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10th August 2009 Archive

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  • Official: Toshiba to get in on Blu-ray Disc

    Wanna be in your gang, your gang, etc, etc

    Toshiba has asked the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) if it can join the gang, a move it specifically stated paves the way for the introduction of Toshiba kit supporting the HD optical disc format. The one-time driver behind the HD DVD format stressed that it remains committed to the delivery of digital content on a variety of …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 08:27

  • Nvidia licenses SLI for mainstream Intel chipsets

    P55 to get it first

    Nvidia has announced Intel's upcoming P55 Express chipset will support its SLI multi-GPU technology. Could this be the "big surprise" Nvidia CEL Jen-Hsun Huang alluded to last week in reference to his company's battle with the chip giant over processor bus licences? Probably not. After all, Nvidia has already allowed Intel to …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 08:49

  • Prof develops football-match scheduling software

    'The only thing I cannot control is the weather'

    A computer-sciences prof in Notttingham says he has developed software which can solve one of the knottiest problems facing humanity at present - that of scheduling football matches. “The biggest difficulties occur at Christmas and New Year when the top clubs play at least twice over the holiday period," says Professor Graham …

    Applications 10 Aug 09:05

  • EC criticised over Intel case

    Evidence gathering not up to scratch

    The European Union Ombudsman has accused competition regulators of poor record keeping over aspects of the recent anti-trust case against Intel. The report, which won't have any impact on the verdict or on Intel's €1.06bn fine, is yet to be published but is expected to accuse the competition commission of "maladministration …

    PCs & Chips 10 Aug 09:17

  • Zafirovski to walk from Nortel with 'head held high'

    CEO will leave bankrupt firm soon

    Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski has said he will soon step down from the stricken firm and "walk out with my head held high." The ex-Motorola exec, who was brought in to try and drag Nortel back from the abyss, but instead has presided over its collapse and breakup, told the Ottawa Citizen that he had been approached to run other …

    Data Networking 10 Aug 09:37

  • Tories plan health record giveaway

    Google and Microsoft sitting in waiting room

    The Tories are today releasing more details of their plan to get Google and Microsoft involved in holding medical records. The idea is that patients will be given some control over their own records, which could then be stored online. But the Tories seem to think that it would be a good idea to have a locally stored version …

    Government 10 Aug 09:41

  • Toshiba touts 'first' 64GB SDXC memory card

    Not out for some time, alas

    It's easy to claim to be first to do something, harder to achieve it. Toshiba has claimed it will be the first to launch an SDXC memory card, but with shipments not due to begun until Spring 2010, there's plenty of time for some other Herbert to get in ahead of it. The SDXC format, launched in January 2009, adds exFAT - aka …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 10:06

  • WD speeds up 2TB rollout

    7200rpm and rising

    Western Digital appears to be accelerating its 2TB 3.5-inch drive from 5400rpm to 7200rpm if a weekend wave of European hard disk drive etailing mentions are to be believed. WD introduced a desktop 2TB Caviar Green drive at the beginning of the year. Then there came an enterprise WD RE4-GP 2TB drive in April, and both rotated …

    Storage 10 Aug 10:12

  • MoD website outflanked by XSS flaws

    Medic!

    Hackers have discovered cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on the UK's Ministry of Defence website. The security shortcomings create a means for miscreants or pranksters to present content from a website under their control in a pop-up window that appears to come from the MoD. This class of flaw is very serious on …

    Enterprise Security 10 Aug 10:26

  • El Reg space paper plane christened Vulture 1

    PARIS project moves to planning stage

    It's official: The El Reg "Paper Aircraft Released Into Space" (PARIS) vehicle has been christened Vulture 1 by popular vote, and with this formality out of the way we can move on to pondering just how our audacious upper atmosphere programme is actually going to work. We're grateful to all those readers who chipped in with …

    Space 10 Aug 10:27

  • Dell ditches 12in netbook

    Screen too big for SCC success?

    Dell has trimmed some of the fat from its netbook line by ending the production of its Inspiron Mini 12 notebook-not-netbook. The Mini 12 – reviewed here – had a 12.1in display and, according to Dell’s Chief Blogger, Lionel Menchaca, “10in displays are the sweet spot for netbooks”. That goes some way to explaining why the PC …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 10:35

  • Cal Tech, Berkeley and UCSB working on 'iPhoD'

    Military photonic device deals inked

    The US military has handed out triple multimillion-dollar contracts to Californian university tech labs, aimed at developing a device called an "iPhoD". The iPhoD is not, as one might have supposed, something to do with a famous nibbled-fruit hardware'n'lifestyle firm. Rather, it stands for "integrated Photonic Delay" - …

    Data Networking 10 Aug 10:50

  • HTC Hero Android smartphone

    Review Cometh the hour, cometh the mobile?

