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27th August 2010 Archive

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  • Dollars and sense: tech startups discover revenue is good

    Open...and Shut No business model is so 2001

    During the dot-com bubble, making money was optional. Given enough eyeballs, all investors are shallow, went the refrain, and money poured into silly startups that had little chance of ever making money except in equally silly IPOs and acquisitions. Today, by contrast, revenue seems to be sexy again. Not everywhere, mind you …

    Financial News 27 Aug 04:30

  • Sony NEX-5 interchangeable lens camera

    Review Big shot

    I have to admit upon opening the box and finding a silver-bodied version of the Sony NEX-5 with the 18-55 zoom, my first thoughts were: this is the coolest camera ever. Sony's NEX-5 with the new E-mount 18-55mm zoom lens Why? Well, Sony has applied some rather simple notions here: put a load of decent glass in front of a …

    reghardware 27 Aug 07:02

  • HP tops Dell's offer for 3PAR

    Poker pot reaches $1.8bn

    HP upped the ante in its battle with Dell last night- outbidding the direct seller's $24 a share offer for 3PAR with an offer of $27 a share - valuing 3PAR at $1.8bn. This is the fourth bid on the table as Dell and HP slug it out to gain control of 3PAR, the maker of highly-automated, virtualised and very efficient enterprise …

    Storage 27 Aug 07:31

  • RIM proposes crypto forum to dodge India BlackBerry ban

    But will it be enough for New Dehli?

    RIM has prosed that an industry forum be established to help governments manage lawful intercept, in the hope of forestalling India's threatened ban. The proposed body would be led by RIM, but the company is clearly hoping that others will join in. There's strength in numbers and India has made it clear that Skype and Google …

    Mobile 27 Aug 09:02

  • Systems monitoring: what’s possible, and what really happens

    Workshop Can we do more?

    IT increasingly plays a pivotal role in business processes. The importance of systems to the efficiency of business operations makes maintaining the quality of service delivered by IT platforms a matter of mounting attention and concern. How can systems managers ensure this quality, especially with the expanding use of …

    Server Management 27 Aug 09:16

  • Half of UK road users support usage-based road charging

    Charges should be spent on roads - survey

    A Department for Transport survey has found that more than half of UK adults believe that road charging should be based on usage. The finding is revealed in the DfT's survey of public attitudes to road congestion, published on 26 August 2010. Over four in five adults thought that congestion was a serious problem for the UK …

    Government 27 Aug 09:30

  • HP readies dual-core Atom netbook

    Mini 5103 inbound

    HP is preparing a netbook based on Intel's new dual-core Atom chip, the 1.5GHz N550, and has posted a service manual on its website ahead of the as-yet-unannounced machine's release. The included specs show that, in addition to the N550, the HP Mini 5103 will also come in versions fitted with the 1.66GHz Atom N455 and the 1. …

    reghardware 27 Aug 09:35

  • Holiday snaps? Er, no - criminal porn

    Know the difference - or you could be in trouble

    Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Nor is it especially clever, if you’re voluntarily handing your PC over to the police to assist them in their inquiries, not to understand the difference between “holiday snaps” and pictures of a criminally pornographic or indecent nature. That, however, was the fairly elementary mistake made …

    Law 27 Aug 10:05

  • Sony exec forecasts physical media future

    Games to ship on discs for years, says Hirai

    If in ten years we've all got diskless PlayStations and Xboxes, we'll all be able to jeer at Sony Computer Enterainment CEO Kaz Hirai who this week forecast such things are at least that far off, if not longer. There are two reasons for this, he told trade paper MCV, one technical, one commercial. From a technological …

    reghardware 27 Aug 10:21

  • First Dreamliner delivery slips into 2011

    Lack of engines prompts yet another delay

    Boeing will not deliver the first Boeing 787 Dreamliners until 2011, following yet another delay in the troubled programme. The company says the knock-back is the result of "an assessment of the availability of an engine needed for the final phases of flight test this fall", although it insists it's working "closely with Rolls …

    Science 27 Aug 10:25

  • Mail on Sunday inadvertently bolsters annual smutfest

    Concept of 'bad publicity' takes another spanking

    A purse-lipped piece in the Mail on Sunday directed at politicians who dare to support the legitimate adult industry has backfired, with sex tradeshow Erotica 2010 turning the slagging to its own advantage. Erotica is an increasingly jaded attempt to generate excitement around matters sexual. It takes place once a year, toward …

    Bootnotes 27 Aug 10:26

  • Friday musings on HDS, NetApp, HP and Dell

    PIgeon post or poo?

