25th June 2010 Archive

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Mozilla mimics Google's native code demo in JavaScript

Velocity Time for a Jäger shot

Mozilla believes that its JavaScript engine isn't that far from matching the performance of Google's Native Client plug-in, which eschews web standards to run native code inside the browser. Speaking today at the net-performance obsessed Velocity conference in Santa Clara, California, Mozilla open source evangelist Chris …

Developer 25 Jun 00:18
Chipzilla: Standards void threatens cloud future

Structure 2010 Microsoft and Oracle, don't push it

Chipzilla is sweating. Intel is worried that without software standards, cloud computing could hit the buffers and curtail the serious amounts of money it stands to make. Intel high-density computing group chief Jason Waxman told Structure 2010 on Thursday that without common agreement on security, management, data federation …

Developer 25 Jun 05:01
Insurers must keep employers' liability policies

FSA outlines tracing rules

Insurers will need to maintain a database of all employers’ liability (EL) policies they have written or renewed since 1st November 1999 under proposals published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) this month. The regulator hopes the new rules will maximise the chances of employees who have suffered workplace injury or …

Developer 25 Jun 06:02
Google outs source code for Android 2.2

Froyo hits Nexus One over the air

Google released the source code for Android 2.2, aka "Froyo", was released on Wednesday, and it's using an over-the-air update to load the new version on existing Nexus One phones. "Today is one of those days that has my heart racing; we’ve just released the source code for Android 2.2," wrote Google software engineer Jean- …

Developer 25 Jun 06:02
Vauxhall Ampera extended range e-car

First Looks Behind the wheel of GM's green mobile

The first left-hand drive pre-production examples of the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera extended-range e-car have arrived in the UK. To illustrate the benefits of range extension, one of them was driven from the Vauxhall Heritage Centre in Luton to the assembly plant in Ellesmere Port where Reg Hardware was on hand to take it for a spin …

reghardware 25 Jun 07:02
UK told to strengthen data protection, again

Your watchdog is a puppy - sort it out or go to court

The European Commission has told the UK government to beef up data protection in order to bring safeguards for British citizens up to European standards. We now have two months to improve the situation and bolster the powers of the Information Commissioner's Office. This is the second stage of the infringement process taken …

Government 25 Jun 07:02
Cybersecurity bill clears Senate committee

Internet kill switch blunted a tad

A controversial cybersecurity bill passed a key Senate committee on Thursday after backers made concessions aimed at blunting widespread criticism the measure would give the US president broad authority to shut down key parts of the internet. The bill, known as the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PDF), has been …

Security 25 Jun 07:02
Big Blue sues exec for joining Oracle

'Should have been on gardening leave'

IBM is suing Joanne Olsen - a 31-year veteran of the company who used to be general manager of its services division. Olsen was tempted away to join Oracle by Larry Ellison after the purchase of Sun Microsystems - which put the two firms in more direct competition. Big Blue complains that Olsen was contractually obliged to …

Servers 25 Jun 08:25
You can't know it all

Sysadmin Blog So ask someone who disagrees with you

I pride myself on my depth of knowledge. I read quickly, and I read profusely. I study everything from medicine to technology, physics to music. For reasons that are likely part genetic, part neurotic hangover from my upbringing, I have an irresistible requirement to learn and understand everything. So how exactly did I miss …

Desktop Mgmt Blog 25 Jun 09:02
RISC OS runs on fastest hardware ever

Nostalgic for the Acorn Archimedes? Help is at hand

RISC OS is alive and well and running on the fastest hardware it's ever been on – and the kit only costs £120. But "kit" is the operative word... Acorn may sadly be no more than a brand name attached to fairly generic netbooks now, but Acorn's products are thriving. The Acorn RISC Machine, later renamed the Advanced RISC …

PCs & Chips 25 Jun 09:02
Suicide Girls whip out iPhone 4

NSFW 'Vast improvement' in breast-imaging capability

In an absolutely shameless piece of bandwagon-jumping self promotion, the internet's leading repository of female tattoos and body piercing has taken the latest manifestation of the Jesus Phone out for a spin (link NSFW). Suicide Girls has put the iPhone's 4's imaging capabilities to the test as is the local custom - by …

