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22nd April 2009 Archive

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  • Google splits with Mozilla on 3D interwebs

    VRML 2: Electric Googaloo

    One of the most heavily-flogged dead horses on the internet is getting 3D graphics into web browsers. But with Google now at the reins, maybe the old girl will actually come back to life. The Mountain View search firm this Tuesday afternoon released an experimental browser plug-in called O3D, which it hopes will get developers …

    Developer 22 Apr 00:11

  • Cache-poisoning attack snares top Brazilian bank

    Google Adsense spoofed

    One of Brazil's biggest banks has suffered an attack that redirected its customers to fraudulent websites that attempted to steal passwords and install malware, according to an unconfirmed report. According to this Google translation of an article penned in Portuguese, the redirection of Bradesco was the result of what's known …

    Crime 22 Apr 00:32

  • AMD loses cash less quickly

    Is the bottom in sight?

    AMD's CEO Dirk Meyer has fired a shot at his Intel counterpart, Paul Otellini, who recently said that the PC market has hit rock bottom. In a call on Tuesday revealing his company's 2009 first-quarter results, Meyer said: "I've heard some say we've hit bottom. I don't know how someone could say we've hit bottom in the current …

    Financial News 22 Apr 00:39

  • Oracle guru speaks peace, MySQL old-guard cautious

    Closed-source kid gloves applied

    Dr DBA, a top technology guru at Oracle, has appeared at MySQL's annual conference to sooth concerns over the open-source database's future under Oracle. Ken Jacbos, vice president of product strategy in Oracle's server technologies division, was brought on stage to highlight the history of fraternal collaboration between …

    Developer 22 Apr 01:07

  • AMD chases Nehalem with speedier Shanghai

    If you can't beat 'em, ultra low volt 'em

    Chip maker designer and marketeer Advanced Micro Devices has been forced to sit through all the glowing news about rival Intel's "Nehalem EP" Xeon 5500 chips for the past three weeks, and now that the news has died down a bit, the company will today announce that it has cranked the clocks on its "Shanghai" quad-core Opteron …

    Servers 22 Apr 04:28

  • Scots to pioneer remote sex via glowing ring

    Distant partners test nookie-by-light-pen

    A Scottish company trialling "intimate communication over a distance" is seeking couples interested in drawing lines of light on each other's bodies rather than the more-traditional teledildonics hardware. The technology comes from Forres-based Distance Labs, who are looking for three couples in which one partner is based near …

    Biology 22 Apr 07:02

  • The McNealy and Schwartz Sun legacy

    Comment How dot com survivor became a beached whale

    Sun's long revivalist saga is over. Soon to be ex-CEO Jonathan 'The Pony Tail' Schwartz will be remembered for what he didn't do and how he turned Sun into a corporate anorexic. He, chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy and Sun's board have sold Sun to Oracle so Larry Ellison can do what they couldn't or wouldn't do - gut the …

    Hardware 22 Apr 08:02

  • Fujitsu cuts contractor pay

    Hardware giant tosses another gloom grenade

    Fujitsu Services has confirmed that it is asking contractors to swallow a 15 per cent pay cut because of prevailing economic conditions. The company said about 450 staff employed by agencies would be hit, but not temporary staff or those on fixed term contracts. Fujitsu said: This programme is designed to realign our costs …

    Channel Register 22 Apr 08:02

  • Darling banks on offshoring to save UK plc

    Budget 09 Budget to promise civil service cuts

    Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling presents his budget today as the UK faces its worse recession for a generation. And his big idea is using offshoring and shared services to cut billions of pounds, and thousands of jobs, from the civil service. The Operational Efficiency Programme promises to cut £15bn from budgets …

    Government 22 Apr 08:28

  • Texas goes large with supersize SSD

    5TB beast is mighty big, mighty fast'n'green

    Texas Memory Systems has announced its biggest flash SSD yet - the 5TB RamSan-620. This product comes as a 2U rack shelf and uses single level cell (SLC) flash. It is, TMS claims, the highest capacity SLC SSD on the market, as well as the fastest at 250,000 sustained I/Os per second (IOPS) for random reads and random writes. …

    Channel Register 22 Apr 09:00

  • Seagate's Barracuda goes low-power

    Greener than Caviar Green

    Seagate has introduced a lower power consumption version of its 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop drive. This 2TB SATA green drive spins at 5900rpm, which according to Seagate gives it a performance edge over competing drives in its class which spin at 5400rpm. It draws three watts when idle and 5.6 watts when operating. Yesterday's …

    Channel Register 22 Apr 09:00

  • Carphone Warehouse to become two

    Take one telecoms company into the shower?

