3rd December 2009 Archive

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Space butterflies invade ISS

…and they're hungry

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are now hopelessly outnumbered by orbital butterflies as part of a student education project dubbed, "Butterflies in Space." Four Painted Lady butterflies emerged this week from chrysalises floating freely in a suitcase-sized container on the ISS, after blasting off in space …

Space 3 Dec 01:11
EFF seeks answers from Facebook police

Surveillance 2.0

As law enforcement agents increase their reliance on Facebook and MySpace to nab suspects, legal watchdogs are demanding that officials disclose exactly how they use social networking sites. In a complaint filed Tuesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued five US agencies that failed to respond to freedom-of-information …

Crime 3 Dec 05:02
Microsoft promises 'open' Bing strategy

Silverlight sneaks in

Microsoft is committed to an open online strategy to include partners and developers and build market share, while unveiling updates to Bing with a decidedly Microsoft flavor. Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's online services division, said Wednesday that the company's goal is for a "third-party scale model …

Music and Media 3 Dec 05:20
Twitter mulls open protocol Web2.0rhea

Supernova PubSubHubbubification

Will Twitter turn itself into an email-like open protocol? It's thinking about it. "There's an ongoing discussion within the company about the merits of decentralization and whether it's really possible and, if it is possible, how it would work," Twitter chief operating officer Dick Costolo told the gathered tech types at …

Music and Media 3 Dec 06:02
Freeview HD goes live

Technical details emerge as DVB-T2 service activated

With the launch today of the Freeview HD service, the UK can claim to be at the forefront of digital television - though most punters won't be able to receive the service until spring 2010. Today’s launch saw services switched on at the Crystal Palace and Winter Hill transmitters, between them providing coverage for around 22- …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 07:02
Live Now : Reg Business Productivity Webcast

Webcast Set browsers to play from 10am GMT

The Register's Tim Phillips, Jon Collins from Freeform Dynamics and IBM's Gary Gomersall will be giving the lowdown on alternative ways to tackle business productivity from 10am GMT today - live, online and free of charge. Tune in as the panel dish out the usual blend of straight-talking advice and expert answers on a number …

Tech Panel 3 Dec 08:02
Acer beTouch E101 touchscreen smartphone

Review Cheap and..?

Acer has been successful in the laptop market by building low-cost, efficient computers that deliver the goods for less dosh than many of its big-brand brethren. When it first began manufacturing smart phones earlier this year, we had high hopes that they'd be able to pull of the same trick. Yet, Acer’s first four Windows Mobile …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 08:02
BONDI is all beachy with W3C

Happy widget consensus happens

The OMTP's widget framework BONDI now complies with the W3C's definition of the term, paving the way to properly-cross-platforms applications. BONDI extends the W3C definition of a Widget to include a security policy and mobile-specific APIs, but the OMTP is pleased to report that its reference implementation now passes the …

Mobile 3 Dec 08:02
Europe's ISPs object to secret copyright treaty talks

ACTA factor

Secret trade talks on counterfeiting and copyright threaten to undermine citizens' rights without giving them a voice in negotiations, European internet service providers (ISPs) have warned. EuroISPA, a trade body representing 1,700 European ISPs, has called the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) talks 'heavy handed' and …

Telecoms 3 Dec 09:50
Proto-mammals survived ancient global warming in Antarctica

Flight from tropics saved egg-laying furless cat

Fossil-probing boffins say they have found evidence that early mammal-like creatures survived a severe episode of global warming 252 million years ago by moving to Antarctica. Most other species then living were wiped out. The new research comes from scientists at the Field Museum in Chicago and the University of Washington. …

Biology 3 Dec 10:10
Micron lights touchpaper on flash rocket

SSD now stands for supersonic drive

Micron has announced what looks like a blazingly fast multi-level cell solid state drive (SSD), which supports the 6Gbit/s SATA interface. The RealSSD C300 is built using the 34nm process Micron and Intel have developed. It comes in both 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors and has 128GB and 256GB capacity points. The read speed …

