9th July 2009 Archive

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NASA data shows 'dramatically' thinned Arctic ice

Seasonal ice dominates for first time (on record)

Nearly half of the Arctic's thick sea ice diminished between the winters of 2004 and 2008, replaced by thinner ice more likely to melt in summer months, NASA's ice-sheet monitoring satellite has shown. With what they call the most comprehensive survey to date, boffins from NASA and the University of Washington say that thin …

Environment 9 Jul 01:24
~~Tech~~Crunch dubs Linux a 'big ol’ bag of drivers'

Fail and Googasm If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

Google has announced the Google Chrome Operating System, which is the Chrome browser bundled with a Linux kernel and a handful of hardware drivers, targeted at netbooks. Yes, this time it's actually an operating system, but don't cream yourself. Yet again, there is a severe case of the media not knowing what the fuck it's …

Operating Systems 9 Jul 05:12
Microsoft rejigger judges Window 7 a success

Now, if only people buy it

Windows 7 is not yet for sale - or even officially finished - but it's already been judged a success. At least, that's what we're lead to believe by Microsoft's latest corporate re-organization. Senior vice president Steven Sinofsky has been named president of the new Windows division, putting him in charge of the engineering …

Operating Systems 9 Jul 05:58
Google uncloaks Chrome OS hardware pals

Whither Dell?

Google has revealed at least some of the hardware manufacturers it's working with to design and build devices that run the much-discussed Google Chrome Operating System. With a post to the official Chrome blog Wednesday afternoon, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory said its hardware partners include Acer, Asus, Freescale, …

Operating Systems 9 Jul 06:46
Acronis jumps on the dedupe bandwagon

Dedupe, dupe, dupe, dupe unfurled

On the day that Symantec said it will add deduplication to its NetBackup and Backup Exec, Acronis has added deduplication to its Backup and Recovery 10.0 product, and increased its upwards scalability at the same time. Acronis Backup & Recovery (ABR) is the next and rebranded version of True Image. Previous versions of the …

Storage 9 Jul 07:02
Microsoft knew of nasty IE bug a year before attacks

Security delayed or security denied?

Microsoft was aware of a critical vulnerability in an Internet Explorer component at least 12 months before attackers started targeting it in lethal exploits that take full control of end-users' PCs, a member of its security team said Wednesday. The disclosure comes as attacks targeting the MSVidCtl ActiveX control …

Security 9 Jul 07:02
Asus F70SL

Review The world's first 17.3in notebook?

In recent years, Asus has become a key player in the netbook revolution. Yet with the F70SL, the company is looking to appeal to a totally different audience. Touted as the world's first notebook with a 17.3in display, this bulky, 4kg desktop replacement, offers a 16:9 aspect ratio screen at a resolution of 1600 x 900. Asus' …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 08:02
Computacenter injects a bit of predictability into revenue mix

Obliging contracts

Computacenter saw shares climb this morning as it updated investors on a successful first half of the year. For the six months ended 30 June 2009 profits were ahead of expectations, ignoring one-off items, thanks to a ten per cent increase in contractual services revenue. Elsewhere the recession is hitting the business - …

Channel Register 9 Jul 08:30
Data protection fee to cost bigger orgs £500 a year

Don't pretend you can't afford it

Organisations with a turnover of £25.9 million or more and 250 or more staff will be required to pay the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) an annual notification fee of £500 with effect from 1st October. The current fee is just £35. Notification is a requirement for 'data controllers' under the Data Protection Act. Every …

IT Director 9 Jul 09:17
LG reveals Louvre - its first 12Mp cameraphone

Museum quality masterpiece?

LG has been talking up its plans to join the 12Mp cameraphone race for months. Now the firm has finally shown off its first offering, sort of. Called the GC990 - or the Louvre - the co-called super-shooter unveiled the handset at a recent event in Warsaw is just a prototype, website GSM Arena reports. So it’s unclear if …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 09:28
Samsung spins up 250GB micro hard drive

The 1.8in HDD with integrated USB

Samsung has introduced a 1.8in hard drive with a whopping - relatively speaking, of course - 250GB capacity. So much, perhaps, for claims the South Korean giant is getting out of the 1.8in HDD business to focus instead on solid-state drives. The Spinpoint N3U is aimed primarily at external hard drives rather than devices like …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 10:00
Stargazers spot oldest supernova yet

'I remember when it was all hydrogen around here...'