    Not happy running just one company Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone has announced plans become chair of one mobile-phone network and one retailer, both of which should end up in the FTSE 250. The split, which won't happen until the credit situation improves, will see the company becoming TalkTalk and Best Buy Europe - …

    Channel Register 22 Apr 09:23

  • eBay officially not cheaper than High Street

    Except possibly for telescopic hats and spares for WWII landing craft

    eBay has been told not to republish adverts claiming its prices are 25 per cent cheaper than the High Street. The Advertising Standards Authority found in favour of a complaint that the claim was misleading. eBay based their advert on third party research and not all the evidence was available. But the online tat bazaar …

    Financial News 22 Apr 09:30

  • Latest Intel netbook chipset needs Vista for boosted graphics

    Solution simple: wait for Windows 7

    Windows Vista is coming to netbooks - well for those that want to take advantage of Intel's GN40 chipset and the graphical advantages it offers over the 945GSE found in most netbooks, it will. The GN40 delivers faster 3D graphics and speedier HD video decoding than the 945GSE does, albeit at the cost of higher power …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 10:00

  • A Geeks Guide2 ...Solid Code

    Reg Bookshop 40% off

    Geeks Guide2 Let’s face it; all software development projects have their fair share of problems. While some are particularly minor, some could result in catastrophic project failure. However, such failures are not always the fault of a single software developer’s error; instead a multitude of technical and non-technical issues …

    Site News 22 Apr 10:02

  • LSI mans up on bandwidth

    Boosts 7900 array I/O and capacity, sees rise in DAS

    LSI Engenio has doubled the I/O bandwidth of its 7900 storage array, increased the drive count, and added full disk encryption. The 7900 array, a mid-range modular product, was launched in October last year with 16 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel interfaces and support for up to 256 3.5-inch SATA or FC drives. It's used by SGI as the …

    Storage 22 Apr 10:06

  • Mozilla update quashes nine bugs

    Critical memory corruption bug stars in update

    Mozilla released an updated version of Firefox on Tuesday that addressed nine security flaws, one of which earns the dreaded 'critical' rating. The critical flaw addressed by Firefox 3.09 involves a memory corruption problem. The two "high-risk" flaws involve same-origin violation security bugs. The other six moderate or low …

    Applications 22 Apr 10:13

  • Oldsters: If you think you'll lose your memory, you will

    Remember: Forget the whole theory

    Here's one for all those concerned at the prospect of advancing age gradually stripping away their, erm, wait, tip of my tongue - memory. Bad news: your ability to retain information will indeed disappear as you get older. But, in a cruel twist of fate, if you aren't concerned you'll be fine. Yes, you read that right. New …

    Biology 22 Apr 10:43

  • Ocarina making dedupe music with BlueArc

    As well as appearing in a Legend of Zelda game

    Hardware-accelerated file storage supplier BlueArc is to sell Ocarina deduplication hardware integrated with its Titan 3000 product. BlueArc's Titan 3000 is a network-attached storage (NAS) product offering very fast access, up to 4PB of capacity, and tiered storage embracing fast Fibre Channel drives, bulk storage SATA drives …

    Storage 22 Apr 10:59

  • Server platforms and operating systems: Reg readers speak

    Reg Barometer Virtualisation more important than Platform?

    This is one of a series of articles which draws on online research conducted in partnership with The Register in October 2008. Some 1,125 people, from organisations large and small based in the UK, United States and many other countries took the time to let us know how IT systems are being used in their businesses. Thanks to all …

    Virtualization 22 Apr 11:17

  • Euro Parliament agrees roaming caps

    Just before elections. Fancy

    The proposed caps on the cost of using a mobile within Europe have been approved, just in time for voters to give their approval come June. The final agreement is pretty much what was proposed last month, with a cap on the cost of texting at €.11, and voice calls at €.40 per minute. Data gets a cap at €1/MB - more than many …

    Mobile 22 Apr 11:26

  • It's US vs Europe as world e-car plug standard race nears end

    'Leccy Tech One ring-main to rule them all

    It looks like the US, Europe and several of the world's major car manufacturers are set to agree on a standard power connector for plug-in e-cars. Or rather two standards: one for the new world, one for the old. Due to be unveiled at a Hanover technology fair on Monday by German energy company RWE, the Euro plug uses three …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 11:36

