19th May 2010 Archive

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Man accused of DDoSing conservative talking heads

'FrostAie' the (alleged) Pwn Man

Federal prosecutors have accused a man of carrying out a series of botnet offenses including attacks that brought down the websites of conservative talking heads Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Rudolph Giuliani. Mitchell L Frost was an undergraduate student at the University of Akron at the time of the distributed denial-of- …

Security 19 May 2010, 00:21
Microsoft launches patent suit at Salesforce cloud

Calculate those costs with your CRM

Microsoft has sued Salesforce.com, claiming that the cloudy outfit has infringed on its patents. Microsoft filed suit with a US court seeking a trial, damages, and costs, saying Silicon-Valley software-as-as-service posterchild Salesforce.com violated nine patents. Microsoft's deputy general counsel of intellectual property …

Software 19 May 2010, 00:33
Sony Ericsson Elm

Review Buy this phone and save the planet – maybe

Sony Ericsson has been busy producing a range of eco friendly handsets, produced under the GreenHeart banner. GreenHeart phones are made from recycled plastics and have no hazardous chemicals in the build. As a green marketing wheeze, by and large, these handsets have been given the names of trees. There’s an Aspen, a Hazel, the …

Phones 19 May 2010, 07:02
Yahoo! buys! city! of! bloggers!

The People's Media Company belongs to Carol Bartz

Yahoo! has bought Associated Content - which brands itself "the People's Media Company" - a sort of Wikipedia with a business plan. The site collects content from its contributors - short articles or videos mostly - on a variety of subjects and then sells ad space alongside them. Payments to contributors are tiny - between $2 …

Media 19 May 2010, 08:17
Personal data export clauses now in force

EEA guidelines updated

New 'model clauses' governing the exporting of personal data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) have come into force. The new documents update one of the ways in which data can leave the EEA legally. European Union data protection law says that personal data can only be transferred outside of the EEA if it is …

Management 19 May 2010, 09:07
Spare Backup branches out with App Store

Comment Looks to mobile internet market

Spare Backup, which supplies cloud backup services to consumer electronics retailers, has branched out and is offering them an App Store for users of mobile internet devices, Macs and PCs. Picking up on the success of Apple's iPhone App Store, Spare Backup has added its own App Store facility to the backup services it offers …

Storage 19 May 2010, 09:14
UK regulator warns targets over share scam sucker list

Turning up the heat on boiler room fraudsters

A UK regulator is taking the unusual step of contacting 38,000 potential share fraud targets after recovering a "suckers list" used by boiler room fraudsters. The Financial Services Authority plans to write to the thousands of people on the list (which contains phone numbers, names and addresses) warning them that their …

Security 19 May 2010, 09:16
O2 to release Palm pair on iPad day

Pre Plus, Pixi Plus come to Blighty

O2 has followed its exclusive on the Palm Pre with the new Pre Plus and Pixi Plus smartphones, the telco said today. Both handsets will be available on the network on 28 May. Trying for an iPad spoiler, O2? We can't see the Palm phones drawing quite as much interest as the Apple tablet, but Palm buffs will look forward to the …

Mobile 19 May 2010, 09:17
TalkTalk told to kill bill claims

ASA: 'Misleading'

Voice-over in a TV ad for TalkTalk Telecom stated "Are you paying too much for your calls and broadband? Well, with Talk Talk we can cut your bill to just £6.49 a month ... for calls and broadband in your home ... including unlimited local calls to anyone in your area". On-screen text stated "£11.25 monthly line rental required …

Broadband 19 May 2010, 09:37
Intel lays ground for larger netbooks

Said to be allowing 11.6in and 12.1in models

Intel has reportedly told netbook makers they can use its upcoming dual-core Atom processor, the N550, in 11.6in and 12.1in machines, and not just the traditional 9in and 10in form factors. The chip giant hasn't said as much in public - we're relying instead on the testimony of moles from within Taiwan's netbook manufacturer …

Laptops 19 May 2010, 09:48
IBM punts commercial Hadoop distro

Big Blue elephant in the data center

With so much of its future sales and growth staked on smart infrastructure and the data analytics that enables it, it comes as no surprise that IBM has taken a shining to the open source Hadoop big data crunching software that has found a loving home at the Apache Foundation. Today, IBM announced it has created a commercial …

