17th June 2009 Archive

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Canonical responds to 'abusive' Ubuntu posts

Troll watch

Administrators overseeing Ubuntu mailing lists are taking steps to thwart and apparent rash of un-Ubuntu-like behavior. Canonical is investigating what has been reported as "abuse" and "intimidation" of unnamed members of the Ubuntu community email lists. The investigation will produce a set of guidelines that will help decide …

Operating Systems 17 Jun 00:45
Cisco spruces media hub, declares consumer love

Fanbois invited into digital home

Cisco on Tuesday quietly updated its Linksys by Cisco line of networked home entertainment products and loudly trumpeted its expansion into consumer electronics products. The Linksys by Cisco Media Hub - which we reviewed shortly after its introduction that this year's Consumer electronics show - will now ship with Mac …

Music and Media 17 Jun 00:52
US gov asked Twitter to stay up for Iran protests

Obama meddling?

On Monday, Twitter delayed a scheduled upgrade so that its micro-blogging service would not be down during daylight hours in Iran, where Tweets have fueled protests against the disputed presidential election. And according to press reports, the delay was requested by the US State Department. "In coordination with Twitter, our …

Government 17 Jun 00:55
MPs launch probe of massive net snooping project

Unrealistic, disproportionate and misleading, experts say

MPs and Lords will launch an investigation into the Home Office's £2bn plan to store details of every online communication, after a critical report by the London School of Economics branded it unrealistic, disproportionate and misleading. Representatives from all sides of both Houses will use the report as the starting point …

Government 17 Jun 06:02
Ten of the best... noise-cancelling headphones

Round-up World, shut your mouth

When we organized a round-up of noise-isolating headphones recently, we were able to get hold of a couple of models that cost as little as £10. However, noise-cancelling headphones are a different kettle of fish. Rather than simply plugging up your ear canal to prevent external noise from getting through, noise-cancelling …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 08:02
Tories don black cap for ID cards

Think before you sign, contractors told

The Tory Party has written to firms involved in bidding for ID card contracts and told them to think long and hard before signing anything. Chris Grayling, shadow Home Secretary, told Radio 4's Today programme that firms should think before committing cash and other resources to bidding, preparing for work or signing contracts …

Government 17 Jun 08:03
Storage Platforms Regcast - Live today

Regcast Expert interaction from the comfort of your desk

Tune in at 2pm BST today (9am EST) as The Register's expert panel takes a live and interactive look at enterprise storage platforms. This Regcast explores the pressures that business requirements place on storage platforms and considers the solutions that can help organisations better align storage performance, protection and …

Storage 17 Jun 08:52
Endeavour launch scrubbed again

Hydrogen vent system not in such good shape

NASA has scrubbed today's planned launch of space shuttle Endeavour - the second such knock-back due to a gaseous hydrogen leak and despite assurances yesterday that the vehicle was "in good shape" to go. The agency canned the lift-off at 05:55 GMT after detecting an escape in at the "Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate" (in pic …

Space 17 Jun 08:54
Defensive contracts set for fail, say negotiatiors

Contract managers scramble to avoid risk at all costs

Contract managers are being more cautious than ever when they negotiate new agreements, contract managers' body IACCM has said. It has surveyed the most negotiated contract terms and says that the wrong terms get most attention. "It has become increasingly apparent that what we negotiate is out of step with business needs," …

IT Director 17 Jun 09:03
Dell replaces entry-level EqualLogic boxes

Plus a new NAS box

Dell has replaced the PS5000 entry point to its EqualLogic iSCSI storage arrays with the PS4000. It is also announcing a new NX3000 network-attached storage (NAS) box. The EqualLogic line, which has recorded stunning sales results recently, consisted of the PS6000 and PS5000. The PS6000 was announced in March and features a …

Storage 17 Jun 09:16
iPhone OS 3 coming ~~today~~ tomorrow

Updated Delayed to allow Apple more unexplained faffing time

Apple has announced that the latest version of its iPhone OS will be available from tomorrow, forcing iPhone users to twiddle their thumbs for a day longer than expected. The update brings with it bunch of much-awaited features, including cut and paste, MMS and support for Bluetooth headphones. iPhone users have been chomping …

Mobile 17 Jun 09:51
Tories research increased net censorship

Jihad.com 404

The activities, alleged activities, and destiny of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are a constant source of controversy in these parts, so our interest was naturally piqued by a Parliamentary question from the shadow security minister Baroness Neville-Jones last week. In a written question, she asked her government …

