16th April 2010 Archive

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Oracle tunes Solaris for Intel's big Xeons

Eight-socket box catching up Sparc

Word is trickling out of Oracle that is recently acquired Solaris has been heavily tuned to support Intel's new eight-core Nehalem-EX Xeon 7500 beasties. Pity, then, Oracle does not yet seem to have a Nehalem-EX box in the field. But the indications are that Oracle is working on an eight-socket box. First, said eight-socket …

Servers 16 Apr 06:02
MySQL under Oracle: No changes, except to what we say

MySQL Con Talent pool persists

Kaj Arnö veered from the official keynote topic on The State of the MySQL Community and tackled the integration of MySQL into Oracle at the MySQL users’ conference on Thursday. Or, in the words of the affable vice president of database community: "How the mapping of MySQL into Oracle is going. What's happening, what has …

Applications 16 Apr 06:02
Attacks exploit unpatched weakness in Adobe apps

Ham-handed PDF peril from Zeus

Criminals behind the notorious Zeus crimeware package have begun exploiting an unpatched hole in the widely used portable document format to install malware on end user computers. The booby-trapped PDF documents arrive in emails that purport to contain a billing invoice, according to a post from M86 Security Labs. If the user …

Security 16 Apr 06:02
Is Xiotech right on thin controllers?

Comment Do or diet

Slim down those controllers! A return to thin controller arrays is being advised by Xiotech, which wants us to get away from the current 'fat controller' syndrome. The idea is that too much functionality has been pushed down the storage stack and both modular and monolithic arrays now do fancy things like zero space …

Storage 16 Apr 07:02
Activision Tony Hawk Ride skateboard controller

Review A board game, for real

Trying your hand at skateboarding without falling on your bum or grazing your knees is now possible, all thanks to a videogame. Based on pro-skateboarder Tony Hawk it has been developed to allow you to perform virtual ollies, grinds and flip tricks using a wireless skateboard peripheral. Ride comes before a fall: Activision's …

reghardware 16 Apr 07:02
Sleep-scheduling software developed for ISS astronauts

Knit-up-the-ravelled-sleeve-of-care 'ware

American space boffins say they have developed fiendishly cunning software which uses "complex mathematical formulas" to work out the best times for people on irregular schedules to have a kip. Code zed. The schlaf-ware was developed by programmers at the US National Space Biomedical Research Institute, aimed specifically …

Space 16 Apr 08:02
Ofcom hangs fire until after Olympics

No wireless mics decision till torch is out

Ofcom has decided to hold off making decisions on wireless microphones until after the Olympics, but won't be paying replacement value of the kit it makes redundant. Back in December 2007 Ofcom proposed that a new band manager should be appointed, to licence out the Program Makers & Special Event (PMSE) frequencies. But since …

Mobile 16 Apr 08:02
Online retailers cannot deduct delivery fee when making refunds

Judges hand out takeaway ruling

Online shopping customers who send back goods straight away must not be charged for their delivery, Europe's top court has said. Consumers can be required to pay the cost of returning the goods but should be refunded every other cost, it said. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said that Germany should not have …

Channel Register 16 Apr 08:31
C&W wraps up three-year court case

Cleared of delaying Caribbean competition

Cable & Wireless has been cleared of deliberately delaying telecoms market competition in the Caribbean, though even the judge attributed his decision in part to poorly drafted regulations. The case was brought by Digicel back in July 2007 and relates to how the Caribbean telecom market was opened up to competition after 2002 …

Mobile 16 Apr 08:38
Sony Ericsson turns in a...profit

Sells less, makes more

Sony Ericsson is celebrating a first quarter which saw the company making money, despite selling almost a third fewer handset than this time last year. Sony Ericsson was expected to lose money this quarter: a Reuters poll of analysts averaged the expected loss at €157m. But the company has rather surprised the market by …

Mobile 16 Apr 08:52
Icelandic ash cloud to keep UK skies closed 'til Saturday

Update Nobody's getting in or out without a boat for a bit

UK air-traffic authorities have confirmed that flights will remain grounded until at least the early hours of Saturday morning as dangerous ash clouds from an Icelandic volcano continue to blanket the nation. Pesky volcano. The National Air Traffic Service (NATS), currently operating a special holding website to deal with …

Science 16 Apr 09:00
Chinese go beyond binary with ternary molecule

Memory sandwich molecule munches three bits

Scientists in Singapore and Taiwan have developed an organic molecule which can have three electrically-readable states, making a ternary rather than binary device possible. Binary devices have two electrically readable states, corresponding to a one or zero. Ternary devices have three: zero, one or two. Consequently they …

PCs & Chips 16 Apr 09:22
G Cloud guy Bellamy says bye-bye to Cabinet Office

CfH director discharges self

The former Connecting for Health director Martin Bellamy is planning to leave his role in charge of the Cabinet Office team developing the G Cloud. The Cabinet Office confirmed the move but declined to give the date of his departure. A spokesperson said that Bellamy is continuing with work on the G Cloud – the plan for an …

Government 16 Apr 09:37
Change management in x86 server estates

Workshop Where's my @*>##% VM gone?