  • Old school music sales fell 8% last year

    Digital fails to offset decline, industry blames pirates

    Worldwide music sales declined by more than eight per cent in 2008 to $18.42bn, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. It reported a sharp drop in the US, where sales dramatically tumbled by nearly 19 per cent last year. Sales were a little less dire in Europe where they fell more than six per …

    Music and Media 22 Apr 11:37

  • Android-based tablet PC spied online

    SkyTone’s Alpha 680

    Several firms have already begun talking-up Android-based laptops, but now a quirky PC manufacturer’s stuck its neck out and launched its own model. SkyTone's Android-based Alpha 680 Although images of SkyTone’s Alpha 680 tablet PC don’t really say much about how Android looks and feel away from a mobile phone, the firm …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 11:41

  • Virgin Media sticks with Phorm

    There's more than one way to target ads

    Claims that Virgin Media is seeking to dump Phorm in favour of more conventional behavioural targeting firms have been denied by both firms today. A report in the digital marketing trade magazine New Media Age today suggested Virgin Media was seeking to distance itself from Phorm by working with Audience Science, another …

    Telecoms 22 Apr 11:45

  • Yes! It's the World of Warcraft house!

    The ultimate shed for WoW addicts

    World of Warcraft undoubtedly has its addicted followers. So if you frequently find yourself playing for hours each day, then why not put yourself in the ultimate WoW garden shed? The WoW Pod: live like a gaming addict The WoW Pod is essentially a prototype for a dwelling that would provide the addicted WoW gamer with …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 11:53

  • Gov systems found on 1.9m zombie botnet

    Ooh, nasty

    Government and corporate Windows PCs were among the ranks of a 1.9 million botnet recently discovered by net security firm Finjan. Finjan security researchers discovered the control server of the botnet after tracing back an infection from a corporate client. Evidence on the cybercrime server, which was hosted in the Ukraine, …

    Enterprise Security 22 Apr 11:59

  • Interstellar Bebo spamgasm targeted at 'water world'

    Web-2.0 tomfoolery could trigger alien jellyfish attack

    Astronomers believe that there may be a "water world" capable of harbouring intelligent alien life orbiting a star just 20 lightyears from Earth. Unfortunately, it appears that the first communication any aliens will receive from the human race will be a multimedia compilation assembled by Bebo users. News of the possible …

    Space 22 Apr 12:03

  • Darling points at silver lining, floats investment in broadband

    Budget 09 Want some of what he's drinking? It'll cost you

    Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling today used what is likely to be his last Budget to paint an optimistic view of the UK economy and the path out of the world recession. Darling said: "We will work to support green industries of the future as well as re-building our financial services." He claimed Britain's economy …

    Small Biz 22 Apr 12:34

  • Dead PC tycoon's estate eaten up by credit card debts

    Forsyth saga comes to an end

    Disgraced PC-tycoon Charles Forsyth died almost penniless, according to the administrator of his estate. High-living Forsyth, who left a legacy of four crashed computer companies and served a three and a half year prison sentence, died last year of a heart attack aged just 49. The public-school educated Forsyth, who was heir …

    Channel Register 22 Apr 12:57

  • Toshiba unveils next netbook

    Move over NB100, here's the NB200

    Toshiba has jazzed up its NB100 netbook, bringing some curves and a 10.1in display to the rather business-like mini laptop. A better battery life too: up to nine hours, the company claimed. Toshiba's NB200: more curvy than its predecessor The new release gets a new name too: NB200. It's essentially the UK version of the UX …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 13:04

  • LG insider points to Apple OLED notebook

    Release imminent. Allegedly

    An LG staffer has made the very bold claim that 15in Apple notebooks equipped with OLED displays will appear within months. Last year, LG signed a $500m deal with Apple to supply the Mac maker with unspecified types of displays through to 2013. This week, an unnamed LG insider told website SmartHouse that the deal includes …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 13:15

  • Eurocrats, MEPs clash on telecoms reform to flush out pirates

    Cutting off is hard to do

    The European Parliament and its member states are reportedly on a “collision course” over tackling online piracy, after the two parties failed to agree on a final sticking point in a massive reform of the telecoms industry. As a result final adoption has been pushed back until May at the earliest, according to Reuters. It had …

    Telecoms 22 Apr 13:31

  • Info Commissioner contacted 74 times over Street View

    Possibly all from that chap filmed peeing in the street

    Privacy regulator the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that 74 people have written to it about Google's Street View service since its launch last month. It said it would release details of the complaints and enquiries soon. The controversial photo-mapping of 25 UK towns and cities has prompted protests from privacy …

    Law 22 Apr 13:33

  • MPs to probe ISP snooping and throttling

    Who woke them up?

