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27th April 2010 Archive

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  • AMD plumps up ATI FirePro line

    Updated Multi-card shot at Nvidia

    AMD filled out its FirePro family of graphics cards Monday with the release of five new cards, each a step or two (or three, or four) down from the top-of-the-line FirePro card it announced earlier this month. AMD modestly described that card, the four-DisplayPort, $1,499 ATI FirePro V8800, as "the industry’s most powerful …

    Music and Media 27 Apr 00:28

  • Chocolate Factory eats crow on Googlephone

    Nexus One bows to carrier might

    When Google uncloaked the Nexus One and started selling the self-styled "superphone" through its own online store, the company insisted it wasn't competing with Verizon Wireless, Motorola, and all those other those partners selling all those other Android phones. But it appears that these Android partners have since convinced …

    Mobile 27 Apr 05:49

  • HP dons blades to scale Superdome 2

    Mountain out of Tukwila molehills

    After several months of not talking about it in the wake of Intel's February launch of the "Tukwila" quad-core Itanium 9300 processors, Hewlett-Packard is finally describing what those machines will be. At the HP Technology@Work 2010 conference, which is being held from April 26 through 29 in Frankfurt, Germany, HP is …

    HPC 27 Apr 06:01

  • Acer Easystore H340 2TB Nas box

    Review For the heavyweight home user

    Sporting four 3.5in drive bays, 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230, all governed by Windows Home Server, the latest edition of the Acer Aspire Easystore H340 series certainly piles on the features in a bid to replace any other storage/streaming/server type device you have ever bought. Sold in three configurations from 1 …

    reghardware 27 Apr 07:02

  • US Army portaloo-full-of-missiles project for the chop

    Who wants to be colonel of a load of boxes?

    A US military weapons programme which might have made large parts of the Army obsolete has been cancelled. Officials said that the Netfires/Non Line Of Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS, aka "rockets in a box") suffered from test failures and escalating costs. The Portaloo of death: Dead The Army Times reports that Pentagon …

    Science 27 Apr 08:02

  • Chinese gadget maker sues HP and Toshiba

    In a flap over over USB patents

    Beijing-based gadget maker Aigo is suing HP and Toshiba for patents relating to USB ports. Aigo has filed against HP in a Beijing court and against Toshiba in Xi'an. It has also written to Dell, Samsung and Sony, Global Times reports. The company, which sponsors the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team, is seeking one million …

    PCs & Chips 27 Apr 08:13

  • The IT management dashboard

    Lab Is this the end goal?

    Our research in the IT management domain has helped us establish a few basic truths. Most IT professionals agree that IT does an adequate job of supporting the business across a range of areas, but also that it could do a better job if was managed more effectively. ‘Historical’ shortcomings, such as the heavy focus on …

    Platform Evolution 27 Apr 08:31

  • Compellent adds file-level access to SAN

    Unified storage here we come

    Compellent is adding integrated file-level access to its SAN product, and using Sun's open source ZFS to do so. The zNAS product is a 1U enclosure running the file access software on diskless, dual quad-core Nehalem hardware, which can be clustered in two nodes for high availability. It has 1Gbit Ethernet client access, with …

    Storage 27 Apr 08:36

  • Samsung cosies up to Yahoo!

    Anyone but Google

    Yahoo! and Samsung are to work more closely together, joining forces against the twin onslaughts of Google and Apple. A deal announced today between the two companies will see Yahoo! embedded in Samsung handsets, including those running Google’s Android as well as Samsung’s alternative, Bada. The two companies signed a co- …

    Mobile 27 Apr 09:03

  • HP challenges Data Domain in deduplication

    Microsoft Exchange and SQL appliances as well

    HP is expanding is aiming to take on Data Domain in the deduplication market, and developing SQL and Exchange appliances in the Exadata mould. Garry Veale, HP's StorageWorks VP for EMEA, talking at HP's Technology@Work event in Frankfurt, said the company will complement its VLS Sepaton-sourced enterprise deduplicating disk …

