4th May 2009 Archive

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Quantum: hot air balloon or just a basket case?

Debt and tape ballast weighing it down

Quantum made a sizeable loss last year, and faces trouble in its efforts to return to the black. The financial promise of its DXi deduplication technology isn't enough to overcome the dead weight of its debt liabilities and tape ballast. A return to profitability could happen in the next few months, though, with Dell lending a …

The Channel 4 May 2009, 06:02
Can you talk and drive?

T-shirt counting game implies that you can't

The UK's Department of Transport has launched a free game that demonstrates how hard it is to listen while driving, addressing the fact that 30 per cent of young drivers admit sending text messages from behind the wheel. The game, and statistics, come as part of the DoT's THINK! campaign, which is particularly aimed at young …

Mobile 4 May 2009, 06:02
Acer 11.6in notebook-not-netbook demo'd on camera

Video Sexy Aspire One 751

Watch a more bandwidth-friendly version on YouTube here Can't see the video? Then download Flash Player from Adobe

Hardware 4 May 2009, 06:44
How to turn votes into tax free cash

Betting on Bozza for PM?

As Labour’s penultimate gamble – the budget – works its way through the system, professionals and dabblers alike are starting to size up the odds on the next election. There is tax-free money to be made – and lost as well – and whilst we’re never going to advocate betting the house, here are some pointers that anyone looking to …

Government 4 May 2009, 08:02
Trade in secondhand BlackBerries booming in Nigeria

Information fences plunder insecure data

A TV investigation has revealed that secondhand BlackBerries on Nigerian markets are priced according to the data held on them, not the age or the model of a phone. Jon Godfrey, director of Sims LifeCycle Services, who is advising on a TV investigation into the trade due to screen later this year, said that BlackBerries sell …

Mobile 4 May 2009, 12:02
Leyio demos UWB personal data-sharing device

Video Point and ping

For a more bandwidth friendly version, visit YouTube here Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com

Broadband 4 May 2009, 14:02
Brocade 'restructuring' personnel for Ethernet push

Layoffs or not?

It has been rumoured that Brocade is planning to sack 200 to 400 excess employees following on from the $2.6bn Foundry acquisition closure. The rumours say that Brocade is focussing more on Ethernet and IP networking and less on Fibre Channel. Brocade's John Noh - Senior Director for global public and analyst relations - …

Data Networking 4 May 2009, 15:27
Ousted Seagate CEO boards Vertical Circuits

Chip stacks

Ousted Seagate CEO Bill Watkins is back at work, as a board member at Vertical Circuits, a maker of thin interconnects used to stack chips vertically. Watkins was suddenly ousted at Seagate on January 9th, being replaced by chairman Steve Luczo. He joined the board of start-up Vertical Circuits in March. Vertical Circuits …

Hardware 4 May 2009, 15:33
Moon Macrosystems - How to build a better Sun

Analysis Go ahead. Take a crack at it

You're a Sun Microsystems systems engineer. Or a Sun software developer. Or maybe even one of the few sales people that knows a disk drive from a processor from a TCP/IP stack. You have survived countless layoffs since 2000, when the dot-com gravy train ran under the sink. You've rolled with the seemingly endless strings of …

Servers 4 May 2009, 16:33
Voltaire two-times InfiniBand with 10Gb Ethernet

Crossing the protocol divide

InfiniBand switch maker Voltaire announced this morning that it would be crossing the high-speed protocol divide and will later this year launch a set of converged switches based on the 10 Gigabit Ethernet protocol. While the current InfiniBand technologies offer 20 Gb/sec (dual data rate) and 40 Gb/sec (quad data rate) …

Data Networking 4 May 2009, 16:59
Emulex tells Broadcom to go away

And come back with more money

Emulex' board of directors has unanimously rejected Broadcom's takeover offer because it "significantly undervalues Emulex and is not in the best interest of Emulex stockholders." Interesting. Does Emulex want more cash? Broadcom is offering $9.25 per share in cash. Emulex exec chairman Paul Folino said: "It is an …

Storage 4 May 2009, 17:04
Apple hooks Microsoft Xbox tactician

The funnest iPod ever

Apple continues to add to its stable of hardware heavyweights with the addition of Richard Teversham of Microsoft's European Xbox division. The hiring of marketing tactician Teversham adds to speculation that Cupertino is building its own dream team of chip designers and strategists, with the goal of creating its own SoCs ( …

