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16th June 2010 Archive

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  • $11.7m judgment against Spamhaus slashed to $27,000

    End of line for 6.6 billion-strong spammer

    A federal judge has handed a major victory to anti-spam crusaders Spamhaus, slashing an $11.7m verdict to just $27,002. US Judge Charles P. Kocoras of the Eastern District of Illinois said the plaintiffs, e360 Insight and its founder David Linhardt, failed to credibly calculate the damage that resulted when its promotional …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 02:40

  • NHS still rubbish at caring for data

    ICO warns, again. Surely that'll work this time

    The Information Commissioner's Office has again warned the NHS that it is not doing enough to safeguard patients' data. This week's featured failures come from Stoke-on-Trent and Basingstoke and North Hampshire. NHS Stoke lost 2,000 paper physiotherapy files, and is not sure if they were destroyed or simply filed in the wrong …

    Government 16 Jun 2010, 06:02

  • NASA: Civilization will end in 2013 (possibly)

    'Here comes the sun, doo-be-doo-do'

    In 2013, the earth will be attacked from space, with one possible outcome being mind-bogglingly severe disruption to our tech-centric way of life. "The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years, we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," says Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics …

    Science 16 Jun 2010, 06:02

  • Ten Essential... 500GB Portable Hard Drives

    Product Round-up Half a terabyte in the palm of your hand

    Portable hard drives may not offer the capacity or speed of their desktop siblings, but for laptop owners looking for handy back-up space or extra storage capacity, they're a must. Users of desktop computers too like their bus-powered plug-and-go convenience, especially if raw storage capacity isn't of paramount importance. …

    Top Ten 16 Jun 2010, 07:02

  • Ubuntu's Koala food mixes with Windows VMs

    Eucalyptus does un-Linux

    Eucalyptus Systems — the open source outfit that mimics Amazon's so-called compute cloud inside private data centers — has released a major upgrade to its commercial product, Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition. Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (EE) 2.0 includes support for Windows virtual machines, letting you hoist Windows Server …

    Virtualization 16 Jun 2010, 07:02

  • AMD shoots low and wide with Opteron 4100s

    The server limbo, Lisbon style

    The x64 server chip refresh cycle may feel done, but there's still one more to go to finish the work that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices started in March. AMD is getting ready to launch its "Lisbon" Opteron 4100 processors, which are slated for delivery sometime in the third quarter. When the twelve-core "Magny-Cours" …

    Servers 16 Jun 2010, 08:02

  • Nuke lab tests flashy HPC server cluster

    Appro and Fusion-io plug into Hyperion

    It's Flashturbation of a different kind. US nuke lab Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has tapped longtime HPC cluster partner Appro International to custom-build a 100 TB flash-based storage system for its Hyperion x64 testbed cluster. Project Hyperion was all the talk at the SC08 supercomputing show a year and a half …

    HPC 16 Jun 2010, 08:02

  • NetApp improves SANscreen for virtualised environments

    Integrated into BMC's Atrium

    NetApp has improved its SANscreen storage management product to show the effects of using thin provisioning and deduplication technologies, and integrated it with BMC's Atrium to help BMC users respond to degraded service levels. We're told the SANscreen product suite offers "end-to-end infrastructure discovery, service-level …

    Storage 16 Jun 2010, 08:25

  • Feds block sale of crooks' favourite messaging client

    ICQ - instant messaging for crims

    AOL's sale of ICQ messaging software to Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies might yet be blocked by US authorities, which fear losing access to transcripts from the criminal fraternity's favoured messaging product. AOL sold ICQ for $187.5m to DST back in April - a pittance compared to the $400m it paid for the company in …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 08:51

  • New crew pursue ISS

    Baikonur blast-off for Expedition 24

    The trio of International Space Station Expedition 24 flight engineers blasted off yesterday at 21:35 GMT from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On board for the Soyuz TMA-19 launch were NASA astronauts Shannon Walker and Doug Wheelock and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who'll all spend five-and-a-half months aboard the …

    Science 16 Jun 2010, 09:13

  • Virident's tachIOn SSD flashes by

    Coming thing or a goner?

