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2nd June 2010 Archive

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  • Software SNAFU took out 10,000 military geo locators

    Receiver upgrade gone bad

    As many as 10,000 global positioning system receivers were rendered useless for days as a result of a software upgrade in January that didn't go well, the Associated Press reports. The "compatibility issue" affected 8,000 to 10,000 of the military's 800,000 GPS receivers, although officials didn't say how many weapons, planes …

    Security 2 Jun 2010, 03:57

  • Novell touts server management on Windows, Linux

    Virtual plate spinning

    Novell has updated its PlateSpin server management tools. The commercial Linux distributor consists of more than just a declining NetWare business and a choppy but apparently break-even SUSE Linux business. It also gets a chunk of its change selling a number of system management and monitoring tools. That, oddly enough, may be …

    Servers 2 Jun 2010, 04:14

  • Steve Jobs talks Flash, 'lying S.O.B' devs, sex, and Gizmodocrime

    iPad conceived before the iPhone

    Steve Jobs says that Flash has had its day, work on the iPad began before work on the iPhone, the Gizmodophone may have been "stolen out of [Apple engineer Gray Powell's] bag", at least one iPhone app developer is a "son of a bitch liar," and his sex life is "pretty good". These remarks — and many more — came in a wide-ranging …

    Mobile 2 Jun 2010, 04:50

  • NetApp plays out ASIS dedupe lead

    Comment Cracks the whip

    While EMC, Dell, HDS and HP stand impotently by, NetApp is making a killing in virtual desktop infrastructure deals and extending its lead in primary data deduplication, making ASIS run faster and deal with more data. How long can this advantage last? Last week NetApp announced terrific quarterly results, citing virtualisation …

    Storage 2 Jun 2010, 06:02

  • Ballmer, black turtlenecks, and Microsoft's next big idea

    Comment The battle to re-top Apple's market cap

    Last week, we had two so-crazy-they-can't-be-true events that sent the internet into a tizzy. And both involved Apple and Microsoft. First, word arrived that Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer would appear on stage with the God-like Steve Jobs at Apple's forthcoming World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, …

    Financial News 2 Jun 2010, 06:53

  • Jaybird SB1 Sportsband Bluetooth stereo headphones

    Review Talk and tunes for the all-weather jogger

    If you are going to splash out on a set of Bluetooth headphones it makes sense to buy a pair that can fulfill a multitude of roles from comfortable home listening to hands-free telephony to outdoor activity in weather both fair and foul. Indeed, Jaybird's SB1 Sportsband headphones endeavour to satisfy all these roles. For …

    Hardware 2 Jun 2010, 07:02

  • The emerging cloud alternative

    Poll Results If you only read one piece on Cloud, read this one

    If there’s one thing about the current furore about Cloud Computing that really gets our goats, it’s to do with the amount of unnecessary confusion that’s being generated. It's unnecessary because, behind it all, there’s actually a number of quite good things happening. Sure, it’s a tricky area as it cuts across so many things …

    Platform Evolution 2 Jun 2010, 08:02

  • Mystic Met is serial Strategy Boutique john

    Police, councils rebrand for total community solutions

    Free Whitepaper - Synergies for Stakeholder Engagement The Met Office's addiction to rebranding has been revealed: it has changed its slogan five times in three years. You'd be hard pressed to find much evidence of this on its website, though. But the Mystic Met wasn't the most dependent Boutique-botherer. Wiltshire Police …

    Bootnotes 2 Jun 2010, 08:02

  • Finnish police raids target virtual thieves

    Seek stolen furniture

    Finnish police have raided five homes in a search for virtual furniture stolen from Habbo Hotel. The virtual world, which is big in Finland, claims 15 million users and turns over about $60m a year by charging users for various virtual goods. Finnish police told the Beeb that they were investigating 400 separate cases of …

    Security 2 Jun 2010, 08:21

  • NetApp backs StorageGRID system

    Keeping the name

    NetApp is bringing its acquired Bycast product to market, and it's keeping the StorageGRID name. Bycast was bought by NetApp last month and the StorageGRID product is being sold as a complementary offering, bringing an object storage capability that NetApp's mainstream file and block storage FAS arrays do not have. NetApp is …