Astronomers from the University of California have spied a supernova which lit up the early universe 10.7 billion years ago - 1.5 billion years before the previous record holder and just 3 billions years after the big bang. A team led by Jeff Cooke spotted the event - a "type II"* supernova provoked by the core collapse of a …

Space 9 Jul 10:03
Morse expects second half revenue dip

'A difficult year' says services firm

Morse expects to report a slight dip in revenues from continuing operations in its second half compared to its first half of the year, the company announced in a trading update this morning. The services group said its margins on that revenue would reflect the benefit of its cost cutting program through the year and the …

Channel Register 9 Jul 10:14
NASA tests rocket-disaster escape rocket

Firing oneself out of the frying pan

NASA has announced a successful test of its "Max Launch Abort System" (MLAS), essentially a rocket ejector seat writ large and applied to an entire space capsule. The system is designed to let astronauts escape and parachute to safety in the event of a launcher stack crackup. That's just the ejector seat. Wait till you see …

Space 9 Jul 10:21
Berlusconi snoops on G8

'Don't tell anyone, or they will all want it'

The G8 summit is meant to be an informal and secret meeting between heads of states assisted by one official known as a sherpa. Throughout the event's history this privacy has been respected - no notes are taken and proceedings are not recorded. Except this year. A secret audio link is relaying the conversations between the …

Government 9 Jul 10:32
A woman spends 287 days choosing what to wear

Although it feels like longer

The average woman will - between the ages of 16 and 60 - spend 287 days deciding what to wear. That's according to Matalan, which polled 2,491 females and found that this essential activity accounts for an average 16 minutes on weekday mornings, 14 minutes after getting up at weekends and up to 20 minutes bothering the …

Bootnotes 9 Jul 10:52
Gamer pays £10k for golden game

Rare Nintendo cartridge makes eBay history

Buying used games through eBay is nothing new. But one gaming fanatic’s desire to own a piece of gaming history has seen him pay over £10,000 ($16,100/€11,500) for a rare Nintendo cartridge. Winners of the 1990 Nintendo World Championships received golden NES cartridges The man splashed out £10,800 to secure himself the …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 10:58
BT names more exchanges for early fibre upgrades

Who wants some?

BT has published a further list of 69 exchanges it will upgrade to offer faster broadband by running fibre to streetside cabinets by summer next year. The list represents the second wave of BT's network upgrade, which is now scheduled to cover 1.5 million premises by early summer next year. The first wave of 29 exchanges is …

Telecoms 9 Jul 10:59
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD

Review HD recording camphone, anyone?

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD comes with a weight of expectation upon it. As the first cameraphone claiming to be capable of recording HD video, it sets itself up to be challenged. Fortunately, for the most part it comes through. With its stonking 8Mp camera and huge OLED screen, this smartphone has what it takes to be an iPhone …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 11:11
Orange introduces mini-SIM

Exactly the same size as a normal SIM

Orange claims to be the first European operator to introduce mini SIM cards, though it's actually talking about the thing that holds the SIM rather than the SIM itself. Touting the development as an environmental step Orange points out that 11,600 tonnes of SIM are shipped each year, 90 per cent of which is unused plastic that …

Mobile 9 Jul 11:13
Mozilla Labs issues 'major' Ubiquity upgrade

No more 'English-centric assumptions'

Mozilla Labs released an update to Ubiquity - its in-browser command line utility - yesterday. The open source browser maker described the release of version 0.5 as a “major upgrade” that makes the instructions you give to Ubiquity feel more natural and human. The latest version of the experimental plug-in, that has …

Applications 9 Jul 11:21
EMC plus Data Domain equals what exactly?

Comment And what will NetApp do about it?

