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1st March 2010 Archive

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  • HP slips Intel's desktop Cores into biz laptops

    The power of small sacrifice

    With plenty of laptops in the business world ranging in age from five to eight years old, Hewlett-Packard is rubbing its hands together. It anticipates a big upgrade cycle in 2010 among commercial PC users whose companies might just be ready to give them a reasonable machine on which to do work, despite the weak economy. While …

    PCs & Chips 1 Mar 2010, 05:02

  • Most resistance to 'Aurora' hack attacks futile, says report

    As many as 100 companies pwned!

    Most businesses are defenseless against the types of attacks that recently hit Google and at least 33 other companies, according to a report to be published Monday that estimates the actual number of targeted companies could top 100. The attackers behind the cyber assault dubbed Aurora patiently stalked their hand-chosen …

    Security 1 Mar 2010, 06:35

  • IBM simplifying its storage range

    Comment An embarrassment of riches

    IBM has been announcing new storage products at a quickfire rate: SONAS, Virtual Disk System (VDS), and the XIV-based Smart Business Cloud are three of them. How do they fit together with each other and with the NetApp-sourced N Series and the DS3000/5000 and 8000 array offerings? Steve Legg, IBM UK's chief technology officer …

    Storage 1 Mar 2010, 08:02

  • Biz services holding back recovery

    CBI bets on slow bounce

    Business and professional services are recovering much more slowly than consumer services although both sections of the economy expect some growth in the next three months. Nine per cent of firms selling to consumers expect some growth in the volume of business in the next quarter and 12 per cent of firms offering business …

    Small Biz 1 Mar 2010, 09:03

  • Virtualisation and management frameworks

    Lab Friends or foes?

    Our research in the field of operational IT management has yielded much in the way of rich, down to earth insights into day to day realities, thanks to the readers of El Reg. As part of this ongoing exploration, we’ve had the opportunity to dig around a bit on the topic of best practice frameworks. What we found would not …

    Virtualisation Lab 1 Mar 2010, 09:24

  • BBC Trust won't probe iPlayer open source gripes

    Exclusive Tells users to 'Have Your Say' via online survey instead

    The governing body of the BBC has no plans to investigate the Corporation's decision to block open source implementations of RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) streaming in the iPlayer, despite grumbles from many UK viewers and listeners of the service. "The decision to block open source plugins is a matter for BBC Management …

    Music and Media 1 Mar 2010, 09:30

  • Mozambican goat rapists face shotgun wedding

    Owner demands dowry in caprine polyandry shocker

    Two Mozambican men may have to cough a dowry after they were caught raping a goat, local media report. The owner of the unfortunate animal is none too impressed with the two lads from Mbucuta in central Mozambique, who were caught in flagrante delicto by police. Witness Mario Creva confirmed: "One of the young men was naked …

    Bootnotes 1 Mar 2010, 09:37

  • Curiouser and curiouser: Aussie gov censors the censorship news

    Now we're not allowed to know who is responsible

    Debate over internet filtering in Australia is rapidly descending from high comedy into total farce, as Communications Minister Stephen Conroy ploughs on with his interesting approach of never committing just one gaffe when he can so easily commit two. The issue, yet again, is focused on a script on the home page of the …

    Government 1 Mar 2010, 09:45

  • Forgot your ThinkPad password? Get new hardware

    Lenovo merciless on memory loss

    Users of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops may be in for a nasty surprise if they forget their main (supervisor) hard drive password. The Chinese hardware manufacturer refuses to reset hard drive (BIOS) security passwords for laptops even if they are covered by warranty. Lenovo, which bought IBM's ThinkPad laptop business in 2005, cites …

    PCs & Chips 1 Mar 2010, 09:55

  • 5000 desktops to virtualise

    On Demand Ready, steady...wait

    Ready, steady.....wait Webcast If you’ve got ‘Virtualise Desktops’ on your to-do list for 2010, you might want to watch this first. It's a webcast we recorded on the 11th of Feb with the project leads from a 5,000 strong desktop virtualisation project talking us through their experiences. They come from Lancashire …

