26th April 2010 Archive

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Leonard Nimoy in 'no more Spock' shock

He's boldly gone on long enough

Leonard Nimoy has announced his retirement - and this time he means it. "Countless times, I thought it was done," he told the Toronto Sun, referring to his 60-year career. But now it is. Done, that is. He can now revive the title of his first autobiography, I Am Not Spock, published in 1977 when he was trying to distance …

Odds and Sods 26 Apr 02:31
EMEA server racket no longer crashing

Fixing a hole where the virt gets in

If the numbers coming out of box counter IDC are any indication, then the server market in EMEA has stopped crashing and may even level off with the possibility of actual growth in the coming years. Don't get too excited. We're not talking about a lot of growth here in the period from 2009 through 2014, for which IDC just …

Servers 26 Apr 03:27
Porky Visual Studio way over the hill

Code Bubbles, not bloat, for .NET and Java

So, Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2010. The latest incarnation of Visual Studio had a difficult gestation, with critics pointing to the slowness and instability of the beta release. Installation was an eye-opener: the 2GB ISO was quicker to download than it was to install - not even counting the several reboots required …

Developer 26 Apr 04:19
HP: last Itanium man standing

Comment Nehalem lives the dream

Make no mistake: If Hewlett-Packard had not coerced chip maker Intel into making Itanium into something it never should have been, the point we have come to in the history of the server business would have got here a hell of a lot sooner than it has. But the flip side is that a whole slew of chip innovation outside of Intel …

Servers 26 Apr 04:30
Pillar juices Axiom software

Better protection and higher efficiency

Pillar is adding four features to its Axiom software to make arrays protect data better and operate more efficiently. It's adding its own array-based replication to extend its current FalconStor and InMage functions with policy-based Application-Aware profiles to replicate data asynchronously between Axiom arrays. Pillar is …

Storage 26 Apr 05:02
Ten Essential... Netbook Accessories

Product Round-up Mobility to the max

The arrival of second-gen netbooks with Intel's 'Pine Trail' Atom chips has seen the breed come of age. Not only can the latest 10in machines from Samsung, Dell and Acer run for up to eight hours on a full charge, but the combination of Windows 7 Starter and the N450 processor has finally brought a decent lick of speed and an up …

reghardware 26 Apr 07:02
High availability systems design

Webcast - Live Now! Architecturally speaking

At 11am today, The Reg's own Tim Phillips will be hosting a live webcast with our old mucker Jon Collins, from Freeform Dynamics, and Microsoft supremo Andrew Driver. The three of them will be talking about how to think about high availability systems architecturally, taking into account the service delivery and manageability …

Platform Evolution 26 Apr 07:11
Nimbus intros diskless storage array

All-flash, no ~~knickers~~ disks

Nimbus Data Systems is introducing a diskless, all-flash unified file and block storage product starting at less than $25,000. Oh, and it does inline deduplication. The S-class is unique: a diskless iSCSI, NFS and CIFS-access network-attached storage array with up to 100TB of NAND flash capacity that comes with primary data …

Storage 26 Apr 08:05
Morse merger is go

Directors and shareholders give thumbs up

The proposed takeover of Morse by 2e2 looks set to go ahead - the companies have agreed final terms. It emerged on Friday that the two firms were in advanced talks. Morse's board of directors today unanimously approved the offer of 51 pence per share. This represents a 60.4 per cent premium on Morse's average share price over …

Channel Register 26 Apr 08:11
Paddy Power takes bets on Streetfighter IV slugfest

What are the odds on that?

You gotta love Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker, for the ingenuity with which it dreams up new gambling hooks to reel in the punters. Today, it is offering odds on a match-up between two Street Fighter IV players, the first videogame fight that the British public can wager on. The Paddy Power Super Street Fighter IV best-of- …

reghardware 26 Apr 09:12
Workload selection on mixed server estates

Workshop Can you juggle services between platforms?

Over the last year or so Freeform Dynamics has asked Reg readers if the new flexibility in deploying workloads in virtualised server infrastructures makes it possible to manage application delivery effectively while minimising the costs associated with delivering services. We have also considered the challenges around …

Server Management 26 Apr 09:26
Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News

Come on you Indians, let's not wave at the galleons!

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has repeated his long-held belief that intelligent aliens are likely to exist, and that a visit by them to present-day humanity would probably have unfortunate consequences for us. Publicising a new documentary he has made for the Discovery Channel, the legendary boffin told the Times at the …

Space 26 Apr 09:29
Gizmodo faces visit from cops over 'found' iPhone

I fought the law...