Bootnotes 25 Jun 09:18
AMD hots up GPU wars with FireStream

Blog New accelerator boards are go

AMD trotted out its latest entry in the GPU wars yesterday: the FireStream 9350 and 9370 accelerator boards. The flagship 9370 is a dual-slot PCIe card that beats NVIDIA’s Fermi handily on single-precision FP (2.64 TFlops vs. 1.03 TFlops for Fermi), but bests Fermi by a much narrower margin on dual-precision with a score of …

HPC Blog 25 Jun 09:46
Adobe hurries out PDF app Flash fixes

Ahead of schedule

Adobe has confirmed plans to release critical security updates for Reader and Acrobat next Tuesday. The cross-platform patches are designed to plug a Flash-related vulnerability that's become the target of hacking attacks since early this month. Adobe fixed the flaw in Flash Player itself on 10 June. Support for Flash in Adobe …

Enterprise Security 25 Jun 10:01
Chinese ecommerce comes to US

Linking suppliers and sellers

Chinese small business trading site Alibaba has made its first US acquistion - buying Vendio Services which provides eBay listing tools, ecommerce and online selling platforms for small firms. Alibaba, and AliExpress.com, is a massive database of potential suppliers. Now Vendio's 80,000 small business customers will soon have …

Small Biz 25 Jun 10:07
Info Commissioner must justify why stats data are personal

How many sex offenders in your post code?

Sadly, there is more data protection case-law arising from the conflict over requests for personal data made under freedom of information (FOI) legislation, than there is when there is a data protection conflict. This state of affairs is the result of the fact the Commissioner has to publish a Decision Notice in relation to a …

Law 25 Jun 10:08
HP buys iTunes jailbreaker

Beefing up its mobile OS

HP has bought one of the more interesting music startups for an undisclosed sum. Melodio's nuTsie software looks up what's in your iTunes library, including the playlists, then matches it against a catalog of music on its own servers, from where the music is then streamed. It creates recommendations based on machine algorithms …

PCs & Chips 25 Jun 10:09
Belkin bridges Xbox 360, PS3 and... iMac

HDMI-DisplayPort adaptor announced

Accessory maker Belkin has come up with a gadget that will allow you to, say, play Blu-ray Discs on an iMac. Or use the Mac's screen for your PS3 games. It's an HDMI-to-Mini DisplayPort converter that takes a 1080p signal from an HDMI source and pumps it out through a Mini DP connector. Hook the latter up to a 27in iMac, …

reghardware 25 Jun 10:12
Consumer tech pollutes enterprise IT

Can Cisco hold back the smartphone flood?

People who work for big companies are consistently ignoring the security policies of their employers to use banned social networking apps and their own phones and computers at work. This is the headline finding of a poll of 500 IT security professionals conducted by Cisco. Some 68 per cent of the respondents know their …

Enterprise Security 25 Jun 10:12
NVIDIA blog bitchslaps Intel

Benchmark this

An email from my friendly NVIDIA rep called my attention to this recent blog post from Andy Keane, head GPU honcho at NVIDIA. In the post, Keane thoroughly pounds Intel for presenting a paper titled Debunking the 100x GPU vs. CPU Myth which, in its abstract, asserts that an older NVIDIA GPU (the GTX280) is only 2.5x faster …

HPC Blog 25 Jun 10:17
Jobs tells iPhone users to get a grip

Version 4 not suited to use of opposable thumb

iPhone users having reception problems are just holding the phone wrong, according to Apple, which have released an official fingering guide for those who want to be able to make calls. The problem is those pesky users who insist on wrapping their fingers around the phone, specifically touching the side at the bottom left …

Mobile 25 Jun 10:18
UK.gov preps bonfire of the vanity websites

Web consultants and Keith Chegwin are toast

Hundreds of taxpayer-funded websites will be unplugged in a savings drive that the government says will cut millions from departmental budgets. A Cabinet Office review launched today aims to identify 75 per cent of the government's 820 websites for closure by September. The surviving services will be required to slash their …

Government 25 Jun 10:21
Middle-aged sex: The X-rated photo guide

NSFW We make the effort, so you don't have to

Our recent sobering piece on middle-aged sex, indicating that after 45 it's downhill all the way between the sheets, prompted some of you to request, nay demand, the traditional El Reg guide. Naturally, we're happy to oblige. Those of you who are already spiralling uncontrollably towards old timerdom will probably greet what …