    Virtualisation Lab 1 Mar 2010, 10:10

  • Large Hadron Collider briefly back on over weekend

    Halting start to 2010 proton billiards season

    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), mightiest particle-masher ever assembled by the human race, briefly circulated its first hadron beams of 2010 at the weekend. However the vast machine has now been shut down again to remedy further technical snags. Following last week's unfortunate multi-magnet quench incident, which saw large …

    Physics 1 Mar 2010, 10:12

  • Old PS3s locked out of PlayStation Network

    Sony seeks solution as slimline consoles continue to connect

    Sony has confirmed that many if not all of its old-style chunky PlayStation 3 consoles will no longer connect to the PlayStation Network. The glitch, which began to strike users worldwide yesterday, does not affect the new, slimline version of the console. The machines are "connecting normally", Sony said on its official …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 10:22

  • Skype first to scrap Windows Mobile

    But probably not the last

    Skype has pulled its Windows Mobile client, saying the interface wasn't worth keeping and presumably planning something better for Windows Phone 7 Series. Users attempting to download the client, which was Skype's first foray into mobility, are now greeted with an FAQ explaining that the Windows-Mobile versions of Skype have …

    VoIP 1 Mar 2010, 10:36

  • Rare NES title takes $43,000 at auction

    Still in shrink-wrap

    The seller said it was a "priceless" item, and while bidding didn't quite reach infinity, one lucky bidder has now agreed to buy a "one of a kind" copy of Bandai's 1986 videogame Family Fitness Stadium Events for $41,300 (£27,102). Developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the game was released in Europe in 1988, …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 10:55

  • DarkMarket founder jailed for five years

    Digital underground kingpin sent down

    The founder of a notorious underground carding forum was jailed for four years and eight months on Friday. Renukanth Subramaniam, 33, set up DarkMarket, an eBay for cybercrooks where fraudsters and crackers could buy and sell stolen bank log-ins, credit card details and skimmers. The scheme became unstuck in 2008 after the …

    Crime 1 Mar 2010, 11:01

  • Freebie BlackBerry bonanza kicks off

    Host your own BES for nowt

    BES Express launches today, offering free software for those who want to host their own BlackBerry servers but lack the budget to do so. RIM has started giving away copies of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, which will integrate with Microsoft Exchange to sync up BlackBerry devices as well as offering the most …

    Mobile 1 Mar 2010, 11:03

  • BT blamed for Davina McCall spamcalls

    When is a call not a call?

    BT has rejected accusations that it wrongly engaged in sales calls by leaving subscribers voicemail messages telling them about all the great work it does for charity. The Reg was contacted by an angry reader who found a message from Davina McCall on his 1571 voicemail telling him about BT's sponsorship of the Sport Relief …

    Law 1 Mar 2010, 11:18

  • HP Mini netbooks to get faster Atom

    Intel N470 inbound

    HP is first out of the gate with Intel's latest netbook processor, the 1.83GHz N470, soon to be found in HP's existing Mini 5102 and Mini 2102 machines. Both PCs provide exactly what you'd expect an early 2010 netbook to offer: 2GB of 667MHz DDR 2 memory, 10.1in 1024 x 600 display, Intel NM10 chipset, USB ports abnd VGA output …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 11:43

  • Microsoft stokes Google 'antitrust concerns' fire

    If there's a hell below, we're all gonna go

    Microsoft launched an ardent attack against Google late last week, accusing the web giant of anti-competitive behaviour. The software vendor's deputy general counsel Dave Heiner wrote a missive on Microsoft's corporate blog on Friday, in which he highlighted complaints levelled at what he sees as Google's questionable business …

    Law 1 Mar 2010, 11:50

  • Is it ta-ta for Flash?

    Stob Interview with a Flash Harriet

    I hear you're a bit of a Flash programmer. Why is Flash in the news so much, Verity? Flash seems to have become the whipping boy for just about everybody in the IT crowd. Now it is under attack from Authentic Steve Jobs, who won't let it play on the iPad, just because the runtime is supposedly a tad flaky. Computer Engineer …

    Verity Stob 1 Mar 2010, 11:58

  • HP intros multi-touch tablet

    More options than you can shake a stylus at

    HP has taken a typical 12in tablet PC form factor and built in not only Intel's latest Core i5 and i7 mobile processors but also given the machine multi-touch capability. The result: the EliteBook 2470p. You'll need Windows 7 to make the most of the 1280 x 800 "outdoor view" multi-touch screen, but HP is also offering older …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 12:16

