8th September 2008 Archive

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VMware for data centres

3Tera's AppLogic

It may be fanciful but let's try the analogy anyway. An outfit called 3Tera has set up partnerships with data centre hosters around the world and says it can run apps in these data centres as if they were in a single cloud data centre. Is this virtualizing data centres like servers? What happens is that 3Tera software called …

Servers 8 Sep 2008, 08:20
ID scheme plans 50,000 cards by April

Creaking to a start in time for Christmas

The National Identity Scheme will produce just 50,000 cards in its first few months – and has yet to define the role or budget of its commissioner. In response to a parliamentary written question from Liberal Democrat shadow home secretary Chris Huhne, home secretary Jacqui Smith said that about 50,000 identity cards will be …

Government 8 Sep 2008, 09:09
Mens mag debuts e-ink cover

Kindle display used in print publication

Sony wants everyone to ditch paperbacks in favour of its Reader electronic book, but man-mag Esquire is keeping the printed world alive with an e-ink magazine. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The 75th anniversary issue of the US edition of Esquire features a small e-ink display on the front cover …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 09:44
NASA chief blasts US space policy in leaked email

White House advisers waged 'jihad' on Shuttle, ISS

An internal email from NASA chief Mike Griffin has been leaked to the media. It expresses Griffin's frustration with recent US space policy, says that White House oversight offices have waged a "jihad" against the space shuttle, and offers a gloomy view of the future. The email was obtained at the weekend by the Orlando …

Space 8 Sep 2008, 09:46
Shiny suits call monopoly shenanigans on GooHoo!

We! Ain't! Done! Nuffin!

Fearing a Googley monopoly on web search, America's powerful Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has called on the Justice Department to nix Yahoo!'s plan to let its supposed rival run its text ads business. The ANA said it discussed the deal face-to-face with Google and Yahoo! before deciding to call for a block on the …

Law 8 Sep 2008, 09:49
Academic wants to 'free up' English spelling

Apostrophe for the off in linguistic reorganiszation

Linguistic traditionalists look away now: John Wells, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London, is proposing English adopts a phonetic approach to spelling in order to relieve kids of the "burden" of learning to write our beloved mother tongue as God intended. Wells will outline his proposals to the the …

Bootnotes 8 Sep 2008, 09:52
Intel launches greener, faster Xeons

Fab four from 45nm fab process

You will get more and greener bangs for your buck with new quad-core Xeons from Intel. Intel is using a new process and building the chips without fire-retardent halogen which can pollute the environment around chips fabs. The new Xeon 5400 processors use transistors made from a Hafnium-based, high-k metal gate formula. The …

Servers 8 Sep 2008, 10:02
Prison officers slam EDS data loss

Prison Data Break, tonight on EDS

The latest unfortunate UK government data leak - the escape of details of an estimated 5,000 prison officer and admin staff after private contractor EDS mislaid a sensitive portable hard drive - has sparked a strike threat by prison workers. As with last year's infamous child benefit data loss, the government department …

Government 8 Sep 2008, 10:07
Segway shock army to invade Department of Transport

Make 'em legal, campaigners demand

A shock army of Segway-borne campaigners will tomorrow make the five-minute trip from the Houses of Parliament to the Department of Transport in an attempt to convince the government that the scooters represent the future of transport. Earl Attlee, Earl Liverpool, and MPs Stephen Pound and Lembit Opik will be among those …

Government 8 Sep 2008, 10:08
Joost ditches P2P client for the web

Who does what?

Mostly harmless internet TV start-up Joost has decided to abandon its proprietory P2P application in favour of delivering video to browsers. The new Joost will ape iPlayer in the UK and Hulu in the US by serving up telly via a slick interactive website, GigaOm reports. Unlike those big broadcaster efforts, it won't use Adobe's …

Music and Media 8 Sep 2008, 10:23
Microsoft strips Hyper-V of price tag

Redmond urges VMworld to 'get virtual now'

Microsoft has shown its virtualisation rivals the V sign, with the firm’s announcement today that the standalone version of Hyper-V Server 2008 will be available as a free download. Previously, Redmond’s hypervisor came with a price tag of $28 per seat but, following on from VMware’s tactical play in July to offer its bare- …

Virtualization 8 Sep 2008, 10:44
Ivan O'Toole? That's nothing, snorts Hugh Jass

We kid you not...

The sorry tale of Ivan O'Toole, which last Friday caused a certain amount of merriment among the less than kind hearted members of our beloved readership, attracted an email suggesting that Mr O'Toole had faked an email address and hoodwinked the Reg Bootnotes secretariat. The missive in question came from one Hugh Jass, who …

Bootnotes 8 Sep 2008, 10:56
WD VelociRaptor 300GB HDD vs SSD

Review Which is best for gamers?

