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25th May 2010 Archive

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  • Google in shock reveal of AdSense revenue shares

    68% cut never changed

    Google has revealed exactly how much revenue it shares with third-party websites who run text advertisements brokered through its AdSense service. With a Monday blog post, the company said that under its AdSense for content program — which serves those familiar "Ads by Google" onto webpages — sites receive a 68 per cent cut of …

    Business 25 May 00:10

  • ISP slapped with $807,000 fee for 'groundless' spam case

    CAN-SPAM cuts both ways

    An internet service provider that has brought more than 20 lawsuits alleging spam abuses has been ordered to pay one of the defendants almost $807,000 for filing "groundless claims" that mired the company in years of costly litigation. The $806,978.84 judgment was filed against Asis Internet Services, the same tiny ISP that …

    Spam 25 May 00:20

  • Color ebook reader for 200 clams? Yup

    Updated Barnes & Noble backing

    There's a new Android-based e-reader on the block that's set to challenge the Kindle, iPad, Nook et al in price, features, and display quality. For "display quality", read "color". Pandigital, a San Francisco Bay Area company known for its digital photo frames, has announced the Novel, a combo video/web/email/music/e-reader …

    Music and Media 25 May 00:26

  • Database daddy goes non-relational on NoSQL fanbois

    VoltDB shocker

    Postgres and Ingres father Michael Stonebraker is answering NoSQL with a variant of his relational baby for web-scale data — and it breaks some of the rules he helped pioneer. On Tuesday, Stonebraker’s VoltDB company is due to release its eponymous open-source OLTP in-memory database. It ditches just enough DBMS staples to be …

    Applications 25 May 05:02

  • Google's encrypted search casts shadow on web analytics

    SSL snuffs browser referral

    In adding SSL encryption to its primary search engine, Google isn't just protecting your traffic from anyone sniffing your network. It's also preventing third-party webmasters from tracking the search terms you used to find their sites. That may be a good thing for netizens intent on privacy lockdown. But for webmasters, it …

    Music and Media 25 May 05:56

  • Veho Muvi Atom video camera

    Review The world's smallest camcorder?

    Any aspiring secret agents out there will probably be interested in the new Veho Muvi Atom DV camcorder. At 40mm tall, it’s even smaller than last year’s Muvi Micro that was touted as the smallest camcorder in the world. The Atom’s size is impressive but it comes at the cost of the viewfinder – there isn’t one. Small wonder: …

    reghardware 25 May 07:02

  • Taxpayers may ship 736 iPads to Brussels

    Not that geezer MEPs can use them

    Each and every member of the European Parliament (MEP) may soon receive a brand-spanking new, "magical and revolutionary" Apple iPad. And no, they wouldn't pay for them out of their own pockets. According to The Times, the 736 MEPs would each receive an iPad as part of a £4.3m ($6.2m) taxpayer-funded "IT mobility project". …

    Music and Media 25 May 07:02

  • Phoenix Mars Lander officially dead

    New snap suggests serious ice damage

    NASA has confirmed that its Phoenix Mars Lander has not survived the harsh Red Planet arctic winter, and appears to have suffered serious ice damage to its solar panels. The agency has been attempting to contact the lander since January, in the slim hope it may have supported the weight of up to 30cm of accumulated carbon …

    Space 25 May 08:10

  • Laws puts brakes on gov IT spending

    Promises cuts, hiring freeze

    David Laws, chief secretary to the treasury, and Francis Maude will jointly chair the "Efficiency Group" in order to help government departments renegotiate contracts with suppliers. The group will also put a freeze on what they call "unnecessary" IT, advertising and consultancy spending over £1m. Presumably someone else will …

    Government 25 May 08:14

  • German watchdog tells firms to do own US privacy checks

    Don't just trust Safe Harbor scheme

    German privacy watchdogs have told companies to conduct their own checks of US companies' conduct before passing personal data to them, even if they are signed up to the EU-US 'Safe Harbor' data protection scheme. The Düsseldorfer Kreis is an informal group of Germany's private sector data protection watchdogs. It has said …

    IT Director 25 May 08:57

  • Janet, E2BN procure network for education and local authorities

    Will make linking public services easier

    The national education network and a broadband provider to public services have shared a £6m deal for new infrastructure in the east of England. The Joint Academic NETwork (Janet) and the East of England Broadband Network (E2BN), have jointly procured the network to support broadband services for schools, higher and further …

