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10th March 2009 Archive

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  • Mobile companies unite on Apple - Google threat

    Eclipse offers sliver of light

    When it comes to easing the pain of building applications for developers that target different mobile devices, many have come with supposed remedies and many have either disappeared or helped make things worse. Now it's the turn of Eclipse, more famous for its work on servers and desktops - only the open-source foundation …

    Developer 10 Mar 2009, 04:02

  • Inside the world's greatest TV remote

    ETech Fun with microcontrollers

    The world's most desirable TV remote was a year and a half in the making. Mitch Altman's TV-B-Gone is what you might call a single function remote. You point it at almost any television, and the TV turns off. It's a must for anyone who prefers the days when people actually spoke to each other when out for dinner. Though the …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 05:22

  • HP sweet talks the hand that feeds IT

    Now is the time to spend (on us)

    These days, no IT vendor seems to be capable of doing a plain, old-fashioned product launch. And now, with Hewlett-Packard owning Electronic Data Systems and giving IBM a run for the product and services money in the data centers of the world, it seems like everything has to have a services angle. Hardware gets cheaper and …

    Servers 10 Mar 2009, 05:56

  • Seagate revs up SATA speed

    Keep up at the back

    Seagate and AMD have demonstrated a 6Gbit/s link between SATA disks and a server, double the speed of the current SATA 2 spec and the same as the fastest SAS speed. The justification for the faster speed is to try and keep up with the accelerating growth in capacity - and cache capacity - of SATA disks, now at the 2TB level …

    Storage 10 Mar 2009, 07:02

  • Nokia sweetens juice-monitor app

    Data rates, signal strength and RAM, oh my!

    Forum Nokia's very-useful-to-a-select-minority power usage logger has been expanded to log a load more system states, which should equally expand the interested market for the app. Nokia's Energy Profiler, an application that monitors and logs the power consumed on a S60 FP1+ device, has been updated. Version 1.2 can now log …

    Mobile 10 Mar 2009, 08:02

  • Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C510

    Review Who says Cyber-shots have to be high end?

    Like the rest of the mobile big boys, Sony Ericsson has been upping its cameraphone firepower, with top-of-the-range, multi-megapixel sharpshooters like the 8.1Mp C905 and the forthcoming 12Mp Idou flying the flag for its photo-centric Cyber-shot line-up. Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot C510: a nicely proportioned, slimline …

    Phones 10 Mar 2009, 09:02

  • Computacenter grows revenues as profits fall

    Blames the French

    Computacenter pre-tax profits are down slightly for 2008 but revenues grew 7.6 per cent to £2.56bn. For the year ended 31 December 2008 Computacenter saw profit before tax fall 6 per cent to £39.5m. Chief executive Mike Norris said it was impossible to draw many conclusions for the year ahead until the company had completed …

    The Channel 10 Mar 2009, 09:31

  • Oz bloke in underpants wrestles 'lunatic ninja' roo

    When Skippys attack

    An Australian man's missus has branded him a "hero" after he tackled a "lunatic ninja" kangaroo which rampaged through their home on the outskirts of Canberra, the BBC reports. Beat Ettlin, 42, intially sought refuge under the bedcovers with wife Verity Beman and their daughter after the roo crashed through their bedroom …

    Bootnotes 10 Mar 2009, 09:34

  • Motion-powered phone en route

    Stores kinetic energy

    Posh Swiss watch firm Ulysse Nardin (UN) has announced plans to launch a mobile phone that’s able to draw its power from its owner. Ulysse Nardin's Chairman: powered by kinetic energy That’s because the Chairman phone has a UN-designed kinetic rotor embedded into its rear that’ll pump power through to a back-up battery each …

    Phones 10 Mar 2009, 09:55

  • Isilon adds faster clustered file storage

    Deduping nearline storage too

    Isilon has souped up its mainstream clustered NAS product and introduced a transactional IO product with SAS disks plus a lower-cost archive model with optional Ocarina deduping. Isilon has made its name with scale-out network-attached storage (NAS) X-Series products which scale to 2.3PB with 96 nodes clustered across …

