4th March 2009 Archive

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Google boss backs subsidized Linuxbooks

Backtracks on Meltdown-proofiness

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hinted that his company - or at least its partners - will one day subsidize the purchase of extra-low-cost Linux netbooks in an effort to promote the use of its myriad cloud online services. "What's particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point," Google's Willy Wonka told a room full of …

PCs & Chips 4 Mar 00:10
The Borings renew Street View fight

'Our home a Google Slave'

Mr and Mrs Boring have renewed their Google Street View tilt. Late last week, lawyers for the now-famous Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania couple asked a federal judge to reconsider his recent decision to dismiss the privacy suit they filed last April after a Google spycar snapped photos of their swimming pool and tossed them onto the …

Music and Media 4 Mar 00:15
Obama releases Dubya's secret anti-terror memos

Warrantless wiretapping? Check

The Obama administration has released nine secret legal opinions penned by Bush Administration lawyers, revealing the scope of executive power the White House sought in fighting domestic terrorism. The opinions reflect an extraordinary interpretation of presidential power used by the Bush White House to justify executive …

Government 4 Mar 00:18
Fusion-io secretly parts with CEO

Updated Oh, and there's an HP pact

Fusion-io has signed a great deal for HP to OEM its flash memory card acceleration technology. And it has lost Don Basile, its CEO, in a bizarre conjunction of events. Fusion-io was founded three years ago and has developed the ioDrive, a PCI-e-connected NAND flash memory card that acts as a large cache between a server's main …

Storage 4 Mar 00:27
US court urged to block warrantless GPS tracking

Surveillance in the digital age

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union are waging a legal challenge against what they say is law enforcement's growing use of global positioning system location-tracking devices often without first seeking a warrant. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday, EFF attorneys argued that FBI …

Government 4 Mar 00:54
MontaVista joins Moblin crew

Hop into Intel's Linux stack

Linux tool vendor MontaVista is joining the Moblin community, the Intel-sponsored group that's putting a Linux stack on the low-power Atom processor. MontaVista specializes in tools for building embedded Linux apps on mobile devices like cell phones and GPS systems. Joining forces with Moblin could help the firm break into the …

PCs & Chips 4 Mar 01:15
US warboffins update Where Eagles Dare gizmo-bombs

Multifunction plug-in detonator gadgets sought

Who here remembers the nifty little gizmo-bombs used so inventively by Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton in WWII flick Where Eagles Dare? If you liked them, it seems you're not alone, as US special ops Q-Branch boffins are now looking to buy a detonator unit with even more functions. The boffins in question are those of the …

Science 4 Mar 05:02
Serious business behind Microsoft's Silverlight-3 tease

Game faces on this month

Microsoft's been playing the tease on Silverlight 3. The company's been slowly upping the ante on expectations, promising "major enhancements", while outsiders who traveled to Redmond and have met the Silverlight team have returned with tales of wonders but few details, citing pain of confidentiality agreements. This month, …

Developer 4 Mar 05:02
Iron Mountain punts subterranean data storage

Underground cloud vault

Iron Mountain - well-known for storing paper records and tape cartridges in secured holes in the ground - has started up an underground cloud-based Virtual File Service. The cloud is truly subterranean, being based on an underground data centre in the USA. Calling it "the industry's first enterprise solution (sic) for cloud- …

Storage 4 Mar 06:02
Dell plays with virtual data centers

Punts shiny new server racks too

In a normal time - say, like last year before the economic meltdown - server maker Dell would have probably just shelled out a bunch of cash and acquired Future Facilities, a maker of 3D data center simulation and design tools. But this is not a normal time, and cash is king. So, today, Dell is instead announcing a partnership …

Servers 4 Mar 06:02
Gigabyte unveils touch-sensitive, twistable netbooks

Quartet of Atom-based tablets shown off

Gigabyte has launched a four-strong range of netbooks with twistable, tablet-style touchscreens. Gigabyte's netbook, with a twist Images courtesy of SlashGear The machines were unveiled by the firm at the ongoing CeBit show in Germany where, according to various online reports, Gigabyte said the M1028M and M1028G models of …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 08:41
Butt-based watch UI uncovered

