9th March 2009 Archive

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Getac fires out rugged PDA

Well 'ard...

Mountainsides aren’t the best places to hold meetings, but if you find yourself stranded on one and late for work then you’d better hope you’ve got Getac’s new ruggedised PDA with you. Getac's PS535F: ultra-hard PDA The “fully rugged” PS535F is based on Windows Mobile 6.1 and features GPS, an altimeter and “E-compass”. …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 00:02
Intel 'Nehalem' Xeons poised for March 31 launch

IT managers, start your checkbooks

Chip maker Intel has been dropping hints like water balloons from the rooftops that its "Nehalem" Xeon EP processors for two-socket servers will arriv before the end of the quarter. And it looks like the chips will finally fall where they may on March 31. As it turns out, Intel and x64 server maker Sun Microsystems - Intel's …

PCs & Chips 9 Mar 02:40
Ofcom plots out wireless mic future

Redefine and reduce, then turn digital

Last month, ITV sold off its 70 per cent share of JFMG, the organisation that manages spectrum used for programme making and special events. But at the same time, Ofcom published research into the future of PMSE, concerned largely with how to get rid of it. PMSE users currently lurk between the analogue TV channels, supplying …

Wireless 9 Mar 03:26
Oracle reaches for Virtual Iron

Virtualisation platform bulk-up

Speculation is growing that Oracle is close to acquiring Virtual Iron. Virtual Iron is a server virtualisation vendor startup for small and medium enterprises. It uses the Xen hypervisor, providing equivalent functionality to VMware bit at lower cost. It is generally reckoned to be number five in the server virtualisation …

Virtualization 9 Mar 03:32
EuroMidEastAfrica server biz tumbles

20.6% rev drop

Last week, the box counters at Gartner put out their report on server shipments and revenues globally in the fourth quarter of 2008, and now, they want to drill down a bit for the EMEA region. Gartner believes that customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa bought 704,830 servers of all types and stripes in the final …

Servers 9 Mar 03:38
Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie

Fail and You Get out the shotguns

Last week, Eric Schmidt ran his mouth off again at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco. Schmidt commented that one of the new business models in the pipe for internet businesses is giving out free or subsidized computers to users and stacking paper on the ad revenue. He didn't actually say that this is …

PCs & Chips 9 Mar 05:40
IBM has lousy disk storage quarter

IDC report shows 22.7% revenue drop

IDC's latest disk storage market tracker report fingers IBM as the big loser, dropping 22.7 per cent from Q4 last year compared to Q4 07 in total disk storage systems factory revenue. Total external disk systems factory revenues declined 0.5 per cent year-on-year (y-on-y) to $5.3bn, while the total of all disk storage system's …

Storage 9 Mar 07:02
Big biz slams brakes on new domains

The Cornish will just have to wait

ICANN has bowed to pressure from big business to push back the launch of new internet domains over fears of wholesale cybersquatting. The decision means domains such as “.shop”, “.music” or even “.google” and “.london”, would be unlikely to see the light of day until late next year at the earliest. The board of the internet …

Telecoms 9 Mar 10:17
Zhao 'C' - Chinese police computer says no

Left field 'Left Crescent' left nameless

A Chinese student who for 22 years happily carried the name Zhao C (Zhao "Left Crescent") fell foul of the powers that be when he came to get a new "second generation" ID card at his local Public Security Bureau (PSB) - police informed him "it was technically not possible to put English letters in names and told him to get a new …

Bootnotes 9 Mar 10:25
Falconstor/Sun wins speediest dedupe race

Comment: So who's suffering from ingestion?

The fastest deduplication on the planet is performed by an 8-node Sun cluster using Falconstor deduplication software, according to a vendor-neutral comparison. Backup expert W Curtis Preston has compared the deduplication performance of different vendors' products. He uses suppliers' own performance numbers and disregards …

Storage 9 Mar 11:00
Tiscali shares suspended on titsup fears

Italian group goes cap in hand to bankers

Shares in Tiscali have been suspended on the Italian stock exchange after tumbling almost 50 per cent this morning on news it failed to meet a debt repayment. The group - whose UK ISP brands include Tiscali, Pipex, Freedom2Surf and Nildram - said over the weekend it would try to renegotiate its loan agreements. Tiscali owes …

Telecoms 9 Mar 11:02
Jobless Brits face influx of foreign IT workers

3.2m unemployed in 2010 says employers group

Small business organisation the British Chamber of Commerce has increased its predicted unemployment figures - it expects 3.2m people in the UK to be looking for work in the second half of next year - or just over ten per cent of the workforce. The BCC said the situation for small business had grown significantly worse than …

Small Biz 9 Mar 11:11
Twitter users hit by smut spam hack attack

Wasn't Britney's four foot vagina warning enough...

