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25th March 2009 Archive

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  • Apple sued over iPhone e-bookiness

    Patented brain currents

    A Swiss company has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the iPhone infringes upon its patent for an "Electronic device, preferably an electronic book." The plaintiff - one Monec Holding Ltd of Berne, Switzerland - was founded in 2000 and describes itself on its website - which might most kindly be described as minimalist - …

    Mobile 25 Mar 00:20

  • Outsourcing prices on the wane, says Gartner

    Optional smiles on service

    If IT vendors think that their services businesses are going to save their cookies this year, they may have another thing coming. According to a report just released by the analysts at Gartner, prices on infrastructure outsourcing services are expected to drop this year and next by anywhere from 5 to 20 per cent on new deals. …

    Business 25 Mar 00:23

  • Microsoft 24 hours late with IE8 pwn protection

    What a difference a DEP makes

    Just one day after a little-known hacker dazzled his peers by exploiting the latest version of Internet Explorer 8 beta, Microsoft added an important protection to the browser that probably would have prevented the attack. The measure, which was added to last Thursday's final release of IE8, restores so-called ASLR, or address …

    Security 25 Mar 00:32

  • Microsoft follows Google to Mars

    Any pics you can post...

    Microsoft clearly will go to the ends of the Earth to make sure no Google product goes unanswered. Weeks after the ubiquitous search engine unveiled new up-to-date NASA imagery of our celestial neighbor on Google Mars, Microsoft is touting its own Red planet-snooping pact with the space agency. Under a joint agreement …

    Music and Media 25 Mar 00:36

  • Dell spreads the channel love with distie big guns

    Hires Ingram and Tech Data in US

    Dell is signed up Ingram Micro and Tech Data in the US to wholesale Vostro desktops and notebooks in the US. The same disties go live with Dell in Canada in the next few weeks. Ingram and Tech Data will purportedly carry stock at prices that allow resellers to offer kit that prices competitively against Dell direct. If true, …

    Channel Register 25 Mar 01:20

  • Yorkshire dealers get spliced

    Phase CRS climbs on Concorde

    Concorde Informatics has bought fellow Yorkshire reseller Phase CRS for an undisclosed sum. Phase CRS boss Chris Walker joins the company as CTO and is taking a stake in the enlarged business. Phase brings 24 people and £2m to the table, to take Concorde's pro forma revenues to £9m and headcount to 70. This is Concorde's …

    Channel Register 25 Mar 01:53

  • Ubuntu promises DIY Amazon cloud

    OSBC Drop your AMIs like they're hot

    Next month should see the first steps from the Canonical camp that will let you run an Amazon-style cloud behind the firewall on Ubuntu. The Jaunty Jackalope edition of Ubuntu, version 9.04, due in April, will let you take existing Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) from Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and run them on your own …

    Operating Systems 25 Mar 06:26

  • InfiniBand: Caught in the Ethernet meatgrinder

    Comment Voltaire heads for the protocol hills

    InfiniBand supplier Voltaire may be moving towards a twin InfiniBand/Ethernet strategy as InfiniBand looks to get boxed in by 10gigE and the coming 100gigE. InfiniBand is a low-latency and high bandwidth interconnect that currently runs at 20Gbit/s and is transitioning to 40Gbit/s. It is used as a cluster interconnect in High …

    Data Networking 25 Mar 07:02

  • EMC saves earth from its own private jets

    Opinion Red faces over green goals

    EMC demonstrated the inherent complexities of saving the planet as it began sponsoring a greenhouse gas supply chain initiative this week, just months after CEO Joe Tucci had a good look at the atmosphere from the comfort of a corporate jet. EMC is helping to pay for World Resources Institute’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol …

    Environment 25 Mar 08:02

  • Leaving PCs on costing UK business millions

    Turn 'em off

    A third of business computers in the UK are left switched on overnight, costing British businesses more than £300m a year in extra electricity bills. In the US the situation is even worse - half of corporate computers are left on overnight. This is costing US firms some $2.8bn a year. Leaving machines on overnight and at …

