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20th April 2009 Archive

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  • Rail union ballots for strike over fingerprints

    Hands off our dabs

    Eurostar cleaners are considering strike action over changes to working practises which mean they must provide fingerprints when they clock on or off. Railway union RMT is calling on members working for Carlisle Cleaning Services which runs cleaning services at St Pancras on behalf of Eurostar to ballot to go on strike over …

    ID 20 Apr 05:02

  • Pirate Bay convictions are legally insignificant outside Sweden

    Editorial Safe for Google, eBay to remove tin hats, too

    A court in Sweden has found the co-founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay guilty of copyright offences. Each of them has been sentenced to one year in prison. But while the ruling has symbolic significance outside Sweden, it has little legal significance. Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm …

    Law 20 Apr 06:02

  • Tory terror police were 'fishing' for Liberty

    Damian Green on Keystone Kops

    Damian Green said being arrested and questioned by anti-terror police would have been a frightening experience, if it hadn't been so comical. Green said it was like the Keystone Kops - police called David Cameron's office to try and track Green down and they inititially surrounded the wrong house. Police took computers, …

    Government 20 Apr 08:51

  • Flash: Fibre Channel drives poised for the exit

    In the year 2012

    In just 30 months flash solid state drives will cost only three times as much as Fibre Channel drives, prompting a user switchover to flash, according to Wikibon analyst David Vellante. He plotted three price erosion curves (below) for single level cell flash over the next few years, expressing the cost of flash as a ratio …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 09:01

  • TVonics MDR-250

    Review Rather good, considering the price

    With the digital Armageddon crossover almost upon us – or actually upon us in the case of anyone living in South Devon or the Borders – never has their been a better time to take a look at an affordable, easy-to-use, jack-of-all-trades Freeview tuner that even the most technophobic in society can get to grips with. That would be …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 09:02

  • Spansion loses chief financial officer

    Executive retention pay deal doesn't work

    Troubled NOR flash maker Spansion's woes have got a little worse with the loss of its chief financial officer. The problems relate to plunging NOR flash product sales. The firm has been badly affected by depressed NAND flash prices caused by over-supply. This prompted mobile phone manufacturers, who use NOR flash to store code …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 09:11

  • US Navy unveils superconductor 'cloaking device' destroyer

    Captain Needa! It happened again

    US Navy boffins say they have made a significant breakthrough in countermeasures against sea mines - by using superconductors to nullify the magnetic signature of an American destroyer. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) says that high-temperature superconductor (HTS) "degaussing" coils fitted to the destroyer USS Higgins were …

    Physics 20 Apr 09:18

  • OCZ nips in to NetBook flash market

    Clambers aboard miniPCI Express

    OCZ has developed a nifty small form-factor solid-state drive (SSD) for netbook users to expand storage capacity without adding a battery-sapping hard drive. The mini PCI Express SSD plugs into a PCIe slot. A SATA interface version comes with either 16 or 32GB capacity, reads data at 110MB/s and writes it half as fast at 51MB/ …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 10:08

  • JG Ballard — 1930-2009

    Sci-Fi giant leaves this Ballardian world

    JG Ballard, self-confessed visionary of “the psychology of the future” and author of works such as Crash and Empire of the Sun, died on Sunday morning after a long illness. He was 78. Ballard outgrew the ‘cult author’ tag to cross over into the mainstream. His novels were widely read, beyond the boundaries of the oft-derided …

    Entertainment 20 Apr 10:14

  • Ask.com rehires butler Jeeves

    Rebranding reverse ferret

    Ask.com has redeployed dotcom-era cartoon butler Jeeves in its battle to attract web searchers away from Google in the UK. He's been back since November last year, but the PR operation appears to only have begun today. The fact that nobody really noticed Jeeves in the meantime suggests the firm will need more than a whimsical …

