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24th February 2010 Archive

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  • Comcast (finally) brings security extensions to DNS

    Now, if we could just lock down the roots

    Comcast - one of the largest ISPs in the US - has deployed new technology designed to protect the internet against a well-known form of attack that allows attackers to surreptitiously lure end users to impostor websites. For now, Comcast users who want to use the technology, known as DNSSEC, or DNS Security Extensions, must …

    Security 24 Feb 2010, 01:09

  • IBM services help complicate cloud's horizon

    Prey you got some systems nerds

    Cloud computing is supposed to make IT easy. But if it was easy, no one would be able to make any money on the idea. As it is, companies like IBM are trying to make money twice with clouds: first by selling preconfigured clouds for inside the corporate firewall and then - you guessed it - selling services to help setup and …

    Servers 24 Feb 2010, 01:24

  • Yahoo! turns! Twitter! firehose! on! self!

    Web2.0rhea insta-search

    Yahoo! has purchased direct access to the Twitter "firehose" - a gigantic stream of Web2.0rhea - providing near real-time access to public Tweets from its primary search engine. As part of a new agreement with Twitter - announced Tuesday evening - the company will also insta-stream Tweets to several other Yahoo! services, …

    Music and Media 24 Feb 2010, 05:55

  • Let us legally rip discs, campaigner tells govt

    Consumer Focus calls for copyright law rewrite

    Consumer rights advocate Consumer Focus has called on the government to fix copyright laws broken by the rise of digital technology. CF's argument is that now the UK's population has amassed a sizeable collection of computers, iPods and phones, members of the public have been busily rippings CDs and DVDs in order to get …

    reghardware 24 Feb 2010, 06:02

  • Juniper dangles $50m carrot over Junos

    Come all ye partners

    Juniper Networks is dangling a $50 million venture capital carrot over startups willing to focus on building software and applications for the Junos operating system. The $50m VC fund expands on Juniper's recent efforts to push its network application platform, Junos Space to third-party developers, including the creation of a …

    Channel Register 24 Feb 2010, 06:02

  • Netezza to bake analytics into appliances

    Big math chews big data

    Data warehousing appliance–maker Netezza wants to set its TwinFins loose on data analytics, thereby doubling the usefulness of the boxes and positioning them to better compete with alternatives from IBM, Oracle, and Teradata. The TwinFin appliances marry X64-based blade servers and home-grown accelerator chips to a heavily …

    Servers 24 Feb 2010, 07:02

  • Xerox sues Google and Yahoo! over patentspeak

    Stay off my apparatus for the integration of information!

    Xerox has sued Google and Yahoo!, claiming that various services offered by the two web giants infringe on a pair of its patents. In a suit (PDF) filed on Friday in a Delaware federal court, the copier king says that several Google and Yahoo! services - including YouTube, Google Maps, AdWords, and Yahoo! Shopping - step on …

    Music and Media 24 Feb 2010, 07:02

  • Toshiba Camileo S20

    Review HD video on a budget

    Toshiba’s Camileo S20 is aimed at a very demanding consumer. The type of consumer who wants a highly portable pocket camcorder with HD recording, and yet, has a budget of just £120. So, the Camileo S20 seems to offer it all – price, performance and portability. But can it really deliver so much for so little? Light in the …

    reghardware 24 Feb 2010, 08:02

  • Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx to Facebook and Twitter you

    Five-year bling plan

    PCs running Ubuntu will be getting more social thanks to changes that will set the popular Linux distro's look and feel for the next five years. Lucid Lynx, due this April, will bring social applications like Twitter and Facebook directly into the software, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has said in an interview here. …

    Operating Systems 24 Feb 2010, 08:02

  • EC sharpens long Google probe

    Three complaints under investigation

    The European Commission is investigating Google to see if it has broken competition and anti-trust laws. A UK price comparison site called Foundem, a French legal search engine ejustice.fr and Microsoft have all complained that Google tweaked search results unfairly to push them further down the rankings than they should be. …

    Law 24 Feb 2010, 08:27

  • IBM plugs Netcool into Juniper's Space

    Big Blue service management for Junos

    Juniper Networks is reaching into IBM's service management portfolio to add some oomph to its new Junos Space network application platform. Big Blue said on Tuesday that it will license its Tivoli Netcool/Ominibus and Network Manager technology for Junos Space. The pact was announced during IBM's Pulse 2010 conference in Las …