  • Oops! Mobile masters of universe forget mobiles make phone calls

    LTE finally finds a Voice

    The strangest of all press releases slid out quietly at Mobile World Congress two weeks ago. The GSMA informed us of a new initiative to set the standard for voice calls on 4G mobile networks. GSMA VoLTE initiative trumpets a "single implementation for voice", covering roaming, fallback to older networks when LTE is not …

    Mobile 1 Mar 2010, 12:23

  • Fatal System Error: Watching the miscreants

    Book review The net's heart of darkness

    Fatal System Error - The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet is an informative and entertaining look at the roots of the burgeoning cybercrime economy and its links to government, featuring a rogue's gallery of international wrong 'uns. Joseph Menn peers down into the underground economy through the …

    Crime 1 Mar 2010, 12:25

  • UK Physicists on Climategate

    Intolerance, sub prime stats, wider enquiry needed

    The body representing 36,000 UK physicists has called for a wider enquiry into the Climategate affair, saying it raises issues of scientific corruption. The Institute of Physics doesn’t pull any punches in the submission, one of around 50 presented to the Commons Select Committee enquiry into the Climategate archive. The …

    Environment 1 Mar 2010, 12:31

  • Microsoft spits out 'browser choice' update to appease EC antitrust probe

    Surf's up as Google, Apple, Mozilla wash ashore in Windows

    Microsoft will begin asking European Union citizens which web browser they wish to use on Windows-based computers from today. The software giant is giving its customers a choice of 12 surfing tools - including its own Internet Explorer browser - after agreeing a deal with the European Commission that has been probing Microsoft …

    Applications 1 Mar 2010, 13:05

  • Hackers go on Tory-bothering spree

    Dave's websites made to spew 'Vote Labour' spam

    Conservative party websites have been attacked by mischievous hackers over the weekend, who defaced some of the sites and sent spam messages from others urging people to "vote Labour". Chris Boyd of Sunbelt Software, who has analysed the attack , said that the attackers gained access to the admin panels of various sites …

    Enterprise Security 1 Mar 2010, 13:09

  • Archos merges PMP with... digital photo frame

    Family oriented "Home Tablet" launched

    France's Archos used to make portable media players. Now it makes "Home Tablets" too, and today introduced the Archos 7 and Archos 8 to prove it. Both machines are based on Google's Android OS, running on an ARM 9 processor clocked at 600MHz. Archos' 8: photo frame, meet media player As the numbers suggest, the new 7 and …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 13:21

  • Lenovo ThinkPad Edge

    Review For business and pleasure, apparently

    Launching an affordable lightweight laptop that appeals both to lifestyle and business markets is a fine idea and one Lenovo clearly thinks has mileage in it. The new ThinkPad Edge is a stylish and affordable machine that is tasked with getting the ThinkPad brand into the world's coffee shops, as well as its board rooms. Best …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 13:29

  • For sale: One des res nuclear bunker

    Desk, chair, enamel bucket, BT landline

    Anyone who's looking for a no-frills bolthole with a Cold War heritage might like to check out a 1959 vintage Royal Observer Corps nuclear bunker, set in "an elevated position with panoramic views over the Derbyshire Dales". The winning eBay bidder for this prime piece of real estate will secure the 50 x 50ft plot above the …

    Bootnotes 1 Mar 2010, 13:33

  • Sexy is as sexy does: UK.gov struggles with sexualisation

    Comment From Apple's baps to Papadopoulos' sop

    Last week saw a series of announcements from the government and others on sexual matters. These were intended as usual to protect children, but have mostly served only to highlight the eagerness of politicians to buy into the infantilisation of adult culture, rather than do anything that shifts responsibility for child behaviour …

    Government 1 Mar 2010, 13:38

  • Nexsan tries for IPO - again

    Second time lucky

    Nexsan is trying for an IPO again, two years after the first attempt, and hoping that recovery from recession will open investors' wallets. The company supplies storage arrays to hold long-term data at low cost by using graduated spin-down (aka AutoMAID) to reduce energy costs and deduplication to increase storage efficiency. …

    Storage 1 Mar 2010, 13:41

  • HP offers Emulex FCoE adaptors

    Blessing bestowed

    Emulex has at last got blue chip OEM blessing for its Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) adapters, with HP now offering the kit. FCoE is reckoned to be the future of Fibre Channel networking, with the protocol being carried on a 10GbitE wire instead of native Fibre Channel wires and Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). FCoE runs across …

    Channel Register 1 Mar 2010, 13:42

  • Eurocrats mandate maximum charge for data roaming

    No more 'bill shock'?