Poor beseiged Twitter users were hit by a new series of attacks on Friday. Subscribers to the popular micro-blogging site received malicious messages from compromised accounts inviting them to visit a pornographic website. The messages, which posed as tweets, tried to tempt users into visiting a site called chatwebcamfree.com …

ID 9 Mar 11:21
Orange and Barclaycard partner on touchless pay-by-phone tech

Sony goes alone e-payment TV remote

The death knell for physical cash payments has sounded once again, this time following an agreement between Orange and Barclaycard to co-develop contact-less payment services for mobile phones. Orange and Barclaycard will co-develop NFC tech The duo will launch co-branded contactless payment products and services based on …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 11:28
Magna boils up EV kit for car makers

'Leccy Tech You spec it, we build it, you badge it

As the major car manufacturers slowly get to grips with the electric – or hydrogen – powered future of personal transport, a number of smaller, more dexterous automotive engineering firms are presenting their views of the way forward. Magna-Steyr's Mila: the concept... A classic example is Canadian company Magna …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 11:46
Google Docs suffers serious security lapse

Cloudbusting bug shares documents

Google confessed to a serious bug in its Docs sharing system over the weekend, but downplayed the security cockup by claiming only a tiny number of users had been affected. The internet search kingpin said that less than 0.05 per cent of Google Docs accounts were hit by a privacy breach after documents were shared “ …

Applications 9 Mar 11:53
Boffin unveils facial expression-controlled iPod

Total winker?

A cute girl winking at you on the bus may soon, unfortunately, no longer be a sign that she’s hot for you. Why? Because she might just be controlling her iPod. That’s because Kazuhiro Taniguchi, from the Osaka University in Tokyo, has designed a gadget able to control an MP3 player using pre-defined facial expressions. Ear …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 11:56
Discovery ISS gig go for Wednesday

No problem with shuttle's hydrogen flow control valves

NASA has given a green light to Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station following a review of a potentially troublesome hydrogen flow control valve. The shuttle will blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 9:20 pm EDT on Wednesday (01:20 GMT Thursday). Discovery's launch was previously knocked back …

Space 9 Mar 11:57
Asus adds dual-core Atom to Eee desktop

Eee Box B208 sneaks out with... er... Vista

Asus has added Intel's desktop-oriented dual-core Atom chip, the 1.6GHz 330, to its Eee Box line of compact PCs - and given it Windows Vista to chew on. Like the other members of the Eee Box family, the B208, still uses some mobile components - its 1GB of DDR 2 memory comes on a latop-oriented SO-Dimm, for instance. The …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 12:14
Pentax Optio P70

Review Nice face, shame about the snaps

Everything about the Pentax Optio P70 suggests fun. It’s got an ultra-thin, sleek design, is available in several colours - our review sample came in a rather fetching marine blue - and is crammed with features designed to make digital photography a hassle-free experience, including face recognition, smile detection and enough …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 12:26
Microsoft Mixes it in Vegas with Silverlight, Azure and IE 8

Radio Reg Sticker shock, Safari love

What do you call a man with a Windows Home Server sticker on his forehead? Steve Ballmer. Microsoft's chief executive recently slapped on the logo and delivered a fine performance for Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) in Redmond, Washington, with talk of Silverlight and Windows 7. Ballmer was big on motivational ”vision” but …

Microbite 9 Mar 12:27
LaCie releases USB keys that... er... look like keys

Don't mock this lock

Some people refer to USB Flash drives as USB keys. The folk at LaCie certainly do - and have released a trio of key-shaped Flash drives in the hope everyone else will too. LaCie's keys: daft? The basic models are the itsaKey and iamaKey, both of which come in capacities of up to 8GB. Their sibling, the PassKey, adds a Micro …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 12:50
Straw bends on Coroners & Justice data-sharing proposals

Comment Legislation dropped - but are proposals really dead?