Although Western Digital's VelociRaptor is a new model name, you can trace the roots of this new hard drive all the way back to 2003. The original WD360 Raptor hard drive was something of a one-trick pony as it had a tiny 36GB capacity but could boast the 10,000rpm spin speed that became the signature of the Raptor family. …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 11:02
Sony: PSP-3000 battery doesn't come up short, after all

Despite what our executive admitted...

Sony has decided that the latest PlayStation Portable’s battery life isn’t shorter than the juice time available on the previous edition, despite a recent confession to the contrary. John Koller, Director of Hardware Marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said last week that “the new PSP will have equivalent battery …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 11:03
Asus Glides in with Win Mobile über-UI

Better than MS' own interface?

Asus has hopped onto the 'we can do a better Windows Mobile interface than Microsoft can' bandwagon set in motion by Palm but given a big push by HTC with its TouchFlo UI. Asus calls its touch UI Glide - are its handset engineers old 3Dfx fans, we wonder? - that provides a tweaked Today screen and an iTunes' CoverFlow-style …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 11:22
Locksmith chains up iPod

Lock your player to a table

With a new iPod design rumoured to be ready for launch tomorrow, keeping any player safe will now be forefront in your mind. Thankfully, a firm’s designed a bike-lock like chain system. MasterLock’s iCage: iPod security locked down MasterLock’s iCage security system is based around a skin into which you slot your player, …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 11:30
London stock market floored by computer glitch

Connectivity issues

Full trading has yet to restart on the London Stock Exchange after computer problems this morning forced it to suspend dealing. The market rose nearly four per cent in early trading on the back of news from the US that the government is effectively nationalising Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which guarantee most of the US …

Financial News 8 Sep 2008, 11:43
Digital divide looms again over superfast broadband for all

Crunch time for next gen access

An influential internet industry group said today it would cost almost £29bn to deploy a 1Gbit/s new fibre optic line to every home and business in the UK, raising the spectre of a renewed digital divide if operators are able to neglect rural rollout in favour of more profitable urban infrastructure. The finding comes shortly …

Telecoms 8 Sep 2008, 11:47
Chrome-fed Googasm bares tech pundit futility

Fail and You It's a f***ing web browser

Last week, Google released a web browser called Chrome, and the online tech media had a powerful Googasm. We were long overdue for another climax like this, having been lightly stimulated with half-baked Google web products in the four years since GMail was released. Every time the media fires off its gravy so violently, it …

Developer 8 Sep 2008, 12:02
NZ in 'Old Bo***ck Road' balls-up

Never mind the bullocks...

NZ's Wellington City Council has promised to remove a sign in the suburb of Highbury which proudly alerts the public of the location of Old Bollock Rd, the New Zealand Herald reports. Council spokesman Richard MacLean described the reclassification of Old Bullock Rd as an "astounding" error and admitted "someone had obviously …

Bootnotes 8 Sep 2008, 12:16
Facebook app shows botnet risk

Updated You have one zombie request

Social networking users can easily be tricked into becoming unsuspecting drones in zombie networks, according to new research. Security researchers from the Foundation for Research and Technology in Heraklion, Greece, created a seemingly innocuous Facebook application called Photo of the Day. The (harmless) application posed …

Security 8 Sep 2008, 12:24
Sony debuts Bluetooth headphone duo

Cable-free life

Sony has cut the cord and launched two Bluetooth headphone designs, for anyone who favours a “sports and active” lifestyle. Sony's Bluetooth DR-BT160AS cans Known as the DR-BT160AS and DR-BT14Q, the 160AS has a rigid connection between both earpieces, the 14Q’s earpieces are interconnected by a cable. Features on both …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 12:33
Beeb readies iPlayer app for Nokia N96

Software to support downloading as well as streaming

Hot on the heels of Nokia’s N96 launch announcement, the BBC has confirmed that it’ll soon offer a purpose-built iPlayer application to N96 users. The software will enable recent BBC TV and radio content to be streamed to the Nokia phone. Although iPlayer is already available as a streaming service to iPhone and iPod Touch …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 12:43
Noel Gallagher takes a tumble on YouTube

Music lover floors Oasis guitar-botherer

A fan at the V Festival in Toronto has posted on YouTube entertaining footage of Noel Gallagher taking an unscheduled tumble during a performance of Morning Glory: Quite what provoked this attack is a bit of a mystery, but one commenter suggests the assailant had "obviously heard the new album". Whatever the truth, the chap …