    From today, Europe's mobile phone networks must work with customers to prevent the use of mobile broadband while travelling from costing the Earth. Roaming rules put in place by the European Union's Council of Ministers and the European Parliament in June 2009 oblige O2, Orange, Three, T-Mobile, Virgin Media, Vodafone and …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 13:48

  • New robot aircraft eliminates need for fleshy slaves

    VTOL copter-plane to refuel itself at automated base box

    A robot-aeroplane inventor with successful designs behind him has come out with a radical new kind of skydroid which, he says, offers long range combined with vertical takeoff and landing - and automated ground support as well. You can take the inventor out of the garage... Tad McGeer started a company called Insitu - in …

    Physics 1 Mar 2010, 13:49

  • Opera's Jon Von Tetzchner on browser choice, the iphone and Google

    Interview The highlights

    In a wide-ranging interview today Opera chairman Jon von Tetzchner talked about the Browser Choice ruling, Opera's iPhone app, Google as a competitor, and how P2P will be the next generation of the web. Rather than pad it out with waffle, here are the highlights with signposts. On the EC's Browser Choice screen The Commission …

    Applications 1 Mar 2010, 14:21

  • FalconStor and Violin get cache in hand

    SAN accelerator is go

    FalconStor and Violin have come up with a flash-based SAN accelerator featuring a dedicated cache area to speed up writes. Take one Violin 1010 flash memory appliance (a PCI-connected solid state drive) and have it fitted to a server running FalconStor's Network Storage Server Gateway and storage management software - the …

    Storage 1 Mar 2010, 14:40

  • LG Windows Phone 7 handset out in Q4

    September release: premature speculation

    LG showed off its upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series smartphone this weekend. But despite recent speculation that the handset would debut this coming September - when Windows Phone 7 is itself to be released - LG confirmed that buyers have a longer wait than that. LG's Windows Phone 7: no name, no specification yet LG …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 15:05

  • WD intros portable hard drive with e-paper display

    Full-time capacity readout

    Western Digital has introduced a trio of new My Passport Studio portable hard drives equipped with an e-paper storage status readout. The use of E Ink technology means that the display can be read even when the drive is unplugged and unpowered. What it shows is up to you: the drive comes with software that lets you personalise …

    reghardware 1 Mar 2010, 15:06

  • Chip biz to grow 20% in 2010

    Semi sales up in January

    Happy days are here again for the semiconductor business, with the analysts at Gartner now projecting that worldwide semiconductor sales will rise by 19.9 per cent, to $276bn, in 2010. Recovering PC sales and rising DRAM memory prices are combining to help push up DRAM revenues by 55 per cent compared to last year, thus …

    PCs & Chips 1 Mar 2010, 15:23

  • Music biz unites to save 6Music

    BPI and AIM join forces for Beeb's unwanted radio baby

    Two wings of the music business which rarely agree on much have come together to condemn the BBC's apparent desire to snuff out BBC 6Music. In a letter to the BBC director general Mark Thompson, the BPI and indie association AIM say the closure of the station is bad for new music. 6Music plays four to five times the amount of …

    Music and Media 1 Mar 2010, 15:29

  • T-Orange merger approved

    EU smiles on deal

    The merger of T-Mobile and Orange will go through, after the UK's Office of Fair Trading withdrew its request for time to investigate the deal. The OFT wanted to investigate on the basis that the merged entity would own an unfair proportion of radio spectrum, and that once it had merged with Orange T-Mobile would have little …

    Mobile 1 Mar 2010, 15:38

  • 'We're on a virtual walk out of Africa', futurologist tells Intel partners

    And does upgrading to Windows hurt a PC's feelings?

