27th March 2009 Archive

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Opera tells dev build where you are

Apes Firefox geolocation

Following in the footsteps of Mozilla and the latest Firefox beta, Opera Software has released a developer build of its Norwegian web browser that knows where you are. The new Opera "technology preview" includes the W3C's Geolocation API, a way for websites to request your physical location - and for you to give it. If you …

Applications 27 Mar 00:33
Blizzard: Game designers aren't Shakespeare

GDC 09 Lay off the text reams

Former World of Warcraft lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan told his fellow developers today to lay off the heavy text. Speaking at a presentation at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Kaplan - who's now helming Blizzard's next unannounced MMO - said game makers often suffer from "medium envy", where they try to …

Music and Media 27 Mar 00:47
Opera plans Turbo mobile peek

AJAX and Flash juiced on Windows

Opera Software's recently announced browser-boosting Turbo looks like getting its first product incarnation with Opera Mobile 9.7. The company said that next week it plans to unveil the latest version of its mobile browser along with the Presto 2.2 rendering engine that's used in the Opera 10 desktop and full support for …

Applications 27 Mar 00:49
Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope springs to beta

Shapes up for April launch

The Jaunty Jackalope edition of Ubuntu has been released to beta. Ubuntu 9.04 brings a clutch of improvements to the desktop while taking the first step on the server closer to Amazon-style cloud computing. Final code is scheduled for release on April 27. Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04 will let you run Amazon Machine Images ( …

Operating Systems 27 Mar 04:52
Why Dell's PS6000 isn't quite enterprise class

Comment Still waiting for FCoE and automated tiering

Dell's EqualLogic storage is positioned as enterprise storage but lacks Fibre Channel connectivity and automated data tiering. The recently announced Dell EqualLogic PS6000 storage arrays are positioned by Dell as enterprise storage. They have iSCSI block access but, typically, major storage and system vendors position Fibre …

Storage 27 Mar 07:02
Jacqui Smith pulls in another TV psych in violence probe

It's all ~~the media's~~ ~~parents'~~ society's fault

Jacqui Smith has beefed up the government's roster of TV psychologists advising politicians on society (or Paps) with the recruitment of Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a longtime provider of academic heft to the likes of GMTV and BBC 3. Papadopoulos has been drafted into a Home Office Consultation entitled "Together We Can End …

Government 27 Mar 08:02
Revo Blok

Review Can a block of wood sound this good?

The sleepy Scottish market town of Lanark is best known for being the place where Mel Gibson William Wallace began his rising against the English is 1297 and as the home town of 1995 World Rally champion Colin McCrae. Well, Reg Hardware can now add to that list because it's also the home of Revo Technologies, a company that make …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 10:24
Indian boffins mull zero-grav bhajis

One small step for naan...

Indian scientists have been tasked with tackling a mission-critical part of their country's plan to get a man into orbit by 2015: Just how to cook up a decent space curry. According to the Times, military boffins from the Defence Food Research Laboratory face considerable culinary challenges in presenting traditional dishes …

Space 27 Mar 10:29
Tesla unwraps Model S

'Leccy Tech Impressive. Most impressive

After months of speculation, Telsa has finally pulled the dust sheets of its eagerly anticipated four-door hatchback, the Model S. While precise mechanical details where thin on the ground, Telsa did say that the Model S will be capable of an electronically limited top speed on 130mph, a 0-60 time of “well below” five seconds …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 10:45
Software generated attendance letter about dead pupil

Capita apologise to stunned parents

Capita is modifying its school management software after a letter about poor attendance was sent to the parents of a girl who had died. Macclesfield High School in Cheshire, which uses Capita's SIMS (school information management system) software, apologised to the parents of Megan Gillan for the distress the letter caused. …

Applications 27 Mar 10:47
Wags barricade Jezza Clarkson in portable loo

Short YouTube clip entertains the crowd

Yes, it's juvenile and totally unnecessary, but this YouTube clip of Top Gear main man Jezza Clarkson confined to a portable bog at the recent Mallorca Classic Car Rally has proved a bit of a hit down at YouTube: Ho ho. Doubtless those who have in the past been on the receiving end of Clarkson's wit - including prozzie- …

Bootnotes 27 Mar 11:00
Cisco patch bundle lances multiple DoS flaws

Updates tackle router crash risks

Cisco has released a bundle of security updates, designed to fix a variety of flaws in its core IOS networking software. The eight advisories cover security patches that address multiple vulnerabilities in the networking giant's implementation of networking protocols. Left unchecked the flaws create a possible mechanism for …

Enterprise Security 27 Mar 11:07
BOFH: Defiling the profile

Episode 4 So... what are you wearing?