    Pigeons from the far corners of the storage empire have flown in to the El Reg roost dropping off their precious messages which may or may not be true, but we think they could be. Pigeon number one comes from locations near to HDS and says a new and refreshed USP-V is being unveiled at the end of September. It will use Intel …

    Blocks and Files 27 Aug 10:31

  • US colonel blasts PowerPoint bureaucracy in Afghan HQ

    'I have done nothing useful since I've been here'

    A US colonel serving at NATO's headquarters in Afghanistan has launched a blistering attack on the PowerPoint culture and top-heavy bureaucracy there. "Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well," writes Colonel Lawrence Sellin, who works at the International Security Assistance Force …

    Applications 27 Aug 10:36

  • iPhone hackers look to iOS 4.1

    Version 4.0.2 stumps them

    Upgraded your iDevice to iOS 4.0.2? Then don't expect to be able to jailbreak it, at least not from tools provided by hackers band the iPhone Dev Team. The group this week confirmed that 4.0.2 - and, indeed, iOS 3.2.2 - plugs the hole the team had exploited in its latest crack, Jailbreakme 2.0. Rather than waste time trying …

    reghardware 27 Aug 10:37

  • UK biz buoys Computacenter

    Expects VAT-related surge in spending

    Computacenter's unaudited results for the first six months of the year show a decent performance all round - with even troublesome Germany showing signs of improvement. Sales for the six months ended 30 June 2010 are up 5.4 per cent to £1.29bn. Profit before tax was up 75.1 per cent to £21m (less exceptional items) and the …

    Channel Register 27 Aug 10:39

  • Dell Streak GPL snub enrages Android fans

    Web 2.0 frenzy ensues

    It seems Dell hasn't quite got used to working with the GNU General Public Licence - it has failed to release some of the core code used by its Streak tablet, much to the annoyance of the open-source community. Users of Dell's tablet/phone hybrid wouldn't notice, but Android fans are prone to a little hacking, and while some …

    Mobile 27 Aug 11:06

  • Apple releases third beta of 10.6.5 OS X

    One known joker to be shuffled out of pack

    Apple slung out a third beta of Mac OS X 10.6.5 yesterday for coders to tinker with. The latest update for Snow Leopard comes a week after Cupertino released the second beta of the operating system. The third beta build of Mac OS X 10.6.5, which has been loaded with bug fixes and updates, landed with one known issue. …

    Operating Systems 27 Aug 11:07

  • Danish rocketeers poised to reach for the skies

    Manned sub-orbital missions to follow first HEAT launch?

    Danish rocket enthusiasts are poised for the first test launch of of a vehicle they hope will one day carry adventurous passengers on a sub-orbital jaunt. Copenhagen Suborbital's Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter (HEAT) is designed to lift the "Tycho Brahe" micro spacecraft, described as "a pressurized volume providing …

    Space 27 Aug 11:16

  • Firefox 3.6.9 release candidate rocks up for sturdy testers

    Hammer time

    Mozilla pumped out a release candidate version of Firefox 3.6.9 yesterday. The pre-beta update is intended only for brave souls willing and able to have a poke around in the unfinished code. “Please hammer on these builds mercilessly to make sure that things work well! If you notice things that worked in previous Firefox 3.6. …

    Applications 27 Aug 11:17

  • Will IBM sideline XIV?

