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25th August 2010 Archive

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  • Google tests phone calls from Gmail

    VoiceChatTalk VoIP

    Google is testing a service that lets you make phone calls from Gmail, according to a report that includes a screen shot of the test. Cnet says it has learned that Google is exploring a service that launches phone calls from Google Chat, the IM client that dovetails with Gmail. The report says that the service allows users to …

    Music and Media 25 Aug 00:59

  • Intel details 10-core Westmere-EX server silicon

    Hot Chips 'Only ten? Wanna make something of it?'

    Intel has confirmed that its upcoming Westmere-EX server processor will be a 10-core, server-enhanced, single-die beastie. No surprise. Back in June, when the program for this week's Hot Chips conference was published, it listed a session in which Intel would discuss "A 20 Thread Server CPU". It was a no-brainer to deduce the …

    Servers 25 Aug 03:06

  • Java lobby lowers Android and iPhone defenses

    Help us to help you help us

    Carriers and handset makers are rallying to make it cheaper and easier to deliver applications on phones using the "official" brand of Java on mobile. The Unified Test Initiative, an industry group that certifies Java ME applications as safe and reliable, is streamlining its verification program. From next month, qualifying …

    Developer 25 Aug 05:02

  • ARM chips put on their server boots

    Intel fight afoot

    The ARM RISC processor is taking a few baby steps closer to being a credible alternative to x64 processors for servers, according to ARM Holdings, the British company behind the popular chip. According to notes for a speech delivered at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University on Tuesday, ARM Holdings architecture …

    PCs & Chips 25 Aug 06:02

  • Ten... Wireless Headphones

    Product Round-up Wired for sound? Not any more!

    The last batch of stereo Bluetooth headphones I looked at, back in 2008, were something of a mixed bag, with some cumbersome designs and very variable audio quality. Fortunately, the current generation provides much better stereo quality, and we’d happily recommend any of them as an alternative to a conventional set of wired …

    reghardware 25 Aug 07:02

  • Argentine court overturns ruling on search engines' link liability

    That's not my mess!

    An appeals court in Argentina has ruled that search engines are not responsible for the content of sites that they index. The court overturned a lower court's ruling against Google and Yahoo! Argentina. A lower court had found the search firms liable for damaging the 'moral character' of Virginia Da Cunha, a model, singer and …

    Law 25 Aug 07:02

  • Marten Mickos defends honor of Ubuntu's Koala food

    'Open core' Eucalyptus scales fightback

    Marten Mickos – the former MySQL chief executive who now heads build-you-own-cloud outfit Eucalyptus Systems – has defended the Eucalyptus platform against recent criticism of both its "open core" model and its ability to scale beyond a relatively small number of servers. His comments come as Eucalyptus releases a new …

    Software 25 Aug 07:02

  • Stockholm schoolgirls fined for bugging staff room

    Clandestine op's cover blown on Facebook

    Two Stockholm schoolgirls have been slapped with a fine for bugging the staff room at their seat of learning. According to The Local, the mid-teens pair intended to listen in to a meeting convened to decide pupils' grades in the hope they might "glean information that would enable them to get their grades improved". Handily, …

    Bootnotes 25 Aug 09:04

  • Alibaba opens up coffers for eBay listing service

    Second US buy

    Chinese auction house Alibaba is expanding its US presence by grabbing Auctiva - the Californian firm which makes tools for business users of eBay. Auctiva's listing tools for eBay to make it easier for small firms to run their online auctions. It claims 170,000 active users. The Chinese company said the deal made it the …

    Applications 25 Aug 09:23

  • Paris Hilton tweets armed intruder drama

    'Knifes' scare ends in therapeutic facial

    Paris Hilton entertained her 2,520,223 Twitter followers yesterday with a quick tweet revealing that some bloke had just tried to enter her Hollywood Hills pad armed with "knifes". The patron saint of El Reg's space plane mission wrote: "So Scary, just got woken up to a guy trying to break into my house holding 2 big knifes. …

    Bootnotes 25 Aug 09:25

  • WD debuts four-port powerline boxes

    Mains networking to the max

    Are your one-port powerline Ethernet adaptors proving insufficient for hooking up all the gadgets you want to connect to your network? Western Digital has the answer. It's moving into the powerline market with Livewire, a four-port adaptor that uses the HomePlug AV standard to deliver raw data rates of up to 200Mb/s. Real- …

    reghardware 25 Aug 09:42

  • Facebook Places 'sparks interest in similar services'

