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25th February 2010 Archive

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  • Adobe Photoshop celebrates big 2-0

    What a long, layered trip it's been

    Exactly 20 years ago today - Wednesday, February 24 - the first stable version of Adobe Photoshop was released into the wild. At 728 kilobytes, it fit on a single floppy disk. To gain some insight into Photoshop's origins, we sat down with long-time Photoshop expert, author, and teacher David Biedny between his Photoshop …

    Music and Media 25 Feb 01:05

  • Google eyes hypegasm fuel cells for 'whole data center'

    Could the Googlenet run on Vodka?

    As Bloom Energy officially unveiled its much-hyped solid oxide fuel cell server - a "parking space"-sized device that converts air and fuel into electricity - Google co-founder Larry Page said the company hopes to eventually run an entire data center using the technology. "I'd love to see us having a whole data center running …

    HPC 25 Feb 01:27

  • Visual Studio 2010 - chunky but has a great personality

    Review Microsoft packs it in

    Like Clerks director Kevin Smith, Visual Studio is a lot to get your arms around. There's a new editor and shell built with the graphics-rich Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), version 4.0 of the .NET Framework that itself is packed with new features. Plus, there are some big changes in the target project types, from C++ …

    Developer 25 Feb 01:28

  • Novell flirts with Citrix

    But wants to play the VM field

    There has been some chatter about Citrix Systems - the corporate entity behind the open source Xen hypervisor and the commercialized XenServer product - hooking up with commercial Linux distributor Novell to work out some sort of deal to collaborate on Xen in a more meaningful way than they currently do. While the two parties …

    Virtualization 25 Feb 05:36

  • Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700

    Review Sammy enters the Android marketplace

    Samsung's Galaxy Portal is the Korean firm's latest dip into Android waters and for now it's exclusive to T-Mobile. It's been available in Europe since last year as the Galaxy Spica but, unlike most Samsung smartphones, this is pure Android. There isn’t the slightest hint of Samsung's TouchWiz interface, so it's effectively a …

    reghardware 25 Feb 08:02

  • Pathetic IT pushes CMEC onto (pricier) paper

    Back to the old school for new CSA

    A parliamentary committee says that IT problems at the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission are causing a 'rapid increase' in manual casework. In its report on the operational improvement plan for the CMEC and its troubled predecessor, the Child Support Agency, the Work and Pensions Committee expresses concern at the " …

    Government 25 Feb 08:02

  • Capita shares hit despite decent sales

    Public sector outsourcer still making cash

    Public sector outsourcer Capita watched its shares fall just over four per cent this morning despite the company reporting a pretty decent set of results. For the year ended 31 December 2009 Capita made sales of £2.7bn and a profit before tax of £325.1m, up ten per cent and 17 per cent respectively. Capita booked contract …

    Financial News 25 Feb 08:59

  • Microsoft's wiretap guide goes online, security site goes offline

    Updated Hotmail hacking how-to for spooks and cops

    Long-established privacy and cryptology website Cryptome.org was pulled offline on Wednesday after Microsoft launched a legal offensive over its publication of Redmond's guide to internet wiretapping. Microsoft's Global Criminal Compliance Handbook, a 22 page booklet designed solely for police and intelligence services, …

    Enterprise Security 25 Feb 09:09

  • Hollywood lawyers have another go at Aussie ISP

    Rack off mate

    Hollywood copyright lawyers are having another go at the Aussie ISP iiNet which recently won a case brought by the Australian Federation against Copyright Theft. At the start of February Judge J Cowroy rejected claims that iiNet had somehow authorised copyright of Hollywood films by BitTorrent users who also used iiNet's …

    Law 25 Feb 09:29

  • 'Kevin Rudd sucks' declares hacked Oz road sign

    Police with bolt cutters 'preserve PM's honour'

    Police intervention was required earlier this week when "political protesters" hacked a Sydney traffic sign and declared "Kevin Rudd sucks" to passing motorists in the city's Rose Bay. The declaration proved such a "major distraction" to passing motorists that cops were eventually obliged to gain access to the offending device …

    Enterprise Security 25 Feb 09:47

  • HP slices up services for small biz

    Easily digestible

    HP is bringing new support and datacentre analysis services to small and medium business (SMB) customers, as well as packaging up services in cheaper lumps for the channel to sell to such customers. The whole exercise is aimed at persuading SMB data centre operators to spend money with HP and its channel to make their data …

    Small Biz 25 Feb 10:05

  • Hero corduroy overpowers US school gunman

    Two-fisted maths teacher in carpark shootist bitchslap

    A hard-as-nails maths teacher in Colorado has received the grateful thanks of his community after barehandedly tackling a gunman who had opened fire at his school. The BBC reports that a suspect named as Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood, 32, allegedly commenced firing at pupils with a rifle in the car park at Deer Trail Middle …

