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23rd July 2010 Archive

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  • Microsoft 'record' results beat Jedi mind trickery

    Cloud company you are not

    Microsoft has reported record financial results for the quarter ending June 30, and the big money maker was Windows. Despite attempts at Jedi mind trickery involving cloud services, the company remains firmly wedded to the earth-bound PC. Revenue for Windows jumped 43 per cent during the company's fiscal fourth quarter, to $4. …

    Financial News 23 Jul 00:22

  • IBM launches zEnterprise 196 'data center in a box'

    Mainframe battles back

    IBM has launched its next-generation System z mainframe, the zEnterprise 196. Now we will get to find out, in the next few quarters or so, if the mainframe business still has some legs and can grow or the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 has permanently knocked it down a peg or two. At the launch event today in New York, IBM's …

    HPC 23 Jul 00:45

  • Apple, Google, NASA, and the Rainbow connection

    Roger Penrose's Silicon Valley crash pad

    When Sir Roger Penrose visited Silicon Valley this spring, he stopped off at Google, NASA, and the Rainbow Mansion. But he spent most of his time at Rainbow, Silicon Valley's answer to the 17th-century French salon. Penrose — the English mathematical physicist renowned for his work on general relativity and cosmology — gave a …

    Science 23 Jul 01:13

  • Overland Storage overhauls tape library and SnapServers

    Bigger tape library and SnapServer

    Overland Storage has announced a larger and LTO-5-supporting NEO tape library as well as a higher-capacity SnapServer. These are two evolutionary product moves by Overland and it's good to see the company improving its products as it climbs out of a period of poor company revenue performance. The NEO 8000e supports the latest …

    Blocks and Files 23 Jul 01:59

  • Google offers IE users faster Wave gravy

    OSCON Splash it all over

    Microsoft web surfers have been promised faster helpings of Wave gravy following Google's release of Splash. Splash is an open-source client for Internet Explorer users to view and consume Google Wave applications and conversations embedded in websites. It replaces use of Google's Chrome Frame – the IE plug-in that the company …

    Applications 23 Jul 04:37

  • Acer beTouch E400 Android smartphone

    Review HTC beater?

    Acer is fully committed to producing smartphones, but seems to be slightly schizophrenic in its approach. There are devices in the Liquid range, which tote Android and are nicely high end, devices in the neoTouch range which run Windows Mobile, and devices in the beTouch range which again run Android and occupy the mid to lower …

    reghardware 23 Jul 07:02

  • Premium rate rants plummet again

    I just called to say I hate you rather less

    The number of complaints to premium rate phone regulator PhonepayPlus (PPP) dropped by 52 per cent in the last year, it has said. PPP said it received 11,249 complaints in 2009/10, down from 23,244 the previous year. PPP, which regulates the premium rate services industry under powers granted by telecoms watchdog Ofcom, has …

    Mobile 23 Jul 07:02

  • HDS coy about future compression tech

    Who, us?

    Hitachi Data Systems doesn't have its own compression/deduplication technology but looks set to get it. Dell is buying Ocarina for such technology and HDS is the array supplier holdout, as competitors EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp each have their own technology for data reduction. What is HDS going to do? Senior executives are …

    Storage 23 Jul 07:59

  • Dell blames staff for malware infection

    Bloody humans

    Dell said human error was to blame for mistakes which led it to ship a number of replacement server motherboards to customers pre-loaded with spyware. The company declined to say whether it was running anti-virus software at its factory but said it had taken 16 steps to improve processes. The infection hit replacement …

    Malware 23 Jul 08:23

  • OFT outlines plans to protect online shoppers

    Punters need scam education

    UK consumers still need to be educated about online shopping to prevent them falling victim to scams and problems, consumer protection regulator the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said. The OFT has published plans to improve the protections available for consumers when they are shopping online. It does not recommend the …

    Channel Register 23 Jul 09:21

  • Voting reform finally on the agenda

    How fair MPs want the system is debatable

    The opening salvoes of the 2015 general election were fired this week, with publication of the wording of a proposed referendum on alternative voting, to take place next year. The question that will be put to voters was announced by Deputy PM Nick Clegg and published for the first time yesterday in the Parliamentary Voting …