HPC 19 May 2010, 10:02
UK to get Diet Facebook

Everyone can get the skinny. If they're on 3

Facebook Zero, the cut-down version of the social networking service that comes without data costs, has been launched in 45 countries with the UK to be added soon. Facebook Zero is a text-based version similar to the existing Facebook Mobile but with one key difference - users don't have to pay for the data used to access the …

Phones 19 May 2010, 10:22
Google Street View whacked by German prosecutors, Czech data watchdog

Wi-Fi slurping spycars scrutinised in Europe

Google came under increased fire in Europe yesterday, after German prosecutors and the Czech data protection agency launched separate investigations into the company’s interception of private Wi-Fi data. Last week Google contradicted previous assurances it had made about its world-roving Street View cars by admitting the ad …

Law 19 May 2010, 10:29
Newzbin goes titsup

Freetards' favourite bids adieu

Usenet indexer Newzbin has gone titsup thanks to legal action from the Motion Picture Association. A message on the homepage says: "Regrettably the Newzbin website has to close as a result of the legal action against us." The page also links to a blog post, although its author makes clear he has no relationship to the site …

Media 19 May 2010, 10:34
World's mightiest supercomputer to design new nuke plants

Grail-hunting Jaguar unleashed

Nuclear supercomputer boffins in the States say they are unleashing the mighty power of the "Jaguar" - number one arse-kickingest computer in the world - to design the next generation of nuclear reactors, including the ITER fusion project. John Wagner, Technical Integration Manager for Nuclear Modelling at the Oak Ridge …

HPC 19 May 2010, 10:39
British Library to scan 40m newspaper pages

Free Beano for family history sites

The British Library and its commercial partner brightsolid - a division of DC Thomson - are to digitise 40 million pages of old newspapers. The library holds 52,000 national and international titles covering 300 years. Currently researchers, 30,000 a year, have to go to Colindale in north London to scan through microfilm or …

Media 19 May 2010, 10:54
Coraid jumps on ZFS bandwagon

That's a bit disruptive

Coraid is adding a ZFS-based NAS appliance to its EtherDrive SAN array product, joining other companies like Compellent in using ZFS in this way. Coraid supplies block storage accessed over Ethernet using an ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) protocol which is not routed, is lossless and doesn't need any storage protocols such as iSCSI …

Storage 19 May 2010, 10:55
Best Buy tech finds 'child abuse' wallpaper on broken PC

Owner cuffed

A man allegedly caught using child abuse images as a desktop wallpaper faces a string of charges after he took in the malfunctioning machine for repair. Daniel J Wagner of Sheboygan, Wisconsin reportedly took the laptop into his local Best Buy store in order to clean up a malware infection around a fortnight ago. The …

Security 19 May 2010, 11:05
Major manufacturer tells reviewer: sample our kit in... er... a shop

Bootnote Why is it so hard to borrow a 3D TV right now?

What do you do if you're a consumer website and you want to review the latest in 3D telly technology from a very well known major consumer electronics company? Go to John Lewis. That's what Reg Hardware's 3D TV correspondent was today advised to do by the manufacturer's PR agency. It's good news for the Middle England's …

Hardware 19 May 2010, 11:19
Wikileaks founder relieved of passport in Oz

Document bit scuffed, gov bit sensitive?

More apparent evidence last week of Australian government sensitivity to criticism, as immigration officials relieve Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of his passport on arrival at Melbourne airport. Immigration officials reportedly told Australian newspaper The Age that Assange's passport is classified as 'normal' on the …

Law 19 May 2010, 11:30
Atlantis 'nauts on battery-swap duty

Second ISS spacewalk kicks off

Atlantis mission specialists Steve Bowen and Michael Good kicked off the second STS-132 mission spacewalk at 10:38 GMT today. The pair (seen here a few minutes ago) are tasked with swapping out three nickel-hydrogen battery units on the International Space Station's port truss, although the EVA "may be extended to accomplish a …

Science 19 May 2010, 11:33
Operators line up to pitch HTC Wildfire

Budget Android 2.1 smartphone out next month

Three, T-Mobile and Virgin Media have all now said they will offer HTC's latest Android handset, the budget Wildfire, in the future. Three wouldn't say how much it will charge for the handset, or when it will make the phone available to subscribers, and Virgin Mobile simply said it will sell Wildfire "in Q3", but T-Mobile …

Mobile 19 May 2010, 11:34
Dell Latitude XT2 XFR ruggedised laptop

Review A tablet to take for the rough and tumble

Dell’s XT2 tablet PC has been around for just over a year, and now the company has come up with a fully-ruggedised version in the form of the XT2 XFR. Able to withstand drops, freezing temperatures and rain, it’s primarily aimed at those who have to cope with something a little more testing than a daily commute on the train. …

Laptops 19 May 2010, 12:02
DARPA witchfinder-ware to SMITE America's IT traitors

If we're lucky, we'll only have to be lucky once. Erm...