    Bootnotes 25 Feb 10:06

  • Virgin to offer 100Mb/s broadband by year's end

    200Mb/s to follow

    Virgin Media is to offer 100Mb/s broadband by the end of 2010. The 100Mb/s service will allow users to download a music album in as little as five seconds, an hour long TV show in 31 seconds and an HD movie in seven minutes 25 seconds, the cableco claimed. Virgin currently offers three broadband packages: 10Mb/s, 20Mb/s and …

    reghardware 25 Feb 10:21

  • German jugs pulled from iPhone

    Today bared breasts, tomorrow the world

    The Federation of German Publishers is up in arms about Apple's new kiddie-friendly policy, as companies struggle to understand if their brands are big enough for porn. Apple's latest policy on iTunes applications is that titillation isn't allowed, unless your brand is "a well-known company with previously published material …

    Mobile 25 Feb 10:57

  • Oracle: What now for HPC?

    Groping in the dark after Sun deal done

    There hasn’t been a lot of talk yet from Oracle about their plans for HPC now that the Sun purchase has been consummated - so what's going on? From what I can tell, it’s not that Oracle is necessarily holding anything back; it’s more that its approach to the market is still being shaped up. The big job was getting the systems …

    HPC Blog 25 Feb 11:11

  • Spare Backup needs spare change

    Comment Puts hand out for $7m

    Cloud backup service provider Spare Backup is looking for $7m by selling a secured revolving credit note. Why does it need the cash? The $7m is a big piece of change for Spare Backup; its market capitalisation being $26.5m. It says the money could be used for "general corporate purposes, infrastructure, marketing, staff, …

    Storage 25 Feb 11:30

  • Woman sues 50 Cent over sex vid leak

    Rival rapper's 'baby mama' objects to net exposure

    A Florida woman yesterday filed suit in Manhattan against rapper 50 Cent, claiming that he "unlawfully distributed" a homemade sex video of her on his website in 2009. Lastonia Leviston is claiming "unauthorized use of her name or image and emotional distress" over the leaked vid, which is introduced and narrated by 50 Cent …

    Bootnotes 25 Feb 11:30

  • Geeks Guide2... The Nomadic Developer

    Geeks Guide2 Save 40% at Reg Books

    Consultancy has some great things to offer. You get to meet lots of interesting people, work in many different industries; and as a technology consultant you become the profit centre. This week you can save 40% on Aaron Erickson’s The Nomadic Developer, your guidebook to succeeding as an IT or software consultant in any economic …

    Site News 25 Feb 11:32

  • BT could face criminal case over Phorm trials

    Prosecutors call in senior barrister

    The Crown Prosecution Service has revealed that it is working with a top barrister on a potential criminal case against BT over its secret trials of Phorm's targeted advertising system. Almost two years to the day since we revealed BT had covertly intercepted and profiled the web browsing habits of tens of thousands of its …

    Telecoms 25 Feb 11:55

  • Large Hadron Collider in multi-magnet quench hiccup

    First 2010 beams delayed as new redline painted on dial

    A technical hiccup has delayed the planned restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the titanic subterranean magno-doughnut particle smasher situated deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border. The LHC, most outrageous matter-rending machine ever assembled by the human race, had been expected to fire up its circulating hadron …

    Physics 25 Feb 12:01

  • 15 new suspects named in Hamas Dubai assassination

    Six more fake UK passports implicated in spy mystery

    Dubai police have named 15 more suspects - all reckoned to have entered the UAE using counterfeit Western passports - wanted over the murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the Gulf state last month. The new suspects - alleged to have laid the groundwork for the main 11 person hit squad by providing logistical support …

    Policing 25 Feb 12:11

  • Mozilla ditches Mac OS X 10.4 support in fresh Firefox

    Toothless Tiger loses fight

    Mozilla has officially ditched Firefox support for Apple Mac OS X 10.4 for upcoming versions of its browser, despite gripes from some web surfers. The open source group confirmed on Tuesday that, following heated discussion from the Mozilla community, it would only support Mac OS X 10.5 or later when it released the next …

    Developer 25 Feb 12:14

  • Spanish priest spunked €17k on chat lines and whores

    Church funds fund less than Catholic lifestyle

    A Spanish priest who spunked €17k of church funds on sex chat lines, internet porn sites and prostitutes has unsurprisingly been given his marching orders. Samuel Martin Martin, 27, racked up some impressive expenditure during his one year-tenure as spiritual shepherd to the villages of Totanes and Noez, in Toledo. As well as …

