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26th February 2010 Archive

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  • Senators to NASA: Get your ass to Mars

    Lawmakers blast agency for lack o' vision

    NASA lacks a clear vision for the future of US human spaceflight, US Senators told the space agency's chief on Wednesday. A Senate science subcommittee clashed with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden over President Barack Obama's proposed 2011 budget, which effectively kills the previous administration's goal of returning to …

    Space 26 Feb 2010, 00:53

  • Novell: Linux finally breaks even

    An open source milestone

    Well, that only took six years and change. As part of its discussion of its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2010 ended in January, Dana Russell, chief financial officer at operating system and systems software maker Novell, said that the SUSE Linux business was at break-even, what he called "a significant …

    Software 26 Feb 2010, 00:57

  • Windows server revenue outpaced Linux in Q4

    Perfect storm plays out

    In Gartner's assessment of the server market in the fourth quarter of 2009, X64 servers and blades in particular were singled out as the growth engines. With IDC's similar, but different, report Thursday we learn that the Windows platform was the real beneficiary of the bump in sales. IDC tracks factory revenues by the server …

    HPC 26 Feb 2010, 01:16

  • Fanboi Opera lovers get 10.5 beta

    Mini on the iPhone? Still waiting

    You still can't run Opera on the iPhone. But Opera-loving Apple fanbois can take some comfort from the fact that a beta version of the Norwegian browser maker's latest desktop creation is now available for the Mac. The company released its Opera 10.5 Mac beta Thursday morning. The new build runs on Mac OS 10.4 - Tiger - as …

    Applications 26 Feb 2010, 01:26

  • Gmail error hops on POP

    Importing issues hit mail service

    Google grappled with erratic Gmail behavior this morning for a "significant subset" of users who receive their mail via POP from external mail providers into Gmail. The company posted notice on its Apps Status Dashboard that users were experiencing "error messages and/or other unexpected behavior" when attempting to fetch …

    Applications 26 Feb 2010, 04:45

  • More workers poisoned by supplier for Apple, Nokia

    Nokia responds. Apple doesn't

    The Taiwanese company that provides displays and electronic components for Apple, Nokia, and others has admitted that more employees than previously reported have been poisoned by an industrial chemical used in its manufacturing facilities. According to a report Thursday by Global Post, a Wintek spokesman admitted that 62 …

    Business 26 Feb 2010, 04:48

  • ICO to investigate surveillance for Parliamentary report

    But who watches the watchdog?

    Privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will report to Parliament later this year on the degree to which UK citizens are put under surveillance. The study will be a follow up to a previous ICO report which said that citizens were at risk from growing pressure in Government to share information between …

    Government 26 Feb 2010, 07:02

  • Marathon reels in another $6.5m

    How to tackle Microsoft, VMware

    Fault tolerant and high availability clustering software maker Marathon Technologies has received the second part of a $13.5m round of equity funding that the company lined up late last year. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Marathon has sold $13.5m in equity in total, but the company …

    Virtualization 26 Feb 2010, 08:02

  • Pentax K-x

    Review Photo finesse?

    The Pentax K-x is arguably one of the smallest and more accomplished entry-level DSLR cameras on the market. The K-x inherits the compact body and the simple layout of the K-m while squeezing in quite a few of the high-end features of its bigger brother, the K-7. Colour photography: Pentax's K-x The 12.4Mp sensor measures …

    reghardware 26 Feb 2010, 08:02

  • ID cards: the first year report

    The czar reports

    Sir Joseph Pilling, the ID commissioner who oversees the ID card scheme, said he is generally satisfied with progress after the first year but it was too soon to give it a clean bill of health. In a 28-page report presented to Parliament yesterday by Home Secretary Alan Johnson Pilling said: "my initial reaction is to be …

    Government 26 Feb 2010, 09:13

  • Virgin Media admits broadband upgrade 'confusion'

