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29th July 2010 Archive

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  • NoScript 2.0 beefs border patrol

    'Saves your router's ass'

    NoScript daddy Giorgio Maone has released version 2.0 of his popular Firefox add-on, a means of blocking JavaScript, Java, Flash, and other plug-in or script content from untrusted websites. Maone is particularly pleased with a change to NoScript's Application Boundaries Enforcer (ABE) module, designed to guard against router …

    Security 29 Jul 00:10

  • Alcatel OT-808 fashion phone

    Review Qwerty clamshell with text appeal

    With its mirrored exterior and clamshell action, it’s quite deliberate that, looking at the Alcatel OT-808, you end up thinking it resembles a make-up compact. Evidently, it’s designed to appeal to budget conscious femmes or those who want something fun to use when out on the town, leaving the pricey smartphone at home. And if …

    reghardware 29 Jul 07:02

  • Cell phone eavesdropping enters script-kiddie phase

    Black Hat Get your GSM snooping tools here

    Independent researchers have made good on a promise to release a comprehensive set of tools needed to eavesdrop on cell phone calls that use the world's most widely deployed mobile technology. “The whole topic of GSM hacking now enters the script-kiddie stage, similar to Wi-Fi hacking a couple years ago, where people started …

    Enterprise Security 29 Jul 07:02

  • Amazon takes Kindle to the UK

    Opens Kindle store

    Amazon UK's front page is dominated today by a letter to its customers, introducing the "third generation of Kindles". In other words, Brits can buy Kindle e-Readers direct from Amazon UK, instead of the American mothership. That means UK prices - £149 for the 3G-Wi-Fi version and £109 for the Wi-Fi only version. This is …

    reghardware 29 Jul 07:38

  • Russian city blocks YouTube

    Clampdown on 'extremist' material

    The Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur has ordered ISP Rosnet to "restrict access" to YouTube and four other websites containing "extremist" material, Pravda reports. Prosecutors in the far eastern Khabarovsk region city trawled cyberspace and unearthed several examples of restricted material, including excerpts from Hitler's …

    Music and Media 29 Jul 07:50

  • Sage poised for huge Italian buy

    New boss plots €650m bid

    The recently installed chief executive of Sage is planning a massive bid for Italian business management firm TeamSystem. The deadline for bids is tomorrow but Sage looks likely to beat two private equity groups for control of the firm. Sage will offer £542m (€650m), outbidding offers from private equity firms HgCapital and …

    Applications 29 Jul 07:56

  • Churchill's dentures go under the hammer

    War-winning gnashers

    A set of dentures belonging to Winston Churchill and described as "a vital weapon" in Britain's struggle against Nazism come under the hammer today, the BBC reports. Churchill was keen to preserve the distinctive lisp which added essential flavour to his wartime speeches, and enlisted dental technician Derek Cudlipp to ensure …

    Bootnotes 29 Jul 08:16

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops squeezes on to Nintendo DS

    Standalone handheld companion

    Call of Duty: Black Ops is to get a standalone "companion" for the Nintendo DS. Its little sister puts gamers "into the boots of CIA-backed operatives" who have lots of weapons to play with, including an attack helicopter and a stealth fighter jet. Call of Duty: Black Ops for the Nintendo DS has six-player online multiplayer …

    reghardware 29 Jul 08:27

  • Managing change in the application portfolio

    Workshop A can of worms?

    Nothing stands still forever, particularly not in IT, and with good reason. When we researched the drivers that were having the most impact on how x86 server environments are architected, evolved and operated for example, we found that data growth was the number one driver, followed closely by new application requirements, and …

    IT at the coalface 29 Jul 09:36

  • BT layoffs boost profits

    Braces for UK.gov cuts

    Layoffs and cost-cutting at BT have boosted BT's first quarter net profits by a third to £284m. However, revenues were four per cent down to £5bn, and CEO Ian Livingston said the firm is in talks with the government about how deep public spending cuts will affect it. He described the results as "an acceptable start to the …

    Telecoms 29 Jul 09:56

  • Turkish pranksters load Facebook Translate with swears

    The rudeness of crowds

    Facebook's attempts to crowdsource translations have gone awry in Turkey. A group of Turkish pranksters banded together to submit bogus translations so that a Facebook IM error message was rendered in Turkish as "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis". The correct version should say the message could not be …

    Enterprise Security 29 Jul 10:07

  • Opposition to can Aus $1.3bn school laptops program

    Election fun and games

    Australia's general election is in full swing and disputes over tech funding and tech policy continue to intrude on today centre stage. In today's spat, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said he would scrap the government's "wasteful" computers for schools initiative if the centre right Coalition wins. That would mean Year 9 pupils …

