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15th March 2010 Archive

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  • Ubuntu Koala food console gets its cron on

    Scalr on schedule

    Scalr - the open source admin console for Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud and its Eucalyptus doppelganger - has added a cron job task manager to its arsenal, giving you more freedom to write and schedule scripts on sky-high virtual servers. Like RightScale, Scalr provides web-based management console for so-called …

    Virtualization 15 Mar 03:21

  • ITV HD World Cup matches to be shown on Sky, Virgin

    Pay services sign up

    Virgin Media and Sky viewers will get to watch ITV's HD channel on 2 April. That's good news for footie fans who subscribe to either service. They will now be able to see all of this summer's World Cup games in HD. All but eight early-stage World Cup matches will be shown on BBC HD and ITV1 HD. VM and Sky subscribers can …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 08:02

  • Nominet to release super-short domain names

    Asks industry for input

    A host of new, short domain names will be made available under the body responsible for domain names ending in .uk, Nominet. It plans to allow the registration of previously-banned domain names consisting of one or two characters. The non-profit body also plans to allow people to register names consisting of terms that make up …

    IT Director 15 Mar 08:27

  • ERP checkpoint

    Workshop Legacy, liability or future proof business platform?

    A lot of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in place today were installed in the 90's as part of the consolidation of point solutions or to deal with Y2K. At the time, a lot of effort generally went into selecting the most appropriate supplier and system, and significant money and manpower was invested in implementation …

    ERP 15 Mar 08:58

  • Vodafone confirms HTC Android 2.1 duo

    Legend and Desire coming to network

    Vodafone has flagged up the forthcoming release of HTC's Android-based smartphones Legend and Desire on its network next month. Legend will come with Vodafone's 360 content and social networking portal pre-loaded. Like Desire, it has a 5Mp camera and an on-board GPS pick-up, but Legend's display is just 3.2in to the Desire's 3 …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 09:00

  • Iran's cyber-police hack US spy sites

    And arrest 30 people

    Iranian security forces have arrested 30 people accused of waging cyber-war against the country with the backing of the United States. A few hours after announcing the arrests the Islamic Revolutionary Guards said they had hacked 29 websites they allege are funded by US spooks. The sites use a cover of human rights activity to …

    Policing 15 Mar 09:35

  • Apple boss gets $22m bonus

    Nice day rate for six months' work

    Apple's chief operating officer Tim Cook got a cash bonus of $5m and a bunch of share options for filling in while Steve Jobs was off sick For covering the top job for six months while Jobs got a liver transplant Cook got $5m in cash and 75,000 share options - half will vest in March 2011 and the other half in March 2012, as …

    Financial News 15 Mar 09:36

  • .com celebrates 25th birthday

    The afterthought that took over the internet

    On April 26, 1985, a man called Charles Hornig complained on a mailing list that his new symbolics.com email address wasn't working. Scanning every mail server on the internet, all 1,008 of them, he discovered only one was configured to handle a .com address. “I am not heartened by these results,” he wrote. “Maybe we should go …

    Data Networking 15 Mar 09:48

  • Is StorSpeed grinding to a halt?

    Filer cacher startup drops the ball

    The future of filer cacher StorSpeed appears unclear after it emerged that key execs had left the firm amidst rumours it failed to actually shift any kit. It launched its SP5000 caching appliance last October. This was juicy hardware with up to six clustered 2U caching nodes featuring FPGA go-faster hardware and solid state …

    Storage 15 Mar 10:00

  • Symbian sees (Silver) light at the end of the tunnel

    Spotted in the wild, but gone in a flash

    A Symbian version of Microsoft's answer to Flash, Silverlight, has been spotted in the wild. It quickly disappeared but the hope is that it will emerge later this week. The download and associated documentation was spotted by Mary-Jo Foley, who managed to snag a copy before it disappeared and is expecting to see the product …

    Mobile 15 Mar 10:05

  • LG cuts Fresh Cookie

    Social networking phones inbound

    LG is to cut a couple of extra Cookies: the Plus and the Fresh. LG's Cookie Plus: colourful Both handsets are pitched at the keen social networker, their colourful "cartoon-styled UI" LiveSquare being centred on presenting friends' online status and current activities, as relayed by Twitter, Facebook, MySpace et al, LG said …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 10:06

  • The challenge of virtualised workloads

    On Demand Where to start

    Virtualisation might be something everyone likes to talk about in general terms, but what of the specifics of migrating workloads? In this On Demand Webcast we tackle just that issue. We’ve put Jon Collins of Freeform Dynamics in a room with Brett Johnson, a Microsoft unified comms technical specialist, and Andrew Fryer, a …