    Government 23 Jul 09:26

  • NAND flash bottleneck being blown away

    Thank you Samsung and Toshiba

    A looming NAND flash memory bottleneck will be pre-empted by a tenfold increase in data rate due to a new industry standard being promoted by Samsung and Toshiba. NAND chips in use today generally use a 40Mbit/s single data rate (SDR) interface. There is a toggle double data rate (DDR) 1.0 specification which provides 133Mbit/ …

    Storage 23 Jul 09:32

  • iPhones dialling up premium-rate bills again

    It's enough to make one side with Apple

    AdMob has been placing premium-rate numbers into iPhone applications again, this time in an application targeted at kids, who are even more likely than adults to hit the link without noticing. The application concerned is "Talking Tom Cat". The free app records the user's voice, and plays it back with comedy animations to the …

    Mobile 23 Jul 09:38

  • Country plods still not carrying mobile data devices

    Seven forces have no digital coppers at all

    Police forces across England and Wales have wildly differing attitudes to the use of mobile-data gadgets. Almost 45,000 "hand-held IT devices" are in use by plods up and down the land, but seven forces have issued none at all. The league table of gadgets issued by forces was released yesterday in answer to a written …

    Policing 23 Jul 10:06

  • Unpatched shortcut vuln exploited by mainstream malware

    'Bottom feeders' latch onto zero-day bug

    Virus writers have begun using the unpatched shortcut flaw in Windows first exploited by the Stuxnet worm, which targets power plant control systems, to create malware that infects the general population of vulnerable Windows machines. Slovakian security firm Eset reports the appearance of two malware strains that exploit …

    Enterprise Security 23 Jul 10:13

  • Canvas chairman gives up Phorm job

    Kip Meek to appoint CEO

    Kip Meek has been appointed chairman of the Canvas company, and will lead the hunt for a CEO for the TV platform. He'll be giving up his non-executive directorships at the Broadband Stakeholder Group and Phorm. Meek's association with the latter raised a few eyebrows when he was linked with the post recently - Canvas boxes will …

    Music and Media 23 Jul 10:21

  • HP to pitch Windows Slate at Big Biz

    WebOS tablets, netbooks for consumers

    HP has confirmed that its Windows 7-based Slate 500 tablet hasn't been canned and will be pitched at big biz customers this coming autumn. HP's plan, mentioned to Engadget, is no great surprise. As we noted earlier this week, HP's acquisition of Palm led many observers to assume that the Slate 500 might be replaced, before its …

    reghardware 23 Jul 10:22

  • Spitzer 'scope spots Buckyballs in spaaace

    Carbon-60 confirmed in distant nebula

    NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has sniffed out Carbon-60 molecules in a distant nebula - the first detection of "Buckyballs" in outer space. A team led by astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute, unexpectedly spotted the miniature footballs in planetary nebula dubbed Tc 1. A …

    Space 23 Jul 10:47

  • 'Freeware' phishing kit dupes s'kiddies

    Dishonour among thieves

    Skilled malware authors have duped less skilled cybercrooks into doing their dirty work with a new phishing kit. A "freeware" phishing kit posted onto hacker forums poses as a way to set up fraudulent websites pretending to be, for example, PayPal or webmail providers. Spam emails masquerading as security checks are then …

    Crime 23 Jul 10:52

  • PARIS skins up with Rizlas and dope

    Well, tissue paper and PVA...

    Work continues apace down at the Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) workshop, where we've been looking at just how to skin our Vulture 1-X vehicle. Before we get to that, though, we're delighted to announce that our audacious upper atmosphere project now officially exists, because Wikipedia says so. Lovely. Now, on …

    PARIS 23 Jul 11:00

  • Microsoft's ARM deal fuels hope of a chilled-out Xbox

    Planning an A4, or perhaps a Cell?