A tech blog that paid five grand to the finder of a prototype iPhone is under police investigation, as it seems buying found property is against the law. Gizmodo paid $5,000 to the chap who found a next-generation iPhone in a bar, and the blog made merry with the device before returning it to Apple - after forcing Cupertino to …

Mobile 26 Apr 10:04
Usain Bolt endorses I-bling

Gold-plated iPod touch

The world's fastest man is lending his moniker to a gold-plated iPod Touch mod. iBling for the masses The Usain Bolt Limited Edition Signature Gold iPod Touch 8GB is "embellished" in 24ct gold, laser-engraved with his signature and pulling of the bow pose. At £359.99 (inc. VAT) this is iBling that even the Man in the Street …

reghardware 26 Apr 10:08
Carphone Warehouse fills up in Q4

All going swimmingly

CarphoneWarehouse shares hit a year high this morning after it posted strong growth for the fourth quarter. Like-for-like revenue for Carphone Warehouse Europe was up three per cent, though it did give an actual figure, despite a 2.9 per cent fall in connections. By contrast Best Buy Mobile US connections were up 34.2 per cent …

Mobile 26 Apr 10:17
'Code theft trader' denied bail

Back to chokey

The man accused of stealing proprietary computer code from Societe General was refused bail last week because the court feared he was a flight risk. Samarth Agrawal was a trader at Societe General. He was caught allegedly copying code which ran the bank's high-frequency trading systems. 26-year-old Agrawal was arrested on …

Applications 26 Apr 11:09
Virgin Media fires up movie streaming service

Rent, watch films over the web

Virgin Media today begins offering "hundreds" of movies on demand, offering a stack of recent and older films to stream for under four quid a pop. The service is delivered over the web using Microsoft's Silverlight technology and will initially present movies in standard definition. VM told Reg Hardware that an HD version of …

reghardware 26 Apr 11:13
Tech disties get clean bill of health from ratings agency

The recovery starts here

Ratings agency Fitch has given the IT distribution market a "stable outlook", predicting modest sales growth this year as corporate IT demand ticks up. The ratings agency profiled five of the major global disties for its Distribute IT: Information Technology Distributors Industry Review and Outlook report. Overall it declared …

Channel Register 26 Apr 11:17
Gene that allows growing a new head identified

Now we just need memory backup - and worm DNA

British boffins say they have identified the key "smed-prop" gene which allows Planarian flatworms to regenerate any part of their body following an injury - even their brains. The discovery is seen as a step towards regeneration therapy for humans in future. Top bio-boffin Dr Aziz Aboobaker and grad student Daniel Felix, who …

Biology 26 Apr 11:35
Opera Mobile comes to the desktop

Test code without needing a phone

Opera has released a desktop version of its mobile browser, so developers can see how their pages will look on a mobile phone and even create a widget or two. Opera Mobile now runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops, and renders pages just as they would appear on a mobile phone running the diminutive browser. What's more, …

Mobile 26 Apr 11:37
Microsoft FAT patent appeal upheld in Germany

Does my bum look big in this?

A German appeal court has upheld Microsoft’s controversial patent that describes the means used to store long filenames on FAT file systems without flouting compatibility with old applications. In 2007 the German Federal Patent Tribunal alleged that patent EP0618540 was difficult to distinguish from work done on the Rock Ridge …

Developer 26 Apr 11:40
Samsung announces SuperSpeed USB 3.0 HDD

Very fast desktop drives incoming

Samsung has upgraded its Story Station series of external desktop hard drives with SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity. The Story Station 3.0 - you can review Reg Hardware's review of the USB 2.0 version here - comes in 1TB and 2TB versions and will go on sale late this month and early May. USB 3.0 offers ten times the bandwidth …

reghardware 26 Apr 11:42
Israel unbans Apple iPad

Tablet's Wi-Fi judged good

Israel's Communications Ministry will no longer demand incoming citizens and visitors hand over their iPads. The move, announced this past weekend, comes two weeks after the Ministry banned the import of iPads because it believed the device defied European wireless standards. Confiscated iPads - and we can't think there are …

reghardware 26 Apr 11:43
Vodafone confirms Google Nexus One availability, pricing

Not as a cheap as HTC Desire

Vodafone will put Google's Nexus One smartphone on sale on Friday, 30 April, the cellco said today. It also said it has begun taking advance orders for the handset, though it admitted these may not be fulfilled until 5 May. The Nexus One will be free if you take out a two-year contract with a monthly payment of at least £35 …

reghardware 26 Apr 11:50
Rethinking security

Workshop Just what are you trying to secure?