Our old friends at DARPA - the US military research bureau - have broached another intriguing and mildy upsetting scheme this week. This time the Pentagon boffins want nothing less than some kind of automated witch-finder technology able to finger "increasingly sophisticated malicious insider behavior" in the USA. According to …

Security 19 May 2010, 12:03
HP Software turns to mediums for market expansion

IT giant discovers a world of smaller firms

Hewlett Packard's software division has realised the world is full of medium-sized enterprises and launched a new sales program and range of "lite" management apps at the market that was there all the time. The vendor unveiled its ten.to.one strategy at a partner conference in Berlin this week. The number refers to the size of …

Applications 19 May 2010, 12:11
The commercial cuckoo hiding in the BBC's global mission

Nation shall speak Top Gear and Doctor Who unto nation

Check the calendar dates and a possible cunning plan emerges. On Thursday 6th May, there was a strong possibility that the UK would elect a Tory government, one that would be eyeing BBC funding suspiciously. On Tuesday 11th of May, BBC director general Mark Thompson gave a speech at Chatham House on "Nation Speaking Peace unto …

Media 19 May 2010, 12:17
Ball lightning is all in the mind, say Austrian physicists

Thunderstorms' magno-field causes brain to malfunction

Physicists in Austria say they have solved the conundrum of "ball lightning", mysterious glowing spherical apparitions which baffled boffins have struggled to explain for centuries. According to Josef Peer and Alexander Kendl of the University of Innsbruck, there is in fact no such thing as ball lightning in reality. Rather, …

Science 19 May 2010, 12:43
Robot Sergey Brin stuns crowd

Telepresence - it's not quite the real thing

Self-help guru Tom Robbins and Google co-founder Sergey Brin employed bots of their wetware selves at a San Francisco fundraiser this month, "strutting the room and chatting it up like the rest of us", according to a blogger present. "People at the event, myself included, were immediately attracted to the robots and loved …

Bootnotes 19 May 2010, 12:44
HP Software targets more customers with fewer partners

Business Class subtracts 300 from 1200

HP Software will cut its number of partners targeting mid-sized enterprises in Europe from 1200 to 300, as it reorganises a channel that had become swollen in the wake of its four-year acquisition drive. The overhaul comes as part of its Business Class channel program, and coincides with a new focus on the mid-sized enterprise …

The Channel 19 May 2010, 13:03
Clegg promises liberties restoration

Giving fingerprints back to the people

Nick Clegg promised government that will restore individual liberties and value dissent this morning, as he set out his Deputy Prime Minster's brief to repeal Labour laws this morning. Setting out what he called a "big bang approach to political reform", he said illiberal and intrusive laws will be scrapped. Most of Clegg's …

Government 19 May 2010, 13:05
User Data: Here, there, everywhere

Blog But rarely where you need it

Every computer user in the world has heard tales of “the computer that ate my files”. Perhaps the magical write-limit fairy arrived and turned your SSD back into a pumpkin. The infamous “someone, definitely not me” could have opened an infected email or Facebooked up an infected flash ad, corrupting the OS and causing all sorts …

Servers 19 May 2010, 13:39
McKinnon family awaits final, final extradition decision

May might act

Supporters of Gary McKinnon are anxiously awaiting a Cabinet Office decision on whether the coalition government will halt his extradition proceedings. While in opposition, cabinet ministers (most notably Nick Clegg and Dominic Grieve, the new attorney general) supported the campaign against the extradition of the Asperger's …

Government 19 May 2010, 13:58
Remote access in real life

Blog Lessons from the front line

In order to have a meaningful discussion about the specifics of remote access software, we need to get a few concepts out of the way, and some terminology nailed down. The first concept that needs to be dealt with is that of “sessions”. A session is the interface you see on the screen when you log in: your background, your …

Servers 19 May 2010, 13:59
Mechanic drove three miles with angry bloke on bonnet

'I’m not stopping. This man is going to kill me'

A Northern Ireland garage mechanic who drove for three miles with a disgruntled customer clamped to the bonnet of his car has been cleared of a raft of charges including assault and dangerous driving, the Belfast Telegraph reports. Gerry Brown, 53, was at his yard near Castlewellan in February 2008 when Lesley Quirey and his …

Bootnotes 19 May 2010, 14:33
DRAM makers fined €331m for euro cartel

They all agreed they did it...

