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13th October 2009 Archive

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  • Oracle's WebLogic roadmap recaptures BEA's dream

    OpenWorld 09 Just enough app server for ya?

    Oracle could to do what BEA Systems failed to achieve in the next two years: successfully deliver on a modular and virtualized roadmap for its Java application server. The database giant Monday outlined a two-year WebLogic roadmap that will see Oracle start to roll out an early set of lightweight WebLogic modules built using …

    Applications 13 Oct 2009, 03:13

  • Canonical pushes out Ubuntu 9.10 server

    Private clouds. Public faces

    If you are getting ready to build your own internal cloud-style virtual infrastructure, Canonical - the commercial entity behind the Ubuntu distro of Linux - really wants you to think outside of the box and consider the forthcoming "Karmic Koala" Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition. Canonical is looking to build some excitement for …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 04:02

  • Racerunner SSDs tap Exar dedupe tech

    WhipTails of the unexpanded

    It had to happen: WhipTail has worked out you'll get more data in an SSD if you compress it, and the company is working with Exar to do exactky this. WhipTail is going to integrate Exar’s Hifn BitWackr hardware deduplication and compression product into its solid state drive (SSD) appliances. With this addition of …

    Storage 13 Oct 2009, 06:02

  • Avere boosts NAS filer performance

    100,000 IOPS benchmark

    Newcomer Avere is one of four NAS storage suppliers to have exceeded 100,000 IOPS on the SPECsfs2008 NFS benchmark, with one quarter to one twelfth of the disks needed by the others - and with a faster overall response time as well. Avere front-ends a bulk data NAS filer with its tiered FXT filer acceleration appliance …

    Storage 13 Oct 2009, 06:02

  • Feds: bald man posing as 17-year-old secretly taped teens

    'I'm lonely and hate being old'

    A Massachusetts man in his 40s stands accused of posing as a 17-year old boy so he could lure teenage girls into video chatrooms and secretly videotape them as they engaged in sexual acts. Lawrence Joseph Silipigni Jr., of Saugus, Massachusetts, was indicted on nine felony counts related to his alleged production of child …

    Crime 13 Oct 2009, 06:02

  • Google Squared rounds out features

    More facts in your spreadsheet search thingy...

    Google Squared - the experimental web tool that delivers Google search results as a table (because tables rock, that's why) - recently received an update to improve the quality and quantity of data it spits out. According to Google's blog, when it launched this spring, Squared could only include 30 facts (aka: squares) for …

    Music and Media 13 Oct 2009, 06:02

  • Packard Bell EasyNote Butterfly

    Review All-day battery and then some

    Over the past two years Acer has bought the eMachines, Gateway and Packard Bell. Dividing the buying public into a number of categories that it can target with specific brands, Packard Bell covers the ‘Trends & Lifestyle’ group in Europe, and the EasyNote Butterfly s laptop is part of the plan. Light on power consumption: …

    reghardware 13 Oct 2009, 08:02

  • 3PAR zeroes in on wasted space

    Latest announcement is all for nought

    3PAR is thinking about nothing in particular with its latest announcement: targeting and removing zeroes from migrated-in volumes and getting rid of them in thin copies and snapshots. Its idea is to use zero detection facilities in the third generation of the ASIC hardware in its InServ storage array, along with a so-called …

    Storage 13 Oct 2009, 09:08

  • Olympic builders hit with biometrics - local residents next?

    If your face don't fit, you're for the high jump

    Confusion reigns over at the Olympic village, as security measures more appropriate to a top security prison than a construction site are put in place to "facilitate" efficient working in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. Meanwhile, an official statement by the Olympic Development Authority hints alarmingly at the need for …

    Policing 13 Oct 2009, 09:08

  • IBM, Microsoft, HP named nimblest negotiators

    Survey finds big guys most persuasive

    IBM, Microsoft and HP are the three best negotiators in industry, a survey has found. The companies took the top three spots in a piece of research that sought to find the companies that were the most able negotiators. IT companies made up half of the top 10, with Cisco and Oracle joining their rivals in the chart. Industrial …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 09:55

  • Torrent crackdown pushing pirates towards file hosting

    May I see your warez?

    The crackdown on torrent tracking sites such as BitTorrent has encouraged software pirates to make greater use of file-hosting websites. Sites such as RapidShare, MegaUpload or Hotfile allow anonymous users to upload large files without charge. The services are intended for personal video file and backup storage but also have …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 10:01

  • Sonos to launch five-amp, five-speaker music streamer today

    ZonePlayer S5 inbound

    Multi-room music streaming specialist Sonos will today introduce its latest system: the ZonePlayer S5, an iPhone-activated, internet-connected music blaster. Due to ship over here on 10 November for £349 - $399 in the US - the S5 contains five Class-D digital amps, each directly feeding one of the unit's five speakers: two …

    reghardware 13 Oct 2009, 10:04

  • WikiReader feeds you factiness on the go

    Is that a cloud-sourced encyclopaedia in your pocket? Oh.

