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12th August 2010 Archive

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  • Credit card trafficker cuffed after nine-month manhunt

    BadB goes down

    A Russian accused of being one of the “most prolific” sellers of stolen credit-card data has been arrested in France, following a nine-month manhunt. Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, 27, was taken into custody in Nice, France, as he was attempting to board a flight bound for Moscow, federal prosecutors in Washington said. He …

    Crime 12 Aug 06:02

  • Philips BDP3100 Blu-ray player

    Review The penny-pinchers' player of choice?

    Philips has made some interesting innovations with TV in recent years – the Ambilight series among them – but with DVD and Blu-ray it's tended to follow Far Eastern manufacturers, while still managing to deliver decent, no-nonsense players that do what it says on the tin. So it is with the BDP3100, but the impressive thing about …

    reghardware 12 Aug 07:02

  • Dell crafts mother of all graphics cards

    16 GPUs jammed in 3U chassis

    Here's just what you need to play Crysis. The bespoke server division of Dell, called Data Center Solutions and accounting for a sizeable portion of Dell's quarterly server volumes, has cooked up a PCI-Express expansion chassis that can house up to 16 GPU co-processors. The new expansion chassis is part of the PowerEdge C …

    HPC 12 Aug 07:02

  • Documents show CAA fears over powerline networks

    Minutes from Ofcom meet show BBC unhappy too

    Both the BBC and the CAA are concerned that powerline networking will damage their services, though only one fears that it will lead to planes falling from the sky. Earlier this month the UK regulator Ofcom hosted a meeting on the subject, minutes of which have been seen by the Reg. At that meeting PA Consulting presented its …

    Telecoms 12 Aug 08:02

  • Northern Ireland gets upgraded spycams

    £12.9m for better ANPR system

    The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is planning to spend some of £12.9m in additional government security funding on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. A spokesperson for the service told GC News that due to security reasons it could not reveal the exact amount being spent on ANPR or any other details …

    Policing 12 Aug 08:25

  • Junk mail kingpin held on child abuse charges

    Trial to start in December

    Notorious spammer Leo Kuvayev is being held on remand in his native Russia over child sex charges. Kuvayev, 38, who occupies the second spot on Spamhaus' ROKSO list of the world's worst spammers, is accused of molesting 50 children from Moscow orphanages. The suspect has been held on remand since last December but news of his …

    Crime 12 Aug 08:46

  • ASA: You can't say 'f**k'

    We still know what it means

    The use of expletives in advertising and marketing can cause offence. That remains true even if some letters in swearwords are replaced by asterisks, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled. A direct mailing for marketing firm The Fuel Agency Ltd took the form of a valentine's card. The text on the front stated: "I …

    Law 12 Aug 09:02

  • Vodafone issues real Froyo update for HTC Desire

    Surrenders to customer anger

    Vodafone has bowed to customer fury and agreed to strip marketing guff and compulsory applications from its HTC Desire phones when it next upgrades the handsets' Android operating system. In the next ten days Vodafone UK will make an update available to Desire users which will upgrade their handsets to the next version of the …

    Mobile 12 Aug 09:32

  • MoD bod warns of cyber attack risk

    Data losses drive security threat

    The accounting officer for the Ministry of Defence has said that data losses and weaknesses in the department's information infrastructure have left it vulnerable to virtual attacks. In the MoD's resource accounts for 2009-10, Bill Jeffrey says that although the department is working to improve awareness of potential online …

    Enterprise Security 12 Aug 10:02

  • Chinese hurl $1.5bn into NFC city

    Not planning to use the tech, just build it

    China Unicom, the country's second biggest network operator, has signed a $1.5bn deal with the Chongqing Municipal Government to create a world centre for the production of Near Field Communications kit. While the US network operators are joining together to create a payment system based on handsets, including NFC technology, …

    Wireless 12 Aug 10:17

  • ICO defends soft Street View probe

    Insists case still open

    The Information Commissioner's Office has defended its handling of the controversy surrounding Google's Wi-Fi data harvesting operation, following questions about its soft-touch investigation. In what a spokesman described as an "update" late yesterday, it protested that it had no powers to investigate Google for alleged …