    HTC is currently balancing its prodigious smart phone output between its long-established Windows Mobile series of handsets and those running Google's Android operating system. The Hero follows the G1 and the Magic in HTC's Android line-up and comes with a fistful of updates. These include a new user interface, multi-touch …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 11:02

  • Firefox 3.6 trots into first alpha

    Mozilla offers lemur of hope

    Mozilla squirted out the first alpha version of Firefox 3.6 late on Friday. The browser maker is also pretty confident that the next iteration of Firefox will rock up quite soon. "Unlike the year that passed between Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5, we expect that this 3.6 release will be released in a small number of months," said …

    Applications 10 Aug 11:10

  • Dell mobile phone launch just days away?

    Mole claims imminent China unveiling

    Dell is poised to launch a mobile phone within days, it has been claimed. A source with “knowledge of the situation” has said that Dell will announce the handset in China within the next day or two, according to a report by website TechCrunch. If the source’s information is correct, the launch will mark Dell’s entry into the …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 11:14

  • Chinese authorities close fatal net treatment camp, arrest 13

    Authorities investigate 'intentional injuries'

    Chinese police have detained 13 people as part of their investigation into the death of a teenager at an internet addiction treatment camp. According to official news agency Xinhua, the 13 are all connected with the Qihang Salvation Training Camp in Nanning. The camp achieved notoriety last week following the death of Deng …

    Law 10 Aug 11:41

  • Job cuts move from private to public sector

    'Getting worse more slowly' as recession is nationalised

    Just as confidence is starting to stabilise in the private sector, so employment prospects in the public sector seem to be getting worse. A survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and KPMG found fewer firms are expecting to lay people off, and those that are planning to do so expect to make smaller …

    IT Director 10 Aug 12:01

  • Increase in comms snooping? You ain't seen nothing yet

    Analysis Busybody bureaucrats are a sideshow

    Figures from the annual report of Gordon Brown's communications surveillance scrutineer are all over the news today, several weeks after they were released. The prompt for this belated but blanket coverage, as far as El Reg can tell, was a press release from the Liberal Democrats. In the news drought of mid-August, railing …

    Government 10 Aug 12:11

  • Bill Gates-funded boffins develop anti-AIDS stealth condom

    Crafty polymer gel 'solidifies' in presence of sperm

    Scientists in Utah have developed what they term a "molecular condom", a type of gel which "turns semisolid in the presence of semen, trapping AIDS virus particles in a microscopic mesh". "Due to cultural and socioeconomic factors, women often are unable to negotiate the use of protection with their partner," says Julie Jay, …

    Biology 10 Aug 12:15

  • Twitter hack spawns spam and scareware scams

    DDoS campaign opens Pandora's Box

    Spam and scams have continued to flow from the fallout of last week's DDoS against Twitter. The attack, which took the micro-blogging service offline for around two hours on Thursday, and reduced service levels for a much longer time afterwards, (see here and here), also affected Facebook, LiveJournal and other sites. The …

    ID 10 Aug 12:36

  • Microsoft railroads little man with Office Live U-turn

    Aims to be 'in line with competitors'

    Microsoft has decided to charge annual fees to all users of its domain renewal service on the Office Live Small Business (OLSB) site. The company told early adopter customers of the service, who had previously been promised free website registrations for life, that from 1 October it would begin charging them a $14.95 a year …

    Small Biz 10 Aug 12:38

  • British boffin named first ever 'doctor of texting'

    phd 4 u

    A student at a British university has been awarded the first ever PhD in text messaging. Linguist Caroline Tagg - now Dr Caroline Tagg - spent more than three years at Birmingham University researching the subject of text messages and the language used within them. She trawled through 11,000 text messages sent by 235 people …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 13:03

  • Docs wire up world's first internet-connected pacemaker

    Beware the Ping O' Death

    A New York woman has became the first person to receive a pacemaker wirelessly connected to her doctor, enabling monitoring and checkups without all that mucking about examining people. The device contains a radio transmitter which connects to receiving equipment in New Yorker Carol Kasyjanski's home, using a very low-power …

