28th April 2010 Archive

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Intel's Wind River quintuples telecom throughput

Linux rescues overstuffed data nets

Wind River has introduced what it calls an "ultra-fast" packet-forwarding platform for overburdened telecom providers. Just how fast is ultra-fast? According to a Wind River release, when running on Linux on an Intel Xeon 5500-based reference board, the new Network Acceleration Platform managed iPv4 forwarding at a rate of 21 …

Networks 28 Apr 03:03
Apple, the iPhone 4G, the cops and the click-tart

Is going to jail part of the Gawker media plan?

Impressive. A not insignificant section of the intertubes is holding Apple entirely responsible for a brutal, paramilitary-style dawn raid by heavily-armed cops (we exaggerate, before they do) on the lovely home of peaceful citizen and Gizmodo editor Jason Chen. And all we actually know that Apple has done is first, ask Gizmodo …

Music and Media 28 Apr 06:02
Doro ProSound HS1910 Dect

Review Headset that's a Dect cordless in disguise

The Doro Prosound HS1910 may look like your average wireless headset, but this one stands out from the crowd. Not merely a headset, it's a cordless Dect phone in its own right. Doro's ProSound HS1910 Dect: ready to receive calls The HS1910 comes with its own basestation ready to be hooked up to an analogue landline, but the …

reghardware 28 Apr 07:02
Software makers fall in behind Lucid Lynx

Eye on '10 million' users

Thursday is D-Day - meaning Download Day - for the new Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support release from commercial Linux distributor Canonical. And this release is shaping up to be a watershed event for the upstart distro. That's true not only on the desktop and on the server, but among the software development community that wants …

Software 28 Apr 07:02
Red Hat goes commercial on Amazon's cloud

RHEL 5.5 leaps from server to sky

For the past several years, commercial Linux distributor Red Hat has been dabbling in public cloud computing, putting out beta releases of its Enterprise Linux on Amazon's EC2 compute utility. The Fedora community also put its eponymous Linux development releases out there. But if you wanted to run real RHEL on EC2 and get …

Operating Systems 28 Apr 08:02
Palin email witness decries 'dog and pony' prosecution

When throwing the book backfires

A witness who testified against the man accused of breaching Sarah Palin's Yahoo! Mail account has criticized federal prosecutors for distorting the facts in an attempt to score legal points. Gabriel Ramuglia said the episode left him so disenchanted that he's changing the logging policy for Ctunnel.com, the anonymity proxy …

Security 28 Apr 08:02
Microsoft's FUD goes mobile

HTC pays MS for Google phone

HTC has agreed to pay Microsoft a royalty when it sells a mobile phone running Google's Android operating system. But why does Microsoft make money from Google's software? Android is based on open source software - and Microsoft has long raised fears that aspects of Linux may infringe on its patents. The deal with HTC is …

Operating Systems 28 Apr 08:27
Hulu scraps UK plans

We don't need no aggregation

So Hulu, America's answer to iPlayer (or to be more precise the as yet un-hatched Project Canvas) is not opening up in the UK after all. The reason? It can't agree terms with British broadcasters, according to the Telegraph. No surprise here: ITV wants to promote content on its own ITV player - no-one wants Hulu to sell …

reghardware 28 Apr 08:43
Jesus descends to Google Earth

Hungarian field hosts Our Lord's likeness

Long-term readers will be aware that the Son of God chooses some pretty offbeat places to manifest his supreme being, including Peruvian sand dunes, Ugandan mobile phone masts, Mount Sinai and Romanian wardrobe doors. Well, it appears he's not about to change his simulacrumtastic ways, and here's the latest spot from …

Bootnotes 28 Apr 08:50
EU pours €9.5m into cutting operator ‘leccy bills

Wants to halve 4G energy consumption by June 2012

Fifteen companies have joined forces to spend the EU’s money to try to reduce the power consumption of 4G technologies, in a project with the fanciful acronym EARTH. Energy Aware Radio and neTwork tecHnologies (EARTH) plays fast and loose with the definition of "acronym", but the idea is to get all the components making up …

Mobile 28 Apr 09:14
Hackers crack Ubisoft always-online DRM controls

Game on

Hackers have overcome Ubisoft's controversial DRM system that relied on constant connection to the internet for games to function. A crack for Ubisoft’s anti-piracy system published by a group called Skid Row allows gamers to circumvent the controls for games such as Assassin's Creed II. A message from the group on a gamers' …

Enterprise Security 28 Apr 09:15
No penis pumping for Papuan plod

Enlarged members a 'hindrance during training'

Papuans whose todgers have been unnaturally enhanced are as of right now barred from joining the police on the grounds that such members are a "hindrance during training". According to local media, Papua police chief Bekto Suprapto confirmed that an aspiring plod "will be asked whether or not his vital organ has been enlarged …