    The human race is on the threshold of a virtual walk out of Africa, but we'll only be able to see where we're going as long as we're wearing those funny little glasses everyone wore to watch Avatar. In the meantime, according to Intel, corporate neanderthals still struggling along with outdated processors can help the human …

    PCs & Chips 1 Mar 2010, 16:12

  • Openistas squish security bugs twice as fast

    Software security MOT results dispel FUD

    Open source software has comparable security, faster bug fixing, and fewer potential backdoors than commercial software, according to a study on software application vulnerabilities by security firm VeraCode. The study, published on the first day of the RSA Conference, is based on aggregated data from real world scanning of …

    Security 1 Mar 2010, 16:22

  • PayPal India hits reboot with bank withdrawals

    Personal payments remain suspended

    PayPal confirmed late last week that the Reserve Bank of India had given it the go ahead to restart bank withdrawals in the country for settlements for exports of goods and services. However, the company's Asia-Pacific boss Farhad Irani warned that personal payments remained switched off. "We are currently making changes to …

    Small Biz 1 Mar 2010, 16:28

  • DARPA wants military iPhone and Android apps

    Pentagon boffins spit on Windows phones

    Bandwagon-bothering boffins at everyone's favourite military tech hothouse DARPA have announced that they would like some apps written for the iPhone or for handsets running Google's Android OS - "with potential relevance to the military specifically and the national security community more generally". The Pentagon deathnerds …

    Mobile 1 Mar 2010, 16:53

  • Citrix goes virtual with more appliances

    Gets physical with web app firewall

    The profit margin on a virtual appliance is a lot higher than on a physical one, and when you own your own hypervisor, as Citrix Systems does, then that's two reasons to promote the running of appliance applications inside virtual machines. And so, after some dabbling last year, when it put its NetScaler network acceleration …

    Virtualization 1 Mar 2010, 18:31

  • Microsoft fluffs second AppFabric beta for cloud scale

    Bucket-O technologies

    Microsoft has released a second beta of its Windows Server AppFabric, a collection of technologies designed to improve the speed, scalability, and management of web, enterprise, and composite applications. The company said it's looking for feedback on AppFabric ahead of planned delivery, scheduled for the third-quarter of this …

    Virtualization 1 Mar 2010, 18:53

  • SCO's Linux litigation architect angles for SCO's mobile biz

    Former CEO strikes back

    Desperate to fund its seemingly-endless legal battle for Unix copyrights against Novell and others, SCO Group has found someone willing to buy the bankrupt company's mobile assets - and it's none other than Darl McBride, the former SCO chief executive sacked as a result of his ruinous crusade to claim Unix. Groklaw has flagged …

    Business 1 Mar 2010, 19:49

  • Wiseguys net $25m in ticket scalping racket

    Captcha busters lock out Coldplay fans

    Federal prosecutors have accused four men of fraudulently obtaining more than 1.5 million concert and sporting-even tickets by hacking the computer systems of multiple vendors. Over a six-year period, the men employed computer scripts that snapped up tickets to some of the hottest events just a fraction of a second after they …

    Crime 1 Mar 2010, 20:38

  • Mozilla orders Jäger shot for Firefox engine

    Down the hatch, SpiderMonkey

    Mozilla is brewing a new extension to the Firefox JavaScript engine, hoping to fix a flaw in its setup that occasionally sends the open source browser back to 2007. Dubbed JaegerMonkey, the new extension will operate alongside the much-ballyhooed TraceMonkey - an extension that debuted with Firefox 3.5 in June of last year - …

    Developer 1 Mar 2010, 20:40

  • IE code execution bug can bite older Windows

    Surf, press F1, get pwned

    Microsoft's security team is investigating a security vulnerability in older versions of Windows that allows attackers to execute malware on end user machines. The bug combines scripts based on Microsoft's Visual Basic language with Windows help files for Internet Explorer. It makes it possible for an attacker hosting a …

    Security 1 Mar 2010, 20:49

  • Google borgs online photo editor

    Let's have a Picnik

    Google has acquired Picnik, a 20-person startup offering a web-based photo editing service. The deal was announced today with a post to both the Google and Picnik blogs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With the Flash-based Picnik, you can upload photos from your hard drive or open them directly from online pic-sharing …

    Music and Media 1 Mar 2010, 22:37