    Virident Systems has announced its tachIOn solid state drive (SSD) that comes as a PCIe-connect card with a claimed two to four times IOPS advantage over Fusion-io and LSI/Seagate PCIe products. What's a tachyon? It's a supposed sub-atomic particle that travels faster than the speed of light. Apparently, if you could see one …

    Storage 16 Jun 2010, 09:17

  • Microsoft justifies lost Office 2010 upgrades

    Simplicity is a key card

    Microsoft has briefly explained why it's killed a tried and tested way for loyal consumers to obtain a new edition of Office for a low price. The company is not allowing upgrades to Office 2010, released to retailers on Tuesday, from older versions of its productivity suite. The move means you must get a completely new copy of …

    The Channel 16 Jun 2010, 09:18

  • Cops collar 178 over £17m credit card crimes

    International sweep nets several scoundrels

    Cops across Europe, the US and Australia have collared 178 people in an operation to smash an international fake credit card production network turning over more than £17m. The investigation was centred in Spain where police discovered 120,000 stolen credit card numbers and 5,000 cloned cards, arrested 76 people and dismantled …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 09:40

  • Nintendo shows off 3D DS

    3DS debuts

    Nintendo has introduced the - not unexpected - 3D-enabled version of its DS handheld console. The - surprise, surprise - 3DS does indeed display 3D without the need for special spectacles, using half of its 3.53in, 800 x 240 display to show the left-eye image and the rest for the right-eye picture, making for a combined 400 x …

    Games 16 Jun 2010, 09:42

  • AT&T iPad 'hacker' arrested for 'drugs possession'

    iFans' emails and mobile numbers exposed

    One of the hackers behind the AT&T iPad security breach has been arrested after police allegedly discovered cocaine, ecstasy and LSD during a search of his home. Andrew Auernheimer, 24, who goes under the hacker handle “Weev”, was seized on Tuesday by Arkansas County Sheriffs following the execution of an FBI search warrant. …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 09:43

  • Virtual management? It's complicated

    Sysadmin Blog Load balancing VMs by hand

    Virtualisation is complicated. I am not talking here about implementation, or even the concepts or technologies underpinning virtualisation. I am talking about the realities of managing and maintaining a virtualised infrastructure. My particular quest of late has been one of decreasing power utilisation, a difficult task in an …

    Servers 16 Jun 2010, 09:50

  • Adaptec disappearing down rabbit hole

    Steele Partners swallows it up

    The remnants of adapter company Adaptec, having sold its RAID adapter business to PMC-Sierra, is leaving storage further behind as it becomes a Steele Partners shell for financial operations. Chief financial officer Mary Dotz is to be terminated from her position on 30 September. She'll probably get nine months' salary, a near …

    Storage 16 Jun 2010, 10:19

  • Managing the dung heaps of data

    Lab Time to rationalise?

    The question “What about the 'I' in 'IT'?” serves as an equally good reminder of the point of the ‘T’. But while information allegedly exists to support the business, from the information technology perspective it sometimes seems almost a by-product of all the communications we want to do, all the applications we want to run. …

    Platform Evolution 16 Jun 2010, 10:26

  • iPad beats BlackBerry for browsing

    Sofa, so good

    Apple's iPad is now generating more web traffic than RIM's BlackBerry in North America, though at least a BlackBerry can do other things too. One per cent of all web traffic, as measured by Quantcast, is now being generated by iOS-based devices, with a tenth of that being attributed to sofa-surfers fondling their iPads. …

    Mobile 16 Jun 2010, 10:31

  • iSoft shuffles board as shares continue to fall

    Market update fails to cheer markets

    iSoft shares continued to fall yesterday despite a supposedly reassuring update from the health provider. The company, at the centre of the UK's National Programme for IT, said some had misunderstood its earlier update: an update which it has already had to clarify when it was interpreted as criticism of the government and of …

    Government 16 Jun 2010, 10:40

  • Easy-peasy science GCSEs binned

    You put the bunsen burner where?