    Microsoft has licensed ARM's architecture, but while an ARM might be found in every mobile phone it seems Redmond is more interested in putting some ARM goodness into the Xbox. An architecture licence isn't necessary for most things – 200 licensees happily make ARM chips without bothering to licence the architecture itself, …

    PCs & Chips 23 Jul 11:26

  • Google cranks up Chrome release schedule

    Quantity and quality - together at last

    Google plans to release new stable versions of Chrome every six weeks as it continues to try and smash through as many builds as possible of its increasingly popular browser. Mountain View’s Chrome program manager Anthony Laforge explained that Google had decided to ramp up the number of stable versions of the browser the …

    Applications 23 Jul 11:37

  • BBC Trust green lights Corporation's news app

    No brainer

    The BBC is now allowed to release smartphone apps able to present its news feeds to viewers on the move. So says the BBC Trust, the organisation charged with ensuring the Corporation does right by licence holders, though in this instance seems to be more concerned with the BBC's competitors than its stakeholders. Why wouldn't …

    reghardware 23 Jul 11:40

  • Possibly the world's most pointless review

    The Sumo Lounge Sway Couple Beanbag Chair

    Each week we receive dozens of link-to-article requests from tech websites. Much as we want to oblige, we rarely have time to read the articles, let alone link to them. We make an exception for this, from BigBruin.com and its review of the Sumo Lounge Sway Couple Beanbag Chair. Four pages, unboxing pics, a texture fetish... …

    reghardware 23 Jul 12:02

  • ACTA leaks - but secret squirrel stays secret

    Fingers point to the USA

    Just who is the bad apple at the ACTA negotiations, excluding the public and forcing discussions between the parties to be held in secret? Not us, says the EU, which has come in for some stick of late – not least from Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstroem - for its refusal to allow MEPs to disseminate anything from the talks …

    Music and Media 23 Jul 12:07

  • 'Soft robots' will use gut-wrenching propulsion method

    Bowel-churning caterpillar boffinry breakthrough

    American boffins say they are poised to invent a new class of shape-shifting "soft bodied robots" which will manoeuvre - perhaps inside the human body - by mimicking the literally gut-wrenching means by which certain species of creepy-crawly get about. Assembled experts in the States have opened the door to a fearsome new …

    Biology 23 Jul 12:09

  • The Sun saves parasailing donkey's ass

    Flying days over, red top assures

    There's some top quality news today for the animal lovers among you: the Sun has moved with lightning speed to save the Sea of Azov's very own flying donkey, Anapka, who recently found herself on the wrong end of an asinine promotional stunt: The Telegraph reports that the beast is none the worse for her ordeal, with a vet …

    Bootnotes 23 Jul 12:30

  • Olympus PEN E-PL1 Micro Four-Thirds camera

    Review Superb

    Adding another variation to its popular PEN range of Micro Four-Thirds cameras, the Olympus E-PL1 has done away with the retro style of its siblings, added a pop-up flash and a dedicated movie record button. It has re-designed the menu layout for even simpler navigation, introduced a Live Guide mode for complete novices and …

    reghardware 23 Jul 12:55

  • Apple delays white iPhone 4 - again

    Real antenna fix coming?

    Apple still can't work out how to mass-produce an iPhone 4 coloured white and has now delayed the handset - again - until "later this year". To, say, 1 October? That's the day after Apple's free case offer for the black iPhone 4 runs out. The black model is the only iPhone 4 variant available so it is, by default, the iPhone 4 …

    reghardware 23 Jul 13:18

  • Couple charged over hybrid car industrial espionage plot

    GM secrets allegedly offered to Chinese rival

    A Michigan couple faces charges of stealing industrial secrets on hybrid cars from GM before attempting to sell the data to a Chinese auto manufacturer. Yu Qin, 49, and his wife, Shanshan Du, 51, of Troy, Michigan have been charged with four offences, including unauthorised possession of trade secrets and wire fraud under an …

    Crime 23 Jul 13:23

  • London bike hire scheme suffers pre-launch wobbles

    Tourists excluded, payment site punctured

    Anyone wishing to use one of Boris's hire bikes from next week will need a UK address registered with a credit card company in order to pre-register because the 'casual use' system has been delayed. Londoners - and visitors to the smoke - will be be able to hire push bikes across the centre of the capital under the scheme. In …

