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13th January 2010 Archive

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  • Google may exit China after 'highly targeted' attack

    Updated Activists hit in 20-company dragnet

    Google plans to curb its controversial practice of censoring search results in China after uncovering a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" designed to steal information about human rights activists from its Gmail service and at least 20 other large companies. The attack that hit Google in mid-December originated in …

    Security 13 Jan 00:12

  • 'Sandwich attack' busts new cellphone crypto

    Kasumi cipher cracked (in theory)

    A new encryption scheme for protecting 3G phone networks hasn't even gone into commercial use and already cryptographers have cracked it - at least theoretically. In a paper published Tuesday, the cryptographers showed that the Kasumi cipher, which is also referred to as A5/3, can be broken using what's known as a related-key …

    Security 13 Jan 00:17

  • Microsoft Office 2007 retailers dodge patent injunction

    Redmond misses update deadline

    Microsoft might have pulled Office 2007 from its online shop but retailers are still selling the suite. Retailers can sell Office 2007 if the copies they purchased were bought before a US-court-mandated deadline of January 11, 2010, Microsoft told The Reg on Tuesday. Upgrade and full copies of Office 2007 were available from …

    Applications 13 Jan 01:20

  • VMware relieves Yahoo! of its Zimbra

    Our grand plan to simplify IT

    VMware has agreed to purchase Yahoo!'s Zimbra unit - an outfit that offers enterprise email, collaboration, and calendering - after earlier reports indicated a pact was on the cards. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But sources speaking with All Things Digital say the price is "well below" the $350m Yahoo! paid for Zimbra …

    Applications 13 Jan 01:26

  • Terracotta polishes Quartz job scheduler

    Boosts Java caching

    Having bolted the open source Ehcache Java caching software it bought to its Java application clustering environment, Terracotta has now added the Quartz job scheduler it acquired as 2009 was winding down. Terracotta took control of privately held Quartz in November 2009, buying the company for an undisclosed sum. As it did …

    Developer 13 Jan 06:02

  • Calcitic astro-whiz clogs ISS piss recycler

    Yesterday's coffee, today's problem

    The mysterious properties of astronaut piss are believed to be the cause of the International Space Station's extremely troublesome deployment of its $250 million urine-recycling system. Engineers attempting to troubleshoot the buggy barrel-shaped Urine Processor Assembly aboard the ISS now suspect that a high concentration of …

    Space 13 Jan 06:02

  • Tech downturn is history, says Forrester

    No more Dumb Computing

    The economists and box counters at IT market-watcher Forrester Research have called an unofficial end to the IT recession, saying that tech spending will hit $568bn in the United States in 2010, up 6.6 per cent compared to last year, and will rise above $1.6 trillion globally, up a smart 8.1 per cent. While this is good news, …

    Business 13 Jan 07:02

  • Symantec buys Gideon to bow before government idols

    Slaps some SCAP on the grill

    Symantec intends to boost the risk-management wares it sells to the public sector by scooping up privately-held Gideon Technologies. Symantec said on Tuesday that the acquisition will expand its slate of products that provide validated configuration of security content automation protocol (SCAP) and its vulnerability-checking …

    Business 13 Jan 07:02

  • Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB Sata 3.0 HDD

    Review The first hard drive with the new bus standard

    The Seagate Barracuda XT is the latest 2TB hard drive to land on our test bench, following on from the WD Caviar Black and Green and the Hitachi Ultrastar. It’s the largest capacity Seagate we have seen since the 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 so you may think that Seagate was as keen as mustard to scatter review samples to the waiting …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 08:02

  • 'Fizzy phone' tops wacky handset list

    Closely followed by ivory tickling alternative

    Smartphones grab most handset headlines these days, but if the latest devices from, respectively, a Chinese designer and Korean manufacturer Pantech are anything to by then there’s still a market for weird and wacky phones. Daizi Zheng's phone runs on fizzy drinks Designer Daizi Zheng, who claims to be working on behalf of …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 08:56

  • Israeli ducted-fan robo sky-jeep in hover trials

    Not a flying car, but perhaps a flying mule

    The Israeli designers of a radical flying jeep style vertical-takeoff-and-landing "fancraft" have announced long-belated flight tests. However, the trials of the pilotless "AirMule" have so far seen the aircraft tethered and restricted to just two feet off the ground. Surly bonds of Earth still in place for now. "Fancraft" …