    Science GCSEs set to replace the pack of dumbed down current exams have been rejected for being too easy. Exam regulator Ofqual has said the proposed GCSEs don't go far enough to addressing the “serious concerns” it has for science assessment. It says they are not demanding enough, especially for the brightest students. The …

    Science 16 Jun 2010, 10:46

  • Did the iPad just save Wired, and Conde-Nast?

    High price, high sales, glossy ads, trebles all round

    Saving the whole of the newspaper industry is a big ask, even for a "magical and revolutionary" device, but there might just be hope for the magazine business. The rapaciously-priced ($4.99 for this month's issue) iPad edition of Wired has comfortably outsold the somewhat cheaper print edition, and it's not even ad-free. On the …

    Hardware 16 Jun 2010, 11:02

  • Sony prices up PlayStation Move

    Wand-ering in in September

    Sony's PlayStation Move motion controller will arrived on UK shop shelves on 15 September, debuting at €30 (£25). That's for the main "motion controller". The "navigation Controller" - Move's answer to the Wii's Nunchuk - is an extra €30. There's also a pistol-style holder for the motion controller - Time Crisis, anyone? - …

    Games 16 Jun 2010, 11:13

  • Philippines declare war on cyberlingo

    Jejebusters battle jejemongers on linguistic front line

    The government of the Philippines has declared "all out war" on what it considers a major threat to the purity of English - the "jejemon" invasion of social networks and mobe text messaging. According to this in-depth report from Oz, the word jejemon is a fusion of 'jeje' (a variant of SMS "hehe"), and the suffix "mon", culled …

    Bootnotes 16 Jun 2010, 11:27

  • Twitter promises to stay up for World Cup

    But warns of more collapses ahead

    Twitter admits it has had its worst month since last October for downtime but promises it will do its best to stay up and running for World Cup games. The micro-blog monster explained in a blog post that tweaking its system to fix problems created by a planned upgrade had uncovered deeper problems. It is working on long-term …

    Applications 16 Jun 2010, 11:28

  • Sony confirms subscriptions coming to Playstation Network

    'Premium' content through 'PlayStation Plus'

    Sony is to start charging for access to the PlayStation Network. Well, kind of. PSN will remain free to access as is currently the case, but Sony will be introducing a subscription-based add-on, PlayStation Plus, that provides content it hopes punters will want to pay for. PlayStation Plus kicks off in on 29 June, priced at € …

    Games 16 Jun 2010, 11:29

  • Opera pushes out 10.6 preview

    Faster JavaScript, offline apps

    Opera has released a public beta of its next browser release, 10.6 - featuring support for royalty-free WebM video and HTML5 offline web apps. This will be the next major milestone for Linux and BSD users, since Opera is skipping an official 10.5 release for those platforms. Opera claims the JavaScript engine is up to 75 per …

    Software 16 Jun 2010, 11:31

  • BT signs first smart meter deal

    Everywhere by 2020

    BT has joined the gathering feeding frenzy around smart metering of utilities with its first ever deal to provide the necessary internet connectivity, to a minimum of 10,000 meters. The firm's BT Redcare division, which operates a network for security devices including alarms and CCTV, has signed a deal to connect up smart …

    Broadband 16 Jun 2010, 11:35

  • Lightning bolt smites 60ft Jesus statue

    Sign from above? Or a lightning conductor?

    The faithful of Ohio were left contemplating a message from above this week after a bolt of lightning hit a 60 foot high statue of Jesus, reducing it to a smouldering steel skeleton. The King of Kings statue at the Solid Rock Church had previously stood 64 foot high, and 40 foot wide, making it something of a landmark for the …

    Science 16 Jun 2010, 11:44

  • Wannabe Jedi drool over potent laser 'lightsabre'

    'Horrendously dangerous' zapper for sale

    Those of you who fancy playing Star Wars or who have a currently unarmed shark knocking about the house might be interested in the Wicked Lasers Spyder III Pro Arctic - a real-life "lightsabre" capable of inflicting some serious damage: The maker explains that it whipped the direct blue laser diode components from a laser …

    Hardware 16 Jun 2010, 11:59

  • Breaking Google's last taboo

    From search to selling bits

    Google has traditionally charged into other business areas with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. This isn't always a bad thing: there are plenty of cosy industries that are ripe for a shake-up, and advertising is one of the cosiest. But there's one area that's been strictly taboo. Google has always linked to other …

    Media 16 Jun 2010, 12:02

  • Radiation warning labels for deadly mobes!

