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14th July 2010 Archive

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  • Intel calls end to server sales drought

    Thanks to Google, Facebook, Amazon, MSN...

    From Intel's point of view, the Meltdown is over, and you're to be credited with its recovery — that is, if you use Google, Facebook, Amazon, or MSN. "This quarter we benefited from a broad-based return of the enterprise and small-business segments," Intel president and CEO told analysts and reporters during a conference call …

    Servers 14 Jul 00:14

  • Firefox engine outraces self after Jäger shot

    SpiderMonkey amps up

    Mozilla has announced that JägerMonkey — the still-gestating JavaScript engine extension set to arrive with Firefox 4.0 this fall — is now faster than the TraceMonkey extension used by the current Firefox 3.6. "JägerMonkey has crossed the streams," developer David Anderson said in a Tuesday blog post, boasting that the …

    Applications 14 Jul 00:24

  • MySQLers mixed on Ellison's ownership

    Forkers no shoo in

    If MySQL forkers Monty Widenus and Brian Aker were hoping that fear of Oracle control over the database might prompt a mass defection, they could be in for a disappointment. Nearly half – 43 per cent – of MySQL users think development of their database will improve under Oracle, according to a survey by open-source business …

    Applications 14 Jul 04:02

  • IBM preps z11 'system of systems' mainframe

    Zooner zan zometime in ze zecond half

    The word is on the street that Big Blue is looking to get its next-generation System z11 mainframes out the door a little sooner in the third quarter than many people might be expecting. No surprises there, with IBM's mainframe business slackening off and the prospects of selling customers System z10 boxes at anything close to a …

    Servers 14 Jul 06:02

  • Cyberpower Ultra Scylla six-core AMD PC

    Review Some kind of monster?

    The Cyberpower Ultra Scylla derives its name from a mythical six-headed sea beastie, which is a tribute to the hexa-core nature of the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor that lies inside the PC. The joy of six: Cyberpower's Ultra Scylla The £899 version of the Ultra Scylla that I was sent includes a 21.5in BenQ G2222HDL …

    reghardware 14 Jul 07:02

  • Labour clings to the good old days

    Online biogs in denial

    New Labour may be out of government – but not according to the personal websites of several of their leading lights. On Monday, we reported on attempts by former Identity Minister, Meg Hillier to derail coalition attempts to unpick Labour’s Identity Card plans. We were amused to note that according to her site, she was still …

    Government 14 Jul 08:13

  • Wales joins supercomputer club

    £40m project

    A £40m supercomputer project has been announced by the Welsh Assembly Government, to help Wales join the supercomputer club and increase knowledge-intensive skills in the country. The HPC Wales project was first announced as a £44m project by the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in December last year. The …

    HPC 14 Jul 08:17

  • eBay whacked with giant patent suit

    How much for the troll?

    eBay is being sued for a minimum of $3.8bn by a company which claims the auction house wilfully copied six of its patents. Should eBay be found guilty of wilful and malicious infringement it would have to pay three times that or up to $11.4bn. XPRT Ventures LLC of Connecticut claims that eBay not only stole its technology for …

    Law 14 Jul 08:40

  • IBM's new water-cooled supercomputer fires up

    Oh it warms the heart. And other bits

    Aquasar, a new water-cooled IBM supercomputer, has just been fired up at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. It’s a 6-Tflop system that uses 33 two-way blades with Cell processors and an additional nine blades with dual Nehalem processors, all contained in three of their BladeCenter H Chassis. Two of the three …

    HPC Blog 14 Jul 09:06

  • Patch Tuesday sounds death knell for Win XP SP2

    Hasta la vista

    Microsoft released the expected four security advisories on Tuesday, three of which earn the dread rating of critical. They collectively address five security vulnerabilities. There are two critical fixes for Windows in the batch, including an update designed to resolve a zero-day vulnerability involving Windows Help and …

    Operating Systems 14 Jul 10:02

  • Digital ad portrayed Catholic Queen as 'flesh-eating zombie'

    ASA worries about children - 'heretics' not so much

    The UK's ads watchdog has slapped down the London Dungeon for running an animated ad on the tube which showed Mary Tudor, England's last Roman Catholic Queen, morphing into a flesh-eating zombie. The ad ran on digital billboards on the London Underground, with the text "New for 2010 Bloody Mary: Killer Queen At the London …

