26th September 2008 Archive

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SpringSource VC investor takes COO role

Exclusive JBoss past, app server future?

SpringSource, steward of the ever-popular Spring open source Java framework, is getting an operations specialist from the investment community with an application-server background. The position of president and chief operations officer has apparently been created and awarded to Rob Bearden, an entrepreneur in residence with …

Applications 26 Sep 2008, 00:51
Kentucky commandeers world's most popular gambling sites

Weep no more, my puritan ladies

The state of Kentucky has seized control of some of the world's most popular gambling domain names courtesy of a state judge who issued a secret ruling last week ordering registrars to transfer 141 internet addresses to the state's top law enforcement official. The order (PDF) by Franklin County Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate …

Government 26 Sep 2008, 01:57
Woman sues EA over 'secret' Spore DRM

Digital rights rage

Electronic Arts may have tried to appease customers angered by slackening the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions in Spore – but the game publisher's troubles over its use may have just begun. On Monday, a class action lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California on behalf of Melissa Thomas of Maryland and …

Law 26 Sep 2008, 02:16
Britons face carbon spotchecks

It's the price of 'one planet living'

Britons should be subjected to random carbon spotchecks and intensive surveillance of their diets, transport and waste disposal habits, says the Government's architecture and design quango in a new report today. The word "monitoring" occurs 19 times in the 32-page publication by the Commission for Architecture and the Built …

Environment 26 Sep 2008, 04:49
PAM from NetApp is going to get flashy

The card that's as good as cache

A bird flew by and whispered in my ear that NetApp's Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) was going to get flashy and have solid state storage (SSD) added to it. PAM is a card acting as an accelerative cache, that can be installed in a NetApp storage array and accelerate all the storage in it. John Rollason of NetApp UK …

Storage 26 Sep 2008, 05:02
New hydrocarb X-51 scramjet ready for flight

DARPA, NASA ~~chuffed to bits~~ ~~blown away~~ cautiously pleased

US jet-engines'n'rockets colossus Pratt & Whitney says it has successfully completed ground testing of its new hypersonic scramjet engine prototype, which can run on ordinary hydrocarbon fuel at Mach 6. The company believes that the radical hyperjet is now ready to fly on the X-51 "WaveRider" test flights planned to begin next …

Science 26 Sep 2008, 08:02
Whitehall opens £4.5bn desktop procurement

OGCbs and DWP join hands

OGCbuying.solutions and the Department for Work and Pensions are joining forces to tender for two lots of ICT equipment and services. The organisations want to set up two contracts, according to a notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 24 September 2008. Although the two deals will be worth £4.5bn …

Channel Register 26 Sep 2008, 08:55
EU spectrum vote leaves digi dividend with Ofcom

No mandated allocations - yet

MEPs voted through a raft of amendments to the telecoms industry Framework Review this week, watering down spectrum reform proposals and providing more than enough leeway for Ofcom's digital dividend sell-off. The changes included the removal of any obligation to charge spectrum users, along with any hint of blocks of spectrum …

Mobile 26 Sep 2008, 09:27
Right: Which one of you lot invented 'tw*tdangle', eh?

Lingo police want your biometrics, and sharpish

Ok, here's the deal: We at the Vulture Central Neologism Soviet want the name and personal details of whoever it was who invented the term "twatdangle", and we want them now. The reason? Well, no one-way ticket to the Gulag for the individual responsible, rather a congratulatory free shirt from El Reg's merchandising tentacle …

Bootnotes 26 Sep 2008, 09:29
AMD pooh-poohs 'Atom smasher' cancellation claim

Why drop 'Bobcat' long before it's needed?

So farewell then, Bobcat, AMD's answer to Intel's 'Silverthorne' Atom processor family? AMD's denying it, but at least one analyst is tolling the low-power chip's death knell. Avi Cohen, managing partner at US investment house Avian Securities, this week told clients: "There are reports that AMD has decided to cancel its …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 09:57
The Boston Trio and the MBTA

How the transport bods silenced security researchers

The annual DEFCON conference in Las Vegas in early August got a bit more interesting than usual when three graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were enjoined from giving a presentation by a court in Boston. The three - Zach Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa - intended to present both a paper …

Enterprise Security 26 Sep 2008, 10:26
Indian chief exec murder 'a warning for management'

Outrage at government minister's inopportune comments

India's Minister of Labour and Employment has landed himself in hot water by describing the death earlier this week of the chief executive of Graziano Transmissioni India as "a warning for management”. Lalit Choudhary, 47, died on Monday of head wounds after being attacked by a mob at the Graziano Transmissioni car parts …

Financial News 26 Sep 2008, 10:36
Brits happy to hand over password details for £5 gift voucher