"What do you know about social networking?" the Boss murmurs quietly one morning, as I'm putting the finishing touches on my espresso. "You mean social networking as in 'I and a group of mates would like to be able to publish our outrageous drinking activities'? Or 'The wife and I have recently separated and I'm looking to …

BOFH 27 Mar 11:08
EMC snips CEO pay

But guarantees Tucci's tenure

EMC has cut the pay of CEO Joe Tucci and four other senior executives by ten per cent. It also has an agreement with Tucci to secure continuity of his employment to the end of 2010 - but why? In an SEC filing its Leadership and Compensation Committee report said: "Given the challenging global economic environment, as part of …

Storage 27 Mar 11:21
Skype 'coming to iPhone soon'

Could land on April Fools' Day...

Skype is reportedly set to imminently release an iPhone version of its VoIP service. According to GigaOM, the eBay-owned service could announce an application for the iPhone as soon as next week, during the wireless CTIA tradeshow in Las Vegas that starts on 1 April. However, Skype declined to comment on the speculative …

VoIP 27 Mar 11:31
Serial killer may have been conjured by DNA blunder

Contamination suspected in 'Phantom' case

A 16-year hunt for a mysterious female serial killer by German police has seemingly ended in farce, as officials admitted they now believe a trail of DNA from 40 crime scenes could have been left by contaminated swabs. In 2007 authorities put up a €300,000 reward for information about the so-called "Phantom of Heilbronn", …

Policing 27 Mar 11:37
Asus slips out latest Eee netbook

The 10in 1002H revealed

Asus’ Eee PC netbook line has expanded once again with the online launch of the 1002H model. Asus' Eee 1002H: fitted with the latest Atom The 10in, 1024 x 600 machine has Intel’s 1.66GHz N280 Atom processor inside and has been fitted with a 160GB hard drive. The internal storage comes in addition to the 10GB of online “Eee …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 11:38
Jobs go at Extreme

More market misery

Extreme Networks told the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday that it is cutting more jobs. The ethernet company is laying off five per cent of its staff. This is in addition to a one per cent cut earlier in the quarter. The company told the SEC it would spend $1.8m in severance payments and related costs - this is on …

Financial News 27 Mar 11:39
Sony sketches downloads-as-standard PSP timeframe

Insists UMD not dead yet

Despite promising earlier this week that downloadable PlayStation Portable (PSP) games will become more commonplace in 2009, Sony executive John Koller has hinted that digital game downloads as standard are still several years away. Speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Koller - Director of Hardware …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 11:42
Street View ghost spooks Cardiff medium

Victorian spectre stalks Tiger Bay

A Cardiff medium has been well and truly spooked by a Victorian "ghost" captured in the city's Tiger Bay by Google's all-seeing Street View: According to the Telegraph, "experts have been called in" to probe the otherworldy sighting, including 39-year-old Jane Cohen, who told the paper: "Apparitions have often been caught on …

Bootnotes 27 Mar 11:58
Boffins: Atlantic temperature ruled by dust, not CO₂

Warm ocean, hurricane increases down to clean skies

American scientists say that variations in atmospheric dust levels affect the temperature of the Atlantic ocean far more than global warming. Research indicates that 70 per cent of the change in Atlantic temperature over recent decades has resulted from reduced dust, rather than climate change. The new analysis comes from …

Environment 27 Mar 12:06
FalconStor's flying backup accelerator

Backup idea offloads host

IP storage software, deduplication and virtual tape library supplier FalconStor is introducing a backup accelerator for its VTL at SNW on 6 April. A VTL accelerates backup, because data streams from the host server's storage to the VTL at disk ingestion speed, instead of the slower tape ingestion speed. This reduces the backup …