Ask any IT manager, business leader or regulator and they will tell you that IT security is important - that much goes without saying. As the chart below shows, for many professionals the role of security in IT is now seen to be a fundamental part of delivering day to day IT service to users, wherever they are, whenever they …

Security that Fits 26 Apr 12:29
Kent police bring obscenity charge over online chat

Court hearing next week

Kent Police have charged an individual with nine offences under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (OPA) in a case that could potentially see online chat in the UK subjected to a much stricter regulation regime. A Kent Police spokeswoman confirmed to The Register it had brought the charges against the individual, and that these …

Law 26 Apr 12:47
UK data watchdog to quiz Google on Streetview Wi-Fi database

What are you up to?

Sharp criticism of Google in Germany has today prompted the UK's privacy watchdog to quiz the firm over data its Street View cars have collected about Wi-Fi networks. Officials from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will seek details and assurances about the practice. A spokeswoman told The Register the ICO had been …

Law 26 Apr 12:49
Ridley Scott talks up 'nasty' Alien prequel

'The dark side of the moon' - in 3D

Sir Ridley Scott has been talking up his Alien prequel, promising a "really nasty" 3D treat which he described as "the dark side of the moon". The movie will be set in 2085, five years before the original, and will see the protagonists "first come across this thing on a planet called Zeta Reticuli". Scott teased to Screen …

Entertainment 26 Apr 12:51
CD habit buoys up UK recorded music

Not going bust just yet, then

The hard-to-kill CD helped revenue from the sales of recorded music in the UK last year stay much where it was in 2008, according to figures released by the BPI today. Interest in music was undoubtedly boosted by the death of Michael Jackson and the final digital release of The Beatles' catalogue remastered. Overall trade …

Music and Media 26 Apr 13:24
NFC not just for Apple

Androids eye near field comms

Apple has been busy patenting all things NFC, but according to silicon manufacturers it will be Android handsets that bring short-range wireless into the mainstream first. Near Field Communications - a short-range radio standard aimed at the proximity-payment/home-automation market - will appear in a "vast portfolio of [ …

Mobile 26 Apr 13:30
McAfee offers cash for clunkers

Sorry we bricked your PC, here's some money

Anti-virus firm McAfee is reimburse people who have spent money getting their computers fixed after they were damaged by last week's security update. An update of active viruses issued by McAfee last week falsely labelled part of the Windows operating system as a virus. This sent computers into a continuous reboot cycle and …

Enterprise Security 26 Apr 14:02
Boobquake fails to destroy planet

Jubs versus Iranian cleric: Immodesty vindicated

Planet Earth has not (yet) been destroyed by today's terrifying Boobquake experiment - one Indiana student's response to Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's insistence that immodestly dressed women provoke earthquakes. Sedighi recently declared: "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, …

Bootnotes 26 Apr 14:05
RIM unwraps the BlackBerry Pearl 3G

Qwerty oops!

RIM today announced the BlackBerry Pearl 3G Smartphone, its smallest phone to date. You can see what it looks like below - what else to say? Lustrous RIM hails the Pearl 3G's elegant "candy bar" design (in other words it is not a slide phone). The phone is available in two models and five "lustrous" colours. The 9100 has …

reghardware 26 Apr 14:11
Murdoch newswire sues over 'hot news'

Alleged copyright breach causes controversial claim

News agency Dow Jones Newswires is suing an online news distributor based on US law's controversial 'hot news' doctrine. The court-created right came into being in 1918 and has recently been revived in internet cases. Dow Jones says that Briefing.com breaches its copyright by copying its headlines and stories and selling them …

Music and Media 26 Apr 14:41
Revealed: Public sector's web gravy train

Councils spend like there's no tomorrow. Maybe there isn't

Even printing money might not save the Web 2.0 gravy train from hitting the buffers. Data released through Freedom of Information requests shows that the average council spent twelve times as much money as the average UK business on websites. And despite the recession, council spending on external web gurus actually rose in 2009 …