    Applications 20 Apr 10:33

  • Google accused of UK tax dodge

    UK tax bill? No results

    Search giant Google has been accused of avoiding UK tax by routing most of its earnings through Ireland. This means it saves about £100m a year by paying Irish corporation tax at 12.5 per cent rather than the 28 per cent it would face in the UK. British advertisers send their money to Google's Irish subsidiary, an arrangment …

    Financial News 20 Apr 10:44

  • Music industry sites DDoSed after Pirate Bay verdict

    Hacktivism cuts both ways

    Hacktivists have launched denial of service attacks against music industry association ifpi.org and lawyers involved in the prosecution of the four Pirate Bay defendants in the wake of a guilty verdict against the quartet last Friday. The assault has rendered ifpi.org - the main website of the International Federation of the …

    Enterprise Security 20 Apr 10:51

  • LG officially launches Viewty Smart

    The Viewty's successor

    LG has today officially announced one of the worst kept mobile phone secrets in recent months: the launch of the Viewty Smart. LG's Viewty Smart: slim and feature-packed The firm’s German arm accidentally published the phone's details last week, but LG later promised that it would today officially unveil the phone in the UK …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 11:07

  • ICO rules against British Council

    Disc loss doh!

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has found the British Council in breach of the Data Protection Act after the loss of an unencrypted computer disc Details lost include sensitive personal information relating to trade union membership of over 2,000 members of staff. The British Council reported the data breach to …

    IT Director 20 Apr 11:22

  • Windows 7 Release Candidate coming 5 May

    Microsoft spins out another 'leak'

    Redmond suffered yet another butter fingers incident over the weekend when the company let slip that the near-ready version of Windows 7 will be made available on 5 May. The company's partner program website revealed the date for the release candidate of its forthcoming operating system on Saturday. Neowin picked up on the …

    Operating Systems 20 Apr 11:24

  • Lotus offers to end e-car silent running

    'Leccy Tech A Tesla that sounds like a TIE Fighter, anyone?

    Lotus has announced a raft of systems designed to solve all your pesky car noise problems. And that includes the owners of e-cars, whose worry is that their vehicles make no noise whatsoever. The systems are being developed in partnership with Harman Becker Automotive Systems - and seem to have all bases covered. Drivers of …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 11:28

  • BT wins Starbucks Wi-Fi deal

    iPhones and lattes, together at last

    BT will take over as Wi-Fi operator at Starbucks coffee shops in the UK and Ireland, with T-Mobile losing out on revenue from more than 650 hotspots. Announcing the deal today, BT said it will begin to install service in some stores this week, with rollout scheduled to be completed by the end of summer. The deal is for five …

    Mobile 20 Apr 11:34

  • Videogames aid 'life skill' development

    Claim... er... gamers

    Looking to develop your life skills? Then forget lowly work experience or charity endeavours - just get back on your games console. Playing games helps develop a whole range of life skills... according to gamers A massive 84 per cent of “tech enthusiasts” think playing videogames has enhanced skills that help them in their …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 11:36

  • Spec-less 3D TV displayed

    A step closer to in-home 3D TV?

    Watching a 3D TV without having to don the silly specs is the holy grail for viewers. Now, as in-home 3D TV edges closer, one firm’s demonstrated its latest specs-less 3D TV effort. TMDT's screen shows 3D without glasses Image courtesy of DigiTimes At a recent technology show in Japan, Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 11:37

  • Adobe turns on to Flash TVs

    Skinning up another consumer end-point

    It's the user interface stupid! Adobe is working to bring its Flash web animation and video viewer to the living room via a new run-time system for HD TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and other connected living room devices. This is all part of bringing Internet content into the TV viewing experience. The Adobe strategy is …

    Applications 20 Apr 11:48

  • Oracle reels in Sun Microsystems with $7.4bn buy

    Orasun? Sunacle? Suc(k)le?

