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5th October 2009 Archive

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  • Full Flash goes mobile (with Google's backing)

    Adobe MAX Adobe in your bank statement

    Adobe has unveiled Flash Player 10.1. Announced today at the company's MAX conference in Los Angeles, the product's most notable feature is that the full player - rather than a cut-down "lite" version - will be delivered to mobile devices and netbooks as well as for the desktop No Apple iPhone yet. But supported mobile …

    Developer 5 Oct 04:02

  • Tories told: Don't scrap NHS IT

    We never said we would

    The Tory Party, meeting for its annual conference in Manchester this week, has rejected claims that it is set to cancel most of the National Programme for IT - the massive technology project aimed at improving the NHS. A survey by doctors.net.uk found a third of doctors and IT professionals believe the project should be …

    Public Sector 5 Oct 06:02

  • EC considers web accessibility legislation

    Viviane Reding sees herself as internet Robin Hood

    The European Commission has proposed legislating to ensure that all EU nations adopt accessibility rules designed to ease disabled people's access to the web. Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding has for the first time talked of a 'European Disability Act' that could compel EU nations to adopt web …

    IT Director 5 Oct 07:02

  • 3PAR peers through cloud at service providers

    Comment Wringing the pennies out of full platters

    In a storage cloud, empty bit buckets on disk platters are like a centrifugal force spinning money off and away. They are destroyers of value. Unless storage suppliers can deal with this, they're going to be outclassed and uncompetitive. David Scott, 3PAR's CEO, says his company is set to bring new features to its InServ …

    Storage 5 Oct 08:02

  • Vodafone Access Gateway 3G

    Review 3G networking for cave dwellers

    The fuss surrounding femtocells is hard to avoid, analyst Berg Insight reckons 70 million of the things will be in use by 2014, but Vodafone's Access Gateway is the first femto product to hit the UK. It’s essentially an access point base station for mobiles, so if you want Vodafone coverage where there is none, then it's hard to …

    Reg Hardware 5 Oct 08:02

  • Pirate Bay back online and back on Google

    All a simple mistake

    Pirate Bay is back on Google, and back online, following a double whammy of downtime and a wrongly served DMCA notice. Last week thepiratebay.org was removed from Google's search results. The page revealed that Google was responding to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice - a legal warning from the owners of …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 09:08

  • Overland's president jumps overboard

    Vern LoForti swims into the night

    Vern LoForti, the man who helped rescue Overland Storage from the ravages of Chris Calisi's CEO-ship, has left the company. LoForti was Overland's president and CEO when board member Eric Kelly - who had largely persuaded Overland to buy his old Snap Appliance business from its unloving owner, Adaptec - took over as CEO in …

    Storage 5 Oct 09:19

  • Avere bets filers are crying out for more tiers

    Four storage levels starting with NVRAM

    Start-up Avere has designed a 4-tier filer appliance to deliver much faster I/O and dramatically lower the number of spindles needed in a high-performance filer. With the Avere FTX Series, the company has undertaken a complete overhaul of filer architecture and moved on from the embedded server-plus-drive-trays approach …

    Storage 5 Oct 09:50

  • Apple chokes on Woolworths logo

    LogoWatch Objects to Oz retailer's brand frontage

    Apple has moved to prevent Oz retailer Woolworths from trademarking a logo - something which would allow it to "slap its branding and logo on every imaginable product", as The Age puts it. The problem is, according to Apple, that Woolies' brand frontage is too close to its own. Woolworths' trademark application "includes a …

    Bootnotes 5 Oct 09:51

  • How Perot Systems played hard to get with Dell

    Fourth time the charm

    With Dell still on the hunt to make acquisitions to bolster its position in the enterprise, there are only a handful of companies big enough to make a difference on Dell's top and bottom line and yet small enough for Dell to buy. Perot Systems had Dell right where it wanted it, hence the $3.9bn (a 67.5 per cent premium) that …

    Channel Register 5 Oct 10:02

  • IBM readies Exadata killer

    Exclusive Big Blue can swing both ways, too

    According to sources familiar with the company's plans, IBM is getting ready to launch its own database clustering box for online transaction processing (OLTP) and data warehousing. The machine, which is apparently going to be called DB2 Pure Scale, is obviously meant to blunt the attack of the Exadata 2 box cluster that …