    MPs have today launched an investigation into the use of snooping technology by ISPs which allows them to profile customers for advertisers and throttle or block specific types of traffic. An inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Communication will examine issues such as the emergence of Phorm's profiling system, and …

    Telecoms 22 Apr 13:47

  • Why Whack-a-Tard won't save music

    P2P: the next generation

    Any recording business executive celebrating the court victory over The Pirate Bay should have been in San Francisco this weekend for a reality check. Attending CodeCon 2009 would have brought them swiftly down to earth, and emphasised the futility of trying to prevent P2P file sharing. What's the point, when you can make money …

    Developer 22 Apr 14:26

  • Google should punt content thief ad payments to rights owners

    Big networks should get noble, says software firm

    A content-tracking software company wants the internet's biggest advertising networks to siphon money from advertising on copyright-infringing websites and divert it to the material's original owners. No major ad network has signed up yet. Attribute is forming the Fair Syndication Network, a grouping of publishers who will use …

    Music and Media 22 Apr 14:32

  • Samsung samples 500GB laptop HDD

    'I scoff at your less capacious SSD'

    With notebook-oriented SSDs now hitting the 250GB mark, Samsung has introduced a laptop-friendly hard drive offering double that capacity. The 500GB SpinPoint M7 uses the notebook-standard 2.5in form-factor and incorporates a pair of 250GB platters. They spin at 5400rpm, and data transfers are buffered in an 8MB cache. The …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 14:38

  • Dell updates Studio 15

    Bigger screen and slower processor, but only slightly

    Roughly ten months after it first launched Studio 15, Dell has updated the laptop series with a selection of cherry picked technical modifications. Dell's Studio 15: now sports a bigger screen, slower processor and a larger HDD When the Studio 15 line was originally launched it was based around a 15.4in, 1280 x 800 display …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 14:44

  • Bittorrent's Bram Cohen on the music biz

    CodeCon 09 Interview Gazing into the smudgy crystal ball of P2P

    I've known Bram Cohen since 2001, when Bittorrent was a glimmer in his eye. It's a worldwide phenomenon now, and is at the heart of the Pirate Bay trial. So there was plenty to chew over when I caught up with Bram at the revived CodeCon workshops in San Francisco this weekend. What's the instant one-line summary of Bittorrent …

    Music and Media 22 Apr 14:50

  • Budget reaction: Credit insurance good, all else bad

    Budget 09 Darling budget upsets small biz

    Reaction to Alistair Darling's budget is mixed to say the least. Even the £2,000 subsidy for people buying a new car and scrapping an old one has had a mixed response from the motor industry. The Federation for Small Business welcomed help in training young people but said: "We are very disappointed that this budget will do …

    Small Biz 22 Apr 15:15

  • One third of workers open to bribes for data theft

    Who wants to be a millionaire?

    A somewhat self-serving survey ahead of an information security trade show in London next week reveals a third of workers can potentially be bribed into handing over company data. A poll of 600 workers at busy London railway stations found more than a third (37 per cent), admitted that they would hand over their organisation's …

    Enterprise Security 22 Apr 15:20

  • Darling supports broadband by raiding Granny's digital fund

    Budget 09 Stop us if you've heard this one

    Alistair Darling used today's Budget to back calls for Universal Service obligations to include access to a decent broadband network regardless of where in the UK your home or business is. The Budget pledged support for universal access to a 2 Megabit broadband network. This will be paid for by the underspending on the …

    Telecoms 22 Apr 15:41

  • Ballmer disses Oracle's decision to buy Sun

    Perplexed MS boss butters up Russia instead

    Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has derided Oracle’s decision to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn. "I have no idea why a software company would buy a hardware company. We don't want to buy any hardware companies," Ballmer told the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo, Egypt today, reports Reuters. He also reiterated that …

    Software 22 Apr 15:46

  • Branson mothership bottom smacked in 'touch & go' incident

    Blushing cheeks at Virgin Galactic

    Rumoured control issues in Richard Branson's WhiteKnightTwo rocketplane-piggyback "mothership" craft appear to be persisting. Reports have it that the innovative aircraft smacked one or both of its tails against the runway during a recent test flight. The tale of the small-tail fishtail issue may not yet be over. The …

    Space 22 Apr 16:01

  • Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000

    Review World's first 60f/s HD camcorder

    ‘It’s a Dual camera,’ says the little sticker on the side of the vaguely retro, pistol grip, Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 camcorder. Sure it can function as a 12Mp still camera too, but when it comes to video, Sanyo claims the Xacti is the first consumer camcorder to shoot 60 frames per second in 1080p full HD. To achieve this, and …