Bootnotes 28 Apr 09:23
Google exec privacy convictions 'based on legal error'

Italian blunder likely to fall on appeal

The Italian court which sentenced three Google executives to a suspended jail term made a legal error, according to an Italian legal expert who has studied the judgment (pdf, in Italian). Elvira Berlingieri told OUT-LAW that Google was likely to win any appeal. Three Google executives were sentenced under Italy's privacy laws …

Law 28 Apr 09:31
Vodafone preps own-brand Android 'andset

Creamy Éclair offering

Not content with offering the Android-based HTC phones Legend and Desire, Sony Ericsson's X10, and Google's own Nexus One, Vodafone today announced an own-brand smartphone running the much-promoted OS. The Vodafone 845 comes with Android 2.1; a 3.2Mp camera; 2.8in touchscreen; quad-band GSM/GPRS connectivity and support for …

reghardware 28 Apr 09:34
LaCie readies rugged USB 3.0 HDD

Portable storage goes SuperSpeed

External storage specialist LaCie has become the latest of its ilk to implement SuperSpeed USB 3.0 in a hard drive. The 500GB LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 combines the new 5Gb/s bus standard with the French firm's existing rubber-clad 2.5in, 7200rpm hard drive. Alas, the limitations of 2.5in rotating magnetic media means that the …

reghardware 28 Apr 09:48
WD buys Hoya sputtering operation

Begins to build its own glass house

Western Digital is buying Hoya's glass media sputtering operation to secure and expand its 2.5-inch media supply as demand for these small disk drives ramps up and up. Hoya is a Japanese optical equipment supplier, and media sputtering is a process whereby atoms are ejected from a solid material and form a thin film on the …

Storage 28 Apr 10:06
LGA and Socitm call for open election data

Easing analysis

The Local Government Association and the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) are calling for local authorities to publish election information and results in an open format. The two organisations said the Open Local Election Data Project, which has been developed as a guide for council web managers and …

Government 28 Apr 10:07
EMC's Mozy saunters into the UK

Cloud backup for home and office

EMC's Mozy cloud backup service has arrived in the UK. European Union regulations require businesses to keep their information backed up within EU borders, so Mozy opened its first data centre in Europe in 2008. Now it has a few but isn't saying how many. You can sign up for one of two services: Mozy Home or Mozy Pro. The …

Small Biz 28 Apr 10:18
Lord of the Rings man made a Knight

Does that make him King of the Hobbits?

Peter Jackson, the director behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy has been knighted in New Zealand. The Queen's representative Governor-General Anand Satyanand honoured Jackson for services to the arts. Jackson said he was humbled by the honour and was accepting it on behalf of his many hundreds of collaborators. He is …

Entertainment 28 Apr 10:26
Pirate Bay suitor returns with strange bid to buy website

Pandeya channels bikinis and Ricky Lake

A mysterious press release popped up on Business Wire yesterday that claimed Hans Pandeya, who last summer failed to buy The Pirate Bay, has returned with another bid to acquire the infamous site. Pandeya - the CEO of Global Gaming Factory X AB (GGF), which last October botched efforts to raise enough money to buy The Pirate …

Music and Media 28 Apr 10:44
Virgin Media boasts more subscribers and more losses

Revenues up but so is interest

More households than ever before switched to Virgin Media in the last quarter, as the company reaped the benefits of network upgrades. A net 38,300 new households joined the cable network in the first three months of the year, beating every quarter since Virgin Media was formed four years ago. A net total of 72,300 customers …

Telecoms 28 Apr 10:56
Panasonic hits the road to preach 3D TV gospel

Come and see the light. Stereoscopically

Panasonic will next month embark on a nine-week tour of the UK with the goal of turning Brits onto the joys of 3D TV. The Panasonic Store 3D Roadshow will begin on 14 May, covering six regions within the UK: South West England, Wales, South East England, South Midlands, North Midlands and Scotland. The tour will come to …

reghardware 28 Apr 11:09
Yahoo! scores Premier League highlights package deal

Result!

Yahoo! has bought the exclusive rights to screen English Premier League games highlights online for the next three seasons. The highlights packages means that armchair football fans will be able to see five minute highlight packages of every Barclays Premier League match via Yahoo.co.uk. Highlights will be published at …

Music and Media 28 Apr 11:29
JooJoo tablet offered to Brits

12in iPad alternative, anyone?