Government 26 Apr 14:45
Scammers plunder gullible iPad owners' backdoors

Bring your early adopters to the slaughter

Malware scammers are trying to trick early iPad buyers into installing backdoor software on Windows machines, according to a security firm. The miscreants are punting emails claiming that the bigphone needs an iTunes update for "best performance, newer features and security", to be installed via their PC. Malicious links …

Malware 26 Apr 14:46
Microsoft discloses fuzzy online Dynamics roadmap

Second half of this year slated for worldwide release

Microsoft made lots of noises over the weekend about the general availability of its Dynamics CRM Online software, which will hit 32 markets across the globe in the second half of this year. However, the company didn’t announce a definitive date for the worldwide release. It said that customers in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico …

Applications 26 Apr 15:49
Users' passwords exposed by Splunk

Updated Regrets the error

Splunk, a kind of Google for business technology that boasts it can help reinforce your security, has exposed the details of major customers to hackers following a web site slip up. The passwords of customers on Splunk.com were revealed after some debug information leaked on to its production servers. The debug code exposed …

ID 26 Apr 18:22
Steve Jobs snuffs App-Store-for-Mac rumor

That would be a 'nope'

Mac OS X users won't be limited to Apple-approved apps as are users of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. So says no lesser light than Steve Jobs himself. Last Friday, a rumor zipped across the interwebs that the next version of Mac OS X - which will be version 10.7 - would institute an App Storesque "gated community" in which …

Music and Media 26 Apr 19:22
Google nixes Nexus One on America's largest wireless network?

Updated Due ~~Spring 2010~~

Mountain View appears to have backtracked on plans to offer a version of the Googlephone for America's largest wireless provider. Currently, the Nexus One is only available for GSM-based networks, but when the device was launched just after the New Year, Google said it would deliver a CDMA incarnation for Verizon Wireless, the …

Mobile 26 Apr 19:27
Platform kicks out HPC Enterprise Edition

GUI tools for big clusters

Platform Computing may have rejiggered its grid and workload management software so it can be used to manage clouds of virtualized servers or clusters running latency-sensitive financial services applications, but it has not forgotten its roots in high performance computing. And today Platform is whipping up a more extended set …

HPC 26 Apr 19:49
Craigslist faces scrutiny over thriving red-light district

Reneges on promise to donate proceeds to charity

Craigslist is expected to boost revenue by a whopping 22 percent this year thanks in large part to fee-based postings in its adult services section, a new report concludes. About one-third of the $122m Craigslist is expected to bring in in 2010 will come from the adult ads, which often promote the services of prostitutes, …

Music and Media 26 Apr 21:01
Cops raid Gizmodo editor in pursuit of iPhone 4G 'felony'

Search warrant invalid, counters Gawker

Gizmodo editor Jason Chen has been raided by Silicon Valley's computer crime force in hot pursuit of the case of the missing iPhone prototype. According to a bulletin published by Gizmodo today, they broke down the front door to gain entry, and departed some hours later with a truck containing Chen's computer equipment. The …

Mobile 26 Apr 21:20
Stick a fork in floppies - they're done

Sony brings a long history to quiet end

Stop us if you've heard this before: the floppy drive is dead. Sony has announced that it will stop selling the long-running storage medium next year. According to the BBC, the end of floppy sales in Japan coupled with Sony's dropping international floppy sales earlier this year sticks the proverbial fork in the finicky, low- …

Music and Media 26 Apr 21:41
Ubuntu floats 12,000 clouds (and counting)

Your own private Amazon

Canonical - the commercial entity behind the Ubuntu distribution of Linux - is taking to the clouds. But will cloud builders take to the new Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud variant? It sure looks like it, if the early results with UEC are any indication. Companies like the utility computing ideas embodied in …

Operating Systems 26 Apr 21:53
Lucid Lynx fights 'major' X-Server memory leak

Update Ubuntu release candidate bug fix under test

The Ubuntu 10.04 release candidate contains a "major" X-Server memory leakage bug that "causes the computer to get slower and slower over time." According to a bug report, the problem can cause system instability after "a day or two uptime" - depending on memory quantity and usage. Developers have proposed a fix, but it's …

Operating Systems 26 Apr 22:51
Investors bullish on report HP will acquire McAfee

Keeping Cisco at bay

Wall Street investors showed new optimism in the shares of anti-virus provider McAfee after financial analysts speculated it may be acquired by Hewlett-Packard. On Monday, shares in McAfee rose $1.44 to $41.57, the biggest gain in two months following a report from Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. that an acquisition of the …

Financial News 26 Apr 23:06