    Government 29 Jul 10:08

  • UK population to be guaranteed mobile 768Kb/sec service

    Plus new-for-old deal for PMSE

    The government has endorsed the plan to pass organisation of the digital dividend mega auction back to Ofcom, with universal service guarantees, and promises a new-for-old deal for the Programme Makers and Special Events (PMSE) crowd. Minister for Communications Ed Vaizey drafted a statutory instrument covering the plan, which …

    Mobile 29 Jul 10:56

  • DfT 'unwittingly' bigged-up speed camera benefits

    Exclusive Rumours of their awesomeness exaggerated, dept admits to Reg

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has "unwittingly" misled the public over the benefits of speed cameras for the last four years. That was the shock admission yesterday by a DfT spokeswoman, when finally cornered by the Department’s own research. She also told us that they have finally agreed to put matters right by adding an …

    Government 29 Jul 11:01

  • Supercomputer geek builds Cray-1 around home PC

    More powerful than the original?

    Daryl Brach, known as pfaffen online, has built a scale model of the Cray-1 supercomputer to house a PC. The Cray-1, (pictured above) the world's first supercomputer, was launched in 1976. It was rated at a peak performance of 250MFLOPS and had "200,000 integrated circuits, 3,400 printed circuit boards, 60 miles of wire, and …

    Servers 29 Jul 11:02

  • ID card astroturf - No2ID beats the truth out of IPS

    Er yes, nearly all the happy campers did work for us

    A cackling Phil Booth, No2ID National Coordinator, writes to tell us that six months after he first pestered the Identity & Passport Service about its quotes from ID card-toting happy campers in its publicity material, it has confessed - um yes, all but one of those quoted worked for the government. "We can confirm that eight …

    Government 29 Jul 11:04

  • Papal crackdown on bare-kneed tourists sparks hypocrisy claims

    Rubbish - priests always cover their knees

    The Vatican's stripey knickerbocker-clad Swiss Guards have launched a crack down on scantily-clad tourists in and around the Holy See. Reports say that a long-standing modest dress decree has been extended from St Peter's basicilica - the big church - to the whole of the Vatican mini-state. The Pope's halberd-waving steel- …

    Bootnotes 29 Jul 11:06

  • iPads for hospitals: is this a good idea?

    Can you wash it, drop it, stop your patients from stealing it?

    Next year, 500 doctors and nurses in Victoria hospitals will trial the use of iPads. Graduate doctors, rather than crusty consultants, will get the devices, as the "younger group of students and graduates of the health professions have grown up with technology all around them," Daniel Andrews, Victoria's health minister, said …

    Public Sector 29 Jul 11:14

  • UK privacy watchdog clears Google Wi-Fi slurp

    'Nothing personal'

    The “pay-load” data collected by Google’s Street View cars did not slurp up “meaningful personal details”, the UK’s privacy watchdog concluded today. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) confirmed in April that it would quiz Google about the practice. Today it ruled (pdf) that the company hadn’t grabbed information …

    Government 29 Jul 11:16

  • Data breaches blamed on organised crime

    Hackers feast on financial sector security mistakes

    Cybercrooks continue to be a menace to corporate security, with hackers and malware authors collectibly responsible for 85 per cent of all stolen data. The latest edition of Verizon's annual data breach report also records a rise in insider threats and greater use of social engineering. Verizon worked with the US Secret …

    Crime 29 Jul 11:45

  • Authentic Navy rum: Yours for £600 a bottle

    Last stocks of RN hard stuff offered to landlubbers

    Those of you with a taste for rum and 600 quid to spare might like to uncork a bottle of Black Tot "Last Consignment" British Royal Naval Rum, lovingly decanted from the official stocks held by the Senior Service since sailors' final rum ration in 1970. On July 31 of that year, at precisely six bells in the forenoon watch, …

    Bootnotes 29 Jul 11:50

  • Sky turns 3D on Oct 1

    Strong sports line-up. And golf

    Sky is launching a 3D TV channel, Europe's first, on October 1. To see it you have to be a Sky HD subscriber with a 3D-ready TV. No set-top box adjustments or additional fees necessary. The satellite TV broadcaster says the channel works with active and passive 3D formats and is compatible with "all of the TVs" being …

    reghardware 29 Jul 11:52

  • Google sets Android on pirates

    Phone-home copy protection

    Android now comes with an API allowing applications to phone home to check for a licence when launched, locking out pirates and anyone with an unreliable data connection. The "Licensing Verification Library" does allow the developer to permit caching of responses, so an application shouldn't stop working when one gets on a …

    Mobile 29 Jul 11:58

  • Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G 18.4in laptop

    Review Full HD desktop replacement with plenty of poke

    Stylish and powerful, the new 18.4in Aspire Ethos 8943G will appeal to those looking for a desktop replacement that doesn’t hold back on performance. Each of the four cores on the Core i7-720QM purr along at 1.6GHz, while ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is on hand should you want to indulge in a bit of gaming. Throw in a Blu-ray …

    reghardware 29 Jul 12:02

  • Virgin hitches MTV to media player loveliness

    Three screens. When will the madness stop?

