25th February 2009 Archive

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Microsoft woos open sourcers with Visual Studio 2010

VSLive What price MySQL?

Microsoft has invited the open-source community to build plug-ins for Visual Studio 2010, and has improved database support to help build partner backing for its planned integrated development environment (IDE). The general manager for Microsoft's Visual Studio told The Reg he'd like to see open-source developers contribute …

Developer 25 Feb 00:49
Google punts unlimited cloud sitting

App Engine gets price tag

The Mountain View Chocolate Factory is now offering (theoretically) unlimited access to Google App Engine, charging a fee for resources above and beyond the no-charge quotas on its fledgling developer cloud. When Google opened App Engine to all (earthbound) developers back in May, its so-called cloud platform was completely …

Developer 25 Feb 01:38
Samsung unsheathes screaming phone

What could possibly go wrong?

Samsung has released a mobile phone with the ability to scream as loud as a snowmobile or motorcycle. And when we say "motorcycle", we're not talking about a smoothly purring BMW R 1200 RT. The Samsung SPH-W7100's alarm siren pumps out a ear-splitting 100db. Think of that insensitive punk with after-market pipes blatting up …

Mobile 25 Feb 03:45
The internet is for violent jerks, study finds

...or violent jerks are for the internet

Does the internet change folks into assholes? Or do assholes just naturally gravitate to using the internet? While the question may never truly be answered by modern science, new research suggests the asshole-to-user ratio isn't just in your imagination. In a study of 9,405 Taiwanese teenagers, a team of researchers at …

Odds and Sods 25 Feb 03:48
Apple iPhone poised for China touchdown

1.3 billion to be served

It appears that Apple's plan to introduce its iPhone to 1.3 billion potential Chinese customers may have taken one more step towards reality. According to ChinaTechNews.com, China Unicom "reportedly" reached an agreement with Apple that would bring the über-successful smartphone to the world's most populous market as soon as …

Mobile 25 Feb 03:52
Banking app vuln surfaces 18 months after discovery

Patch procrastination bares 24 sites

As a security auditor for 11 years, Adriel Desautels has written his share of vulnerability advisories, but never one like the one he issued Tuesday for a software package made by a small Vermont company called Cambium Group. In the course of penetration testing a client's website, Desautels, who is CTO of security consulting …

Security 25 Feb 04:31
Server sales cratered in Q4, says IDC

Blades the only bright spot

Someone has turned the volume knob on the x64 server market from 11 down to 9. And that someone is the economic meltdown. In the fourth quarter of 2008, when the meltdown was flaring up, server spending dropped off dramatically. The analysts at IDC who track the server space reckon that server sales contracted "sharply" in Q4 …

Servers 25 Feb 04:40
Beware the dazzle of Microsoft's Azure lure

Cloud clarity needed

When it comes to Microsoft's Azure Services Platform, it pays to be cautious. Microsoft has joined IBM and others in trying to build its own version of what's beginning to look like a vast, mainframe-like computing and storage system in the sky. In the case of Azure, you - the developer - will build your applications using …

Developer 25 Feb 07:06
Home Office plans to force CCTV on shops and pubs

Buying booze? Smile for the camera

If you’re planning to buy alcohol in the near future, and prefer not to have your mugshot made available to the local police, best to stock up now. Because, buried deep within the debate around the s.31 of the Policing and Crime Bill are provisions that will allow the Secretary of State to instruct your local corner shop - or …

Government 25 Feb 08:02
OCZ Apex 120GB SSD

Review Quirky performer

From the outside, the 120GB OCZ Apex solid-state drive looks very similar to every other 2.5in SSD on the market, including the 80GB Intel X25-M that we reviewed last year. OCZ's Apex: good price-per-gigabyte score Internally, it’s a different story as the Apex uses two JMicron JMF602 Flash controller chips in conjunction …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 09:02
Straw slaps ban on Iraq debate docs

Why appeal when you can veto?

When the government decided not to appeal the Information Tribunal's order to release Cabinet minutes related to the invasion of Iraq it seemed like a victory for open, transparent government. It wasn't. Instead of making a legal appeal against the decision Jack Straw has opted to simply veto the decision. Justice Minister …

Government 25 Feb 10:00
Snowstorm swallows GPS skiing gizmo's creator

Probably not wearing the gadget, say mates

In a cruel twist of fate, an Australian man behind the development of a GPS gadget for tracking skiers has himself gone missing in a heavy snowstorm. SSI's Flaik Scott McKay, 27, from Brisbane, was formerly the VP of Snow Sports Interactive, the company behind Flaik, a multipurpose GPS gadget aimed at skiers. McKay was …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 10:25
Government promotes open source for public sector

Better value for all

The government has published a new policy aimed at promoting the use of open source software in the public sector. It is also aimed at promoting open standards and encouraging the re-use of IT solutions. Measures include an education programme, guidance on procurement from the Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council and …

Applications 25 Feb 10:28
E-tailers can't claim on returned goods

ECJ endorses refundamentalism

Online retailers cannot reclaim some of the purchase price of goods even if they are returned after a long time and have given the user some benefit, an advocate general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said. Buyers can return goods and get a full refund in the first one to two weeks of ownership of goods, said …

Channel Register 25 Feb 10:38
Cheery Chinese car maker makes splash with EV hatchback

'Leccy Tech Design look familiar?