    Music and Media 14 Jul 10:11

  • Ex-MI6 officer admits attempt to sell secrets

    Updated Dodges theft rap, but faces jail

    A former MI6 officer faces jail after he pleaded guilty this morning to two breaches of the Official Secrets Act. Mr Justice Bean told Daniel Houghton, of Hoxton, that a prison sentence was inevitable, PA reports. In an apparent plea deal, Houghton denied a third charge, of theft, which was accepted by the prosecution. The …

    Crime 14 Jul 10:27

  • Seagate announces ugly diskless NAS filer

    Nice price though

    Seagate has announced an empty four-bay small business filer that you fill up with drives yourself. Seagate ones, naturally. It's the BlackArmor NAS 400 and is the same box as the NAS 420 and 440 products, which come with two and four drives installed respectively. You can stick 1 and 2TB Barracuda drives in it, but not the …

    Storage 14 Jul 10:30

  • Give a little love

    Sysadmin blog Holding hands and stroking egos is good business

    When you unify the user experience, there's going to be fallout. Homogenising the hardware and software environments means change, and sometimes users react badly to change. I have been ordered to roll out Office 2010 this summer, and I know I have several users who are going to hate it. Helping them through the transition is …

    Desktop Mgmt Blog 14 Jul 10:35

  • Pressure mounts on Apple to recall iPhone 4

    Replace phone, rescue reputation, say PR boffins

    Apple is facing increased pressure to say there's more to the iPhone 4's antenna woes than iffy signal strength readout code and to recall all the handsets it has sold so far. Suggestions from some quarters that it may yet be forced to do so sent the company's share price down by more than ten dollars from $257.33 to $246.89, …

    reghardware 14 Jul 10:50

  • 3D is headache for six million Brits

    Blurry vision

    Six Million Brits suffer from poor binocular vision - which gives them headaches and achey eyes when watching 3D films. So says The Eyecare Trust, which tells us that 3D relies on our eyes's abilities to work as a "co-ordinated team to achieve an accurate perception of depth". But if you have poor binocular vision, your brain …

    reghardware 14 Jul 10:51

  • Sony reveals lens-swap camcorder

    Un-wrap party for 14Mp HD video cam

    Sony has announced the interchangeable-lens camcorder it revealed earlier this year as a concept it had in development. And still is in development, presumably, since the Handycam NEX-VG10E isn't going to go on sale until the end of September. When it does, it will be a machine with a 14.6Mp CMOS sensor capable of recording …

    reghardware 14 Jul 11:08

  • LaCie cues up unbreakable Flash drive

    Captain Scarlet's favourite?

    LaCie is to release a USB Flash drive that can withstand being run over by a ten-ton truck. The XtremKey comes inside a metal pipe, the walls of which are 2mm thick, and made from a zinc, aluminium, magnesium and copper alloy called zamac. The pipe is sealed with an O-ring and wear-resistant screw threads. LaCie claimed the …

    reghardware 14 Jul 11:15

  • Mobile broadband: not up to the job?

    Workshop What we learned

    Mobile broadband has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame since it became widely available, with many mobile operators reporting triple digit growth year-on-year, and data usage surpassing mobile voice. Access to multimedia content and social networking sites from smartphones, and traffic to and from mobile broadband-based PCs, has …

    Mobile Workshop 14 Jul 11:24

  • Canon ups camcorder capacity

    Legria line extended

    Canon has extended its Legria HF M camcorder line with a 64GB model. Despite that capacity, it's still labelled the Legria HF M32. In addition to the 64GB of on-board storage, the M32 can take SDXC cards of up to 2TB capacity, as and when they become available. The M32 will also take EyeFi wireless SD cards if you want to …

    reghardware 14 Jul 11:30

  • Office 2010 retail sales shaken, not stirred

    Boxed software not flying off shelves, says NPD analyst

    Early sales of Microsoft’s Office 2010 proved somewhat “disappointing” in the first two weeks that the software hit retail shelves, according to research outfit NPD Group. NPD’s weekly tracking service found that units and dollars were down from Office 2007’s first two weeks of sales. Despite that, the company said Microsoft’s …

