The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

4th June 2010 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Search begins on seized Gizmodo journo kit

    Steve Jobs in Der Ring des Gizmodophonelungen

    The Gizmodophone saga lurched another step forward Thursday when the chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, California, the jurisdiction investigating that misplaced/stolen/repurposed next-gen iPhone prototype, announced that a court-appointed agent had begun to search equipment seized from a Gizmodo editor. …

    Music and Media 4 Jun 04:18

  • Microsoft's Ballmer and Ozzie tag-team on mediocrity

    Comment Failure to communicate

    Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer and chief software architect Ray Ozzie put on a poor performance when quizzed by Walt Mossberg at the All Things Digital conference, judging from the live blogs of the event. What was wrong? They allowed the conversation to be focused mainly on competing products: Apple iPad, Google …

    Software 4 Jun 04:33

  • Bookeen Cybook Opus e-book reader 2010 edition

    Review Never judge a book by its colour

    Less than a year after its initial release French e-reader maker Bookeen has released an updated version of its Cybook Opus e-book reader, reviewed last year. The most obvious change, but fairly irrelevant, is the new range of seven colours, instead of just plain white. Colour schemes aside, the important upgrade is the new …

    reghardware 4 Jun 07:02

  • Vince Cable: Feel my mighty SME love

    Pledges red-tape slashfest, bank-loan bonanza

    New Coalition government biznovation minister Vince Cable has set out his stall in a speech given yesterday at a business school in London. He pledged to cut the red tape stifling small businesses, and said he would compel banks to lend to SMEs. On the matter of red tape, here's what Mr Cable had to say: I will take a tougher …

    Small Biz 4 Jun 07:02

  • MS lines up 10 bulletins for bumper Patch Tuesday

    Including three critical fixes for IE and Windows

    Microsoft is lining up a bumper load of 10 security bulletins covering 34 vulnerabilities for June's Patch Tuesday release. Three of the 10 bulletins, due on 8 June, cover critical flaws, normally defined as security holes that might allow an attacker to take full control of the targeted machine. The other seven notices fall …

    Enterprise Security 4 Jun 07:56

  • Is your office World Cup sweepstake legal?

    Spot the balls-up

    Many of the sweepstakes being run at workplaces ahead of next week's football World Cup are likely to be illegal, according to an expert in gambling law. Sweeps with informal tickets and even those where some proceeds go to charity can be illegal. As next Friday's World Cup draws nearer, clubs, societies and workplaces are …

    Small Biz 4 Jun 08:02

  • Everything should be encrypted, right?

    Workshop Poll Security's magic bullet

    Here's the perfect plan to solve all those pesky security problems. Confidentiality and data leakage, secure backups, individual privacy, data integrity, identity and access management - all can be dealt with in some way by encryption. So why don't we all just use it then, and be done? Of course encryption is out there, …

    Security that Fits 4 Jun 08:17

  • Post Office finds new tech boss

    If the boss gets £3.5m what does the IT director get?

    The Post Office will make Yvonne Ferguson its new Chief Information Officer when the current holder Robin Dargue departs. The two have been working together and will continue to do so until the end of the month, when Dargue will join Alcatel-Lucent and Ferguson will take sole control, Computing reports. The Post Office is …

    IT Director 4 Jun 08:25

  • TD-LTE sounds death knell for WiMAX

    Opinion It tolls for thee. Or does it?

    "The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Was it Mark Twain who said that, or WiMAX? News of the poor 4G technology's imminent death have surfaced again with some vigour, with blame squarely aimed at the growing support for the unpaired flavour of LTE - known as TD-LTE - which offers holders of unpaired spectrum a …

    Mobile 4 Jun 09:19

  • Cray packs DataDirect into supercomputers

    Hooks up meanest array

    Cray is using DataDirect Networks' (DDN) biggest, baddest array in its supercomputers. This is the SFA10000, which offers up to 2.4PB from 1,200 SSD, SAS and SATA drives in two rack cabinets. It features up to 10GB/sec bandwidth for reads and writes, up to 1,000,000 random IOPS to cache and 300,000 random IOPS to disk, and …

    Storage 4 Jun 09:22

  • Google blames Wi-Fi snooping on rogue engineer

    Patented accidental Street View slurp defended

    Eric Schmidt has taken to the business pages today to blame Google's heavily criticised Street View Wi-Fi data harvesting operation on the actions of one rogue software coder. The male Googler in question is now subject to disciplinary proceedings, he told the FT. That's in spite of the news overnight that the firm applied …