    Science 13 Jan 09:02

  • Sony Ericsson Android phone caught on camera

    CES 2010 on Video Xperia X10 demo'd

    Watch in HD at Reg Hardware's YouTube channel Can't see the video? Download FlashPlayer from Adobe.com

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 09:49

  • Home Office picks new prof for Nutt job

    As Spaniards blame coke for three per cent of deaths

    The Home Office has found someone to take the job of chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, left vacant after the sacking of David Nutt. Les Iversen, a former Oxford professor of pharmacology, takes the chair. He has been chairing the meetings since Nutt left in October. The ACMD, required under the Misuse of …

    Government 13 Jan 09:52

  • Dell's pimps 6gig SAS for DAS

    Faster PowerVaults

    Dell is adopting 6Gbit/s SAS for its PowerVault direct-attached storage (DAS) for servers with drives, enclosures and RAID controllers. It says that this will effectively double the speed of its PowerVault DAS enabling it to keep up with the Nehalem generation of multi-cored and virtualised servers. The increased SAS speed is …

    Storage 13 Jan 10:00

  • Alfresco ECM gilds IBM's Lotus suite

    Enterprise 3.2 supports cloud deployment

    Open source vendor Alfresco Software is rolling its enterprise content management (ECM) system into IBM's Lotus collaboration products to serve as a stronger counterpoint to Microsoft Sharepoint and reach smaller-sized business customers. The company is also teaming with RightScale's software-as-a-service cloud management …

    Software 13 Jan 10:02

  • Demystifying architecture for non-enterprise organizations

    Workshop Have you got a map?

    Architecture, schmarchitecture... words like “architecture” get banded around in IT like they have a specific meaning, when in reality you’d get ten different definitions from ten different people if you asked. But few would agree that IT should do without some degree of ‘structure’, be it mere forethought or understanding about …

    Infrastructure Workshop 13 Jan 10:17

  • Diva: Samsung touts tarted up telephones for WAGs

    Handbag handsets

    Samsung's Diva phones, due to strut their stuff over here later this month, are apparently aimed at "fashionable women", the company said today. Hence the quilted, handbaggy look of of the S5150 Diva Folder - a clamshell, we assume - and the leggy blonde - Estonian model Carmen Kass, no less - being used to flog the phones. …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 10:23

  • An academic take on Santa

    HPC news and developments slack off a lot during the holidays. The lull often lasts well into January as we put the holiday season behind us, take down the tree, and exchange our geeky gifts for even geekier and more powerful gifts… but that won’t stop us from writing something HPC-related. In our never-ending quest to find …

    HPC Blog 13 Jan 10:34

  • Brit firm aims to make airport perv scans obsolete

    Voyeurs despair, chemistry fetishists delighted

    A British firm is aiming to capitalise on travellers' body issues with a security scanner that does not produce an image, yet can identify a wide range of concealed explosives. Following Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's failed attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner over Detroit, body scanners are firmly on the security agenda …

    Policing 13 Jan 10:37

  • Networkers at Cisco Live: €300 discount for Reg readers

    Site offer Justification letter to open the purse strings

    Cisco is hosting Networkers at Cisco Live, its annual conference for techies, in Barcelona on January 25-28. Better still, the networking equipment giant is offering Reg readers a credit-crunchtastic €300 discount for everyone who signs up. Go to Cisco's registration page and quote this offer code: READNWCL10. The offer ends …

    Site News 13 Jan 11:02

  • Prysm pitches ultra-green laser telly tech

    Reinvents the CRT for the 21st Century

    US company Prysm has taken the covers off what it claims is a new type of ultra-low power HD TV that combines old-style CRT elements with laser technology. Called Laser Phosphor Display (LPD), the system replaces a CRT's electron beam with a directed laser beam. The phosphor-coated screen that's excited by the beam to emit …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 11:02

  • Supercomputing in retail?

    What are they getting out of it?