    Channel Register 14 Jul 11:32

  • LaCie touts tough truck-resistant flash drive for tough guys

    Laughs in face of pressure, heat, water; has actual hairy chest

    LaCie is bringing out a USB flash drive that can withstand being run over by a 10-ton truck. The XtremKey comes inside a metal pipe, the walls of which are 2mm thick, made from a zinc, aluminium, magnesium and copper alloy called zamac. The pipe is sealed with an O-ring and wear-resistant screw threads. LaCie claims it's …

    Storage 14 Jul 11:38

  • Loons speak brains on gov Treasury crowdsource site

    This is all going marvellously well

    In the least shocking news of the day, it appears that the government's latest internet loon-magnet is attracting an awful lot of lunatics. The Treasury's Spending Challenge site was supposed to be a way for the great British public to create a wonder-Wiki of savings ideas for the coalition government. There's no denying it is …

    Government 14 Jul 11:49

  • Virgin eyes legal challenge to Canvas

    Set to request Ofcom probe

    Virgin Media looks set to formally complain about Project Canvas to communications watchdog Ofcom, The Times reports today. Virgin believes Project Canvas, which is developing a standard framework for the delivery of IPTV services, is anti-competitive and presumably fears it will dissuade punters from subscribing to the …

    reghardware 14 Jul 11:56

  • Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB solid-state drive

    Review Serious capacity... serious price

    Reg Hardware has covered plenty of solid-state disks before, but never anything to match the capacity of Kingston’s latest high density SSD. Back in January, Kingston announced the SSDNow V+ series, the higher spec members of its family of “value” drives with capacities ranging from 64GB to 512GB. Kingston's SSDNow V+: hits …

    reghardware 14 Jul 12:02

  • Sluggish corporates ill-prepared for death of Win XP SP2 support

    Analysis Expect attackable vulns to accumulate, warn security watchers

    It's been months coming but many organisations are ill-prepared for the end of security support for Windows XP SP2, potentially leaving a huge population of vulnerable machines for hackers to exploit. July's Patch Tuesday marked the closure of patching support for both Win 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2. From now on there' …

    Operating Systems 14 Jul 12:07

  • 'Russian spy' was MS software tester

    US ejects 12th man

    The alleged "12th man" in the Russian spy ring broken up by the FBI earlier this month was a software tester at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters. Alexey Karetnikov, 23, was deported without court proceedings yesterday after admitting he was in the US in violation of immigration law, according to the Department of Homeland …

    Government 14 Jul 12:09

  • Symbian Titanic heading for iceberg

    Nokia deserves much of the blame

    In a commentary piece titled Is Symbian re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?, Gartner analyst Nick Jones provides a stinging analysis of the current Symbian state of play, admonishing the less than impressive Symbian^3 user interface and misguided roadmap for the mobile operating system's evolution. He concludes that " …

    Mobile 14 Jul 12:13

  • Thieves steal 3,000 laptops from US Special Ops contractor

    9-hour military operation burglary

    Thieves lifted 3,000 laptops from a military contractor for the US Special Operations Command in a leisurely nine-hour robbery back in March, it has emerged. According to the St Petersburg Times the brazen bandits loaded a brace of trucks with the lappies and a pile of other kit in the robbery at the offices of US contractor …

    Channel Register 14 Jul 13:25

  • India to place $11bn order for AIP hi-tech submarines

    Nazi style super-U-boat kit finally spreading

    Indian defence chiefs have approved $11bn of funds to boost the country's submarine fleet. The cash is intended to see India become the first non-Western nation to deploy long-touted, much feared "air independent propulsion" (AIP) submarine technology. The Times of India reports that 50,000 crores of rupees (500 billion rupees …

    Science 14 Jul 13:44

  • Storage vendors are in VMware beauty contest

    New vStorage APIs cement control

    VMware has come up with new vStorage APIs in vSphere 4.1 that improve storage array's abilities to store lots of virtual machines (VM), copy them, and help move them; great for VMware users; potentially terrible for some array vendors. Maritz' developers seem to have modelled much of the new vStorage properties on pioneering …

    Blocks and Files 14 Jul 13:55

  • Gay teen mag closure sparks privacy fears

    Whose data is it anyway?

    The closure of a US website and magazine for gay teens has sparked privacy fears over what will happen to sensitive personal information held by the now defunct publication. US consumer watchdog the FTC warned owners of XY Magazine and XY.com against the sale or transfer of private user data during bankruptcy proceedings …

    ID 14 Jul 14:42

  • Double whammy: The music tax based on deep packet inspection

    A cure that kills the patient?