Chinese electric cars may not be pushing back the boundaries of technology or styling, but they do have the edge when it comes to affordability, practicality and actually - or rather probably - making it into mass production. With BYD's 'leccy E6 due later in the year, rival Chinese car maker Chery – silly name, we grant you; …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 10:40
Ryanair trades blows with 'idiot blogger'

Online booking glitch provokes almighty punch-up

Hats off this fine morning to Ryanair, which last week traded blows with "idiot blogger" Jason Roe and in the process demonstrated exactly how airlines should deal with bothersome self-loading cargo. The whole thing kicked off when Jason posted details of an apparent glitch which allowed him to get Ryanair tickets for nowt. …

Developer 25 Feb 10:52
PlayStation Network members top 20m

Xbox Live lagging behind

Sony has announced that over 20m accounts have been registered with the PlayStation Network since the free online service launched back in late 2006. The network’s subscriber figures compare to global PS3 sales of 21.3m units – as of December 2008 – and 50m PlayStation Portables (PSP) sales, as of last month. That may sound …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 10:56
Obama says his new chopper is 'procurement gone amuck'

'The helicopter I have now seems quite adequate'

It looks as though the new US President may soon join the Queen and switch to purchasing his official helicopters in America. Speculation is rife over the future of the planned buy of modified British/Italian copters, after Barack Obama made negative remarks regarding the project. "The helicopter I have now seems perfectly …

Government 25 Feb 10:59
Excel Trojan targets unpatched flaws

Another day, another zero-day threat

Virus authors have reportedly created a Trojan that exploits an unpatched vulnerability in a range of versions of Excel. The malware comes in the form of a maliciously constructed spreadsheet file with a malicious payload identified by McAfee, for example, as the BackDoor-DUE trojan. Many versions of Excel are vulnerable, …

Malware 25 Feb 11:14
Qualcomm UK engineers under threat

Cambridge cuts planned

Mobile phone chip maker Qualcomm is considering laying off up to 40 engineers at its Cambridge labs, an insider has revealed. According to our source, staff at the site on Cambridge science park have been told they could be made redundant at the end of March as part of a cost cuts. The layoffs will come as a blow to the city's …

Mobile 25 Feb 11:38
Google blames Gmail outage on data centre collapse

Domino effect crashes through the cloud

Google has apologised for yesterday’s major Gmail meltdown after some of its data centres in Europe failed to cope with a routine maintenance event. The company’s web-based email service was flat as a pancake for about three hours yesterday morning as Mountain View engineers attempted to fix the problem, which affected vast …

Telecoms 25 Feb 11:44
Intel sues Psion over 'netbook' trademark

Chip giant accuses PDA pioneer of dirty tricks

Intel has followed Dell and launched legal action against Psion to recover 'netbook' as a generic term for little laptops. And it accuses the PDA pioneer of fibbing to US trademark overseers. In a complaint filed with the US District Court of Northern California earlier this month, the chip giant asks that Psion Teklogix's …

PCs & Chips 25 Feb 11:46
Cheeky NetApp does it better than biggies

Trounces EMC, IBM, HDS and HP

In a cheeky move NetApp is guaranteeing that customers using EMC, HDS, HP and IBM storage will save 35 per cent of the capacity on these systems by front-ending them with a NetApp V-Series product. NetApp already offers a 50 per cent guarantee program specifying that customers will use 50 per cent less storage in its own, …

Channel Register 25 Feb 11:51
Super-sensitive MS mouse goes on sale

Blue-laser tracking tech deployed

Microsoft’s mouse department has been pretty quiet since unveiling BlueTrack last year, but the firm’s now confirmed availability of a gaming mouse based on the blue-laser technology. Microsoft's SideWinder X8: uses BlueTrack tracking tech To refresh your memory, BlueTrack creates a scanning area more than four times as …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 11:55
What are the security threats?

Sophisticated Malware or just People?