    Storage 10 Mar 2009, 10:04

  • No welcome in the valleys for Welsh incinerator

    Locals oppose £400m 'dirty stinking scheme'

    Local residents are determined to battle a plan to build a giant £400m "Energy-from-Waste" facility in Merthyr, capable of incinerating all of Wales's non-recyclable waste. The proposed plant will, operator Covanta said, represent Wales's "biggest inward investment for years", creating 500 construction jobs and 100 permanent …

    Science 10 Mar 2009, 10:22

  • UK IT should 'fire men first', says Kate Craig-Wood

    Expensive blokes' jobs should be gendersourced

    Famed skydiving hosting-biz queenpin Kate Craig-Wood has called for IT companies hit by the recession to fire male employees before female ones, as men are - she says - paid more to do the same jobs. “In the IT industry women earn a massive 23 per cent less than male counterparts, despite being equally capable,” says Craig- …

    Small Biz 10 Mar 2009, 10:23

  • HP tells us all about EVA

    Fasten your seatbelts

    HP has finally revised its mid-range mainstream EVA arrays with EVA6400 and 8400 models featuring more capacity and solid state drive (SSD) support. It has also announced an enhanced SAN Virtualization Services Platform supporting more multi-vendor SAN systems. The EVA6400 updates and replaces the existing EVA6100 with the …

    Storage 10 Mar 2009, 11:08

  • Royal Mail disses runaway post van man

    Injured have-a-go hero 'victim of his own misfortune'

    The Royal Mail has taken a less than grateful attitude towards a Bristol man who prevented a runaway post van "careering over a busy main road", as the Times puts it. Dad of two and artist Robert Moore, 63, spotted the Transit rolling backwards after the driver forgot to apply the handbrake, in an incident last September. He …

    Bootnotes 10 Mar 2009, 11:21

  • Google's cloud bursts yet again

    Scattered outages for Gmail users

    Google has admitted that some Gmail users cannot currently access their email just weeks after the company suffered a major outage following a technical cockup at one of its European data centres. It confirmed that a “small subset of users” have been affected by the latest downtime, but didn’t provide a definitive number and …

    Applications 10 Mar 2009, 11:41

  • MEPs flatten roaming costs

    Cheaper calling next year, probably

    The EU's Industry Committee has voted to agree the Commission's proposed cap on calls home of €.40 a minute, and €.11 for text messages, but has undercut the Commission in asking for per-second billing and data rates of €.50/MB wholesale. The Industry Committee is made up of MEPs, and it is the Committee that takes …

    Mobile 10 Mar 2009, 11:44

  • Russian politician: 'My assistant started Estonian cyberwar'

    Dubious DDoS lols

    A junior Russian politician has admitted that a Russian government official might have played some part in the infamous cyberattacks against Estonia two years ago - sort of. Comments by Sergei Markov, a State Duma deputy from the Putin's Unified Russia party, on a cybercrime panel may have been intended as a joke. Nonetheless …

    Security 10 Mar 2009, 11:49

  • Samsung spells out alphabet touch-phones

    Swipe A to open messaging or B to start the camera

    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it - so goes the old saying. But Samsung clearly thought something’s up with existing methods for unlocking phone screens, because it’s launched two handsets with 26 different unlocking combinations. Samsung's S5600: unlocks and opens apps using gestures The S5600 and S5230 both sport Gesture …

    Phones 10 Mar 2009, 12:02

  • Dell launches well 'ard laptop

    With tank-like armour plating

    The workplace sometimes resembles a warzone, so if you’re going to survive you need a laptop with Ballistic Armour Protection – at least according to Dell. Dell's Latitude E6400 XFR: has a Ballistic Armour Protection shell The PC giant’s latest rugged laptop – the Latitude E6400 XFR – can rise to “the challenges you face …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 12:14

  • Ingram ups small biz credit

    Money meets mouth

    Ingram Micro's Europe arm is offering more credit to its small business customers - even offering to move pre-payment customers onto credit accounts. The distie said the economic crisis was making it difficult for small business to get credit from banks or from disties. Therefore Ingram is moving "a significant proportion" of …

    The Channel 10 Mar 2009, 12:18

  • Tata to release UK's first 'serious' electric car

    'Leccy Tech Looks like a real car not a G-Whizz

    Though lacking the glamour of some of the other electric cars shown at the Geneva Motor Show Tata Motors' Indica Vista EV may be the first that you will actually be able to drive because, if the mutterings around the Tata stand are to be believed, the car will be launched in Norway in September and be available to buy in major …

    Science 10 Mar 2009, 12:21

  • The world's best tech bike?