    Servers 5 Oct 10:35

  • Black-hole sniffing 'laser combs' are go, say Brit gov boffins

    Golden triangle mega space scope gets box-tick

    Boffins at Blighty's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) - birthplace among other things of the internet* and the Dambusters' bouncing bomb - say they have validated a cunning super-accurate, laser-assisted space formation flying tactic. This will allow the detection of ripples in the very fabric of space-time, allowing top …

    Space 5 Oct 10:45

  • Tories will let voters 'rewrite' legislation online

    Bringing ignoring the public into the 21st century

    The Tories have pledged to open source legislation if they get into power, raising the promise of an even bigger cock-up than Number 10's woeful petitions website. The Guardian reports that shadow foreign secretary William Hague will unveil the plan, presumably at the Conservative Party Conference this week. Hague will unveil …

    Government 5 Oct 10:48

  • Toshiba reveals Cell TV specs

    'Future of TV', apparently

    Toshiba has whet the appetites of couch potatoes everywhere by releasing the final specifications of its most advanced HD TV yet. Toshiba's Cell Regxa 55X1: advanced The 55in Cell Regza 55X1 – which essentially incorporates the same CPU found inside Sony’s PlayStation 3 – provides “state-of-the-art picture quality”, Toshiba …

    Reg Hardware 5 Oct 10:50

  • Police charge anarchist over G20 protest network

    Man had Marx poster and Twitter account

    A New York man is out on bail after being arrested for monitoring police movements around the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh and disseminating intelligence to protesters on the ground. Elliot Madison, 41 - a social worker and self-described anarchist from Queens - was arrested in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit on September 24 …

    Policing 5 Oct 10:54

  • MoD 'How to stop leaks' guide leaks

    Secret security manual no longer secret

    A Ministry of Defence guide to preventing information leaking into the public domain has leaked into the public domain. The three volume, 2,300 page book includes information on dealing with investigative journalists, foreign agents and computer hackers as well as how to deal with typical approaches from Chinese and Russian …

    Government 5 Oct 11:05

  • Comedian pitches $100k for Twittter account

    Drew Carey eyes @drew for charity

    US comedian Drew Carey has bid a $100k charitable donation for the @drew Twitter account - if he gains 100,000 followers by 9 November. The account has been put up for grabs by Drew Olanoff. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma back in May, and decided to auction off his Twitter presence in support of the Lance Armstrong …

    Bootnotes 5 Oct 11:10

  • Microsoft developing universal game action capture

    Record and review every victory

    Microsoft is developing a universal in-game gameplay capture system for the Xbox 360, an industry mole has claimed. The revelation comes from an unnamed developer, who – at the recent Tokyo Game Show – said: “We’d love to have video capture in our game, but why work on something that the platform holder is already developing …

    Reg Hardware 5 Oct 11:15

  • MS plasters Ballmer's signature on Windows 7 special edition

    Includes balloons, but no jelly and ice cream

    Anyone brave enough to be throwing a Windows 7 house party is in for an extra special treat - Microsoft is dishing out a “Signature Edition” of the Ultimate version of its upcoming operating system to the hosts. And, praise be, it’s also handing over balloons to party animals too. The special flashy edition of the OS comes in …

    Operating Systems 5 Oct 11:19

  • Is Brocade selling itself?

    Fibre Channel vendor wants to be in the tent

    Brocade may have decided the best way to way address a changing datacentre market is to stitch itself to one of the big three server suppliers. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Brocade may have put itself up for sale. Brocade dominates the Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN) networking and fabric market …

    Storage 5 Oct 11:32

  • Desktop Management – Where are you now?

    Standing still or moving forwards

    Since desktop PCs first entered the world of business, IT managers and help desk staff have struggled for years to keep the machines running. And as anyone involved in IT support will tell you, the majority of the struggles have not been with the PC hardware or software but with the users attached to them. As we kick off this …

    PC Management 5 Oct 11:37

  • IBM's Exadata2 knock-off could use SVC and flash

    Comment Pure Scale InfiniBand-connected SVC

    IBM's DB2 Pure Scale project has a storage problem - storage arrays don't make good cluster nodes. Pure Scale is the rumoured Exadata 2-killer from IBM. It is thought to be a clustered implementation of IBM's DB2 database running on Power-based servers with the AIX O/S, and an InfiniBand cluster interconnect between server and …

    Storage 5 Oct 11:49

  • Crucial CT256M225 256GB SSD

    Review The best value solid-state drive yet?

