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14th December 2009 Archive

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  • Hackers declare war on international forensics tool

    Microsoft's COFEE decaffeinated

    Hackers have released software they say sabotages a suite of forensics utilities Microsoft provides for free to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the globe. Decaf is a light-weight application that monitors Windows systems for the presence of COFEE, a bundle of some 150 point-and-click tools used by police to collect …

    Crime 14 Dec 06:40

  • Toshiba Satellite T110

    Review Trying too hard not to be a netbook?

    Toshiba's 11.6in Satellite T110 makes you appreciate the fuss Intel makes about multi-core processors. Toshiba's Satellite T110: very, very glossy The T110, you see, has a single-core chip, a 1.3GHz Celeron 743, to be precise, which sits on an 800MHz frontside bus and has 1MB of L2 cache. The 743 is one of Intel's so-called …

    reghardware 14 Dec 08:02

  • Where is virtualisation taking you?

    Lab Is ‘perfect’ possible – or indeed necessary?

    Anyone who’s been in this industry for longer than a decade will know that some of what IT vendors say needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Virtualisation holds great promise, so we are told – but yet so did blade servers, grid architectures, enterprise management solutions, application service providers... the list goes on. …

    Virtualisation Lab 14 Dec 09:42

  • 2009's Top Mid-Range Compact Cameras

    Kit of the Year Budget snappers for photographers who want a little more

    Time was when the all compact cameras were much of a muchness, all designed for consumers seeking point-and-click simplicity, but with various degrees of manual control thrown in for enthusiasts. Nowadays, the compact market is segmented, with kit costing £150 or less for the holiday snapper, and the likes of the Canon Powershot …

    reghardware 14 Dec 10:02

  • Adaptec appoints new sales boss

    Board struggles through yet more upheaval

    Adaptec has replaced its dismissed world-wide sales VP John Noellert by promoting Jared Peters. Peters is a 16-year Adaptec veteran, and was the VP for international sales. This is the first executive-level appointment made by Adaptec since Steel Partners took control of its board a few weeks ago. At that time, Adaptec's CEO …

    Channel Register 14 Dec 10:13

  • Sony Ericsson intros tree-themed eco phones

    Handsets to hug

    Sony Ericsson has introduced a couple of new phones it hopes will reinforce its claimed green credentials. The arboreally inspired offerings are the Hazel and the Elm, but feature a "human curvature" for users' creature comforts. The two handsets - the Elm's a candybar, the Hazel a slider - are constructed from recycled …

    reghardware 14 Dec 10:16

  • Emulex gets short-lived FCoE design win

    Verari certifies - then 'crashes'

    Emulex has finally got its first public Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) design win, from Verari, which promptly appeared to fall over on Friday. FCoE sends and receives Fibre Channel storage data traffic over Ethernet, instead of using Fibre Channel wires and switches. For its adoption it relies on a loss-less and low- …

    Storage 14 Dec 10:26

  • Gov retreats on vetting database but ain't climbing down

    Balls throws vetting critics a bone

    Government tinkering with the eligibility rules for the new Vetting and Barring Scheme may satisfy some critics – but the black hole of logic at the heart of the scheme has not been addressed. This weekend saw the long-awaited report back from Sir Roger Singleton, Chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), …

    Government 14 Dec 10:32

  • Fujitsu recalls 'fire risk' laptop batteries

    Red sky at night, Amilo alight?

    Just when you though it was safe to start using lithium-ion laptop batteries again*, Fujitsu has admitted that some of its power packs have been the subject of claims that they overheat and could catch fire. The PC maker has asked owners of a trio of models in its Amilo P range of notebooks to return their laptops' batteries …

    reghardware 14 Dec 10:34

  • Western Digital gears up for mighty formatting

    Ten per cent space boost soon come

    WD and other disk drive manufacturers are increasing disk sector size eightfold to prepare for 2TB-plus capacity drives. Current hard disk drives have a 512 byte data sector sector size and have had for up to 30 years. Each sector has a sync/DAM header and an ECC (error checking and control) trailer followed by an inter-sector …

    Storage 14 Dec 10:43

  • Kindle app comes to UK iPhones

    Tomescent

    Amazon has at long last updated its iPhone-based virtual Kindle e-book reader to allow punters outside the US to buy and read digital books. The update, which takes the app to version 1.3, brings Kindle support to a total of 60 countries. The download is free of charge. A flaw, however, is that there's no way to integrate e- …

    reghardware 14 Dec 10:59

  • Exchange 2010 dumps single instance storage

    Say hello again to attachment duplication

    Microsoft added single instance storage (SIS) to Exchange 2005 and has now removed it from Exchange 2010, ensuring that duplicated applications will be stored in all their redundant, space-gobbling glory on Exchange server's disks. Why has Microsoft made this apparently retrograde step? A Microsoft Social Technet entry reads …