    Storage 27 Apr 09:12

  • Brazilians ordered to have more sex

    High blood pressure? Get on the job

    Brazil's health minister has agreeably proposed that more nookie could help the population combat the effects of chronic illness. José Gomes Temporão used the launch of a campaign to prevent high blood pressure to warn of a health "time bomb" which within 20 years would see a good whack of Brazilians suffering hypertension, …

    Bootnotes 27 Apr 09:15

  • HP prepares 3-layer storage cake

    Comment All in-house

    HP is readying a three-layer storage product as part of its converged infrastructure strategy to collapse multiple server, storage and networking products into single high-level data centre IT units. We won't call these HP V-blocks, though they are heavily virtualised and integrate server, storage and networking technology in …

    Storage 27 Apr 09:28

  • Hugo Chávez goes a-twittering

    Online counter-terrorism initiative

    Venezuelan prez Hugo Chávez has decided that the best way to counter online criticism of his regime is to create a Twitter account via which he can disseminate his socialist vision in bite-sized insights. According to Bloomberg, Chávez has described net attacks on his leadership as "terrorism", and his counter-terrorism …

    Bootnotes 27 Apr 09:53

  • Don't try to sleep with your iPad, doctor warns

    Apple products won’t send you to sleep

    Curling up with an iPad might not be as restful as one might hope as the electroluminescent glow inhibits the production of melatonin. And you might drop it too. So says the Director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center, Frisca Yan-Go, who reckons that having that much light right in front of the eyes prevents the brain …

    Mobile 27 Apr 09:58

  • Spotify adds Web2.0rhea

    Now a 'total music management platform' solution

    The first major Spotify upgrade sees it treble in size, turning into a cross between iTunes and Facebook. The goal is to make Spotify "your only music source". It's also, according to the company, much more "social". What the word "social" really means in today's Web 2.0 jargon is "two solitary people in two geographical …

    Music and Media 27 Apr 10:02

  • Spotify goes social, digs into your PC

    Facebook love, iTunes challenge

    Spotify today introduced the Spotify Music Profile, to enable users to share music with their friends. The site upgrade includes music management for the PC through a library function. In other words you could play music from your iTunes library and build playlists from PC and Spotify through the Spotify player. Neat, huh! …

    reghardware 27 Apr 10:33

  • Global warming dirt-carbon peril models are wrong, say boffins

    Greenhouse experiments show reduced greenhouse effect

    The world may not be doomed after all, according to top American dirt scientists. Soil-dwelling microbes, expected in climate models to go into CO2-spewing "overdrive" as the world warms, refused to do so in experiments. This is how you create a greenhouse effect. According to a statement released this week by the US …

    Environment 27 Apr 10:34

  • Nokia unveils digicam-beating cameraphone

    12Mp N8 announced

    Nokia has introduced its first Symbian 3 smartphone, the N8. The handset's headline feature: a 12Mp camera that the Finnish phone giant claimed can "rival dedicated point and shoot cameras". Nokia's N8: compact camera-beating snapper? Key to that claim are Carl Zeiss optics, a xenon flash and a "substantially" larger sensor …

    reghardware 27 Apr 11:00

  • Clive Sinclair weds ex-lap-dancer fiancee

    What first attracted you to the bald millionaire pensioner?