Bootnotes 25 Jun 11:02
Survey scammers offer fake Doctor Who clips

Soiled spoilers

Miscreants are exploiting interest in the season finale of Doctor Who by posting fake episode clips, spoilers and dubious download offers. Credulous fans who follow links supposedly offering footage from the upcoming Big Bang episode, due to screen on BBC on Saturday (26 June), are invited to fill out a quiz in order to " …

Spam 25 Jun 11:04
'Biggest thing in farming for 10,000 years on horizon'

Dirtboffins argue for lawn-style perennial grainfields

Agro-boffins in America say that mankind could be on the verge of the "biggest agricultural breakthrough in 10,000 years", as researchers close in on "perennial grains". At the moment, most grain grown around the world has to be replanted after every crop. Farming so-called "annual" grain of this sort consumes a lot of …

Biology 25 Jun 11:08
Samsung shines light on lamp-less LED projector

No bulbs to fail mid-movie

Samsung today introduced a lamp-less projector, equipped instead with an LED display. Good for 1000 lumens of brightness, the LED source in the SP-F10M is rated at 50,000 hours' usage, Samsung claimed after noting that regular projector bulbs typically need replacing after 3000 hours' usage. That said, it didn't indicate …

reghardware 25 Jun 11:09
Nokia loses top tech brain

Exclusive Psion legend joins TomTom

One of Britain's top technologists is leaving Nokia. Charles Davies, Psion's first employee in 1981, became MD of Psion Computer before leaving to join Symbian as CTO in 2003. Since Nokia acquired the Symbian staff two years ago, he was heading up the strategy and architecture team for Nokia R&D. A plasma physics PhD, Davies …

Mobile 25 Jun 11:18
Mobile API standard puffs on last cigarette

OMTP sings WAC me up before you go go

Operator talking shop the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) has sketched out its last three papers before it gets absorbed into the Wholesale Application Community. The tasty bits of OMTP will get subsumed into the WAC, with the rest due to disappear into the GSMA and OMA from which much of it should probably never have …

Mobile 25 Jun 11:23
Original 'Echelon' secret UK-US spookery treaty published

Plus old 1940s intercepts: US stuff out this arvo

Old news in the world of surveillance and spookery today, as the original 1946 secret treaty between the UK and US which set up the famous "Echelon" listening system is finally published. The UKUSA agreement, drafted to formalise intel-sharing arrangements which had developed during World War II, formed the basis for the US- …

Government 25 Jun 11:25
Laid-off public sector techies better get flexible to survive

Ain't no tea trolley in the real world

Ex-government developers and other tech staff will need to accept the different culture of working in the private sector if they want to find jobs. With this morning's news that the Cabinet Office is set to cull hundreds of government websites and associated staff, the warning comes from one of the UK's leading IT jobs sites …

Small Biz 25 Jun 11:34
Ex-Brocade CEO Reyes gets 18 months for stock back-dating

'Man of integrity' now a shell

Disgraced ex-Brocade CEO Greg Reyes, who appealed in 2007 against a 21-month prison sentence for stock option backdating, has been given an 18-month term in the slammer plus a $15m fine. Reuters reports that this was given to him by the same judge who had initially sentenced him three years ago, and it works out at $33,708 a …

Financial News 25 Jun 12:01
Sorting out the jigsaw that is business mobility?

Workshop Do all your pieces fit?

Most businesses tend to find themselves arriving at a point where they have accumulated a bunch of mobile stuff. Some of it has been brought into the business in a premeditated fashion, while other bits have crept in, in response to personal or group pressure. We can argue that there is nothing necessarily wrong with this, it …

Mobile Workshop 25 Jun 12:29
Crucial releases really skewed cheap flash drive

64GB RealSSD

Lexar has announced a 64GB version of its Crucial RealSSD flash drive with enormously skewed read and write rates. The 2.5-inch format product is a dwarf compared to its 128GB and 256GB counterparts, and a comparative sluggard at writing. The 64GB version uses the same multi-level cell flash from Micron as the other two but …