    San Francisco supervisors get all overheated

    The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed an ordinance that will require warning labels on mobile phones, indicating their radiative output especially for the scientifically-illiterate and paranoid. The ordinance, which was passed with an overwhelming majority (10 to 1), will require anyone selling phones within the …

    Phones 16 Jun 2010, 12:08

  • Currency moves cost small biz dear

    Time to hedge

    Small business owners in the UK blame currency movements for threatening their ability to export goods - or at least to export goods profitably. A survey of 365 business owners by the Forum of Private Business found 63 per cent said currency movements are a restriction on overseas trade. Just 31 per cent complained about …

    Small Biz 16 Jun 2010, 12:09

  • Orange outs iPhone 4 pricing

    Not cheap

    Orange has posted its iPhone 4 tariffs, but you'll need to spend big to get one of the handsets for free. £75 a month for two years, to be precise. Reduce the monthly spend and/or the duration of the contract and the smartphone will set you back between £29 and £229. That's for the 16GB version - the 32GB iPhone 4 isn't free …

    Mobile 16 Jun 2010, 12:15

  • Alleged Biden threat spoofer drops plea deal

    'Wi-Fi' framer will face charges

    The tech-savvy man accused of emailing threats to US Vice President Joe Biden, spoofed from his neighbour's account, has upped the stakes of the legal ordeal he faces. Alleged Minneapolis nuisance neighbour Barry Ardolf has ditched his deal to plead guilty and wants to go to trial. This will mean he's likely to face charges of …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 12:30

  • Sony Ericsson unveils yoof-oriented Xperia

    Android for the masses

    Sony Ericsson has introduced its latest Android-based Xperia smartphone: the X8. Does the X8 excite? Probably, if you're happy with a 3in, 320 x 480 display, you don't care which version of Android you run - it's 1.6, by the way - and your a TwitBook buff and you want your phone to be an on-the-go entertainment device.   In …

    Phones 16 Jun 2010, 12:43

  • Developers twitchy as wait for Symbian^3 goes on and on

    Nokia promises improvements with N8, but new OS will take time to gain momentum

    Nokia's forthcoming N8 smartphone will certainly have market leading hardware specs, but the real challenge for the firm is to convince developers of its software credentials. It is promising improved developer tools, Ovi Store experience and user experience for the N8, drawing on the new open source release of Symbian. But …

    Developer 16 Jun 2010, 12:59

  • Police complaints body gets a kicking for FOI law-breaking

    Watchdog vs watchdog

    The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has been given a truncheoning for ignoring Freedom of Information requests from the public. The Information Commissioner issued the IPPC with an enforcement notice requiring it give an initial response to requests within the legal timeframe of 20 days. The notice follows …

    Law 16 Jun 2010, 13:16

  • HTC speaks out on Hero Android 2 update

    Out this month, firm insists

    Still awaiting the promised Android 2 update for your HTC Hero smartphone? Here's what HTC has to say about it: “Android Éclair update for HTC Hero will be released by the end of June. "The upgrade will come in two parts, the first of which will roll out from this week and will be detected when the Hero next automatically …

    Phones 16 Jun 2010, 13:22

  • Burger van busted offering free takeaway porn

    Want ketchup and man oysters on that mate?

    Police are pondering just what charges two East Yorkshire men will face after they were nabbed giving away free porn DVDs from a burger van in Driffield. The van, or more accurately a caravan as the snap here shows, was parked in a garden in an area of the Capital of the Wolds "popular with young revellers attending late-night …

    Bootnotes 16 Jun 2010, 13:41

  • Dot Hill: Troubles and prospects

    Comment Rejiggery pokery with Xiotech

    Dot Hill sold 125,000 entry-level array subsystems - good news. The bad news is it's restructuring and sacking a tenth of its workforce to staunch losses - and it's partnering with Xiotech in an opaque technology agreement with no clarity over which of them will deliver product. So what on earth is going on? Dot Hill sells …

    Virtualization 16 Jun 2010, 14:07

  • Violin Memory gobbles up Gear6

    Flash NAS on the way then?