    Sir Clive Sinclair has married his lapdancer fiance Angie Bowness in a Las Vegas ceremony. The pair married at the Civil Court in Las Vegas while staying at the Bellagio Hotel, after a ten year on-off relationship, the Daily Mail reports. Asked about the 36-year age difference between them 69-year old Sinclair said: "It's …

    Bootnotes 27 Apr 11:12

  • Vintage Computer Festival recruits OMD for synthpop loveliness

    Retro pop fit for retro-thon

    Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: remember them? We do and so will many geek nostalgia buffs of a certain age who can see the synth-pop duo talk and play - they're called OMD now - at the UK's first Vintage Computer Festival. VCF runs on June 19 and 20 at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes …

    reghardware 27 Apr 11:13

  • TomTom to brings apps, always-on connectivity to satnavs

    Next-gen GPS gadget incorporates Apple tech

    TomTom has unveiled its next-gen navigator - a gadget it hopes will bring downloadable apps to satnavs and allow it to cash in on the craze the way Apple has. The TomTom Go Live 1000 will go on sale in the summer. When it's here, it will incorporate cellular connectivity - Vodafone is TomTom's data partner, and the two have a …

    reghardware 27 Apr 11:21

  • HTC HD mini

    Review The smartphone for small pockets?

    Smartphones with large screens are great up to a point, the inevitable drawback being a chunky handset. With the HTC HD mini, the 3.2in screen allows even petite paws to reach all the way across it for one-handed use, making it very easy to pocket. Slim pickings: HTC's HD mini The handset runs Windows Mobile 6.5 …

    reghardware 27 Apr 12:02

  • SAS Survival Guide for the iPhone

    The battery's gone... we're doomed! Doomed!

    The best selling SAS Survival Guide has been re-purposed for the iPhone and is selling for £3.99 ($6.99 in the US). It's already a hit at the iTunes app store, ranking no. 8 this week in the UK top grossing list. Now you can take the original set of world-class survival skills with you anywhere in the world – from the peaks …

    reghardware 27 Apr 12:06

  • Salesforce and VMware fluff Java cloud posse

    Spring into action

    Marc Benioff is stepping up to Java heavyweights IBM and Oracle by fluffing developers' applications with a cloud built on SpringSource, VMware and his Salesforce.com service. Benioff's SaaS customer relationship management specialist is today expected to announce VMforce, an Amazon- and Heroku-like platform for Java …

    Developer 27 Apr 12:11

  • EVA to become P6000 in HP's Converged Infrastructure

    Hoping to keep existing customers

    HP's Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) will be rebranded as the P6000 and be a main player in HP's Converged Infrastructure (CI). Converged Infrastructure is a set of integrated stacks of server, storage and networking with a common management layer, orderable as single SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). An updated server element was …

    Storage 27 Apr 12:22

  • Google Maps absorbs Earth view

    Bringing Google Earth to a browser near you

    Google Maps yesterday got a new tab - an "Earth" option which injects all of the meaty goodness of Google Earth into the search monolith's online cartographical offering. Google explains: "Earth view uses the same technology that powers the Google Earth desktop application. It allows you to view the same high-resolution …

    Applications 27 Apr 12:23

  • Google buys LabPixies

    Mobile apps picked up

    Google has bought LabPixies, an Israeli maker of casual games and "fun widgets" for mobile phones and websites, to strengthen iGoogle, its customisable homepage. Google said the team will join its "ever-growing Tel Aviv office". LabPixies was one of the first developers to make products for iGoogle. LabPixies said there no …

    Applications 27 Apr 12:24

  • Swiss police thwart 'eco-anarcho terror' attack on IBM

    Balmer tightlipped on 'nano bomb plot'

    IBM has been allegedly targeted by a group of Italian eco-terrorists intent on bombing a planned nano-technology centre in Switzerland. Police in Switzerland apparently foiled the attack by members of Italian eco-anarchist group Il Silvestre when they stopped a car a few miles from the target on April 15. Officers allegedly …

    Policing 27 Apr 12:28

  • RIM ties in corporate drones with VoIP over Wi-Fi

    No escape from Mobile Voice System 5

    Along with a new handset, RIM yesterday announced Mobile Voice System 5, which brings VoIP calling over Wi-Fi for enterprise users, with number mapping courtesy of Cisco. The new Mobile Voice System integrates with Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager and can map a Wi-Fi-connected Blackberry to a desktop phone number. Thus …