    Law 12 Aug 10:21

  • Boffins pioneer electron spin data storage

    Taking spintronics for a spin

    Ohio State University boffins have built a device that stores data based on electron spin which uses less energy and is cooler than existing DRAM. Electrons can be forced to orient their magnetisation or spin in parallel (on) or anti-parallel (off) alignment by using an external magnetic field. The alignment, called spin up or …

    Storage 12 Aug 10:25

  • iPhone 4 on Pay as You Go: UK networks compared

    If only things were that SIMple

    We were struck by how bad a deal Vodafone is offering with its new PAYG plans for the iPhone 4. But it seems we are in a minority: the telco sold out of stock in less than a day of launching. We asked the company what the deal was for sim-only PAYG - and after getting the run-around from four departments, we were told to go …

    reghardware 12 Aug 10:59

  • Firefox 4 hits third beta stage, gets touchy-feely with Windows 7

    JavaScript in heavy C++ overhaul

    Mozilla has slung out its third beta of Firefox 4, which now comes with Windows 7 multi-touch support. This test build of the browser also has improvements to its JavaScript handling functions. However, the interface itself remains unchanged from the previous beta released by Mozilla late last month. That’s hardly surprising …

    Applications 12 Aug 11:16

  • Funding drought shuts e-victims support group

    Updated That's just great

    Lack of funding means that a UK-based charitable organisation that helps victims of electronic crime will be forced to close next month. E-Victims.Org, established three years ago, has offered advice to individuals and small businesses on online security problems ranging from being harassed on Facebook to dealing with the …

    Crime 12 Aug 11:29

  • Oracle and IBM end poaching lawsuit

    Leave gardening leave for gardeners

    IBM has ended a lawsuit against Joanne Olsen, a 30-year Big Blue veteran and former head of its services division. The problem was that Olsen was seduced away from IBM by Larry Ellison after the purchase of Sun Microsystems. IBM complained that Olsen had failed to take a year's gardening leave and was therefore taking …

    Servers 12 Aug 11:30

  • High Court: Music TV royalty ruling flawed

    Copyright Tribunal 'misunderstood' evidence

    The Copyright Tribunal did not have a sound basis for the royalty rate it set in a dispute between rights holders and a music TV broadcaster, the High Court has said. The Tribunal set a new rate on spurious grounds and misunderstood evidence, it said. Video Performance Ltd (VPL) and CSC Media Group were in dispute about how …

    Music and Media 12 Aug 11:31

  • Are plasma TVs killing radio?

    Radio Society appeals for evidence

    The Radio Society of Great Britain is asking anyone with a plasma TV to let it know if they‘ve had trouble getting Radio 4 lately. The Radio Society of Great Britain represents the radio ham community, though it sees itself as having a wider remit. When not organising competitions to see who has the biggest beard can transmit …

    Wireless 12 Aug 11:36

  • Defra gifts £22m to payments quango

    Ever heard of Natural England? You're paying for it...

    An answer sneaked out in the last days before parliament’s summer recess raises questions as to just what the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is spending its ICT budget on. Because alongside a few tens of thousands spent on IT for sustainable development and animal health, and a slightly more …

    Government 12 Aug 11:43

  • Sat firm fails to stop legal challenge

    Ofcom closer to sending bailiffs for frequencies

    ICO Global Communications has failed to force a judicial review of Ofcom's decision to move to release radio frequencies allocated to the company. Despite the US-based ICO having invested $3bn in building a satellite network, and launching its first bird into orbit, the UK regulator has won the right to send a letter to the …

    Telecoms 12 Aug 11:52

  • Google spins out happy-clappy autofill Chrome 6 beta

    Is that a faster V8 in your browser leg, or are you just pleased to see me?

    It’s been a bumper beta 24 hours here on the brewing-browsers El Reg desk, after Google shoved out a Chrome 6.0.472.33 build yesterday. A developer build of Chrome 6 has been available since June, and now Google has effectively promoted most of that code to beta status for Windows, Mac and Linux fans. But there are exceptions …

    Applications 12 Aug 12:02

  • Buy songs from your radio

    Pure goes with the Flow

    Pure, the UK digital radio maker, has launched FlowSongs, a cloud-based music service for British customers that identifies tracks on a radio station and gives listeners the option to buy. While tuned in to any digital, FM or internet radio station, users can tag tracks, purchase them, then stream them without having to turn a …

    reghardware 12 Aug 13:32

  • Google, boffins crack Rubik's Cube mystery

    The ultimate answer - or is it?

