18th March 2009 Archive

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iPhone chip designer trumpets multi-core GPUs

Multicore Expo Use your Imagination

Immersive gaming, photo-realistic graphics, and HD video will soon take a giant step off your desktop and into the palm of your hand with the arrival of a new line of multi-core GPUs aimed squarely at the mobile, handheld, and automotive markets. The new designs are from Imagination Technologies, a fabless chip designer …

PCs & Chips 18 Mar 03:19
Opera promises netbook and mobile Turbo boost

Graphics impact

Opera Software's browser-boosting Turbo technology has been released for limited testing, with a view to boosting the web experience on netbooks and mobile phones. The company claimed Opera Turbo could improve web surfing speeds by a factor of four. Opera Turbo does this by sending pages to the company's own servers first, …

Applications 18 Mar 03:42
Sun breaks through the clouds

Presque vu all over again

Server maker Sun Microsystems will today launch its third assault into utility-style computing. And if you find yourself having a flashback of sorts, it isn't you and all that brown acid you took at Berkeley. It's just the way it is in the modern computer business. Ask anyone in IT, except for maybe a few million CIOs and …

Servers 18 Mar 04:02
Rackable shrinks CloudRack cookie sheets

Pre-heat data center to 104 degrees...

Rackable Systems, one of the handful of niche server makers out there on the cutting edge of compute density and energy efficiency, will today upgrade its relatively new CloudRack line of "cookie sheet" servers. The original CloudRacks debuted back in October 2008. Rather than putting metal enclosures around the horizontal …

Servers 18 Mar 04:02
Mimosa mixes SharePoint, mail and files in one archive

Are customers making their mind up?

Email and file archiver Mimosa has added SharePoint archiving to its NearPoint product, meaning you can now protect, search and discover content in one aggregated mail, files and SharePoint archive. Mimosa's product strategy is to make NearPoint's archiving, data protection and eDiscovery features a platform on which it layers …

Channel Register 18 Mar 07:02
Discovery docks with ISS

No bat on board, sadly

Space shuttle Discovery yesterday docked with the International Space Station at 17:20 EDT (21:20 GMT), delivering the final solar arrays and associated truss segment to the orbiting outpost. The STS-119 mission crew, comprising Commander Lee Archambault, Pilot Tony Antonelli, Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, …

Space 18 Mar 07:43
Health trust pushing on with record sharing

Long-term sick targeted

West Kent Primary Care Trust is pushing ahead with a scheme which will give limited access to health records to nurses from Bupa despite privacy fears. But the Trust said it is following best practice privacy policy, and will stick with asking patients to opt out rather than opt in to the service. CareCall is a phone service …

Public Sector 18 Mar 08:02
Councils clamp down on Strategy Boutique Newspeak

The end of blue sky horizon scanning coterminosity

Free Whitepaper - Mainstreaming Process-Driven Holistic Governance The Local Government Association (LGA) has issued a jargon death list featuring 200 of the worst Strategy Boutique abuses of the English language which will in future be consigned to the dustbin of linguistic history. Among the outrages marked for proscription …

Bootnotes 18 Mar 09:45
ISS space bio-experiment freezer to return on Discovery

Superheroes and/or bizarre space pestilences assured

Consumer pundits have long speculated that we would one day - perhaps even by now - have intelligent fridges which could be remotely controlled and monitored from afar using advanced communications links. But they couldn't realise that these fridges would become crammed with possibly-deadly organisms warped by extraterrestrial …

Space 18 Mar 10:09
IBM 'in talks' to buy Sun Microsystems

Schwartz dives for cover in Big Blue

IBM has opened acquisition talks with Sun Microsystems, raising the prospect of a massive consolidation of the software, server and storage markets. According to the Wall Street Journal IBM has mooted a price of $6.5bn. Sun is currently capitalised at $3.7bn ($4.97/share), but its share price has persistently fallen since the …

Hardware 18 Mar 10:34
Juror tweets could force retrial

'Twit' doesn't quite cover it

A juror who published Twitter messages during the course of a trial has undermined the trial process and its verdict, lawyers have claimed while launching an appeal. The US juror told reporters he did not think posting the messages was wrong. An appeal has been lodged in an Arkansas court against a $12.6 million ruling against …

Law 18 Mar 10:38
Government flags ID cost increase

Passport slice shrinkage

The identity minister has indicated that passports will account for a smaller proportion of the national identity scheme's overall cost than previously stated. Meg Hillier told Parliament on 11 March 2009 that introducing and producing passports containing fingerprints will cost "about 70%" of the ten year budget of the …

Government 18 Mar 10:55
Aussie firewall blocks Wikileaks

What's that Skippy? There's bad stuff on the internet?