Fusion Garage has made its 12in Atom-based tablet, the JooJoo, available to buyers outside the US. UK residents can now order the large iPad alternative for £319 plus £15 postage and packing - a grand total of £334, which is roughly what the most basic 9in iPad is expected to retail for. The JooJoo: sporting a 12in …

reghardware 28 Apr 11:35
NHS accused of politicising health records

Take the money and run

Figures from Connecting for Health reveal that dozens of primary care trusts took money to tell patients about summary care records, even though they had no intention of actually moving to such records. Some 70 PCTs took money to run publicity campaigns for Summary Care Records (SCR) - you might even have got such a letter …

Government 28 Apr 11:36
Infosec surfs in on self-propagating scaremongering

Opinion Enter the insufferable hype machine

Infosec, the annual IT security trade show, has always been a place to do deals rather than to unveil new research or make significant product announcements. Over the years the conference has attracted a steady stream of high-profile speakers - last year former Home Secretary David Blunkett featured in the line-up. With the …

Enterprise Security 28 Apr 12:01
Samsung R580 15.6in notebook

Review Entertainment centre

Such is the pressure on PC makers to come up with ever more compelling designs - let alone exciting internals - that they must get so absorbed in their work that they forget to check on what their rivals are up to. Samsung's R580: over designed? Case in point: Samsung's new R580, a 15.6in entertainment-centric notebook that …

reghardware 28 Apr 12:02
SAP profit rises on SME sales boost

Sticks to outlook for year

Business management software maker SAP saw first quarter net profit nearly double to €387m on total revenues up 5 per cent to €2.5bn for the period ended 31 March 2010. "We saw strong results from the rapidly expanding demand for SAP BusinessObjects solutions, as well as in our small and midsized enterprise business," said SAP …

Applications 28 Apr 12:08
Web politics: The honeymoon is over

Spam and astroturf are souring the dream

Parallel moves in Canada and the US may signal the end of the honeymoon for web-based political campaigning - or change it beyond recognition. Politicians are becoming increasingly familiar with sudden squalls of email filling up their inboxes, and policy makers with responses to public consultations arriving via a web …

Government 28 Apr 12:38
Organisational change and IT

Lab More than a bar-room conversation?

It is great to theorise about all the good things IT can bring. Indeed, a fortunate few have that as their jobs. Just imagine what life would be like, for example, if it were possible to provision virtual servers on the fly, or provide real-time business intelligence tools to everyone who needed them, or implement management …

Platform Evolution 28 Apr 12:43
ITC investigates claims against Apple

Touchscreen patent row

The US trade watchdog confirmed this week that it would investigate patent infringement allegations made by Elan Microelectronics against Apple last month. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) said in a statement that it had voted to probe "certain electronic devices with multi-touch enabled touchpads and touchscreens …

PCs & Chips 28 Apr 12:51
San Francisco's rogue BOFH is guilty

But could avoid more jail

Terry Childs - the sysadmin who refused to hand back passwords to San Francisco's network - has been found guilty of computer tampering. Although guilty of a felony Childs could be released quite soon - he's been in custody for almost two years awaiting trial. One juror told the San Francisco Chronicle: "We had a lot of …

Crime 28 Apr 12:57
Codeweavers CrossOver Mac

Review Run Windows apps - minus Windows

Like many Mac users, I use Apple’s Boot Camp to switch between the Mac OS and Windows as required. However, I also use virtualisation tools - Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion - which have the added convenience of allowing you to run Mac and Windows programs side-by-side. Codeweavers CrossOver: run PC games on a Mac The …

reghardware 28 Apr 13:49
California's 'Zero Energy House' is actually massive fossil hog

'Zenergy' eco-home gets award from local senator anyway

In startling enviro-technology news, it has been reported that an ordinary 1950s house in California has been given a "green renovation" which has apparently made it a "Zero Energy House" and won its builders an award from the state government. Not some nasty cold, dark hut for unwashed primitives, oh no This is pretty …

Environment 28 Apr 13:50
3PAR adds offices serving five Apac countries

Nice, but how much does it help?

3PAR has added five Far Eastern countries to its sales geography in one month, and is gaining customers in Norway and South Africa. This month 3PAR has opened up operations in India, China, Australia, New Zealand and Korea. These all have local sales offices except New Zealand, which is covered by the Sydney office. There was …

Storage 28 Apr 14:15
NPfIT ignored NHS culture, says Halligan

Leadership and teamwork needed

One of the founders of the NHS National Programme for IT has told HC2010 that it failed to understand that "culture eats strategy for breakfast". Professor Aidan Halligan, who now works in senior roles at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, said that the programme has been …