    Has Google finally cracked it? Revealed today, courtesy of the massed ranks of Google computing, the answer to the ultimate question – not the old one about Life the Universe and Everything – is 20! We’re talking God’s Number here, or more prosaically the maximum number of moves required to solve the Rubik's Cube no matter …

    Physics 12 Aug 13:33

  • BBC digital chief emerges from Strategy Boutique

    Huggers' new plan looks a lot like the old plan

    While public self-flagellation and expressions of retrenchment are suddenly evident all over the BBC, its New Media chief Erik Huggers has left the door open for indefinite online expansion in a new strategy statement. The message to rival commercial online organisations is pretty clear: the BBC web operation has little prospect …

    Music and Media 12 Aug 13:36

  • Smartphone sales up 50%

    Android set to whack BlackBerry

    Smartphone sales rose by half over the last three months, according to market analysts Gartner, with the segment now making up almost 20 per cent of phones sold. Of the 326 million handsets that Gartner reckons were sold in the last three months, 19 per cent fall into the smartphone category, with Symbian's share of that …

    Mobile 12 Aug 13:41

  • Xiotech's ISE price cut

    Like a cash back but a discount

    Xiotech has a special offer; it will cough up $1,000 per TB of old Fibre Channel or SAS disks you junk in favour of an ISE system. If you want to trade up from SATA drives you get $500/TB. There's no limit, Xiotech says, to the amount that can be traded in. You don't get your hands on the actual cash, as it is used to lower …

    Blocks and Files 12 Aug 13:54

  • Microsoft: Hotmail fix coming soon to a browser near you

    Hopes to wipe out upgrade gripes, just don't mention Chrome

    Microsoft is telling pissed-off Hotmail punters to be patient while it tries to fix the various glitches found in the recently upgraded service. As we were first to report earlier this week, solutions offered by needled Microsoft support staff in the Hotmail forums included a novel suggestion that the company’s webmail might …

    Applications 12 Aug 14:19

  • BlueArc boosts filesystems

    SiliconFS 7.0 gets metadata in flash and 16PB capacity

    BlueArc has boosted its filesystem to support faster access to file system metadata and 16 petabytes of capacity on a node or cluster. BlueArc makes hardware-accelerated Titan and Mercury filers and these run the SiliconFS software. Version 7.0 puts file metadata onto solid state or fast SAS hard drives and the file data on …

    Storage 12 Aug 14:26

  • Taxman warns on phone fraud

    Look this gift horse in the mouth

    Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is warning people not to fall for unsolicited phone calls claiming to be offering tax rebates. The scammers, mirroring an almost identical email spam campaign, phone up and request bank details in order to pay over the tax rebate. If the mark is gullible enough to hand over bank details they …

    Small Biz 12 Aug 14:29

  • India threatens BlackBerry ban

    You have 19 days to comply

    India has followed Saudi Arabia‘s lead in threatening to cut off BlackBerry users, unless RIM provides the country with a mechanism to allow lawful interceptions. Having met with the country's network operators, the Indian government has now imposed a deadline of 31 August. By the end of this month either Indian security …

    Mobile 12 Aug 15:03

  • Carphone Warehouse: We won't shop or sue freetards

    Cloud music data stays with us

    Carphone Warehouse says it won't pass on any data to record companies from its new cloud music service, Music Anywhere, contrary to claims made by a freelance activist. Alexander Hanff, a self-employed consultant to Privacy International, said on BBC Radio 4's Reality Check discussion that "it will report you, and you will be …

    Music and Media 12 Aug 15:34

  • Samsung and Seagate snuggle on solid state drives

    Enterprise hook-up

    Samsung and Seagate will jointly develop and cross-license controller technologies for solid state drives (SSDs) used in enterprise applications. The release singles out Seagate's enterprise storage technology, meaning its hard disk drive experience (HDD), and Samsung's 30nm multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash expertise. Samsung …

    Storage 12 Aug 15:36

  • CEOP claims success for Facebook 'panic button'

    Threefold increase in reports

    The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre has received 211 reports of "suspicious activity" on Facebook since the launch of a branded app last month, it announced today. By comparison, earlier this year CEOP said it received 257 complaints about activity on the dominant social network in three months. The " …

    Applications 12 Aug 15:42

  • Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

    An epic for the tech-headed?