The Great Australian Firewall has claimed another victim - some pages of Wikileaks have been added to the blacklist of websites which Australians are not allowed to look at. The reason for the block is that Wikileaks published a list of websites banned by the Danish government. Australian websites which link to the pages face …

Government 18 Mar 10:56
World's first proper flying car makes debut flight

Here's your flying car

The Terrafugia Transition "roadable aircraft" - the nearest thing to a flying car yet built - has made its first test flight. Terrafugia says that the flight took place on March 5, and will hold a media briefing at 1430 UK time. Meanwhile pictures of the flight are available on the company's website. Now. Where's my robot/ …

Science 18 Mar 11:09
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS7

Review Stand-out performance?

The sub-£200 digital camera market is a cutthroat sector with big-name - and not so big name - companies launching a plethora of models that offer an impressive range of features and an even more impressive performance. In other words, if you want to be a winner, you’re going to have to offer something that’s just a little …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 11:49
Fujitsu moves colour e-reader to pre-order stage

Books, documents and presentations in colour

Move over Amazon, Fujitsu has begun taking pre-orders for what’s thought to be the world’s first e-book reader with a colour screen. Fujitsu's Flepia: for e-reading in colour Called Flepia, the device's screen has a 768 x 1024 resolution and is 2in larger than the 6in display found on Amazon’s recently launched Kindle 2. …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 11:58
Philips Xenium handset leaked

Cool design, with metal backing

Philips is to expand its Xenium phone range with a seemingly sexy new model: the X810. Philips' Xenium X810 Image courtesy of Mobil.cz Full specifications are still a little scarce, but several online reports have said the square-edged phone – which seems to have a brushed aluminium backing – sports a 240 x 400 touchscreen …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 12:14
Online video regulation structure outlined by Government

Ofcom steps up/sidesteps

Media regulator Ofcom will take over the regulation of video on demand services, but will delegate it to an industry-formulated co-regulator, the Government has said. The Government has published details of how it will ensure that the UK complies with the European Union's Audio-Visual Media Services (AVMS) Directive, which …

Music and Media 18 Mar 12:29
Rogue Aus sysadmin jailed over hacking spree

Drunken revenge backfires

A disgruntled contractor who hacked into government systems and deleted thousands of records in Australia's Northern Territories has been jailed for three years and four months. David Anthony McIntosh, 28, locked users out of IT systems at the Northern Territories' Health Department, Royal Darwin Hospital, Berrimah Prison and …

Crime 18 Mar 12:31
London stab murder rate entirely normal, says top stats prof

Media hysterics capital of the world

A top statistician has thrown a bucket of cold water on the stab murder media hysteria which has gripped the UK - and especially London - during the past year. Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, has just published a study on the subject in …

Policing 18 Mar 12:38
Dell pipelines Adamo netbook?

Support app points to 9in version

A smaller version of Dell’s swish Adamo designer laptop could be in the works, according to one of the firm’s own support documents. Is a 9in Adamo is the works at Dell's HQ? Image courtesy Engadget Adamo was officially launched yesterday as a 13.4in laptop, but a screen grab of what’s said to be a Dell support utility for …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 12:49
Sex offender email monitoring plan mothballed

UK.gov blames human rights judgment

A plan to require registered sex offenders to notify police of their email addresses and social networking identities has been shelved while the government battles a human rights judgment in the High Court, according to the Home Office. The measure was the centrepiece of a suite of announcements on child protection on and …

Law 18 Mar 12:50
Killzone 2 to drive XBox 360 owners to PS3, claims Sony

A game so good you'll be powerless to resist?

Killzone 2 on the PlayStation 3 will spur Xbox 360 gamers to sample Sony’s console, the consumer electronics giant reckons. Scott Steinberg, VP of Product Marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, told website GameDaily that the game – which launched in the UK late last month and is a "tremendous" PS3 exclusive – will …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 13:07
Minister confirms U-turn on data sharing

But zombie clause will return

Justice minister Michael Wills confirmed to Parliament yesterday that clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill to provide ministers with unlimited inter-department data sharing has been removed. The clauses were tacked onto an unrelated bill dealing with making certain inquests secret - this has also been amended and …

Government 18 Mar 13:11
Vodafone promises a response if you're really, really big

SLAs? Only if you're a multinational

Vodafone has published a standard set of response times for multinational customers, guaranteeing them a minimum level of service across 15 countries with the rest of the world to follow. Contracts with multinational companies generally have agreed levels of service, but Vodafone has made its guaranteed response times public …