    A snip at just £20,000

    Some might think £20,000 is rather a lot to spend on a push bike, but what if we told you it’s been reportedly dubbed one of the world’s most advanced bikes and that it features a host of electronic gizmos? Beru f1 Systems' Factor 001: has an on-board computer and GPS Image courtesy of Gizmag Although the Factor 001’s …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 12:32

  • Boffins build 'slow glass' light-trapping nanodoughnut

    Exciton in tight ring = fast photonic computing?

    Warwickshire boffins believe they may be on the track of science-fiction "slow glass", through which light might take a long time to travel. The scientists think that such light-storing materials might be fashioned using excitons mounted inside unfeasibly tiny "quantum doughnuts". In essence it seems that an exciton is an …

    Science 10 Mar 2009, 12:35

  • Government rejects call to limit insolvency firms' fees

    Don't soak the liquidators

    Minister for Employment Regulations Pat McFadden yesterday rejected calls to set controls on how much administrators can charge when a company goes into liquidation. MP Gordon Banks called for the minister to set maximum limits and reduce fees charged by administrators and receivers handling company collapses. Fees are worked …

    Small Biz 10 Mar 2009, 12:55

  • Apple 17in MacBook Pro

    Review How much battery life? How big a price tag?

    When Apple overhauled its laptop range towards the end of 2008, the 17in version of the MacBook Pro got the short end of the stick. While both the consumer-oriented 13in MacBook and the more expensive 15in MacBook Pro were revamped with Apple’s new ‘unibody’ aluminium design, the 17in model was left with the same ‘titanium’ …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 13:02

  • DNA database includes nipper and nonagenarian

    The seven ages of man according to Smith

    Jacqui Smith yesterday showed how the DNA database presents a truly wideview snapshot of Britain when she revealed the youngest subject on the database is under one year while the oldest is over 90. Smith revealed the data in an answer to a question from Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne. She said, “As at 26 November 2008, the youngest …

    Government 10 Mar 2009, 13:02

  • A Geeks Guide2 ...Sybex Study Guides

    Site offer 40% off at Reg Books

    Geeks Guide2 We read it in the papers everyday that people need to reskill, retrain, update their certifications et cetera. The truth is we already know. Do they really think we crave to be unemployable? The problem for most of us is that to retrain or update our skills costs money, a lot of it too, especially if you are looking …

    Site News 10 Mar 2009, 13:19

  • UK gov gets twitchy on Google feature creep

    Comment Less lassitude on Latitude please

    Google was the target of MPs' ire yesterday as four of them signed an Early Day Motion expressing concern about the chocolate factory's latest feature, one that allows willing subjects to be tracked through their phones. Google's Latitude is a feature of Mobile Maps, and allows one to share one's location with selected friends …

    Mobile 10 Mar 2009, 13:26

  • Eset false alarm puts system files on remand

    Kryptik cock-up

    Slovakian anti-virus firm Eset has confirmed that a misfiring virus definition update wrongly labelled Windows system files as infected with malware. As a result of the dodgy definition key files were identified as a virus and shuffled off into quarantine. Eset said it spotted the problem within minutes and released a new …

    Security 10 Mar 2009, 13:29

  • Man punts 'prototype' iPhones on eBay

    A piece of history?