Gentlemen, sit your watches

Let’s face it, many of us spend most of the day sitting down. So a designer’s drawn up plans for a watch that tells the time according to sitting time zones. Cycle Life: tells the time according to where your bum's placed Andy Kurovet’s Cycle Life concept has four rump-resting locations: Car, PC, Car and TV. Car is the …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 08:48
San Diego F-18 crash deaths 'avoidable'

Mechanical failure and human error led to tragedy

The F/A-18D Hornet crash which last December claimed four lives after the aircraft came down in a suburb of San Diego was "avoidable", the BBC reports. The Hornet - reportedly piloted by Lt Dan Neubauer of Marine Corps Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 - was on a training flight from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln …

Science 4 Mar 09:53
Live security webcast: 3pm GMT today

Regcast Your questions, expertly answered

Our expert panel take to the studio at 3pm GMT today to tackle the topic of Security for mid-sized businesses, in our latest live, free and fully interactive webcast. Join in from the comfort of your desk as the panel considers the business drivers and constraints of medium-sized organisations, before examining the effect of …

Tech Panel 4 Mar 09:57
Portuguese open sourcers decry MS-only gov eProcurement

Running Linux? Want to tender? Forget it

Portuguese open sourcers are a bit miffed that a government "eProcurement" platform offers "conditioned access to bid at a public tender", viz: If you're not running Microsoft software you're not tendering for anything. That's according to the Associação de Empresas de Software Open Source Portuguesas, aka ESOP, which claims …

Operating Systems 4 Mar 10:39
HP plays the Fusion-io card

Comment A solid state of mind - for now?

HP has plunged into the solid state drive storage pool by adding NAND flash-based IO Accelerator cards to its blade servers to speed up disk I/O. These are mezzanine cards which will plug into BladeSystem c-Class C3000 and C7000 blade servers and provide much faster access to data than using traditional hard drives. HP quotes …

Storage 4 Mar 10:50
Panasonic reveals dual-resolution camera

Shoot video at 1080p or 720p

Panasonic has expanded its Lumix camera line with a “creative HD hybrid” model able to shoot video at two different resolutions. Panasonic's Lumix GH1: shoots video at 1080p or 720p, at different frame rates The DMC-GH1 can capture “high resolution” video at 1080p, using a 24f/s frame rate, or “smooth” video at a higher …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 11:10
Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbook

Review The ThinkPad of laptots?

Ah, netbooks... everybody is making them - cue Psion lawyers - and everyone wants one. Yet despite the stiff competition, Acer and Asus combined own around 70 per cent of the market. So what are the rest of them doing so wrong? Not distinguishing themselves well enough, if the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e is anything to go by. Lenovo' …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 11:10
ITV to sell Friends Reunited, axe 600 jobs

Ad revs plummet

Broadcaster ITV is slashing 600 jobs and looking to sell its Friends Reunited and Scoot websites after reporting a net loss of £2.55bn last year. “Current conditions in the advertising market are the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years in UK broadcasting,” said chairman Michael Grade. “This is reflected both …

Financial News 4 Mar 11:19
MPs vote to keep addresses private (theirs, not yours)

Our house, in the middle of a street we're not about to reveal to you plebs

Members of Parliament have voted themselves the right to withhold their names and addresses from publication. Candidates at Parliamentary elections will get the same right. This is perhaps less surprising than it ought to have been. Last May, the High Court ruled in a Freedom of Information case that MPs' addresses should be …

Government 4 Mar 11:47
Government wastes £4.6m on mobile telly nonsense

Web2.0-twattery: Condom ads watched by almost no one

A £5m gov-backed mobile-video series designed to promote condom use among da yoof has met with a limp reception - in the two months since its launch the internet-based campaign has only managed 554 MySpace friends and 15 fans on Facebook. The project, entitled Thmbnls and with the strap line "Want Respect? Use a condom", is …

Mobile 4 Mar 11:51
Online bookie Bwin funding dodgy football website

Offside!