    But consumers need to act when their contract ends

    Virgin Media has denied claims from broadband customers that it is cheekily charging them more to upgrade their cable broadband packages than it asks new punters to pay up. One customer who contacted Reg Hardware told us that punters on Virgin Media's 20Mb/s XL tariff who log on to the account management section of the VM …

    reghardware 26 Feb 2010, 09:55

  • Experts rubbish iPhone for health use

    It's not a cure-all - it's barely even a phone

    Two NHS mobile equipment specialists have said that the short battery life of Apple's iPhone makes it unsuitable for use in health work Paul Curley, clinical director of IT and consultant surgeon for Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said that his organisation's tests had found that personal digital assistants were viable for …

    Mobile 26 Feb 2010, 09:58

  • Lara Croft walks rings round Derby City

    Home town heroine has road named after her

    By popular acclaim, Lara Croft is to have a road named after her in Derby, the city in which the computer game character was created. Almost 90 per cent of the 27,000 people who participated in an online poll to name a stretch of the new £36m ring road, voted for Lara Croft Way, Derby City Council announced. Lara Croft was …

    reghardware 26 Feb 2010, 10:00

  • Cleversafe beats RAID/replication scale trap

    Distributed slices of data

    Cleversafe has improved the hardware it sells to distribute slices of data around a network, reckoning this is much cheaper at the PB scale than a RAID and replication combination. RAID 5 will protect a drive failure. RAID 6 will proptect against a double drive failure. So if a second drive fails while a rebuild is recovering …

    Storage 26 Feb 2010, 10:05

  • Supersonic stealth jumpjet makes 'short landing'

    Vid Comes down Royal Navy style, lids flipped and rolling

    The F-35B Lightning II, world's first supersonic stealth jumpjet and successor to the famous Harrier, has carried out its first "short" landing. Test pilots are currently making slower and slower flights with the aircraft, progressing gradually towards hovering vertical landings. Video of the jet coming in for a rolling runway …

    Science 26 Feb 2010, 10:23

  • Patterned storage media almost sewn up

    Comment Insulate those bits

    Patterned media is stepping closer with Molecular Imprints announcing and selling a system for pilot and low-volume manufacture. Hard disk drive (HDD) Perpendicular recording will crash into a barrier as its magnetised domains get smaller and smaller heading to and beyond 800-900Gbit/sq in areal densities. The problem is that …

    Storage 26 Feb 2010, 10:38

  • Final shuttle rocket test goes without a bang

    While NASA preps Discovery for Tuesday roll-out

    The final test firing of a space shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) went without a bang yesterday, as NASA prepares to retire the shuttle fleet. Since the first test in July 1977, ATK Launch Systems has carried out 52 similar ground-based proving operations on the monster lifters, which have carried shuttles aloft 129 …

    Space 26 Feb 2010, 10:56

  • BBC to cull radio stations, halve websites in painful biz review

    6 Music, Asian Network up for chop, says report

    The BBC reportedly plans to axe its 6 Music and Asian Network radio stations, cull 50 per cent of its websites and reduce spending on American TV shows next month. According to a story in today’s Times, which cites BBC Trust sources, Beeb director-general Mark Thompson will admit in March that the Corporation is bloated and …

    Music and Media 26 Feb 2010, 10:58

  • Latvian hacker tweets hard on banking whistle

    Fat cat pay leaked all over the Baltics

    A hacker has become a popular hero in the Baltics, and scourge to the authorities, by leaking information on the finances of banks and state-run firms to Latvian TV. The whistle-blowing cracker, who calls himself Neo in an apparent Matrix tribute, is feeding embarrassing information such as the pay of managers who work for a …

    Crime 26 Feb 2010, 11:14

  • IBM offers voluntary redundo - two days into 'consultation'

    Well, you don't hang about do you

    IBM is offering staff voluntary redundancy just two days into the consultation period. The discussion period began 23 February and IBM yesterday announced a "voluntary separation programme". The offer is to UK staff at IBM's Global Services Delivery. They have until 8 March to express interest in leaving Big Blue. Managers …