Storage 3 Dec 10:17
Virgin Media network goes titsup in Brum

Power outage blamed

Virgin Media customers across the west Midlands are this morning cut off from broadband, cable phone and digital TV. Reg readers in Birmingham, Solihull and Kidderminster are reporting their connections went down at about 5.40am. A update on Virgin Media's status page confirms engineers are investigating the problems. A …

Telecoms 3 Dec 10:19
Geeks Guide₂ Christmas 2009 - Part II

More Christmas Savings at Reg Books

Welcome to the second part of our Christmas trilogy. This week we move from digital photography to the modern man’s pastime of gaming. We have a 40% discount on each of the below titles including this year’s sleeper hit Plants vs. Zombies on PC and Mac; a guide to the biggest game of them all – Modern Warfare 2, and for the old- …

Site News 3 Dec 10:34
Wikipedia to disclose user's IP address in blackmail case

Complies with court order to unmask suspect Wikifiddler

The High Court has ordered the publishers of the Wikipedia user-generated encyclopaedia to reveal information which could identify a contributor in a blackmail case involving an unnamed famous businesswoman. The Wikimedia Foundation said that it would not help to identify the user unless a court order was made, but that if the …

Law 3 Dec 10:36
Micron takes wraps off 'fastest' desktop SSD

6Gb/s Sata does the trick

Memory maker Micron has introduced what may be the first solid-state drive fitted with a 6Gb/s Sata 3.0 connector. The RealSSD C300 is being pitched as "the fastest drive for notebook and desktop personal computers". Easy to say, that, and Micron followed it up by stating the C300 is faster than any other SSD connected by a …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 10:38
LHC back after temporary unexistence

'Pre-cycling interruptus' delays return

The Large Hadron Collider - mightiest particle-smasher ever built, and possible portal to other dimensions - came back online late last night following a power cut which not only shut down the Collider but also caused it to vanish off the internet for a time. Amateur LHC-watchers, observing the great machine either for …

Physics 3 Dec 10:53
UK Wii sales surpass 6m

Reaches milestone more quickly than any other console has

You can question the platform's longevity, but there's no doubting the Nintendo Wii is a sales success. Especially now market data shows it to be the UK's fastest-selling console. During the week ending 28 November 2009 - week 48 - total local Wii sales surpassed 6m units, market watcher Gfk-ChartTrack has revealed. That …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 11:00
Setting application data free

Workshop Liberating the user, or IT?

The best time to sell someone pain relief is when they are hurting, and so it was back in the 90s, when the first wave of ERP software was offered to customers to ease their suffering from point solution chaos and broken automation. The next best time to sell medication, of course, is when someone is looking forward to some …

Evolving Apps 3 Dec 11:07
Mozilla fixes memory-hogging bug in Thunderbird 3

Email client almost ready for blast-off

Mozilla has fixed a serious instability in an almost-ready version of its Thunderbird email client, as well as tackling a variety of lesser stability flaws and adding some enhancements. Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate 2, released Tuesday a week after the first almost-baked version, fixes flaws that turned the previous test …

Applications 3 Dec 11:27
Intel fixes 'bricked SSD' firmware bug

New X25-M firmware released

Intel has quietly released new firmware and an updated firmware loader that, it claims, fixes the problems 64-bit Windows 7 users had been experiencing with its second-generation, 34nm X25-M SSDs. The original firmware was released more than a month ago, on 26 October 2009. Almost immediately, drive owners began posting claims …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 11:28
Time pops tablets to take magazines electronic

Haven't we already tried that?

Time Inc. has seen the future, and it's electronic magazines rendered on an Apple tablet, assuming Apple ever makes one. The publisher has been working out how to sell magazines in an electronic format. It reckons advertisers will pay extra for video inserts, while punters will want access to more pictures and video content - …

Mobile 3 Dec 11:33
Google moves tanks onto property market's lawns

Making stuff cheaper for estate agents? This might not be popular...