    Yanai's baby under threat

    Mighty Moshe Yanai has left IBM for unknown reasons and regions unknown, with various bloggers suggesting his intensely competitive personality might have have something to do with it. That could leave the XIV product in a lurch. The rub of this is the supposed overlap between the two high-end storage arrays: XIV and the …

    Storage 27 Aug 11:39

  • ISPs - beware of paranoid bloggers

    Exclusive Ofcom goes gentle on neutrality

    Ofcom will encourage ISPs to be transparent about traffic management, but won't ask them to detail the information in a standard format, according to meeting notes seen by The Register. The regulator is sounding out opinion from ISPs and consumer groups on traffic management, which it sees as the only aspect of the US "Net …

    Telecoms 27 Aug 11:48

  • Euro bell tolls for UK's data protection regs

    Deadline day for European review

    The Ministry of Justice has said it has responded on time to the European Commission's request that it beef up British data protection to bring it into line with European law. In June the Commission gave the UK government two months to strengthen protection for its citizens or go to the European Court. The Ministry of Justice …

    Government 27 Aug 12:23

  • Boffin-botherer's LHC doomsday case thrown out on appeal

    Hawaiian beaks dismiss 'speculative fear' case

    Eccentric botanist and soi-disant physicist Walter L Wagner of Hawaii, continuing his futile battle in the US courts against the Large Hadron Collider, has been handed another stinging legal bitchslap. Wagner's original case was thrown out in 2008, but he appealed this decision and found himself back in Hawaii's federal court …

    Science 27 Aug 12:36

  • CTOs warned to prepare for Windows 7 budget squeeze

    2011-2012 is crunch time - Gartner

    Businesses rushing to upgrade their computers from Microsoft’s Windows XP and Windows 2000 to Windows 7 can expect their budget purse to swell in 2011-2012, IT analyst house Gartner warned yesterday. “Corporate IT departments typically prefer to migrate PC operating systems (OSs) via hardware attrition, which means bringing in …

    PCs & Chips 27 Aug 12:42

  • Fujitsu roadmaps Core i5 tablet netbook

    Serious computer for serious tasks

    We're nowhere near the end of 2010, but Fujitsu has already roadmapped what it hopes will be the killer mobile office computer of 2011. Dubbed the Lifebook T580, it's a 10.1in machine with a fold-round dual-digitiser - stylus and touch - display for tablet usage. Despite the screen size, the T580 is no mere netbook. According …

    reghardware 27 Aug 13:13

  • Twitpic pulls 50 Cent bum burger snap

    NSFW Kim Kardashian's juicy buns? Not on here, mate

    50 Cent is none too impressed that Twitpic last night objected to a snap of of his "Kim K burger" and decided it'd probably be better if they suspended his account altogether. He gaily twittered "Yall like my Kim K burger?", and posted a link to the offending photograph, which rapidly resulted in Twitpic expulsion. A couple …

    Bootnotes 27 Aug 13:15

  • Gang get prison, face deportation for mobe thefts

    30 shops robbed

    Five men and a woman have been sentenced to prison terms for their roles in a series of burglaries of mobile phone shops. The gang were all arrested during raids on east London addresses on 28 April by the Met's National Mobile Phone Unit, assisted by other officers. The gang was linked to more than 30 burglaries at mobile …

    Policing 27 Aug 14:15

  • Sony granted PS3 modchip dongle ban Down Under

    See you in court, mate

    Sony's Australian wing has successfully asked the Federal Court to ban the importation and sale of the PS Jailbreak USB dongle. Local mod chip sellers OzModChips, Mod Supplier and Quantronics, both of whom were offering the PS Jailbreak gadget, will have to stop doing so and hand over their stock of the devices to Sony. The …

    reghardware 27 Aug 14:42

  • Netezza sees explosive growth in Q2

    TwinFin upgrade around the corner

    Momentum continues to build at data warehousing appliance maker Netezza, which posted 45 per cent growth in the second quarter of fiscal 2011, hitting $63.8m in revenues. In the quarter, which ended July 31, Netezza brought $3.2m to the bottom line, more than four times the black ink it had in the year ago quarter. Jim Baum, …