    IT Director 25 Mar 09:17

  • Mimecast and file server destruction

    Analysis Online mail services lead to filer destruction - maybe

    Mimecast is a UK-based supplier of unified email management services. Around the end of 2002 it started to build an appliance function that would unify the many daisy-chained email functions, (anti-spam, anti-virus, data leak prevention, signaturing) that were all implemented as separate boxes through which emails had to flow …

    Storage 25 Mar 09:20

  • Dell buffs up EqualLogic SAN arrays with solid state drives

    Expanding virtual storage pools

    As we exclusively revealed last week, Dell is launching a new PS6000 line of EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays, featuring solid state drives and expanded software offerings. Compared with the current PS5000 products, The PS6000 delivers up to 91 per cent faster sequential write workload performance and is up to 29 per cent faster …

    Storage 25 Mar 09:32

  • 'Transportable' raygun 'deploys' - across Albuquerque

    Early test sharks struggle under burden of 40' containers

    US flying-and-exploding-stuff globocorp Boeing has announced successful tests of a mobile "rapid deployment" complete laser weapon system. Sadly the company has missed the widely accepted shark-portability standard by a huge margin. In fact, Boeing's "Re-Deployable High-Energy Laser System (RHELS)", while handy and lightweight …

    Science 25 Mar 10:05

  • Warner launches press-to-order DVD movie service

    Downloads too

    Warner Bros is diving into the vaults to offer 150 previously unreleased classic films for download or through a made-to-order DVD service. The Warner Archive Collection enables film fans in the US to order one-off pressings of vintage era titles, such as Carey Grant’s Mr. Lucky, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Al …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 10:13

  • Samsung boxes up Centrino 2 notebook pair

    One for families, one for road warriors

    Samsung is prepping the launch of two Centrino 2 notebooks. They are fairly similar, apart from screen size, but aimed at two decidedly different markets. Samsung's Q320: look ma, no frame! The 13.4in Q320 is “perfect for mobile enthusiasts”, while the 15.6in R522 is a “family-friendly” notebook with an aluminium-style palm …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 10:17

  • Google takedowns flawed, analysis shows

    A third of requests may be bobbins

    Academics have analysed the requests received by Google for copyrighted material to be removed from the internet and found that almost a third of requests may be unwarranted and over half of link removal demands came from competitor companies. Jennifer Urban of the University of Southern California and Laura Quilter Of the …

    Music and Media 25 Mar 10:26

  • El Reg nails rooftop 60-ft todger outrage mansion

    Berkshire phallus eludes Google Earth

    There was much merriment yesterday at the news that an 18-year-old wag had painted a 60-ft phallus on the roof of his parents' £1m Berkshire mansion - an outrage which escaped mum and dad's notice for a year: The BBC reported that the young man was away travelling, and would "have to scrub it off when he gets back". Well, …

    Bootnotes 25 Mar 11:08

  • Shuttle XPC SP45H7 Core 2 barebones PC

    Review Fewer features, higher price? You sure, Shuttle?

    We're desperately keen to see the new Shuttle SX58H7, which supports the Core i7 family of processors, but it's currently listed as "coming soon" so we shall have to be patient. In the meantime, Shuttle suggested, why not take a look at the SP45H7? So we did. Shuttle's XPC SP45H7: poor value? We had a sense of déjà vu as …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 11:27

  • Canon unveils 1080p HD video-shooting DSLR

    EOS line extended

    Canon has launched a 15.1Mp digital SLR camera that’s also able to capture full HD video. Canon's EOS 500D: take snaps, record 1080p movies The EOS 500D, designed as the next model up from the 450D – reviewed here - has top still-image continuous burst rate of 3.4f/s and a basic ISO sensitivity of between 100 and 3200, …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 11:34