    OpenMoko's Project B: WikiReader, a hardware implementation of Wikipedia offering mobile users access to the font of all knowledge, goes on sale today. Openmoko promised the new hardware when the company admitted it couldn't afford to develop a new handset, the GTA03. We had no idea what the mysterious "Project B" would be, …

    Mobile 13 Oct 2009, 10:40

  • Maradona's website hacked after last-gasp Argentina victory

    Peruvian miscreants leave him crying in the rain

    Peruvian hackers have reacted to the country's dramatic defeat to Argentina on Saturday by defacing the site of Argentinian manager Diego Maradona and dubbing him a cry-baby. A picture of a tearful Maradona was pasted on the website, alongside the message "Te Hicimos Llorar" (We made you cry). Maradona is pictured in tears and …

    Enterprise Security 13 Oct 2009, 10:53

  • Mitsubishi preps 'versatile' plug-in hybrid e-car

    Leccy Tech 4WD or 2WD; battery, petrol or both - PX-MiEV drive train will do it all

    Mitsubishi has announced details of the range-extended plug-in hybrid that Reg Hardware first got a sniff of back in July and which will be officially unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show next week . Called the PX-MiEV, the concept vehicle promises to have one of the most versatile hybrid drive trains yet developed. Mitsubishi's …

    reghardware 13 Oct 2009, 10:56

  • Guardian gagged over Commons question

    Updated Bloggers, Twitter roar as paper silenced

    The Guardian newspaper was yesterday prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings, after legal action apparently trumped the media's right to report on the House of Commons. According to the Guardian, yesterday: "Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The …

    Law 13 Oct 2009, 11:27

  • Moon orbiter detects pole-plunge hotspots in dark bottom

    Pics NASA: LCROSS may have caused 'significant heating'

    NASA has released new images from its spy satellite orbiting the Moon, showing the twin impacts at the lunar south pole of the iceberg-hunting probe which struck there on Friday. Hotspots produced by the pole-diver craft. The LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission saw a spent Centaur rocket stage …

    Space 13 Oct 2009, 11:32

  • Savvis picks Compellent for public cloud service

    Spirited automatic data progression

    Savvis has picked Compellent to be its cloud storage supplier in the Spirit project to develop a virtual private data centre public cloud service. Compellent beat other vendors because its automated data movement made its storage more cost-effective and cheaper to manage. Savvis, an $850m a year revenue managed services …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 11:36

  • One cellphone for every ten lags in UK prisons

    At least that's what they found

    The Prisons service discovered 8,648 mobile phones in prisons in the last 12 months, forcing prisoners to share one between ten, though it also admitted there could be many more. Prisoners aren't supposed to have mobile phones at all, but stopping them getting into the prisons isn't easy. In response to a parliamentary …

    Mobile 13 Oct 2009, 11:39

  • SanDisk flashes its extra bits

    4-bit MLC transition is underway

    SanDisk is shipping 4-bit Secure Digital flash cards with flash chips storing 8GB of data. Multi-level cell (MLC) flash technology stores four bits of data per cell. MLC is regarded as key technology for increasing NAND flash capacity and effectively lowering its cost per GB stored, making it more affordable. Alternatively …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 11:40

  • Proles told to get online to save economy

    Or we'll ruin EastEnders

    Having recently been given her very own digi-quango, dotcom ingenue Martha Lane-Fox has taken to airwaves and newspapers to berate the public for not using the internet enough. The web-travel-agent-turned-biznovation-wonk is appalled there are ten million Brits who have never used the internet, according to her staff's …

    Government 13 Oct 2009, 11:49

  • Google Docs gets jiggy with folder sharing

    Ratcatcher snares Gmail deployment

    Mountain View is finally rolling out a “shared folders” feature in Google Docs, after it first promised to add the option to its online app in July this year. Google said it added the feature due to popular demand. Apparently it’s been the “most requested” option for users of the service. The collaboration tool won’t show up …

    Applications 13 Oct 2009, 12:06

  • Western Digital WD TV Live

    Review HDD media player revamped with networking

    We liked the first version of Western Digital's WD TV box. It was released in December 2008, barely nine months ago, but WD has already rolled out its successor. Western Digital's WD TV Live: now with networking on board... There's no substantial change to the functionality: WD TV - now called the WD TV Live - is a compact …

    reghardware 13 Oct 2009, 12:14

  • Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming

    Rainforest similar to ours flourished at 3-5° hotter

    Fossil boffins say that dense triple-canopy rainforests, home among other things to gigantic one-tonne boa constrictors, flourished millions of years ago in temperatures 3-5°C warmer than those seen today - as hot as some of the more dire global-warming projections. Just like a modern jungle. Except with bloody enormous …

    Environment 13 Oct 2009, 12:35

  • Pirate Party helped cut P2P in Sweden?