    Law 4 Jun 09:34

  • Government opens public spending database

    COINing it in over previous Whitehall incumbents

    The government has broken the seal on its UK public expenditure data by releasing the entire contents of the Treasury’s Combined Online Information System (COINS) that details spending undertaken by the previous administration for the past two years. The information has been published on data.gov.uk and contains “detailed” …

    Government 4 Jun 09:56

  • Idle gear: It's too darn hot

    Sysadmin Blog Power management - use it or lose it

    IT projects can arise from the most interesting of circumstances. One project begets another project and another and down the rabbit hole you go. The subject of this article is power management; a project brought to the forefront by of all things our upcoming replacement of desktops with low-power Wyse thin clients. If that …

    Desktop Mgmt Blog 4 Jun 10:11

  • Facebook plugs email address indexing bug

    It's just not your month, is it, dear?

    Incident-prone social network monolith Facebook has plugged yet another security leak, this time involving the indexing by search engines of email addresses not listed on Facebook. Thousands of email addresses submitted using Facebook's "Find a friend" feature that were not tied to a Facebook account wound up getting indexed …

    ID 4 Jun 10:37

  • Advertisers set iPad pester-standards

    Eye-assault levels fixed

    The Mobile Marketing Association reckons iPad adverts can be up to 900 pixels across, but still shouldn't be more than 40KB to download. The latest white paper from the Mobile Marketing Association (pdf) points out that screens have grown bigger since September last year, so now adverts might like to take advantage of Extended …

    Mobile 4 Jun 10:39

  • Tesla Motors: Elon Musk's divorce won't sink us

    But our cars' declining battery life might

    Fresh troubles have beset famous battery-car maker Tesla Motors, as the acrimonious divorce of its CEO and principal backer Elon Musk may imperil its finances and imminent IPO. Furthermore, there are signs that the lustre of the company's flagship Roadster sportscar may be dimming. The latest Roadster Sport. Looks sexy... but …

    Science 4 Jun 10:54

  • Rdio snubs 'second rate' Indies

    Exclusive Kazaa founders now in bed with majors

    So much for the rebels socking it to The Man. The would-be "Spotify-killer" music service unveiled yesterday by former Kazaa founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis is happy to be owned by major labels. But Rdio won't extend the same offer to the Indie sector, The Register has learned. As with Spotify, the majors (Universal …

    Music and Media 4 Jun 11:31

  • Google buys Invite Media, invites protest from rivals

    'Conflict of interest' claims thrown at ad broker

    Google upset the online display ad market yesterday, after it confirmed the takeover of Invite Media. Immediately following the buyout, claims of “conflict of interest” were thrown at the world’s largest ad broker. Invite Media currently allows advertisers to buy display ad spots from a wide cross section of ad exchanges, …

    Applications 4 Jun 11:36

  • Romanian boffin touts 1PB holographic disk tech

    Ceramic-glass objects for the millennia

    Another holographic hopeful has emerged, Storex Technologies, which claims its Hyper CD technology can produce a 1PB optical disk. It was only a couple of years ago that Call/Recall was proposing a 1TB drive and GE was suggesting it could produce a 500GB unit last year. InPhase had to be rescued after its long-lived attempt to …

    Storage 4 Jun 11:42

  • MI5 recruiters enter the Strategy Boutique in CIO search

    Whale song, joss-sticks, exploding pens

    Free Whitepaper - Re-engineering an Open Conversation Framework MI5 aims to recruit a senior business executive to head up big changes to its IT operation, ahead of an anticipated squeeze on the intelligence budget. A six-figure salary is on offer for the Security Service's "head of transformation and office of CIO". All the …

    Government 4 Jun 11:43

  • Twitter airport bomb spoof joker launches appeal

    What will he pretend to threaten to do if he loses?

    The Twitter user who jokingly threatened to blow Doncaster airport "sky high" back in January is to appeal against his widely criticised conviction for sending a threatening message. Paul Chambers, 26, got into trouble for posting the ill-conceived micro-blogging update on 6 January, after a run of heavy snow weather forced …