    Financial News 26 Feb 2010, 11:23

  • Sony ships Freeview HD Bravia TVs

    Dozens of models to choose from

    Sony's first tellies capable to tuning into Freeview HD will go on sale this weekend, the consumer electronics giant said today. Sony's Bravia HX703: designed for movie lovers - and 2001: A Space Odyssey fans in particular The line-up comprises seven types of Bravia-branded TV, each available in a number of sizes, taking …

    reghardware 26 Feb 2010, 11:26

  • Bringing P2P in from the cold

    Interview Chris Castle catches up with El Reg

    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. In the first installment of our annual catch-up, he wondered whether Google may have annoyed so many rights holders that it's rethinking its strategy. Here, he talks …

    Music and Media 26 Feb 2010, 12:02

  • Computer boffin on NHS Spine: Get out while you can

    Summary Care Record summarily slammed

    A leading computer scientist has sounded a warning over an NHS data collection plan, urging patients to opt out. The Summary Care Record (SCR) scheme will make outlines of medical records available to hundreds of thousands of NHS staff in England. The idea is to provide doctors and nurses in England with easier access to …

    ID 26 Feb 2010, 12:10

  • Mandy accused of screwing small biz

    Giving more money to Google not good for Brits, is it?

    Web design and consultancy firms have reacted with outrage to Lord Mandelson's latest attempt to get more British small businesses online. The launch of "Getting British Business Online" saw Mandy promise to get 100,000 British small and medium enterprises online for the first time by the end of 2010. And the partners for …

    Small Biz 26 Feb 2010, 12:12

  • Microsoft slams nails in Windows Vista, XP SP2, 2000

    Switching off life support, left to breathe alone

    Microsoft will kill support for its unloved Windows Vista operating system a few months ahead of its Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 planned end-of-the-road-for-updates deadline. The company said yesterday that a Vista service pack-free OS will no longer get MS support after 13 April this year, leaving the flaky platform …

    Operating Systems 26 Feb 2010, 12:25

  • EU rattles sabre at Street View

    Warn people you're coming, Google told

    The head of EU data protection agencies has told Google it must warn people of the impending arrival of its Orwellian Street View spymobiles. According to AP, Alex Turk has written to Google's data privacy chief Peter Fleischer insisting that it "should always give advance notice on its website and in the local or national …

    Government 26 Feb 2010, 12:29

  • US Navy SEALs' new airlock minisub - made in Blighty

    Brit knowhow cracks 'exploding iPod' battery-inferno snag

    A groundbreaking new miniature submarine in use by the US Navy's secretive, elite frogman-commando special operations force was actually designed and built in old Blighty, the Reg can reveal. We reported first on the S301 mini-sub two weeks ago, noting from federal documents that the famous US Navy SEALs had leased a …

    Science 26 Feb 2010, 12:57

  • Twitter hits fan as scams smite banks, cabinet ministers

    Harman gets hacked, Miliband's account peddles penis pills

    The Twitter phishing attacks from earlier this week stepped up a gear on Friday with huge volumes of spam from compromised accounts, some of which belonged to UK cabinet minsters and even a bank. Pwned micro-blogging accounts include high profile targets such as Ed Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change …

    ID 26 Feb 2010, 13:00

  • Cyberspooks sceptical on UK.gov's IT cost-cutting plans

    Exclusive Cloud threatened by security risks, says GCHQ

    Whitehall IT chiefs have been warned by the intelligence agency GCHQ that security problems with cloud computing could foil their plans to use the technology to slash the cost of public services. The assessment forms part of the first report of the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), seen by The Register. The new internet …