  • WAG sues CPW for phone pic nick

    Boob pic shocker

    Glamour model Danielle Lloyd is suing Carphone Warehouse after a staff member downloaded pictures of her from her phone and tried to sell them to national newspapers. Lloyd left her phone with the shop so that that data could be transferred to her new handset. But the staff member, who has since left the firm, copied intimate …

    Mobile 25 Mar 11:40

  • Scareware package incorporates file ransom trickery

    Double dipping

    Cybercrooks have combined two threats with a fake anti-virus package that holds files for ransom. The malware comes in the guise of a utility called Antivirus2009 that claims to have located corrupted files on affected systems. Prospective marks are told they are need to download a package dubbed FileFix Professional to …

    Crime 25 Mar 11:42

  • Dell retreat from Limerick will leave 9,500 casualties

    Secret government report details the cost

    Dell's axing of 2,510 jobs at its Limerick plant will cost the region 9,500 jobs and suck €117m out of the local economy, a secret Irish government report admits. The report, which was prepared for the government last December but which has just emerged in the Irish press, details just how devastating the effective closure of …

    Channel Register 25 Mar 12:03

  • BMW driver follows satnav to edge of cliff

    West Yorkshire Italian Job reconstruction

    A Doncaster man is facing a "hefty recovery bill", and an appearance before the beak on a driving without due care and attention rap, after following his BMW's satnav to the edge of a West Yorkshire cliff, the Telegraph reports. Robert Jones, 43, was driving in "broad daylight" on Sunday morning en route to visit some chums. …

    Bootnotes 25 Mar 12:06

  • Sony talks up PSP digital downloads

    UMD's future at risk?

    Sony has confirmed that downloadable games will become a much bigger feature on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) throughout the rest of 2009. John Koller, Sony Computer Entertainment America's Director of Hardware Marketing, told Wired that “one of our big pushes this year is to be sure that the right kind of content and the …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 12:14

  • Sex crime 'lie detector' pilot could prompt wider use

    More crims to be made to sweat?

    Paedophiles and other sex offenders on probation will face compulsory "lie detector" tests from next month, The Register has learned. The academic who will run the tests of controversial polygraph technology on sex offenders for the government believes a successful trial will lead to its use in other crimes. From late April, …

    Policing 25 Mar 12:22

  • Isle of Man e-bike trial loses racers

    'Leccy Tech How many TTxGP teams will actually take part?

    Will the Isle of Man TTxGP zero-emission motorcycle race, due to be run on 12 June, have more than two electric bikes on the starting line? Here's one that won't be there. Designed by long-time champion of feet-forward motorcycles, Royce Creasey, this 'leccy racer was created to take full advantage of the TTxGP's decision to …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 12:28

  • Copyrighted mice give OK on vat-grown organs

    Big Blue® brand rodents scotch mutant clone peril

    Scientists in Hawaii and Texas have unveiled some good news for planned "therapeutic cloning" techniques, in which new genetically-correct tissues would be grown in the lab for transplant into people needing replacement parts. Quite apart from religious/ethical concerns about the likely need to create human embryos - which …

    Biology 25 Mar 12:32

  • Last.fm goes payware

    UK, US and Germany excluded

    Less than a year after unveiling what it called a "free global jukebox", Last.fm is scrapping free radio listening, except in three key countries: the USA, the UK and Germany. The site, acquired for $280m by media giant CBS almost two years ago, will instead introduce a €3 monthly equivalent fee for music streams. The site cruft …

    Music and Media 25 Mar 12:44

  • French 3M workers barricade boss in office

    Industrial director confined behind wardrobe

    Workers at a French 3M plant barricaded their boss in an office yesterday, in a protest over plans to lay off 110 employees, Reuters reports. The group's industrial director, Luc Rousselet, was confined to quarters by a strategically-placed wardrobe in the factory at Pithiviers, near Orleans. Staff are demanding "more money …

    Financial News 25 Mar 12:53

  • China brands Tibet beating video fake

    Edited together from different sources

    The Chinese government has branded a YouTube video, purportedly showing Chinese police viciously beating Tibetan protesters, as a fake. The film, apparently taken last March near Lhasa, was put on the video sharing site last Saturday and is believed to be what sparked China's renewed blocking of the site. The second part of …

    Government 25 Mar 13:59

  • Security in the clouds - or clouds in security?