    This is the dawning of the age of location-whores

    Alternative location service echoecho reckons Facebook Places is driving up interest in the subject, to the good of the whole industry and, in particular, echoecho. Apparently downloads of the echoecho client have multiplied by ten since Facebook Places was announced, which the company attributes to offering much the same …

    Mobile 25 Aug 09:57

  • WikiLeaks readies next release

    CIA documents next up

    WikiLeaks used Twitter to tell the world it is to release a CIA document later today. The site's supposed crusade of transparency has been over-shadowed in recent days by its founder's legal difficulties in Sweden. Swedish prosecutor Eva Finne is still considering whether or not to prosecute the site's founder Julian Assange …

    Law 25 Aug 09:59

  • HP bangs on glass as 3PAR marches to the altar

    Shane Robison shouts 'NOOOOOOOOO'

    If 3PAR decides the HP re-bid is a superior offer it is going to give Dell three days to come up with a better acquisition offer or be jilted. Dell made an agreed $18/share offer for 3PAR on August 16, after HP refused to raise its first bid on August 1. 3PAR and Dell were then set to walk to the altar with an agreed merger, …

    Storage 25 Aug 10:30

  • BT ad banned for 'misleading' customers over broadband speeds

    For once, it's not the estate agent's fault

    The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a BT television advert, after the watchdog concluded that customers had been misled by the telecom giant’s broadband speed claims. ASA said that the TV ad in question featured a voice-over that claimed BT was “rolling out up to 20 meg speeds” to provide punters with “ …

    Telecoms 25 Aug 10:45

  • Pioneer preps wall-mount iPhone speaker

    Hang ten?

    Pioneer has taken the standard iPod speaker dock, flattened it out and hung it on a wall. The Kodo XW-NAW1 - which is due to go on sale next month - provides a home for both iPods and iPhones, feeding their output through a pair of 30W stereo sound system. The Kodo can be controlled using its on-board blue-lit, touch- …

    reghardware 25 Aug 10:46

  • Energy-saving LEDs 'will not save energy', say boffins

    Photon-hoggish humanity set for orgy of illumination

    Federal boffins in the States say that the brave new future in which today's 'leccy-guzzling lights are replaced by efficient LEDs may not, in fact, usher in massive energy savings. This is because, according to the scientists' research, people are likely to use much more lighting as soon as this becomes practical. The greater …

    Environment 25 Aug 10:59

  • Dixons done for dumping customer info in skip

    Do you want identity theft with that?

    Dixons has had its wrist slapped for leaving customer details in a skip outside one of its PC World stores. To be fair to the world's favourite tech retailer there were only eight completed credit agreements found, but they did contain customers' personal and financial data. The store concerned was in Northamptonshire, and the …

    Channel Register 25 Aug 11:03

  • Apple patches 13 bugs in OS X

    At least 6 critical vulns squished

    Apple has punched out a security update for some major bugs found in its Mac OS X operating system. The Jobsian outfit released the update yesterday afternoon, which patches 13 vulns located in OS X components such as CFNetwork and Apple Type Service. Apple has also fixed issues found in open source components including PHP, …

    Operating Systems 25 Aug 11:06

  • How extreme is your pr0n? Depends on your lawyer

    Analysis Beware bluetooth bearing gifs

    In matters of extreme porn, the message of recent cases seems to be that whether you get off increasingly depends on how familiar your legal team are with a law still in its courtroom infancy. In Mold, Mr Andrew Robert Holland, of Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Clwyd, was originally charged on two counts of possessing extreme porn. The …

    Law 25 Aug 11:12

  • Ex-prez sues Fujitsu over ousting

    Nozoe demands damages, apology

    The ex-president of Fujitsu has thrown a sue ball at his former employer, following his ousting from the company in September 2009. Kuniaki Nozoe filed a lawsuit against the Japanese tech giant and four of its execs yesterday, according to the Wall Street Journal. He is seeking damages that total about ¥380m ($4.5m) and an …

    Servers 25 Aug 11:37

  • Apple snubs O2's handset enviro-spec rating

    Palm Pre least green in shrunken field

    O2 has added environmental impact to its handset specifications, rating the Palm Pre as the worst while Sony Ericsson's Elm left the smallest footprint. The new labels, which indicate the environmental impact of each handset based on O2's own criteria, will be applied to 93 per cent of the devices supported by the network - a …

    Mobile 25 Aug 11:41

  • Pupils find teacher's abuse images

    Who knew you could retrieve stuff from the recycling bin?