    Telecoms 25 May 09:15

  • Business intelligence for real

    On Demand Right here, right now

    Just last Thursday we had a live broadcast from our illustrious studios that explained how business intelligence can be used to good effect in your business – given the new end-user demands everyone is facing. In the moderator's chair was The Reg’s own delightful Tim Phillips. He was joined by Martin Atherton from Freeform …

    Platform Evolution 25 May 09:24

  • Terence Conran slams 'appalling' Olympic mascots

    LogoWatch 'Symbols of national mediocrity'

    Sir Terence Conran has expressed his displeasure at 2012 Olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville in a letter to the Times in which he describes the pair as "symbols of national mediocrity". Conran notes that the "appalling" duo "seem to have received their fair share of criticism" - a fair analysis following design critic …

    Bootnotes 25 May 09:25

  • Dell to release first MID on 7 June

    Brits get it first

    Dell will launch its Streak mobile internet device on 1 June - and UK cellco O2 has the exclusive. Whether that will endear punters to the Android-based, 1GHz Qualcom Snapdragon-powered, 5in touchscreen-equipped MID remains to be seen. An exclusive tie-in with O2 didn't appear to harm the iPhone's take up, though Palm's Pre …

    reghardware 25 May 09:29

  • Cray launches Gemini super interconnect

    Last Baker system component revealed

    The final piece of Cray's "Baker" XE6 massively parallel supercomputers, on which the company's financial 2010 hinges, make its debut today. The unveiling comes a week ahead of the International Super Computing conference in Hamburg, Germany, and at Cray's user group meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland. Cray has not said much …

    HPC 25 May 10:13

  • GreenBytes qualifying 1TB drives

    Another new Seagate 2.5-inch drive? Say it ain't so

    GreenBytes is qualifying 1TB, 2.5-inch drives, and by a process of elimination we think we've spotted signs of another new Seagate product. GreenBytes uses 7200rpm 2.5-inch SATA drives in its GB-1000 product and SAS or SATA drives in the same form factor in its larger GB-2000 and GB-4000 products. Barbara Craig, a Senior …

    Storage 25 May 10:15

  • Microsoft to wave goodbye to mobile 'experience' boss?

    Entertainment and Devices in line for redesign

    All change at Microsoft, according to the Wall Street Journal which reports J Allard - responsible for the Xbox and parent to the stillborn Courier - is top of the leaving list. Citing the omniscient "people familiar with the matter" the WSJ reports that Microsoft will likely announce a complete reorganising of its …

    Mobile 25 May 10:20

  • 3-million-km-long comet plunges into Sun

    'Deepest penetration yet' filmed in STEREOvision

    Boffins in California report that they have managed to track the course of an unusually resilient comet as it crashed deep into the Sun before finally being crisped. "We believe this is the first time a comet has been tracked in 3-D space this low down in the solar corona," says Claire Raftery, a post-doctoral researcher …

    Space 25 May 10:22

  • OFT leaves online ad snoopers to regulate themselves

    What could go wrong?

    The Office of Fair Trading believes the online behavioural advertising industry is quite able to regulate itself, despite some concerns about user profiling and adaptive pricing based on postcodes. It said the Internet Advertising Bureau's approach to self-regulation goes some way to dealing with consumer concerns, although …

    Music and Media 25 May 10:51

  • Looking for code work? Write fake anti-virus scripts

    Updated Scammer job ads move mainstream

    A scareware purveyor has brazenly advertised for recruits on a mainstream job market website. A job ad on Freelancer.com offers work for a coder prepared to turn his hand to the creation of fake anti-virus website redirection scripts. However, prospective applicants are warned not to expect a big payday - the budget for the …

    Crime 25 May 10:57

  • PC World gets almost-exclusive iPad deal

    D'you want Mastercare with that?

    If you want to buy an iPad on Friday, and you aren't near an Apple store, you'd best get down to PC World or Currys. Dixons Store Group International has got a 60-day exclusive to sell the giant phoneless iPhone in 139 stores. Pre-orders are only available through Apple's own shops. The magic pad will also be on sale in Best …

    reghardware 25 May 11:14

  • Unified communications in context?

    Webcast Lots to do, where to start

    We've seen from Reg research that a lot of you have considered and are exploring the notion of unified comms so we’ve been trying to do some work on your behalf. Last week we got a whole range of end users and experts in the field of unified comms to do a series of videos on the challenges, benefits and management of such …

    Unified Comms 25 May 11:19

  • Queen's speech pledges faster deficit cut, 'freedom bill'

    'Philip, what do they mean by constitutional change?'