    Database giant Oracle has agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn, or $9.5 a share, in cash. The surprise move comes in the wake of IBM walking away from a possible buyout of Sun Microsystems for $6.85bn. Oracle said the boards of both the firms had given the transaction the thumbs up. It’s expected to complete this summer …

    Financial News 20 Apr 12:06

  • External multi-touch trackpad fingered

    A MacBook, without the expense

    If the growing number of laptops being shipped with multi-touch trackpads has you down, one retailer’s launched a gadget that’ll bring your machine up-to-date without spending a fortune. SmartTrack Neo: multi-touch, without the cost SmartTrack Neo is an external touchpad supporting multi-touch. Because it’s powered through …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 12:49

  • Intel X25-M solid-state drive firmware update

    Review Speed booster

    Intel has updated the firmware for its four models of mainstream solid-state drives, the 80GB and 160GB 1.8in X18-M and 2.5in X25-M. Intel's X-25M and X-18M: upgraded You may recall that during our review of the 80GB X25-M we were faced with the task of updating the firmware from version 8510 to 8610 and it was bloody hard …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 12:50

  • Marathon bundles up HA and FT with everRun 2G

    Lockstepping fault tolerance for Xen virtual machines

    Marathon Technologies today is announcing a merged product line, called everRun 2G, that puts together its high availability clustering and fault tolerant clustering technologies for Windows servers, which up until now have been distinct products. The company is also debuting a fault tolerant lockstepping and clustering …

    Virtualization 20 Apr 13:09

  • Blu-ray to boom despite downturn

    Analyst forecasts 100 per cent sales growth

    World+Dog will buy more than twice as many Blu-ray Disc players this year than the number sold in 2008, it has been claimed. According to market watcher Futuresource - a long-time Blu-ray advocate - 12m Blu-ray Disc players will be bought in 2009 in addition to Sony PlayStation 3 consoles and PC-oriented optical drives. By …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 13:25

  • HP pits Matrix against Cisco's California

    'We need blades. Lots of blades'

    Mark Hurd, in a black leather overcoat, wearing dark shades, standing in a white room that stretches out to infinity. "We need blades. Lots of blades," he mutters. ...And suddenly there are racks and racks of servers, bigger than a Google data centre, hotter than a nuclear simulation, humming away, ready to take on Cisco …

    Servers 20 Apr 13:27

  • World's first waterproof, solar phone unveiled

    Eco-power, while talking in the bath

    Whether the market’s been crying out for phone that's waterproof and solar-powered or not, wacky Japanese phone firm KDDI and Sharp have put their heads together to create one. World's first waterproof and solar-powered phone Hailed as a world’s first, the waterproof talker will let you safely hold conversations in the rain …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 13:44

  • Twitter riddled with worms and scams (again)

    Who will stop the madness?

    Multiple new versions of the Mikeyy cross-site scripting worm spread across the Twitter micro-blogging network over the weekend. The first in the latest batch of worms berated Twitter for poor security. Mikeyy Mooney, the VXer who got a job in security days after creating the first Twitter XSS worm over the Easter holiday …

    Security 20 Apr 14:01

  • Lumension keys in Securityworks for compliance buy

    Knock your SOX off

    Patching specialist Lumension has acquired compliance and risk management firm Securityworks. Terms of the deal, announced on Monday, were not disclosed. Lumension said the purchase will allow it to add compliance and risk management capabilities to its existing security portfolio, thereby improving its ability to compete in …

    Enterprise Security 20 Apr 14:06

  • Tosh unfolds 10in netbook series

    Larger screen and longer battery life than NB100

    Toshiba has updated its box-like 8.9in NB100 netbook with the launch of a more spacious, 10.1in UX series. Toshiba's UX: 10in netbook The netbook series will feature a 1024 x 600 display – as seen on the NB100, reviewed here - and have Intel’s 1.66GHz N280 Atom processor under the hood. Each machine will also be fitted with …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 14:18

  • Sony whips out better basic Blu-ray box

    S350's successor

    Sony has shown off the successor to its rather good entry-level Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-S350. Unsurprisingly dubbed the BDP-S360, the new machine adds DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoding to the S350's base spec - a first for a Sony entry-level BD machine. Sony also claimed the new box will start up in just six seconds, just …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 14:18