Storage 27 Mar 12:27
Fabric and loathing in Vegas: what happened at MS Mix

Radio Reg Silverlight 3 and the important of being IE 8

Microsoft's Mix was intended to introduce developers to the company's cloud platform - Azure Services Platform. Just days before, though, Azure suffered its first outage - 22 hours of darkness. Microsoft blamed an over-active Fabric Controller for the problem, saying it had taken down healthy server instances instead of just …

Microbite 27 Mar 12:29
Nvidia countersues Intel in licensing spat

Legal tussle over memory controllers escalates

Nvidia filed a countersuit against Intel for breach of contract yesterday, in which it alleged Chipzilla had made misleading statements in an effort to weaken the graphics chipmaker's licensing rights. The suit is also seeking to kill off Intel's licence to Nvidia's graphic processing and 3D computing patents. "Having …

PCs & Chips 27 Mar 12:51
Skypocracy under fire

Gizmo calls foul

It's one of the world's most popular communications systems. But the company jealously guards its closed, proprietary technology, shunning well-established open industry standards. No, it's not Microsoft and the system isn't Exchange. It's Skype - but the parallels are spooky. Last month Michael Robertson, scourge of the …

VoIP 27 Mar 13:02
Pentax Optio E70L

Review Bargain?

A credit crunch camera or a model aimed at the digital beginner? You can take your pick when it comes to the Pentax Optio E70L. This budget camera costs less than £100, which is nice, but there’s a big difference between offering a low price and good value for money. Buying cheap can be an expensive mistake, so where does the …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 13:19
Motion-powered phone details unmasked

Cheaper to run than to buy

Posh Swiss watch firm Ulysse Nardin has broken its silence about its upcoming motion-powered phone, releasing specifications for and pictures of the exclusive handset. The Chairman: charged by kinetic energy As previously reported, Chairman boasts a “kinetic rotor system” that pumps power through to a back-up battery each …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 13:26
Leaked memo says Conficker pwns Parliament

Updated House of Commons systems borked

The House of Commons IT systems has reportedly been infected by the infamous Conficker superworm, which has previously infected millions of Windows PCs and affected the operation of hospitals, military and large corporate systems. Political blog Dizzy Thinks first reported that a memo (below) sent out to parliamentary IT …

Malware 27 Mar 13:29
Fresh tech hiccup for V-22 tiltrotor fleet

If something hasn't broken on your Osprey, it's about to

The famous V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, which flies like a plane but tilts its props upwards to land and take off like a helicopter, appears to have hit yet another technical snag. Hey, Joe - is it supposed to make that rattling noise? The troubled military combo-copter, which suffered through a decades-long and accident-prone …

Physics 27 Mar 13:33
Plants cry out for water... by Twitter

Flowers can Tweet too, you know

Keeping houseplants alive can be a tiresome job. Has it had too much water? Does it need a little more? Why are some leaves brown and the others green? Well, now plants can tell you what they need using Twitter. Botanicalls: lets your plant tell you about its water needs Botanicalls is a gadget originally designed by …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 13:51
U2 song whacked my hard drive

Overly loud playback pushes storage over the edge?

We're not sure how seriously to take this. According to Mexican hardware hackers, Acer's hugely popular 8.9in Aspire One netbook will zap its own hard drive if you play music through it too loudly. According to a post on Spanish-language site HardwareCult, if you pump up the volume, your AA1's disk will quickly rebel. In …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 13:51
WiReD UK: ET found in 19 years

Do they know something we don't?