    A teacher who let a class use his laptop was given a suspended sentence yesterday after kids found child sex abuse images in his recycling bin. Michael Humphreys, 32, of Didsbury, allowed members of his year 11 class to use his laptop to play chess. The cunning kids checked his deleted items and found a file called 'paedo girl …

    Law 25 Aug 11:48

  • 'Spintronic' computing gets closer with laser 'lectron discovery

    Tiny twirly tech

    Boffins in Kansas report that they have made a breakthrough in "spintronics" - the postulated future technology which might replace today's conventional electronics and allow much more powerful IT hardware. As the name suggests, spintronics uses the spin of an electron to store information rather than its charge. If it can be …

    PCs & Chips 25 Aug 11:50

  • Why Android won't worry RIM and Apple

    Opinion Nibbling at the wrong target

    My US colleagues are regulars on John C Dvorak's excellent Cranky Geeks and a highlight of the show. I was recently intrigued to hear the opinion from Vulture West Coast (in Episode 232) that RIM was toast, and Android would triumph. Now, bearing in mind that I've been wrong about mobile more than I've been wrong about anything …

    Mobile 25 Aug 12:02

  • Meego goes 3D

    Just what are Nokia and Intel playing at?

    Yesterday Nokia and Intel announced that the future of mobile interfaces is 3D, and that everyone else will soon be following their Meego platform into the third dimension. 3D is certainly a bandwagon, and Nokia likes hopping on board bandwagons whenever it spots one. This time it's dragging Intel along for the ride, but …

    Applications 25 Aug 12:40

  • Royal Society opens inquiry into why kids hate tech

    Lessons that is, not games, mobiles, Facebook

    The Royal Society has opened its investigation into why kids are so bored with technology and computing classes in British schools - even if they're obsessed with their mobiles and iPods and applications like Facebook. Earlier this month the Society announced an 18-month probe into Computing in Schools with the support of 24 …

    Government 25 Aug 13:30

  • Home Office unveils new UK passport

    Better security, lovely pictures

    The Home Office has said that new UK passports with 'strengthened security features' will be issued from October. To make the passports more secure, the chip which stores the holder's details has been moved to the inside of the passport cover so it will no longer be visible, the Home Office said. The new 10-year passport will …

    ID 25 Aug 13:32

  • Playlist.com goes titsup

    Lotsa money owed everywhere

    Labels both large and small, as well as songwriters' organisations, are owed millions after Playlist.com filed for bankruptcy. Founded in 2006 as Project Playlist, the revenue-lite operation made widgets for social network sites as Facebook and MySpace, and in its heyday boasted almost 40 million users. The largest amount, $ …

    Music and Media 25 Aug 13:33

  • PARIS team cracks Vulture 1-X wing

    Knocks together proof of concept structure

    The Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) team has spent the last couple of days working on a definitive Vulture 1-X wing structure, having already tried and rejected a few options. Naturally, we took on board all of your suggestions as to how we might go about making an aircraft wing entirely from paper, and reckon we've …

    PARIS 25 Aug 14:26

  • Consumers Union calls for NFC regulation

    Network operators can't be trusted, not like banks

    As America wakes up to the idea of pay-by-phone the Consumers Union is calling for greater regulation, concerned that proximity payments may not receive any protection at all. Various pay-by-phone operations, based on Near Field Communications technology, are being tested in the US at the moment, with a consortium of US …

    Mobile 25 Aug 14:42

  • BBC adopts El Reg units

    Vulture Central to send Auntie Olympic-sized invoice

    We're delighted to announce that the Beeb appears to have got with the programme and adopted official El Reg units. In this report on the "lake that has formed under a glacier on Mont Blanc, and threatens to flood the St Gervais valley", the Corporation quantifies the potentially-deadly body of water as apparently containing " …