Okay, it's over. The rotund female has started singing and EMC is buying Data Domain. But what happens next? Firstly, Data Domain becomes a product division within EMC, as stated in Joe Tucci's letter to Data Domain employees. Secondly, EMC will pump Data Domain's products through its sales channel, and this should greatly …

Channel Register 9 Jul 11:22
A Geeks Guide₂ ...Microsoft Training Kits

40% discount at Reg Books

Geeks Guide2 You don't have to look far to see that IT jobs are disappearing right, left and centre. For those still in employment it's becoming more important than ever to show your diverse set of skills. For those looking for employment, re-skilling or certifying is a possible route to securing a new job. This week's GG2 is a …

Developer 9 Jul 11:37
KIlling ID cards and the NIR - the Tory and LibDem plans

Analysis This week the parties opened up on how they'll go about it

A future Tory government will cancel the ID Card Scheme - but, as The Register has asked several times, what does that mean? A broad commitment to abandon ID cards, even to cancel the National Identity Register database, leaves a certain amount of wiggle-room, particularly if - as is Tory policy - you're likely to be keeping …

Government 9 Jul 11:52
Amazon cuts cost of Kindle

Cheaper e-book reader

If you’re yet to make the jump from paper books to electronic displays Amazon has an incentive: a Kindle price cut. The online retailer has reduced the device’s price by $60 (£37/€42) to $299 (£185/€214). Sadly, Amazon hasn’t trimmed the fee of its other, newer Kindle model, the DX, which remains a pricier $489 (£302/€350). A …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 12:02
Robot land-steamers to consume all life on Earth as fuel

Autonom-nom-nom-nomous technology

News has emerged of a milestone reached on the road towards a potentially world-changing piece of technology. We speak, of course, of US military plans to introduce roving steam-powered robots which would fuel themselves by harvesting everything alive and cramming it into their insatiable blazing furnaces. The scheme is …

Science 9 Jul 12:06
UK tabloid in phone hacking probe

Wapping breaks out the brown trousers

Newspapers owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch have been accused of secretly paying over £1m to settle three cases involving the alleged use of illegal phone tapping against celebrities. News Group reporters allegedly hired unscrupulous private investigators to gain access to mobile messages, as well as bank statements and tax …

Mobile 9 Jul 12:25
Russian snatches world's strongest 'intimate muscles' crown

NSFW As well as having 14kg glass balls

A 42-year-old Russian woman has snatched the world's strongest vagina crown after using her "intimate muscles" to lift a 14kg glass ball. Tatiata Kozhevnikova has apparently been training her privates for 15 years in order to support improbable weights. She explained to Life.ru: “After I had a child, my intimate muscles got …

Bootnotes 9 Jul 12:27
NHS Direct gets to be number one, one, one

Proposal for those unable to look up a phone number

UK regulator Ofcom has proposed allocating the number 111 for non-emergency medical advice, arguing that no-one can remember the number for NHS Direct. The proposal runs to 61 pages (pdf), but boils down to the idea that people dialling "111" anywhere in England should be connected to NHS Direct. Scotland should follow soon, …

Telecoms 9 Jul 12:43
Met warns officers off photographers

The return of copper plate photography?

The Metropolitan Police has issued guidance to its officers to remind them that using a camera in public is not in itself a terrorist offence. There has been increasing concern in recent months that police have been over-using terrorism laws and public order legislation to harass professional and amateur photographers. The …

Policing 9 Jul 12:59
Web application security: It's scary out there!

Regcast Fight them on the breaches

Web applications are a daunting challenge for IT security professionals. So many application development software programs to take account of, so many frameworks to support, so many complex platforms to consider, so many more attack possibilities. What could possibly go wrong? This is the topic of our upcoming webcast: Jump …

Tech Panel 9 Jul 13:02
UK data breach incidents on the rise

Security measures compromised by human dimwittery

Seven in ten UK organisations experienced a data breach incident over the last year, up from 60 per cent in the previous year. The third edition of an annual survey by the Ponemon Institute, sponsored by PGP, also found that 12 per cent of 615 public and private sector organisations probed were hit by five data loss incidents …

Enterprise Security 9 Jul 13:15
Designers conjure up wacky 'car of the future'

Leccy Tech Forward thinking or yeast logic?