    "The innocent man must be punished!" - Mark Corrigan "If you start treating everybody like criminals, then pretty soon everybody starts acting like a criminal," says PRS economist Will Page, referring to the Spanish digital music experience. Spain is the best warning yet of what happens when you slap a clumsy music tax on …

    Music and Media 14 Jul 14:47

  • Sepp Blatter dubbed 'Bellend' by SA gov website

    Copywriter to get red card for bio foul-up?

    Sharp-eyed Fifa watchers have spotted that either Sepp Blatter has an unusual middle name, or someone in the South African government was relying on Wikipedia when knocking up the presidential website. Blatter, well known as the president of Fifa, since April has also been a proud bearer of the Order of the Companions of OR …

    Bootnotes 14 Jul 15:21

  • Bookie takes wagers on iPhone 4 recall

    'Never tell me the odds'

    Bookmaker Paddy Power is offering odds of 4:5 that Apple will recall the iPhone 4. The odds are based on the chance of "Apple's iPhone 4 being totally recalled" and that the recall "must be confirmed by Apple to be due to hardware issue relating to antennae". It also has to take place this year. Not convinced Apple's going to …

    reghardware 14 Jul 16:33

  • IBM opens up beta for AIX 7

    Pushing Power7 chips to the limits

    For only the second time since Big Blue entered the Unix market for real in February 1990 with the launch of the RS/6000 line of workstations and servers, the company is letting customers who use its Power-based servers take a future AIX release for a test drive in an open beta program. The AIX 7 open beta, which launches …

    Operating Systems 14 Jul 17:07

  • Jobsian remote access app comes to Android

    LogMeIn without an iPhone

    LogMeIn has released an Android version of its popular remote PC-access tool, LogMeIn Ignition. Ignition was originally built for the iPhone, providing remote access to your PC or Mac from the holy Jobsian handset. And naturally, it's now available for the iPad as well. Like the iPhone/iPad incarnation, the Android version …

    Mobile 14 Jul 17:09

  • Amazon sounds death knell for rocket-science grids

    Comment Clustered instances semi standard

    Amazon's Cluster Compute Instances officially sounded the death knell for grid computing efforts that once held promise as the "next big thing". Cluster Compute Instances takes a multiple of x64 and links them together using 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and switches. The EC2 virtual server slices function just like any other …

    HPC 14 Jul 18:22

  • Apple acquisition points to Google Maps divorce

    Poly9, playing for time

    Apple has acquired the French-Canadian mapping-software firm Poly9 and moved the company's braintrust to the Cupertino mothership. This news comes from the Quebec daily Le Soleil in an article with a title that emphasizes that the acquisition was for Poly9's talent more than its products: "Apple achète des cerveaux de Québec …

    Financial News 14 Jul 19:20

  • Top Solaris developer flees Oracle

    OpenSolaris board threatens ritual suicide

    Greg Lavender, the lead developer in charge of the Solaris operating system at Oracle, has left the company. And the OpenSolaris Governing Board, which is supposed to steer the open source version of Solaris, is thinking about disbanding because Oracle has not had any contact with the board for the past six months. As one El …

    Operating Systems 14 Jul 19:27

  • Opera Mini de-betas on Android

    Default browser, anyone?

    Opera has taken the beta tag off the Android incarnation of its low-bandwidth mobile browser, offering an Opera Mini 5.1 that includes a few small improvements over the 5.0 beta. Yes, they've jumped straight from a 5.0 beta to 5.1 This brings the Android version in line with last week's update for various other platforms. The …

    Mobile 14 Jul 19:35

  • Google tests multiple accounts in single browser

    Enables Googly schizophrenia

    Google is testing a tool that lets you use multiple user accounts in the same browser, according to a bloggy report. The unofficial Google Operating System blog provides a screenshot of the tool, which — at this point — only works with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Code. The …

    Applications 14 Jul 22:55

  • IDC: Second quarter PC sales hit the bull's eye

    Consumers wane as corporates wax

    The PC market rebounded as expected in the second quarter, according to the latest statistics from market watcher IDC, with PC shipments across all types up 22.4 per cent to 81.5 million units. This is more or less in line with IDC's projections for the second quarter, which called for the world's desktop and laptop PC peddler …

    PCs & Chips 14 Jul 23:18