    Biology 10 Aug 13:55

  • Mellanox looks to buy home networking start-up

    CopperGate purchase marks home invasion

    InfiniBand vendor Mellanox seems set to buy home digital media networking company CopperGate for about $200m. InfiniBand is a high-speed and low-latency interconnect that has found favour in supercomputing and other high-performance computing (HPC) environments. Mellanox is an Israeli company, founded in 2005, that designs …

    HPC 10 Aug 14:39

  • Nintendo to release pulse-feeling Wii add-on out next year

    Vitality Sensor launch set

    Nintendo plans to launch its planned pulse-sensing peripheral for the Wii next year, the company has announced. The Wii Vitality Sensor was unveiled back in June, but it’s taken until now for the Japanese gaming giant’s President, Satoru Iwata, to confirm that the peripheral will be launched “not too late” during 2010. Iwata …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 14:56

  • Lamborghini to go (partly) electric

    Leccy Tech Hybrid Gallardo inbound

    Lamborghini’s CEO, Stephan Winkelmann, has revealed that the Audi-owned supercar maker plans to add electricity to its drive trains from 2015. Lamborghini's Gallardo: the next-gen model will be the firm's first hybrid But in an effort to stop Ferruccio Lamborghini's body from revolving in its grave, the company is only …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 15:02

  • Sun's Rock is barefoot on Abbey Road

    Rumors of its death not greatly exaggerated?

    More rumors and some evidence has surfaced suggesting that Sun Microsystems has indeed killed off its "Rock" UltraSparc-RK, sometimes called the UltraSparc-AT10, high-end server processor. Sources at Sun familiar with the Rock project and its related "Supernova" servers told El Reg on June 15 that Sun had killed off the 16- …

    Servers 10 Aug 15:07

  • Counting the cost of virtualization

    Reader Workshop Avoiding nasty surprises

    The benefits of virtualization, particularly in relation to x86 server consolidation, are pretty well recognised. The significant reduction in hardware requirements and operational overheads that many have achieved with their initial deployments will in many cases have easily justified the cost of the virtualization technology …

    Software 10 Aug 15:10

  • 73% of Brits too shagged for a shag

    Put it away, love, and hand me the TV remote...

    A shock survey of 2,000 adult Brits has revealed that 73 per cent are too tired at the end of the day to get their rocks off - the result of a national malaise of bone idleness which has poor old Blighty creaking under the weight of lardy couch potatoes. According to the "alarming" Nuffield Health figures, 58 per cent admit …

    Bootnotes 10 Aug 15:15

  • Canadian telco uploads 8GB iPhone 3GS

    Pre-release hint or keyboard slip-up?

    Canadian electrical retailer Rogers has as near as darn it confirmed that an 8GB iPhone 3GS is on its way, briefly revealing the device in a handset comparison chart on its website. Rogers' comparison chart: iPhone 3GS features on the left and iPhone 3G features on the right A section of Rogers’ website allowing buyers to …

    Reg Hardware 10 Aug 15:22

  • Tr.im cuts air supply, says no money in tiny Web 2.0 pot

    Short-lived URL shortening service choked

    Tr.im has shutdown its operations after failing to make money from, or find a buyer for, its URL shortening service. The company's website carries a glum message confirming that the service is in the process of being discontinued because Tr.im, which was popular among some Twitter users, couldn't raise money from the venture …

    Applications 10 Aug 15:28

  • IT shops struggle to control personnel costs

    Hiring frozen for a year

    According to a new report out of Gartner, IT managers and chief information officers are having a tough time getting their arms wrapped around personnel costs in their shops. Gartner has just put its 2009 IT Market Compensation Study out, which is based on surveys it performed back in March at 325 IT organisations in the …

    IT Director 10 Aug 15:31

  • Hotel prank call badboy tracked down to mum's flat

    Alleged PrankNET leader forced to cower inside

    Online news mag The Smoking Gun (TSG) claims it to have tracked down the leader of prank call website PrankNET to the suburban flat in Windsor, Ontario he shares with his mum. PrankNET's stock in trade is to pose as hotel employees, emergency service staff or representatives of fire alarm companies in order to trick their …

    Crime 10 Aug 15:42

  • Court filings are protected by copyright, says lawyer

    Knickers in a twist over briefs

    A US lawyer has claimed that copyright is violated when courts pass legal submissions on to a commercial publisher. The lawyer claims that the US courts' behaviour undermines the hundreds of hours of work put into submissions. An intellectual property law expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said that an …