Music and Media 8 Sep 2008, 13:11
Prototype orbital seaplane in Texan blimp-base blast

Nautical X Prize also-ran suffers further setback

A group of retired NASA engineers looking to develop a spacegoing seaplane - or seagoing spaceplane - have suffered a setback, with a prototype craft reportedly exploding during tests at the weekend. High and dry. Pic courtesy of the X-Prize Foundation. The Daily News of Galveston County in Texas reports that the explosion …

Space 8 Sep 2008, 13:21
Anti-science Greenies keep Africa poor, says boffin

Let them eat dirt

What's happened to Sir David King, surface chemist and the former chief scientific advisor to the Government? Perhaps something fell on his head. The man dubbed the "King of Climate Porn" achieved notoriety at the turn of the decade as the architect of the Foot and Mouth holocaust - which unnecessarily slaughtered seven …

Environment 8 Sep 2008, 13:35
French firm intros remix-friendly music format

Ogg-based MXP4 debuts

Parisian technology company Musinaut has introduced what it hopes will be the digital music successor to the MP3 format. Dubbed MXP4, the file type allows content owners to embed a whole lot more data than the MP3 format does, including lyrics, interactives and remixes of the song - Musinaut calls them "skins". Each skin is …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 13:41
Mozilla pushes out second Firefox 3.1 alpha

Early developer milestone

Mozilla has released the second alpha of Firefox 3.1 a week after Google unveiled its shiny new browser, Chrome. The latest advance version of the Mozilla Foundation’s upcoming browser is codenamed “Shiretoko”, and is intended for trailblazing software developers and testers only. Meanwhile, the so-called “code freeze”, or …

Applications 8 Sep 2008, 13:52
Dual-core Atom to be released by month's end

First system spied

UK PC supplier Tranquil PC has begun taking orders for a compact desktop PC based on Intel's upcoming dual-core Atom chip. The £299 PC comes with a "dual 1.6GHz" Atom of model number "Z330". Intel's current, single-core desktop Atom is simply called the 230, and the dual-core version is actually expected to debut as the 330 …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 14:15
Philips creates a buzz with entry into marital aid market

Readies Warm Intimate Massager

Which products do you think of when you think of Philips? TVs, electric razors and digital photo frames? Well, the electronics firm is now branching out into… ahem… “marital aids”. According to a report by the Times, Philips has created a non-penetrative device called the Warm Intimate Massager (WIM). Details are still scarce …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 14:18
Vodafone friends Facebook

Matey messaging service, 10p upwards

Vodafone is to allow customers to send messages to their mates direct from their Facebook page, at a cost of only ten pence per message. The service is a Facebook application snappily entitled "Vodafone Connect to Friends", and is currently only a trial to see if people want to pay for sending messages to their chums. Text …

Mobile 8 Sep 2008, 15:18
Notorious Israeli Pentagon hacker on ATM fraud rap

Analyze That

Canadian police have cuffed a notorious Israeli hacker over allegations of financial fraud, seven years after he avoided jail after being convicted of hacking into Pentagon systems. Ehud Tenenbaum (aka The Analyzer), 29, has been detained with three suspected accomplices over allegations they hacked into the systems of a …

Enterprise Security 8 Sep 2008, 15:37
iRobot buys underwater minisub-droid firm

Roomba maker to clean up on sea floor

iRobot Corp, famed as the manufacturer of the "Roomba" autonomous floor-cleaner, has bought underwater robot maker Nekton Research - suppliers of droid submarines to the US military. “We believe that the underwater market is the next frontier for robots,” said Helen Greiner, iRobot co-founder. “This acquisition positions us …

Financial News 8 Sep 2008, 15:41
London Stock Exchange limps back online

Misses most of the day

The London Stock Exchange restored full connectivity today at four o'clock - just half an hour before the scheduled close. A spokeswoman for LSE said: "Trading resumed at four o'clock and we will close as normal at 4.30. We work with a number of suppliers so cannot speculate at this stage as to what caused the problems." …

Financial News 8 Sep 2008, 15:44
Beware the innocent systems 'health check'

D'oh! Cough, please

This column has generated a lot of feedback, some indicating that the answers to the problems were obvious. Quite right - they are obvious to people with years of practice, and some of our readers are blessed with that experience. But the whole point of the series is that none of us start with 20 years of experience. We all …

Software 8 Sep 2008, 16:02
Westcoast completes XMA merger

Last November, Westcoast announced the acquisition of XMA, the printer consumables distie. Today, the company issued a press release, heralding the completion of the merger. In other words, the back office has been trimmed, any performance related payments settled, and distribution activities consolidated. Hardware is to be …