    Bootnotes 25 Feb 12:36

  • Pentax preps 26x superzoom

    Building bridges

    Pentax has popped out its latest bridge camera: the 12.1Mp X90, complete with 26x optical zoom. Still insufficient? Then you can call on the 6.25x digital zoom to zero even further into your subject. In addition, the X90 boasts a 26-276mm 35mm-equivalent focal length range, 1cm macro mode, aperture of f/2.8-5.0, a nine-spot …

    reghardware 25 Feb 12:40

  • Sellafield gull cull mulled

    War on Windscale's winged menace

    Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant is considering a cull of gulls which could have come into contact with contaminated waste. A spokeswoman for Sellafield told the Beeb: "Contamination is particularly evident within the historic facilities such as open fuel storage ponds, which gulls can access, although there are a number …

    Bootnotes 25 Feb 12:41

  • Premium line complaints drop by more than half

    Regulation apparently working shock

    UK punters are more than twice as happy with premium-rate services than they were last year, according to the industry regulator PhonepayPlus. The figures come with the regulator's quarterly report for the last three months of 2009, showing a major improvement over the same period of 2008 (pdf). Back in 2008, complaints about …

    Mobile 25 Feb 12:44

  • Gmail Labs' experiments: What's in, what's out?

    Google kills 5 features, promotes 6 others to big boy club

    Google has slotted six new features into Gmail after testing the technologies in its Labs playpen, at the same time the company has dumped five other features that never got past the experimental stage. “Over the next few days, you'll see Muzzle, Fixed Width Font, Email Addict, Location in Signature, and Random Signature stop …

    Applications 25 Feb 12:50

  • Nominet to get unelected board members

    Keep Mandy from the door

    Nominet members have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a raft of measures designed to avoid the government taking control of the .uk registry. At the non-profit company's EGM on Wednesday, more than 90 per cent of voting members agreed its constitution should be changed to allow it to appoint new board members without a vote, …

    Telecoms 25 Feb 13:11

  • Lenovo intros ThinkPad X201 series

    Standard, skinny and tablet models

    Lenovo has introduced what it claims is not only the thinnest and lightest ThinkPad yet, but also the fastest ultraportable around. The X201 is a 12.1in model and packs in a "normal Volt" Core i7 processor, the 2.66GHz i7-620M, Lenovo said. You can also opt for a Core i5 CPU, if you want a cheaper option. CULV-less: Lenovo's …

    reghardware 25 Feb 13:11

  • British Library wants taxpayer to gobble the web

    Cost? We don't know

    British Library wants to archive the UK web, creating an invaluable national treasure trove of porn, celebrity trivia gossip and Daily Mail comments. But it admits it can't put a figure on the project - which looks like becoming a huge, open-ended commitment for the taxpayer. Today the Library stepped up the pressure for the …

    Music and Media 25 Feb 13:15

  • Vulcan kept airborne by £400k refuel

    Anonymous donor bails out XH558

    The Vulcan to the Sky Trust is breathing a massive sigh of relief after an anonymous donor stumped up over £400,000 to keep Vulcan XH558 flying, the BBC reports. XH558 required around £7m and years of restoration before it finally took to the skies again in 2007. Keeping it aloft is evidently a very expensive business, since …

    Bootnotes 25 Feb 13:16

  • Oz censorship debate censored on Comms minister's website

    It's all kind of ironic when you think about it

    If you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet, what better approach to take than to, er, censor debate about how you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet? Brilliant. That, according to one sharp-eyed Register reader, is the game being played by Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, whose …

    Government 25 Feb 13:22

  • MS uses court order to take out Waledac botnet

    Zombie network decapitated. For now

    Microsoft has won a court-issued take-down order against scores of domains associated with controlling the spam-spewing Waledac botnet. The software giant's order allows the temporary cut-off of traffic to 277 Internet domains that form command and control nodes for the network of compromised machines. Infected (zombie) …

    Crime 25 Feb 13:45

  • Broadband probe aimed at next gen upgrades

    Improvement promises to be tested

    The impact of upgraded broadband technology is set to be measured to determine whether customers really see the improvements advertised by BT, Virgin Media and the rest. Ofcom has decided to use the network of monitoring equipment it deployed in hundreds of homes last year in partnership with Samknows to study how ADSL2+, …

    Telecoms 25 Feb 14:06

  • Nokia No.2 is so sorry for N97 debacle

    Apologises to general public for leaky flagship

    CEO confessionals are all the rage now, but Nokia's No.2 executive has apologised for Finland's 2006 winning entry in the Eurovision Song Contest ("Hard Rock Hallelujah" by Lordi), the lack of jokes in Aki Kaurismäki's dramas, and the Nokia N97 phone. Actually, no - we made the first two up. But Anssi Vanjoki said the £500 …

