26th November 2009 Archive

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LIVE NOW: The state of the x86 server estate

Webcast Featuring Reg reader research

Today at 11am GMT we share the wisdom of your peers in a live webcast on the state of the x86 server estate. The webcast draws on research we recently completed with you, the reader: it promises to give you good insight into how your peers are coping with the challenges of the modern server environment – and gives you the low- …

Server Management 26 Nov 07:02
Locust Storage unveils Ethernet-powered disk array

Eco-friendly tech aims for global swarming

Start-up Locust Storage is combining drive spin-down with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to provide what it reckons is the greenest storage array yet designed. The technology combines standard hard disk drives, a solid state drive (SSD) front end, and a Lithium Ion battery reservoir, fed by PoE over a 10GigE wire, to provide …

Storage 26 Nov 07:02
UK equality laws 'fall short of EU requirements', says Commission

Less equal than others

The UK's equality laws are inadequate, according to the European Commission which has announced that it has begun legal action against the UK. The Government claims that new equality legislation will settle the dispute. The Commission has said that the UK's laws are not compliant with the Equal Treatment Directive. It has …

IT Director 26 Nov 07:02
iFarter begs Apple for rational App Store

Holding your breath? There's no app for that

First Apple came for the fart apps, and I did not speak out because I was not an insufferable twat. Then Apple came for the Nancy Pelosi Bobblehead app, and I did not speak out — because seriously, a bobblehead app? Are you kidding me? Then Apple came for the "ka-ching" button app — and, hmmm...there probably is in fact …

Mobile 26 Nov 07:02
RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700

Review Slimmer, sharper, swifter

The original BlackBerry Bold 9000 cut quite a dash when it debuted last year, signalling clearly to any doubters that Research in Motion was moving the BlackBerry out of the boardroom and into the pockets and handbags of consumers who had need for its exemplary e-mail service in their day-to-day lives. Leaner and fitter: RIM' …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 08:02
EU gifts Ireland €14.8m after Dell Limerick shutdown

Funds for (most) redundants

The European Parliament has sent €14.8 million to the Mid-West of Ireland following the shutdown of Dell's factory in Limerick. Dell Computer shuttered its Limerick factory in January, cutting loose 2,840 workers. 2,000 of those were Dell employees and the rest worked for suppliers and downstream partners. Ireland applied for …

Channel Register 26 Nov 08:02
Google flirts with new-look home page

It's bolder. It's, um, bluer

Google is testing out a new look for its iconic search page, featuring cleaner, bolder graphics and a default side bar. A small number of Google users have already been seeing the changes over the past week or so, although it's not clear when, if ever, the new search interface will be widely deployed. As you can see from …

Music and Media 26 Nov 08:02
Windows 7 saves Dixons

I'm a PC, and saving your ass was my idea

Dixons Store Group International credited the launch of Windows 7 with reducing its losses for the first half of the year - ahead of the all-important Christmas sales beano. DSGi said sales in the six months ended 17 October 2009 were down one per cent to £3.3bn and like-for-like sales were down four per cent overall, but up …

Channel Register 26 Nov 09:51
NASA to develop haptic air-typing spacesuit gloves

Touch screens over before they began?

NASA is considering plans to integrate haptic vibro feedback and Halting State style air-writing accelerometer capability into spacesuit gloves. The news came this week as the space agency announced candidates selected for its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) pork handouts. Among the successful applicants was Virginia …

Space 26 Nov 10:02
Microsoft enlists faceless girl band as face of Windows 7

Leather-clad Sugababes shove OS through revolving door

The Sugababes may be clumsily plodding along without any original members left in their line-up, but that hasn't stopped Microsoft from enlisting Heidi, Amelle and Jade (who they?) to big up Windows 7. As usual Microsoft has completely misjudged its audience with the company's latest marketing campaign. It's already been …

Bootnotes 26 Nov 10:13
Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring system

CView not for you to see

Virgin Media will trial deep packet inspection technology to measure the level of illegal filesharing on its network, but plans not to tell the customers whose traffic will be examined. The system, CView, will be provided by Detica, a BAE subsidiary that specialises in large volume data collection and processing, and whose …

Telecoms 26 Nov 10:36
Afghanistan disappears from Planet Apple

Prepare for war with Eurasia!

iPhone owners with mates in Afghanistan will have a hard time keeping track of them, as the handset doesn't admit the existence of the country in its contacts application. A contact's country of residence is selected from a drop-down list on the iPhone and iPod Touch - unless that contact lives in Afghanistan, in which case …