Channel Register 8 Sep 2008, 16:11
Intel releases laptop, desktop SSDs

Still not cheap

Intel has started shipping its 1.8in and 2.5in 80GB solid-state drives. The chip giant also reiterated its plan to release 160GB versions by the end of the year. The X18-M and X25-M drives use multi-level cell (MLC) technology, generally held to be slower than drives based on single-level cell designs. Intel promised it will …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 16:18
Trend virus update freezes some PCs

Chicken Little pox

Problems with antivirus updates from Trend Micro left some users with unusable computers late last week. The signature update, pushed out on Friday morning, incorrectly identified key Windows system files as being infected with a Trojan. The security software quarantined these important files leaving users with unstable …

Malware 8 Sep 2008, 16:29
Mitsubishi prices up 65in laser HD TV

65in and 73in whoppers en-route

Mitsubishi has finally unveiled how much it plans to charge for its laser-based HDTV and, as expected, the 65in stunner will be expensive. Mitsubishi's 65in LaserVue will cost £4000 The firm previously announced plans to make both a 65in and a 73in LaserVue TV. But it’s only now said that the smaller model will cost $7000 …

Reg Hardware 8 Sep 2008, 16:41
Gas refineries at Defcon 1 as SCADA exploit goes wild

At least they should be

Gasoline refineries, manufacturing plants and other critical facilities that rely on computerized control systems just became more vulnerable to tampering or sabotage with the release of attack code that exploits a security flaw in a widely used piece of software. The exploit code, published over the weekend as a module to the …

Security 8 Sep 2008, 18:32
EMC plays kiss chase with Hyper-V

VMware's big daddy snuggles MS

VMware's storage parent EMC is providing back-end support for Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and the firm’s System Centre management suite. The infrastructure giant said today that it will cough up broad technology support and solutions for Microsoft’s new virtualisation strategy and portfolio. EMC reckoned the move …

Virtualization 8 Sep 2008, 18:35
Taiwanese firm to sue over armed raid at IFA

Barks back at Philips, patent police

A Taiwanese firm is taking legal action over damage to its reputation after an Italian patent troll representing Philips prompted the raid of a Berlin consumer electronics show last month. Teco was among 69 companies targeted by some 200 armed German custom officers during the IFA trade fair in Berlin. The raid was done at the …

Channel Register 8 Sep 2008, 19:16
IBM bombs world with storage blitz, but...

Comment One's whelm is undered

Today IBM carpet-bombed the world with its storage showcase. Shock and awe it wasn't. The flavour of the event, much of which was pre-announced, was given by a URL reference on the main release to "a full listing of all the products and services announced today." It was broken, with the IBM response page saying: "Our apologies …

Storage 8 Sep 2008, 19:39
Seagate layoffs coming?

Possible facility closures too

Seagate is focusing on cutting OPEX, and a financial analyst expects facility closures and/or headcount reductions over the coming months. Wachovia's Aaron Rakers investors' research note says that Seagate is looking to trim operating expenses, with an OPEX/revenue ratio below 12 per cent being the aim. The company hopes that …

Storage 8 Sep 2008, 21:24
IBM, PGP fill Bletchley Park's rattling tin

US firms boost UK codebreaking heritage

The campaign to save Bletchley Park from decay and disrepair is moving stateside. On Tuesday, a fundraising group organized by IBM and the cryptography firm PGP plan to launch a US campaign to raise awareness of the historical landmark and raise donations for its preservation. Bletchley Park was home to UK code-breaking …

Science 8 Sep 2008, 21:44
Google launching its own navy?

Penguin deathwatch continues

About 70 per cent of the Earth is covered by water. So Google's thinking it had better build some data centers that can float. With a recently-released patent application, the search giant cum world power seeks exclusive rights to what it calls a "water-based data center". This modular collection of processing, storage, and …

Servers 8 Sep 2008, 21:46
Google bulges old time news archive

More papers, more ads

Google is redoubling efforts to offer a digital archive of the world's newspapers. Two years ago, the search giant began indexing the existing digital archives of papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and today, with a post to The Official Google Blog, the company said it's now working with other publishers …

Music and Media 8 Sep 2008, 23:06
Brit trio convicted for liquid bomb terror plot

Conspiracy to commit murder - not bomb planes

Three of eight British men accused of plotting to blow up seven trans-Atlantic airliners using liquid explosives were convicted today of conspiracy to commit murder. The jury, however, didn't find any of the men guilty of the actual headline-grabbing charges that lead to a worldwide clamp-down on liquids in carry-on baggage. …

Crime 8 Sep 2008, 23:24