    Some films just beg for us to write about: step forward Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Written, directed and produced by Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World has been sending critics wild, with many suggesting it tops Wright's previous films, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. No mean feat. Based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's cult …

    reghardware 12 Aug 17:33

  • Amazon, Novell to sell full SUSE Linux on EC2

    Full support comes at a price

    Novell turned green with envy a long time ago watching Red Hat's business grow. Now it's following Red Hat onto Amazon's compute cloud by offering cloud pricing for its Linux when running on EC2. Michael Applebaum, director of Linux and appliances marketing at Novell, said Amazon is still finalizing the pricing it will charge …

    Operating Systems 12 Aug 17:45

  • Server-based botnet floods net with brutish SSH attacks

    Updated PHP patch laggards to blame

    A server-based botnet that preys on insecure websites is flooding the net with attacks that attempt to guess the login credentials for secure shells protecting Linux boxes, routers, and other network devices. According to multiple security blogs, the bot compromises websites running outdated versions of phpMyAdmin. By …

    Enterprise Security 12 Aug 17:50

  • 'PatentGate' allegations denied by Apple

    Misunderstanding, not malfeasance

    There is no "PatentGate." That's the word from FutureTap, the company which The Reg reported last Friday was concerned about Apple's lifting of the look-and-feel from its flagship app and including an illustration of it in a recently published patent application. "Apple is contemplating steps to attribute the screenshot in the …

    Mobile 12 Aug 17:58

  • AMD quickly updates ATI Stream SDK to OpenCL 1.1

    Fusion chips lurch closer to reality

    AMD has upgraded its ATI Stream SDK adding full OpenCL 1.1 support to the CPU/GPU development platform while also embracing Ubuntu 10.04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5. That was quick. OpenCL version 1.1 — the latest open source standard for munging CPU and GPU powers to allow for streamlining of highly parallel software …

    Developer 12 Aug 19:46

  • 15K Wikileaks docs 'potentially more explosive,' US frets

    Allies are outted?

    The Pentagon says many of the classified documents not yet published by Wikileaks contain material that's “potentially more explosive, more sensitive” than the huge trove of leaked records that has already prompted conniptions in military circles, The Washington Post reports. Pentagon officials have identified some 15,000 …

    Government 12 Aug 19:49

  • Microsoft delivers dedicated 30-minute big Fail support

    Affordable if it matters

    Microsoft is targeting mission-critical customers who need a response ASAP with a fresh support option that's only available with customized pricing. The company has announced its Premier Mission Critical package, which promises a dedicated team of people to handle your problems within 30 minutes of contact. As part of the …

    Software 12 Aug 21:05

  • Google on defensive as Facebook joins net neutrality fight

    AT&T: it's a 'reasonable plan', honestly

    Facebook has joined the assault on the Google/Verizon network-neutrality proposal just as Google published a spirited defense of what it says "has become a very contentious issue." "Facebook continues to support principles of net neutrality for both landline and wireless networks," Facebook's head of public policy …

    Music and Media 12 Aug 22:29

  • Internet Explorer 9 beta due on September 15

    IE's new look to be unveiled

    Microsoft has named the date for the first beta of its successor to Internet Explorer 8. You'll be able to download beta code for IE9 on September 15, the company said Thursday. Microsoft told The Reg that it's not releasing code to MSDN subscribers in advance, followed by everybody else. Microsoft is planning to formally …

    Applications 12 Aug 23:32

  • NTLM authentication: still broken after all these years

    Popular tech imperils users

    A 15-year-old vulnerability in technology used to authenticate users on Windows and Unix networks continues to put the organizations that rely on it at risk, a security researcher said on Thursday. Short for NT LAN Manager, NTLM and its offspring, NTLMv2, is a challenge-and-response protocol for logging onto Microsoft accounts …

    Enterprise Security 12 Aug 23:33