    Virtualisation Lab 15 Mar 10:10

  • IT contractors convicted of UK casino hack scam

    Hustlers hamstrung by basic maths booboo

    A pair of UK hackers who used false betting slips in a bid to con casinos into paying out on bogus gambles were undone by greed and a schoolboy maths error, a court heard. Andrew Ashley, 30, and Nimesh Bhagat, 31, were each handed a suspended jail sentence of one year after they pleaded guilty to theft over a plot involving …

    Crime 15 Mar 10:22

  • TomTom for iPhone gets traffic updates

    Reasonably priced, too

    TomTom has updated its iPhone app, adding a much requested traffic updates and Google searches for local services. TomTom for iPhone has been on sale since the summer of 2009, but the new release, version 1.3, is the first to make use of the handset's pinch-to-zoom gesture, allowing users to zero in on map features and the …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 10:30

  • Harrods punts 3D TVs with free shutter specs

    Posh peoples' shop out to outdo common-or-garden retailers

    Posh department store Harrods has dispute Currys claim to be the first UK retailer to begin taking advance orders for Sony 3D TVs. Currys announced this past Friday it was taking orders in store there and then, and online from 4pm. But Harrods' in-store Sony Centre began taking 3D TV orders on the same day too, and told Reg …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 11:01

  • Intel ships super-svelte SSD

    40GB only and slugged performance

    Intel is now shipping a cut-down version of its X25-M SSD for less than $150, days after OCZ announced its sub-$100 Onyx SSD. The X25-V, presaged in November last year has just 40GB of multi-level cell capacity, half the entry-level X25-M's 80GB. It's a boot drive SSD with the performance skewed enormously to reading rather …

    Storage 15 Mar 11:16

  • Nokia cuts own market share forecast to 34%

    New estimates include grey market

    Forecasts and market share estimates in the handset industry are increasingly skewed by the rising importance of counterfeit and grey market devices. Such products find their main markets in emerging economies, which are accounting for an increasing proportion of total shipments. Now Nokia has broken the conspiracy of silence …

    Mobile 15 Mar 11:31

  • Robot mini space shuttle is go for April, says US air force

    Will fly itself down from orbit to runway landing

    Long-delayed plans by the US to deploy a small robot space shuttle appear now to be approaching fruition, according to reports. The US Air Force has now stated that the X-37 unmanned spaceplane will be launched into orbit on April 19. Falling with style. The X-37 began life as a NASA project, intended perhaps to lead to a …

    Space 15 Mar 11:37

  • Gelsinger stuns analysts and colleagues with storage pool plan

    Comment EMC will sync all your data, worldwide

    EMC's Pat Gelsinger is proposing unified storage/server systems that span the globe and function as a single virtual resource pool, using YottaYotta technology. The details, such as they are, are in an EMC webcast presented at an analyst briefing event last week. It asserts that EMC will be able to overcome limitations of …

    HPC 15 Mar 11:45

  • Apple details iPad's 'breakthrough' mobile contract

    Offers to replace batteries too

    Apple's iPad will come with a monthly contract, a replacement option when the battery craps out and a button to stop the screen spinning round - and it'll even read bedtime stories to you. With the iPad now available for pre-order, for Americans at least, more details of the device have emerged including an additional button …

    Mobile 15 Mar 11:50

  • YoYoTech Warbird i750CX 4GHz gaming PC

    Review Overclocked CPU and dual Radeons? Ripper

    The YoYoTech Warbird i750CX is a juiced-up version of the Warbird i750X. Both models are bare towers that come without a display, mouse, keyboard, speakers or operating system, although our review unit was supplied with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit already installed to save us the effort. Everything else is included. …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 12:02

  • Boffins builds lithium battery that can't explode

    Solution: get rid of the metallic lithium

    Scientists from Stanford University in the US have worked out how to build a lithium-sulphur battery that doesn't require a lithium metal electrode. That, they say, will make it free from the "serious safety issues" that have been holding the technology back. Lithium-sulphur is seen as a strong contender for the next …

    Reg Hardware 15 Mar 12:09

  • Ex-Sun man Bray takes on paranoid Android role at Google

    Disses Apple iPhone's 'Disney-fied walled garden'