The Mike & Maaike design studio is well known for its work on HTC’s G1 Android-based phone and the Xbox 360. Now it has turned its attention to thinking how the car of tomorrow will look and operate. M&M's ATNMBL: the car of tomorrow? The ATNMBL - short for Autonomobile, apparently, though it seems more like a TXTer's …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 14:14
US docs claim world record musical-kidneys game

Eight-way, four-hospital transcontinental organ swap

Topflight doctors in America have claimed a world record for "the first eight-way, multihospital, domino kidney transplant". The multiple organ-swap involved four hospitals, almost a hundred medical personnel, eight donors, eight recipients and sixteen different kidneys - many of which latter made transcontinental journeys …

Biology 9 Jul 14:15
Nokia fesses up to 3720 toughphone

Handle without care

After weeks of leaked pictures and demonstration videos, Nokia has confirmed what the tech world had already guessed: that the 3720 Classic is the company's latest rugged phone. Nokia's 3720: the firm's most rugged phone to date The phone features IP-54 toughness certification concerning dust resistance, protection from …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 14:24
The new (MP3) Pirates of the Caribbean

Peculiar trade squabble allows Zookz to set sail

Antigua, once rife with traditional high seas piracy, has given birth to a pirate download service. Only this is one you pay for. Zookz claims to host 1,500 movies and 50,000 tracks for subscribers who trust it with $9.99 a month. Creators won't see a penny, however, because of an unusual exemption claimed by the island. …

Music and Media 9 Jul 14:55
Edinburgh Fringe website suffers logon wobbles

But doesn't fall down

Edinburgh Festival Fringe organisers have reassured customers that its ticketing system and website are robust enough to cope with demand following last year’s chaotic box office snafu. However, a small number of people have complained that the online service for booking tickets still isn’t entirely up to scratch. Some have …

IT Director 9 Jul 15:00
Toshiba's TG01 smartphone turns Orange

Winging its way into stores from tomorrow

If you’re desperate to snare yourself Toshiba’s upcoming TG01 then get yourself down to an Orange store, where the network operator will begin dishing out the smartphone from tomorrow. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The TG01 will be free to customers prepared to sign up to a £39.15 ($63/€45) per …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 15:01
Broadcom turns away after Emulex rejects it again

Gets coat, wonders what to buy now

Emulex has looked at Broadcom's increased offer to take it over, sniffed, and said it undervalues the company again. Broadcom is dropping its bid. It's the same Emulex response as before, pretty much. The bid undervalues Emulex' long-term prospects and it's not in the best interests of Emulex' shareholders. Executive chairman …

Storage 9 Jul 15:08
Mobile co fails to stump up for pointless structure

Good folly, missed lolly

The largest folly built for a hundred years has just been completed on the Rushmore Estate in Dorset, despite the lack of mobile-phone operator to pay for it. The folly was driven by the need for better Airwave coverage - the mobile network used by the UK's emergency services - and the requirement to hide the 17m masts needed …

Mobile 9 Jul 15:27
OLED TV sales to soar, says market watcher

But won't match plasma - let alone LCD - until 2017

Sales of OLED TVs will skyrocket between now and 2016. The bad news for OLED watchers is that a compound annual growth rate of 140 per cent still leaves the technology behind plasma let alone LCD. The growth forecast comes from market watcher DisplaySearch, which today predicted that, come 2016, OLED TVs will yield revenues …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 15:29
Java to offer Carbonite capture to users

Cloud storage firm in download distribution agreement

Sun customers downloading the latest version of Java will get a free 30-day trial of Carbonite Online Backup. Carbonite reckons this will get it access to millions of Java users. Carbonite Online Backup installs in a few clicks and runs automatically in the background, continually backing up the files on the computer, sending …

Storage 9 Jul 15:47
Google Oompa-Loompas dream of virus-free OS

Everlasting gobstopper

Google has rather rashly claimed its plans to develop an operating system promise an end to security woes. The search giant said Google Chrome OS, due to debut in the second half of next year and initially targeted at netbooks, will be based on open source code and offer unprecedented security. Sundar Pichai, VP of product …

Malware 9 Jul 16:05
Samsung N310 netbook

Review Style over substance

Samsung has never been a supplier of cheap and cheerful netbooks, and the consumer-oriented N310, which expands the range beyond the more seriously styled NC10, NC20 and N120, still comes in with a suggested price of a pound under £400. For that, you’d expect something very special. The N310: you'd never guess is was a …