    Law 4 Jun 12:13

  • Pentax Optio W90 rugged camera

    Review Whatever the weather

    Summer is here, sort of. The beaches are soon to be filled to capacity and anyone with any sense is clambering aboard the first plane to somewhere hot and sandy. That's a disaster for most cameras, which don't happily take to beaches, airport baggage handlers or seawater. Unless you've a 'ruggedised' model, of course, …

    reghardware 4 Jun 12:15

  • Sky snaps up Virgin TV channels

    You TV, me Telco

    Virgin Media is selling its TV channels to Sky, to focus on the telecoms side of its business. Sky is paying £160 million cash for the channels and will no longer pay carriage fees for Virgin channels to appear on its TV services. The company has also secured a new agreement with Virgin that safeguards the appearance of Sky’s …

    reghardware 4 Jun 12:16

  • Alpha Protocol

    Sega soaked espionage

    When Obsidian and SEGA teamed up to create a new espionage-themed RPG they must have thought it was cake baking time. Looking the wrong way seriously "backfired" Add ingredients: narrative, character development, moral choices and minigames. Whisk in contemporary themes of corporate greed and regional instability. Finally, …

    reghardware 4 Jun 12:29

  • The world's ugliest dog is dead

    Miss Ellie bites the big one

    A pedigree dog, crowned the world’s ugliest pooch, has died at the grand old age of 17. Miss Ellie was a wiggly-eyed Chinese Crested Hairless mutt with a drooping tongue and a scruffy mass of sprouting grey hair. She was also a keen charity fundraiser according to Asheville Citizen-Times, which first reported the dog’s sad …

    Bootnotes 4 Jun 12:33

  • NetApp grows fastest in rebounding storage market

    Nearly three times quicker than the rest

    The external disk storage market is back in rude health, according to IDC, with 17 per cent revenue growth in the first quarter. EMC, IBM, NetApp and Dell all recorded double-digit revenue growth, and NetApp leads the pack with a 47.4 per cent jump. IDC reckons the market grew to $4.96bn in the first quarter of this year …

    Channel Register 4 Jun 12:40

  • BT reaches deadlock with union

    Strike ballot to go ahead

    BT faces a strike ballot after it failed to reach an agreement in a pay dispute with engineers by today's noon deadline. Some 55,000 members of the Communication Workers Union at BT will now vote on their first industrial action in more than 20 years. The union had set a 12pm deadline for BT to improve on its offer of a two …

    Telecoms 4 Jun 12:45

  • Summary Care Records project lives

    Minister confirms database is healthy

    The Summary Care Records project will continue in care trusts where patients have been properly informed about the process. Michael Fallon, Conservative MP for Sevenoaks, asked health minister Simon Burns if the controversial project to upload summary records to the central spine would continue. The LibDems made some vague …

    Government 4 Jun 13:21

  • HP plays musical chairs at PC group

    Euro pack gets shuffling

    HP is shuffling senior management at its European PC business. Antoine Barre becomes vice president and general manager for the Personal Systems Group at HP for Middle East and Africa, replacing Josh Brenkel who will be moving to a similar role for Asia-Pacific and Japan. Barre previously ran the European channel business for …

    Channel Register 4 Jun 14:15

  • Panda soups up freebie cloud anti-virus

    Oi. Behave

    Panda Security has improved the functionality of its free cloud-based anti-malware service and launched a new commercial version, Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro. The paid-for version, which costs from $29.95, offers expanded support and automation. Panda said nearly 10 million users have used Panda Cloud Antivirus (the free …

    Malware 4 Jun 14:17

  • Gadget tax needed 'to save US newspapers'

    The FTC does the sums. And they don't add up...

    Beware, anybody working in music or movies industries who thinks a levy - one that raises a little pot of money - will save the day. Newspaper tycoons got there first and parked their backsides in the little pot, and won't budge. They'll be able to do so because politicians still fear what newspapers say about them, and they …

    Music and Media 4 Jun 14:35

  • Delivering on data governance

    Lab Making sure IT’s glass is half full

    Data governance can be dismissed as ‘applied common sense’, or balked at as an impossible endeavour which once embarked upon, will never end. The fact that one end of the data governance spectrum can seem a bit frightening means many organisations tend towards the other, and wind up doing the absolute minimum in order to get by …

    Platform Evolution 4 Jun 15:14

  • UK Waves hello to Samsung's Bada

    Bada or Gooda?

    The Samsung Wave, the first handset based on the company's much hyped Bada platform, hit the UK today, available on Virgin Media, O2 and Vodafone. The Wave is coming in at just over £400 on pay-as-you-go - but of course you can get it for "free" if you stump up for a meaty tariff The Wave has a 1GHz processor, 5Mp Camera and …

    reghardware 4 Jun 16:01

  • SGI ends Itanium era with UV supers

    ProPack for Linux glows UltraViolet

    After years of development and financial struggle, Silicon Graphics has at last begun shipping its "UltraViolet" Altix UV supercomputers. With that, the Itanium era of SGI is essentially over at the company, even though it will never say that publicly, and the NUMAlink interconnect is now available on standard x64 processors, …

    HPC 4 Jun 16:16

  • Dolphin talks to humans – but does he love Toughbook or iPad?