  • Nokia Wizard spells security issue

    E-mail passwords magically grabbed

    The wizard used to configure e-mail access on the latest Nokia S60 devices is sending e-mail credentials to Nokia, via HTTP, even when the user is connecting to an unrelated mailserver. The connection was spotted by the Mobilitics blog, who discovered that running the wizard on a Nokia 5800 results in a (secure) HTTP …

    Mobile 20 Apr 14:19

  • Profs: Human race must become Hobbits to save planet

    British men 3'3" tall would meet UK carbon pledges

    Public-health researchers in London have come up with a new plan to save the planet: wealthy westerners should all reduce by several inches in height by starving their children. This would not only save food, but make people much lighter, meaning that cars and buses would use less fuel. The new insight comes from Professor Ian …

    Environment 20 Apr 14:32

  • The Pirate Bay loads cannon with official appeal

    Reel around the fountain

    The Pirate Bay four, who were convicted of being accessories to breaching copyright laws on Friday, have fired off an official appeal against the $3.6m fine and one-year jail terms they were handed by a Swedish court last week. The BitTorrent tracker site’s co-founders Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid …

    Music and Media 20 Apr 14:52

  • RedFly goes soft

    Windows Mobile at 1024x768

    Celio, makers of the extension keyboard and screen for Windows Mobile devices, have gone soft with a desktop version of their hardware, for those really addicted to Windows Mobile. The software, which is in public beta, runs applications on the mobile phone but puts the display onto a desktop PC, as well as ramping up the …

    Mobile 20 Apr 15:07

  • King Larry launches Oracle-Sun combo at Big Blue, Cisco

    Analysis Big Red wants a piece of HP, too

    It was not a very auspicious beginning to the merger of two tech giants. Oracle just couldn't seem to get its phone lines and Webcast in order to do the actual announcement of its $5.6bn acquisition of server maker Sun Microsystems. Or, perhaps this explains it all. I guess Oracle needed some Sun servers a little more quickly …

    Servers 20 Apr 15:34

  • LG to unwrap OLED screens by Christmas

    Firm talks up OLED delivery

    Think OLED telly manufacturers and you’d be forgiven thinking solely of Sony. But LG-branded OLEDs are just months away, the firm’s confirmed. LG executive Amitabh Tiwari has told website The Hindu Business Line that its OLED displays “should be here by end of 2009”. His comment builds on an LG promise from last year to punch …

    Reg Hardware 20 Apr 16:35

  • DHS hunts for white-hat hackers

    Only the elite

    The Department of Homeland Security is looking to recruit white-hat hackers to help defend the US's critical internet infrastructure. An ad by General Dynamics Information Technology on behalf of of the DHS seeks applicants who can "think like the bad guy", understand hacking tools and tactics, analyse net traffic and identify …

    Security 20 Apr 17:43

  • New England wrestles porn law schizophrenia

    Sexting OK. Geezer porn? Not so much

    Have Vermont’s lawmakers, who are currently debating a law that would give immunity from prosecution to teenagers engaged in "sexting," been infected with a rare outbreak of common sense? Or are their best efforts still not good enough? What, too, of Massachusetts legislators, who seem determined to turn the censorship dial in …

    Law 20 Apr 17:51

  • Apple rides fanbois to popularity crown (again)

    4,564 Americans can't be wrong?