Reg Hardware 9 Jul 16:14
Cisco taps chief strategy officer

Mergers and acquisitions man

Networking giant and server wannabe Cisco Systems has elevated Ned Hooper - currently its senior vice president of corporate development and consumer - to the expanded role of chief strategy officer. Hooper has been at Cisco for the past eleven years and came to the company when Cisco acquired Lightspeed International in …

Networks 9 Jul 17:02
Yahoo!'s web-wide query language learns to write

Missing SQL verbs no longer missing

Yahoo!'s SQL-like web query language just learned to write. Wednesday, the web giant added a trio of previously absent SQL verbs to its nine-month-old Yahoo! Query Language (YQL), an umbrella API that lets app developers query, filter, and join data across disparate web services offered up by Yahoo! and the web at large. With …

Developer 9 Jul 19:37
Easter Island dirt may hold key to longer life

Anti-fungal agent gives mice more birthdays

A group of US scientists believe that an anti-fungal agent found in the soil of Easter Island may have life-extending properties. When the compound rapamycin was fed to middle-aged mice, life expectancy is claimed to have been raised by 28 per cent in males and 38 per cent in females. The findings published in the journal …

Biology 9 Jul 19:56
Three 'critical' Windows fixes due on Patch Tuesday

Relief for what ails you

Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release updates patching three critical Windows security vulnerabilities, two of which are already under attack. One of the updates plugs a hole in an Internet Explorer component that handles online video. Hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of websites - mostly catering to Chinese- …

Security 9 Jul 20:21
Retailers prepped for Windows 7 family pack

October launch offer expected

Microsoft can't admit it's got a Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack in the works. But its partners can. A salesman for online retailer Expercom contacted by The Reg on the phone Thursday morning confirmed Microsoft had sent information to distributors on a planned Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack. The Reg contacted Expercom …

Channel Register 9 Jul 20:27
Apple preps iPhone face recognition

Channels Oprah

The US Patent and Trademark Office published 33 new Apple patent applications on Thursday, bringing the total filed in July to 55 - and we're not even a third of the way through the month. Today's cluster of creativity ranged from flexible cabling to scrolling lyrics, but the bulk of the filings described new powers for the …

Mobile 9 Jul 20:43
Lenovo punts Nehalem server quartet

A little slow on the uptake

If Chinese PC vendor Lenovo wants to be a contender in the global server racket, it is going to have to pick up the pace a little bit. Which it's doing. A little. Intel launched their Nehalem EP Xeon 5500 processors back in March, and all of the key tier-one server makers had at least some gear using the new chips ready to …

Servers 9 Jul 21:30
Microsoft's Flash-challenger Silverlight 3 hits web

Ready to "light up" online Office apps

The next version of Microsoft's Flash-challenger media player has hit the web, ahead of Friday's official launch. The final Silverlight 3 runtime for users and software development kit (SDK) for programmers have been published to the web and were available for download as of Thursday afternoon. You can get the SDK here and …

Developer 9 Jul 21:38
Google Moon to go 3D

40th lunar anniversary with added terrain

Google is likely to announce a new 3D view of the Moon in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20. The Mountain View Chocolate Factory announced plans to hold a press conference that day in Washington, DC to discuss "a very special announcement about the newest addition to Google Earth." …

Space 9 Jul 23:18
iSuppli chops semi, electronics forecasts

The chips were down in first half

With the global economy still on the skids - despite over $5 trillion in stimulus spending committed worldwide - market researchers are all revising their forecasts for sub-sectors of the IT economy. It was iSuppli's turn, and it has tweaked its prognostications downward for the chip and electronic sectors for 2009. Back in …

Financial News 9 Jul 23:31
Optimism down as priorities shift in mid-market IT

You can't postpone mission critical

With a sharply declining server market this year and relative stagnation expected for the few, according to a long range forecast released by IDC and a shorter-term one from Gartner, you can bet server resellers are trying to get a bead on what things midrange shops want and need to spend money on. Which is the main reason why …

Business 9 Jul 23:40
Teen cuffed for bomb threat webcam pay-per-view

The SWAT channel

A North Carolina teenager has been arrested and accused of phoning in bomb threats to schools and universities so he could charge admission for people to watch in real time over webcams as police responded. Ashton C. Lundeby, 16, of Oxford, North Carolina took part in a group that used VoIP, or voice over IP, software and …

Crime 9 Jul 23:54