3rd May 2010 Archive

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Applesoft, Ogg, and the future of web video

Will the real open codec please stand up?

Two years ago, cosmonaut and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth challenged open sourcers to turn the Linux desktop into a piece of art. They should "out Apple" Apple, he said. They should fashion beautiful software and online services that reach a wider audience of consumer users. Shuttleworth's Canonical has now launched …

Music and Media 3 May 05:15
Egenera spans more iron with PAN Manager 6.0

Unified computing pioneer still kicking

Egenera was one of the pioneers not only in blade computing, but also in what we have come to now call unified computing. And while the company, which was spawned from the IT bowels of banking bad boy Goldman Sachs, doesn't make as big a splash now as it did a few years back, it's business is growing again, three years and one …

Servers 3 May 05:46
Ten Essential... iPhone Games

Product Round-up Gaming-on-the-go heaven

Despite Nintendo and Sony’s cries to the contrary, the iDevices are fast becoming serious players in handheld gaming. The big software companies have begun to realise this, and are now joining the indie developers in a fight for your cash. And, with the iPad entering the UK fray in late May, iGaming is set to explode into the …

reghardware 3 May 08:02
McKinnon's mum fights for civil liberties in parliamentary run

Interview A day in a life on a campaign trail

Janis Sharp, mother of accused Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon, is upbeat about her run for Parliament despite acknowledging she has little chance of becoming an MP. Sharp is contesting the safe Labour seat of Blackburn held by Jack Straw, the Justice secretary, as an independent in a campaign that aims to highlight the erosion …

Government 3 May 08:02
DVLA off-road system seriously off-message

SORN shambles

The DVLA’s off-road notification system is a shambles: legally unenforceable and administrative chaos. Two recent court cases suggest that the DVLA has been acting unlawfully and does not have the powers it thinks it has when it comes to pushing motorists around. First up was a case heard in Clerkenwell District Court in …

Government 3 May 08:02
Semi sales rush to new peak

Cheap devices push chips

After a slight dip in February that was nothing compared to the precipice that chip sales plummeted over a year ago during the economic meltdown, global semiconductor sales did a sequential bump and are kissing the peak sales the industry hit in November 2007. The Semiconductor Industry Association, which tracks monthly chip …

PCs & Chips 3 May 16:37
Jobs: One million iPads sold

'Demand exceeds supply'

Apple announced on Monday that one million iPads were sold in the first four weeks of the "magical and revolutionary" device's availability in the US market. "One million iPads in 28 days - that's less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone," crowed Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a canned statement. …

Music and Media 3 May 17:22
OpSource adds storage to compute cloud

Cloudy margins almost as good as software

OpSource has created a storage utility called Cloud Files to accompany its virtual private compute cloud, OpSource Cloud, introduced last summer. OpSource Cloud, based on VMware's ESX server hypervisor, went into full production in March with goosed service-level agreements and expanded image support to include Red Hat …

Servers 3 May 17:53
iPhone code ban facing antitrust inquiry?

US watchdogs track Steve Jobs Flash attack

The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are exploring an antitrust inquiry into Apple's ban on iPhone code translation, according to a report citing a "person familiar with the matter." The New York Post reports that the DoJ and FTC are "locked in negotiations" over which will investigate a recent change to …

Developer 3 May 18:10
Hackers release jailbreak for iPad and newer iPhones

'Spirit' points way to userland

Hackers have once again wrested a measure of control from Apple's iron-fisted grasp of iPads and newer iPhones with the release of jailbreaking software that allows hundreds of unapproved apps to be installed on the devices. The package, called Spirit, was released over the weekend for devices running firmware versions 3.1.2, 3 …

Security 3 May 18:24
IBM shells out for Cast Iron

Integration appliances go cloudy

IBM has purchased Cast Iron System, an outfit that sells application integration appliances. Everything is cloudy these days, and now, the appliances sold by Cast Iron will have that puffy label slapped on them after Big Blue shelled out an unknown amount of cash for the company. Cast Iron was founded in 2001 as IronHide Corp …

Financial News 3 May 19:06
Google borgs 3D desktop

BumpTop goes to Mountain View

Google has acquired Bump Technologies, a more-than-three-year-old startup that offers a 3D desktop interface known as, well, BumpTop. Bump announced the deal with a post to its website. "More than three years ago, we set out to completely change the way people use their desktops," the company said. "Thanks again for all your …

Financial News 3 May 19:10
Microsoft defends death of free video in IE 9

Updated Pity us, for losing money on H.264

Microsoft has gone on the defensive over its decision to exclude free video from the next version of Internet Explorer. With a blog post, IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch dismissed claims that IE 9 will only play HTML5 video built using the patented H.264 codec because Microsoft makes money from licensing H.264. H.264 …

Software 3 May 20:15
Hacked US Treasury websites serve visitors malware

Updated Lights on, no one home

Websites operated by the US Treasury Department are redirecting visitors to websites that attempt to install malware on their PCs, a security researcher warned on Monday. The infection buries an invisible iframe in bep.treas.gov, moneyfactory.gov, and bep.gov that invokes malicious scripts from grepad.com, Roger Thompson, chief …

Security 3 May 20:40
Twitter boots BitTorrent sites for 'abuse'

Thou shalt not Tweet too many links

Twitter has suspended the accounts of two BitTorrent sites without prior notice and little explanation. Both sites were regularly updating their Twitter accounts with links to freshly-posted torrents. As reported by the Torrent Freak blog, Twitter has quashed the accounts of both YourBitTorrent and TorrentSurf for "abuse" of …

Music and Media 3 May 22:22
ATI Stream upgrade embraces OpenCL

Fusing with AMD's Fusion

The ATI Stream software development kit was bumped up to version 2.1 on Monday, receiving a hefty dose of OpenCL capabilities in the run-up to AMD's Fusion series of "accelerated processing units" (APUs) scheduled to appear next year. Not that devs using the new ATI Stream SDK 2.1 will have to wait until then to take advantage …

Music and Media 3 May 22:27
Wayward 'zombiesat' poses risk to other satellites

Ground control to Galaxy 15

An out-of-control Intelsat satellite that stopped communicating with ground crews last month poses a threat to other satellites as it wanders about 36,000km above the earth. Dubbed Galaxy 15, the satellite stopped responding to ground controllers on April 5, according to Space.com. Since then, engineers have sent more than 150, …

Space 3 May 22:51