Mobile 18 Mar 13:26
HP hits UK workers with canteen, car, pension cuts

Cuts in May

Hewlett-Packard and EDS employees in the UK who are currently bracing themselves for pay cuts can now expect to see food subsidies axed, a pension scheme shake-up and changes to their car allowances. HP told workers yesterday in a memo seen by The Register that prices in the company’s canteens would be jacked up, fewer meal …

Financial News 18 Mar 13:51
Linux netbook share to fall to 10% in 2009

Down from 70 per cent last year

After yesterday's claim that Linux is losing out to Windows XP as the netbook operating system of choice, here come some numbers - from a separate source - that show the shift more clearly. According to an unnamed Taiwanese market watcher cited by Chinese-language newspaper the Economic Daily News - all by way of local …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 14:17
Brit D-cell torpedo in icepack-bottom probe

Icebreaker crew landed with 4 tonnes of dead batteries

A British robot submarine has penetrated under the Western Antarctic ice shelves to a distance of 60km, plunging to depths greater than 1000m. The "Autosub", built by boffins in Southampton, was powered by tens of thousands of ordinary D-cell batteries during its forays beneath the ice. Autosub comes from the UK's National …

Environment 18 Mar 14:21
Apple plays catch-up with new iPhone features

Point the DeLorean at 1999!

Apple has announced the new iPhone features due for summer, including several the competition has only had for a decade or so. The upgrade will be free for iPhone owners, although those with an iPod touch will have to stump up another $10 to get to version 3. Anyone desperate to get their hands on the new features earlier …

Mobile 18 Mar 14:28
Minister admits thought crime is on the agenda

Oh George, you are a one

A short exchange in the Commons yesterday suggests that thought crime is now officially on the government’s agenda. Labour MP George Howarth had something of a triumph at the committee stage of the Coroners and Justice Bill, when he famously observed, of a drawing scrawled on a piece of paper: "If somebody is in the process of …

Government 18 Mar 14:38
Apple unit sales fall sharply

February a 'crummy month'

Sales of Macs sold through retail in the US fell just under 17 per cent in February compared to the same month last year. Stephen Baker, analyst at NPD, said: "They had a pretty crummy month. Some have noted that they had some tough year-to-year comparisons, but this is a little more concerning than just comparisons." Baker …

Channel Register 18 Mar 14:51
EMC fattens up flash drive second edition

Size matters

EMC has upped its Symmetrix DMX-4, Clariion and Celerra enterprise flash solid state drive capacities to 200GB and 400GB from the current 73GB maximum capacity. The higher capacity STEC SSDs are available for Symmetrix now and Clarion and Celerra later this year. When the Celerra upgrade was announced in late February, the …

Channel Register 18 Mar 14:53
BBC botnet 'public interest' defence rubbished by top IT lawyer

V for Vigilante

The BBC's argument that "public interest" justified its purchase and use of a botnet in a controversial experiment is little better than vigilantism, according to a top IT lawyer. BBC Click bought a botnet of 22,000 compromised machines in order to send spam to webmail addresses it set up, and to launch a denial of service …

Malware 18 Mar 15:39
Logitech launches laptop cooler

Keep your PC cool during the British summertime

Hot-desking is one thing, but you should never actually have to put up with a hot desk. So Logitech has launched a laptop stand with an integrated cooling fan. Logitech's N100: really blows The N100 “Cooling Pad” has a USB-powered airflow system inside that sits beneath a slotted surface, the combination of which, Logitech …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 15:52
Brando unveils iPhone add-on lenses

Improve your phone photography

Not satisfied with the quality of photographs snapped using your iPhone? Quirky online retailer Brando has launched three sets of add-on lenses to help you master phone-based photography. Brando's fish eye lens and phone mounting magnetic rings Designed for the iPhone 2G and 3G - although images do show the various lenses …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 16:03
Mormons demand ICANN plugs net smut hole

No more crazy whoreses, thanks

Mormon anti-pornography activists led by SCO Group chairman Ralph Yarro III are calling on ICANN to give more political clout to those who want to kick porn off the web. Scores of Yarro’s followers have this week petitioned ICANN to OK the formation of a new “Cybersafety Constituency” which would help develop binding policies …

Telecoms 18 Mar 16:09
Jaguar-Land Rover to develop F1-style energy recovery tech

'Leccy Tech Motorsport concept to filter down to road cars

Reg Hardware has never really shared Formula One President Max Mosley's belief that the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) technology that will be allowed in the sport from this year will filter down to road cars. Just goes to show how wrong we can be. Today, Lancashire-based transmission expert Torotrak announced it is …