    Law 10 Aug 15:55

  • Microsoft offloads digital ad agency for $530m

    Bing logo daddy waves goodbye

    In a deal worth about $530m in cash and stock, Microsoft has offloaded its Razorfish digital ad agency to Publicis Groupe, the French advertising giant that purchased a search-engine marketing biz from Google last year. Microsoft acquired Razorfish in 2007 as part of its unprecedented $6bn acquisition of the Seattle-based …

    Business 10 Aug 17:22

  • Obama loses (another) cybersecurity bigwig

    Updated Oh, the bureaucracy

    Yet another high-ranking government official in charge of securing the country's computer networks has resigned. This time, it's the head of the US Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team. Mischel Kwon submitted her letter of resignation last week, according to The Washington Post. The report cited …

    Security 10 Aug 17:24

  • Microsoft's next SQL Server debuts in pieces

    BI, Gemini, cloud

    Microsoft has released the first in a series of test code drops for the next version of SQL Server. The company has delivered the community technology preview (CTP) of its SQL Server R2 2008 to subscribers on the company's MSDN and TechNet communities. Features include application and multi-server management, SMP scale for up …

    Applications 10 Aug 17:25

  • Nortel CEO says g'bye as revenues rise

    Wanna run a dying telecom hardware biz?

    Last week, Nortel president and CEO Mike Zafirovski said he would leave the embattled Canadian telecom equipment maker, and today, he made good on his promise, just as Nortel announced second-quarter financial results that were - although still feeble - better than expected. As The Reg reported earlier today, Zafirovski told …

    Telecoms 10 Aug 18:06

  • Fortinet plots rare IT security IPO

    Under starter's orders

    All in one security appliance firm Fortinet has announced plans to go public on the stock exchange. The firm announced on Monday that it has filed a S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on a proposed initial public offering of its stock, marking the first stage in the sometimes complicated …

    Enterprise Security 10 Aug 18:14

  • BMC snaps up message queue maven

    Eat or watch others eat

    System and application management tool maker BMC Software today made a rather oblique move into the message queuing middleware space by acquiring a relatively obscure company called MQSoftware. For most commercial applications, generic message queuing middleware comes in two flavor: IBM's WebSphere MQ (formerly MQSeries) and …

    Applications 10 Aug 18:15

  • US bank deposits checks via iPhone camera

    Point, shoot, deposit

    A US bank will this week launch a new service that allows you to deposit checks by taking photos of them with your iPhone. The privately held financial services and insurance company USAA (United Services Automobile Association) serves only current and former members of the US Armed Services and their families, but even with …

    Mobile 10 Aug 19:16

  • HP sued by own sales reps

    The omega of commissionware

    IT vendors are often not much better than their customers when it comes to doing information technology, and sometimes, they are worse. This appears to be the case with a sales force commission tracking system called Omega used by Hewlett-Packard, which has screwed up commissions so badly that three former employees of the …

    Business 10 Aug 19:31

  • Georgian blogger calls for Twitter attack probe

    'Dear Dmitry!'

    The pro-Georgian blogger who was the target of attacks that shut down micro-blogging website Twitter last week has called on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to track down the culprits. The well-known blogger who goes by the name Cyxymu has said the attacks - which also struck at Facebook, LiveJournal, and YouTube - were …

    Security 10 Aug 22:10

  • Microsoft nails retail store logo and locations

    "Next door" and them some

    Microsoft has locked down the logo for the planned retail stores it hopes will take a bite out of Apple's PC and phone business. The company has been awarded a trademark for the colored squares-within-squares logo that first popped up in a leaked presentation of a proposed layout for the stores. You can view Microsoft's …

    Channel Register 10 Aug 22:13

  • Yahoo!'s open source elephant loses its daddy

    Hadoop founder departure 'unrelated' to MS pact

    Yahoo! is losing the founder of Hadoop, that increasingly popular open source grid platform based on Google's proprietary software infrastructure. On September 1, after three and a half years with Yahoo!, Doug Cutting will join Cloudera, the commercial Hadoop startup that launched earlier this year. As reported by the New York …

    Developer 10 Aug 22:15

  • Facebook secures ex-Google brain trust

    FriendFeed buy nets nimble minds

    Facebook has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, a file, photo, video, and message-sharing website whose co-founders are all former Googlers, one of whom coined Google's renowned motto, "Don't be evil." Perhaps the most important assets that Facebook will land as a result of the acquisition won't be FriendFeed's technology, but …

    Music and Media 10 Aug 22:45