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20th April 2010 Archive

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  • 'iPhone 4G' loser outed

    Updated Engineer + suds = career crash

    As promised, Gizmodo has identified the unfortunate soul who left his prototype iPhone 4G in a northern Silicon Valley pub. That'd be Gray Powell, a 27-year-old Apple software engineer working on the call-enabling iPhone Baseband Software. But before we tell his story as reported by Gizmodo, we feel compelled to first say …

    Mobile 20 Apr 01:02

  • Bond 23 suspended 'indefinitely'

    007 grounded as MGM struggles

    The producers of Daniel Craig's third outing as James Bond have suspended the production "indefinitely" due to "continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of MGM and the failure to close a sale of the studio". According to the BBC, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of Eon Productions said they didn't know when work on …

    Entertainment 20 Apr 05:28

  • Cyberattack lifted Google password system code, says report

    'Chinese' hack nabbed single-sign-on source

    When alleged Chinese hackers infiltrated Google's internal systems in December, they lifted source code for a password system that controls access to almost all of the company's web services, according to a report citing a person with direct knowledge of Google's investigation into the matter. The New York Times reports that …

    Security 20 Apr 05:55

  • Apple sued over iPhone aqua sensors

    Liquid larceny litigation

    Apple is facing a class-action lawsuit that alleges Cupertino is using faulty moisture sensors in its iPhones and iPods to unfairly deny warranty service. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court of Northern California last Thursday, alleges that Apple denies coverage when a device's Liquid Contact Indicators (LCIs) show …

    Mobile 20 Apr 06:02

  • Drupal 7: Sooner or later, but hopefully sooner

    DrupalCon 2010 Too many bugs, not enough sites

    Drupal 7 will be finished by June 2010 - if things go well. If they don't, it'll be the autumn - a year after construction was supposedly done and just testing and debugging remained. It all depends on whether 114 critical bugs can be fixed, the creator of the open-source content management system (CMS) Dryes Buytaert told …

    Applications 20 Apr 06:04

  • Livescribe Pulse Smartpen

    Review Save your scribbles

    Who would have thought something as basic as the pen could be up for a geek-friendly makeover? The folk behind the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, obviously, because what they’ve come up with is a pen which can record your writing and anything you or others say, and then squirt it all into a computer for keeping and sharing. …

    reghardware 20 Apr 07:02

  • Ubuntu Server primed for the bigtime

    Ready for the RHEL world

    Next Thursday, Canonical will open the internet floodgates and allow end user downloads of Ubuntu 10.04 Server Edition, the latest and perhaps most significant release for servers in the British company's six year history. Ubuntu 10.04 is what Canonical calls a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means Canonical guarantees …

    Operating Systems 20 Apr 07:02

  • Managing UC – you need to be in control

    Workshop No room for backseat drivers

    Love it or hate it (and from the feedback we have seen from Reg readers, the jury is still very much out on this one), Unified Communications (UC) is here to stay, and it will increasingly make its presence felt in the workplace. Not only will it change the way people work, but also the way the IT environment is managed. While …

    Unified Comms 20 Apr 08:10

  • Flights resume in Scotland - Gatwick and Heathrow still shut

    Rumblings of more ash ahead

    Flights from some Scottish airports are flying to Stornoway this morning but there are fears that more eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano could mean even more delays for stranded passengers. The latest from the Met office suggests that although eruptions continue they are weaker than they were over the weekend. But …

    Environment 20 Apr 08:11

  • UK IT job outfit punts 491 private email addys

    Yeah, I'll just stick the database in the 'To:' field

    UK IT recruitment outfit ecrm people has pulled off a bit of blinder by exposing the email addresses of what appears to be its entire mailing list of potential candidates for a Senior Web Developer post in London. The missive, suitably censored here to protect the innocent, begins: From: Ross Miller [mailto:Ross.Miller@ …

    Small Biz 20 Apr 09:13

  • Seagate media player streams HD video to goggle boxes

    FreeAgent Theatre upgraded

    Seagate's FreeAgent Theater home media player can now deliver streamed video to your TV from YouTube, Netflix and other internet sources. The FreeAgent Home Theater is a combination of an HD media player and a FreeAgent Go portable drive. Once it's connected to your PC, bundled software copies all of your media files to the Go …