    The Queen has opened Parliament, detailing the coalition's first legislative programme and setting the scene for deep cuts and unprecedented political bartering. No further cuts were announced following yesterday's initial £6.2bn pruning, but the Monarch did confirm the ConDems will speed up their deficit reduction programme. …

    Government 25 May 11:30

  • 6Music: Dead man walking?

    Analysis BBC strategy review public consultation ends

    Public consultation on a whole raft of cuts planned at the BBC ends today, after the Corporation confirmed in March that, among other things, it would axe digital radio stations 6Music and the Asian Network and halve the number of Beeb websites by 2012. Auntie said at the time that it hoped to make savings of around £600m a …

    Music and Media 25 May 11:41

  • Mass Effect movie deal done

    RPG snapped up by 300 studio

    Role-playing game Mass Effect is set to make a big-screen appearance. Legendary Pictures - the company behind the latest Batman movies, 300, Watchmen and Where the Wild Things Are - has acquired the film development rights to the BioWare game series. Fans of the game like to talk up Mass Effect's exploration of themes and …

    reghardware 25 May 11:43

  • Second biggest WiMAX network switches to LTE

    There's just no Nuf in WiMAX any more

    Russia's Yota network, which connects 300,000 people over WiMAX technology, is switching to LTE as the tide firmly turns in favour of the latter technology. Back in 2008 Yota (also known as "Nuf", which is "Fun" backwards, see?) deployed the world's first WiMAX handset, and since then has been busy signing up customers to its …

    Mobile 25 May 11:45

  • HTC Smart mobile phone

    Review Fancy a Brew?

    HTC's Smart is the Taiwanese company's cheapest handset yet. Designed around the cost-cutting Brew operating system it eschews such bells and whistles as Wi-Fi, GPS or an app store, but it still has quite a few things going for it. A new strain: HTC's Smart offers a taste of Qualcomm's Brew The Smart is a budget phone, but …

    reghardware 25 May 12:02

  • Toshiba takes cover off waterproof camcorder

    Shoot while you swim

    Toshiba has introduced its first camcorder capable of taking a dip and capturing 1080p footage while it's at it. The Camileo BW10 can take still snaps to, at up to 5Mp. It has a 10x digital zoom that works on both still and video modes. Snaps and such are stored on SD cards of up to 64GB capacity. The 22 x 107 x 55mm, 114g …

    reghardware 25 May 12:07

  • New iPhone to land in US on 7 June

    As Wal-Mart slashes 3GS price

    June 7 is now a near-certainty to be the launch date for the latest iPhone, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicking off the firm's Worldwide Developers' Conference on that day (and with US retailer Wal-Mart halving the prices of the current iPhone 3GS in readiness). That would suggest that the new handset would hit the shelves in …

    Mobile 25 May 12:25

  • Tabnapping attack baits phishing trawl

    Hook, link and stinker

    A leading developer of Firefox has warned of a sneaky potential new form of phishing attack. Aza Raskin, the creative lead for Firefox, explains that the approach exploits the fact that most surfers keep many tabs open during a browsing session, without really keeping track of what sites they have visited. The so-called …

    Enterprise Security 25 May 13:07

  • Computing smart-scope gunsight for US snipers

    Terry Pratchett gizmo makes long shots hit 6 times out of 10

    US military boffins are about to produce a field-ready computer gunsight which will let snipers kill people on their first shot from a mile away - even with troublesome winds blowing. The technical issues facing the so-called "One Shot" project have already been solved using prototype equipment, and it is now planned to …

    Physics 25 May 13:12

  • Murdoch's paywall: The end of the suicide era?

    Staggering on could count as success

    News International is offering a glimpse of its revamped Times and Sunday Times newspaper sites, before they disappear behind a paywall in four weeks' time. Murdoch's move has been greeted with a lot of angst from people who never pay for anything - the Kumbaya crowd - but also criticism from rivals who, hypocritically, secretly …

    Music and Media 25 May 13:24

  • Beeb, British Museum face smut issues over saucy pot

    One man, three boys, one cup

    The BBC and the British Museum could be in a tight spot if the legal system puts two and two together over a Roman cup which also puts two and two together... in a naked, underage sort of way. A sharp-eyed Reg reader (who may now need locking up) draws to our attention the BBC’s online publicity for a Radio 4 series entitled …