    Storage 14 Dec 11:01

  • IBM chums with Swiss to build 3D brain-density processors

    'Without them, IT will gobble entire world power supply'

    Boffins in Switzerland have warned that increasingly powerful computer processors are set to guzzle the entire world electricity supply by the year 2100. They say that only 3D myria-core chips can save the day. Getting on top of Moore's law. "Industry’s data centres already consume as much as 2% of available electricity," …

    HPC 14 Dec 11:16

  • Cert snafu leaves Office 2003 locked out of files

    Crocked key conundrum resolved by weekend hotfix

    A cryptographic bug in Microsoft Office 2003 bug left enterprise users locked out of files. The snag involved files protected using Microsoft's Rights Management Service (RMS), a technology for controlling who can access or modify documents. The snafu - which left corporate users in the frustrating position of being unable to …

    Applications 14 Dec 11:30

  • Axeman Chancellor toes the line on ID cards

    Just do it, Darling

    Alistair Darling is making a habit of taking an axe to the projects of his ministerial colleagues in media interviews, if this weekend's press is to be believed. Last week he forced health secretary Andy Burnham to give an emergency statement in the Commons by waxing confusedly lyrical on the Andrew Marr Show about how the NHS …

    Government 14 Dec 11:46

  • Amazon EC2 urges customers to name their price

    Let the little fluffy cloud bidding wars commence

    Amazon Web Services LLC has launched a new auction room-style purchasing package for its EC2 cloud computing rental service. The firm said in a statement today that customers could now use a new option called “Spot Instances” that allows them to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run those instances for as long as their …

    Virtualization 14 Dec 12:22

  • Nuance closes in on Spinvox

    £30m bridging loan extended to allow deal

    Spinvox is set to be taken over by a US speech recognition firm days before it is due to repay a £30m bridging loan, The Times reports. Spinvox hit the skids last summer, when it emerged that its speech to text service had been powered in large part by humans, rather than computers. In August, one of its backers, John Botts, …

    Telecoms 14 Dec 12:41

  • Eggheads solve England penalty-shootout crapness riddle

    Football lab-rats in goalie fear stress cycle

    Eggheads in Exeter say they have answered one of the most important questions facing the human race today: namely, why are England footballers so rubbish at penalty shootouts, and what can be done about it. According to Greg Wood, working towards his PhD at Exeter uni's sports-science department, it's a simple enough matter. …

    Science 14 Dec 12:53

  • Oracle defrosts EC concerns over Sun takeover

    Careful what you wish for, Monty. It might just happen...

    The European Commission has welcomed a series of promises made by Oracle about the future of the MySQL database, all of which could signal that the company's planned $7bn takeover of Sun Microsystems may now get the all-clear from regulators. "Today's announcement by Oracle of a series of undertakings to customers, developers …

    Applications 14 Dec 13:12

  • Lighting up management’s information blind spot

    Poll Results If ever there was a case for IT governance....

    Consultants and analysts often trot out lines about the importance of ‘IT-business alignment’, encouraging IT departments to tune into the ‘business agenda’ and take their lead from management priorities and objectives. But what happens when management and the broader business needs help with something, only to have a blind spot …

    Evolving Apps 14 Dec 13:17

  • Plough gives birth to sextuplets

    Asterism's Mizar actually six stars

    Stargazers at the US's University of Rochester have announced that Mizar in the asterism of the Plough (the Big Dipper to our US cousins) is actually a six-star system. Mizar was scientifically confirmed as the first known binary star system back in 1617, by Benedetto Castelli and Galileo, who demonstrated that Mizar was …

    Space 14 Dec 13:19

  • Apple cancels Christmas... if you want a 27 inch iMac

    All-in-one suffers multitude of problems

    Apple has slammed the brakes on shipments of its much coveted 27 inch iMac after users were driven cross eyed by flickering screens and other problems with the machines. The problems with the machines have been detailed on imac.squeaked.com, where Mac apostles have been forced to openly question their faith. Now it seems that …

    PCs & Chips 14 Dec 13:22

  • DVLA data powers likely to be abused by foreign officials

    Bulgarian traffic wardens know where you live

    Personal data belonging to nearly 40 million UK motorists is likely to be abused by foreign officials under new automatic access powers, according to a restricted report. Drivers' details such as name, address, motoring convictions and some medical information will be available to more than two dozen European countries around …