    Government 23 Jul 13:47

  • IBM's zEnterprise 196 CPU: Cache is king

    Analysis 'The fastest CPU in the world.' And more

    IBM is a funny technology company in that its top brass doesn't like to talk about feeds and speeds and seems to be allergic to hardware in particular. Which is particularly idiotic for a hardware company that sells servers, storage, and chips. Thursday, in launching the new System zEnterprise 196 mainframe, IBM didn't say …

    HPC 23 Jul 14:02

  • Home Office mobe theft fight doubles in importance

    Stolen phones in runaway value explosion

    The Home Office has published guidelines asking recyclers to check if phones are stolen, claiming that the business is worth £5m a year despite it being only worth £2.5m eight weeks ago. When the then-Labour government started on the guidelines telling companies to continue doing what most of them were doing already, we were …

    Mobile 23 Jul 14:08

  • UK.gov soaps up public in latest data appeal

    Sleepless in see-through panties

    The Cabinet Office is once again asking British citizens to pony up ideas about what government information should be released via the data.gov.uk website. Francis Maude, the department’s minister, is calling on the public to log on to the site and post their views about what data should be made available. He said the Public …

    Government 23 Jul 14:10

  • Oracle has '$70bn, five-year acquisition plan'

    Oh wait, no it doesn't

    Charles Phillips, one of the co-presidents at software giant and unenthusiastic server maker Oracle, reportedly said the company had plans to double its acquisition budget over the next five years to a total of $70bn. But apparently this is not true. Phillips was speaking on Thursday at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2010 …

    Applications 23 Jul 14:40

  • BBC news apps squeeze onto iPhone, iPad

    Android stays paranoid

    The BBC Trust has waved through a Beeb news app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, just a few months after the Corporation’s governing body mulled whether development of the software could be justified. Auntie announced today that apps had been launched for the Jesus Phone and the Jobsian fondle slab in the UK. The BBC had …

    Mobile 23 Jul 14:55

  • Forget the Jesus Phone, here's the Rude Phone

    NSFW A grubby little handset

    It costs $78, it is available in black, red or white and it is called the WANK E5. No, not an personalised number plate, but the name of a Nokia handset on sale at SoloMobi, a Chinese retailer. Going Solo? That sounds about right. We guess the name will change soon enough; and before sniggering too hard, we happily …

    reghardware 23 Jul 14:57

  • Software giant SAS loses copyright case in London

    David beats Goliath, Goliath says he's fine actually

    SAS has lost an important copyright case in the High Court in London, although SAS insists it has not lost at all. The software giant sued Worldwide Programming Ltd - a small UK firm - for breach of copyright and breach of license conditions. SAS said WPL had breached its license relating to SAS Learning Edition in order to …

    Applications 23 Jul 14:59

  • Ex-staffer pleads guilty to massive T-Mobile data scam

    Another yet to face the beak

    A former T-Mobile employee has admitted his role in the illegal sale of massive volumes of customer data to marketers. David Turley, of Birmingham, 39, pleaded guilty to 18 charges under section 55 of the Data Protection Act at Chester Crown Court on Thursday. He is yet to be sentenced. A second former T-Mobile employee, …

    Law 23 Jul 15:17

  • UK's Zephyr robo sun-plane in record-buster 2-week flight

    Ideal for missions not too far from the Equator

    The "Zephyr" solar-powered unmanned plane, which has been airborne continuously for the past two weeks above the Arizona desert, has made a successful landing to break several aviation records. Today, Arizona. Tomorrow, the world - well, the hot bits anyway. The Zephyr was built by controversial UK defence boffinry selloff …

    Science 23 Jul 15:35

  • Forrester: IT spending growth holding up

    Asia and Latin America counterbalance Europe

    The prognosticators at IT watcher Forrester Research are not letting a little debt crisis in Greece and the fears by some that it will "metastasize across the European Union" put a damper on global IT spending growth for 2010. In a report released this week from Andrew Bartels, the vice president and principal analyst who is …

    IT Director 23 Jul 15:56

  • Google is ‘Obama’s Halliburton’

    So who's Dick Cheney?