Mobile 26 Nov 10:59
Sun doubles Open Storage high-end performance

Comes out with CPU, cache and capacity upgrades

Sun has pimped up its high-end Storage 7000 product with processor, cache and hard drive upgrades. At Supercomputer 09, Sun announced that it was supporting 2TB drives in its Storage 7000 products, doubling capacity from 288TB to 576TB. It also added InfiniBand and Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) as well as boosting …

Storage 26 Nov 11:06
Sennheiser parades "world's best Bluetooth headset"

Fold-flat wireless travel cans

Claiming your Bluetooth headset as the “world’s best” is a dangerous statement to make, but one that manufacturer Sennheiser believes its latest cans are worthy of. Sennheiser’s MM 450 Travel headset Sennheiser’s MM 450 Travel headset does away with a pesky cable by opting to communicate with your media player or mobile …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 11:27
Modern Warfare 2 update confirmed

Download content dated to 'Spring' 2010

Don’t fret if you are growing tired of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or have already completed all the levels - it has emerged that more content is on the way. Robert Bowling, Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 2’s developer, has confirmed that a downloadable content (DLC) update is currently being created …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 11:30
US Military cyber forces on the defensive in network battle

Operation ~~Screaming~~ Whimpering Fist

The US 24th Air Force - the first dedicated American military cyber force to go operational - is "not yet a warfighting organisation" and needs to "create an awareness of the battlespace", according to its commander. Major-General Richard Webber, a former nuclear-missile and satellite-jamming officer, took over the 24th in …

Enterprise Security 26 Nov 11:31
iPhone developer hires worm author

Strewth!

An Australian mobile application developer has hired the creator of the first iPhone worm, Ashley Towns, as a software developer. Towns, 21, from Wollongong, New South Wales, landed a job with mogeneration, publisher of a children's game called Moo Shake! The creator of the infamous ikee (Rickrolling) worm broke news of his …

Enterprise Security 26 Nov 11:35
Computacenter beefs up in Germany

Finds becom becoming

British PC mega reseller Computacenter has hoovered up German outfit becom Informationssysteme GmbH. London-based Computacenter will pay UCSG Holding Gmbh €2m for the operation, with a further €1.2m in the pot depending on the final shape of the balance sheet. Computacentre says the deal "will strengthen Computacenter's …

Channel Register 26 Nov 11:51
Crowdsourced maps take inspiration from Pac-Man

Don't eat that Power Pellet or we'll end up lost

Free mapping service Waze is hoping to fill gaps by providing users with virtual rewards for real work. "Cherries", "hammers" and "small gifts" will be awarded to users driving down a specific street or across a junction where Waze finds a disconnect in its crowd-sourced maps, the idea being to speed up completion of some …

Mobile 26 Nov 12:00
Asus unboxes latest Eee Box

Dual-core Atom plus Ion

Asus has broadened its Eee Box range with the addition of a dual-core Atom-based mini-desktop. Asus's Eee Box 1501: Nvidia Ion plus dual-core Atom The new Eee Box 1501 incorporates Intel’s dual-core 1.6GHz Atom 330 CPU and Nvidia's Ion integrated chipset. Windows 7 Premium comes pre-installed on the machine, which can take …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 12:12
London's stock exchange crashes again

Updated Who's to blame this time?

The London Stock Exchange has suffered yet another systems crash, leaving brokers high and dry since 9.30 this morning. The Exchange last went down in September 2008 and took almost the entire day to get back online. That outage, on one of the Exchange's busiest days, was the day after the $200bn bailout of US housing giants …

IT Director 26 Nov 12:23
'Alien spies live among us' says Bulgarian gov space boffin

Say we must stop global warming, unnatural insemination

A boffin at the Bulgarian national Space Research Institute has stated that not only are aliens living among us, but that they object strongly to "immoral behaviour" by humanity - such as causing global warming. "Unnatural" acts such as use of cosmetics and "artificial insemination" are also frowned upon by the extraterrestrial …

Space 26 Nov 12:32
Italian prosecutors seek jail time for Google execs

Mountain View in hot water over 'defamation' video

Italian prosecutors are pushing for Google execs to be jailed in a case over an internet video that showed the bullying of a teenager with Down's Syndrome. In September 2006, someone posted a three-minute mobile phone video to Google's Italian website in which four Turin teenagers make fun of a classmate with Down's Syndrome …

Law 26 Nov 12:54
TomTom iPhone Car Kit

Review Worth its Jobsian price tag?