    Violin Memory, which makes network-attached flash memory arrays, has bought Gear6, a web and NFS caching technology company. We might see a flash NAS as a result. Gear6 is a four-year-old startup that supplied Memcached software and also NFS caching. The former is an open source, distributed memory caching system that stores …

    Storage 16 Jun 2010, 14:29

  • Android and iPhone bite into Nokia Q2 results

    The fightback starts...soon?

    Nokia has been having a worse year than expected, reminding the world that it's a tough market out there. Not that the world's largest phone manufacturer is downgrading expectations for the industry as a whole, or even expecting its own market share to drop significantly. The company will simply be selling fewer high-end …

    Mobile 16 Jun 2010, 14:56

  • Street View snooping sparks new watchdog site

    Privacy site wants your help

    The row over Google's Street View network sniffing, along with European proposals to keep browsing history, has led Privacy International to set up a new website which aims to harness technical knowledge and skills to push forward debate on these issues. The lobby group wants to focus debate on the technical questions which …

    Law 16 Jun 2010, 14:58

  • Bigfoot Networks Killer 2100 gaming network card

    Review The quick and the dead

    Bigfoot Networks’ new Killer 2100 is more than just an Ethernet card as it features a network-processing unit designed to reduce lag when on-line gaming. The manufacturer’s claim the benefit is improved performance in games with high network traffic: think MMOs in crowded cities or raids. To try out this card, I tested it in the …

    Games 16 Jun 2010, 15:02

  • HP bulks up software for hybrid infrastructures

    Two ways lens for LOBs and IT

    HP has revved its BSM (Business Service Management) product - software which, HP says, provides a two-way lens through which line-of-business (LOB) managers and IT staff can each understand the other's view of business service priorities and IT infrastructures supporting those services. In the decades-long struggle to align IT …

    Virtualization 16 Jun 2010, 15:09

  • Got an iPhone 4 yet? No? You're gonna have to wait now

    This changes everything. Again

    iPhone 4 wannabes who blinked, or most likely were hit with an error message, will now have to wait until next month before they can get their hands on one of the coveted talking lightboxes. Apple started taking pre-orders for the smudge-a-phones just yesterday morning. However, whether by accident or design, most wannabe …

    Mobile 16 Jun 2010, 15:11

  • Virtualization for critical apps

    On Demand Down and dirty, hands on tech guidance

    Just last week we got down and dirty in the tech underbelly of Virtualization. This wasn't a strategic discussion, it was hands-on and all about the challenges and solutions to virtualizing mission critical apps. We know most Reg readers have moved on from the early days of virtualizing servers and are now looking to get more …

    Virtualization 16 Jun 2010, 15:36

  • Apple apologizes for iPhone 4 gaffe

    What's the plural of 'snafu'?

    On Wednesday morning, Apple released a straightforward apology for Tuesday's series of iPhone 4 pre-order cock-ups. As The Reg reported Tuesday, prospective buyers in both the US and the UK — at minimum — found themselves unable to order the next must-have Jobsian device due to server overload, either in Cupertino, at the …

    Mobile 16 Jun 2010, 16:22

  • TomTom slashes LIVE subs

    Big promo

    TomTom is offering new TomTom LIVE sign-ups free services for a year - and is halving annual subscription costs to £47.50. Existing subscribers for the traffic information service automatically get the new price and will stay on the new rates if they renew, TomTom says. New customers get the year’s free subscription when they …

    Science 16 Jun 2010, 16:36

  • IDC: 2010 PC sales will top 2008 peak

    Sustained growth through 2014

    Happy days are not only here again in PC Land for 2010, but apparently the party is going to continue for the next five years as far as the forecasts coming out of market researcher IDC are concerned. PC sales perked up considerably in the second half of last year, as El Reg previously reported, and sales were up sharply in …