    Law 25 May 13:32

  • Plug-in pledges to rid web of Justin Bieber

    Teen crooner blanked out

    Sick to death of Justin Bieber? Help is at hand. Free Art & Technology (FAT) has launched a new browser application that promises to relieve thousands of internet users from unwanted Bieber references in TwitBook et al. The Canadian teen idol's popularity has caused so much online irritation that Greg Leuch, a developer from …

    reghardware 25 May 13:47

  • Greatest Living Briton loses £30m

    404: Semantic Web institute not found

    The 'Institute of Web Science' is another casualty of the UK's spending cuts. The £30m institute was announced only two months ago in Labour's drunken pre-election cash splurge. The Greatest Living Briton, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, was appointed to lead it, with backing from Southampton University - the Harlem Globetrotters of …

    Government 25 May 14:11

  • IT managers are spoil sports

    Just saying

    Just over half of IT managers (54 per cent) think staff should be banned from watching the World Cup using PCs at work. Why? because they think streaming madness will bring their corporate networks crashing down. So says Bluecoat Systems, which does networky management stuff like stopping people watch the World Cup on their …

    reghardware 25 May 14:13

  • Violin punts flash-mem array with '10X performance advantage'

    Cheaper per gigabyte too

    Violin Memory is introducing a flash memory array product with integrated flash RAID and a "sustainable ten-fold performance advantage over leading competitors". The 3200 Flash Memory Array has hot-swappable flash drives and is claimed to have a much lower cost per useable gigabyte as well as a performance advantage. It is a …

    Storage 25 May 14:23

  • Second man jailed over Scientology DDoS attacks

    A year and $20,000 down

    A second US man has been jailed over controversial denial of service attacks against the Church of Scientology two years ago. Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, 20, of Grand Island, Nebraska, was jailed for a year and ordered to pay $20,000 in compensation to the Hubbardists at a sentencing hearing on Monday, AP reports. Mettenbrink …

    Crime 25 May 14:33

  • Women are tech goddesses!

    The spying game

    Why can't you see What you're doin' to me When you don't believe a word I say? This month the Irish singer Ronan Keating was turfed out of the family home after his wife rifled through a bag and found his "secret mobile phone", containing sexting messages from a horizontal dancing partner. Here we have a suspicious wife …

    reghardware 25 May 14:52

  • Yahoo! buys! obscure! Indonesian! geo! location! site!

    Bartz tells reporter to 'f*ck off'

    Yahoo! has bought a little-known Indonesian social media company for an undisclosed sum. Koprol offers a geo-location service to its users, much in the same way as the more widely known Foursquare - which Yahoo! had also been pursuing in a $100m, seemingly doomed bout of kiss chase. "Users are increasingly relying on mobile …

    Applications 25 May 15:05

  • Google does an Orb

    Builds cloud streaming into Android

    Google's Android music service will do an Orb and allow you to stream your home music collection when you're out of the house. It will require a small piece of server software to run on your home PC. If this sounds a bit deja vu, that's because it is. The pioneer in this area, Orb, has had a similar service for over five years …

    Music and Media 25 May 15:14

  • Chips-for-gold fraud gang get 74 years' jail

    Bullion-buying crims on the run

    A 21-strong gang of CPU-dealing VAT fraudsters have been sentenced to a total of 74 years in prison. Reporting restrictions on Operation Devout were lifted today following sentencing in the seventh and final trial related to the complex organised crime network. The gang were involved in importing CPUs, mainly from Ireland. …

    Channel Register 25 May 15:15

  • Deadly phone number of doom disconnected

    Nine eights kill three. Ooooooo

    A Bulgarian phone number featuring nine eights has been cut off after three successive owners died in suspicious circumstances. The details come courtesy of the Telegraph, which reports that the first owner of 0888 888 888 died of cancer aged 48, while the next two were gunned down following shady business dealings. Such …

    Mobile 25 May 15:19

  • Facebook promises simplified privacy controls from Thursday

    So, like, even hysterical idiots can protect their stuff?

    Facebook is due to begin rolling out simplified privacy controls on Thursday, a senior executive has announced. Chris Cox, Facebook’s vice president of product, promised “drastically simplified” privacy controls at a keynote presentation at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City. There were no details beyond the …

    Applications 25 May 15:25

  • iPhone 3G disappears from cellco sites

    So last year...