    ‘Don’t eat me’

    Dolphins eat fish, kill porpoises for fun, and try, not always successfully, to hide from Japanese fishermen. In their spare time, they hang out at Seaworld and help scientists in their ceaseless quest to talk to animals. And for animals to talk to humans. Take Merlin, aged 2, a dolphin, who is helping researcher Jack …

    reghardware 4 Jun 16:27

  • Google's $124.6m open codec hits Chrome dev build

    WebM browser

    Google has added the newly open-sourced VP8 video codec to the latest developer-channel build of its Chrome browser. The codec is already part of developer builds from Mozilla and Opera, and it was rolled into Chromium, the open source incarnation of Chrome, in late May. But this marks its debut in Chrome itself. Version 6.0. …

    Developer 4 Jun 17:31

  • iPads in spa-a-a-a-ce!

    Rockin' the Vomit Comet for science

    The next time you take your iPad into space, remember that it has a screen-rotation lock next to its volume-control rocker switch. You may need it. As any fanboi toting Apple's magical and revolutionary device knows, the iPad's accelerometer allows it to reorient its display so that down is always down, no matter in which …

    Music and Media 4 Jun 17:56

  • Microsoft pulls plug on search bribery machine

    So long and thanks for all the farce

    Microsoft is pulling the plug on its search bribery machine. The Bing Cashback program — which actually paid people to use Microsoft's third-rate search engine — will vanish on July 30. In May 2008, as part of its desperate bid to catch the uncatchable Google, Microsoft began bribing people to use Live Search, Bing's precursor …

    Music and Media 4 Jun 19:36

  • Apple's HTML5 'standards' hype debunked

    'It's open. But it only works with Safari'

    Apple is hyping HTML5 again, this time with a new website purporting to show open web development in action. But the company's standards-following rivals have pointed out the Jobsian site is peddling nonsense. Today, Apple posted an HTML 5 Showcase demonstrating video, graphics, and typography built with HTML5, the related …

    Developer 4 Jun 20:32

  • Michael Dell mulls taking PC colossus private

    Shareholders begone

    Michael Dell told a conclave of moneymen on Thursday that he has considered taking his eponymous PC maker private. This off-the-cuff revelation was in response to a question from an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein's 26th annual Strategic Decisions Conference in New York City. According to Reuters and others, Dell answered " …

    Financial News 4 Jun 20:33

  • Fujitsu, Oracle ironing out Sparc server deal

    A 'mutually complementary' relationship

    Fujitsu and Oracle, newly in the server racket thanks to its Sun acquisition, are working on a new contract covering the development and sale of Sparc-based servers. While Oracle may not be the mood to talk about its future Sparc and x64 server plans, Fujitsu's new president, Masami Yamamoto, wants to look ahead after taking …

    Servers 4 Jun 21:06

  • Appeals court absolves firm that exposed man's SSN

    No harm, no foul

    A man whose social security number and other personal data were exposed by a company that processed his job application has no legal claims because no actual damage resulted from the privacy breach, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision, issued late last week by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, is likely to make …

    Law 4 Jun 21:15

  • US census inflates latest employment numbers

    Computer makers add, service providers cut jobs

    The good news is that employment in the US is up. The bad news is that most of the rise is due to temporary government head-counters. Barack Obama doesn't have a lot to be thankful for since moving into the White House a year and a half ago, what with the economic meltdown, the mess of healthcare reform, and now the oil slick …

    Business 4 Jun 21:17

  • Google open codec wins OSI love after patent shield rethink

    Open is as open does

    Google has rejiggered the license on its open-source VP8 video codec after complaints that it wasn't really open source. Today, with a blog post, Google's Chris DiBona announced that the company had switched to a pure BSD license, ending a bit of a feud with various open source stalwarts over the codec. On May 19, after …

    Music and Media 4 Jun 22:09

  • Hack on e-commerce co. exposes records for 200,000

    'Highly unusual search command'

    E-commerce company Digital River exposed data belonging to almost 200,000 individuals after hackers executed a “highly unusual search command” against its secured servers, according to a news report. The breach came to light only after a 19-year-old New York man allegedly tried to sell the purloined data for as much as $500, …

    Security 4 Jun 23:33

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 achieves orbit on maiden flight

    Elon Musk rocket overhead

    The SpaceX Falcon 9 launched on its maiden flight on Friday at 11:45am Pacific Daylight Time, 15 minutes short of the end of its four-hour launch window. As live-blogged on the Space Exploration Technologies website: Posted June 04, 2010 11:45 Pacific Time T+ 00:00:06 Liftoff! Posted June 04, 2010 11:46 Pacific Time T+ 00: …

    Space 4 Jun 23:52