Changes to the IT environment are the source of some of the biggest headaches for the IT pro. They probably always will be, for the obvious reason that accidents aside, the most straightforward way of destabilising an IT system is to change it. However, change is inevitable: by and large, dealing with such changes, and …

Server Management 16 Apr 09:44
Toshiba intros consumer desktop replacements

15, 16 and 17in beasts announced

Toshiba has introduced a quartet of new Satellite laptops if hopes will tempt with their big screens and extended keyboards. Top of the list is the A660, which sports a 16in, 1366 x 768 display, a choice of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, up to 8GB of memory and up to 640GB of hard drive storage. It has Harman Kardon …

reghardware 16 Apr 09:49
Zeus spyware pretends to be Royal Mail PDF

The postman always zings twice. Zing!

Zeus spyware Trojan variants have begun using PDF files to package exploits. Thousands of spammed messages containing exploit-ridden attachments posing as delivery notices from the Royal Mail have been intercepted by net security firm Websense this week. The PDF attachment contains an embedded executable containing the Zeus …

Malware 16 Apr 09:58
Orange re-bundles broadband

It's the new unbundling

Orange is to give up running its own broadband network, and will rebundle its service to leave BT Wholesale to compete with itself. Orange will hand over its existing infrastructure to BT Wholesale, and will continue to operate as a bundled broadband provider in the same mould as Vodafone, Tesco and the dozen or so other ISPs …

Telecoms 16 Apr 10:12
Alleged MI6 traitor also accused of betraying spies

Spy on our spy as he hunts their spy?

The former MI6 officer accused of trying to sell spying secrets is also now charged with trying to trade lists of British intelligence personnel, a court heard. The new charge against 25-year-old Daniel Houghton was added at a hearing at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court on Thursday. Piers Arnold, for the prosecution, said …

Government 16 Apr 10:18
Obama: We're off to Mars

And let's land on an asteroid, too, says prez

President Barack Obama yesterday insisted that US astronauts will reach Mars by the mid-2030s, during a speech in which he stressed "nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space than I am". Speaking to a "polite" crowd of around 200 staff and guests at the Kennedy Space Center, Obama dismissed …

Space 16 Apr 10:21
Volcanic Eyjafjallajökull dirt-splurt space snap

Pic ESA offers plane-buster Icelandic gunge plume sat pic

The ESA has released this pic of the Icelandic volcano plume currently paralyzing air traffic above northern Europe and Britain. The pic was snapped yesterday by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer instrument aboard the Envisat spacecraft, before the plume had spread to cover the southern UK. Tongue-twisting glacier …

Science 16 Apr 10:49
AA intros car parking space locator app

Have you paid and displayed?

Not sure where to find your nearest NCP? Drivers can now look it up on an iPhone thanks to the Automobile Association. The AA has released an app that allows you to enter a location and get a map showing where you'll find parking bays, be they free or not. Street parking options appear to have been omitted, however. And to …

reghardware 16 Apr 10:50
UK Blu-ray Disc sales shoot up

But still some way from catching DVD

Brits bought 2.7m Blu-ray Discs in the first three months of 2010 - 69.5 per cent more than they purchased in Q1 2009. So said the British Video Association, a trade organisation representing publishers and retailers, this week. Some 15.6m BDs have been bought since the format first appeared over here in 2006. The BVA was …

reghardware 16 Apr 10:54
Billy Connolly invades TomTom (for £8.99)

No swearing, no dirty bits

We love Billy Connolly - but listening to the foul-mouthed comic day-in, day-out as the satnav voice in the car? That could be too much, even for diehards like us. Today, the Big Yin joins the line-up of voices available to TomTom's 40 million users across Europe. They can download Billy's voice at http://www.tomtom.com/ …

reghardware 16 Apr 11:07
US government probes HP bribery claims

Investigation widens

US Securities and Exchange Commission regulators are reportedly probing bribery allegations against tech giant HP, after its Moscow headquarters were raided by Russian investigators earlier this week. German and Russian authorities are already looking into claims that HP bribed its way to victory in a big contract. They …