    The iPhone has been updated, with two new models of the phone popping up for sale online. One of the prototype iPhones running a beta OS Sound too good to be true? Well, sadly, it is, because the two models are actually – according to their eBay seller - “rare and collectable” examples of prototype iPhones. Only one of the …

    Phones 10 Mar 2009, 13:31

  • No investigation after malware is found on parliamentary PC

    Hill to climb for new e-crime unit

    Police did not investigate when Alun Michael MP reported a PC in his office was attacked with malware, the former minister has revealed. Michael, a tech-savvy parliamentarian, was able to detect and remove the malware himself, and described it as "a low level incident". He told The Register that he decided to report it to …

    Security 10 Mar 2009, 13:33

  • Silverlight and open-source Java love has its day

    Microsoft-blessed interop project delivers

    Microsoft's investment in interoperability between Silverlight and open-source Java has paid off. French IT company Soyatec has released Eclipse4SL under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 on SourceForge, and submitted it to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project. Eclipse4SL can be found here and here. Eclipse4SL is an …

    Developer 10 Mar 2009, 14:04

  • Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

    You carrying anything which might be on our secret list?

    Europe's stupid aeroplane security rules have received a public kicking from the European Community's Court of Justice, which ruled it is unfair to confiscate items from passengers if you don't tell them beforehand what they cannot carry onto planes. Regulations adopted in 2002 for standard items not permitted on board …

    Law 10 Mar 2009, 14:42

  • Drunk sorority girls quaff booze 'to impress boys'

    Prof: College chaps unimpressed by squiffy vixens

    Researchers say that American college girls drink heavily in order to get the attention of the opposite sex, but that this is backfiring as US college boys actually prefer a less boozy ladyfriend. "Women have steadily been drinking more and more over the last several decades," says Joseph LaBrie, psych prof at Loyola Marymount …

    Bootnotes 10 Mar 2009, 14:48

  • Cops foil Level 3 burglary

    Three charged after attempted London heist

    Three men have been charged following a break-in at a Level 3 datacentre in central London in the early hours of Monday morning. John Harrison, 31, of no fixed address and Darren May, 23, of Mansell Court in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, were both charged with burglary. Christopher Skutela, 27, of Haymerle Road, Peckham, was charged …

    Broadband 10 Mar 2009, 15:33

  • Microsoft notebook stand blows in

    Fan-powered cooling base

    Microsoft has launched a curvaceous notebook stand that’s as cool as it is comfortable. Microsoft's Notebook Cooling Base The Notebook Cooling Base has a fan integrated into its middle and an “efficient cooling channel”, which Microsoft claimed combine to prevent your machine from overheating. The 29mm thick base is …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 16:26

  • Homosexuality does for UK blue duck population

    'A lovely couple', admits downheartened bird warden

    A couple of male blue ducks have pretty well done for hopes that the species might propagate in the UK after eschewing the advances of a female in favour of some light boy-on-boy, the Telegraph reports. The pair of gay drakes - named Ben and Jerry - resisted the advances of female Cherry at Arundel Wetland Centre in West …

    Science 10 Mar 2009, 16:27

  • Firefox 3.1 morphs into Firefox 3.5

    Mozilla claims version switcheroo won't hurt ship date

    Mozilla has renamed the oft-delayed Firefox 3.1 to Firefox 3.5 and said a fourth beta of the browser is slated for a 14 April release. A possible name change has been batted around inside Mozilla Towers for several weeks, but the outfit finally confirmed the decision yesterday. “As recently proposed, the version number of the …

    Applications 10 Mar 2009, 17:07

  • Conspiracy theories fly around Norton forum 'Pifts' purge

    EXE phones home?

    Conspiracy theories are running rampant in the absence of a clear explanation of why Symantec deleted threads expressing concern about a file called pifts.exe from its Norton support forums. Many users running Norton Internet Protection began seeing a popup warning on Monday that a file called PIFTS.exe on their systems was …

    Security 10 Mar 2009, 17:13

  • Hynix to pay Rambus $379m in patent dispute

    Case ending just short of its tin anniversary

    A legal feud between Korean memory maker Hynix and the US patent peddler Rambus may be winding down after its eight-year tour of California's court system. Rambus on Tuesday has struck up a proposal for the court-ordered, compulsory royalties that Hynix must pay for infringing on the patent-holding firm's memory technologies …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 19:05