Google's latest target for freeing to death is, says the Financial Times, the UK property market. According to the paper, the company intends to launch a service offering estate agents free property listings early next year, and to bankroll it through advertising. Currently UK online property listings are conducted via portals …

Music and Media 3 Dec 11:40
SD cards to get 300MB/s bus

SD 4.0 spec roadmapped

The guardians of the SD memory card specification announced version 3.0 of the technology less than a year ago, but that hasn't stopped them talking up version 4.0 already. SDXC, launched on 7 January 2009, takes the card's capacity to 2TB and ups the maximum data transfer rate at the bus to 104MB/s. SD 4.0 - which will also …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 11:45
2009's Top Solid-State Drives

Kit of the Year High speed storage with no moving parts

Solid-state drives have yet to truly challenge magnetic media when it comes to storage capacity and the price you pay for it. But 2009 saw a bumper crop of SSDs as Flash and storage specialists really tried to drive performance. Some even pushed low capacity but cheap drives in a bid not to replace the HDD but to work alongside …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 12:02
Live Now: Why care about SLA Monitoring and Management?

Webcast SLAve to the rhythm

Today at 9am PST (12pm EST/5pm GMT) we've got a free, live webcast taking place that will look at service level monitoring and management and how it can help your business. We'll attempt to find out what benefits the use of SLA monitoring and management systems can provide in an era when IT systems are needing to be become more …

Tech Panel 3 Dec 12:02
Swedish lactating bloke's dream turns sour

Milkman's 'sore' moobs refuse to yield

The Swedish dad who's spent the last few months attempting to squeeze milk from his breasts has thrown in the towel, with nothing more than "sore breasts" to show for his efforts. Student Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, said that male lactation "could prove very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an …

Biology 3 Dec 12:19
Gov confirms plans for Sky box in charge of your house

Smart ~~meters~~ remote-control spy boxes by 2020

The government has announced the results of its consultation with the public and other interested parties on plans for "smart" energy meters to be installed in all British homes and businesses. The most controversial aspects of the devices - the fact that they will effectively allow remote control of a home by energy companies …

Government 3 Dec 12:25
Has your iPhone been involved in an accident?

Ambulance chasing? There's an app for that

Solicitors Bott & Co have launched an iPhone application for recording accident details, along with a link to their dedicated hotline for those seeking injury compensation. The "Car Incident Assessment" application, which is free from iTunes, runs the user through the important things to note following an accident; including …

Mobile 3 Dec 12:27
Manchester journo gets first ID card - late

Nearly scuppered by potatoes, Chadderton

A Manchester Evening News hack claims to be the first member of the public to get an ID card in the government's pilot, despite her application almost being scuppered by an accident with a roast potato. Angela Epstein was offered the first appointment at the City's ID central office, after covering the scheme in her column in …

Government 3 Dec 12:36
Optoma HD20 budget full HD projector

Review Light fantastic

Billed as the first 1080p projector available for under £900, Optoma has taken a no-frills approach to cram maximum HD goodness into its HD20 home cinema projector. Compact at 324 x 234 x 97mm, it houses a full HD 1080p DLP device to satisfy film buffs and big screen HD gamers. Back to basics: Optoma's HD20 The HD20 comes …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 13:02
Malware derails Indian business school admission tests

Politician wade in as exams for 8,000 applicants postponed

A malware infection has screwed up plans for Indian business schools to run admission tests online for the first time. Many would-be students were told tests would have to be rescheduled after unspecified malware derailed plans to offer the CAT (Common Admission Test) online. An estimated 8,000 of 45,000 candidates due to take …

Enterprise Security 3 Dec 13:02
Catholics slam PETA nude adopt-a-mutt poster

Unimpressed by angelic model's 'carefully-placed crucifix'

The Catholic League has fired a broadside against animal rights outfit PETA after the campaigning organisation decided to ask Playboy model and Dancing With The Stars contestant Joanna Krupa to whip off her kit in defence of homeless mutts: The image - which clearly demonstrates Krupa sports no fur whatsoever - is a follow- …

Bootnotes 3 Dec 13:04
Footie fans flock to clock 'Miss of the Century'

Ryman League open-goal howler delights YouTube crowd

Football fans worldwide have flocked to YouTube to catch what has been dubbed "The Miss of the Century" - a open-goal howler by Harrow Borough's Rocky Baptiste: Mercifully for Baptiste, Harrow Borough beat their Ryman League rivals Waltham Abbey 5-3 in Saturday's match, but the poor bloke's epic fail has "now replaced …

Bootnotes 3 Dec 13:47
Crooks 'too lazy' for crypto

Met's digital forensics boss thanks human nature

The widespread use of encryption by criminals - long feared by intelligence and law enforcement agencies - has yet to materialise, according to the man in charge of the country's largest digital forensics unit. Mark Stokes, head of the Metropolitan Police's Digital and Electronic Forensic Services (DEFS), told The Register …

Policing 3 Dec 13:49
Microsoft backs away from Murdoch love-in

Not ready to go exclusive? Or not rich enough?