    Supplementary benefits

    ‘Cloud Computing’ is the marketing term of the moment, despite lacking a formal definition (this is what we came up with), Undoubtedly, many organisations are looking to source certain IT services from across the internet. While such capabilities may be initiated as standalone, they frequently move on to be used in combination …

    State of Security 25 Mar 14:02

  • Altec Lansing Octiv Air wireless iPod speaker system

    Review Tunes throughout your house

    iPod speaker systems have come on a-ways of late, with units such as Edifier's Luna 5 and B&W's Zeppelin both looking and the sounding the part of serious home audio kit. With wireless music networking being the other Big Idea at the moment it was only a matter time before somebody put the two together and came up with something …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 14:37

  • Dell serves up 11G servers and Nehalem workstations

    Focus on simplicity and performance

    Dell is launching its 11th generation of PowerEdge servers, with M-series blades and new Precision tower workstations, together with a new Dell Management Console (DMC) based on Symantec Altiris software. Naturally, Dell says the servers have been designed for virtualisation, low electricity needs and simpler management. A …

    Servers 25 Mar 14:57

  • Quirky motion-capture controller finally paraded

    New look, same technology?

    A controller enabling gamers to play motion-capture games on the Xbox 360 has been unveiled at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Gametrak Freedom: motion-capture controller for Xbox 360 An early model of the Gametrak Freedom controller was first seen back in September, when Register Hardware …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 15:16

  • Sun sells two Constellation supers for $30m

    Solar weather Down Under

    Sun Microsystems may be keeping quiet as lawyers apparently work out the details of a sale to IBM, but the company has made one announcement: a $30m deal to sell two of its "Constellation" supercomputers to support weather forecasting and academic research in Australia. Sun will install two complete Constellation systems, with …

    Servers 25 Mar 15:31

  • Skype is biggest international telco

    If we're counting free minutes across the internet

    VoIP outfit Skype is now handling more international voice minutes than anyone else - the eBay-owned operation is responsible for eight percent of the world's chat time. Skype handled 33 billion cross-border minutes during 2008, a jump of 41 per cent against an industry that increased traffic by twelve per cent to 384 billion …

    VoIP 25 Mar 15:38

  • Are you making the most of your IT?

    Three Regcasts for the masses

    In recent weeks, The Register broadcast three live webcasts looking at software productivity for mid-sized businesses. They were all based on surveys we conducted with the Reg Technology Panel. And yes, they were sponsored by Microsoft and our analyst partner Freeform Dynamics. Reg moderator Tim Phillips kept our experts in …

    Tech Panel 25 Mar 15:44

  • Pentagon hacker Analyzer suspected of $10m cyberheist

    Credit card scam exposed

    Charges against notorious hacker-turned-suspected-cyber-fraudster Ehud Tenenbaum have expanded to include alleged fraud involving banks and credit card firms in both Canada and the US. Ehud Tenenbaum (AKA The Analyzer), 29, was arrested in Canada last September on suspicion he conspired with others to hack into the systems of …

    Crime 25 Mar 15:55

  • Deadfish iPhones send users into deep freeze

    When cool isn't cool enough for WiFi

    Some iPhone and iPod Touch users who've upgraded to the latest 2.2.1 firmware are reporting problems connecting to WiFi, though in some instances, going outside or sticking the handset in a freezer is providing relief. Quite what's going on isn't clear, despite numerous suggestions and discussions on the support forums - Apple …