Jail for data breach directors, M&S cake for us

UK consumers have rather glaring double standards when it comes to information security risks, according to a new survey by Symantec. Although the majority (60 percent) of 207 London residents were happy to hand over computer password data which might be useful to potential ID thieves in exchange for a £5 M&S gift voucher, the …

Crime 26 Sep 2008, 10:47
BT withdraws Wi-Fi access to The Cloud

Closedzone

BT Openzone customers will next week be cut off from public Wi-Fi provided by The Cloud, and will lose coverage at thousands of hotspots as a result. A deal between the two firms will come to an end at 9am on October 2, BT told Openzone users in an email. Both home and business broadband subscribers will be affected. The …

Wireless 26 Sep 2008, 10:48
Sony shows first ultra-portable laptop with on-board Blu-ray

SSDs, 802.11n, the works too

Sony has introduced what it claims is the world's lightest laptop with Blu-ray on board. Sony's Vaio TT: first ultra-portable laptop with Blu-ray? The 1.3kg Vaio TT is just an inch thick but packs in a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo SU9300 or 1.4GHz SU9400 CPU, 2GB of DDR 3 memory, and a 160GB hard disk or a pair of RAIDed 128GB solid- …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 10:54
Fire-breathing black cabs: Shock eyewitness photo

RoTM NRA operative survives TX4 ambush

Our recent shock piece on an attempted incendiary uprising by the TX4-type cab prompted the neoLuddite Resistance Army to place all London cadres on Defcon Laguna. Well, the reality is worse than we thought. Here's an image caught by an NRA operative last night during a furious firefight in the capital: According to the …

Rise of the Machines 26 Sep 2008, 11:02
Jumbo-jet sized '~~Super~~GigaFly' robo parachute tested

Pimp my parafoil

Airborne Systems, maker of automatic parachute systems to the likes of Elon Musk's SpaceX private rocket firm, has announced successful tests of the "World's Largest Autonomously Guided Ram-Air Parachute". Big enough even for CEO parachute packages. Pic: Airborne Systems. The colossal robo parawing is called GigaFly, and …

Science 26 Sep 2008, 11:10
UK WoW fans plead for Lich King Collector's Edition

Amazon.com allocation sold already

UK gamers are up in arms and venting spleen in forums over fears that the Collector's Edition release of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King will not be be released in Blighty. According to a statement from publisher Blizzard Entertainment, the CE version will only be available in “select regions”. We contacted the firm …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 11:13
Alcatel-Lucent loses $1.5bn MP3 patent claim against MS

US court ditches appeal

Microsoft will not have to pay Alcatel-Lucent $1.5bn in damages, after a lower court threw out the jury’s verdict in a fight over MP3 patents. The software giant yesterday successfully convinced the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that Microsoft shouldn’t be required to cough up damages to Alcatel-Lucent, which is …

PCs & Chips 26 Sep 2008, 11:21
How an Italian judge made the internet illegal

New technology? It's all a mistake

Italian bloggers are up in arms at a court ruling early this year that suggests almost all Italian blogs are illegal. This month, a senior Italian politician went one step further, warning that most web activity is likely to be against the law. The story begins back in May, when a judge in Modica (in Sicily) found local …

Law 26 Sep 2008, 11:40
More BlackBerry Storm pictures leaked

Official shots of RIM's first touchscreen BlackBerry?

Pictures of the first touchscreen BlackBerry have been leaked online, further ramping up speculation that RIM is poised to confirm the phone’s creation. Could this be an official Storm picture? Images courtesy of BGR One of the high-quality photos – purported to be of the much hyped 'Storm' phone – shows a screen …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 11:51
Voix MPX 2.1 tower loudspeakers

Review In-spire-ing sound quality?

Designed to act as a complete audio package for home cinema set-ups, the Viox MPX rig packs a good performance some nice features, but one still can't help but be left with the feeling that it could be better. The MPX 2.1 speaker system consists of two slimline tower speakers that are each just over 1m tall. The company quotes …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 12:18
Brace of C-level execs flies Copan coop

Updated. Copan: separate and unrelated events

Updated Copan Systems, which sells the greenest disk arrays of all, has lost both its chief financial officer (CFO) and its VP for North Europe. Copan's Revolution drive arrays use MAID (Massive Array of Idle Drives) technology in which up to 75 per cent of the densely packed drives are not spinning and so saving power. The …

Channel Register 26 Sep 2008, 12:21
O2 denies subsidised MacBook broadband sign-up lure

Exclusive Not true, claims carrier

O2 has pooh-poohed claims that it has signed a deal with Apple to offer new broadband customers MacBook laptops. A spokeswoman for the network operator told Register Hardware that it has “no such plans to launch an Apple MacBook laptop offer”. She added that the claim – which first appeared on website Mobile Today - is “untrue …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 12:25
BMW readies 7-series hybrid