    I got a call recently from a reporter who confronted me with an interesting question. He had attended SC04 in Pittsburgh, and one of his key takeaways from the show was that retailing was on the cusp of adopting HPC-style computing to crunch their data in order to improve both top-line and bottom-line results. He asked me: “Has …

    HPC Blog 13 Jan 11:07

  • Critical Adobe updates overshadow MS Patch Tuesday

    PDF peril finally plugged

    January's Patch Tuesday update from Microsoft was overshadowed in importance by fixes that defend against highly publicised exploits in Adobe Acrobat and Reader. The vulnerabilities in Adobe's software have been the target of hacking attacks since mid-December and so rate higher in important than Microsoft's solitary update, a …

    Enterprise Security 13 Jan 11:08

  • US faces critical lack of (mad) computer scientists

    Outreach project to teen tech dorks planned

    Famed Pentagon wildcard boffinry outfit DARPA issued a stark message today. According to the military crazytech bureau, America faces a crippling shortage of mad scientists - in particular, of mad computer scientists - in the near future, and only drastic action in the US educational system can rectify this. According to a …

    HPC 13 Jan 11:41

  • Wii welcomes video on demand

    Nintendo and Netflix shake hands

    Nintendo will roll out a Netflix video-on-demand service to Stateside Wii owners, the gaming giant’s US chief has confirmed. The two companies are expected to formally announce their partnership later today, but Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo America, has already told the New York Times that the deal “is a …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 11:47

  • Economics backs net neutrality, say researchers

    The dollar has spoken

    Net neutrality is not just the fairest way to organise the internet but the most economically effective, according to two US academics. Their economic analysis of the policy claims that it is the best way to encourage investment in online services. Subscribers pay internet service providers (ISPs) for access to whatever …

    Telecoms 13 Jan 11:48

  • 'Plutonium pinch' nips NASA

    Shortage of fuel squeezes exploration programme

    NASA's future solar system exploration programme could be threatened by a shortage of plutonium-238, New Scientist reports. Many of the agency's spacecraft rely on the nuclear fuel, but the US no longer produces the stuff, and despite previous estimates that the lack of plutonium-238 wouldn't bite until 2020, NASA is "already …

    Space 13 Jan 11:50

  • HP loses massive DWP contract

    Exclusive Fujitsu Services to pick up desktop deal

    HP has lost one of its largest outsourced IT contracts from the British government to rival Fujitsu Services. The Department of Work and Pensions today confirmed to The Register it had appointed Fujitsu Services as the preferred bidder to take over its huge desktop contract from 31 August. A DWP spokeswoman declined to reveal …

    PCs & Chips 13 Jan 12:11

  • GSMA sees 2.6GHz future

    Digs knife a little deeper into WiMAX

    The GSMA argues that the majority of the 2.6GHz band should be LTE-friendly, conceding that WiMAX needs some space to play in the interest of neutrality. The details come in a report (pdf) from the GSMA, the industry body representing GSM-based-mobile operators, which argues that 340MHz of the 2.6GHz band should be allocated …

    Mobile 13 Jan 12:25

  • Mini-asteroid sneaks up on Earth

    Lunchtime flyby for diminutive rock

    A diminutive asteroid will today pass within 76,000 miles (122,000 km) of Earth at 12:46 GMT, although NASA has confirmed Bruce Willis's services will not be required. The body - dubbed 2010 AL30 - was discovered by the LINEAR survey of MIT's Lincoln Laboratories on 10 January. Since its orbital period is "nearly identical …

    Space 13 Jan 12:27

  • French culture minister flames Google over book scan plan

    Mitterrand tells Google to go conjugate itself

    Frederic Mitterrand delivered another Francoslap to Google yesterday, threatening to eject the book-devouring search giant from the effort to digitise the French National Library. Mitterrand, France’s culture minister, said that the firm had to radically rethink its approach to its book scanning crusade, the FT reports, if it …

    Music and Media 13 Jan 12:29

  • ntl:Telewest forgets who its customers are

    Someone else's fault obviously

    Some Virgin customers have been without ADSL services since this morning thanks to a breakdown in authentication, though things should be back to normal now. The problem was with ntl:Telewest Business division, which started choking at 08.30 this morning when the servers responsible for checking usernames and passwords failed …

    Telecoms 13 Jan 12:31

  • What Ballmer and Hurd should announce this afternoon

    Hyper-V not Slates please

    Microsoft and HP CEOs are making a big announcement today about a joint agreement and investment in business computing. We don't know what they are announcing, but we know what they should be. Mark Hurd and Steve Ballmer will take questions from invited journos at a teleconference later today abbout the two companies' …

    Virtualization 13 Jan 12:36

  • Labour MP experiences nasty video shock horror

    Proposes censoring sport, music, religion. Is nothing sacred?