    Reg Hardware 22 Apr 16:58

  • IBM picks open-source in Oracle database fight

    Compatibility is a company called EnterpriseDB

    IBM is licensing technology from an open-source database company it's invested in, hoping to convince Oracle customers they should switch to its next DB2. The giant has licensed capabilities in five-year-old EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which EnterpriseDB claims will cut by 90 per cent the cost of moving off …

    Developer 22 Apr 17:02

  • Google feeds Analytics API to world+dog

    Stats, stats everywhere

    As promised - many months ago - the Mountain View Chocolate Factory has opened up the Google Analytics Data Export API, letting web-happy developers tap straight into site stats collected by the free traffic-tracking service. This being Google, the API is billed as a public beta. And it will most likely retain its beta tag for …

    Developer 22 Apr 17:06

  • IBM boasts Sun-HP server pact pillaging

    Customer theft tit-for-tat

    Now that IBM has reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2009, the company can brag a little bit about competitive takeouts for server deals. To that end, Big Blue says that in the first quarter it landed 102 deals that displaced servers made by rivals Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. IBM has been …

    Servers 22 Apr 17:25

  • AT&T reveals slipping iPhone sales

    Fanbois eye Third Coming

    Sales of Apple's iPhone are slowing as potential buyers await the long-rumored refresh of the popular smartphone. On Wednesday, AT&T released its financial results for the first quarter of 2009. Among the details of the report - which showed revenue to be essentially flat, year-on-year - was the news that iPhone activations …

    Financial News 22 Apr 18:51

  • Turks hijack Kiwi MSN via DNS cracks

    RSA A pie in the face of Microsoft (and everyone else)

    The New Zealand version of Microsoft's MSN website was briefly hijacked after attackers penetrated that country's prominent domain name registrar. Websites for Sony, BitDefender, and HSBC were also commandeered. The mass defacements came as security researchers gathered in San Francisco discussed vulnerabilities in the DNS, or …

    Security 22 Apr 19:49

  • Tech giants surrender to Oz Wi-Fi boffins

    'Prior art' my Kookaburra

    Some of the world's top tech companies have run up the white flag in the face of a national science agency’s legal claim it invented key technologies behind Wi-Fi. Each of the 14 companies the agency sued for copyright infringement in 2005 has cut confidential settlements with the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and …

    Wireless 22 Apr 21:40

  • Microsoft's DNA won't permit Oracle-Sun deal

    Comment Ballmer knows his knitting

    When Steve Ballmer tackled the inevitable question on a Microsoft hardware acquisition, in the wake or Oracle's planned purchase of Sun Microsystems, he was "sticking to the knitting." "I have no idea why a software company would buy a hardware company," Microsoft's chief executive is reported to have said. That's not to say …

    Software 22 Apr 21:53

  • AMD pulls forward six-shooter Opteron cannon

    Guns for Intel on server turf

    AMD is picking up the pace for its six-core, Istanbul family of Opteron processors, saying it will ship the chips to paying customers in May with server OEM partners shipping in June. That brings the Istanbul chips ahead by several months and gives AMD a chance to leapfrog Intel in the two-socket server space, where Intel has …

    Servers 22 Apr 22:05

  • VMware lovers to slow fake server spending

    The mind is willing. The wallet is not

    VMware's first quarter sales were up 7 per cent thanks to a huge jump in its services revenue, but the virtualization house warned it's likely to report a first-ever drop in revenue next time around. The expected shortfall was blamed on a transition to VMware's newest product, VMware vSphere 4 - and the crap economy. "We …

    Virtualization 22 Apr 23:10

  • Microsoft rallies Google-averse on pubCenter

    No time like a recession

    Microsoft has thrown its challenger to Google's Adsense open to public testing while trying to rally partners. The company's pubCenter has been released to US beta testers following long-running private tests. Senior product marketing manager Kevin McCabe called the beta a "great opportunity" for web site owners to shape an " …

    Music and Media 22 Apr 23:13

  • eBay endures revenue shrinkage deja vu

    But all will be fine in 2011

    At the end of 2008, for the first time in its history, eBay stomached a year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue. And at the beginning of 2009, it happened again. For three months ending March 31, the online tat house pulled in revenues of $2.02bn, an eight per cent dip from the first quarter of 2008, while profits topped …

    Financial News 22 Apr 23:17