Microsoft does not want to get into bed with Rupert Murdoch after all, with a senior exec telling the FT that Redmond is not interested in securing the Aussie mogul's content for its Bing search engine. Or at least, Microsoft is not prepared to go exclusive with the hard-nosed Aussie and other media moguls. Not this week, …

Music and Media 3 Dec 13:52
Murdoch takes aim at streaming pretenders

MySpace Music arrives in UK with a bullet

Fresh from signing up the indies, News Corp's MySpace Music is launching an ambitious streaming competitor - in theory - to Spotify, We7 and Last.fm in the UK. In practice, it's hard to see people substituting much Spotify time for MySpace time. Music on the portal is hard to find, and buried under major label marketing bumph …

Music and Media 3 Dec 14:32
UK police take down fake designer goods sites

Del Boys swept out of .co.uk domains

UK police have completed a massive take-down operation, after targeting scam websites selling fake designer goods. More than 1,200 counterfeit-slinging UK-registered websites were grounded as part of Operation Papworth - an operation led by the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) - which targeted scam websites in …

Crime 3 Dec 14:51
MS kills 'Bing buys the news' furore, but Google could still lose it

Imaginary story confirmed imaginary shock

Microsoft has firmly ruled out the notion of paying news publishers to de-index their content from Google. But you knew that already. Speaking at the unveiling of new Bing features in San Francisco yesterday, senior online services VP Satya Nadella said that Microsoft was not focused on getting exclusive content, and that "there …

Music and Media 3 Dec 14:54
Honda goes NUTs for future micro-car

Leccy Tech Welcome please the, ahem, Neo Urban Transport

Honda has whipped the dust covers of its vision of the small, urban coupé of tomorrow at the LA Auto Show. The Personal Neo Urban Transport - or P-NUT - seats three with the driver amidships and fits within the diminutive footprint of a micro-car. Honda's P-NUT: US notion of a micro-car Or rather within the American idea …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 15:35
Taliban attack Brit troops with explosive donkey

'Considerable' blast from asinine IED

British troops in Afghanistan's Helmand Province will in future eye donkeys with suspicion after the Taliban strapped an improvised explosive device to an unfortunate beast of burden and sent it "galloping" towards a military camp. Major Richard Streatfeild, of the 3rd Battalion the Rifles Regiment, said the insurgents had " …

Bootnotes 3 Dec 15:56
HP hit with another strike

HP CDS becomes department of no work and less pensions

More industrial unrest is threatening HP, where another union today announced that its members will strike. Unite said it will organise a walkout, involving about 100 staff, on 7 December. Yesterday, the Public and Commercial Services Union said its members working on Department of Work and Pensions contracts for HP (the …

Financial News 3 Dec 16:25
Antitrust incoming? A view of Google from 30,000 ft

Interview Have they bitten off more than they can compute?

Attorney Chris Castle has worked for the original Napster ("one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century"), Snocap and in digital licensing for Sony and A&M, and his "View of the Music Wars from 30,000 ft" was one of the most popular features of last year. In the first installment of our annual catch-up, he wonders whether …

Music and Media 3 Dec 17:37
MS honeypot research sheds light on brute-force hacks

An idiot's guide to stronger passwords

Microsoft's honeypot-based research has highlighted common password mistakes, as well as shedding light on automated hacking techniques. Attack data collected from an FTP-server honeypot revealed that most attacks attempted to log into administrator accounts (Administrator and the French equivalent Administrateur were by far …

Security 3 Dec 18:01
SC09: Infiniband expands, Mellanox thrives

Pretty sporty

Mellanox was a big presence at SC09. It had a good-sized booth of its own, and its products were featured or referred to at a significant number of other booths. It also made a major announcement with NVIDIA about a joint effort to provide technology that allows GPUs to talk directly to storage, thus taking load off of the …

HPC Blog 3 Dec 18:02
World Cup to be shown in 3D

Beer bellies and silly specs ahoy!