    Hardware 16 Jun 2010, 17:48

  • Inevitable Mac OS X 10.6.4 update problems surface

    'F***ed up' fonts and iTunes lead the list

    There are scattered reports of problems with Apple's Snow Leopard update that was released yesterday. Ah, tradition. Over on the Apple Discussions forum, early updaters are reporting a series of troubles after upgrading to Mac OS X version 10.6.4: Complete installation failure. iTunes running on an iMac caused the UI to …

    Software 16 Jun 2010, 17:51

  • Firefox's oldest friend dumps it for Google Chromium

    Flock: 'We pushed it as far as we could'

    Flock — the so-called social web browser — has dumped its traditional Firefox core in favor of Chromium, the open source incarnation of Google's Chrome browser. CEO Shawn Hardin calls Flock 3 — released today as a public beta — the first major browser other than Chrome to use a Chromium base, and in making the switch, the …

    Developer 16 Jun 2010, 18:00

  • Eastern European banks under attack by next-gen crime app

    BlackEnergy 2's one-two punch

    Banks in Russia and Ukraine are under continued siege by criminal gangs wielding a sophisticated, next-generation exploitation kit that hacks the financial institutions' authentication system and then hits it with a denial-of-service attack. The attacks are being carried out with the help of a top-to-bottom revision of …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 18:12

  • IBM buys Coremetrics for web analytics

    Opens school of predictive analytics

    IBM has added another arrow to its data analytics quiver with the acquisition of Coremetrics, a specialist in the area of web analytics relating to product marketing. Whether we like to admit it or not, marketing campaigns – consisting of display advertising, Webcasts, and other branding efforts as well as the cross-selling …

    Business 16 Jun 2010, 19:23

  • Privacy watchdog pack demands Facebook close the 'app gap'

    'Nuclear option' not enough

    A small mob of privacy advocacy groups have called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to do more to protect user privacy by giving users more control over the way their personal information is turned over to third parties. In a letter sent Wednesday, the groups – which included the Center for Democracy and Technology and the …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 20:02

  • Oracle's Java police derailed by Google TV

    Android marches on Java SE

    While the authorities governing Java fiddle, the power is passing to another: Google. Four years back, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) had a very public falling out with Sun Microsystems over the Test Compatibility Kits (TCKs) used to certify Java. Sun courted acclaim by open-sourcing Java, but then threw it away by …

    Developer 16 Jun 2010, 20:14

  • Mega ISP Verizon punts sky-high storage

    'We do Everything-as-a-Service'

    Mega ISP Verizon has unveiled its own on-demand storage service, dubbed — in predictable fashion — Verizon Cloud Storage. Like Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) or the new Google Storage for Developers, this is a pay-as-you-go service that scales storage as needed. It can be used on its own or in tandem with traditional …

    Storage 16 Jun 2010, 20:22

  • YouTube adds video editor for noobs

    It's a snip

    YouTube has added a video editor — or at least a video trimmer. The Reg was tipped to this development by the unofficial Google Operating System blog. As of Wednesday, the editor trimmer was available here, but after editing our first video, that clip's description read: "I created this video at http://www.youtube.com/editor …

    Software 16 Jun 2010, 21:34

  • Microsoft inks search pact with...Opera

    Grovels to Norwegian nemesis

    Microsoft has inked a deal with arch-nemesis Opera Software, convincing the Norwegians to make Bing one of the, um, "default search engine choices" on their latest desktop browser. It's true. You can see for yourself by downloading the new Opera 10.60 beta here. As announced by Microsoft Bing general manager Jon Tinter, this …

    Applications 16 Jun 2010, 21:57

  • Russian video chat site mulls todger filter

    Input from Ashton Kutcher, Shawn Fanning

    Video chat site Chatroulette may deploy genitalia-filtering software to stem the considerable tide of pervs flocking to the property to show world+dog their penises, TechCrunch has reported. With more than a million visitors per day, the Russian site is generating plenty of interest from Silicon Valley investors. The, er, …

    Security 16 Jun 2010, 23:24