    Data Networking 24 Feb 2010, 09:02

  • Copan assets scooped up by SGI

    SGI refuge for battered MAID

    The battered MAID that is Copan has found a refuge inside SGI. For the amazingly low sum of $2m SGI gets most of the assets and assumes a few of Copan's liabilities. It will keep Copan's Longmont, Colorado, office and hire some of Copan's staff but will not pay off any of Copan's debts. SGI will use Copan's Massive Array of …

    Storage 24 Feb 2010, 09:14

  • BBC iPlayer rejects open source plugins, takes Flash-only path

    Exclusive Be safe: Use Adobe content protection, kids

    The BBC has quietly updated its hugely popular iPlayer with a verification layer that closes the door on open source implementations of RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) streaming, The Register has learned. The Beeb applied the update to its online video catch-up service on 18 February, just four days after Adobe Systems …

    Developer 24 Feb 2010, 09:50

  • Logica hits targets for 2009

    Low targets admittedly, but hey

    Logica has hit financial targets for the year - revenues are down three per cent pro forma or up three per cent on an actual basis. The public sector specialist saw outsourcing revenues grow nine per cent but this was offset by a 10 per cent fall in consulting and professional services. Unaudited revenue for the year ended 31 …

    Channel Register 24 Feb 2010, 10:03

  • Mad Aus gov accuses Sydney hacks of hacking

    You hit page refresh! That's... that's an exploit!

    Australian state government ministers have accused journalists of hacking in order to get the low-down on transport plans in New South Wales. The Sydney Morning Herald has mounted a convincing defence against the seemingly tech-illiterate allegations that journalists at the paper attempted to access a restricted website 3,727 …

    Enterprise Security 24 Feb 2010, 10:13

  • Rom-coms, period dramas are rubbish: Mathematical proof

    Chaos theory shows action movies are the purest art

    American boffins* have carried out detailed research into movies down the decades using chaos theory, and decreed that auteurs have - by a process akin to natural selection - gravitated towards a shot rhythm which matches an underlying mathematical pulse beat found in music, economics and even engineering. However, some genres …

    Entertainment 24 Feb 2010, 10:29

  • Google snubs Chinese Android developers

    Hong Kong? Phooey!

    Google has pulled out of a scheduled Android developers' conference in Beijing, allegedly as part of its ongoing shift out of China. The Android bandwagon has been travelling the world, armed with Nexus One handsets, to promote the platform and provide a leg-up for local developers. But now Reuters reports that while the shows …

    Mobile 24 Feb 2010, 10:35

  • Banking industry worker faces cosh over anonymous rant

    Busted over Chip'n'PIN diatribe against Cambridge boffins

    Anonymous comments dissing Cambridge University computer scientists for their research into security weaknesses with Chip and PIN have been traced back to a banking industry group worker who acted without the permission of his bosses. A commentard using the handle Scrutineer tore into research that demonstrated how it might be …

    Enterprise Security 24 Feb 2010, 10:54

  • Elgato intros networked HD-capable TV tuner

    Misses trick - no Freeview HD support

    Elgato has taken its TV tuners off the computer and added them to the network to allow any connected Mac or PC to be used to view and record HD content. The EyeTV Netstream DTT takes a standard coax antenna feed and, like Sling Media's Slingbox, sends programming out over the local network. The box has a 100Mb/s Ethernet port …

    reghardware 24 Feb 2010, 11:00

  • VDI: Desktop problem obliterator?

    Comment Not without lots of work and plenty risk

    Desktop virtualisation isn't a panacea that will slay infections and slash costs - it's a problem-filled journey that may not even solve the problems you started out wanting to fix. That's one lesson attendees at IDC's Desktop Virtualisation Conference 2010 in London learnt. The easy desktop virtualisation pitch is that you …

    Storage 24 Feb 2010, 11:33

  • Acer extends laptop warranty for overseas travel

    Full year of cover provided

    Acer has extended the duration of its International Travel Warranty - a support package intended to cover users against hardware failures that may hit its laptops used outside the country they were purchased in. The cover, which previously was limited to three months of travel, now runs to a full 12 months of overseas usage. …

    reghardware 24 Feb 2010, 11:37

  • Tandberg goes atomic on NAS

    Dedupe, iSCSI and NAS, oh my

    Tandberg Data has announced a deduping Atom-powered NAS/iSCSI box for its channel along with deduplication software. The DPS2000 is a 4-bay storage box in table-top or rackmount enclosure form. It's powered by an Intel Atom processor and the Linux software provides concurrent iSCSI block access as well as the CIFS, NFS and AFP …

    Storage 24 Feb 2010, 11:44

  • iPad nearly had video conferencing?