    Mobile 27 Apr 13:07

  • Radical hypersonic glider vanishes above Pacific

    Envelope pushed a bit too hard, perhaps

    Some details are beginning to emerge regarding the failure of an advanced US military hypersonic glider test above the Pacific last week. However, a complete picture of what happened to the HTV-2 test platform may never appear, as communications with it were lost early in the flight. That's the last time I'm letting you drive …

    Space 27 Apr 13:16

  • Microsoft slings out Windows Home Server beta

    Unveils Vail

    Microsoft yesterday released an English language-only public beta of the next version of its Windows Home server, codenamed ‘Vail’. The company said it was still busy developing the software and so was fairly light on details but it did confirm that Vail includes four feature improvements. A community tech preview leaked onto …

    Operating Systems 27 Apr 13:44

  • Missing Soviet nuclear electrocar FOUND ON MOON

    Probe-sat locates vanished pinnacle of 1970s USSR tech

    A long-lost Soviet solar/nuclear robot buggy - mislaid in the early 1970s - has been found on the moon by a NASA survey satellite. Old school. The vehicle in question is the Lunokhod 1 rover, which landed in the Mare Imbrium aboard the Luna 17 lander in 1970. During the fortnight-long lunar days the machine was able to …

    Space 27 Apr 13:55

  • EU plans IP address snatch to battle cybercrime

    Proposes new anti-cybercrime body

    An international cybercrime centre will be able to revoke domain names and IP addresses under new proposals by European governments. The EU Council of Ministers announced the plan yesterday. They want a new body, possibly based at Europol, the EU police agency, to take on an array of tasks to combat cybercrime. The most eye- …

    Policing 27 Apr 13:59

  • ICO targets lost laptop breaches under tougher fine regime

    Watchdog bares teeth at encryption refuseniks

    The deputy commissioner of the Information Commissioner's Office said that it is no longer a "toothless tiger" and has the resources and resolve to apply enhanced powers to data protection miscreants. David Smith said increased fines of £500K, introduced in April, for the worse case of privacy breaches would "concentrate minds …

    CIO 27 Apr 14:07

  • Nokia's lost weekend ends with N8?

    Profits could crawl back up

    Nokia can start restoring its diminishing profit margins later this year with the release of the N8, announced today. It's the first Symbian^3 phone, and so the first to be based on new code written since Nokia acquired Symbian and then spun it out to become an anarcho-syndicalist commune in 2008. Nokia watched its profit …

    Mobile 27 Apr 14:09

  • Mac fanbois finally get Carakan of love with Opera 10.52

    Shoots golden arrow at Apple

    Norwegian browser maker Opera Software released a completed version of Opera 10.52 for the Apple Mac today. The company had previously been beavering away at taking Opera 10.50 for Windows from pre-alpha to a final version in about 10 weeks, by releasing the browser just one day after Microsoft rolled out its Windows browser …

    Applications 27 Apr 14:18

  • Netherlands raises €2.7m on 2.6GHz

    Dutch auction not a Dutch auction

    The Netherlands has raised just over €2.7m selling off its LTE-ready spectrum - a derisory sum, and no one seems to want WiMAX at all. The auction has been running since Monday, and finished up with five companies buying FDD spectrum ideally suited to LTE deployments. Incumbents KPN, Vodafone and T-Mobile got 50MHz between …

    Mobile 27 Apr 14:47

  • Sims 3 embraces consoles (and handhelds too)

    Never leave the game

    EA's mega franchise, Sims, is getting even more mega in the Autumn, when the iconic PC game Sims 3 makes its debut on PS3, XBox 360, the Wii and Nintendo DS. EA is tailoring Sims 3 to each platform, with exclusive features to allow for even more control, creativity and connectivity." Which is nice. The new platforms all get …

    reghardware 27 Apr 14:57

  • Unisys services sales down in Q1

    ClearPath mainframes rise again

    Services and server seller Unisys felt the pinch in revenues in the first quarter thanks to divestitures of business units and a decline in its services revenues, which has widened its losses. Revenues fell by 6.9 per cent in Q1, to $998.3m, but a rebounding ClearPath mainframe market helped quadruple operating profits to $58. …

    Channel Register 27 Apr 15:14

  • Should you own your own data?

