24th November 2009 Archive

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HP floats Q4 profit on services biz

Everything else takes a swim

Hewlett-Packard's profits grew 14 per cent in the fiscal fourth quarter, boosted by corporate cost-cutting and solid performance by its enormous services unit. The vendor's successes helped offset major losses in revenue in just about everything that's not services, including consumer PCs; enterprise storage and servers; …

Financial News 24 Nov 00:12
Cray previews XT6 Opteron nodes

SC09 Cash for number clunkers

The SC09 supercomputing trade show finished up late last week, but El Reg still has a bunch of things to tell you about. One of them is a preview of the Opteron blade server for the upcoming high-end XT6 and midrange XT6m supercomputers from Cray. Like all of the progeny of the Red Storm supercomputer that Cray built for …

HPC 24 Nov 00:24
Adaptec sacks sales chief, boots CEO from board

Gotta Steel yourself

Adaptec has suddenly fired John Noellert, its worldwide sales boss, and Adaptec's CEO has been voted off the board. Adaptec is the server I/O adapter company that has been struggling to make profits and lost a boardroom and investor battle two weeks ago when activist investor Steel Partners gained control of the board in a …

Storage 24 Nov 06:02
Wikipedia springs free labor leak

Where have all the fiddlers gone?

Wikipedia is leaking free labor - and fast. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, a new Wikistudy says that in the first three months of the year, the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" lost 49,000 more volunteer contributors than it gained. That's ten times the net loss from the same period last year, according to a study …

Music and Media 24 Nov 06:59
Government ICT spending heads for plateau

Evening out

Public sector spending on ICT is set to stabilise over the next five years. New research from Kable shows that while government is placing the brakes on the spending surge of recent years, the drives for efficiency and radical changes in service provision will open up new areas of growth. The UK public sector ICT overview and …

Government 24 Nov 07:02
iPhone conquers half the (smartphone) world

But there's an Android approaching

Apple's iPhone now accounts for 50 per cent of worldwide smartphone usage, according to a new report. But off in the distance, there's an Android approaching. The latest traffic figures (PDF) from AdMob - the mobile ad-servicing shop recently acquired by Google - are less kind to Symbian and Palm. According to the report, …

Mobile 24 Nov 07:02
Imation notebook flash upgrade as easy as pi to 30 places

This isn't rocket science... it's brain surgery!

You now have the option of pepping up your sorry notebook by using an Imation solid state drive (SSD) upgrade kit, but only if you are happy getting inside its casing and swapping out its hard drive for the SSD. The aim is to replace the HDD with an Imation M-Class 2.5-inch SSD, with either 64G or 128GB capacity. The upgrade …

Channel Register 24 Nov 08:02
Samsung X520 notebook

Review Nine-hour battery life – hit or myth?

With smooth, curved edges and an eye-pleasing design, the 15.6in X520 slips into Samsung’s new X-series range. There are two other X-series models: the 11.6in X120 and 14in X420. The focus is on mobility here and, as such, all feature so-called CULV - Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage - processors and integrated graphics from Intel …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 08:02
Combat games disrespect war laws, report claims

Virtual troops should play by the same rules real ones do

Videogames should respect the real-world rules governing wars, a report has concluded, following research into how many videogames break them. A study of 20 titles, including many from the Call of Duty and Tom Clancy series, carried out by Pro Juvenile – an organisation which aims to protect kids from unlimited videogame …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 09:02
Record company exec cuffed for failure to twitter

Refused to virtually disperse Justin Bieber mall mob

Long Island police last week cuffed Island Def Jam Records vice prez James Roppo for failing to disperse a crowd of hysterical teenagers with the social networking equivalent of the water cannon - a tweet. Thousands of young girls turned up at a shopping mall in Garden City, New York, last Friday expecting a gusset-moistening …

Bootnotes 24 Nov 09:37
Google grabs another ad company

Second this month

Google has bought another display ad company - the second this month. The search giant is paying an undisclosed amount for Teracent which offers personalised display ads. Earlier this month Google paid $750m for AdMob which delivers display ads to iPhones and other mobile gadgets. Teracent claims to be able to tweak adverts …

Applications 24 Nov 09:45
'Google Earth for the Iraq insurgency' gets $115m

Could have bought ordinary Google Earth for that

Pentagon boffinry chiefs have decided to spend more than a hundred million dollars on a new military database/map system which will let troops in the field collect, share and organise intelligence more effectively. The system in question is named TIGR, for Tactical Ground Reporting, and it has been described as "Google Maps …

Applications 24 Nov 09:52
Data centres: what are the new skill sets?

You the expert Commodity technology = commodity staff?