    Mobile 25 Mar 16:28

  • Profs design AK47-locating 'smart dust' helmets

    Satnav network node-lids backtrack bullets, ID weapons

    Acoustic gunshot detectors have become common in the past few years, and some have been reduced in size to where a single soldier can wear one on his uniform and be cued-in to an enemy's location as soon as he fires. Engineers in Tennessee, however, are touting the idea of tieing a unit of footsoldiers' acoustic shot-spot …

    Security 25 Mar 16:38

  • Pioneer rebuffs reported rush to end plasma TV production

    Exclusive Will continue making sets until the end of the year

    Pioneer has denied reports that it will wrap up worldwide plasma TV production with a final run of sets next month. The firm announced last month plans to exit the plasma TV business by March 2010. But a release on its Japanese website today prompted numerous online news sources to wrongly report that the 2500 50in and 500 …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 17:15

  • VMware VMs cost how much?

    Let's punch the VMware calculator

    VMware reckons its virtual machines (VMs) cost less than rivals because you can stuff more of them in a physical server. It cites a Taneja Group study, just released, to support this claim. Jeff Boles, a Tanaja analyst, says: "We’ve validated in a number of tests that VMware virtualised servers can run twice as many …

    Virtualization 25 Mar 18:12

  • Microsoft: Judge us by our deeds on open source

    Updated OSBC Ignore the patents and Ballmer thing

    Microsoft has made a "tremendous commitment" to systems and file interoperability, according to its head of North American sales and marketing. Robert Youngjohns on Wednesday called interoperability between Widows and Linux and support for open-file formats and open-source languages like PHP a business imperative. He added …

    Software 25 Mar 19:52

  • Canadian cops cry for BlackBerry wiretap

    Comment How to eat a golden egg

    It has recently dawned on Canadian officials that communications sent with the BlackBerry are among the hardest mobile messages to eavesdrop on. But rather than congratulate the Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion on a job well done, they're calling for laws that would force service providers to use only technology that …

    Security 25 Mar 22:06

  • Nintendo's Iwata reveals wii storage fix, new games

    GDC 09 Zelda for DS, two Final Fantasies for WiiWare

    Nintendo president Satoru Iwata delivered a keynote address to a capacity crowd at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today, revealing a new mass storage solution for the Wii and preview of three upcoming game titles. Until now, the Wii was alone in the current generation of consoles to lack a proper mass …

    Reg Hardware 25 Mar 22:13

  • AMD migrates live VMs from Shanghai to Istanbul

    Flight of the fake servers

    Virtual machines are not as virtual as you might think. It's a bit tricky to move a running virtual machine across different processor generations, and you can forget jumping from a Xeon to an Opteron server - or visa versa. Considering that Intel's Xeon and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips have their respective VT and …

    Virtualization 25 Mar 22:21

  • Dell Nehalem men badmouth your servers

    Old iron ain't free

    Uh-oh. All the server makers are starting to talk about total cost of ownership (TCO) again. And that usually means they are running out of the normal bang for the buck arguments they use to peddle products. Such was the case as Dell raised the curtain a few inches in a webcast today on its impending lineup of servers based on …

    Servers 25 Mar 22:53

  • Red Hat sales buck Meltdown

    But profits under pressure

    If you had to be one software vendor staring down the economic meltdown, then you would probably want to be Red Hat. If someone else had already chosen to be Oracle. And maybe you'd rather be Red Hat anyway, because size isn't everything. After Wall Street closed today, Red Hat reported its financials for the fourth quarter …

    Financial News 25 Mar 23:00

  • Sun packs 150 billion web pages into meat locker

    Getting your arms around the internet

    If you believe the Gospel According to Robert J. Cringley, Google pilfered its top-secret modular data center from the Internet Archive. In a now-famous 2005 online expose, Cringley puts Google co-founder Larry Page at a pitch meeting where the Internet Archive's Bruce Baumgart considers the advantages of stuffing a full- …

    Servers 25 Mar 23:59