    World+dog must have a media player to call its own. Not to be outdone Virgin is in on the act as of today with the launch of Virgin Media Player, for mobile and computer use. The cableco has lined up "hundreds of hours" of content, including various youthie MTV network shows, which already appear on its on-demand TV service. …

    reghardware 29 Jul 12:45

  • Courts bar dodgy documents from divorce cases

    Hildebrand rules hustled out

    People involved in divorce wrangles will no longer be able to use dodgily-obtained documents to prove their spouse is hiding money, following a landmark Court of Appeal ruling. Previously courts would consider information obtained by the poorer party about the other's finances, even if it was secretly copied from a …

    Law 29 Jul 12:50

  • Fragrant tech thief stalks Whitehall

    Public servants' purses exposed

    Civil servants at the Department for Communities and Local Government are living in fear of a sweet smelling mobile technology thief who carries a ladies' purse. That is the inescapable conclusion after a minister in the department detailed the terrifying catalogue of thefts within the department in a commons answer. Pete …

    Government 29 Jul 12:53

  • .NET for Android prepares to get probed

    Port from Windows help

    Microsoft's .NET for Android - dubbed MonoDroid - has come a step closer. The Novell-backed MonoTouch project is about to start beta tests of a version of its open-source implementation of Microsoft's framework for use on Google's Linux operating system for devices. Final product for MonoDroid is expected in the fall, Novell …

    Developer 29 Jul 13:02

  • Pay-off or lay-off: HP calls on 700 staff to heed redundo plea

    EOW woe

    Hewlett-Packard has reduced the number of UK employees it plans to show the door in its latest round of redundancies from 934 to 720. Employees at the company received an email, seen by The Register, from management last week in which HP confirmed that it was asking for all its UK infrastructure technology outsourcing (ITO) …

    Channel Register 29 Jul 13:03

  • Sky bags UK HBO exclusive

    Not showing on a TV near you

    Never saw The Wire, but I am told it is rather good. I won't be seeing it in a hurry either, now that Sky has slurped up HBO's entire library in a UK exclusive. The deal - worth £150m over five years, according to various reports - will see iconic American TV shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos , Sex and The City, True Blood …

    reghardware 29 Jul 13:14

  • Quantum quivers again

    Drops a sales ball

    Quantum, the supplier of tape, reduplicating backup arrays and some file archiving software, has turned in a loss-making quarter, attributing it to poor sales in Europe and a North America region. Quantum's results for its first fiscal 2011 quarter saw revenues $3m upon the year-ago quarter to $163m, essentially flat as the …

    Blocks and Files 29 Jul 13:38

  • Sky clocks up £1bn profit

    HD boosts money-making machine

    Sky made a £1bn profit in the year to 30 June for the first time, with ARPU reaching £508 per subscriber. Annual revenue totalled £5.9bn, up 10 per cent year on year. The subscriber base grew modestly to 9.86 million, but more are buying subscriptions, driven by HD content. Sky now boasts 2.9 million HD subscribers, with 429, …

    Music and Media 29 Jul 13:59

  • Nokia goes after Opera Mini

    It'll have you in interstitials

    Nokia has unveiled a knock-off of Opera's Mini phone browser, intended for use on its low-end handsets in emerging markets. It's the first manifestation of Nokia's own ad engine. Like Opera Mini, Ovi Browser is a Java client that uses a compression proxy to reduce bandwidth. The browser is a crude 0.1 affair, but it's the ad …

    Mobile 29 Jul 14:10

  • Apple coughs to iPhone 3G IOS 4 upgrade problems

    Where are we now?

    iPhone 3G users who've upgraded to iOS 4 are discovering that the roaming switch isn't working any more, for those on O2's network at least. Apple's new OS isn't running as smoothly as intended; users report the upgrade causes slow-downs and freezes, not to mention draining the battery and running up unexpected roaming bills, …

    Mobile 29 Jul 14:12

  • IBM buys file compressor

    Storwize swallowed

    IBM is buying Storwize for its real-time, inline data compression technology and products. Storwize produces appliances, the STN-2100 and STN-6000, which sit in front of NAS (network-attached storage) arrays and compress data being written to the array, using Lempel-Ziv algorithms in its Random Access Compression Engine (RACE …