The capabilities of modern servers offer in-principle benefits of more dynamic management, workload balancing and so on. How do these capabilities impact on the skillsets required of data centre operations staff today? Trevor Pott Infrastructure Support Engineer The commoditisation of certain technologies once found only in …

Server Management 24 Nov 10:03
Vodafone Spain puts intelligence into fair use

While the rich can buy their way out of it

Vodafone is trialling tiered data services to Spain, priority data for business customers and more intelligent application of fair use capping. The system has been deployed across Vodafone's Spanish network. It is designed to ensure that customers on the operator's business tariff, paying €49 a month, get connected regardless …

Mobile 24 Nov 10:15
Gov advisers slate Home Office over innocents' DNA retention

Arrests made just to collar DNA

The Human Genetics Commission has slammed the government over the rampant expansion of the UK's DNA database. One retired police officer told the Commission that the databases existence had changed policing practices, with some officers making arrests purely to get samples on the system. The Human Genetics Commission (HGC) is …

Government 24 Nov 10:16
Opera update plugs heap big buffer overflow bug

Major upgrade features baked-in web server tech

Opera has fixed three potentially nasty security vulnerabilities with the release of a major new version of its web browser software. A heap buffer overflow bug involving the string to number conversion technology in previous versions of Opera created a means to inject hostile code onto vulnerable systems. Opera version 10.10 …

Enterprise Security 24 Nov 10:44
First Nokia X-series phone priced up, release scheduled

Three days to go

The launch of Nokia’s first X-series handset is just days away, the Finnish phone giant has confirmed. Nokia's X6: out this Friday Unwrapped back in September, the X6 is the new range’s flagship model and will be available on 27 November – that’s this Friday, folks. The handset will cost an eye-watering £449 ($761/€496) if …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 10:50
Collisions at LHC! Tevatron record to be broken soon?

Boffins tear up schedule in race for dimensional portal

Forging ahead much faster than had been expected, particle-smashing boffins at the Large Hadron Collider have now carried out actual collisions - blasting beams of protons into one another at a healthy 450 giga-electron-volts each for total whack of 900 GeV. Since the mighty LHC was crippled last year in an unfortunate electro …

Physics 24 Nov 11:04
Microsoft hit with lawsuit over Xbox memory card ban

'Unauthorised' accessory supplier gets legal

A UK-based manufacturer of Xbox 360 memory cards has begun legal action against Microsoft over the software giant's efforts to prevent so-called “unauthorised” memory cards being used with the console. Datel Design & Development, the manufacturer of Max Memory cards for the Xbox 360, yesterday filed a complaint with the San …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 11:07
Your wish list for packaged applications

Mini Poll All I want for Christmas is....

Following our discussions this week on the importance of evaluating application packages from a technology perspective, we're interested in gathering some more information from you on the things that really matter. So, if you have a couple of minutes, please give us your feedback in the short poll below: READER POLL: …

Evolving Apps 24 Nov 11:19
HP storage looking limp

Comment NetApp revenues could overtake it

HP's fourth quarter storage results show that NetApp is catching it up on a revenue basis. HP made $918m from its storage business in its fourth fiscal 2009 quarter, while NetApp recorded $910m. A year ago HP earned $1.15bn though, whereas NetApp made $908.4m, with HP showing a 20 per cent year-on-year decline and NetApp …

Channel Register 24 Nov 11:19
Hard drives cop flak from .50 cal incendiary round

Shooting up a server? Pah, that's nothing...

Our piece last week on keepgoing.biz, which deployed an arsenal of weaponry to shoot the shit out of an innocent server, prompted HardOCP.com's Kyle Bennett to drop us a line suggesting he was better endowed in the firepower department. Coincidentally, HardOCP uses the same range as keepgoing.biz to satisfy its appetite for …

Bootnotes 24 Nov 11:20
Is server virtualization ready for production?

Lab Beyond the low hanging fruit

The adoption of server virtualization technology follows several trajectories. We could consider the breadth of its penetration in terms of the number of organisations using it today, or we could consider the depth of its use in individual organisations, in terms of what they actually do with it. The latter is of more …

Virtualisation Lab 24 Nov 11:21
Corel begs for survival by giving takeover thumbs up

As long as I know how to love I know I'll stay alive

WordPerfect maker Corel Corp confirmed yesterday that its majority investor, Vector Capital, planned to take the software vendor private in an effort to prevent a default on loans. The firm filed an amendment with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. It said it had expanded, added and clarified “certain …

Channel Register 24 Nov 11:28
UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

Exclusive Terror squad arrest over model rocket

The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record. His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his …

Law 24 Nov 11:36
Spain warned on filesharing cut-offs

Slow down there José

Communications Commissioner Viviane Reding has warned Spain to look carefully at proposals to cut off alleged illegal filesharers. She said such a policy ran counter to European values and laws and that a new approach to protecting intellectual property was required. Reding said: "If Spain cuts off internet access without a …