  • The long road to Reader and Flash security Nirvana

    Updated Critical Adobe updates not easy to come by

    Adobe on Tuesday patched a hole in its ubiquitous Acrobat Reader program that allows attackers to remotely install malware without requiring unsuspecting users to do anything more than browse to the wrong website. Real-world attacks targeting the vulnerability, which affects all versions of Reader, have been circulating for …

    Security 10 Mar 2009, 19:52

  • Microsoft promises 'first' relational cloud storage

    Policy U-turn adds SQL Server network protocol

    Microsoft has revealed a single, simple change for its cloud platform that should make full SQL-Server functionality available almost overnight this year. Microsoft said it will expose the Tabular Data System (TDS) protocol used in its popular SQL Server database as a service protocol in the online SQL Data Services (SDS) …

    Software 10 Mar 2009, 19:59

  • VMware takes EMC 'beyond virtual servers'

    The 21st century software mainframe

    Here's the no-brainer statement of the week: EMC says that it is not going to sell off its stake in virtualization juggernaut VMware. The disk storage maker and parent company of VMware is hosting its strategic forum for institutional investors - what we might call an analyst conference - in Boston this morning, and EMC's …

    Virtualization 10 Mar 2009, 20:38

  • Apple ogles location-based iPhone ads

    Patent app knows where you are

    Apple has filed for a patent on a location-based interface that can display ads and facilitate purchases over your iPhone or iPod touch while you're out shopping. The patent, "Graphical User Interface with Location-Specific Interface Elements," is designed to generate impulse buying and to ensure that purchases are made at …

    Mobile 10 Mar 2009, 20:43

  • TSMC shocks market with break-even claim

    Last minute Chinese save

    The world's largest chipmaker and a close partner with Intel and AMD had some shocking news for industry-watchers on Tuesday: business in the first quarter of 2009 will be better than they had originally estimated. According to a report on the Taiwanese trade website DigiTimes, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ( …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 21:26

  • Concerted Linux-netbook effort needed to beat Microsoft

    Zemlin: skin this cat with services

    When it comes to Linux netbooks, PC manufacturers should act more like cell-phone makers and telcos by selling customized and subsidized machines with online services. That's according to Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin who believes the Linux netbook market is not realizing its full potential, because those …

    Operating Systems 10 Mar 2009, 21:45

  • Stratus punts freebie VMware virt software

    Company feels your pain

    Times are tough out there, no doubt, and fault tolerant server maker Stratus Technologies feels your pain. That's why the company has decided to pay for a license to VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 Foundation Edition for customers who are buying its ftServer iron. Fault tolerant servers have never been cheap because they are …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 21:56

  • Craigslist boasts 95% drop in 'erotic services' listings

    Cracking down on classifieds of ill-repute

    With Chicago's sheriff accusing Craigslist of being one of America's top sources of prostitution, the online classified ad-broker has opened its books to illustrate what it calls "spectacular" reductions in the volume of "erotic services" listings. In a Monday blog post, Craiglist says implementing new verification policies in …

    Security 10 Mar 2009, 22:37

  • Linux-Lego man trumpets OSH revolution

    ETech Open source hardware 'ten years away'

    The brain behind Bug Labs' Lego-like Linux building blocks says we're on the verge of open-source hardware revolution. "[Open Source hardware] will happen. There's nothing stopping it," Bug Labs CEO and founder Peter Semmelhack told The Reg this morning after trumpeting the biz benefits of open-source hardware during a mini- …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 23:14

  • Nvidia seeks 'PC soul' software

    $5m could be yours

    Nvidia wants to give you between $0.5m to $5m (£0.36 to £3.6m), plus partner with you on marketing, development, distribution, and more. All you need to do is come up with great software that exploits the processing power of an Nvidia graphic processing unit (GPU). On Tuesday, Nvidia announced its new GPU Ventures Program and …

    Hardware 10 Mar 2009, 23:17

  • AOL starts swinging the axe

    'Important meeting' invite

    Sackings for AOL's workforce-decimation scheme have begun, according to a report at Silicon Alley Insider. AOL workers began receiving emails yesterday afternoon from management asking them to attend an "Important Meeting Tuesday" – predictably where the axe awaits. Time Warner's failing internet division expects to lay off …

    Financial News 10 Mar 2009, 23:25