    A discovery motion filed part of an investigation into Google’s former chief lobbyist turned Obama’s “Deputy CTO” failed this week. Former lobbyists are prohibited from involvement in policies that affect their former employer - in the case of Andrew McLaughlin, Google's former Head of Global Public Policy - it's hard to see …

    Government 23 Jul 16:06

  • Riverbed removes steel from WAN juicing Steelhead

    Fake appliance goes anywhere

    Riverbed has released a version of its Steelhead WAN optimization appliance that isn't an appliance. You might say it's a Steelhead without the steel. Yes, it's a Virtual Steelhead, and the company tells us it's meant for offices that just don't have room for a (real) appliance, data centers that have already virtualized …

    Data Networking 23 Jul 17:33

  • Intel and Nokia's MeeGo Linux gets car boost

    Penguin is my co-pilot

    Nokia and Intel's MeeGo mobile Linux effort has been given a leg up in cars. Car-industry alliance GENIVI has officially chosen MeeGo as the reference release for its In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system. MeeGo will provide the basis for the upcoming GENIVI Apollo release, it was announced Friday. There was not date for when …

    Software 23 Jul 18:24

  • Judas Phone: more Photoshop tomfoolery

    How many fingers does a guy need?

    Some sites call for Photoshop submissions [Fark and B3ta.com]. And some reject them, as Reg reader Bill discovered today. His "bored Friday stuff" was knocked back by the estimable site Judasphone.com, so he sent them to us instead. We thought you would like to see these: Thanks, Bill. Bootnote We are not really set up …

    reghardware 23 Jul 18:35

  • Blacklight: Tango Down

    Shoot, is that all you got?

    One of the few things I learnt at university was Pareto’s Principle, or the 80/20 rule, which states that in anything, 20 per cent is vital and 80 per cent is trivial. Pedestrian crossing? Doubtful Originally calculated to describe the distribution of wealth in society - where 20 per cent of a population owns 80 per cent of …

    reghardware 23 Jul 19:02

  • vBulletin vuln gifts admin credentials to unwashed masses

    Just type 'database'

    Websites using software from vBulletin have been stung by a critical vulnerability that makes it trivial to steal credentials needed to administer site panels. The flaw in version 3.8.6 of vBulletin makes it possible for anyone with a web browser to infiltrate a forum's back end, where sensitive data about users is often …

    Security 23 Jul 20:00

  • Google tests (semi) HTML5 YouTube embed code

    It works with HTML5. Except when it doesn't

    Google is testing new YouTube embed code that plays videos using either the company's experimental HTML5 player or its standard Flash player, depending on the video and the setup of the user's system. YouTube is still very much wedded to its Flash player, but since January, Google has offered an experimental HTML5 player that …

    Music and Media 23 Jul 20:25

  • Empires built on free code aren't cheap

    Open...and Shut Starting up is cheap. Success is expensive

    Five years ago, Joe Kraus declared that it was a "great time to be an entrepreneur." In the midst of dwindling hardware and software costs, among other things, it's never been easier to start and scale a company. Or so the reasoning goes. It's undoubtedly true that startup costs have gone down. Ironically, this comes at the …

    Business 23 Jul 23:42

  • Security world ill-equipped to solve digital whodunnits

    'Unqualified and pedestrian'

    When anthrax-laced letters killed five people and sickened 17 others shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, investigators were able to pin point the precise lab where the deadly spores were manufactured. And when Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was shot on the battle field some 150 years ago, forensics …

    Security 23 Jul 23:45

  • Mozilla tames Firefox tab monster with Candy

    Sweet organization

    Mozilla is testing a new Firefox interface designed to tame that seemingly endless string of tabs stretching across the top of your browser – and beyond. Known as Tab Candy, this alpha prototype provides a separate window where you can lay out your tabs like playing cards and sort them into groups. You can move tabs from group …

    Applications 23 Jul 23:45