The European Commission has fined ten memory chip makers a total of €331m - as part of the first settlement made for cartel charges. Ten chipmakers were found guilty of running a cartel in order to fix prices. The fine was cut by ten per cent in recognition of the companies' acceptance of the facts. Micron had its fine …

Hardware 19 May 2010, 14:43
German cybercrime forum hacked

It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is data protection

An underground cybercrime forum has been hacked, with once walled-off information uploaded onto file-sharing networks. The attack on German e-crime site Carders.cc has led to the wider disclosure of stolen credit card details and passwords from victims along with data on the forum's criminal denizens. A database file …

Security 19 May 2010, 14:51
LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 portable hard drive

Review SuperSpeed USB and military-grade toughness?

Although it has been said that it won't become mainstream until it is officially adopted by Intel in 2011, USB 3.0 - aka SuperSpeed USB - is steadily emerging from the shadows with more and more manufacturers bringing support for the protocol to the eager masses. Shock and awe: LaCie's Rugged USB 3.0 has military grade impact …

Hardware 19 May 2010, 15:13
SUSE Linux 11 gets first service pack

KVM virt side-by-side with Xen

Commercial Linux distributor Novell is hoping that the delivery of the first service pack update for its SUSE Linux 11 operating system for servers and desktops will give the software a bump. And not just because SP1 has support for lots of new hardware. According to Kerry Kim, senior product marketing manager at Novell in …

Operating Systems 19 May 2010, 15:23
'Draw Mohammed' call prompts Pakistan Facebook ban

Put your pencils down

Pakistani authorities have ordered ISPs to block access to Facebook ahead of an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" planned by users for tomorrow. Prompted by a court order, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority today told providers to suspend access. The order runs until 31 May. The Facebook group for "Everybody Draw Mohammed …

Media 19 May 2010, 15:28
Flash and the five-minute rule

Comment NAND then there was disruption

"Flash is a better disk ... and disk is a better tape." So said distinguished Microsoft engineer Jim Gray in 2006. A few years before then he had formulated his famous five-minute rule of thumb, which said that it is better to cache disk-held data in DRAM if it was going to be re-used in five minutes or less. The idea was that …

Storage 19 May 2010, 15:32
Google open sources $124.6m video codec

Google I/O VP8 set free as WebM

Google has taken a swashbuckling step towards open and license-free web video by open sourcing the leading codec from On2 Technologies, the video-compression outfit it acquired earlier this year for $124.6 million. This morning, at Google's annual developer conference in San Francisco, Google vice president of product …

Media 19 May 2010, 16:55
Atlantis 'nauts bolt on new battery goodness

Second ISS spacewalk wraps

Atlantis mission specialists Steve Bowen and Michael Good wrapped the second STS-132 mission spacewalk at 17:47 GMT today, having spent seven hours and nine minutes outside the International Space Station. The pair swapped out four of the six nickel-hydrogen battery units targeted for replacement on this mission, bolting* …

Science 19 May 2010, 17:51
Facebook scrambles to close hole exposing private data

Gives attacker almost as much control as user

Facebook engineers are finishing a patch for a critical vulnerability that exposed user birthdays and other sensitive data even when they were designated as private, a security researcher said Wednesday. The bug could be exploited by prompting a user to click on a link while logged into the social networking site, said M.J. …

Security 19 May 2010, 18:03
Google readies Chrome OS web app store

Google I/O Desktopware verboten

Google is launching an online app store for web applications. Its upcoming Chrome Web Store will be available through its Chrome web browser and Chrome OS, the upcoming netbook operating system based on the browser. Google vice president of product management Sunder Pichai announced the store this morning at Google I/O, the …

Software 19 May 2010, 18:16
Oracle sneaks out carrier grade Sparc blade, Xeon rack

Where's that Nehalem-EX beastie?