    Storage 20 Apr 09:19

  • Swedish Pirate Party membership numbers sinks

    Pirate Bay supporters jump ship a year after verdict

    Pirate Party membership in Sweden has plummeted by around 50 per cent as erstwhile supporters fail to renew their alliance to the party. The outfit saw a surge in interest this time last year when the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay had just been found guilty in a Swedish court of being accessories to breaching copyright …

    Music and Media 20 Apr 09:28

  • Election promises: Wi-Fi chain gangs and maximum wage

    What the other 'sensible' parties are proposing

    The big three are not the only parties in the coming general election. Here are some highlights the other allegedly sensible parties might have in store for us if elected. First up, the Green Party, which might just steal a seat in the Brighton Pavilion constituency. Their manifesto (pdf), like those of the Lib Dems and Labour …

    Government 20 Apr 09:41

  • 'Goodness, evilness makes you powerful' - like the Force

    Pure heart = x10 strength. Lust, hatred = mind choke?

    Profs at Harvard uni, Cambridge*, America, say they have discovered a crucial meta-physiological effect. Being extremely good and moral - or conversely highly evil - actually confers mental and even physical powers on a person. "People perceive those who do good and evil to have more efficacy, more willpower, and less …

    Biology 20 Apr 09:45

  • Pinhead Mac Trojan sticks it to fanbois

    HellRTS-D snooping for backdoors

    Miscreants have created a new strain of Trojan horse malware that establishes a backdoor on compromised Macs. HellRTS-D (AKA Pinhead-B) disguises itself as the iPhoto photo application. The Trojan is a new variant of a strain of malware first reported in 2004, reports Mac security specialist firm Intego. The Trojan, developed …

    Malware 20 Apr 10:11

  • Data Protection Manager flies cloudwards

    CloudRecovery links into DPM

    Iron Mountain has enhanced its CloudRecovery product with support for Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 so that users can send DPM-gathered data to its cloud storage vault. The company says the latest release of CloudRecovery offers multi-terabyte scalability and retains support for DPM 2007 with SP 1. It can retain data for …

    Storage 20 Apr 10:54

  • Exploiting the new dynamism

    Lab Got the new kit? Now make it work

    A combination of today’s fast moving, interconnected trading environments and economic uncertainty drives the need for robust yet flexible business support from IT. Yet many IT departments are constrained in their ability to respond to changing business requirements because of the relatively static way in which IT has …

    Platform Evolution 20 Apr 10:58

  • Sony Vaio M Atom 2.0 netbook

    Review If you can't beat 'em...

    The new Vaio M is the first Sony netbook to be pitched at the increasingly common £300 price point and it is also the first to use the now equally common 1024 x 600 resolution screen. This display choice suggests that – after the highly desirable but horrendously expensive P Series and the cheaper but still unpopular hi-rez W …

    reghardware 20 Apr 11:02

  • First among SQLs

    Stob COBOL for lawyers

    Legend has it that Edgar 'Ted' Codd got the idea for SQL while attending a 'Sky at Night' spin-off lecture. Patrick Moore, pointing at the blackboard, said: 'Select a star from the table'. 'That's it!', cried Codd, and ran out the door to follow up his inspiration forthwith, missing a good discussion of vulcanoids. Though born …

    Verity Stob 20 Apr 11:03

  • Mystic Met closed Europe with computer model

    And not much data

    So the UK Met Office closed European civilian airspace on the basis of one computer model, which it didn't check against reality. We already knew that the great volcano shut-down was based on a model, but we didn't know how little atmospheric sampling was performed to test the simulation against the atmosphere. It turns out only …

    Science 20 Apr 11:05

  • iPhone users suffer summer appointment chaos

    Spring forward, fall backward

    iPhone users are turning to Google for help as an incompatibility with Outlook shifts appointments by an hour instead of switching on daylight saving. iTunes version 9.1 currently can't cope with daylight saving time, shifting appointments by an hour or even a day as it struggles to cooperate with Microsoft Outlook. Given the …

    Mobile 20 Apr 11:23

  • Yahoo! hires! ex-Microsoft! Windows! Live! man!