    Government 14 Dec 13:24

  • UK e-car trials kick off with mass motor handover

    Leccy Tech Minis in Oxford, Mitsubishis in Brum

    Forty leccy Minis were yesterday handed to their owners – well, lessees, to be exact – at the BMW Mini factory in Oxford. It's all part of the Government's 12-month e-car field trial during which time BMW hopes to “evaluate the psychological, social and technical aspects of living with an electric car.” Mini E recipients …

    reghardware 14 Dec 13:34

  • US and Russia begin cyberwar limitation talks

    It's like SALT for hackers

    The US and Russia have begun talks on limiting the the military use of cyberspace. Entry into the cyber arms reduction talks - convened by a United Nations arms control committee - represents a significant shift for the US, which has resisted entering such talks for years, the New York Times reports. The change of tack came …

    Enterprise Security 14 Dec 13:37

  • Coldplay flog kit on eBay

    'Clearout sale' to benefit kids charity

    Coldplay have announced they will flog "guitars, keyboards, amps, posters, platinum discs and all sorts of nostalgia" in an End of Decade Clearout Sale on eBay. Everything under the virtual hammer from will be "signed by the four of us, or accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, again signed by all of us", the band …

    Entertainment 14 Dec 13:39

  • 3 billion have suffered Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody'

    Noddy Holder tortures 42 per cent of world's population

    The PRS for Music has chillingly announced that Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody could have been heard by 42 per cent of the world's population - a cool three billion souls whose lives have been enriched by Noddy Holder and chums' ubiquitous Yuletide anthem. The song has apparently already been enjoyed in 47 countries around the …

    Entertainment 14 Dec 13:56

  • Mesh intros bonkers BMW-designed gaming PC

    Weird chassis, mad price

    UK PC maker Mesh has fitted out Thermaltake's bizarre BMW-designed computer case and turned the engine-inspire chassis into what it claims is the ultimate DirectX 11 gaming rig. Dubbed the Mesh 7, the monster machine comes equipped with a 2.66GHz Intel Core i7-920 quad-core CPU, 6GB of 1666MHz DDR 3 memory in tri-channel …

    reghardware 14 Dec 13:56

  • Peer 1 setting up Atmos cloud storage

    Hundreds of terabytes

    Hundreds of terabytes of EMC's Atmos storage are going to be used by Peer 1, a North American hosting company, in a cloud storage service. Atmos is EMC's dedicated storage platform for storage in the cloud as opposed to direct-attach storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS), and storage area network (SAN) arrays. Peer 1 …

    Storage 14 Dec 14:17

  • German storage specialist punts luxury external hard drives

    Not at all blingy, thank goodness

    If you're looking for an external hard drive that offers something more than the usual half-a-terabyte of storage in a grey plastic case, Germany's Brinell believes it has what you're after. You see, the Understated and Elegant series of 1.8in Purestorage XS and 2.5in Purestorage 2 drives are wrapped in, respectively, Macassar …

    reghardware 14 Dec 14:29

  • 4G network goes live for lucky few

    Nothing in our stocking yet

    TeliaSonera today switched on LTE networks in Stockholm and Oslo with coverage for 400,000 customers. The operator is pushing Long Term Evolution as offering ten times the speed of 3G, promising speeds between 20 and 80 Mb/sec at 2.6GHz, and making synonyms of LTE and 4G - as though WiMAX had never existed. But WiMAX …

    Mobile 14 Dec 15:08

  • Copenhagen talks stalled by green puppeteers

    DONGers' cars burnt in protests

    International climate negotiations in Copenhagen were reportedly stalled today, as delegates from developing nations - some working hand-in-glove with Western environmental activists - expressed their objections to rumoured plans by rich nations to replace the established Kyoto Protocol with a new framework. The BBC reports …

    Environment 14 Dec 15:27

  • Motorola joins industry of shopkeepers

    Shop4Apps slips out onto the net

    Motorola's own Android application store has slipped out onto the net. Although it was hastily removed, it proves that the company still has aspirations to play with the big boys. Shop4Apps was spotted by Android and Me, who managed to grab several screen-shots before Motorola pulled the store from public view. It was enough …

    Mobile 14 Dec 15:55

  • Facebook chief explains bear photo bareness

    Intended to make now shielded pictures public, apparently

    Facebook chief exec Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the derision that arose when previously private photos became public property after last week's privacy roll-back by the social networking site. Under Facebook's new (much criticised) privacy controls system, users are encouraged to accept the wider sharing of their photos …