    Storage 29 Jul 14:43

  • Oracle and HP make a deal for Solaris on ProLiants

    Dell does deal for PowerEdges, too

    The inscrutable plan of Oracle for Solaris 10 on x64 servers became more... scrutable this morning. The company announced that Dell and Hewlett-Packard would be certifying and reselling Oracle's Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems, as well as its Oracle VM implementation of the Xen hypervisor on their respective …

    Servers 29 Jul 14:53

  • Lovefilm calls in the DRM brigade for media player push

    They're all at it

    Lovefilm is the UK's answer to Netflix. And like Netflix it has a pressing problem. No, not Blockbuster. It has reams of customers, 1.4 million all told, for its DVD-by-mail rental service. But for how long? Downloads and streaming is the way forward, baby - onto TV, phone and computer - the three screens strategy, as Virgin …

    reghardware 29 Jul 15:49

  • US carrier tailors 3G jacket for iPod touch?

    A Peel for your Apple

    US wireless carrier Sprint is slated to offer a kind of handset sleeve that could provide 3G wireless access to an iPod Touch, the Apple iPhone that's not a phone. As noticed by Phone Scoop, Chinese manufacturer ZTE has submitted a Sprint-branded device to the Federal Communications Commission that can house a mini-tablet like …

    Mobile 29 Jul 16:34

  • Open source HPC file system gets startup

    Wham, cloud with Lustre

    High performance computing – by which is meant traditional parallel supercomputing as well as data analytics and hyperscale cloudy infrastructure – is facing a looming file system and storage bottleneck, and Whamcloud, a startup backed by $10m in private funding and some of the top people behind the Lustre file system, want to …

    HPC 29 Jul 16:48

  • Next Gnome delayed until 2011

    September previews planned

    Linux users on Gnome must wait a full year before their favorite desktop is updated – the first such delay in the project's short history. Gnome 3.0 has been postponed until March 2011 from the scheduled September due date that would have been in keeping Gnome's six-month release cycle, in practice since 2004. Instead, the …

    Software 29 Jul 17:48

  • Microsoft names September for IE9 beta

    FAM Turner promises 'great' story

    The beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 will hit in September. Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner named the date for Wall Street analysts during the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft until now has not released dates on IE9, but Turner dropped the date …

    Applications 29 Jul 18:45

  • Fog of cyberwar: internet always favors the offense

    Black Hat The Poland of international conflict

    Fighting wars that target computer networks is fraught with risks that don't exist in traditional warfare, raising the stakes for future conflicts, a retired US general told security professionals Thursday. “You guys made the cyber world look like the north German plain, and then you bitch and moan because you get invaded," …

    Security 29 Jul 19:48

  • Nvidia plugs-in Visual Studio with CUDA 3.1

    Cuda be an enterprise contender

    Nvidia announced some new CUDA stuff last week, a new developer kit (3.1) and the Parallel Nsight Visual Studio plug-in, both designed to make it easier for ISVs and other coding types to support Nvidia GPUs in their apps. Our pal TPM has a typically detailed story here. One thing that jumped out from the introductory …

    HPC Blog 29 Jul 19:52

  • Ballmer and Softies sacrifice sleep to catch iPad

    FAM 'Job-one urgency'

    Microsoft's chief executive has come very close to telling investors he screwed up after years of writing off, belittling and underestimated Apple's potential success in touch-based computing. Steve Ballmer told Wall Street he's under no illusion about Apple's success with the iPad and iPhone, and Microsoft's number-one …

    Software 29 Jul 21:40

  • Uncle Sam sues Oracle (again) for alleged fraud

    DoJ doubles down on whistleblower suit

    The US Department of Justice has filed a fresh lawsuit against Oracle, three months after intervening in a whistleblower suit that accuses the software giant of overcharging the government by "tens of millions of dollars." Paul Frascella, formerly senior director of contract services at Oracle, filed the original lawsuit back …

    Government 29 Jul 22:57

  • Data for 100m Facebook accounts published to BitTorrent

    Forever is a mighty long time

    Underscoring the permanence of data published on the internet, a security researcher has compiled the names and URLs of more than 100 million Facebook users and made them available as a BitTorrent download. Ron Bowles, who describes himself as a certified penetration tester, said he used some hastily written code to harvest …

    ID 29 Jul 22:59

  • 'Suspicious' Android wallpaper app nabs user data

    Up to 4 million downloads

    An Android wallpaper application that collected data from users' phones and uploaded it to a site in China was downloaded "millions of times", according to mobile security firm Lookout. Kevin MaHaffey, chief technology officer at Lookout, used Jackeey Wallpaper as an example of the wider risk faced by smartphone users during a …

    Security 29 Jul 23:32