Good news for Reg correspondent aManfromMars - he'll no long be punning alone. WiReD magazine UK editor David Rowan reckons ET will have been discovered within 19 years. The magazine (re-)launches in Britain next week, with Conde Nast picking up 12 years after it last crashed and burned. Rowan's prediction is part of the pre- …

Bootnotes 27 Mar 14:26
Latest MSI Wind netbook blows in

Atom-powered, 10in machine

MSI has released official specifications for the latest addition to its Wind netbook family – the Atom-powered U123. MSI's Wind U123: Aside from its 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, the U123 also has an Intel 945GSE chipset inside and 1GB of DDR 2 memory. Storage capacity options include an 80GB, 120GB or 160GB 2.5in hard …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 14:55
EMC offers Quantum solace

Helps it cope better with that darn ADIC debt

EMC has given struggling tape, disk and deduplication vendor Quantum a sorely-needed $100m financial lifeline. Quantum will use the cash to refinance its convertible debt, which dates back to 2003. A different credit line, Quantum's senior debt, was used to finance the ADIC acquisition for almost $800m in May 2006. As of …

Storage 27 Mar 15:14
MacBooks set to join hardware giveaway

Thanks to Orange largesse

Orange is reportedly in talks to add a MacBook to the range of subsidised hardware network operators are handing over these days, equipping the mobile executive for only a small monthly commitment. It wouldn't be particularly surprising to see a subsidised MacBook coming with an Orange-tied 3G dongle, and joining the plethora …

Mobile 27 Mar 15:32
Fujitsu staff clash with bosses over pay freeze

Frozen realm of ~~Narnia~~ IT services

Fujitsu Services employees are up in arms after the company's management announced a pay freeze. A memo was dished out to the firm's Blighty-based workers earlier this week, in which Fujitsu's UK boss Richard Christou outlined "the need to take action now to protect our business." He blamed the economic downturn for the …

Financial News 27 Mar 16:07
Germans announce: Revenge is inefficient

If only we'd discovered this sooner

In development which should strike fear into the hearts of action-movie scriptwriters and BOFHs everywhere, remorselessly efficient German economists have calculated that revenge is inefficient. According to the German national socio-economic database, vengeful people are more likely to be unemployed, have fewer friends and …

Biology 27 Mar 16:10
Orange to sell MacBooks?

Rumours of MacBook Mobile Broadband packages

Apple has already blessed us with white, black and aluminium MacBooks. But it’s now rumoured that an Orange MacBook could be on its way, thanks to a tie-up with the UK network provider. Apple could be on the cusp of signing a MacBook with Orange Mobile Broadband deal According to sources unknown, the network provider’s …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 16:13
Google Voice forbids itself

You did read the T&C, didn't you?

The chocolate factory's latest service, Google Voice, expressly forbids using the service for voice mail - despite that being one of the most promoted features of the service. Google Voice not only records voice-mail messages, but also transcribes those messages into text for archiving, and to allow easy scanning for targeted …

Telecoms 27 Mar 16:14
'Cybercrime exceeds drug trade' myth exploded

AT&T feeds Congress trillion-dollar FUD

A leading security researcher has unpicked the origins of the myth that revenues from cybercrime exceeds those from the global drug trade, regurgitated by a senior security officer at AT&T before Congress last week. Ed Amoroso, Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer of AT&T, told a Congressional Committee on 20 March …

Crime 27 Mar 16:22
Wallace and Gromit get patent-happy at Science Museum

'I think we're about to go up in the world, lad'

A Wallace and Gromit exhibit aimed at guiding students through the world of cheese-fuelled innovation will open its doors at the Science Museum in London tomorrow. Visitors will be encouraged to learn more about what the museum described as "some of the greatest objects ever invented". The Intellectual Property Office-backed …

Entertainment 27 Mar 16:36
Smoking power supply alarms net brokerage house

TD Ameritrade trades on

The data center at online brokerage house TD Ameritrade in Jersey City, New Jersey handled more drama yesterday than the usual ups and downs of the market, after a smoking power supply in a blade server caused fire suppression systems to kick in and the building to be evacuated. This is not a situation that any IT vendor likes …

Servers 27 Mar 16:37
LG fu**ed off with swearing

Future TV sets to recognise, replace cussing

LG has launched a website where customers can submit their weird and wacky ideas for futuristic TV features, such as a telly that replaces swear words with baby laughter. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com A spokeswoman at LG told Register Hardware that its LGenius website is a portal where “ …

Reg Hardware 27 Mar 16:46
EA: No DRM for Sims 3

Best-selling franchise won't phone home

After taking one on the chin for Spore's overbearing DRM protection schemes, Electronic Art's is going back to tried-and-true disc-based authentication for the next installment of the The Sims. In a post to the official Sims 3 website, Rod Humble, the man in charge of EA's best-selling PC franchise of all time, says the game …

Music and Media 27 Mar 17:27
Acer sued for shipping Vista-book with GB of memory

Um, where's my graphics mem?