'Leccy Tech Into production in 2009

Unwilling to be beaten in the hybrid race by German taxi maker Mercedes-Benz, BMW will release a dual-fuel 7-series saloon in 12 months' time. Dubbed the ActiveHybrid, the 750i-derived car contains a twin-turbo 4.4l V8 petrol engine that BMW says provides 407bhp and 442lb/ft of torque. The vehicle's electric motor bumps those …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 12:25
'I can see dinosaurs from my back porch'

USA '08 Palin-tology and the threat to science teaching

GOP Veep candidate Sarah Palin's belief in creationism brings the evolution of a crank's outlook into an asset in US public life into plain view. It's simply the rock-like belief that if science isn't convenient to a very personal value or notion, then it constitutes an attack on such and is to be set aside. Kevin Phillips, a …

Government 26 Sep 2008, 12:29
Larry Ellison becomes HP's richest reseller yet

Comment And hands Sun a thumpering

HP has expanded its reseller channel with a Sun Thumper-bashing griddled hybrid storage/server just for Oracle. Oracle is selling an HP Oracle Database Machine, a customised bundle of Oracle database and data warehouse software running on a grid of eight HP Proliant servers running Oracle RAC, and 14 specialised Exadata …

Channel Register 26 Sep 2008, 12:46
Tw*tdangler defends Benito Mussolini stunt

Didn't want to p*ss on fans...

David Blaine has defended himself following widespread criticism of his Benito Mussolini twatdangle above New York's Wollmann ice rink - a daredevil 60-hour upside-down endurance marathon which actually saw the Brooklyn media strumpet take breaks to drink water and empty his bladder. According to the BBC, Blaine told US TV …

Bootnotes 26 Sep 2008, 12:50
Microsoft claims 'landmark victory' against defunct UK reseller

Takes aim at MD's assets

Microsoft has said it will go after the assets of the former MD of defunct IT distie ITAC UK Ltd in a long-running parallel importing dispute. But lawyers for the reseller have slammed Microsoft for breaching an earlier confidentiality agreement between the two firms. On Wednesday Microsoft claimed to have scored a “landmark …

Channel Register 26 Sep 2008, 13:00
Revealed: Street View's UK invasion schedule

Britain to fall within a year, Orwellian Opel driver log shows

Those of us who've been keeping close tabs on Google's Orwellian Opel Street View spycars and their inexorable progress across the UK and beyond recently pondered how long it would be before every highway and byway fell to the search monolith's all-seeing eye. Well, we've just received some evidence indicating the complete …

Bootnotes 26 Sep 2008, 13:02
German developers forge Iron from Chrome

Browser transmutation for privacy fans

German developers had developed a cut-down version of Chrome that doesn't send usage data back to the Google mothership. Iron is aimed at punters who like Chrome's fast JavaScript engine but baulk at the search giant's policies for collecting usage data. SRWare forged Iron by taking out all the features privacy-sensitive …

Applications 26 Sep 2008, 13:12
Swiss strap-on jetplane ace flies Channel

Barmy backpack birdman does a Blériot

Renowned Swiss birdman Yves Rossy has, after several weather-related setbacks, finally flown over the English Channel using his unique backpack jetplane. Leaping from a plane 8,000 feet above Calais, Rossy extended his wings, fired up his four mini jet engines and zoomed across the Channel in less than ten minutes, following …

Science 26 Sep 2008, 13:40
EMC founder clashes with IRS over 'tax evasion' scheme

Gimme back my $62m

Richard Egan, ex-marine and a founder of EMC, is suing the US Internal Revenue Service for the return of $62m taken from him after the IRS decided option trading arrangements he had entered into were a tax avoidance scam. Egan insists the trades were genuine. Egan, an ex-US ambassador to Ireland, is involved in the case …

Financial News 26 Sep 2008, 13:58
uTorrent for Mac leaks into Pirate Bay

Get your Cocoa-based client here

A rough alpha version of BitTorrent client uTorrent for the Mac has tipped up on The Pirate Bay website. BitTorrent’s product development veep Simon Morris has warned fanboys that the leaked pre-release version isn’t ready for widespread use as it's still in development. He told TorrentFreak that the company will finally spit …

Applications 26 Sep 2008, 14:06
Agile development workshop: Lessons learned

Reg Reader Workshop Week one roundup

Reader research conducted via the Reg Technology Panel over the last few years has consistently indicated the importance of application development to organisations large and small. Contrary to some of the things we hear, the need for software design, build and maintenance capability has not been killed by packaged applications …

Workshop 26 Sep 2008, 14:48
German man arrested after UK gamer's murder

Online war of words went too far?