    Enterprise Security 26 Feb 2010, 13:05

  • Microsoft inks IP licensing exFAT deal with Panasonic

    Not a Flash in the pan

    Microsoft has dropped yet another Intellectual Property deal into its bulging patent bag, this time in an agreement with Panasonic over its use of its Extended File Allocation Table, aka exFAT, format. Financial terms were kept characteristically quiet in what is Microsoft's second IP handshake in the past week, following a …

    Developer 26 Feb 2010, 13:23

  • Suits 2.0 will survive BBC's 'purge'

    Comment Only the lamest survive

    Bureaucracy is the one sure winner in the BBC's strategic review - the suits and wonks. It's sort of like natural selection turned upside: in a changing environment, the most useless survive. Mark Thompson's review, leaked to the Times today, was supposed to review the Corporation's output, and it could have helped made inroads …

    Music and Media 26 Feb 2010, 13:51

  • Bulgarian airbag absorbs semi-automatic rifle round

    Implant saves US woman's life, plastic surgeon claims

    A California woman caught up in a fatal shooting may have been saved by her D-cup breast implants, one of which took a round from a semi-automatic assault rifle, the Los Angeles Times reports. On 1 July last year, Lydia Carranza was working at the front desk of a dentist's office in Simi Valley, north west of Los Angeles. …

    Bootnotes 26 Feb 2010, 14:00

  • NatWest suffers calamitous online banking breakdown

    But flack insists system never actually died on arse

    NatWest customers struggled to access the company's online banking, ATMs, telephone and even branch systems in the past few hours, after it was hit by a unspecified "technical issue" this morning. A spokeswoman at the firm denied that the bank's systems were hit by an outage, and insisted to The Register that NatWest had …

    CIO 26 Feb 2010, 14:03

  • Fujitsu strike is off

    Concessions on pay and pensions end four month strike

    Fujitsu and the Unite union have agreed terms to end the planned strike at the services giant. Staff accepted proposals from arbitration organisation ACAS by a ratio of four to one. Unite's national officer Peter Skyte said: “While the Acas brokered proposals do not fully satisfy our members’ aspirations, there have been …

    CIO 26 Feb 2010, 14:31

  • Jobs: I'll decide what to do with Apple's $40bn cash pile

    Smaug, Marner, Croesus? They never invented the iPhone

    Steve Jobs has told shareholders not to complain about the Mac maker's $40bn and growing cash mountain as he could decide to do something interesting with it at any time. Shareholders usually get antsy when companies cash piles grow too large, and start demanding execs do something to return the value to... them. Share …

    Financial News 26 Feb 2010, 14:41

  • Ofcom decides it can't decide on spare spectrum

    8MHz left fallow after 6 months of faff

    Following six months of consultation Ofcom has decided it can't decide what to do with 8MHz of sub-1GHz spectrum, so will do nothing until after the general election. Not that the election is supposed to be the important factor - officially the regulator is waiting to see if the EU's boffins can get GSM-R (GSM for Railways) …

    Mobile 26 Feb 2010, 15:06

  • 'Promiscuous slapper fruitfly sluts prevent mass extinctions'

    NSFWFI Also: Ant royalty 'devious', implicated in BO-based plots

    Hot hot news from the world of insects this week, perhaps with insights to be gleaned into the conduct of human relations. It has emerged from research on the sex lives of female fruit-flies that the practice of remaining faithful to just one bed partner is fantastically genetically unwise and can render an entire population …

    Biology 26 Feb 2010, 15:32

  • O2 revamps Sim-only tariffs for end-of-contract iPhone owners

    Owners of other smartphones can apply too

    O2 is looking to win over eBay buyers who've picked up a second-hand iPhone or another make of smartphone. Today it launched new 'Simplicity' Sim-only tarrifs aimed at people who aren't looking for a new handset. The packages will also encourage iPhone owners who've come to the end of their contract to stay with the cellco, O2 …