    The Channel 2 Jun 2010, 09:18

  • Brocade flicks out trio of denser blades

    Bigger blades, bigger networks

    Networking company Brocade has three denser blades for its big iron data centre and carrier switches, meaning they can sit at the centre of even bigger networks than before. The FC8-64 is a 64-port blade for the DCX backbone switch that looks after Fibre Channel SAN and data centre networking. Each port has a bandwidth of …

    Storage 2 Jun 2010, 09:25

  • Ofcom smites silent callers

    No more than one pointless call a day, alright?

    Ofcom plans to tighten up the rules on silent calling, proposing that pestering companies to wait 24 hours between calls and tell people by whom they're being pestered. A silent call is where you pick up the phone and there's no one there. A small proportion are weirdos or nervous secret admirers (or perhaps a happy …

    Broadband 2 Jun 2010, 09:36

  • The software licensing minefield

    Lab Have you got a license for that?

    Software vendors make their money from licensing software for individual and corporate use. From the buying perspective, you’d think it could be a simple question of asking how much you need, and working out a price for that. But nothing in IT is ever so straightforward. In France they have an expression – “why do something …

    Platform Evolution 2 Jun 2010, 09:45

  • Office and Sharepoint 2010: The future of productivity?

    On Demand One way to find out

    Last month, Microsoft ran a ginormous online conference to promote Office 2010 and Sharepoint. The Register was there, virtually of course, in our capacity as official media partner. The event was called The Future of Productivity and all its keynotes, tech sessions, case studies and stuff, are available on demand. Also you …

    Site News 2 Jun 2010, 10:02

  • Prince Charles, Stephen Fry and IBM to save the planet

    Big Green and Big Blue circle one another warily

    IBM UK yesterday proudly unveiled plans to host an invitation-only "Summit" on environmental sustainability later this year for "business and industry thought leaders". The plan is a cooperative venture between IBM and the Prince of Wales' "Start" sustainability initiative. The summit will see IBM closeted with major players …

    Servers 2 Jun 2010, 10:17

  • PARIS goes to 60,000 feet, without leaving the ground

    Hypobaric tests are go

    The Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) team took a day trip to QinetiQ in Farnborough yesterday in order to use a hypobaric chamber to test the plane's release mechanism. The chamber is a pleasingly old-school lump of iron which is controlled not with some la-di-dah user interface but with large, red-painted wheels. …

    SPB 2 Jun 2010, 10:22

  • Want to stiffen your rack?

    Vibration researcher weighs up GPC and rubber bands

    Data centre storage arrays slow down because of background data centre vibration. Or so consultant Julian Turner maintains. Others deny the problem even exists. Julian Turner's research which showed the vibration-induced performance drop off identified Green Platform Corporation (GPC). Turner said: "They are definitely the …

    Storage 2 Jun 2010, 10:43

  • Patching is a pain...

    Sysadmin Blog ...but misconfiguration is worse

    After a couple of pretty bad weeks, in which virtually everything that could conceivably have gone wrong has, things are finally starting to settle down. Despite a couple of “weeks from hell” in which my network survived virtually every “network down” scenario back to back, none of that actually bothers me. Some of these worst …

    Servers 2 Jun 2010, 11:14

  • Microsoft picks over Google's Windows exit strategy

    Irony? We've heard of it

    Microsoft responded to yesterday’s report that Google was internally ditching the company’s operating system in favour of Linux, Mac OS X Chrome OS by telling anyone that would listen that the Mountain View Chocolate Factory wasn’t exactly immune to occasional security gaffes. Redmond blogger Brandon LeBlanc felt obliged to, …

    Operating Systems 2 Jun 2010, 11:25

  • Mobiles back in the frame as bee killers

    Actual research this time, just not much of it

    Strapping a pair of mobile phones to the side of a bee hive can lead to a dramatic decline in honey and bee production, researchers have claimed. Published in Current Science, the research (pdf) compared the performance of hives exposed to cell phones with those kept radio-free. According to the researchers the phone use led …