Online bookie Bwin is funding a website that links to unauthorised live internet broadcasts of Premier League and other football matches, according to a BBC Radio 4 investigation. myp2p.eu, which is based in The Netherlands, acts as a hub for online streams uploaded to the net by football fans around the world. While these …

Music and Media 4 Mar 12:03
Cut your desktop TCO with The Register

Exclusive Reg event for senior bods

If you are responsible for desktop environments in large organisations – more than 500/1000 desktop PCs – then we’ve got a treat for you. We're running a round table next Tuesday that shows how to reduce your Desktop TCO. And we've got four tickets left for this free-of-charge event, which we are running in a central London ( …

Tech Panel 4 Mar 12:17
Garmin walks out pedestrian-oriented satnavs

'Step left at the next corner'

Garmin has veered off of the road to launch two satnav series targeted at pedestrians. Garmin's Nüvi 1200 and 1300: walk, not drive The Nüvi 1200 and 1300 series – which together comprise eight models in all – are compatible with CityXplorer maps, which Garmin claimed offer “pedestrian navigation capability” for selected …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 12:28
ZTE promises world's first low-cost solar phone

Only 30 quid a pop?

Solar-powered gadgets, particularly mobile phones, were everywhere at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month. Now a Chinese firm’s unveiled a solar talker that’ll help save the Earth – but which won’t cost it either. ZTE's Coral 200 Solar: yours for 30 quid? Admittedly, most firms developing solar-powered phones, …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 12:34
Polish Spitfire shoots down BNP

Anti-immigration poster pic blunder

The British National Party has pulled off a bit of a blinder by fronting an anti-immigration campaign with a poster featuring a Spitfire belonging to 303 Squadron of the RAF - the "most effective Polish squadron during the Second World War", as the Telegraph puts it. A spokesperson at the Royal Air Force museum explained: "The …

Bootnotes 4 Mar 12:40
LG preps 8Mp Viewty successor

Popular cameraphone to be updated?

Reports are coming in that LG has designed a successor to its Viewty cameraphone. The new handset has already been unofficially dubbed the Viewty II. LG's GC900 could replace the existing Viewty Officially called the LG GC900, the phone’s specifications were captured by website New Mobile – which managed to snap a picture …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 12:41
Amazon's Kindle goes soft with iPhone app

LCD reading fun for the US

Amazon has extended the Kindle brand into software with an iPhone application, also available for the iPod Touch, replicating the electronic-book experience but without the electronic ink. The latest version of the Kindle was only launched last month, but Amazon recognises that not everyone is wowed by electronic ink and is …

Mobile 4 Mar 12:45
OLED-equipped 'open source' EV shown at Geneva Motor Show

'Leccy Tech Light Car in the flesh

Back in January, Reg Hardware reported on German auto-engineering company EDAG's plan to unveil at the Geneva Motor Show an electric vehicle with an OLED tail-gate, four in-wheel electric motors, user-definable OLED dashboard and basalt-fibre body panels. EDAG's Light Car: on stage at Geneva True to its word, EDAG this week …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 12:52
HP punts Officejet threesome at SMBs

One page after another

Hewlett-Packard has launched three new Officejet printers aimed at the small and medium business (SMB) market. The company is punting its HP Officejet Pro 8500 All-in-One series at customers in Western Europe from today, while Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa will have to wait for the product to land …

Small Biz 4 Mar 13:02
MPs told PGP 'incompatible' with Parliament network

Cryptographic conundrum

MPs have been told that although they are free to install PGP on their parliamentary machines the technology is not compatible with Parliament’s remote access software, making its use impractical. The curious response came from the House of Commons Commission via Lib Dem MP Nick Harvey in response to questions raised by …

Enterprise Security 4 Mar 13:05
Taiwan suggests suffering IT vendors try China, Africa and India

Cebit 09 No prospects in the US and Europe

Taiwan's IT cheerleader-in-chief claimed today the country's IT sector should come through the current financial crisis unscathed, if it can wean itself away from the cash-strapped consumers of the US and Europe. Peter Huang, executive vice president of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, admitted the country's …

Channel Register 4 Mar 13:23
Bloodhound supercar is 'recession beater', says promoter

Boob-squeezing boffins steal Richard Noble's show

Government plans to turn the UK's foundering financial-services-based economy into a high tech, engineering powerhouse were showcased today in London. The "Pioneers 09" expo was opened by Richard Noble, the man in charge of the new Bloodhound supersonic car project. However, there was also news of an even more inspiring …

Physics 4 Mar 13:32
Epson EH-DM2 projector with built-in DVD player

Review Only needs a mains connection?