    UK Government attempts to re-enact legislation designed to police video recordings are bringing out the censorial tendency in parliament. Last week, the Government introduced the Video Recordings Bill in the House of Lords. The blurb accompanying this legislation states that the Bill "repeals and revives, without amendment, …

    Law 13 Jan 12:51

  • Lethic botnet knocked out by security researchers

    Zombie network taken down

    The command-and-control servers of the Lethic botnet have been taken out following a spam-busting collaboration between security firm Neustar and ISPs. The botherders behind Lethic specialised in distributing unlicensed pharmaceutical, diploma and replica goods spam. Compromised machines in the network are reckoned to have …

    Crime 13 Jan 12:56

  • Canon Digital Ixus 200 IS

    Review Trendy touchscreen snapper, anyone?

    Some digital cameras cry out to be touched. They’re sleek, they’re stylish and it’s hard resist the temptation to pick them up. Canon’s range of Ixus cameras falls into this category, and the Digital Ixus 200 IS takes this step a further by being the first Ixus to offer a touchscreen interface. Touching gesture: Canon's Ixus …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 13:02

  • Schools minister strikes elegiac tone at Bett

    Bett You should coco, Vernon

    Minister for Schools and Learners Vernon Coaker kicked off this year's Bett today, in a reflective speech that offered very little insight into what the current government plans were for the future of IT in education. Instead Coaker reminded the audience what the Labour government has done for getting technology into schools …

    Government 13 Jan 13:35

  • Google leaves censorship to China's experts

    Comment China crisis not exactly a human rights triumph

    Amnesty International was among the human rights organisations scrambling to congratulate Google for threatening to pull out of China today. Which just shows how much human rights activists know about technology. Come to think of it, if human rights campaigners did know more about technology, they might think twice about using …

    Enterprise Security 13 Jan 14:19

  • Seagate CEO rides again

    Pops up as leading light in LED firm

    Ousted Seagate CEO Bill Watkins is back in harness as the CEO for a light-emitting diode (LED) company. The company is Sunnyvale-based Bridgelux, which supplies and develops solid state lighting products for direct use and for OEMs to incorporate into their own lighting products. LED lighting technology is being pushed as more …

    Storage 13 Jan 14:38

  • Spam filters stuff Canadian Beaver

    Venerable magazine to adopt less suggestive title

    Venerable Canadian publication The Beaver has been obliged to change its name after prudish spam filters objected to its suggestive title. Publisher Deborah Morrison explained to AFP: “The Beaver was an impediment online. Several readers asked us to change the title because their spam filters at home or at work were blocking …

    Spam 13 Jan 14:41

  • Fem-rage shocker: Woman zaps ex-boyf with pink taser

    Battery charge(d) loverat dustup unpleasantness

    The debate over the appropriateness of Taser flying-cattleprod stun weapons took a new turn this week. Those fearing that the crippling electric weapons might be used inappropriately will be alarmed, but it's possible that the jitter-jolt blasters may become more popular in some quarters. A chilling warning to American men …

    Bootnotes 13 Jan 14:47

  • Yikes! It's the Yike Bike

    Leccy penny-farthing, anyone?

    A bunch of “entrepreneurs, engineers and dreamers” have turned their backs on headline-grabbing e-cars to come up with an electrically powered shrunken penny-farthing. Yike Bike has supposedly been designed to “dramatically change” urban transport by providing city dwellers with a fast, safe and easy way to get around town …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 14:50

  • French top MOT failure league

    Mon dieu mon brave, that's gonna cost you

    The government agency which runs MOT tests in the UK has finally given in to a BBC request for all the information on which cars were most likely to fail the test in 2007. The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, an agency of the Ministry of Transport, gave in and released the data yesterday. VOSA originally claimed it could …

    Government 13 Jan 15:14

  • Facebook snuggles with McAfee in security spree

    Symantec unlikely to like updated relationship status

    Facebook has partnered with McAfee to offer users of the social networking site a free six-month subscription to its security software. The year-long exclusive deal, announced Wednesday, also involves a special (unspecified) discount for McAfee's Internet Security Suite software once the six months trial is over. Facebook and …

    Malware 13 Jan 15:20

  • Cisco taps Avnet to peddle 'California' servers

    Up next, Arrow Electronics?