    Mobile 2 Jun 2010, 11:26

  • Hesitant Mozilla nurses Firefox 3.6.4 baby for a bit longer

    Release Candidate shoved out the door

    The planned release of a full fat version of Mozilla’s Firefox 3.6.4 browser has been pushed back to an unspecified date sometime this month. The open source outfit was expected to unleash Firefox 3.6.4 today, after letting loose a Release Candidate of the browser last weekend. It seems that Mozilla has delayed the release by …

    Applications 2 Jun 2010, 11:51

  • No-good scareware varmints exploit Wild West game

    Hang 'em high

    Varmints are exploiting interest in a treasure hunt tied to popular Wild West-themed game Red Dead Redemption to lay scareware traps. One aspect of the game is a treasure hunt, which features cryptic clues and drawings linked to landmarks in the gameworld where hidden virtual bars of gold might be found. Surfers looking to …

    Security 2 Jun 2010, 11:55

  • Synology DiskStation DS210j Nas box

    Review The ultimate budget home server?

    Synology’s Disk Station 409 Slim was one of Reg Hardware’s favourite Nas boxes of 2009. With the DiskStation DS210j, the company addresses the needs of home users for around half the price of the Slim. An unpopulated device, the DS210j has two Sata drive bays with RAID support and more features than any hi-tech household could …

    Hardware 2 Jun 2010, 12:02

  • Play BP Offshore Oil Strike

    70s board game family fun

    In the 1970s, an obscure board games publisher called Printabox collaborated with BP to design a game called BP Offshore Oil Strike. Will You Strike Oil, Dry Hole or Hazard? Here are some rules (courtesy of Boardgamegeek): Two to four players compete at exploring for oil, building platforms, and laying pipelines to bring …

    Hardware 2 Jun 2010, 12:05

  • BT to retain more control over fibre networks

    'Virtual unbundling' must be temporary, warns EU

    BT will have tighter control over competitors' access to its new faster broadband infrastructure than it has over the old copper network, after the European Commission today approved new regulations. Rather than the existing system of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), competitors will access new fibre-to-the-cabinet and fibre-to- …

    Broadband 2 Jun 2010, 12:07

  • V-22 Osprey downblast scatters spectators like skittles

    72-year-old, baby bowled over by descending tiltrotor

    Spectators were blown "thirty feet" along the ground and battered by flying debris including branches ripped from trees by downwash from a V-22 Osprey tiltrotor landing in a park at the weekend. The MV-22B aircraft, operated by the US Marines, was landing in Clove Lakes Park, Staten Island as part of Memorial Day …

    Science 2 Jun 2010, 12:11

  • Freeview HD sacrifices surround sound for World Cup scramble

    Same old show on my stereo

    Freeview HD may have kicked off to a song and dance about pin-sharp pictures for the World Cup, but many buyers have been disappointed to discover that things sound far from rosy when it comes to the audio side of the service. Some of the adverts and even Freeview’s own web site talk about surround sound as a benefit of …

    Hardware 2 Jun 2010, 12:18

  • Gov ICT contracts to go online in July

    Plus tenders for contracts of £10,000+

    The prime minister has told government departments to publish all new ICT contracts online from July 2010. In a letter to departments dated 1 June 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron set out a timetable for the publication of public sector datasets. In addition to ICT contracts, departments will be expected to publish all …

    The Channel 2 Jun 2010, 12:26

  • Smokescreen brings Flash to the iPhone

    Slow is better than nothing

    A new software bundle called Smokescreen promises to bring Flash animations and interactivity to the iPad and iPhone by converting them into JavaScript on the fly. Smokescreen is entirely written in JavaScript, and once running it downloads the Flash SWF file, decompresses and interprets it, then renders without recourse to …

    Mobile 2 Jun 2010, 12:38

  • Living with Unified Comms

    On-Demand Webcast Life after implementation

    This final instalment in our unified comms series gets to the meat and potatoes of living with Unified Communications. It’s a detailed look at what you can expect once you’ve implemented a unified communications solution. As ever, the programme is fronted by our highly experienced end user, Darren Lloyd, from Newport City …