    Software support, hardware lacking, probably

    Developers pawing over the latest iPhone SDK have found references to a front-facing camera, and controls to manage video calls, despite the lack of announced hardware. The latest iPhone SDK, which is also used to develop iPad applications, has references to a hasFrontCamera variable - so applications can check if the hardware …

    Mobile 24 Feb 2010, 11:58

  • Google execs protest Italian guilty verdicts

    Beating a disabled child should stay private

    Three Google executives have been given suspended sentences for breaching Italian privacy laws. The three were found not guilty of defamation but guilty of privacy offences. The case centred on a Google Video clip of a child with Down's syndrome being taunted and hit by four school boys. The clip was put on Google Video in …

    Law 24 Feb 2010, 12:00

  • Antitrust incoming? Google hit by EU complaint, FCC filing

    Turning search into powerful marketing channel for own services, claims Foundem

    Shopping comparison site Foundem this week fired the opening shots in the coming Google antitrust battle, with a complaint to the European Commission and a filing with the US Federal Communications Commission accusing Google of posing "an immediate threat to competition and innovation." The US filing is in response to the FCC's …

    Law 24 Feb 2010, 12:07

  • Belkin preps SuperSpeed USB 3.0 adaptors

    ExpressCard ahoy!

    Accessory specialist Belkin is gearing up for the SuperSpeed USB revolution with a pair of products that will add the new 5Gb/s bus to your computer. Desktop owners will be able to use the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCIe Add-in Card, which is exactly what Belkin says it is. The card occupies any PCI Express slot and has a pair if USB …

    reghardware 24 Feb 2010, 12:08

  • Mandybill: innocence restored, fines for copyright cockups

    Mandybill You mean I can finish this download?

    Overnight amendments tabled by Lord Mandelson give significant concessions to critics of the Digital Economy Bill. A revised section on the appeals process for ISP subscribers accused of infringement restores the presumption of innocence, introduces fines for copyright holders who make accusations that are later shown to be …

    Government 24 Feb 2010, 12:24

  • Lingerie model ran 'Charlie Angels' drug gang

    Argentinian police seek scantily-clad cocaine cartel boss

    Argentinian police are hunting a 30-year-old former lingerie model accused of running an all-women cocaine-smuggling gang, Argentina's La Nación reports. Colombian Angie Sanclemente Valencia was crowned her native land's Queen of Coffee in 2000, but following a relationship with a Mexican drug lord known as "The Monster", …

    Bootnotes 24 Feb 2010, 12:37

  • Google profits from UK.gov's climate change quango rivalry

    Bidding circle-jerk confession

    The government department responsible for climate change policy has admitted bidding against one of its own quangos for advertising on Google, forcing up the cost to taxpayers. Ed Miliband's Department of the Environment and Climate Change (DECC) said it sometimes battles the Energy Saving Trust to sponsor links on the …

    Government 24 Feb 2010, 13:07

  • Mozilla warns of 'Microsoft monoculture' in South Korea

    Lemur web saviour flutters very big eyes

    The lemur-obsessed Mozilla crew have this week mostly been pushing their hippy ideals in the hope of reminding people that there's more to life than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Early this morning the open source outfit and Firefox maker took a second stab at the hearts and minds of conscientious web surfers in a post about …

    Applications 24 Feb 2010, 13:10

  • Google Books loses lions of literature

    Whoa there, Jeffrey Archer is out? I'm out too

    Documents released as a result of last week's hearing into Google's book-scanning settlement reveal thousands of authors asked to be excluded from the project. There are over 6,000 authors, including literary colossus Jeffrey Archer, on the list prepared by Rust Consulting for Google. Rust set up a call centre to receive opt- …