Channel Register 16 Apr 11:12
India boasts more mobes than bogs

'Quick, text me the address of the nearest khazi'

A UN think tank has revealed that almost half of India's 1.2 billion population has access to that most basic of human needs - a mobile phone - although a good proportion of them will not be using it while sitting on the toilet. According to a United Nations University (UNU) study (summary here in pdf), "545 million cell …

Mobile 16 Apr 11:13
Memristors can maybe learn like synapses

Human-brain-like computers, annihilation of humanity one step closer

Memristors can potentially learn like synapses and be used to build human brain-like computers according to Wei Lu, a University of Michigan scientist. He thinks that two CMOS circuits connected by a memristor is analogous to two neurons in the brain connected by a synapse. It is thought that synaptic connections strengthen as …

PCs & Chips 16 Apr 11:15
MS kernel patch skirts infected machines

Damage control bypasses pwned PCs

Microsoft's latest batch of patches contains a kernel update designed not to install on machines infected with a rootkit. The move is designed to prevent the confusion that occurred when one of the patches released in February resulted in a Blue Screen of Death and continuous reboot cycles on some Windows XP machines. …

Malware 16 Apr 11:18
Newsnight tries banalysis 2.0 for Prime Ministerial debates

Comment Tag clouds: Not in my name

The obsession of the media and political worlds with pointless info-toys met a new nadir last night, during the webby part of Newsnight's otherwise respectable coverage of the first Prime Ministerial debate. Reporter Justin Rowlatt was tasked with using the power of "tag clouds" - also known as Wordles - to offer insights into …

Government 16 Apr 11:44
Microsoft coughs to Visual Studio 2010 upgrade delay

Tells customers to play with trial version instead

Microsoft has been forced to delay delivery of some Visual Studio 2010 Professional Upgrade pre-orders due to a “product fulfillment issue”, The Register has learned. The company apologised to EMEA customers who had ordered the software via the Microsoft online store ahead of its release earlier this week. "We apologise for …

Developer 16 Apr 11:48
Think you can outdo the political mob?

Register your candidacy before it's too late

So you’d like to stand for parliament? There's still time and if you have a spare £500 to burn you may yet be up before the electorate on 6 May. Provided that is you're not a convicted criminal. The absolute deadline for getting your nominations in to your local Returning Officer is 4pm on Tuesday 20 April. You need to be be …

Government 16 Apr 12:02
Google snubs Labs again with brace of Gmail features

Drag-and-Drop in the cloud, man

Google released a brace of features yesterday that the company uncharacteristically slotted straight into Gmail without testing them out with its users in Google Labs first. Gmailers reading their email through a Chrome or Firefox 3.6 browser can now drag-and-drop attachments from their desktop directly into a message. A …

Applications 16 Apr 12:09
New road made from pigsh*t in Missouri

Porcine dandruff almost sty-mies chocolate highway plan

Planet-friendly pigfarm barons in Missouri have come up with a brilliant new plan for disposing of their porcine portfolios' pungent poo output. They have developed a process which turns pigshit into road tarmac. The St Louis Post-Dispatch has the story, describing pigmuck tech kingpin Kent Schien's 10-year quest to quell the …

Science 16 Apr 12:30
El Reg PARIS team unboxes some toys

Vids Lights, space cameras, action...

El Reg's Paper Aircraft Released into Space (PARIS) team has been busy acquiring some toys for our world-beating attempt to boldly put the Vulture 1 paper plane where no paper plane has ever been put before. While work on the Vulture 1 release mechanism, which will separate the vehicle from the main payload, continues to cause …

Science 16 Apr 12:53
Police send Reg hack CRB check database

Exclusive Massive security breach prompts investigation

Police face accusations of incompetence after accidentally emailing a file detailing the results of thousands of criminal records checks to a Register journalist. The author of the email at Gwent Police is now facing a gross misconduct investigation and potential sacking over the incident, which came to light this week. The …

Policing 16 Apr 13:44
Bromsgrove lass slapped with Boozbo

No alcohol anywhere in England and Wales

A 20-year-old Bromsgrove woman has been slapped with a drinking banning order (DBO) which prevents her from drinking or buying alcohol anywhere in England and Wales. Laura Hall had already been barred from all of her Worcestershire home town's watering holes when Kidderminster Magistrates' Court imposed the order, which will …

Bootnotes 16 Apr 13:46
But is that really cloud?