    Unified Comms 2 Jun 2010, 13:03

  • Minor bugs bite patch security checking tool

    Ants in your pants

    A security researcher claims to have found a trio of coding bugs in Secunia's popular security inspection tool. Secunia PSI, which provides a handy way to check if applications installed on a computer are up to date, has a bug in its interface which allows anything to be inserted, according to blogger Raul Romero. Romero …

    Security 2 Jun 2010, 13:08

  • Vulture 1 GPS test live at 2pm

    Updated PARIS takes to the air - follow us here

    At 2pm this afternoon, the El Reg Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) programme take to the air for the first time, for a live test of the Vulture 1 GPS unit. At the helm for this test run is PARIS radio man Steve Daniels (callsign G6UIM), who's put together the lightweight air-to-ground comms package, details of which …

    SPB 2 Jun 2010, 13:11

  • Newzbin comes back to life

    Zombie usenet rears up

    As predicted, Newzbin has come back to life. The Usenet indexer and search engine was shut after it was found guilty of copyright infringement at the end of March after action by the Motion Picture Association. A message on its website said: "Regrettably the Newzbin website has to close as a result of the legal action against …

    Broadband 2 Jun 2010, 13:12

  • Sonic waves $323m in DivX marriage proposal

    Deal promises 'over the top' technology

    Roxio owner Sonic has sucked up DivX in a $323m deal it claims will streamline "over the top" movie distribution. DivX is best known for its codec technology, which enables decent quality video transmission, and has cropped up in a range of devices from handsets to TVs. It is notorious for a long-running dispute with Universal …

    Applications 2 Jun 2010, 14:00

  • Wikileaks denies Tor hacker eavesdropping gave site its start

    Updated Perish the thought

    WikiLeaks has denied that eavesdropping on Chinese hackers played a key part in the early days of the whistle-blowing site. Wired reports that early WikiLeaks documents were siphoned off from Chinese hackers' activities via a node on the Tor anonymiser network, as an extensive interview with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Paul …

    Security 2 Jun 2010, 14:08

  • Qualcomm spits out 3rd gen Snapdragon

    Poking the iPad rivals with a stick

    In an almost one line release this week, US chip vendor Qualcomm says that it has begun shipping the chips that will line up against the Apple A4 - its Snapdragon dual core chips. One of the keys to this chip is that Qualcomm has always preached that phones and portable devices will run on a single core in order to keep …

    Hardware 2 Jun 2010, 14:28

  • About The Register HPC Community

    Welcome to The Register’s HPC Community, a one-stop shop for interesting and relevant HPC content. The HPC sector generates more than $10bn a year revenues worldwide and this vibrant market is entering the mainstream. Massive improvements in system price / performance in recent years are fuelling the proliferation of HPC …

    HPC 2 Jun 2010, 14:29

  • Novell swings into MeeGo throng

    Me too MeeGo

    Novell has joined Nokia and Intel in backing the new MeeGo platform, which is unsurprising given its absorption of the Novell-backed Moblin platform. Novell will put MeeGo on top of SUSE Linux, and push it out to notebook and netbook manufacturers as an alternative to desktop operating systems, just as it did with Moblin. So …

    Mobile 2 Jun 2010, 14:57

  • James Bond Aston Martin on the block for $4m (or more)

    License to spend lots of money

    Wealthy Bond fans were left with heartbeats racing today after it was announced that the spy's most famous car will be auctioned. Driven by Sean Connery in films Goldfinger and Thunderball, the Aston Martin DB5 is widely regarded as the ultimate Bond car and has never sold before at public auction. Go-Go gadget car The …

    Science 2 Jun 2010, 15:01

  • ID cards poster girl laments her £30

    'It is simply tantamount to theft'

    Angela Epstein, the Manchester-based columnist and ID cards poster girl, has written a furious lament for the scheme - and she's so angry she's started a Facebook group. "I never wanted to be a poster girl for the ID project," Epstein rages in her latest treatise for the Manchester Evening News. "I never had any kind of …