    ID 14 Dec 16:11

  • NASA's WISE heads skywards

    Embarks on six-month infrared mission

    NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, aka WISE, is up and running following a successful launch at 14:09 GMT today from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The 661kg spacecraft was lifted aloft by a Delta II rocket, following a launch knock-back last week caused by an "anomaly in the motion of a booster steering …

    Space 14 Dec 16:13

  • Verari Systems staff join alumni network amidst 'restructure'

    Speculation abounds over firm's future

    Verari Systems is undergoing a "restructure" that has prompted speculation the boutique server maker has shut up shop and led workers to set up an alumni network. "Currently, we are working on a communication statement to release during our restructure," Mike LaPan, director of marketing and communications, explained in an …

    Storage 14 Dec 16:24

  • German shoppers slug it out with salami

    Parmesan 'dagger' contributes to trolley-rage casualties

    A couple of German shoppers ended up in hospital last Saturday after an argument over a trolley ended in a full-blown scrap involving fists, a salami and a fearsome 4lb wedge of parmesan used as an improvised dagger. The action kicked off in an Aachen supermarket, as a 74-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman disputed …

    Bootnotes 14 Dec 16:38

  • US Supremes to hear text-message privacy case

    Do gov employers have a right to snoop?

    The US Supreme Court said Monday it will decide whether government employers can snoop on their workers' personal text messages if they're sent from department-issued devices. The justices agreed to review a federal appeals court decision that sided with Ontario, California police officers who complained their department …

    Law 14 Dec 19:29

  • Googlephone facing 10m more Jobsian challengers?

    'Nexus One' pics appear online

    The Googlephone may be coming, but Apple's commanding lead won't be easy to overcome. As The Reg reported over the weekend, Google employees received early Christmas gifts from their Mountain View masters: pre-release versions of the upcoming Googlephone, dubbed in breathless sci-fi manner as the Nexus One (Engadget has snaps …

    Mobile 14 Dec 19:57

  • Google's reCAPTCHA busted by new attack

    Significant success rate

    A security researcher has devised a successful attack on a Google-owned system for blocking malicious scripts on web-based email services and other types of sites. The attack, described in a paper released Saturday, uses a combination of OCR, or optical character recognition, techniques and other methods to break reCAPTCHA, a …

    Security 14 Dec 20:00

  • IT first to abandon Tiger Woods sponsorship

    Outsourcer says affairs don't rub with image

    Of the countless companies sponsoring Tiger Woods these days, you'd think a global outsourcing company would find revelations of the golfer's allegedly numerous extramarital affairs the least incongruous with its corporate image. Alas, such self-reflective logic has little place in these matters. The technology services and …

    Odds and Sods 14 Dec 20:37

  • Data Robotics names new CEO

    Drobo maker co-founder replaced

    Data Robotics has hired Tom Buiocchi as its new CEO, replacing founder Geoff Barrall. Data Robotics produces the Drobo products, data robots that provide multi-drive external storage. Almost 100,000 Drobos have been sold, and founder Geoff Barral has been its CEO since 2005. Tom Buiocchi's last executive business role was at …

    Storage 14 Dec 21:20

  • AMD cuts to the core with 'Bulldozer' Opterons

    The future is modular

    IT shops buy current products, but they always have their eyes out one or two generations to assure themselves they aren't buying into a dead-end product. Which is why makers of chips and other components that go into systems as well as system makers themselves are forced to talk about the future when what they really want to do …

    PCs & Chips 14 Dec 21:45

  • Chocolate Factory does url shortening

    Toolbar, FeedBurner get Goo.gl

    Google has launched its own url-shortening service along the lines of TinyURL and Bit.ly. Dubbed Goo.gl, the service is available with the latest versions of Google's browser toolbar and FeedBurner RSS service, both released today. A URL shortener lets you shrink lengthy web addresses into just a few characters. They've …

    Music and Media 14 Dec 23:09

  • US Congress earmarks $30m for anti-piracy fight

    DHS boasts busts in 'Operation Holiday Hoax'

    The Motion Picture Assocation of America on Monday graciously stroked US Congress for promising $30 million towards fighting IP crime in 2010. Hollywood's top lobbyist, MPAA chief executive Dan Glickman, also praised the success of a six-day Yuletide sting against counterfeit DVDs and CDs called "Operation Holiday Hoax." The …

    Music and Media 14 Dec 23:10

  • Google Chrome bug outs users seeking anonymity

    Loose-lipped proxy spills local IPs

    A bug in the latest version of the Google Chrome browser could leak the identity of users trying to surf anonymously, developers warn. The flaw means that domain-name queries are made by a user's local network even when Chrome is configured to used a third-party proxy. Users typically use proxies to conceal their local IP …

    ID 14 Dec 23:30