    Bootnotes 25 Aug 14:45

  • Server recovery picks up steam in Q2

    High end waiting for the lift

    The recovery in the server business is building momentum, and the box counters at IDC believe that server makers peddled and pushed $10.9bn in aluminum, tin, and iron in the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 11 per cent compared to last year. Those revenues were driven substantially by increasing shipments of x64-based …

    Servers 25 Aug 15:06

  • Facebook leapfrogs Google's Orkut in India

    Mountain View supports split personalities

    Facebook’s popularity has overtaken Google’s Orkut in India, where Mountain View’s social network site had previously – and somewhat surprisingly – reigned supreme. According to new figures from web traffic outfit comScore, Facebook edged ahead of Orkut in the past year with one million more users in India, where social …

    Music and Media 25 Aug 17:43

  • Undead Commodore 64 comes back for Christmas

    All-in-one zombie attacks children of the 80s

    The Commodore 64 will rise from the grave before Christmas, according to the tiny company determined to reanimate the long-dead 80s icon. Commodore USA — the outfit that seemed to unveil a reincarnated C64 before failing to secure the rights to the name — has at long last signed an agreement with the rights holders, and …

    Music and Media 25 Aug 17:54

  • Pentagon confirms attack breached classified network

    'Network administrator's worst fear'

    The Pentagon has opened the kimono on what it described as the “most significant breach of US military computers ever,” in which a flash drive in 2008 was used to infect large numbers of computers, including those used by the Central Command overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the device was plugged into a …

    Security 25 Aug 18:58

  • Google unleashes phone calls from Gmail

    Voice extension

    Google has announced that you can now place and receive phone calls inside Gmail, a day after a report revealed that such a service was under test. As expected, the company's Gmail phone-call service works in tandem with Google Voice, the new-age telephony web service that lets you attach a single phone number to multiple …

    VoIP 25 Aug 20:04

  • Intel chief: Obama (still) driving US off cliff

    Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

    Intel CEO Paul Otellini believes that the US is heading towards a second-rate status as a technology leader, and it's the Obama administration's fault. "The next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here," unless government policies are changed, Otellini told a Tuesday gathering at the Technology …

    Financial News 25 Aug 21:56

  • Stripped-down IE9 interface leaks in Russia

    Less is more

    Internet Explorer 9 is getting a stripped down interface, if a screenshot leaked online is to be believed. The next IE will feature a back button, a combined URL and search box at the top, and do away with "Favorites, "Suggested Sites," and "Get More Add-Ons" items, according to Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley here. The peak …

    Applications 25 Aug 22:16

  • Citrix takes bare-metal hypervisor to PCs

    XenClient less than it could be

    On Wednesday, Citrix Systems kicked out XenClient, a bare-metal (or type 1 in virt lingo) hypervisor aimed at desktop and laptop PCs, perhaps in an attempt to steal a little thunder from VMware and its upcoming VMware View 4.5 virtual desktop infrastructure software, expected to be announced at the VMworld conference in San …

    Virtualization 25 Aug 22:44

  • Robocopter combat cargo skyhook chosen by US forces

    Meatsack stickjockeys no longer required

    A US military competition aimed at finding a robotic unmanned helicopter able to haul supplies to isolated bases in Afghanistan has a winner, according to reports. OK, flyboy, you go and have your mandatory aircrew sleep time - you've slept yourself right out of a job The US Marines' "Immediate Cargo Unmanned Aerial System …

    Government 25 Aug 22:47

  • Wikileaks publishes secret CIA memo

    More to come...

    Wikileaks posted a classified CIA memo on Wednesday, three weeks after the Pentagon warned the self-described whistleblower website to return a huge cache of of unpublished documents believed to be in its possession. The secret memo, titled “What If Foreigners See the United States as an 'Exporter of Terrorism?',” isn't likely …

    Government 25 Aug 23:05

  • Apple to reveal musical something on September 1

    iPods, Apple TV, cloudy tunes?

    Fanbois, mark your calendars: Apple has sent out invitations to a music-themed event to take place in San Francisco next Wednesday morning. With customary Cupertinian minimalism, the email message provides no information about what will be announced at the invitation-only event — just the 10:00am starting time and the venue, …

    Music and Media 25 Aug 23:48