    Net privacy bill causes panic

    Privacy campaigners have long advocated that we should own our data, and we should be able to do what we like with it. So why has an attempt to put this into law caused a minor panic? A Michigan Senator has introduced a Bill giving individuals the right to request the removal of personal data from websites. Last week, Facebook …

    Law 27 Apr 15:16

  • Nokia asks ever so nicely for return of missing prototype

    'We are not the Secret Police'

    A Russian website famous for for getting its mitts on re-production versions of mobile phones has stolen some of Nokia's N8 launch day thunder. Making its debut today, the N8 is the first mobile phone anywhere built on the Symbian S3 platform - and it's very big news for Nokia. But Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin had already …

    reghardware 27 Apr 16:21

  • Google blesses Hadoop with MapReduce patent license

    Safety for stuffed elephants

    Three months after securing a patent for MapReduce - the distributed number-crunching platform that underpins its world-spanning infrastructure - Google has granted a license to Apache Hadoop, easing infringement concerns hovering over the MapReduce-mimicking open source project. Apache legal counsel Lawrence Rosen announced …

    Software 27 Apr 18:04

  • Infamous Storm botnet rises from the grave

    Undead penis pill spam

    After blowing itself out 18 months ago, the notorious Storm botnet is back, researchers from CA said Tuesday. Storm - once responsible for churning out 20 percent of the world's spam - started to peter out in September 2007, when Microsoft targeted it through the Malicious Software Removal Tool. Some 274,372 demonized PCs were …

    Spam 27 Apr 19:35

  • Google backpedals on IP 'anonymization' claim

    Less obscure obscurity

    Google has not only opened up on how often the world's governments request user data stored on its servers. It's come awfully close to acknowledging that it doesn't actually "anonymize" your IP address after 9 months. As noticed by longtime Google critic Chris Soghoian - now a technical advisor for the US Federal Trade …

    ID 27 Apr 19:58

  • Microsoft's Office Web Apps - Google killing not included

    Review Sharepoint power, cloud cracks

    The most intriguing piece of an otherwise predictable Office 2010 - which volume customers can get as of Tuesday - is Office Web Apps. These are the first ever, in-browser versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote from Microsoft. They represent a significant break with the past for a suite that's been one of Microsoft's …

    Applications 27 Apr 20:10

  • Apple admits to eating 'iPad chip designer'

    Downs Intrinsity after PA Semi comes back up

    Yes, Apple has borged Intrinsity, the Texas-based chip outfit that (supposedly) played a role in the design of the chip driving the iPad. Today, the Jobsian cult confirmed the buy with the New York Times. Previously, profiles posted to the social networking site known as LinkedIn indicated that Apple had borged at least a trio …

    PCs & Chips 27 Apr 22:53

  • IBM gooses dividend, share buybacks

    Looking to split?

    It's been so long since IBM has seen a stock split, Wall Street has probably forgotten that it's even possible. But you can bet Sam Palmisano's last dollar that Big Blue is itching to do one, and by boosting its dividend and announcing yet another massive share repurchase campaign, it's one step closer perhaps to its first stock …

    Financial News 27 Apr 22:54

  • Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx stalks PC and Mac converts

    Returns? We're over that

    Canonical says that with the latest release schedule this Thursday, it will win your love for Ubuntu. If not immediately, give it a year - but Canonical will get you. And by 'you', Canonical means Mac and Windows users. Chief operating officer and blogger Matt Asay told The Reg that changes in the consumer-oriented Ubuntu 10. …

    Operating Systems 27 Apr 23:27