Reg Hardware 18 Mar 16:11
Treating today’s security risks

Episode 2 Audio with slides attached

In the second of our mini series of audiocasts assessing the state of the IT Security market, our expert panel considers the major risks and how to deal with them. Again lending their expertise are Jon Clay, core technology marketing manager from Trend Micro and Tony Lock, programme director at the IT analyst firm Freeform …

State of Security 18 Mar 16:51
Congress re-mulls ban on wireless tax

Grassroots movement comes from rather rich soil

The Cell Tax Fairness Act is back, despite having failed to get through Congress last year. The five-year moratorium on local and state wireless taxes is again at the committee stage. The act is proposed by Zoe Lofgren, rep from California's 16th District, but backed by 20 co-sponsors who also want to see states banned from …

Wireless 18 Mar 16:59
Hefty 'battle strength' electro-laser breaks 100kW barrier

We're gonna need a bigger shark, boss

US arms globocorp Northrop Grumman have claimed a significant raygun first - producing a 100+ kilowatt laser beam using electrically powered equipment. Blaster rays of this intensity formerly required the use of troublesome, toxic chemical fuels producing equally annoying wastes. Not exactly portable yet. According to …

Science 18 Mar 17:06
Recession victims big on Linux, IDC says

It's the talk of the poorhouse

Nowadays, more and more companies are poor and interested in Linux, according to an IDC study sponsored by Novell. The industry bean counter's February poll of 330 IT workers indicates a "surge" of businesses that are either thinking about using Linux or already switching over. Most said the primary reason was to lower ongoing …

Operating Systems 18 Mar 17:55
Microsoft throws Silverlight 3 beta at Adobe

Mix 09 Plugs gaps, and then some

Microsoft has opened a new front in its battle with Adobe Systems, releasing beta code for Silverlight 3 that plugs fundamental gaps in its media player and attempts to out flank Flash. The company opened its annual Mix developer and designer conference by releasing the Silverlight 3 SDK and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 …

Developer 18 Mar 18:52
Privacy watchdog barks for federal Gmail probe

The Google Cloud - Is it safe?

An influential net watchdog has urged the US Federal Trade Commission to shut down Google's so-called cloud computing services, including Gmail and Google Docs, if the web giant can't ensure the safety of user data stored by these online apps. With a petition (PDF) filed yesterday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center ( …

Government 18 Mar 19:08
Crackers latch onto year-old Windows token vuln

Unpatched bug features in multi-stage attacks

Hackers have created exploits against a long-standing, unpatched Windows "token kidnapping" vulnerability. The appearance of attacks follows a year after security researchers Cesar Cerrudo informed Microsoft of the problem in March 2008. Microsoft acknowledged the potential issue in April and published workarounds in an …

Security 18 Mar 20:25
Apple intoxicated with ex-Vista chief's musical stylings

iTunes honors ~~Allchin's~~ Allchest's 'Enigma'

Apple is smitten by the admittedly strong guitar stylings of Jim Allchin, the former Windows chief who gave up a life of programming after Vista to pursue his love of music. Allchin's debut album, Enigma, has snagged honors on the iTune's store as one of Apple's "What We're Listening To" recommendations. Microsoft and Apple …

Music and Media 18 Mar 20:43
Sun pitches new cloud as 'Open Platform'

Like Linux, for grids

As part of its roll-out of the Sun Cloud this morning at the CommunityOne East developer event in New York, the executives in charge of the developer community and cloud efforts at Sun Microsystems provided a little more detail on how it will be promoting not only its own public cloud, but APIs and management tools that will …

Servers 18 Mar 21:00
The long slog to multicore land

Multicore Expo Chip future must wait

Open standards and development tools are needed to accelerate the transition to a multicore future, according to minds at this week's Multicore Expo in Santa Clara, California. As Markus Levy, president of the Multicore Association, put it: "Hardware's easy." Brian Carlson, Texas Instrument's Open Multimedia Application …

PCs & Chips 18 Mar 23:47
Ubuntu gets pre-Koala cloud love

The sky is open

As Mark Shuttleworth preps a new "Karmic Koala" Ubuntu distro suited to life with its head in the Amazon clouds, Thorsten von Eicken has lent a helping hand. Von Eicken is the CTO and co-founder of RightScale, a Santa Barbara, California outfit offering what it calls "a fully automated cloud-management platform." In other …

Servers 18 Mar 23:53
TinyURL, your configs are showing

Twitter pal leaves server wide open

TinyURL - the site that converts unwieldy web addresses into short, manageable URLs - has been caught running a server so poorly configured it represents a serious risk to its millions of trusting users, a security expert is warning. At time of writing, the site's PHP module was actively broadcasting dozens of sensitive …

Security 18 Mar 23:54