    Hopes to wow advertisers with science, art and, er, scale

    Yahoo! confirmed yesterday that ex-Microsoft man Blake Irving will take on the role of chief product officer and report directly to the company’s boss, Carol Bartz. He will team up with Yahoo!’s top scientist, Prabhakar Raghavan, to lead “innovation efforts” at the firm, it said. As previously reported, Irving will replace …

    Applications 20 Apr 11:30

  • Leica launches its first geo-tagging compact

    V-Lux 20 makes its debut

    Leica has introduced its first camera with integrated geo-tagging able to stamp snaps with your location anywhere in the world... except China, apparently. The camera also supports the new SDXC memory card format. The compact, 103 x 62 x 33mm V-Lux 20 has a 12.1Mp sensor and a 12x optical zoom. The lens runs from 4.1mm to 49. …

    reghardware 20 Apr 11:34

  • Security boffins build broadband speed quantum crypto network

    A scram-jet for secure scrambling

    UK-based boffins have set a new record for quantum key distribution in a move that paves the way towards faster high security communication networks for banks and governments. Toshiba Research Europe Cambridge hit a sustained secure bit rate exceeding 1 Mbps over 50 km of fibre for the first time, around 100-1000 times faster …

    Enterprise Security 20 Apr 12:02

  • Space Station lightsabre-sparring hoverdroids to be upgraded

    ISS mini-globes get tractor beams, crowdsauce greasing

    In further Star Wars-themed international space station (ISS) news, it has emerged that not only is the orbiting space base soon to be equipped with a robot named "R2", but that its complement of small, spherical hoverdroids - not unlike those famously used by Luke Skywalker aboard the Millennium Falcon for light-sabre sparring …

    Space 20 Apr 12:20

  • Broadband boss: 'The end of freeloading is nigh'

    There's no such thing as a freetard's lunch

    The telecomms industry is in a Mexican stand-off and we'll have to pay for the data we use. So reckons David Williams, the outspoken chief executive of broadband-by-satellite outfit the Avanti Group. Williams had an interesting letter in the FT yesterday castigating "content free loaders". So I gave him a call. Williams' …

    Telecoms 20 Apr 12:23

  • Music festival organisers warn punters about dodgy tickets

    Some sites as smelly as three-day old concert-goers

    As Glastonbury confirmed today that Latin pop sensation Shakira will play at this year's festival, organisers of various summer concerts have warned punters to beware of fake tickets. Festival Republic said yesterday that customers searching online for tickets to Reading and Leeds festivals, which take place in August this …

    ID 20 Apr 12:37

  • Discovery touches down at Kennedy

    Safe homecoming for STS-131 mission

    Space shuttle Discovery touched down at Kennedy Space Center at 13:08 GMT today, marking the end of its STS-131 mission to the International Space Station. A first landing attempt yesterday was waved off because of rain and cloud. Discovery lifted off on 5 April, carrying the Leonardo multi-purpose logistics module packed with …

    Space 20 Apr 13:11

  • 3G iPad ship date named

    Pre-orders made good

    Apple's 3G iPad will go on sale on Friday, 30 April, the company has just said. This will, of course, come as no relief to UK buyers, who won't get their mitts on the thing - or on the Wi-Fi only model - until the end of May. Punters Stateside will have to wait until 5pm on the big day before they can get one across the …

    reghardware 20 Apr 13:20

  • Rogue admin waits for verdict

    BOFH faces jail for password refusal

    San Francisco's rogue sysadmin Terry Childs, who refused to reveal passwords when he was sacked, could learn his fate later today. The jury has started deliberating on whether Childs is guilty of locking the city out of its own network. He faces up to five years in prison if found guilty. Childs refused to hand over passwords …

    Crime 20 Apr 13:31

  • Amazon purges account hijacking threat from site

    XSS no more

    Amazon.com administrators on Tuesday closed a security vulnerability that made it possible for attackers to steal user login credentials for the highly trafficked e-commerce website. The XSS, or cross-site scripting, bug on Amazon Wireless allowed attackers to steal the session IDs that are used to grant users access to their …

    Enterprise Security 20 Apr 13:54

  • European Commission details Five Year Security Plan

    Stronger data protection, ID theft to be a crime

    The European Commission has revealed some more details of how it intends to get the Stockholm Programme to strengthen security enacted into law by 2014. The Commission promises to strengthen data protection law, make ID theft a criminal offence, introduce new hacking offences, improve the rights of those accused of crimes, …