Yes, the iPhone incarnation of TomTom's GPS navigation system is a bit on the pricey side. But if you're a fan, you're used to paying a pretty penny for flashy tech. And this TomTom actually gets the job done. The TomTom car kit for iPhone mounts firmly and easily to your car's windshield - or windscreen TomTom released a …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 13:02
Geeks Guide₂ Christmas 2009 - Part I

Christmas Savings at Reg Books

Welcome to the first part of our trilogy of Christmas 2009 goodies! If he hasn't made too many elves redundant, St Nick should be with us in four weeks' time, and for those of you who have yet to begin shopping we'll have 40 per cent savings each week on a range of books from dSLR cameras to iPhones, dragons to zombies, and …

Site News 26 Nov 13:02
Kent Police exceeded powers in too-tall photographer case

'Because we can' is not proper grounds for an arrest

Police in Kent have at last acknowledged that arresting people for being too tall might not be a very good idea. Or rather, arresting someone for no better reason than "because they could" was unlawful and not altogether sensible. The story begins this July when photographer Alex Turner was stopped whilst taking snaps in …

Policing 26 Nov 13:07
Nokia limits N900 shipments to pre-order customers

Everyone else will have to wait a little longer for the smartphone

Nokia fans hoping to pick up one of its N900 Linux-based smartphone-cum-tablets on the high street may finally be able to do so on 4 December. An unnamed Nokia spokesperson yesterday told website NokNok that the sheer volume of advance orders the Finnish phone giant has taken for the N900 means even though the first of these …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 13:23
Facebook swipes user's vanity URL

Analysis I am not a number, I am a squaresheep! Or not

Facebook's recently introduced vanity URLs may be a handy function for many, but the offer to distinguish users' profiles with names rather than numbers is not unconditional. Defence systems engineer David Lloyd was pleased to be able to adopt the nickname 'squaresheep' to distinguish his Facebook profile from those of the …

ID 26 Nov 13:23
Mobile industry excludes self from filesharing regulation

We'd love to help, but just can't

Mobile operators have kicked off the PR war against identifying those sharing files by revealing themselves as the ideal conduit for any kind of online crime. The details come from the Mobile Broadband Group, which counts all the UK's operators as members and told ZD Net that mobile operators don't allocate IP addresses to …

Mobile 26 Nov 13:32
SpinVox puts spin on layoff rumours

Exclusive It's just a slice here and there...

SpinVox insiders say the controversial voice-to-text company has made layoffs at its Marlow office today. Brunswick, SpinVox's PR company, told us that SpinVox had an ongoing program of cost-reduction but declined to characterise it as a round of redundancies. SpinVox's debt problems were widely discussed in press reports …

Telecoms 26 Nov 14:15
Replace Bulldog gridiron mascot with robot, PETA demands

Symbol of sturdy Britishness mustn't be bred any more

Animal-rights protesters in Georgia, America have asked a local football* team - the "Georgia Bulldogs" - to replace their recently-deceased bulldog mascot with a robot. The protesters say that far from being tough, bulldogs are actually weakly genetic freaks and shouldn't be allowed to breed. WGAU Local News reports on the …

Biology 26 Nov 14:35
Police smoke out 300-pound frozen turkey thief

Homeless giant repaid hospitality with fridge invasion

Police in Michigan are hunting an enormous homeless burglar who swiped a family's Thanksgiving turkey. The Jackson Citizen Patriot reports that the Sobiegray family were left facing a fowl-free Thanksgiving, after the man kicked down their front door and raided their freezer on Tuesday night. The suspect in the theft of the …

Bootnotes 26 Nov 14:36
How to network at a supercomputing show

SC09 Switch hitters

There was plenty of noise coming out of the networking vendors, who glue supercomputing nodes and their storage to each other at last week's SC09 supercomputing trade show in Portland, Oregon. El Reg has already told you about QLogic getting reseller deals for its quad data rate InfiniBand host channel adapter from Dell, …

HPC 26 Nov 14:37
IT buyers will keep purses shut till New Year

January sales may see growth return

IT spending will likely return to growth next year, although it will be modest - about four per cent worldwide for the whole year. This will be partly driven by pent-up demand - purchases and upgrades which have been delayed by recession fears this year. The survey, from Goldman Sachs, found businesses expecting to increase …