    Apple trounced all competition in a recent Forrester Research customer-satisfaction survey. And in other news, dog bites man. The Cupertinians have been rated as most-loved for years - but this time their margin of affection is embarrassing. According to Forrester's survey of 4,564 Americans, Apple scored a full 14 percentage …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 18:15

  • Obama taps America's top techie

    iTunes pusher named ADfTutWHoSaTP

    US President Barack Obama has named Virginia's current secretary of technology to be the country's first "CTO," charged with making the federal government more responsive and efficient through applied technology. Aneesh Chopra officially got the nod Sunday morning during Obama's weekly radio and internet address. Obama said …

    Government 20 Apr 18:24

  • Canonical punts Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

    Pre-Karmic Koala for netbooks, desktops, servers

    Canonical this afternoon debuted its Ubuntu 9.04 release of Linux, the tenth release since the company founded the Ubuntu project in October 2004. This iteration of Ubuntu, code-named “Jaunty Jackalope,” comes with mixes designed specifically for three platforms: netbooks, desktops, and servers. Ubuntu is a normal release, …

    Operating Systems 20 Apr 18:49

  • FBI docs out home-brewed spyware probes

    Browser vulns optional

    The FBI for at least seven years has relied on a home-brewed package of spyware to infiltrate the computers of criminals and secretly send a wide range of information to servers controlled by the bureau, according to an investigation by Wired.com. The software, dubbed CIPAV, or computer and internet protocol address verifier, …

    Security 20 Apr 19:28

  • IDC: PC market slowing...pretty much everywhere

    Q1 padded by small, cheap love

    Industry beancounter IDC has tallied some new numbers on the PC market for the first quarter of 2009 — and surprise — they're looking down pretty much everywhere. First quarter PC shipments in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) suffered their first yearly decline since the 2001 dot com bust, according to IDC. …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 21:45

  • One Laptop Per Child dumps AMD for VIA

    Beyond Geode

    The One Laptop Per Child folks have found new brains for the $199 laptop that wants to change the world. OLPC will keep the look and feel of its current XO laptop (which we reviewed last January), but will replace its end-of-the-line AMD Geode LX-700 with a low-power VIA C7-M. The Geode was x86-compatible, and so is the C7-M …

    PCs & Chips 20 Apr 22:47

  • Jackalope gets jaunty with Ubuntu nip and tuck

    Review Growls over universal messaging

    Ubuntu 9.04 - officially launched today and due to be ready for download on Thursday - is a worthwhile upgrade for Ubuntu fans. Ubuntu steward Canonical has been working hard to improve the look and feel of Ubuntu and the Jaunty Jackalope edition brings quite a few refreshing touches to the old exterior. The default theme is …

    Operating Systems 20 Apr 22:48

  • Google boffins unveil 'What's Up?' CAPTCHA

    Arms race extended

    Attempting to take the upper hand in the battle against bots, researchers from Google have devised a new CAPTCHA system that uses a series of randomly rotated images to distinguish between human visitors and automated scripts. The technique, detailed in a paper titled What's Up CAPTCHA? (PDF), presents people signing up for …

    Security 20 Apr 22:51

  • Big Blue defies server crash with Q1 profit

    Mum on Sun, Oracle, Cisco

    Despite some pretty steep revenue declines - particularly in server lines - that drove IBM's overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 down 11.4 per cent to $21.71bn, net income only fell by 1 per cent to $2.3bn. And thanks to some $1.8bn in share buybacks, earnings per share rose by 3.7 per cent to $1.70 a pop. Either Big …

    Financial News 20 Apr 22:56

  • Canonical parks cloud on Jackalope

    In-house Amazon aping

    Yes, your new Jackalope comes with its very own cloud. With the release of Ubuntu 9.04 - aka Jaunty Jackalope - Canonical has paired its Linux distro with Eucalyptus, an open-source software platform that mimics Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) inside your own data center. And if you like, you can marry your private cloud …

    Software 20 Apr 23:01

  • HP ScanJet 3C takes lead on Bohemian Rhapsody

    PC parts' Queen cover combo

    And now, because you secretly asked for it in your heart of hearts: a version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody as played by an old scanner, floppy drive and Atari and TI computers. Not the best sounding version, mind, but squeezing the modern rock classic from creaks, hums, drones, beeps and squeaks of antique kit should soften …

    Odds and Sods 20 Apr 23:53