A German gamer has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a British man who ran a website devoted to the Nintendo DS game series Advanced Wars. Matthew Pyke, 20, of North Sherwood Street, Nottingham, was found stabbed to death at his flat one week ago. A screenshot from Advanced Wars: Dark Conflict On Wednesday, German …

Reg Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 15:09
Phorm mulls incentives for ad targeting wiretaps

Opt in, save a starving African

Phorm is considering tugging on ISP subscribers' heartstrings by offering to donate to charities if they opt to let it profile their internet use for advertisers. The idea is one of more than a dozen possible incentives being punted in a survey running on the market research site Toluna.com. The questionnaire probes attitudes …

Telecoms 26 Sep 2008, 15:30
Poptastic MySpace Music launches, without indies

Big splash for Big Music

MySpace Music, the ambitious new joint venture between the major record labels and News Corporation, has finally gone live. Don't let the name mislead you - the only thing it has in common with the scrappy ethos of the original "MySpace" is the name. Executives have said they want the service to be "the new MTV", and the …

Music and Media 26 Sep 2008, 15:46
HP waves goodbye to 9,300 EMEA employees

European unions condemn 'job-shedding'

Hewlett-Packard will cut 9,300 jobs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, following its $13.9bn takeover of EDS in August. The firm confirmed last week that 24,600 jobs, or 7.5 per cent of its workforce, would be axed worldwide. European trade union groups today lambasted the company’s decision to slash so many jobs in the …

Financial News 26 Sep 2008, 15:48
Our IT Crowd prize draw - we have a winner

Lucky C'n'C subscriber to enjoy Pinewood thespshmooze

We're delighted this afternoon to announce the winner of our Cash'n'Carrion The IT Crowd draw, who's secured a pair of tickets to view the filming of the show at Pinewood studios and, gasp, the chance to shmooze with the cast in the green room before the cameras roll. And the name of that lucky person is .... <drumroll> ... …

Site News 26 Sep 2008, 16:08
Apple NDA kills Jesus Phone gospels

Black market inflation

Apple's clampdown over access to information on the iPhone's Software Development Kit (SDK) has plumbed new depths, forcing a book publisher to withdraw a programmers guide scheduled for December 2008. Pragmatic Bookshelf announced it is pulling Phone SDK Development from its production schedule because Apple's draconian non- …

Mobile 26 Sep 2008, 16:46
VMware reach exceeds grasp

Comment Heaven is a data center

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning I don't know if the data center can qualify as a kind of heaven, but I do suspect that if there is a heaven, the temperature is always perfect and you can hear the faint hum of the workings of the Universe. Anyway, you can't blame IT …

Virtualization 26 Sep 2008, 17:38
Net pariah Intercage back among the dead

Updated No more Global Crossing

After returning from the dead two days ago, network provider and internet pariah Intercage has once again been knocked offline. Websites served by Intercage started to become inaccessible on Wednesday afternoon after backbone provider Global Crossing began filtering internet protocol addresses assigned to the California-based …

Security 26 Sep 2008, 18:29
Damien Hirst buys Paris porn collage

Brit artist circle jerk

Skull bedazzler and shark preserving artist Damien Hirst spent some of his recently acquired riches from a record-breaking art sale to purchase a collage of US socialite Paris Hilton composed of images from porn magazines. The Hilton portrait, for which Hirst paid an undisclosed sum, is the latest in a series by fellow …

Bootnotes 26 Sep 2008, 18:45
Adobe cites bad blood for closed Flash

Wary of corporate agendas

Everyone loves open source - well, everyone apart from Microsoft, that is. The only problem with open source is deciding how much code control you're willing to relinquish, especially when open source puts your precious bits and bytes - and ultimately your own product plans - into the hands of your competitors. Adobe Systems' …

Developer 26 Sep 2008, 18:57
Ballmer gives Norwegian students free love

Beware the flying herring

Microsoft believes it has "lost" a generation of developers who might have embraced Windows and .NET, thanks to the Mac and open source frameworks and operating systems. In an ongoing attempt to woo the next generation Microsoft's rumbustious chief executive will next week announce the latest extension of a program offering …

Developer 26 Sep 2008, 21:26
IBM tries its hand in the lawn sprinkler biz

Precipitation anticipation

IBM's patent portfolio is a terrific source of the curious and bizarre. From patents for "dealing with chaos," to automating the process of informing a clerk whether you want paper or plastic, Big Blue certainly has a knack for wrapping its IP tendrils around some strange stuff. This week, IBM is in the lawn sprinkler …

Hardware 26 Sep 2008, 22:52