Law 24 Nov 12:12
EU stops haranguing Qualcomm

Four-year case shelved indefinitely

The European Commission has shut down its investigation into Qualcomm's alleged abuse of monopoly, as the complainants got bored and wandered off. The investigation was triggered by a complaint from Ericsson back in 2005, and was formally launched in October 2007. During the intervening time various other regulatory …

Mobile 24 Nov 12:15
Ralsky jailed for four years over stock fraud spam scam

Godfather of spam sent down

Notorious spammer Alan Ralsky has been jailed for more than four years over his role in a masterminding a stock fraud spam campaign that made him an estimated $2.7m. Ralsky, 64, from West Bloomfield, near Detroit, Michigan, was sentenced to 51 months while his son-in-law, Scott Bradley, 48, was imprisoned for 40 months over …

Spam 24 Nov 12:26
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2TB HDD

Review The two-terabyte hard drive to have?

Back in August 2009, Hitachi announced that it was “shipping the industry’s first 2TB 7200rpm desktop hard disk drive” in the shape of the Deskstar 7K2000. Hitachi's Ultrastar A7K2000: better duration specs than the Deskstar That statement may have been accurate, depending on your definition of ‘shipping’, but we received a …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 12:53
Phone cloners eye 3G upgrade

It's a real Nokia, honest, and I paid nothing for it

Nokia is a status symbol in Asia, but as Prada and Gucci have found out to their cost, even when it comes to status symbols, punters will make do with a knock-off. Now they can get a more authentic knock-off. Qualcomm has signed a chip agreement with a leading Taiwanese supplier whose chips often find their way into fake …

Mobile 24 Nov 13:12
LinkedIn wedges open API door

Developers need key first, mind

LinkedIn has opened its platform to developers who are prepared to try and pass a rigorous application process. Previously the business-oriented social networking site only offered a select bunch of partners access to its Web 2.0 platform, which many use as a CV hub and biz man stalking tool. LinkedIn, which claims about 50m …

Developer 24 Nov 13:22
NASA plans robot rocket aeroplane to fly above Mars

To join nuclear laser tank. Mars defends, actually

NASA intends to build a robot rocketplane the size of a light aircraft and send it across space to fly the skies of Mars: and the space agency wants help in building it. Not quite so impressed with our tripod walker machines now, are we? The droid aeroplane is known, slightly confusingly, as ARES (Aerial Regional-scale …

Space 24 Nov 13:36
SuperSpeed adaptor goes on sale

USB 3.0 for your laptop. Now.

Keen to leap into the SuperSpeed era? There may not be many USB 3.0 devices you can use, but at least you can now prep your notebook for the new bus standard. Accessory supplier Brando has begun selling an ExpressCard 34 add-in with a pair of SuperSpeed ports built in. Brando's ExpressCard USB 3.0 adaptor: get ready for …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 13:53
Spectrum goes liberal at EU level

Following Ofcom's lead

While anti-piracy measures may have grabbed the headlines, the EU's Telecoms Package also endorses Ofcom-style spectrum liberalisation across Europe - to a point. The package, which was voted in today, states that radio spectrum should not be allocated by application; licensees should be free to do with it as they will. But it …

Mobile 24 Nov 14:30
Manchester united against ID cards, ID minister finds

All the supporters live somewhere else apparently

The put-upon people of Manchester got the chance to quiz Home Office minister Meg Hillier on ID cards yesterday, while Parliament got an update on the national identity register - the database at the heart of the project. Sir Joseph Pilling told the Home Affairs committee that 538 people were now on the database - one of them …

Government 24 Nov 15:54
eBay offers compo for search failure

Tech firm behaves like a proper company

eBay is offering customers hit by the failure of its search engine last weekend the chance to relist items, rather than sell them at lower prices. They are also offering discount vouchers to buyers who are disappointed to have lost out. In an email sent to sellers last night, the online tat bazaar said search was unavailable …

Small Biz 24 Nov 16:18
Twitter finds its voice

For the really, really, lazy blogger

A new service offers to post voice files to Twitter, enabling those who can't even type 140 characters to contribute to their valuable insight to the blogosphere. The service comes from Kirusa and, unlike competing services, doesn’t bother trying to transcribe the recorded voice but simply posts a recording of the message onto …

Mobile 24 Nov 16:20
Orchestration and the server environment

Workshop Just pie in the sky?