    Crucial supplies a fair amount of information about its CT256M225 256GB SSD, including the facts that it uses MLC Flash, has a read speed of 250MB/s, a write speed of 200MB/s and comes with a 64MB cache. Crucial's CT256M225: Indilinx' controller on board The one piece of data that is clearly missing is the identity of the …

    Reg Hardware 5 Oct 12:02

  • Super 'sun-hot' plasma rocket in fullbore bench test triumph

    Ex-astronaut boffin's drive could reach Mars in 39 days

    A radical, highly fuel-efficient plasma rocket whose interior operates at temperatures close to those found inside the sun has passed a key test milestone. Trials of the space drive aboard the International Space Station are expected within the next few years. The superpowered rocket design is known as the Variable …

    Space 5 Oct 12:13

  • PunterNet thanks Harriet for massive upswing

    No Harman done there

    Prostitutes worldwide were this weekend congratulating Women’s Minister Harriet Harman on a job well done – as remarks she made to last week’s Labour Conference have dramatically increased business for sex workers using online site PunterNet. A press release put out by the owners of the site pointed to a doubling in site …

    Government 5 Oct 12:17

  • Google Chrome gets friendly with Native Client

    Dev preview plugs into x86 chip models

    Google pushed out version 4.0.220.1 of its Chrome browser on Friday and it comes loaded with a number of fixes and features, including the debut of Native Client on Microsoft’s Windows OS. The nifty Native Client (or NaCl) open source tech has been developed for running x86 native code in web apps. By slotting it into Chrome, …

    Developer 5 Oct 12:28

  • Helpdesk Heroes or unappreciated geeks?

    Workshop Share your tales from the front line

    The helpdesk has always been the most visible part of the IT support operation. It is here that the “my password isn’t working anymore” and the “computer says no” calls are taken by valiant members of the IT team. As we move into an era when the help desk may become more of a ‘service centre’ and less of fault reporting point, …

    Service Management 5 Oct 12:52

  • CCTV website recruits video vigilantes

    Time on your hands? Into ghosts?

    A new web service aims to recruit tens of thousands of unpaid watchmen to monitor neglected CCTV cameras nationwide. Internet Eyes, a start up based in Stratford-upon-Avon, plans to charge businesses £20 per month for members of its website to watch live camera feeds and report incidents via text message. In return, the …

    Policing 5 Oct 13:40

  • Barclaycard drops offline

    It can get you anywhere - 'cept on its website

    Barclaycard's UK website has been unavailable for most of the day and the company isn't sure when it's coming back. The company apologised to frustrated customers but said it was too soon to say what had gone wrong. The website went down this morning and is still unavailable at 3.00pm. The last time we reported problems - …

    IT Director 5 Oct 14:08

  • Apple Mail and iPhone users get vid-tracked

    A trail of HTML 5 tags

    Paranoid or spam-averse users should steer clear of Apple's desktop or iPhone mail clients for a while, as mails can't be prevented from using HTML 5 tags for tracking. In common with the majority of email clients, Apple's can be configured not to load remote images embedded in messages, for privacy and spam prevention. But …

    Mobile 5 Oct 14:24

  • Symantec offers cloud building blocks

    Filestore, not vapourware

    Symantec is offering private and public file access building blocks for the cloud called FileStore, which form an NAS head cluster in front of block access storage arrays. FileStore is a software-based appliance, running on standard x86 servers and aggregating connected back-end arrays together. Symantec says FileStore use can …

    Storage 5 Oct 15:11

  • US military jets to run on weeds, scum & corpse-grease

    Mushroleum fungus-fuel sadly not on horizon

    Well on track to making their aircraft run on coal, the US forces have just ordered 600,000 gallons of renewable jet fuel made from weeds, algae or rendered fat from animal corpses. News of the biofuel push comes courtesy of Honeywell subsidiary UOP, which has been developing sustainable/renewable biofuels for use in jet …