    Government 2 Jun 2010, 15:02

  • US Navy develops toss-proof robot crane

    Allows matelots to unload safely out at sea

    US Navy boffinry chiefs say they have successfully tested a cunning, heavily augmented crane which allows containers to be loaded on and off ships tossing on the waves out at sea, removing the need for a harbour when mounting an invasion or delivering humanitarian aid. Hah, the crinkly stuff holds no terrors for us now …

    Science 2 Jun 2010, 15:46

  • Atmos virtualises non-EMC storage

    3PAR? NetApp? HDS? Oh yes

    EMC can now virtualise its competitors' arrays courtesy of an Atmos front end running as a virtual machine. Atmos is EMC's cloud storage array, designed to combine nodes in massively scalable storage pools that can be worldwide in scope and present data locally. At EMC World in May the company announced Atmos Virtual Edition ( …

    Storage 2 Jun 2010, 15:52

  • Steve Jobs fears Nation of Bloggers

    I'll save you, media!

    A free and open professional media is essential to democracy, Steve Jobs said yesterday at the All Things D conference. "I don't want us to become a nation of bloggers myself. I think we need editorial more than ever right now. "We have to get ways of people to start paying for this hard earned content... Anything that we can …

    Media 2 Jun 2010, 15:58

  • Yahoo! APIs share fantasy with devs

    Daydream sports stats exposed

    Yahoo! has offered up APIs for its popular fantasy-sports services. Today, the company exposed API suites for its Fantasy [American] Football and Fantasy Baseball services, and according to David Geller, director of Yahoo!'s fantasy sports division, APIs for Fantasy Basketball and Fantasy Hockey will follow "in the coming …

    Developer 2 Jun 2010, 18:08

  • Force10 adds rack-topping Gigabit switch

    Fat buffers for virt servers

    Force10 Networks has been flattening out and speeding up networks since its was founded over a decade ago, and today it is fleshing out its product line with a server virtualization–friendly top-of-rack Gigabit Ethernet switch called the S60. There are plenty of Gigabit Ethernet switches out there, but Steve Garrison, vice …

    Data Networking 2 Jun 2010, 19:17

  • EMEA shops set x64 server share record

    But spending still slowed by the Great Recession

    Europe has been looking for some good news — aside from the fact that it is not in close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico — and it comes today in the form of server stats from the box counters at IDC. To be precise, there was a recovery in spending on x64 servers in the first quarter, with machines using Xeon and Opteron chips …

    Servers 2 Jun 2010, 20:14

  • AT&T to ax unlimited data plans on iPhone Monday

    But you can have tethering. For another $20

    If you're in the US and want an iPhone or other AT&T-provided smartphone with an unlimited data plan, get off your duff and sign up before Monday, June 7 — that's when AT&T will switch to capped data-service plans. June 7 is also the day that Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the next-generation iPhone. In addition to killing …

    Mobile 2 Jun 2010, 23:16

  • AMD demos first Fusion 'APU'

    Party like it's 2009

    The first processor to emerge from AMD's long-gestating Fusion effort made its demo debut on Tuesday at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan. A Fusion processor is neither a CPU nor GPU, but in AMD parlance an APU — an accelerated processing unit. An APU not only marries a GPU and a CPU onto the same die, but can also …

    Hardware 2 Jun 2010, 23:23

  • HPC might rises in the Far East

    Like the space race. But with petaflops

    As spring turns into summer, we get – like clockwork – a new Top 500 list. While there’s plenty of analysis yet to be done, what’s getting lots of press is how the Chinese National Supercomputing Center has captured the number two slot on the list with their 1.27 petaflop (sustained), 4,640 GPU monster box. This system is …

    HPC 2 Jun 2010, 23:37

  • Watchdog backs Google antitrust complaint with (more) data

    YouTube on Google = IE on Windows?

    Public advocate and longtime Google critic Consumer Watchdog has issued a report alleging that the web giant may have used its search monopoly to illegally drive traffic to its own services. Citing three years of web data from research outfit Hitwise, the report claims that Google significantly increased its share of three …

    Media 2 Jun 2010, 23:37