"Security", as the first article in this series points out, can always be found near the top of the list of concerns of every IT manager and IT director. Unfortunately the same subject can also manage to not quite make it onto the more important list of things to do something about now. Over the years, a diverse array of …

State of Security 25 Feb 12:02
Texting peer gets prison

12 weeks for dangerous driving

Lord Ahmed, charged with dangerous driving after sending text messages shortly before hitting a car on the M1, has been jailed for 12 weeks. Ahmed was driving his Jaguar on Christmas Day 2007 when he hit a stationary car in the fast lane, killing the 28-year-old driver. Three minutes before he used his mobile to call …

Mobile 25 Feb 12:15
UK kiddies cop a righteous tasering

LibDems decry increase in electro-justice

The Liberal Democrats are a tad worried that the UK is sliding inexorably into a US-style law enforcement pit where the merest hint of insurrection is countered by a robust tasering - even if it means delivering electro-justice to wide-eyed kiddies. According to shock figures "revealed in a Parliamentary answer", the facts are …

Bootnotes 25 Feb 12:17
Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made

Exclusive Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report

Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission. Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably …

Environment 25 Feb 12:23
Gmail phishing attack hits on heels of outage

Oh the humanity

Gmail users, still swooning from the extended outage on Tuesday, were hit with a widespread phishing attack hours after the blackout. The malicious message spread via the Google Talk instant messaging chat system, urging users to a video by clicking on a link connected via the TinyURL service. The link points to a website …

Spam 25 Feb 12:40
Canadian prof: Green IT is a waste of time

Digital nomads will destroy the planet

A prominent Canadian academic in the tech-policy field has said that "Green IT" initiatives don't work. "Most of the negative environmental impacts [of IT] occur in the form of completely unintended, second and third order effects," says Professor Richard Hawkins of Calgary Uni. "These 'rebound' effects may not be mitigated by …

Hardware 25 Feb 12:49
Aussie internet-net will be drawn wider

Comms minister expands on site blacklist

The Australian government is already planning to block legal internet content when its "great firewall" eventually goes live. That is the fear expressed by some of the most trenchant critics of this scheme, including Senators Simon Birmingham (for the Liberal Party) and Scott Ludlam (for the Greens) following another shift in …

Law 25 Feb 13:48
Earthworm blamed for laptop crash

It's all gone a bit literal

When Mark Taylor's laptop computer crashed, he thought a computer worm might be the cause. Attempted repairs revealed that he was quite right, though not in the way he suspected. A five-inch earthworm had crawled into the laptop through an air vent before getting up in the internal fan, jamming the operation and killing itself …

Bootnotes 25 Feb 13:51
UK censors revolt against 'pornalone' ordeal

The loneliness of the long-distance smutwatcher

Staff from the British Board of Film Classification are inexplicably up in arms about a management move to force them to endure hardcore rumpy-pumpy alone, the Guardian reports. While we have no doubt there are hundreds of Reg readers - in common with the BBFC's 80 battle-hardened reviewers - willing and able to cast a …

Bootnotes 25 Feb 13:56
NASA releases moon return globo-projection movie

Can be played at home (with 4 HD projectors + 6 PCs)

NASA has announced the imminent debut of a promotional film entitled Return to the Moon, made for the radical new "spherical film-making" projection system. What, you didn't know about spherical movies? Neither did we, to be honest. In essence, the idea is to project the images not onto a flat screen but onto a large sphere …

Space 25 Feb 14:11
Dell delivers gargantuan gaming beast

With ~~recessed media tray~~ coin collector

Dell has quietly revealed the latest addition to its XPS gaming PC line, with the online launch of its slick-looking Studio XPS 435. Dell's Studio XPS 435: powerful Aside from a “bold” and “angled design trimmed with Brilliant Crimson Orange accents”, the 727.5 x 485 X 195mm machine has a “recessed media tray” on its top …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 14:20
Multi-coloured DSi models emerge

But only in - you guessed it - Japan

Nintendo’s updated DS handheld console, the DSi, isn’t even out here yet, but those pesky Japanese gamers have already been rewarded with a resprayed line. Nintendo's resprayed DSi consoles Very soon – the exact launch date’s yet to be confirmed – Nintendo will launch the DSi in three new colours: pink, green and blue. …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 14:20
Sharp UK intros 108in monster telly

Costs less than £1000 per inch

If a 32in LCD just won’t do for your modern living room then how about a 108in beast from Sharp? Sharp's 108in LB-1085: monster The monstrously sized LB-1085 screen was first seen back in mid-2008, but was built to order then and really only aimed at businesses who want enormo-screens for conference rooms, shopping centres …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 14:59
Small ISPs reject call to filter out child abuse sites

IWF blocklist effective despite workarounds, charities argue

ISPs have rejected a call by childrens' charities to implement the government's approved blocklist for images of child sexual abuse, because the list does not stop anyone who wants to accessing such material. On Monday a coalition including the NSPCC and Barnardo's sounded warnings that 700,000 homes could access websites …