    XML co-inventor and languages expert Tim Bray has taken a job at Google just a month after he left Sun Microsystems Oracle. "As of this morning I work for Google. The title is 'Developer Advocate'. The focus is Android. Fun is expected," he wrote in a blog post titled "Now A No-Evil Zone". Bray, who is among a growing list of …

    Mobile 15 Mar 12:09

  • Carly Fiorina downs sinister Democrat hot air balloon

    Hugely-inflated Barbara Boxer menaces California

    The team driving Carly Fiorina's bid to become Republican senator for California is apparently still relying heavily on mind-altering substances during its campaign brainstorming sessions, if this pop at Democrat incumbent Barbara Boxer is anything to go by: Fans of Fiorina will recall that there was more than a trace of …

    Bootnotes 15 Mar 12:12

  • Pirate Bay founders get post-Sweden election appeal date

    Court says wait 'til leaves turn brown

    The Pirate Bay appeal finally has a tentative autumn 2010 date set for the founders of the infamous BitTorrent tracker website. In April last year Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg were found guilty in a Swedish court of being accessories to breaching copyright laws. Immediately after the …

    Music and Media 15 Mar 12:39

  • Cybercrime losses almost double

    FBI figures show huge rise in online miscreantage

    US net crime loss complaints almost doubled in value from $265m in 2008 to reach $560m last year, according to official figures. An annual report of the FBI-backed Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), published on Friday, reports that the unit handled 336,655 complaints in 2009, a 22.3 percent increase on 2008. Around 16 …

    Crime 15 Mar 12:51

  • Spooks scramble to replace failed secret messaging system

    CLiC to pick up the pieces

    MI6 and GCHQ have begun work to replace an aborted secret communications system that wasted tens of millions of pounds. The failed project, SCOPE Phase II, was run out of the Cabinet Office with IBM as the main contractor. The intelligence agencies have taken direct control of its replacement, CLiC (Collaboration in the …

    IT Director 15 Mar 12:59

  • Are West Bromwich Borg pliers actually side cutters?

    Our experts probe Street View transdimensional DIY mystery

    The revelation last Friday that West Bromwich was under threat of subjugation by a transdimensional DIY superpower prompted a few commentards to question our use of the word "pliers" to describe the threat: Indeed, some of our beloved readers suggested what we're dealing with here are in fact supersized flying side cutters, …

    Bootnotes 15 Mar 13:01

  • Historian warns against copyright-fight heavy hitting

    No one likes a bully

    Copyright-dependent industries risk alienating the public and undermining intellectual property laws with their unregulated and aggressive tactics, according to an historian who has studied nearly 400 years of piracy and intellectual property law. Adrian Johns, a professor of history at Chicago University, told technology law …

    Law 15 Mar 13:36

  • Ad industry OKs climate porn

    You write the cheques, we'll drown the puppies

    The UK advertising industry has bravely decided it can continue to accept millions of pounds from the state to create alarming climate advertisements, despite inaccuracies and a storm of complaints from parents. The principled decision, from the admen's self-regulatory body the ASA, follows 939 complaints about the UK energy …

    Environment 15 Mar 13:57

  • Dealing with unstructured content

    On Demand Managing blind - how to see the problems

    You can't manage what you can't even see. In these days of continuing data growth, it's becoming increasingly difficult to know what's stored where, and who's got access. It's not anybody's fault of course - we can squarely lay the blame at the feet of increasingly fragmented IT environments and the propensity of all and …

    Tech Panel 15 Mar 14:11

  • Dedicated Vi device vies for buyers

    Ninety-quid NanoNote runs Doom, Quake

    The NanoNote is a £90 portable computer, sporting open source hardware and software, but no wireless and little more than a Vi editor in the way of applications. The device comes from Qi-Hardware and features a 3in colour screen, 2GB of Flash storage along with 32MB of Ram, but not much in the way of applications as it will …

    PCs & Chips 15 Mar 14:39

  • UK tech companies call for government tax breaks

    You can be big and perfectly formed too, y'know

    UK technology firms are calling on the government to slash taxes to help create thousands of new jobs in the IT sector. According to a report in today's Financial Times, the likes of Alchemy, Iris, Kewill and other IT players in Blighty think that UK.gov should recognise the strength that the 1.5 million-strong tech workforce …

    Financial News 15 Mar 15:24

  • EU fails to shift unwanted perv scanners

    Power mad despots and oligarchs only likely buyers

    The European Parliament has failed to offload the half-dozen body scanners it bought in 2005, shortly before MEPs decided the technology was intrusive - even for normal people. The scanners were bought in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but only turned up in 2005, by which time things had calmed down a bit. They were …