    Are copyright scares helping the enforcement agenda?

    Figures from Sweden suggest six out of ten P2P users have stopped or significantly reduced their unlicensed file sharing, AFP reports. The study was conducted by recording industry trade group IFPI in June, and claims to be more accurate than earlier studies since it contacted internet users by mobile and email, rather than …

    Music and Media 13 Oct 2009, 12:55

  • Polish government cyberattack blamed on Russia

    Round up the usual suspects

    A largely unsuccessful attack on Polish government systems last month reportedly originated in Russia. Details are scarce but it seemed that the attack coincided with the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two. Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported that the assault targeted Polish government systems and took …

    Crime 13 Oct 2009, 13:00

  • Idle wild: how Intel's mobile Core i7 speeds up to slow down

    Turbo Boost, Thread Parking and the drive for low-power performance

    Intel's first mobile Core i7 processors - codenamed 'Clarksfield' - incorporate a feature the chip company is calling Turbo Boost. It's not new - the technology is a part of every 'Nehalem' architecture-based CPU the company has released to date. So, Turbo Boost can be found in desktop chips and it's in Xeon server parts too. …

    reghardware 13 Oct 2009, 13:34

  • Perot/Dell buys China services business

    Takes a slice of BearingPoint

    Dell will get a services foothold in China after its soon-to-be subsidiary Perot Systems announced it would take over a unit of the distressed consultancy BearingPoint. Perot is taking on BearingPoint Management Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, aka BearingPoint China Consulting. BearingPoint is the consulting firm spun out of …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 13:42

  • UK Border Agency flip-flops on asylum seeker DNA tests

    Make your minds up, lads

    After it "temporarily suspended" its controversial nationality DNA testing pilot, the UK Border Agency has today changed its stance again, saying the programme will go ahead, but the results won't be used to decide asylum seekers' fate. DNA fingerprints and isotope analysis will be collected from asylum seekers, but "they will …

    Government 13 Oct 2009, 13:50

  • Cornish separatists take aim at pasty students

    Red terror stalks Cornish campus

    Cornish separatists have launched a campaign to scare students out of the county, along with second homers, surfers and celebrity chef Rick Stein. The Cornish Republican Army was apparently behind a graffiti outrage in Penryn this weekend. The chilling words "Penryn has had enough of students" with the tag CRA were visible to …

    Bootnotes 13 Oct 2009, 14:20

  • Michigan airport grounds website over malware risk

    Fly-by download threat

    An airport in Michigan reportedly took down its website late on Monday in response to a computer virus risk. The Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids temporarily pulled its site in response to an unspecified malware threat, local channel Wood TV reports. The site was restored by late Tuesday morning. During the …

    Malware 13 Oct 2009, 14:53

  • Mozilla gets orientation-friendly with Firefox 3.6

    Which way do you swing?

    The next iteration of Firefox will be able to detect the orientation of laptops and mobile devices that come loaded with accelerometers. Mozilla said yesterday that Firefox 3.6 would carry support for web pages to read machine orientation details, if available on the device. It created the device API to allow users to work …

    Applications 13 Oct 2009, 14:55

  • Cisco swallows Starent Networks

    Wants a little more telco action

    Cisco has announced it will absorb mobile experts Starent, in a deal worth $2.9bn which prepares Cisco for the Long Term Evolution of mobile telecoms. Cisco will pay $36 cash for each share in Starent, which combines with some outstanding equity to value the deal at $2.9bn for the Massachusetts-based company that was set up …

    Mobile 13 Oct 2009, 14:59

  • Office 2004 for Mac granted extended run to appease VBA fans

    Microsoft salutes fanboys

    Microsoft has thrown a lifeline to the Office 2004 for Mac by extending its official retirement date. The software vendor was expected to end mainstream support today, but Microsoft’s controversial decision to clip the wings of Office 2008’s support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) clearly proved to be a bad bit of game …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 15:11

  • Man jailed over air traffic control IT kit eBay scam

    Pushing Tin

    An engineer who sold £58,000 of kit stolen from the UK's National Air Traffic Control Centre on eBay to pay off a credit card debt was jailed for 15 months on Monday. Andrew Woffinden, 43, of Fareham, Hampshire, a former IT worker with Serco, turned criminal in order to pay off his wife's credit card bills. During a sentencing …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 15:28