Government 17 Jun 10:02
Carter recommends 'G Cloud' for gov IT

Digital Britain Getting touchy feely over tech procurement

The newly published Digital Britain report has advocated that more government IT applications be moved to cloud computing. In its chapter eight section on procurement, the report says that cloud computing – in which a third party takes responsibility for the technical management of IT functions – can work as a shared service …

Channel Register 17 Jun 10:03
Samsung clears runway for Jet

Firm's latest all-powerful, speedy handset lands

Impatience is a virtue - at least according to Samsung, which has launched the super-stylish Jet mobile phone that, supposedly, “epitomises speed” and boasts a “super-fast processor”. Samsung's Jet: features a 800MHz processor Although we’d argue that Jet’s 3.6Mb/s HSDPA 3G is hardly groundbreaking, the phone’s 800MHz …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 10:09
New Pegi videogame ratings designed

Out with the BBFC?

Redesigned age rating and content classification symbols for videogames released in the UK have been revealed. Pegi's age ratings will join the BBFC age symbols The new Pan-European Game Information (Pegi) symbols following a recent decision reached by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to make Pegi the sole …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 10:18
Gay animals going at it like rabbits

Lesbian albatrosses, boy-on-boy bat bugs...

Researchers have concluded that homosexual behaviour among animals is so impressively rife that it can "reshape their social dynamics and even change their DNA" - something which could have "evolutionary consequences" for species indulging in same-sex shenanigans. Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk of the University of California …

Biology 17 Jun 10:31
Dutch company augments mobile reality

Like life, only with more fluorescent writing in the sky

Dutch developer SPRXMobile has created a browser that overlays local information on the camera view, augmenting reality with superimposed information provided by business partners, who pay for the privilege. Android handsets feature a digital compass, which can be used along with GPS to enhance the real world with additional …

Mobile 17 Jun 10:38
Chief constable caves to judges on disk grab

Judges concerned over conduct

Avon and Somerset Chief Constable, Colin Port, bowed to the law this week and returned computer disks seized by his force from computer forensic expert Jim Bates. However, reports from the High Court in London, suggest that Mr Port is determined to keep on expressing the point of view that had him hauled up in the first place …

Law 17 Jun 10:51
iPhone OS still due later today

International Date Line causes confusion

Despite reports to the contrary, including in our own pages, the iPhone update to version 3 will be available today. The confusion stemmed from a Singapore web site whose customers live on the other side of the International Date Line. By the time eager iPhone users in Europe and the US are downloading the 298MB firmware, …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 11:01
Win an HTC Touch Diamond2!

Reg Lucky Draw Last call for iPhone botherer promo

The Register has teamed up with our retail partner eXpansys to give one lucky reader the chance to get his or her hands on HTC's best handset yet, the Touch Diamond2. The Touch Diamond2 features a lovely 3.2-inch, 480 X 800 touch sensitive screen and Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and HSDPA/WCDMA connectivity to keep you in touch. A …

Site News 17 Jun 11:02
Gov considers website to teach tech skills

And sharks to teach swimming

A review of England's computer skills has found over 11m people who lack even basic IT abilities. The report by Baroness Estelle Morris recommends free IT training for all adults in England. The report found 11.6m English people lack basic tech skills. Morris reckons a marketing campaign to show people the benefits of going …

Government 17 Jun 11:09
Sapped council staff offered SAP counselling

Somerset struggles with 'shambolic' shared solutions

Harrassed Somerset County Council staff are to benefit from "support sessions" designed to help them face the trauma of a SAP implementation which has so far seen the software not quite providing local government operatives with "the visibility to pinpoint inefficiencies", the "capabilities to transform them into competitive …

Government 17 Jun 11:56
Samsung N120

Review The netbook with a notebook keyboard

If you can live with the price, relatively fragile hard drive and Windows then the Samsung NC10 is, without doubt, one of the best netbooks currently available. However, Samsung has decided that its range needs to address the parts of the market that other netbooks don't reach and with that in mind it has launched the N120, an …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 12:02
Chinese phone maker ponders solar-powered Android handset

Google-based device coming next year

Three months after it unveiled the world’s first low-cost solar-powered mobile phone, Chinese handset maker ZTE hinted today that it may launch an Android-powered solar phone next year. In an interview with Register Hardware, ZTE Sales Director Wu Sa confirmed that the company will launch its first handset based on Google’s …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 12:03
Britain looks to export net censorship model to Europe

Digital Britain And they say this country doesn't make anything anymore

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a British success story - and one that our government would dearly like to export overseas. Although it would rather not pay for it, if it can possibly avoid doing so. That is the somewhat Johnny Bullish assessment of how we regulate the internet here in dear old Blighty, taken from the …

Policing 17 Jun 12:06
What's the best NAS configuration?