    Law 24 Feb 2010, 13:11

  • Hordes of new threats ahead for mobile networks

    Faked femtocells will eff up your ess

    Malware on smartphones is just the first in a series of new security threats for mobile networks ushered in by the embrace of internet technologies, according to mobile phone encryption firms. Dr Bjoern Rupp, chief exec of GSMK CryptoPhone, warns that criminal gangs are able to steal private information and undermine fair …

    Mobile 24 Feb 2010, 13:59

  • IBM diligently adds mainframe dedupe

    Let's not get physical

    IBM mainframes can now send backed-up data to a deduping virtual tape library instead of physical tape. Big Blue has combining its Diligent deduplication and virtual tape library functionality in the TS7680 ProtecTIER deduplication gateway. No changes are needed to backup processes on on the Z/OS mainframe but some …

    Storage 24 Feb 2010, 14:04

  • What's on the mind of the Freetard eBookworm?

    Pirate download chart reveal hobbies, habits and hopes

    To Mayfair, where at the crack of dawn we find a huddle of eBook technology companies and investors. On display were a couple of prototype readers, with next generation screen tech, and a sober assessment of the market. I'll report on this later. But in the presentations I saw a Top 10 downloads chart that's too good not to …

    Music and Media 24 Feb 2010, 14:07

  • Silicon Valley hypegasm for miracle shoebox powerplants

    Analysis 'No emissions - too good to be true?' Well yes, actually

    A Silicon Valley startup backed by the rainmaker who got Google off the ground is about to formally announce a miraculous, shoebox-sized device capable of powering a house - "anywhere, with no emissions" according to the BBC. No, actually Of course that's just Beeb Twitter-journalism twaddle, and the firm in question - …

    Environment 24 Feb 2010, 14:23

  • Ofcom probes TV climate porn

    But too late to save Drowning Dog

    Ofcom is to investigate the Government's notoriously emotive 'Drowning Dog' prime time TV advertisements. Ad industry self-regulator the ASA is already conducting its own investigation of the 'climate porn' campaign. The taxpayer-funded advertisement features a father reading a bedtime story to his young daughter. The picture …

    Environment 24 Feb 2010, 14:42

  • Montblanc's Gandhi pen run out

    Indian court mulls legality of luxury writing device

    Luxury pen maker Montblanc has suspended sales of its £16k* Mahatma Gandhi fountain pen pending an Indian court decision as to whether it's legit to punt the extravagantly-priced writing device. The release of the limited-edition pen last year prompted a chorus of protests in India, despite Montblanc's assertion that it was " …

    Bootnotes 24 Feb 2010, 15:03

  • HP-Cisco split allows competitors to pick up pieces

    Force10 hopes to benefit from wind of change

    Fighting is ongoing in the aftermath of Cisco stripping HP of its favoured partner status. We even heard, inaccurately as it happened, that HP has discontinued the Cisco switch for the C series blade chassis. Support of Cisco gear in HP accounts is an opportunity as far as Comtek is concerned. It provides IT repair services …

    Channel Register 24 Feb 2010, 15:17

  • HP puts own man in charge of ex-EDS

    Keeping it simple

    HP today stamped its authority on day-to-day operations at the former EDS by replacing the services unit's boss Joe Eazor with its own man, Tom Iannotti. Iannotti, previously managing director of HP Americas and Technology Solutions Group, will now run the group's global outsourcing operation, HP Enterprise Services. The unit …

    Channel Register 24 Feb 2010, 15:48

  • Pocketgear, Handango join to create app store giant

    Only Apple and Google now tower over new merged beast

    Independent application stores are usually overshadowed by the vendor-owned ones, but two of them have merged to create a mobile storefront that is larger than any of them, except the Apple App Store and Android Market. PocketGear has acquired Handango, forming a combined content marketplace with more than 140,000 premium and …

    Small Biz 24 Feb 2010, 15:50

  • US unveils planet-hugging London embassy

    Glass diplocube to trumpet 'transparency, openness, and equality'

    The US has unveiled the design of its new embassy in London - a "carbon neutral" glass cube described as a manifestation of the "core beliefs of our democracy - transparency, openness, and equality". Philadelphia architects KieranTimberlake are at the helm of the £650m project, destined to land in Nine Elms, Wandsworth, in …