    This is one that you could have seen coming a million miles away. With only two master resellers in the global server racket, it was only a matter of time before either Arrow Electronics or Avnet started distributing the "California" Unified Computing System converged blade servers from Cisco Systems. Avnet has announced that …

    Channel Register 13 Jan 16:07

  • Rugby Football Union scores 3D first

    England vs Wales match to be beamed into cinemas

    Next month’s rugby match between England and Wales looks set to go down in history as Blighty’s first live sports event broadcast in 3D. England team sponsor O2 said 40 cinemas across the country will show the 6 February Twickenham match live in 3D. Paul Vaughan, Operations Director for the Rugby Football Union, said: “I hope …

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 16:38

  • Sun marries Hadoop to Grid Engine

    DIY Googleplex

    Sun Microsystems may be in a PR muzzle until sugar daddy Oracle gets permission to buy it from European antitrust regulators, but the coders who maintain Sun's myriad software products are still banging away on their keyboards in an effort to not only look useful to keep their jobs, but be useful. They just can't engage the IT …

    Servers 13 Jan 16:38

  • Sony Ericsson outs see-through screen phone

    CES 2010 on Video Xperia Pureness

      Watch in HD at Reg Hardware's YouTube channel Can't see the video? Download FlashPlayer from Adobe.com

    Reg Hardware 13 Jan 16:39

  • McKinnon granted another judicial review

    Is Pentagon hacker too ill for US trial?

    The High Court has granted a further judicial review of the Home Secretary's decision to allow extradition proceeding against Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon to proceed. The move means the imminent threat of extradition against McKinnon is removed until at least April. The latest in a long line of appeals by McKinnon will …

    Crime 13 Jan 16:49

  • HP, Microsoft form $250m IT tag team

    Frontline battle with Sunacle, CiscoEMCVMware

    With Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware teaming up to sell integrated IT stacks, Oracle buying Sun Microsystems to create its own integrated stacks, and IBM having sold integrated legacy system stacks and rolling in profits from them for decades, it was only a matter of time before other big IT players paired off Today, through a …

    Servers 13 Jan 18:43

  • Google flips default switch for always-on Gmail crypto

    Hours after dropping Chinese hack bomb

    Just hours after Google disclosed it and at least 20 other large companies were the targets of highly sophisticated cyberattacks, the online giant said it would enhance the security of its email service by automatically encrypting entire web sessions. The change, which Google is in the process of rolling out now, means Gmail …

    Security 13 Jan 18:51

  • 3D TV gets cold shower from Avatar man

    CES 2010 Geek spec chic will have to wait

    Judging by the avalanche of hoopla thundering out of last week's Consumer Electronics Show, you'd think that 3D television is done deal. All the wrinkles have been ironed out, and all you need to do is don a pair of geeky glasses and your boob tube will immerse you in three-dimensional movies, sports, and reruns of "The Office …

    Music and Media 13 Jan 19:04

  • Googlephone sales off to a sluggish start?

    'Only 20K' in first week

    A new report suggests that as few as 20,000 Google Nexus One smartphones were sold during its first week of availability. By comparison, 1.6 million iPhone 3GS units were snapped up in its first seven days on the planet. First the caveats. Then the dirt. The Android handset's debut was nothing like that of the iPhone 3GS. The …

    Mobile 13 Jan 19:49

  • Microsoft predicts Linux will fail mobile 'quality' test

    Victory through cheap Windows branding

    Linux is shaping up as Microsoft's target in a potential war of attrition to gain lost market share for Windows Mobile in handsets. Microsoft's executive in charge of leading Microsoft's Windows Mobile group has predicted the number of operating systems for mobile handsets will be whittled down in the next three to five years …

    Mobile 13 Jan 20:06

  • Trojan pr0n dialers make comeback on mobile phones

    By popular demand

    After taking a long hiatus, trojan dialers that can rack up thousands of dollars in charges are back by popular demand. According to researchers at CA Security's malware analysis lab, a new wave of malicious dialers is hitting users of mobile phones. The trojans are built on the Java 2 Micro Edition programming language and …

    Malware 13 Jan 20:56

  • RealNetworks boss in sudden exit

    Glaser steps down after 16 years

    Rob Glaser - founder of internet media outfit RealNetworks - has stepped down as chief executive of the company after sixteen years at the helm. Current general counsel and executive vice president of corporate development Robert Kimball has been appointed president and acting CEO. He will also serve on the company's board of …

    Music and Media 13 Jan 23:28