Channel Register 26 Nov 15:28
Aus gov dredges up cuter panic-button for kids online

Flipper fights predatory paedophiles

Salvation for children who feel threatened, harassed or bullied on the internet may be close at hand, in the shape of a user-friendly dolphin-shaped "panic button". That appears to be the upshot of discussions now taking place in the Australian Federal Government’s consultative working group on cyber safety. While their …

Government 26 Nov 15:29
Apple ramps up share of US retail PC sales takings

Kerching! - for the moment

Apple accounted for just under half - 48 per cent - of all the money spent on desktop computers in US retailers during October 2009, market watcher NPD has revealed. That figure is a gain on the 33 per cent of revenue Apple took in October 2008. It's not all good news for the company: revenues from Apple laptops dropped from …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 16:02
Christmas debut for Rock Band Network?

Rock on(line)

Gamers uninspired by Rock Band’s 1000-strong track catalogue could be strumming along to their personal music collections by Christmas, MTV Games has said. News of Rock Band Network (RBN) emerged earlier this year. It is designed to let gamers turn almost any track in their collection into a version playable in the Rock Band …

Reg Hardware 26 Nov 16:14
EU agency runs rule over ID cards for online banking logins

What could possibly go wrong?

A study by an EU cybersecurity agency into the use of electronic identity cards for online banking has highlighted seven types of vulnerability and 15 possible threats. ENISA (the European Network and Information Security Agency) compared the suitability of smart eID cards to other authentication techniques for online banking …

Government 26 Nov 16:16
McNealy's inflatable 'blimp' pleasure-dome angers neighbours

'Muffled slapshots' echo across leafy valley

Sun boss Scott McNealy has installed a giant, blimp-like inflatable dome in his garden, where he entertains companions. Angry neighbours have complained about loud cries and the noise of muffled "slapshots" which "ring out across the valley". According to the San Mateo County Times, McNealy's pleasure dome is regarded in the …

Bootnotes 26 Nov 16:25
Corel Holdings scoops up cash-strapped Corel Corp

Send in the snow plough

Struggling software vendor Corel Corporation has been bailed out by Corel Holdings, a limited partnership controlled by the company's majority investor Vector Capital. Earlier this week the WordPerfect, Paint Shop Pro and WinZip software maker confirmed in an amended filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that …

Financial News 26 Nov 16:26
'World's largest' BitTorrent tracker Mininova kneecapped

Probably not so popular without copyright torrents

Popular BitTorrent site Mininova has been forced to delist virtually all its trackers, after a legal defeat by a Dutch rights holder organisation. The move may signal the end for what billed itself as the world's largest BitTorrent site. Mininova was sued by BREIN, a coalition of Dutch publishing, music film and software …

Music and Media 26 Nov 16:57
Mozilla dishes up fourth Firefox 3.6 beta alongside deep-fried turkey

A generous dash of sugar in your sweet potato mash

Praise be - Mozilla has spun out yet another beta for Firefox 3.6, the next iteration of the outfit's popular browser, just in time for Thanksgiving. A finalised version of Firefox 3.6, based on the Gecko 1.9.2. engine, will rock up next month - unless Mozilla is hit by any last-minute showstopping bugs, that is. The Firefox …

Applications 26 Nov 16:58
Big Blue murders Cell blade servers

Power chips live on. In game consoles

IBM's QSZ2 Cell-based blade server received nary a mention at last week's SC09 supercomputing trade show in Oregon. And for good reason. Top brass in IBM's Systems and Technology Group killed the product off about 18 months ago, according to sources familiar with situation. The QSZ2 blade server was slated to use a future …

HPC 26 Nov 20:03
Icon design for ~~dummies~~ fanbois

Mac Secrets Going Rogue (Amoeba)

This month, we broaden the bailiwick of the Mac Secrets column. From now on, I’ll cover not only undocumented Apple APIs and programming techniques, but also other topics of Mac developer interest. This time around, I examine the thorny issue of application icon design. Why thorny? Well, even if you can churn out awesome code …

Developer 26 Nov 22:02
Johnson refuses to intervene in McKinnon extradition

'No discretion' says Home Sec

Gary McKinnon could be extradited to the US to face hacking charges before Christmas, after the Home Secretary declared he would not be intervening in the case. Alan Johnson had frozen extradition proceedings against 43 year old McKinnon - accused of hacking into the Pentagon's computers in 2002 - in the middle of last month. …

Enterprise Security 26 Nov 22:23