    Public Sector 24 Feb 2010, 16:24

  • Creaky old Windows flaw rises, divides doommongers

    It's either no biggie, or hot buttered death

    A new Windows-based denial of service attacks reportedly exploits a 10-year old OS flaw to crash vulnerable systems. Independent security experts downplay the likely impact of the bug even though 2X Software, the virtual computing firm that discovered the bug, is talking up its supposed seriousness. Versions of Windows from …

    Security 24 Feb 2010, 16:52

  • Gartner report card gives high marks to x64, blades

    Unix, Sun, Eastern Europe? Not so much

    After Dell and Hewlett-Packard reported their financial results for their most recent fiscal quarters last week, the box counters at Gartner and IDC could tweak their models to figure out how the server makers stacked up in the final quarter of 2009. Gartner got its grading done first and handed out report cards today. As we …

    Servers 24 Feb 2010, 17:34

  • Twishers reel in 'distracted' Boing Boing blogger

    Hook, (coffee) line, and sinker

    Add prominent blogger Cory Doctorow to the list of people successfully phished by a new Twitter worm that's making the rounds. The co-editor of Boing Boing surrendered his Twitter password to scammers after receiving a direct message from one of his contacts that included little more than the text "This you????" and a …

    Security 24 Feb 2010, 20:22

  • Microsoft aims thin clients at the classroom

    Updated Windows Terminal Services reborn

    With today's talk of application and desktop virtualization, it's easy to forget there's another, older way to deliver software in a controlled way to resource-constrained PCs: thin-clients. You remember thin client computing: Citirx, Microsoft's Citrix-backed Windows Terminal Services, Sun Microsystems' Sun Ray, and …

    Channel Register 24 Feb 2010, 20:37

  • PayPal opens polls on developer X games

    Race for $50,000 gets hot

    PayPal has opened the virtual polls at X.com, taking votes on the new-age payment applications vying for the $50,000 top prize in its inaugural Developer Challenge. The competition received some extra spice yesterday, with one developer accusing PayPal of playing loose with the contest rules, but Naveed Anwar, head of the …

    Developer 24 Feb 2010, 20:38

  • Linux kernel R&D worth over 1bn euros

    Spanish boffins put value on penguin

    How much would it cost the European Union to cobble together the Linux kernel from scratch? The development costs would reach over a billion euros (or about £900m, or $1.4bn USD), according to researchers from the University of Oviedo, Spain. Jesús García-García and Mª Isabel Alonso de Magdaleno are set to present this open …

    Operating Systems 24 Feb 2010, 21:28

  • Cray inks $45m super pact with DoD

    So, three Bakers enter the Pentagon...

    Supercomputer maker Cray has staked a lot of its financial 2010 on its future "Baker" massively parallel Opteron-based servers and their new "Gemini" interconnect. And today, 2010 got off to a good start as Cray announced that the US Department of Defense has forked over more than $45m in tax dollars to drop three new Baker …

    HPC 24 Feb 2010, 21:57

  • HyTrust nets $10.5m in funding

    Cisco Systems now a good buddy

    HyTrust, a startup that came out of stealth mode last April with a security appliance to lock down and manage virtual servers running on VMware's ESX Server hypervisor, has two new best friends: server wannabe and networking giant Cisco Systems and venture capitalist Granite Ventures. Those two companies, along with existing …

    Servers 24 Feb 2010, 22:18

  • 3 Bulgarians charged in 44-day ATM hacking spree

    Skimming proceeds top $137,000

    Three Bulgarian men were charged Wednesday with defrauding banks of more than $137,000 in a scheme that attached electronic skimming devices to numerous automatic teller machines in Massachusetts. In the 44-day hacking spree, the men planted skimmers on ATMs maintained by Bank of America and Citizens Bank and secretly recorded …

    Crime 24 Feb 2010, 23:27

  • Apple prepping 'Explicit' App Store?

    Puritanical purge continues

    Apple's campaign to shield iPhone and iPod touch users from what it deems to be "overtly sexual content" has entered a new phase - and a strange one it is. On Wednesday morning, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, and Recombu all reported that Apple has added a new "Explicit" option to the list of categories from which developers must …

    Mobile 24 Feb 2010, 23:37