    Mobile 25 Feb 15:23

  • UK.gov IT minister makes open source gaffe over browsers

    Angela Smith hits wrong note on Opera

    The UK government’s current minister in charge of the IT brief has got her knickers in a twist over web browsers by wrongly stating that Opera is based on open source technology. Angela E Smith, Labour MP for Basildon and Thurrock, took over some of the Cabinet Office responsibilities of “digital engagement” minister Tom …

    Applications 25 Feb 15:32

  • Scareware scams ride the back of killer whale tragedy

    Black hats pee in the pool again

    Supposed footage of Wednesday's fatal Sea World killer whale attack in Florida actually points at sites distributing scareware. Dawn Brancheau, 40, a trainer at Sea World in Orlando, lost her life yesterday after a killer whale attack. Miscreants have wasted no time is exploiting the tragedy, as so many before it, by setting …

    Spam 25 Feb 15:51

  • CA buys 3Tera to blow up quick clouds

    Banish app deployment terror

    CA is buying 3Tera, which provides application cloud deployment services on Xen, and will extend its software to VMware and Hyper-V environments. 3Tera's AppLogic technology is claimed to let IT professionals develop and deploy online applications in minutes instead of weeks. They can offer application stacks on demand by …

    Servers 25 Feb 16:17

  • Deutsche Telekom still losing money

    But more slowly than before

    T-Mobile's parent Deutsche Telekom lost €3m in the last quarter of 2009, which isn't too bad considering the company lost €730m during the same part of 2008. For the whole of 2009, the company managed to increase sales by 4.8 per cent, to €64.6bn, though the net profit on those sales was down by 76 per cent to €353m. The …

    Telecoms 25 Feb 16:20

  • Men at Work appeal Down Under plagiarism ruling

    Kookaburra? What kookaburra?

    EMI Music has lodged an appeal against the ruling that the flute riff in Down Under by Oz band Men at Work was plagiarised from Lucky Country kids' favourite Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree. A Sydney court earlier this month ruled in favour of Kookaburra copyright holder Larrikin Music, decreeing the offending flute part …

    Bootnotes 25 Feb 16:23

  • France Telecom hits targets, admits crisis

    New boss, fewer deaths

    France Telecom now has 193m customers and made revenues of €46bn in the year ended 31 December 2009, down 1.9 per cent on last year. The figures exclude FT's UK business, Orange, which is now in the process of merging with T-Mobile. Total customer numbers grew 5.7 per cent with best growth for its digital TV business - up 53 …

    Telecoms 25 Feb 16:26

  • Oz songstress: Record label 2.0 abandoned me

    Sellaband didn't sell my band

    Crowdsourcing DIY music company Sellaband filed for bankruptcy on Monday, and we have some interesting insider perspective. From Oz, reader Gary writes with the tale of Mandyleigh Storm. Mandyleigh became the seventh artist on Sellaband in 2007. She used some of the $50,000 raised to record with veteran producer and engineer …

    Music and Media 25 Feb 16:27

  • Cryptome restored after Microsoft change of heart

    Redmond rescinds DMCA takedown

    Microsoft has rescinded the copyright complaint that resulted in the shutdown of the long-standing whistleblower website, Cryptome.org, after it published Redmond's spy guide for law enforcement. The company said it has asked Cryptome's ISP, Network Solutions, that the website be restored and that it no longer wants the …

    Music and Media 25 Feb 20:00

  • Google's 'post holiday' Caffeine shot still brewing

    Worldwide roll-out in 'coming months'

    The web is still waiting for the worldwide roll-out of Google's next-generation search infrastructure, the mysterious indexing system overhaul known as "Caffeine." A recent Wired profile of Google's search team indicates that Caffeine has already been deployed. But it seems the technology is still limited to a single data …

    HPC 25 Feb 22:40

  • Microsoft: Oracle will take us back to 1970s hell

    Mini-computers, here we come

    Microsoft's server and tools chief Bob Muglia has chided Oracle for peddling a return to "1960s computing," accusing its rival of going against industry trends and backing a dying and expensive operating-system architecture. Last month, Oracle modestly justified its $5.6bn purchase of Sparc and Solaris dinosaur Sun Microsystems …

    Software 25 Feb 22:56

  • EMC shuffles Ionix to VMware

    Welcome to the real world

    EMC is keeping up appearances that its VMware subsidiary is still a separate company. Today, it transferred a number of system management products that were part of its evolving Ionix brand to VMware for $200m in cash. Last July, after five years of making systems management tool acquisitions, EMC slapped the Ionix brand on …

    Servers 25 Feb 23:01