    Government 20 Apr 14:59

  • Panasas adds high-capacity archive box

    High-performance computing sees a boost

    High-performance computing scale-out NAS supplier Panasas is launching its PAS HC product, a high-capacity archive store. Panasas supplies PAS 7, 8 and 9 systems for high-performance computing (HPC) and performance-dependent technical applications needing fast access to millions of files. It uses its PanFS filesystem to …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 15:14

  • IBM pares down Power7 blade server

    Cuts cores and memory in half, but not price

    One of the blade servers using IBM's new Power7 processors got lost in the shuffle last week. The single-socket Power Systems 701 and the dual-socket, double-wide Power Systems 702 were launched together, but there was another baby blade in a separate announcement, the Power Systems 700. While the PS701 and PS702 blades have …

    Channel Register 20 Apr 15:32

  • Google stung by more privacy complaints over Buzz

    Data watchdogs wade into row

    Canada's privacy chief is the latest high-profile politico to hit out at Google for its ill-considered stealth launch of Buzz in Gmail earlier this year. The country's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart penned a joint letter to Google's CEO Eric Schmidt in which data protection authorities from Canada, Israel, the UK, …

    Applications 20 Apr 15:40

  • Microsoft preps fix for IE 8 flaw that makes safe sites unsafe

    Third time's the charm

    Microsoft will release an update intended to rid Internet Explorer 8 of a vulnerability that can enable serious security attacks against websites that are otherwise safe. The change, which will be introduced in June, will be the third time in six months that Microsoft has tweaked a feature used to filter out XSS, or cross-site …

    Enterprise Security 20 Apr 17:23

  • Newtonian Rock shop leaks iPad prices

    Updated Neither welcome nor believable

    Apple has announced that it will reveal international pricing for the iPad on May 10, but that hasn't stopped one Gibraltar-based mart from jumping the gun. If that outfit, Newton Systems, is anywhere near correct, and if its pricing parallels that of more-northerly UK outfits, picking up a 'Pad in Blighty may be a pricey …

    Mobile 20 Apr 19:08

  • Google's Schmidt pitches Chrome OS netbooks

    Network computer, fully baked

    Browser-obsessed netbooks running Google's Chrome operating system will be the freshest thing to hit computing in two decades, Eric Schmidt claims. Speaking at the Atmosphere Cloud Computing Forum the Google CEO heralded the coming of "completely disposable" mobile devices running Chrome OS that boot up in two seconds and …

    Mobile 20 Apr 19:18

  • Adaptive Computing consolidates cloud control

    Behind-the-scenes VM embrace

    When Cluster Resources became Adaptive Computing last summer, the hybrid HPC cluster management specialist promised to ramp up its tools for virtualized servers to boost its enterprise business. And with the Moab Adaptive Computing Suite 5.4, it's doing just that. In fact, according to vice president of marketing for Adaptive …

    HPC 20 Apr 19:39

  • Google tool ranks gov appetite for your private data

    Brazil and US revealed as binge eaters

    Brazil and the United States topped the list of nations demanding private information about Google users, according to a tool the web giant unveiled Tuesday. Brazil sought information 3,663 times in the last six months of 2009, a figure that was closely followed by the US, with 3,580, according to the tool. That amounts to an …

    ID 20 Apr 20:02

  • Amazon sues US state on customers' privacy

    50 million in tax probe

    Amazon has filed suit against a US state agency that is demanding the online retailer turn over not only the sales records of nearly 50 million transactions since 2003, but also the names and addresses of the purchasers, along with details of exactly what they bought. The North Carolina Department of Revenue (DOR) is …

    Music and Media 20 Apr 20:45

  • iPhone and Mac boost Apple by 94%

    'Extraordinary' Jobsian products promised

    The Apple juggernaut continues to pick up speed. Cupertino today announced its financial results for its second fiscal quarter of 2010, which ended March 27. During that quarter, revenues were $13.5bn, up from $9.1bn during the same period last year, a 49 per cent jump. Quarterly net profit also soared from $1.6bn in last year …

    Financial News 20 Apr 21:12

  • Yahoo! conjures! growth! from! flat! first! quarter!

    Man behind curtain fully engaged

    Yahoo!'s search pact with Microsoft, cost cutting and business growth helped boost the internet's second biggest search company in the first three months of 2010. The company Tuesday announced net income jumped 163 per cent for the first three months to March 31 while earnings per diluted share were up 175 per cent to $0.22. …

    Financial News 20 Apr 22:03