    Government 15 Mar 15:27

  • Twitter bomb hoax man changes plea

    Not guilty

    A UK man accused of posting a Twitter update that was taken as a threat to blow Doncaster airport "sky high" is to face trial, and has changed his plea to not guilty. Paul Chambers, 26, allegedly posted the contentious update on 6 January, after a run of bad weather forced the Yorkshire airport to close a week before he was …

    Policing 15 Mar 15:33

  • Mole-cruiser planned to attack Iranian nuke bunkers

    Pentagon's rum burrower-bomb revealed

    The US military is looking for help in building a robotic subterranean mole-craft, intended to deliver burrowing kamikaze strikes against underground bunker complexes and suchlike. This is a bloody strange nuke bunker. This news comes to us courtesy of a US government request for information, flagged up by the excellent …

    Science 15 Mar 16:23

  • US National Broadband plan goes to Congress

    Bigger, better, faster than anyone else, in theory

    All Americans will be entitled to 4Mb/sec broadband, and America will have the fastest mobile network in the world, under the FCC's plan for the future of internet access. The Federal Communications Commission today presented the plan to Congress. The rest of us will have to wait until tomorrow to get the details, though a …

    Telecoms 15 Mar 16:25

  • VMware opens up Workstation 7.1 beta

    More cores, fatter disks, and Fedora 12

    Server and desktop virtualization giant VMware has opened up beta testing on its latest desktop hypervisor, Workstation 7.1. Workstation 7 was announced last October in the wake of Microsoft's Windows 7 blitz. Workstation 7 was based on a variant of the VMware hypervisor, and it can carve up a desktop PC, laptop, or …

    Operating Systems 15 Mar 16:56

  • Facebook users warned over stalk-my-profile scam

    Crap snoop app escapes whack-a-mole policy

    A bogus application that lures Facebook users by falsely offering to show who has been viewing their profile has been exposed as a scam. Rik Ferguson, a senior security consultant at Trend Micro, warns he has already identified 25 different copies of the same rogue app but using different monikers such as peeppeep-pro, profile …

    Malware 15 Mar 16:59

  • Crooks plant fake payment card terminals at multiple stores

    'Visually identical' pads siphoned customer data

    Crooks planted bogus payment card processing terminals at multiple locations operated by the Hancock Fabrics chain store that allowed for the theft of sensitive financial data from customers, the company warned. The personal identification number pads were stolen in August and September and "replaced with visually identical, …

    Crime 15 Mar 17:52

  • Battle lines drawn in Apple-Google warfare

    Updated Top talent choosing sides - or bailing

    The battle between Apple and Google is heating up, with execs taking potshots at each other and Silicon Valley insiders choosing sides - some by getting new business cards. "It's World War III. Amazing animosity is motivating two of the most powerful people in the industry," a "well-connected" investor told The New York Times …

    Music and Media 15 Mar 19:05

  • Windows Phone 7: free tools, captive Marketplace

    Mix10 Microsoft apes Apple

    Microsoft aims to lure Windows Phone 7 developers with free tools. That's the good news. The less-good news is that Redmond plans to lock down the platform à la Apple's App Store. These revelations were part of Microsoft's baptism of the development platform for Windows Phone 7 on Monday at the Mix10 conference for web …

    Mobile 15 Mar 20:05

  • Microsoft pushes temporary security fix to IE laggards

    For those too stubborn to upgrade

    Microsoft has released automated workarounds designed to immunize users against a critical vulnerability in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, which criminals are already exploiting online. The "Fix It" updates were released over the weekend for people who still use IE versions 6 and 7. The fixes are by no means foolproof. …

    Malware 15 Mar 20:40

  • The $20K iPad

    Diamonds are a fanboi's best friend

    If you're an Apple fanboi with $19,999 burning a hole in your pocket, why not spend it on The World's First Diamond iPad? Doing so would greatly please John Mervis, Digital Strategist for Mervis Diamond Importers, a third-generation family business in the Washington DC area. As Mervis told The Reg: "We've always been trying to …

    PCs & Chips 15 Mar 22:17

  • Man gets 30 months in prison for taping nude sportscaster

    Erin Andrews bids adieu to peephole stalker

    A Chicago-area man was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for secretly taking videos of America's sexiest sportscaster in the nude and then posting them online. Michael David Barrett, 49, was also ordered to pay $7,366 in restitution to Erin Andrews, the ESPN bombshell he stalked over an 18-month period starting in …

    Crime 15 Mar 23:24