Will users get carried away by Epson's EH-DM2 portable projector that features an integrated DVD player and audio output? Epson's EH-DM2: more Volvo than Ferrari First impressions are not good: this is not a curvy, sexy colour supplement-friendly machine. Think Volvo, rather than Ferrari. Yet if you're a movie buff who …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 14:02
US cops called to McDonalds menu cock-up

No McNuggets? Dial 911!

A Florida woman has earned herself an appearance before the beak on a misuse of 911 rap after calling cops three times to demand they rush to a McDonald's outlet and satisfy her lust for Chicken McNuggets. According to the Stuart News, 27-year-old Latreasa L Goodman, of Fort Pierce, ordered and paid for a delicious ten-piece …

Bootnotes 4 Mar 15:01
Acer promises Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone for €49

Cebit 09 'The market's changed in recent months...'

Acer unwrapped a quartet of smartphones at Cebit today, doubling its range just weeks after it unveiled its first wave of devices. The Taiwanese vendor's second set of handsets will all run Windows Mobile 6.5 and offer what it describes as full smartphone functionality, with the mandatory cameras and GPS. At the top of the …

Mobile 4 Mar 15:21
Eye-Fi launches Wi-Fi video upload SD

Picture upload app for iPhone also promised

Eye-Fi has launched an SD card able to support wireless video uploads onto the web, as promised. Eye-Fi's Share Video (left) can't geo-tag like the Explore Video (right) can The SD – of which there’s actually two variants – expands on the firm’s existing wireless SD card range, which allow users to wirelessly upload …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 15:37
EC retires the Microsoft watchdog

Monitoring trustee gets laid off

The European Commission has relaxed the requirements of the 2004 anti-trust order against Microsoft - the software giant no longer needs its behaviour watched by a full-time “monitoring trustee”. Brussels said it no longer needed a permanent observer to ensure Microsoft was obeying a European Union order to share technical …

Operating Systems 4 Mar 15:44
Opera lances 'extremely severe' jpg bug

Norwegian browser update guards against pillaging

Opera has published an update to its flagship browser software that addresses a raft of security bugs. The version 9.64 update, released Wednesday, fixes a flaw that means maliciously crafted JPEG images can cause Opera to crash in such a way that arbitrary code gets executed. Opera describes the flaw as "extremely severe", …

Malware 4 Mar 15:46
Asus cracks out of its shell with Air-esque Eee PC

Cebit 09 Slaps Eee moniker on PCs, storage, sticks...

Asus stuck with its beside-the-seaside theme this week when it unveiled its latest 10in Eee PC netbook, the 1008HA, at Cebit. Asus' Eee 1008HA: inspired by MacBook Air? The 1in-thick device weighs in at 1.1kg and has a 92 per cent scaled keyboad. Asus chairman Jonney Shih said the device took its inspiration from a seashell …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 15:53
Last day for anti-snooping petition

As ad companies promise not to break the law

An e-petition which asks Prime Minister Gordon Brown "to Stop ISP's from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies" is ending today. The petition has already collected just over 21,000 signatures. In other news several behavioural advertising firms including Google, Microsoft, NebuAd and Phorm have signed up to …

Telecoms 4 Mar 16:21
Huawei unwraps 21Mb/s HSDPA dongle

Sports retractable USB connector

Modem maker Huawei has introduced an HSDPA dongle with a slide-out USB connector. Not only that, but it supports monster download speeds The E182E supports HSDPA 3G data transfers of up to 21.6Mb/s - provided the network can manage it, of course. That's the downlink - upload speeds run to 5.76Mb/s, Huawei said. Huawei's …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 16:23
Asus unfolds dual-screen laptop/e-book reader