Government 28 Apr 14:55
Lexar releases 600x CompactFlash cards

Life in the old CF dog yet

Still using CompactFlash? Lexar now has a 600x card that'll deliver a minimum sustained write speed of 90MB/s - and that's guaranteed, the company said. Of course, you'll not only need a device capable of operating at that speed - look for UDMA 6 compatibility - but also $500 (£328) to shell out for the card itself. That's …

reghardware 28 Apr 15:04
Packard Bell rings up Facebook-friendly laptop

Social Networks button on board

Acer subsidiary Packard Bell has its eye on TwitBook buffs. Next month it will release a 15.6in notebook - the EasyNote TM - which sports a special Social Networks key. Tap it and up pops a panel providing fast access to the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. The TM line will be offered with a variety of Intel Core i3 …

reghardware 28 Apr 15:48
ICQ chatted up by Russian billionaires

AOL offloads IM service

Russian investors have bought ICQ, the venerable instant messenger service, from AOL for $187.5m. The deal was announced today by Digital Sky Technologies, an investment group backed by Yuri Milner, a media baron, and Alisher Usmanov, the controversial Uzbek commodities plutocrat who owns a large stake in Arsenal FC. After …

Music and Media 28 Apr 16:16
Mozilla spits out 'pre-alpha' Fennec for Android

Fox on the robot

Mozilla has released a "pre-alpha" version of its mobile Firefox browser for Google's Android operating system. Previously, an even earlier build was available through back channels, but Mozilla is now offering a build that's "usable by a broader set of people." With a blog post, Mozilla developer Vladimir Vukićević says that …

Mobile 28 Apr 17:25
Man's MySpace page torpedoes personal injury suit

Judge: 'Hell on earth' claims undermined

A computer animator's $2.5m personal injury lawsuit suffered a near-fatal blow thanks in part to MySpace postings that undermined claims his life had become "hell on earth." Eric Sedie of Corte Madera, California testified that as a result of injuries sustained during a 2006 collision with a United States Postal Service truck " …

Music and Media 28 Apr 18:13
'World's largest' IT catalog open to view

iPad in the, um, datacenter

An IT asset management firm is providing access to what it claims is the world's largest catalogue of hardware, software, and networking equipment. BDNA has announced Technopedia, claiming it lists "every piece of hardware you could find in a data center and the software that runs on it." The list of 150,000 IT products has …

Software 28 Apr 18:42
Red Hat bags NTT as cloud partner

KVM virt for Japanese SMBs

Server virtualization wannabe Red Hat has notched up another cloud computing win with its commercial-grade KVM hypervisor. Japanese telco and service provider NTT Communications has said it is building its new cloud and Web hosting facilities using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. RHEV, as it is called in the lingo of Red …

HPC 28 Apr 19:14
AMD ships low-cost six-core Phenom IIs

Now with Turbo ~~Boost~~ CORE

AMD's six-core Phenom II X6 processors have hit the streets, and the company claims that since they work with existing AM3 and AM2+ socket motherboards "with proper BIOS support," the move to six cores is "an easy upgrade." As The Reg reported last week, the two new processors are the 2.8GHz Phenom II 1055T and the 3.2GHz …

PCs & Chips 28 Apr 19:53
NASA's Nebula cloud descends on Washington

Ubuntu's Koala food goes to Goddard

NASA's Nebula infrastructure cloud - which will likely host websites across the federal government - is expanding from the agency's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley to a data center at the Goddard Space Flight Center in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. "We are in the process of implementing the second Nebula …

HPC 28 Apr 20:10
HP agrees to buy Palm for $1.2bn

Pre sale

HP has agreed to buy beleaguered handheld maker Palm for $1.2bn. The two companies announced the deal with a press release Wednesday afternoon, and they plan to hold a joint conference call with analysts and stockholders later in the day. HP has agreed to purchase the company behind the Pre smartphone and its webOS at a price …

Financial News 28 Apr 20:43
Online anonymity fueled 'Web War' on Estonia

Hactivist assault as 'tulip frenzy'

The attacks that paralyzed Estonian internet traffic for three days in 2007 were fueled by online anonymity and a phenomenon known as contagion, according to a report by three academics. The paper, titled Storming the Servers: A Social Psychological Analysis of the First Internet War, is among the first to study the social and …

Security 28 Apr 21:34
Texas man cops to botnet-for-hire charges

DDoS demo backfires

A Texas man has agreed to plead guilty to charges he trained a botnet on a popular internet service provider so he could demonstrate custom-made malware to a potential customer. David Anthony Edwards of Mesquite, Texas admitted that in August 2006 he and alleged accomplice Thomas James Frederick Smith unleashed a flood of data …

Crime 28 Apr 22:56
HP eyes webOS iPad rival

Borgs Palm for tablets too

In purchasing Palm, HP intends to build and sell not only a new collection of phones based on Palm's critically-acclaimed webOS, but a line of webOS tablets as well. On Wednesday, the two companies announced that HP has agreed to acquire Palm for roughly $1.2bn - $5.70 per share of Palm common stock - and according to Todd …

Mobile 28 Apr 23:34