    reghardware 26 Feb 2010, 15:33

  • O2 intros 'light use' mobile broadband deal

    1GB a month, on a one-month contract

    O2 has adjusted its Mobile Broadband monthly subscription rates, adding a 1GB data transfer limit package for more casual users. The tariff is available for £10 a month on an 18-month contract, or for a single £10 payment for one month's tie-in. A Huawei E169 modem come free with the longer contract - and O2 will give you …

    reghardware 26 Feb 2010, 15:51

  • eBay Germany faces PayPal probe

    Ich nichten lichten

    eBay Germany is being investigated by competition authorities concerned that its tying of PayPal to certain eBay purchases is in breach of consumer law. eBay.de recently asked sellers with low feedback points to offer PayPal. The company justified the move because it said the number of bad buying experiences is twice as high …

    Small Biz 26 Feb 2010, 15:53

  • Samsung joins the Skype-TV crowd

    Two-way telly becomes a reality

    Samsung has joined LG and Panasonic in embedding Skype into its high-end TVs, putting video calling firmly into living rooms. LG and Panasonic announced plans for Skype-enabled TVs in January, but Samsung is a bigger brand; and while the company has only announced two models to feature Skype functionality, it's clearly part of …

    VoIP 26 Feb 2010, 16:34

  • Microsoft and the Windows Phone 7 noise machine

    Radio Reg The importance of being 'relevant'

    Critics of the company and Web 2.0 fashionistas frequently assert that Microsoft is no longer "relevant," in an era of Google and open source. But the near hysterical level of speculation in the run-up to Windows Phone 7 - and the coverage on the day - prove the opposite. It remains a center of gravity. What you actually got …

    Microbite 26 Feb 2010, 18:05

  • IBM quietly shoves ISS wares into Tivoli

    Services only, please

    IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) products have quietly been booted from Big Blue's global services business and into the ever-expanding Tivoli brand product line, The Register has learned. IBM acquired ISS four years ago in a deal valued at an astounding $1.3bn. And though the Georgia-based firm was best known for its …

    Applications 26 Feb 2010, 19:03

  • Gay site says bank shut account over 'objectionable' blog

    'Citibank is not so Fabulis'

    Citibank - the third largest holding bank in the US - has apologized to a gay social networking website after its founder claimed the bank had blocked his account due to "objectionable content" on the site's blog. Known as Fabulis, the site bills itself as "network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block …

    Music and Media 26 Feb 2010, 19:10

  • Parallels fondles Steve Jobs' bare metal

    VMs gets cozy with Apple Xserve

    Parallels has introduced a bare-metal hypervisor for servers built by the Jobsian cult. The Apple-happy virtualization outfit unveiled Parallels Server for Mac Bare Metal Edition, which lets you run virtual machines on Jobsian servers without a host OS - i.e. on the server's "bare metal." The company's existing Xserve product …

    Virtualization 26 Feb 2010, 20:53

  • Microsoft warns over rogue Security Essentials

    Not flattered

    Microsoft has warned Windows users to be on their guard against a piece of rogue antivirus software passing itself off as Microsoft Security Essentials. Security essentials 2010 is a piece of software Microsoft said installs a fake virus scanner on your machine and]monitors and blocks processes it doesn't like. The software …

    Security 26 Feb 2010, 21:41

  • Facebook patents user news feed

    Zuckerberg owns Web 2.0 stalking

    Facebook has been awarded a patent on displaying news feeds of users' activities, creating an interwebs stir that basic social network functionality could soon fall prey to Facebook IP rights. The US patent - awarded February 23 - pertains to "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network". For example: " …

    Music and Media 26 Feb 2010, 22:13

  • Apple uncovers child workers in its plants

    iPod, iPhone, and Mac makers quizzed

    Apple has found children were hired to help build some of its products, with one employer in its Mac, iPod and iPhone supply chain falsifying records. Three facilities were found to have hired 11 workers aged 15 in countries where the minimum work age is 16, as part of the annual audit of companies adhering its supplier code …

    Business 26 Feb 2010, 22:26