Justice Minister Jack Straw has bowed to the inevitable and announced the withdrawal of provisions for data-sharing from the Coroners’ and Justice Bill, presently before parliament. This occured at some point in the last seven days. Lack of a precise date for this act of Ministerial euthanasia may be attributed to the lack of …

Government 9 Mar 12:53
Cebit 09 too dead to trash says Greenpeace

Cebit 09 But Schwarzenegger says he'll be back

Cebit organisers underlined the crisis facing the IT industry this morning when they claimed last week's IT extravaganza had gotten off to a "powerful start and ended on a successful note, boosting optimism in the world ICT industry". This despite the fact that the number of visitors was down 20 per cent to 400,000 and the …

Financial News 9 Mar 12:59
Daily Telegraph hit by SQL hack attack

Middle England pwned

Vulnerabilities on a Daily Telegraph website have been exposed by serial grey-hat hacker Unu. In a posting on the hackersblog site Unu outlines a number of SQL injection security weaknesses on the newspaper's website. The entry, which includes screenshots to substantiate the claim, claims that subscriber email addresses were …

Enterprise Security 9 Mar 13:05
Designer BMW PC unveiled

Firm takes top down on engine-like PC

Top Gear’s Cool Wall already features several BMWs. But the what’s hot and what’s not display could soon feature a new model entirely: the BMW PC. Nope, you’re not reading a ‘Leccy Tech story here. Instead of PC standing for Petrol Carburettor, the BMW PC is exactly as it sounds: a futuristic Personal Computer created in …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 13:13
Swedish police claim massive anti-piracy bust

Waiting in wings of Pirate Bay trial

Swedish police raided a location near Stockholm last month where computer equipment containing a huge bounty of alleged pirated material was seized by authorities. The raid was carried out on 9 February, but private copyright advocacy outfit Antpiratbyrån only revealed that the bust had taken place late on Friday. A server …

Music and Media 9 Mar 13:20
PC World cuts off Capita call centre contract

Insourcing is the new outsourcing

PC World owner DSGi has decided not to renew its call centre outsourcing contract with Capita and will instead bring 1,300 staff back in house. Call centres in Sheffield and Nottingham will return to the DSGi fold on September 2. The original contract, signed in 2004, is due to finish during April. The pair have signed a six …

Channel Register 9 Mar 13:44
Gamers risk early graves, claims advert

Health groups warn against inactive lifestyle

Young gamers have been targeted by a healthy lifestyle advertising campaign that implicitly connects videogaming with early death. Charities the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK, in partnership with the government, have published an ad that carries the headline “Risk an early death, just do nothing …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 13:46
Ombudsman probes European Commission over late payments

EC does all it can to support SMEs - except pay them

The European Ombudsman has kicked off an investigation into the European Commission's habit of not paying its suppliers in a timely manner. P Nikiforos Diamandouros's investigation into the Commission's tendency to bend the cash/time continuum comes as the Commission continues its own efforts to support European firms through …

Small Biz 9 Mar 14:47
Gov launches 'Healthy Bees' plan

Calling all apiarists...

Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government today announced a ten-year "Healthy Bees" plan to combat the serious decline in honeybee numbers. The main thrust of the plan - formulated following a public consultation - is to "sustain honeybee populations by supporting beekeepers to ensure effective biosecurity measures are adopted …

Biology 9 Mar 14:58
Wattpad furnishes iPhone with bootleg books for bupkes

Pirate-lit sets sail

The literato's Pirate Bay, Wattpad, has reached the iPhone and iPod Touch, offering community scribblings and copyrighted material through an Apple-sanctioned client. While iPhone owners who want to pay for electronic reading material can install Amazon's Kindle service or the Stanza, those who prefer to avoid paying for books …

Mobile 9 Mar 15:17
IBM boasts of full 8Gb Fibre Channel for blades

From blade to SAN and back again

IBM is making the rounds this week talking up a new 8 Gb Fibre Channel daughter cards for its BladeCenter blade servers, saying that it is the only blade maker that can deliver 8 Gb performance all the way out to the storage area network. The company this week will begin reselling a new 8 GB/sec Fibre Channel daughter card for …

Channel Register 9 Mar 15:25
Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite to be pulled from console line-up?

Will become basis for game-themed editions instead, it's claimed

Microsoft’s flagship Xbox 360 – the Elite – could soon be canned and replaced with limited-edition models linked to game launches, it has emerged. The firm will, it's claimed, stop taking orders for the Elite during Q2 so that existing stocks of the top-of-the-range console can begin to shrink, according to sources speaking to …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 15:30
Republican e-chief exits, denounces 'blog-flogging simpletons'

Must program harder

The former Microsoft and Yahoo! exec who helped take the US Republican party online has quit saying the party must out-program its rivals. Cyrus Krohn did not give reasons for his exit, but blamed "more than a software glitch" for the party's defeat during the US presidential elections to the Democrats and Barrack Obama. …

Government 9 Mar 15:40
Vista to XP 'downgrade' lawsuit revised

Microsoft accused of plumping up Vista sales

A US woman who is suing Microsoft for allegedly charging her extra to downgrade from Windows Vista to XP had the lawsuit revised late last week. Emma Alvarado of Los Angeles, California amended her complaint at the Seattle federal court last Thursday. She repeated her charges, first filed on 11 February, in which Alvarado …

Channel Register 9 Mar 16:15
Scottish hospitals laid low by malware infection

Worm causes appointment bother

Appointments for cancer patients had to be rescheduled after a computer virus infected the networking systems at two Scottish hospitals last week. The infection of laboratory PCs at the Stobhill and Gartnavel General hospitals meant the bookings of 12 patients attending the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Care Centre in …

Malware 9 Mar 16:29
3D TV by Christmas, hints Sky

The Queen's Speech... stereoscopically?