Telecoms 25 Feb 15:15
Pirate Bay prosecutors get jiggy with charge sheet - again

IFPI boss 'vague' on BitTorrent tech

Prosecutors in the entertainment industry versus The Pirate Bay trial have made further amendments to the charge sheet in the hope of nailing a conviction against the defendants. According to Swedish online news service The Local, prosecutors have once again adjusted the language in the indictment. It requested that the …

Law 25 Feb 15:38
Report names LG's phones as least reliable

But firm's users are 'tech boffins'

LG, Sony Ericsson and Samsung mobile phones have been fingered as some of the most problematic handsets available, according to a poll of users. Opinium Research – on behalf of website Moneysupermarket.com – quizzed just over 2000 British adults and discovered that more than one third of LG owners – 34 per cent – had …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 17:07
MS warns testers to activate Windows 7 beta

Otherwise desktop will be painted black

Microsoft is nagging Windows 7 beta testers to activate their copies of the incomplete OS or else face a blackout after the 30-day grace period expires. The company reminded users yesterday that the Windows 7 beta has been configured to regularly remind them to register their copy. "If you do not activate the software within …

Operating Systems 25 Feb 17:11
Fraud linked to US payment processor breach

Malware on servers to blame (again)

US credit unions are reporting a security breach affecting credit and debit card numbers involving a payment processor firm. Neither the name of the company at the centre of the snafu nor how many records might be involved has been disclosed. Official word of the breach came when the Community Bankers Association reported that …

Crime 25 Feb 17:13
Sony shows off wacky fuel cell designs

Power packs inspired by... er... radios and coffee machines

Sony has demoed three odd fuel-cell designs on the opening day of the fifth International Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Expo in Japan. Sony's idea for a fuel cell speaker Despite looking like a coffee machine, reports from Japan have said that the first design – shown above – is actually a speaker system that’s able to run for 12 …

Reg Hardware 25 Feb 17:29
Google eats social bookmarking sideline

More fat trimming

As it continues to cut costs, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory will soon shutter Google Shared Stuff, an attempt at so-called social bookmarking. Google Shared Stuff was launched in September 2007, after so many navel-gazing net mavens had turned their attentions to Delicious and other sites that share your browser …

Music and Media 25 Feb 19:05
What's next for NetApp hardware?

Storage and the PCIe switch

NetApp has confirmed it is working on new hardware platforms. Rich Clifton, a senior VP at NetApp, provided a glimpse of NetApp's hardware direction this week at VMworld, as The Register sought to determine what storage OEMS would want with a PCIe switch. Clifton said there would be phased ONTAP G announcements, suggesting …

Storage 25 Feb 19:22
HP and Sun in Solaris bear hug

Unix survivor

HP and Sun Microsystems have entered into an agreement designed to simplify sales, service, and support for customers who run - or can be coaxed to run - Sun's Solaris 10 operating system on HP's x86 hardware. Under the new partnership - discussed on Wednesday morning in a joint conference call hosted by HP and Sun execs - HP …

Servers 25 Feb 19:49
Microsoft aims 'non-security' update at gaping security hole

Disabling Autorun once and for all

Microsoft is delivering a Windows software update designed to quash once and for all the difficulty of disabling Autorun, a feature that allows the spread of malware through CDs, USB, and other removable media. The update fixes an unspecified issue that prevents the NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry key from working as expected, …

Malware 25 Feb 21:37
Microsoft plays with small, sleepy servers

Like kittens, only crunchier

The Cloud Computing Futures (CCF) research unit at Microsoft, officially launched this week at the TechFest event in Redmond but secretly in existence for more than a year, showed off a number of projects at the event, two of which relate to servers. One demonstrated the use of low-powered processors and small form-factor …

Servers 25 Feb 21:48
Music industry's Irish ISP shakedown letter leaked

Blacknight ain't scared

An internet hosting company has published a copy of the nasty-gram Ireland's music industry lawyers bulk-mailed to that country's internet service providers, demanding they begin blocking access to any website accused of piracy or else. The letter confirms earlier reports that the the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) has …

Music and Media 25 Feb 22:01
AMD lifts veil on six-core ~~Constantinople~~ Istanbul

The Road from Shanghai

AMD has demoed its upcoming six-core server processor, code-named Istanbul, claiming that it remains on track for release in the second half of this year. The demo came hot on the heels of Intel's confirmation that its four-core Nehalem-EP will be released by the end of this quarter, along with that company's recent detailing …

PCs & Chips 25 Feb 22:38
Nortel to cut 3,200 workers

Without severance

Nortel Networks plans to lay off 3,200 workers worldwide, about a tenth of the total workforce. The latest round of reductions follow 1,800 job cuts the company announced in December. The Toronto-based telecom equipment maker, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, said today it will also drop employee bonuses for …

Financial News 25 Feb 22:55