Oracle has hardened up the Sun Blade 6000 blade server to support telcos and other service providers, creating the Sun Netra 6000 chassis and its companion Netra T6340 blade server, based on the current Sparc T2+ processors designed by Sun and made by Texas Instruments. Oracle has been a pretty quiet server vendor since …

Servers 19 May 2010, 18:29
Wave gravy splashes onto Google Apps

Google I/O Email-IM crossbreed for all

Mountain View has rolled Google Wave, its new-age online collaboration and communication tool, into its Google Apps suite of web-based business applications. Yes, that means the tool is now available to world+dog. This morning, at Google's annual developer conference, Wave daddy Lars Rasmussen - part of the brother team also …

Software 19 May 2010, 18:46
Anti-Oracle duo discover hardware love

SAP and HP unite

SAP and HP, companies with axes to grind against Oracle, are following the database giant with their own hardware and software appliance. Software giant SAP said on Tuesday that it's working on an in-memory data analytics engine tuned to the PC and server maker's hardware that'll crunch data from servers, data warehouses, and …

Applications 19 May 2010, 19:52
Mobile sales soar, but numbers are squishy

Motorola #6 or #8 - take your pick

Worldwide mobile phone sales are steadily rising, smartphone sales are skyrocketing, and Nokia maintains its lead in both categories. But when you try to dig deeper into the numbers, it all depends on whose numbers you're digging into. Gartner's latest report says that global handset sales to end users grew to 314.7 million …

Networks 19 May 2010, 19:53
Flash embraces Google's open video codec

Google I/O Adobe extends Dreamweaver to HTML5

Adobe has rolled out an HTML5 development kit and announced that Flash will use Google's freshly open sourced VP8 video codec. The company wants you to know that despite its tussle with Steve Jobs, it very much believes in web standards. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch unveiled the new HTML5 Pack - an extension to Adobe's existing HTML …

Developer 19 May 2010, 19:57
Novell seeks rich suitors

Private buyers line up

It looks like Novell has formally put itself up for sale after rejecting the entreaties of a hedge fund two months ago. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a separate report from the New York Times, Novell had asked for suitors looking to eat the company to put in initial bids by the end of this …

Business 19 May 2010, 20:17
ISP shuttered for hosting 'witches' brew' of spam, child porn

3FN RIP

A federal judge has permanently pulled the plug on a California web hosting provider accused of harboring a "witches' brew" of pernicious content on behalf of child pornographers, spammers, and malware purveyors. San Jose, California–based 3FN.net, which also operated under the name Pricewert, was also ordered to liquidate all …

Security 19 May 2010, 21:12
Google and SpringSource join hands in the heavens

Google I/O App Engine eyes MySQL

Google and VMware's SpringSource arm have teamed up to offer a series of development tools for building Java apps that can be deployed across multiple web-based hosting services. That includes Google's own App Engine, VMware-happy infrastructure services, and third-party services such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud. In …

Developer 19 May 2010, 22:04
Britons: iPhone eighth most important invention — ever

Squeaks by toilet, crushes push-up bra

In the British mind, the iPhone is a more important invention than the automobile, calendar, or hot water, though not as important as its immediate forebears: the telephone, personal computer and the internet. A Tesco Mobile survey of 4,000 consumers aged between 18 and 65 placed the iPhone eighth out of 100. As might be …

Hardware 19 May 2010, 22:11
Sergey Brin: 'We screwed up' on Street View Wi-Fi grab

Google I/O US lawmakers call for probe

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says the company "screwed up" when it equipped its world-roving Street View cars with software code that spent three years capturing personal data from open Wi-Fi networks. "Let me just say: We screwed up," Brin told a room full of reporters this afternoon at the company's annual developer …

Security 19 May 2010, 22:46
Oracle punts first VirtualBox x64 hypervisor

With affordable support - for now

VirtualBox made the cut in the wake of the acquisition of Sun by Oracle back in January, and Wednesday marked the first release of what is now called Oracle VM VirtualBox. With VirtualBox 3.2 (and no one is ever going to call it Oracle VM VirtualBox, so let's get that straight), the software engineers have tweaked the type 2 ( …

Virtualization 19 May 2010, 22:56