Sky subscribers could be treated to 3D TV this coming Christmas, the broadcaster has said. The firm’s Chief Engineer, Chris Johns, said that there’s the possibility that homes could “see 3D” by the end of the year and it’s aiming to “build a content library over the coming year”. Sky’s already claimed to have successfully …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 16:46
Hyundai confirms watchphone

Video calls not supported

Hyundai’s known for its cars, but surprised us all by launching headfirst into the mobile phone market. Now, however, the firm’s confirmed plans to make a watch. Hyundai's MB-910: it's a watch... and a mobile phone The MB-910 is more of a natural progression for Hyundai though, because the timepiece is actually a tri-band …

Reg Hardware 9 Mar 17:03
US cybersecurity chief quits over NSA power grab

A threat to democracy

The US government's cybersecurity chief abruptly quit last week amid allegations his office was woefully underfunded and unduly controlled by the country's ultra-secretive National Security Agency. Rod Beckstrom was named last year to head the NCSC, or National Cybersecurity Center, an office within the Department of Homeland …

Government 9 Mar 18:27
Microsoft's Turner: Yahoo! search deal, but no acquisition

Woos new CEO

Microsoft's courting Yahoo! over a possible search deal, although acquisition seems off the table. Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, told The Times of London a deal would make economic sense to both parties. Turner's focus, though, was on an ads deal rather than acquisition, which his boss - chief executive …

Music and Media 9 Mar 18:44
Taiwan supplier fingered in Apple touch-screen netbook rumor

Newton rising from the grave?

A touch-screen netbook from Apple is coming later this year, according to a report by an Asian industry-watching website. We believe that the truth may be more interesting than the rumor. Taiwan's DigiTimes reports that the Chinese-language daily Commercial Times has said that Wintek, a Taiwanese manufacturer of flat-panel …

PCs & Chips 9 Mar 18:48
FoxIT update defends against PDF peril

Not just an Adobe problem

It's not only Adobe Reader that needs patching against maliciously constructed PDF files. Targeted attacks against an unpatched flaw in Adobe Reader over recent weeks has stimulated interest in alternative PDF viewers, such as FoxIT. However FoxIT is also vulnerable to the same type of threat, promoting the release of a …

Malware 9 Mar 19:28
IBM not worried about Cisco blades

Or HP's leading blade share

If there's one thing IBM doesn't need right now, it's another competitor jumping into the blade server market. Too bad. Networking giant Cisco Systems wants a bigger bite of the data center budget at exactly the same time that Hewlett-Packard has been ramping up its blade sales and Dell and Sun Microsystems are getting some …

Servers 9 Mar 19:30
Social networking and blogs more popular than email

Old-timers love Facebook, Nielsen says

More people visit social networking sites or blogs than use web-based email, according to a new study by Nielsen Online. The media bean counter claims over two-thirds of the world's population frequent what it calls "member communities," which includes both social network and blogging sites. Member communities make up the …

Music and Media 9 Mar 20:11
Boffins breed new programming race

ETech Everyone's a coder

Does the world need more programmers? Of course, it does, says Jay Silver. Everyone should be a programmer. That's not to say everyone should make their living as some sort of ponytail-ed, Python-obsessed shut-in. But just as everyone should know how to write, everyone should know how to program. And that's the computing …

Developer 9 Mar 20:32
Feds file new felonies against alleged Palin hacker

Circular reasoning straightened out

A University of Tennessee student accused of illegally breaking into the email account of Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been hit with three new felony charges in connection with the case. David Kernell on Monday pleaded not guilty to the new charges, which include fraud, unlawful electronic transmission of material outside …

Crime 9 Mar 22:05
YouTube blocks music videos in UK

Content yanksploitation against royalty collectors

YouTube is blocking most of its music videos from UK viewers after negotiations with British royalty collectors turned sour. The Performing Rights Society (PRS) for Music, a group representing artists and publishers, and YouTube both blame each other entirely for the impasse, of course. Patrick Walker, YouTube's top pact- …

Music and Media 9 Mar 22:55