Few words in the IT industry’s vocabulary are more grandiose than ‘orchestration’, evoking images of symphonic movements, rows of groomed musicians and wild-haired, baton-pointing conductors. Just how the term came to be used for the allocation of server resources must leave IT managers more than a little flummoxed, however. …

Server Management 24 Nov 16:22
Emblaze demos Else handset

Not a smartphone, a 'mobile apps device', apparently

If you are bored of the same old smartphones, then an Israeli design firm claims to have designed a handset that offers something Else. Emblaze's Else runs on Linux The Else “mobile device” runs on Linux and has been hailed by Emblaze as a step away from “phone-centric” devices and a step towards “application-centric” multi …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 16:28
Dragon Age: Origins game in gay sex scene shock

Help me become somebody's elf*

A secret scene in the fantasy game Dragon Age: Origins shows a male character getting down to some hot same-sex action with an elf, The Telegraph titters today. The scene, hailed by some as progressive and derided by others as "ewww icky", is accessed when a player seduces the warrior Zevran with the right combination of …

Bootnotes 24 Nov 16:31
Google herds coders into Chrome extensions gallery

Hang 'em high

Google is corralling developers into uploading their Chrome browser extensions to a new gallery that hasn’t been opened up to testers yet. That will change for a select bunch of coding guinea pigs in the next few days, said Mountain View. In the meantime, those developers who want to slot their add-ons into Chrome will be …

Developer 24 Nov 16:35
Sony Ericsson suspends Satio sales

Pulls phone over software glitches

Sony Ericsson has withdrawn its new 12Mp cameraphone, Satio, from sale after only a few weeks of UK availability. The company told Register Hardware today that “a small number of consumers have experienced software issues” with the phone over here. It isn't known if overseas buyers are experiencing the same problems. Sony …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 16:43
Sony to publish James Patterson e-book reader

Digital thrills?

Are thrillers more up your alley than slushy Mills & Boon romances? If so, take a gander at the latest version of Sony’s Reader Pocket Edition: a tribute to author James Patterson. Sony's James Patterson Reader Pocket Edition Called, unsurprisingly, the James Patterson Reader Pocket Edition, the e-book viewer will come with …

Reg Hardware 24 Nov 16:48
MS unleashes legal attack dogs to lick up COFEE spill

Cryptonomicon

Microsoft unleashed its legal attack dogs to remove its leaked forensics tool from a respected security site, it has emerged. Cryptome.org was issued with a take-down notice shortly after Microsoft's point-and-click "computer forensics for cops" tool leaked onto the web earlier this month. Redmond's lawyers acted over …

Crime 24 Nov 17:08
Dodgy wheel thwarts Mars rover rescue

Sand trap 3: NASA 0

NASA's attempts to rescue its stuck rover Spirit from a Martian sand trap has hit another snag in the form of a dawdling wheel. Spirit's right-rear wheel stalled during the agency's third attempt to extract the aging rover from a sandy feature called "Troy" where it has been caught since April. The space agency was also …

Space 24 Nov 18:34
Fasthosts in day-long email FAIL

You say 'intermittent.' I say 'You're rubbish!'

Customers of Fasthosts - the UK-based webhost - have been without both POP and web-based email for much of the day, complaining that such outages have become, shall we say, far too prevalent in recent months. A half-dozen users have contacted The Reg about the outage, and countless others have complained via posts to the web. …

Networks 24 Nov 18:37
Bug puts net's most popular DNS app in Bind

Rare but remote

Makers of Bind have warned of a security vulnerability in versions of the domain name resolution application that could allow attackers to trick servers into returning unauthorized results. The bug in the Berkeley Internet Name Domain program surfaces only when the DNSSEC security implementation is enabled and the name server …

Security 24 Nov 18:55
Opera plugs hole in Great Firewall of China

Facebook withdrawal 'upgrade'

Opera has sealed the hole its Mini browser tunneled through the Great Firewall of China. With the international version of Opera Mini - the company's Java-based mobile browser - Chinese users had found a way of freeing themselves from local net filters, accessing sites otherwise banned by the government. The browser shuttles …

Networks 24 Nov 19:44
~~Fanbois~~ Apple buyers howl over crocked iMacs

A crack in the cult

Apple customers are howling over a pair of recurring flaws in the company's new iMac desktops. Some buyers say machines are arriving on doorsteps with a conspicuous crack in the lower left-hand corner of Apple's built-in display, while others howl that their freshly-shipped systems won't even turn on. Each flaw has spawned …

PCs & Chips 24 Nov 21:37
Amazon instaboosts Kindle battery life

Flying firmware

Amazon is boosting the Kindle's battery life and adding native support for PDF documents with a free firmware upgrade for the e-reader. The online retailer said the Kindle 2 will get an 85 per cent boost in battery life — lasting seven days on a charge versus the previous limit of four days. With wireless turned off, battery …

Music and Media 24 Nov 22:23
HP takes one in the servers

Comment Hurd hails 3Com 'convergence'

Well, it looks the enterprise slammed on the server spending brakes a lot quicker and a lot harder than smaller outfits this fall. HP released its fourth quarter earnings yesterday, and its Enterprise Storage and Servers group took a serious hit, with sales down 16.6 per cent to $4.22bn in the quarter ended October 31. The …

Servers 24 Nov 23:31