade options. The new enclosures for SGI's Altix ICE 8200 platform now support Intel's 5400 'Seaburg' Chipset with dual- and quad-core Xeon processors. SGI rather generously dubbed …
Servers 21 Mar 2008, 23:29