On box for best, one box for everyday data

What NAS product or combination of NAS products would best suit the following home network requirements: RAID 1 storage for important media, eg. photos, home video, etc with minimum capacity of 500GB. RAID 0 storage for other media and backups, eg. TV recordings, DVD rips, music etc with minimum capacity of 2TB with the …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 12:16
Obama disconnects 'obsolete' cell phone tax

'Burdensome, poorly understood' law hung up

The US revenue service has made clear it is binning a controversial tax on personal use of employer supplied devices such as cell phones and BlackBerries. The law was introduced in 1989 and meant that personal use of mobiles provided by employers would be taxed as a benefit. Last week, the Internal Revenue Service asked for …

Mobile 17 Jun 12:21
Hydrogen-powered two-seater car unveiled

Leccy Tech 240 miles from a single tank, anyone?

British boffins have unveiled what they believe is the future of urban personal transport - a prototype two seater micro-car powered by a single hydrogen fuel cell. Riverside's hydrogen-powered car Inside the Riversimple Urban Car (RUC) lurks a 6kW fuel cell that drives the car’s four electric motors – with one motor …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 12:33
W3C launches appeal to scupper Apple patent

All your updates are belong to Cupertino

The W3C, custodians of web standards, have launched an appeal for prior art to contest an Apple patent that appears to cover any kind of automated updating procedure, including the Widget standard on which the group is working. The patent, filed in 1995 and awarded in 1998, and which Apple revealed to the W3C in March, covers …

Developer 17 Jun 13:03
500-strong rat pack menaces Muscovites

City braces for follow-up from moles, badgers

Shaken eyewitnesses have recounted the invasion of Moscow's Preobrazhenskaya Square by a 500-strong rat pack, the Moskovsky Komsomolets reports. The rats simply "appeared" in a swarm of rodents so dense that parts of the square were "literally swarming" with the rampaging animals, which attacked pedestrians and attempted to …

Bootnotes 17 Jun 13:04
HDS drive array failure suspected in bank giant's ATM outage

Red faces all round after service goes titsup

Did a Hitachi Data Systems USP-V array controller failure cause the Barclay's ATM outage yesterday? Yesterday, to its great embarrassment, Barclays' ATM network in the south of England crashed at 1pm, together with a lot of its online banking facilities. Functions were not restored until 4.30pm or later, and thousands of …

Storage 17 Jun 13:25
Storage co. ups profit forecast

Recession? What recession?

STEC investors have reasons to be cheerful - the SSD supplier favoured by most enterprise array suppliers, has just announced it expects to sell a boatload more SSDs this year than it thought. More revenue equals a more valuable company equals higher stock prices equals happy investors. Back in May STEC had thought it would …

Storage 17 Jun 14:22
Catholic social club ousts coven of witches

Witchy knees-up 'not compatible' with church ethos

The Diocese of Shrewsbury is risking soured milk and sickly cattle after deciding a coven of witches could not hold its annual shindig on Catholic premises. The Crystal Cauldron, led by High Priestess Sandra Davis, booked the Our Lady's Social Club in Shaw Heath, Stockport for the Witches' Ball, scheduled for October. …

Bootnotes 17 Jun 14:30
Infortrend steps up to Fibre Channel

Award winning ESVA arrays get new goodies

Second-tier drive array supplier Infortrend has revamped its product catalogue with the ESVA line - Enterprise Scalable Virtual Architecture - including both Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity. ESVA arrays include storage virtualisation, thin provisioning, distributed load balancing, array-based snapshots and replication. …

Storage 17 Jun 14:37
IDC: Server market to decline through 2010

Three crunches to combine into perfect storm

The box counters at IDC tried to put their best face forward with their revised server forecasts this morning, saying that the market has shown some signs of stabilization. But the forecast that IDC put out today is probably going to cause server makers and their resellers to freak out. Everyone is expecting the second quarter …