    Environment 5 Oct 15:29

  • Spotify offers offline mode

    DRM has never smelled better

    As we predicted back in the summer, Spotify is now taking on iTunes as a rival for your digital music library. The only major feature it's lacking is CD burning. But then all your music is in a DRM encrypted format, so you'll lose it when you leave. Basically it's the iPhone capabilities for the desktop - only with a peculiar …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 15:32

  • DDoS attack rains down on Amazon cloud

    Updated Code haven tumbles from sky

    Web-based code hosting service Bitbucket experienced more than 19 hours of downtime over the weekend after an apparent DDoS attack on the sky-high compute infrastructure it rents from Amazon.com. This in turn left many developers without access to code projects hosted on Bitbucket, a GitHub-like service based on the Mercurial …

    Enterprise Security 5 Oct 15:32

  • Active Media preps SuperSpeed SSD trio

    Faster data rates for solid-states

    Buffalo and Freecom are currently fighting it out to launch the first USB 3.0 external HDDs, but Active Media (AM) looks set to steal the limelight with its launch of a SuperSpeed-supported external SSD range. Active Media's Aviator 312 SSD: USB 3.0 connection AM said its Aviator 312 SSD line offers read speeds of up to …

    Reg Hardware 5 Oct 15:50

  • Mellanox jacks up revenue and profit guidance

    Says Q3 is just rolling along

    Server and storage networking equipment maker Mellanox Technologies raised its guidance for its third quarter ended September 30. The company said in a statement that it expected revenues to fall between $32m and $32.5m in the third quarter, up from its previous guidance of $28.5m to $29m. That means on a year-on-year basis, …

    Storage 5 Oct 16:04

  • 10,000 Hotmail passwords mysteriously leaked to web

    Updated Phishing booty free for taking

    Login credentials for more than 10,000 Microsoft Live accounts have been posted to the internet, most likely by miscreants who found them or harvested them in a phishing attack. In all, there were 10,028 pairs of user names and passwords posted to multiple pages of public upload website Pastebin.com, some of which remained …

    Security 5 Oct 16:27

  • Most Mac owners getting Windows on the side

    The Moulin Redmond

    The stereotype goes that Mac fans are markedly loyal to their platform. And while a new study by the NPD Group shows Apple adoption is on the rise, the vast majority of Jobs-fearing homes also keep a Windows PC running under their roof. More than 12 per cent of US homes have at least one Mac, according to NPD's latest …

    PCs & Chips 5 Oct 18:46

  • Amazon unveils payment system for smartphones

    Look out, Apple and eBay

    Amazon has unveiled a service that allows smartphone users to pay for music, applications and other content without having to enter credit card numbers into their devices. The service, known as Mobile Payments Service, is a set of application programming interfaces developers can plug into websites so they work seamlessly with …

    Mobile 5 Oct 18:49

  • Ubuntu man finds metalove in Debian attacks

    Long-term Linux co-ordination predicted

    If there's an upside to the Debian community's recent attacks on Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth it's that there'll be more conversation between engineers on the two distros. That's according to Ubuntu founder Shuttlworth, who believes engineers on major subsystems are now in a better position to talk, which will lead to greater …

    Operating Systems 5 Oct 21:18

  • Palm Pre re-re-introduces iTunes synchronization

    Your move Apple, oh wait - no!

    You've got to hand it to Palm, it's made itself one tenacious mole for Apple to whack. The company's long-running fight to keep the Palm Pre compatible with iTunes entered yet another round of assured futility over the weekend. This Saturday, Palm released version 1.2.1 of WebOS, which "resolves an issue preventing media sync …

    Music and Media 5 Oct 21:24

  • Flash goes native on iPhone

    MAX 09 Adobe gets Creative with Apple

    When it comes to Apple versus Adobe Systems there’s still no Flash in the iPhone browser, but a new compiler does enable Flash applications for App Store Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch, speaking at Adobe's MAX in Los Angeles, California, explained what we already knew: that there is no technical barrier to running …

    Applications 5 Oct 23:13

  • IE, Chrome, Safari duped by bogus PayPal SSL cert

    Fraudulent credential, real risk

    If you use the Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Apple Safari browsers to conduct PayPal transactions, now would be a good time to switch over to the decidedly more secure Firefox alternative. That's because a hacker on Monday published a counterfeit secure sockets layer certificate that exploits a gaping hole in a Microsoft …

    Enterprise Security 5 Oct 23:24