The 2010 World Cup will be the first global soccer event shot in 3D, Fifa - the Fédération Internationale de Football Association - said today. Sony has won the contract to provide the production kit, and will be releasing footage on an official Blu-Ray Disc in due course. The Blu-ray Disc Associaton has yet to define a …

Reg Hardware 3 Dec 18:05
Microsoft acted on Opera's modified browser proposal?

'Robust remedy' in EU works

Windows PC users in Europe could get to pick their browser without going through Internet Explorer. Microsoft is reported to have agreed to changes proposed by Opera Software to a ballot screen Redmond had offered for users to pick the browser they wanted on their Windows computer. The ballot screen was offered by Microsoft …

Applications 3 Dec 19:10
Comcast promises not to lock Hulu behind paywall

Enjoy it while it lasts

Comcast doesn't plan on locking Hulu behind a paywall once it's given the keys to NBC Universal. In a deal valued at about $37 billion that ends General Electric's majority control of NBC Universal, the US cable giant is set to become a media superpower that not only oversees how television shows are distributed, but also how …

Music and Media 3 Dec 19:17
Google dodges Googlephone question

Supernova Who's your hardware daddy?

Google has declined to discuss the possibility of a Google-branded IP-based cell phone handset, the subject of much speculation in recent weeks. Speaking with The Reg this morning at the annual Supernova tech pow-wow in downtown San Francisco, Google voice product manager Craig Walker chuckled at the prospect of actually …

Mobile 3 Dec 19:56
Linux kernel cured of remote panic-attack bug

Get your BUG_ON

Developers of the Linux kernel have patched a bug that allowed attackers to remotely crash a machine by sending it malicious Wi-Fi signals. The flaw in the delBA handling of mac80211 has been fixed in version 2.6.32, the latest stable release of the Linux kernel. Various distributions of the open-source operating system have …

Enterprise Security 3 Dec 20:04
Microsoft's Silverlight 4 - Flash developers need not apply

Review The dark side of .NET improvements

Microsoft's Silverlight 4 shows remarkable progress since version 3, released in July. The pace of development shows Microsoft is serious about making this work - but is it delivering something developers can use? The answer is a guarded "yes". Version 4 is a huge improvement, resolving many of the most frustrating aspects of …

Developer 3 Dec 20:36
Apple's App Store police relent on hardware images

Pictures forbidden, no more

Apple's App Store police have again exhibited a brush with common sense, and allowed another iPhone app to display previously forbidden images of Cupertino hardware. An update of the iPhone version of Mactracker (App Store link), a free compendium of stats on each and every Apple product since the dawn of the Macintosh 128k, …

Developer 3 Dec 20:47
Google expands plan to run own internet

The Chocolate Factory does DNS

Google has entered the domain name resolution business, part of its ongoing effort to control just about everything you do on the net. This morning, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory unveiled the free Google Public DNS, a service that lets you resolve net domain names through Google-controlled servers. DNS - the Domain Name …

Networks 3 Dec 21:37
YouTube strips page clutter with 'Feather'

Faster loading for crap computers

One problem with small, cheap computers is that even the internet staple YouTube can slow such a machine to a crawl. And what's the point of a $300 computer if you can't watch a dog riding a skateboard immediately? To address this issue, YouTube launched an experimental "Feather" viewing option on Thursday that strips out many …

Music and Media 3 Dec 22:32
Man loses fight against firm that suffered data breach

Harm? What harm?

A Missouri man has lost his legal battle against an online prescription processor that suffered a security breach that exposed highly sensitive subscriber information. John Amburgy alleged that Express Scripts was negligent because it failed to adequately safeguard customer data, including names, dates of birth, social …

ID 3 Dec 22:37