Storage 25 Jun 13:02
Olympus PEN E-P2 Micro Four-Thirds camera

Review Optical extras

Not long after Olympus introduced it first Micro Four-Thirds camera, the PEN EP-1, a second in the digital PEN series appeared. While the PEN EP-2 is essentially the same as the PEN EP-1 reviewed last year, it does have some extra features to entice seasoned photographers to the fledgling Micro Four-Thirds format. With Register …

reghardware 25 Jun 13:05
Student's brilliant idea: A peer-to-peer social network

Comment Because there weren't enough types already

Benjamin Birt, a CompSci student at the University of St Andrews, has announced a new type of social network, which he calls PeerBook. We note that there are some folks in Hamburg who might want to chat to him about the name and an international academic working group who might like a quiet word about this being a whole new …

Developer 25 Jun 13:07
Council of Europe condemns teen-bothering Mosquito

A Mozzie free summer? No chance

The Council of Europe has voted to 'ban' the Mosquito anti-youth device, despite having no power to enforce the ban, as the device's manufacture is keen to point out. The Mosquito is a small device that makes a buzzing sound below the hearing threshold of (almost) everyone over 20, thus dispersing groups of yoofs who might …

Policing 25 Jun 13:11
News gatherers urge court to protect 'hot news' doctrine

'Vital to a functioning democracy'

Major US news organisations have filed papers with a New York court arguing that the controversial 'hot news' doctrine should be preserved and that they should be able to sue anyone who republishes their news quickly. Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP), the New York Times, local paper giant Gannet and others …

Law 25 Jun 13:19
Windows 7 SP1 'beta' leaks, hits torrents

Cool new stuff for server edition

A beta version of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has apparently leaked onto the torrent networks, if you're exceptionally brave and fancy installing a knock-off version of a major OS update. The intrepid can take some slight reassurance from the information that it can be uninstalled, so your Windows …

Operating Systems 25 Jun 13:33
Governments mull net censorship grab

Dot-gays could kill the internet!

Governments working within ICANN are pondering asking for a right of veto on new internet top-level domains, a move that would almost certainly spell doom for politically or sexually controversial TLDs. In a number of meetings of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee here in Brussels this week, civil servants from several …

Telecoms 25 Jun 13:43
Venus home to lost cities left by long-dead aliens, says ESA

Well, it was strongly implied

Venus could once have been a living world with watery surface oceans, according to the European Space Agency. The ESA says that data from its Venus Express probe in orbit above the second planet indicates that it "may even have begun its existence as a habitable planet similar to Earth". OK, so where's the ruined city built …

Space 25 Jun 13:56
BBC Trust approves Project ~~Cartel~~ Canvas

Attaches strings

The BBC's self-regulatory body, the BBC Trust, has approved the Beeb-led set top box Project Canvas with certain conditions. Domestic broadcasters have lagged behind on HD TV, while Sky, which launched HD in 2006, has found around two million customers for its Sky+ HD services. To close the gap, the old guard are banking on a …

Music and Media 25 Jun 14:04
England versus Germany: Quaff real ale

Stuff lager, insist hoppy chemists

The Royal Society of Chemistry is advising England fans to avoid overanxiety on Sunday, as their team goes out on penalties to slaughter ze Germans, by drinking real ale. Biochemist Dr Ian Hornsey explained: “English supporters should be able to withstand the pressures associated with the big match on Sunday better than our …

Bootnotes 25 Jun 14:06
Spanish firm raided in logic-bomb backdoor probe

Auto-fail programming alleged

Three managers at an unnamed Spanish software developer have been arrested over allegations they planted 'logic bombs' in software that meant clients were obliged to pay for disruptive repairs and extended maintenance contracts. The Guardia Civil said that more than 1,000 clients of the Andalucia-based developer were affected …

Enterprise Security 25 Jun 14:18
Iomega Prestige Portable 1TB

Review Heavy metal storage

There's no doubt but that the Iomega Prestige is a looker. And with 1TB of hard disk storage on board, it's at the current peak of portable hard drive capacity. The styling, as you can see from the pictures, is all gunmetal-coloured brushed steel, with a Mac Pro speaker-grille pattern of small holes punched into the front …

reghardware 25 Jun 14:37
EMC gets busy with dedupe, compression code-base

Team Viper has awesome name, dude

EMC has been developing its own deduplication and compression code-base, entrusting the effort to a team code-named Viper. The story, as told by someone familiar with the events, starts with EMC acquiring Avamar in November 2006. In June 2009 it acquired DataDomain. At this point it had Avamar source deduplication, DataDomain …