Two Middle Americans have sued Acer over its low-cost Aspire notebooks, claiming that the Taiwanese PC giant pre-installed Windows Vista on machines ill-equipped to run Microsoft's latest OS. With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world's …

PCs & Chips 27 Mar 18:37
Amazon to shutter distribution center trio

200 jobs cut

Amazon is shuttering three of its distribution centers. According to The Associated Press, the etailer/cloud-maker will close its centers in Munster, Indiana; Red Rock, Nevada; and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The Munster operation was opened as recently as 2007, but the company has since opened two other Indiana distribution …

Financial News 27 Mar 19:42
Ousted Fusion-io boss lands at VC

Competitive capital?

Don Basile, the recently ousted CEO of Fusion-IO, has become the managing director of Iron Capital Partners, a small venture-focussed investment bank which may, if rumours are right, be getting involved with Fusion-io competitor Violin Memory. Fusion-io makes flash memory SSDs - known as ioDrives - which connect via a PCIe …

Financial News 27 Mar 19:57
How Dead Space got EA's groove back

GDC 09 The long road to a greenlight

If the alien infestation in EA's Dead Space didn't scare you, maybe the mega-publisher's sudden, uncharacteristic willingness to tackle new IP did. Forget necromorphs, the real danger in the stricken mining space ship USG Ishimura was an EA suit lying in wait to turn the game into something like Lord of the Rings: Gandalf's …

Music and Media 27 Mar 20:40
The Pirate Bay punts BitTorrent cloaking device

IPRED gets IPREDator

The Pirate Bay's swashbuckling Swedes have launched their very own VPN service, hoping to combat a new Swedish law that would force ISPs to cough up the personal details of suspected copyright infringers. The new law is called IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive). And the new VPN is an IPREDator. "The …

Music and Media 27 Mar 21:39
Apple sizes iPhone for dog's nose

Scent of a fanboi

Apple has filed a patent application for a set of techniques to enhance security of iPhones and laptops using biometric sensing and other technologies. Some of the identification methods described in the filing would automatically sense your unique personal attributes without you needing to perform a separate device-unlocking …

Mobile 27 Mar 21:50
AT&T to warn online music rustlers

Nag, not throttle

AT&T, the US's largest ISP, will cooperate with the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) in tossing written warnings at downloaders of copyrighted material. But it won't cut offenders off - at least not "without a court order," according to a senior AT&T exec as quoted by Cnet News. Jim Cicconi, AT&T's senior executive …

Music and Media 27 Mar 21:57
Interweb Chuck Norris infiltrates Netflix, Tivo

CSRF has two speeds: Hack and Kill

Researcher Lance James has been busy devising ways to play tricks on some of the world's bigger websites using an exotic attack known as CSRF, or cross site request forgery. While his exploits amount to little more than pranks, they point to the very sobering realization that the net isn't a very secure place. One proof-of- …

Malware 27 Mar 22:22
IBM turns back on server history

To give and to hybrid

As odd as this may seem, IBM is not thinking about servers any more. Well, not in the way you might think. According to the top minds at Big Blue's Systems and Technology Group - which designs and sells its servers, processors, and storage - the future is not about making particular server architectures do jobs and fight for …

Servers 27 Mar 22:40
Apple follows AT&T with no-contract iPhones

Freedom for the wealthy

Apple and AT&T have each launched their own effort to shovel existing iPhone 3Gs out the door in preparation for the increasingly likely launch of a new iPhone - or iPhone line - early this summer. For its part, Apple is now offering iPhones for sale in its brick-and-mortar Apple Stores without requiring the former two-year …

Mobile 27 Mar 23:21