Cebit 09 Prototype display seen at CeBit

Two screens are better than one, aren’t they? The answer’s yes, at least according to Asus – developer of a dual-screen display shown off at the ongoing Cebit show in Germany this week. Asus' prototype dual-screen device Although still only a prototype, the Asus machine would have four main modes: laptop, e-book, cinema and …

Reg Hardware 4 Mar 17:12
German cops bust cybercrime forum

Trojan scammer trouncing

German police have arrested several members of a hacking forum linked to the distribution of Trojan horse software that infected 80,000 computers. The www.codesoft.cc messageboard was being abused by cybercrooks to exchange tips on ways to use malware and other means to create counterfeit credit cards, according to cybercops …

Malware 4 Mar 17:46
Spotify breach creates password hack risk

Radio ga-ga

Popular online music service Spotify has warned of a security breach that may have exposed user passwords and other sensitive data. A notice - posted on Wednesday - explains that a bug in Spotify's protocols that was recognised and resolved in December was more serious than first suspected. Last week Spotify learned that a …

Crime 4 Mar 17:49
Obama taps net neut for FCC post

Law school chums

As expected, President Barack Obama named former Harvard law classmate Julius Genachowski as the next chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission. And the net neuts are chuffed. Genachowski was Obama's chief technology adviser during his election campaign, and he helped pen the Barack Obama Technology and Innovation …

Government 4 Mar 18:59
AMD's former chip-making unit dubbed 'Globalfoundries'

'The Foundry Company' no more

AMD's former chip-making business is now "Globalfoundries." Well, technically, it's "GLOBALFOUNDRIES," but we don't play that capitalization jive. You'll remember Globalfoundries as Advance Micro Devices' debt-dependent semiconductor unit which the company spun out with ATIC, the investing arm of the government of Abu …

PCs & Chips 4 Mar 19:23
AMD teams with Intel chum on 40nm GPU shrink

TSMC gets around

AMD has announced two new graphics processors designed to provide DirectX 10.1 gaming and HD-video capability in low-power packages for laptops. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 and 4860 are the company's - and the world's - first processors manufactured on a 40nm process. And they're built in the fabs of TSMC, the Taiwanese …

PCs & Chips 4 Mar 19:50
Brit pair convicted for high-tech bank heist gone bad

Botched £229m USB stick plot

Two men have been convicted for trying to steal £229m from the London branch of a Japanese bank in an elaborate, high-tech scheme that would have been Britain's biggest bank heist. Hugh Rodley, 61, of Twyning, Tewksbury was found guilty in Snaresbrook crown court of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to transfer criminal …

Crime 4 Mar 20:23
Schwarzenegger delivers the goods for Cebit fans

You know he won't really be back

With Terminator Salvation lead actor Christian Bale losing it and the movie's director Joseph McGinty clashing with Warner Brothers for clipping scenes to make his film PG-13 instead of R, the time is ripe for the man who helped make the whole Terminator oeuvre such a success to step in, apply some cool Austrian logic, and bang …

Odds and Sods 4 Mar 20:42
NASA teams with Cisco to track carbon in 'near real-time'

New insights into climate change

Global climate science could get a kick in the pants with NASA's new pact with Cisco Systems to monitor and report carbon buildup across the world in "near real-time." The US space agency says it's teaming with Cisco to create a network of satellite-, airborne-, sea-, and land-based sensors to update Earth's environmental …

Environment 4 Mar 22:28
Microsoft courts enterprises with Windows 7

Take a look. We dare you

Microsoft has shifted focus from consumers and has begun targeting major enterprises mostly running Windows XP by telling them to prepare for Windows 7. The company's Windows team has advised enterprises to start testing and planning for Windows 7 now and to send Microsoft their feedback. "If you haven't been considering …

Operating Systems 4 Mar 22:32
HP babysits small biz servers

Zeros in on Europe with 0% financing

Hewlett-Packard can't afford to have small and medium businesses become deer in the headlights of the economic meltdown. And so, the company is starting to kick out deals and services to make it easier for SMBs to acquire its servers and storage despite the uncertain business climate. Today, HP rolled out a babysitting service …

Small Biz 4 Mar 23:02