  • Exagrid slides out smoothly scalable Data Domain beater

    100TB without having to change boxes

    Start-up Exagrid has introduced a 10TB dedupe appliance, configurable in a 10-node deduplication grid or cluster, with global reduplication across the nodes and Data Domain-beating performance. Exagrid provides disk-to-disk backup deduplication appliances that connect in a grid architecture for the mid-market. The company says …

    Storage 13 Oct 2009, 15:50

  • Sun, Fujitsu crank Sparc64-VII clocks

    Sparc roadmap? Don't hold your breath

    While Sun Microsystems has been muzzled by Oracle to not talk in specifics about the future of the Sparc server line, Sun and its server partner, Fujitsu, can nonetheless keep enhancing their jointly sold midrange and high-end server Sparc Enterprise machines, and at the OpenWorld customer event in San Francisco this morning, …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 16:41

  • Missing dot sends Sweden tumbling off internet

    DNS doldrums for mournful Scandies

    Sweden effectively fell off the internet last night when maintenance to Domain Name Systems damaged every single .se web address. The problem happened at quarter to ten last night and took just less than an hour to fix. But some problems remained because the address data is cached externally by ISPs - these servers had to be …

    Networks 13 Oct 2009, 17:31

  • Snow Leopard data-munching bug predates Snow Leopard

    Howls of Jobsian distress date to November 2007

    Fanboi complaints of a mystery data-munching Mac OS bug began well before the arrival of Snow Leopard, Apple's latest desktop operating system. Similar tales of woe date back to at least November of 2007, when Jobsian cultists were still using the previous Mac OS version, just plain Leopard. This week, the web is awash with …

    Operating Systems 13 Oct 2009, 18:03

  • Google shares malware samples with hacked site admins

    Seeing is believing

    Google has rolled out a feature that provides webmasters of compromised sites with samples of malicious code and other detailed information to help them clean up. The search giant has long scanned websites for malware while indexing the world wide web. When it detects outbreaks, it includes language in search results that …

    Security 13 Oct 2009, 18:04

  • Dell pitches x86 in Oracle's Sun court

    OpenWorld 09 Larry patches it up

    Michael Dell has tuned his supersales pitch for the down economy: buy more, and buy frequently, to save more. Just don't buy Sparc. Dell told OpenWorld that buying batches of his company's x86 machines running virtualization and the latest in power efficiency and increased processing power will let you claw back around 15 per …

    Channel Register 13 Oct 2009, 19:45

  • Internet coalescing into lump of Google

    And P2P is so 2007

    The internet is looking much lumpier than it was just a few years ago. In 2007, the majority of internet traffic was more evenly distributed across tens of thousands of networks. Now, just 300 networks contribute to 60 per cent of all traffic online, according to two-year study by Arbor Networks. Google is clearly the largest …

    Networks 13 Oct 2009, 20:49

  • Bing advertisers on wane, says report

    'Inexpensive marketing sandbox'

    Microsoft's Bing decision engine search engine stomached an 8 per cent drop in all-important first-page advertisers during the third quarter, according to the latest report from search research outfit AdGooRoo. First-page ads are those that turn up on the first results page after a keyword search. Due out tomorrow - prior to …

    Music and Media 13 Oct 2009, 20:52

  • Adobe relieves Reader and Acrobat update blues

    Plus fixes for 29 security bugs

    Adobe Systems has introduced a new software updater for its Reader and Acrobat applications, one of several additions released Tuesday to protect users against a growing wave of malware attacks. The new updater was included in in the latest versions of Reader and Acrobat, which Adobe released to fix almost 30 security …

    Security 13 Oct 2009, 21:12

  • Google's Postini clogs email in US, UK

    Delivery delays

    Google's Postini email security and spam filtering system is seriously clogged, with businesses on both sides of the Atlantic complaining that the hosted service is slow to deliver their messages. As of 2:30pm Pacific, it appears that the problem has lasted for several hours. Jeff Wojciechowski - LAN/WAN telephony admin for …

    Applications 13 Oct 2009, 22:13

  • Intel coffers rebound from first half beating

    Profits down. Hopes up

    The theme of Intel's third quarter earnings today is paying no mind to last year and focusing on how much better things are compared to Q2. Chipzilla is indeed doing much better sequentially. But to finger the issue more precisely, Intel had suffered a particularly awful second quarter this year. (It was also hit with a $1. …

    Financial News 13 Oct 2009, 22:57

  • HP invites you to touch its PCs

    Dangles TouchSmart desktops, laptops

    As part of its ongoing rollout of new PCs and laptops ahead of the Windows 7 launch next week and a presumed bump up in PC sales, Hewlett-Packard has announced another batch of new machines for consumers and corporates. The big push today is for relatively inexpensive touch screens for laptops and desktops and low-cost Compaq- …

    PCs & Chips 13 Oct 2009, 23:10