    Suspicions that the iPhone 3G is not long for this world would appear to be founded - if UK carriers' websites are anything to go by. O2, for example, isn't offering the 3G as an option at all. Whether you're after a pay-monthly package or a pay-as-you-go deal, you can get the iPhone 3GS but not its predecessor. Orange does …

    reghardware 25 May 15:27

  • Canonical updates Landscape manager

    A sterner nursemaid for Ubuntu

    Having taken the wraps off the enterprise-grade Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support variant of Linux, commercial Linux distributor Canonical this morning delivered an upgrade of its companion Landscape systems management tool to keep all those Linuxes in line. With Ubuntu 10.04, both the server edition and the desktop edition have …

    Operating Systems 25 May 16:06

  • Fedora 13 – Linux for Applephobes

    Review Polish without the Ubuntu

    With its music store and cloud syncing services, Ubuntu 10.04 tends to eclipse Fedora in the minds of many. Not that Fedora project leader Paul Frields minds. He's told me in the past that Fedora is intended "first and foremost for users interested in and capable of contributing to open source." And when I spoke to Frields …

    Operating Systems 25 May 16:21

  • Google: Android fragmentation isn't fragmentation

    Google I/O It's 'legacy'

    Google Android project leader Andy Rubin isn't concerned about the fragmentation of the Android handset market. In fact, he doesn't even call it fragmentation. Google's primary aim to ship new and improved Android devices as quickly as possible, and a natural by-product of this, Rubin says, is that the market will span myriad …

    Developer 25 May 18:42

  • Google removes Chrome beta tag on Mac, Linux

    Chrome 5 arrives

    Google has promoted Mac and Linux versions of its Chrome browser out of beta, marking the first time the search behemoth has brought them into its fold of ready-for-prime-time releases. Released on Tuesday, Chrome 5 brings a variety of fixes and new features to users of Windows, OS X, and Linux. Chief among them is the ability …

    Applications 25 May 19:05

  • Windows Phone chief and Xbox brain exit Microsoft

    Mobile on the Bach foot

    If there's a job more thankless than leading Microsoft's perpetually loss-making online business operations, it's running the Redmond unit that handles Windows Mobile and Xbox. When consumer gadgets were flying off the shelves last Christmas, Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices unit actually saw sales drop — by 10 per cent …

    Software 25 May 19:36

  • 74 Democrats defy Obama man's net neut plans

    The magic word: 'jobs'

    Seventy-four Democratic members of the US House of Representatives have sided with telcos in the ongoing dust-up over the Federal Communications Commission efforts to preserve net neutrality. "We urge you not to move forward with a proposal that undermines critically important investment in broadband and the jobs that come …

    Networks 25 May 19:51

  • Cisco taps into smart grid money machine

    Wrap IP lovingly around the 'leccy grid

    Cisco has developed a new router and switch pair in an attempt to cash in on the growing interest in — and money-making potential of — "smart" electrical power grids. You may not think that this whole smart grid thing that IBM, Cisco Systems, and a bunch of other IT players have been pushing is all that big of a deal. But …

    Data Networking 25 May 19:57

  • Mountain View delivers Google Analytics opt-out

    Plug-in for no tracking

    Mountain View has released a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics, the traffic monitoring service now used by 71 per cent of the top domains on the interwebs. Google announced the plug-in on Tuesday with a post to its Public Policy blog, following through on a promise it made in mid-March. The plug-in is …

    ID 25 May 21:06

  • HP unseats Big Blue as server king

    10 years after Compaq buy

    The triple-whammy of declining mainframe and Power Systems server sales and a resurgent X64 market has toppled IBM from the top rank in the server racket, according to statistics released by box counter Gartner. That means Hewlett-Packard has finally fulfilled its goal — since buying Compaq nearly a decade ago — of unseating …

    Servers 25 May 21:16

  • Twitter tw*ts ad networks

    Except its own

    Twitter has banned third-party ad networks from its micro-blogging service, less than six weeks after launching an ad platform of its own. Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief operating officer, announced the change on Monday with a blog post, saying the company would soon update its API terms of service to make things official. " …

    Music and Media 25 May 22:28

  • Intel abandons discrete graphics for HPC

    'Larrabee is dead, long live Larrabee'

    Intel is leaving the discrete graphics market to Nvidia and AMD/ATI for now, but its orphaned GPU/CPU mashup, Larrabee, will soon see new life in the HPC space. In a Tuesday posting on the Technology@Intel blog, director of global communications Bill Kircos communicated with the globe to say that Larrabee the graphics …

    HPC 25 May 22:29