Hardware 4 May 2009, 18:21
Hyperic acquisition binds Spring Framework to cloud

Visibility in uncertain times

SpringSource is moving into management of public and private clouds with its third acquisition in two years. The commercial maintainer of the ever-popular Spring Framework has bought Hyperic, an open-source systems monitoring and management specialist. Hyperic specialized in bread-and-butter datacenter activities such as event …

Developer 4 May 2009, 18:43
Zend plugs PHP into Amazon cloud

What devs want

Zend Technologies has plugged its PHP web development framework into Amazon's cloud. On Friday, the company unveiled version 1.8 of its Zend Framework, and for the first time, users can tap directly into the processing and storage resources offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). "We're allowing PHP developers to utilize Zend …

Developer 4 May 2009, 18:45
Firefox users caught in crossfire of warring add-ons

NoScript v AdBlock Plus

A protracted war between authors of two of the most popular add-ons for the Firefox browser has prompted calls for changes in the way extensions are written, after one of them admitted he added camouflaged code that disabled features in the other's program. In a heart-felt apology posted Monday, Giorgio Maone admitted that he …

Applications 4 May 2009, 18:52
Amazon big-screen Kindle sails this week

Magazine mimic

Amazon is just days away from busting out a new large-screen Kindle e-reader designed to better replicate old-media newspapers, magazines, and textbooks. The New York Times was first to report a jumbo Kindle arriving as early as this week, citing "people briefed on on the online retailer's plans." Amazon has since scheduled a …

Media 4 May 2009, 19:17
BlackBerries outselling Apple iPhones

Fanboi excuses aplenty

RIM's BlackBerry Curve outsold Apple's iPhone in the first quarter of this year, according to a US survey conducted by the wireless-market research firm NPD Group. To help the BlackBerry pass the iPhone, however, Verizon had to give RIM's phones away. From February 6th through March 31st, Verizon ran a "Buy One, Get One" …

Phones 4 May 2009, 20:14
Botnet hijacking reveals 70GB of stolen data

Torpig uncovered

Security researchers have managed to infiltrate the Torpig botnet, a feat that allowed them to gain important new insights into one of the world's most notorious zombie networks by collecting an astounding 70 GB worth of data stolen in just 10 days. During that time, Torpig bots stole more than 8,300 credentials used to login …

Security 4 May 2009, 21:49
FreeBSD 7.2 joins BSD fest

Super-powered superpages

The Beastie sent up FreeBSD 7.2 today, topping off the recent bout of major BSD releases last week. FreeBSD 7.2 mostly includes functionality updates and a few bug fixes, although there's a handful of new features baked inside too, such as improved memory management with superpages. The OS's virtual memory subsystem now …

Operating Systems 4 May 2009, 22:32
Asempra collapses, Bakbone pounces

Assets gobbled

Backup software vendor Bakbone is buying the continuous data protection technology assets from the collapsed Asempra Technologies for a mixture of shares and cash. Chris Ross, Bakbone VP and general manager for EMEA, said: "Asempra has ceased trading. We've essentially bought the assets of the company." Bakbone - which …

Storage 4 May 2009, 22:37
Google patent feeds ebook 'monopoly' infrared 3D

The world is flat. The page is not

If there were any doubt that Google is in a prime position to establish a legal monopoly in the world of digital books, the US patent office has snuffed it out. Earlier this year, as spotted by The New Scientist and churned up late last week by National Public Radio, Google patented a book-scanning technology that can digitize …

Developer 4 May 2009, 22:52
Apple snips Nine Inch Nails app

Censorship and The Downward Spiral

Apple has once again proven the absurdity of its App Store product-approval process by rejecting an app from Nine Inch Nails because of its "objectionable content." Apple didn't decline the update to nin: access (iTunes link) because it has a problem with multi-instrumentalist and producer Trent Reznor's songwriting talents. …

Media 4 May 2009, 22:56
Unicode bloat blights SAP upgrades

Oracle throws the mob a body

A relatively small change to the way SAP represented characters four years ago is threatening to complicate upgrades to the latest edition of its software. SAP's implementation of Unicode - now widely adopted - has massively expanded the amount of data held in the databases underpinning many customers' SAP systems, increasing …

Applications 4 May 2009, 23:03
Compellent - the billion-dollar storage company?

Comment Screw the recession up

Holding up Compellent as an example - and with an emphatic sideswipe at some business ethics - Compellent CEO Phil Soran opened his company's CDrive conference today by saying: "Big business isn't going to pull us out of this recession. Nor big computer computers. It's the small and medium-sized businesses that are going to have …

Storage 4 May 2009, 23:43