Reader Mini-Poll What constitutes ‘proper’ cloud computing

Cloud computing is one of the most talked about topics in the industry at the moment. One of the difficulties, however, is that it is sometimes hard to work out exactly what people mean by it. Different vendors and service providers use the term in relation to some quite different types of offering. Various well-meaning …

Servers 16 Apr 13:53
Hentai malware publishes web history of marks online

Tentacle-smut shakedown

A Trojan circulating in Japan seeks to extort money from shame-faced fans of hentai-themed games. Those who download illegal copies of ”over 18″ hentai-themed games from file sharing networks are liable to wind up with a nasty surprise, Trend Micro warns. Some bogus files posing as games from Abel software attempt to trick …

Malware 16 Apr 13:56
New ISS machine makes water from waste CO₂

Backup for buggy re-wee golden barrel rolled out

Thirsty astronauts orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have just gained a handy new source of water to eke out supplies shipped up from Earth and those from the station's famously erratic urine recycling system. The new Sabatier Reactor, named for the Nobel prize-winning French chemist who developed …

Space 16 Apr 14:32
Hasselblad CFV-39 digital back

Review 39Mp upgrade for your 50-year-old camera, anyone?

In a world constantly upgrading and adding new innovative features to tempt users into buying a new piece of gear; it is truly refreshing to come across a product that not only raises the bar on quality, but reuses old camera systems - giving them a new lease of life. The CFV-39 digital back is something of a revelation, because …

reghardware 16 Apr 15:02
Oracle ponies up $685m for Phase Forward

Larry Ellison on drugs discovery trip

Oracle's software strategy as it takes on application software industry leader SAP is to not only work on its own systems, thanks to its $7.4bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems, but to beat SAP at having software packages aimed at very precise customer sets. This morning, Oracle took over the software space relating to drug …

Applications 16 Apr 15:06
Steve Jobs bans all apps from iPhone (or thereabouts)

Code translation verboten. Whatever that means

You could argue that the new Jobsian SDK bars developers from writing any application for the iPhone - unless they possess some sort of savant-like ability to think solely in Objective C. The much-discussed software development kit for the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 says that native applications must be "originally written" in …

Developer 16 Apr 17:25
Microsoft wants pacemaker password tattoos

The keys to my heart are on my foot

A Microsoft researcher has suggested tattooing passwords on patients with pacemakers and other implanted medical devices to ensure the remotely-controlled gadgets can be accessed during emergencies. The proposal, by Stuart Schechter of Microsoft Research, is the latest to grapple with the security of implanted medical devices …

Security 16 Apr 19:00
Apple backs down from Pulitzer putsch

Updated Political toonist can 'resubmit'

Apple has invited Pultizer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore to resubmit his NewsToons iPhone app that was rejected last December because it "ridicules public figures." "I feel kind of guilty," Fiore told The Wall Street Journal, "I'm getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer." Well, Mark, that too …

Mobile 16 Apr 19:04
IBM's Power 780 pushes the value envelope

Lotta flash, fewer cores on TPC-C test

After several months of tuning and tweaking in its benchmark labs, IBM has finally released a TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark test result for its new Power7-based servers. Rather than presenting results on a number of heavily configured machines, IBM has packed a lot of flash storage into a relatively skinny …

Servers 16 Apr 19:42
Ellison's database customers slip slidin' to x86

Where's a server deal when you need one?

When Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison doubled down on Unix with his $5.6bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems, his customers were moving away from RISC systems. Half of Oracle's customers are running their database instances on x86, while those who aren't will do so "shortly". A survey of Oracle customers found that while …

Servers 16 Apr 21:03
Jobs to iPad skeptic: 'Are you nuts?'

Euro launch conspiracy theory quashed

A European iPad fancier emailed Steve Jobs that he feared a nefarious plot was behind the delay of his rendezvous with Apple's "magical and revolutionary" device. Jobs' reponse: "Are you nuts?" And unlike his other indignant, off-the-cuff email outbursts, this time Jobs may be right. Swiss business consultant Paul Shadwell …

Music and Media 16 Apr 21:09
School secretly snapped 1000s of students at home

Some while sleeping or partially undressed

A suburban Philadelphia school district secretly captured thousands of images of students in their homes, sometimes as they slept or were partially undressed, according to documents filed in federal court. Using a system to track lost or stolen laptops, officials from the Lower Merion School District also covertly surveilled …

Security 16 Apr 23:02