Storage 25 Jun 14:56
Obama Twitter hacker avoids jail

Guessed admin passwords

A French hacker has avoided jail after he was convicted of breaking into the Twittier accounts of US presdent Barack Obama and other public figures and celebrities. Francois Cousteix (AKA Hacker-Croll), 23, received a five-month suspended sentence after a court in the central French region of Clermont-Ferrand accepted that he …

Crime 25 Jun 14:57
Nimbula puffs up 'cloud operating system'

Amazon EC2 techies do their own thing

Two of the techies at Amazon.com who helped do the coding behind the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) cloud computing service have got together, grabbed a big bag of venture funding, and created Nimbula, a company that has created what they are billing as a cloud operating system. The goal for Nimbula, which was founded in early …

Virtualization 25 Jun 15:37
Google Chrome consummates Adobe Flash marriage

Auto update sows What Jobs Hates™

Google has released the latest stable build of its Chrome browser, and it integrates what Steve Jobs hates. On May 30, in a none-to-subtle answer to the Flash-phobic Jobs, Mountain View announced that future versions of Chrome would bundle the Adobe plug-in, and began testing the setup in the Chrome developer channel. Less …

Developer 25 Jun 17:26
US lawmakers grill Apple on location tracking changes

'Dear Mr. Jobs'

US lawmakers are grilling Steve Jobs over recent tweaks to Apple's privacy policy allowing the company and its partners to collect and share "precise location data" of all iTunes and App Store customers. US Representatives Edward J. Markey and Joe Barton, the co-chairs of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, sent a letter to …

Government 25 Jun 17:41
Ex-MySQL chief puts open source in its place

Structure 2010 From disruptor to innovator

What's bigger than open source? Cloud computing. Plus it's a force for positive change. That's according to Marten Mickos, the recently recruited chief executive of Eucalyptus Systems – the startup that's partnering with Canonical on open-source computing clusters. Mickos was CEO of MySQL and then leader of the MySQL business …

Virtualization 25 Jun 18:05
Azul goes virtual with Java appliance

Because you can't teleport hardware to the cloud

Upstart Java acceleration hardware appliance maker Azul Systems is no longer a startup, but it does have a problem. If cloud computing is the future – by which is meant a mix of utility-priced, x64-based shared infrastructure as well as internal private infrastructure based on heaven knows what – then you cannot teleport an Azul …

Virtualization 25 Jun 18:27
Linux game-time refined with latest Wine

Review Otherwise pointless?

Wine, the project that lets Linux users run Windows apps within Linux, has released a major update that fixes a number of bugs and includes 64-bit support. Wine 1.2 includes a new set of icons, a number of fixes for video rendering – improving Windows gaming – and better font anti-aliasing and handling of desktop link files. …

Developer 25 Jun 18:35
Pakistan set to ban more web blasphemy

Yahoo!, Google, Amazon, Bing...

Pakistan announced Friday that it will monitor Yahoo, Google, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Amazon, and Bing, and will block links and content that it deems anti-Islamic. "If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the [link] shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website," Pakistan …

Government 25 Jun 21:03
Neuroscientist: iPhone 4's 'Retina display' not bullsh*t

Updated Battle of the boffins

An America retinal neuroscientist has focused his boffinistic eye on the iPhone 4's much-touted high-res display, and has come to the conclusion that Apple's claim that the "Retina display's pixel density is so high, your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels" is true. "I'd find Apple’s claims stand up to what the …

Mobile 25 Jun 21:34
Mozilla: We're not 'on board' with Google's plugin spice

'No position' on Pepper

Mozilla says it has "no official position" on NPAPI Pepper, the revamped browser plug-in API developed by Google for use with Native Client, a plug-in that runs native code inside its Chrome browser. Google is also using Pepper to integrate Adobe's Flash player and a PDF reader with Chrome, and in announcing its plan to bundle …

Developer 25 Jun 23:22