Channel Register 17 Jun 15:04
Germany poised to impose police-run block list

Quality of German debate shames cosy UK arrangements

Germany’s main political parties have agreed the text of legislation designed to enshrine the blocking of selected internet sites in law. Critics of the plan insist that take down would be more effective – and express concerns that however well-intentioned a block list, it would forever be open to abuse by the state. The text …

Government 17 Jun 15:23
Quant sportster moves closer to reality

Leccy Tech Mole leaks Koenigsegg's production plans

When Register Hardware first clapped eyes on the Koenigsegg Quant leccy hyper-car back in March, we never thought the vehicle would see the light of day. But a company mole’s since claimed the very opposite. Limited Quant production will start soon, a Konigsegg mole's claimed The insider recently told a Swedish website that …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 15:39
Canonical certs Ubuntu on ProLiants

If HP won't do it, we will

Canonical, the commercial organization behind the Ubuntu variant of the Debian distribution of Linux, said today that it has certified its Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition to run on all 17 configurations of Hewlett-Packard's sixth-generation of ProLiant servers. As El Reg was crabbing about earlier this week, HP does not officially …

Channel Register 17 Jun 17:42
Microsoft takes hatchet to YouTube clone

Admitting Failure 2.0

Microsoft plans to "significantly scale back" its Soapbox service, the would-be YouTube challenger it launched in 2006. Whatever that means. Speaking with Cnet, Microsoft vice president Erik Jorgensen said that Soapbox's YouTube-like user-generated video setup is just too expensive considering the state of the economy. But he …

Music and Media 17 Jun 17:44
Huawei's Android touchphone details revealed

Exclusive Gaze in wonder at its bizarre 'full and half Qwerty' keyboard

Huawei may have finally unveiled a few of the specifications for its first Android handset - the U8230 - but Register Hardware has laid its hands on the device’s full feature list. Huawei's first Android handset: the U8230 The phone supports a variety of Google applications, including Maps, Search and Talk, while relying on …

Reg Hardware 17 Jun 18:41
Microsoft to pitch 'all-you-can-eat' Windows volume license

Save now, pay later

Microsoft will next month encourage partners to promote all-you-can-eat volume licensing so that large customers can save money while consuming more SQL Server and Windows apps. The company's Application Platform Agreement (APA) targets customers with more than 250 PCs who are trying to cut their number of software suppliers …

Channel Register 17 Jun 18:56
US feds subpoena names of anonymous web commenters

Should have hired a Moderatrix

The all-too-typical violent hyperbole found in reader comments across the internet has landed one Las Vegas newspaper in the hot seat with US prosecutors. The Las Vegas Review-Journal says it has been served with a federal grand jury subpoena seeking information on people who posted supposedly threatening anonymous comments on …

Music and Media 17 Jun 20:45
Dell grows Intel 'Nehalem EP' iron

'Istanbul' servers coming soon

Server makers continue to expand their server lineups for Intel's four-core 'Nehalem EP' Xeon 5500 processors, and today, it was Dell's turn to roll out some new boxes: two new tower servers and a low-end rack server. After doing some arm twisting or pleading with Intel executives (or maybe both), Dell was able to preview its …

Servers 17 Jun 20:59
Microsoft cries foul over Google Outlookware

Chocolate Factory plug-in disables Windows search

Update: This story has been updated to include comment from Microsoft and better represent the dispute If you install Google's new Redmond-battling Outlook plug-in, it automatically disables Microsoft's Windows desktop search service. And Microsoft is peeved. Last week, as part of its ongoing effort to destroy Microsoft …

Applications 17 Jun 21:16
iPhone 3.0 - born on schedule...

Lightning Review ...and (mostly) healthy

Apple's iPhone 3.0 Software update went live Wednesday at around 10:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. After a few hours of reviewing its flagship features, I can report that all - well, most - seems to be in order. After a half-hour download of its 230.1MB bulk over a sputtering DSL connection, I fired up the installation process …

Mobile 17 Jun 21:57
Data Domain sued over NetApp takeover

Shareholders cry for EMC

Data Domain chose NetApp's takeover bid over EMC, and now dissident shareholders are crying dirty dealing. Two law firms have launched separate class-action lawsuits against Data Domain's board of directors, saying the bidding process wasn't fair and open. On Monday, Data Domain rejected a hostile takeover offer from storage …

Storage 17 Jun 23:26