    Servers 27 Aug 14:51

  • Nominet chief tells domainers to grow up

    You've all been very naughty boys

    The chief executive of .uk domain manager Nominet has called for the "domaining" community to "grow up" and start looking more respectable. Lesley Cowley, speaking at the MeetDomainers conference in Manchester today, said that UK domain investors need to show "greater maturity" or risk governments riding roughshod over their …

    Telecoms 27 Aug 14:53

  • Microsoft to slot ActiveSync into Hotmail

    Play push and pull with Google, Apple... Oh, and Windows phone 7 too

    Microsoft will show some much-needed love into Hotmail next week, by adding Exchange ActiveSync to the webmail service. ActiveSync was licensed by Apple in 2008 and by Google in 2009. Other phone makers that are also paying Redmond big bucks to use the service - Microsoft's protocol to push email from a server to a client - …

    Applications 27 Aug 15:10

  • Intel to get whacked in Q3 by PC slowdown

    Competitive pressures, too?

    Wall Street got a shock this morning as chip maker Intel cut its guidance for the third quarter ending in September. In a statement, Intel said that it was now expecting revenues to be somewhere between $10.8bn and $11.2bn, significantly lower than the $11.2bn to $12bn guidance that the company gave Wall Street back on July 13 …

    PCs & Chips 27 Aug 15:19

  • Colonel who slammed Afghan HQ PowerPoint culture is fired

    Heroic US officer returns to civvy IT job

    A US Army colonel who published a splendid attack on top-heavy bureaucracy and PowerPoint culture at NATO's top headquarters in Afghanistan has been sacked. Colonel Lawrence Sellin, in his critique of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command (IJC), suggested that the IJC exists primarily "to provide some …

    Applications 27 Aug 15:22

  • Doc develops RSI-reducing rolling mouse

    The secret is in the tilt

    Could this mouse reduce your risk of developing repetitive strain injury? Creator SmartFish thinks so. SmartFish's ErgoMotion Mouse is essentially a standard mouse mounted on top of a tilt-and-pivot joint and a baseplate. The idea: as you steer the rodent around, your hand rolls and pitches rather than remain flat. “When …

    reghardware 27 Aug 15:26

  • Once-prolific Pushdo botnet crippled

    Torrent of spam choked

    Security researchers have disrupted the botnet known as Pushdo, a coup that over the past 48 hours has almost completely choked the torrent of junkmail from the once-prolific spam network. Researchers from the security inteligence firm LastLine said that they identified a total of 30 servers used as Pushdo command and control …

    Malware 27 Aug 17:30

  • US gov slaps flack for fake iTunes game reviews

    'But we really liked 'em!' claims firm

    The US Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with a California public-relations firm in which the company agrees to stop posting reviews on Apple's iTunes Store of their clients' games, and take down the ones already posted. The FTC characterizes the reviews, which weren't identified as being written by the firm's …

    Music and Media 27 Aug 18:29

  • Fennec squeezes into Android users' pockets

    Have yourself a foxy weekend

    Mozilla has pushed out another alpha version of Firefox for mobile phones, Fennec, and it's inviting Android, and N900, users to have a shot with the little fox. Fennec is the working title for the mobile version of Firefox, incorporating the irritatingly-named "Awesome Bar" and synchronising in real time with its bigger …

    Mobile 27 Aug 18:31

  • Google ditches JavaOne over Oracle's Android suit

    Sharing thoughts now 'impossible'

    Google has said that due to Oracle's lawsuit against the company over the use of Java in Android, it will not be attending the annual JavaOne developer conference this fall. Following Larry Ellison's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, JavaOne is now run by Oracle. Google says that it has attended JavaOne every year since 2004 …

    Developer 27 Aug 19:11

  • British Airways sorry for 'landing on water' nonsense

    Faux emergency breeds 'undue stress'

    British Airways has apologized for telling 275 passengers en route from London to Hong Kong that their Boeing 747 was in imminent danger of crashing into the sea. “This is an emergency. We may shortly need to make an emergency landing on water,” an announcement sounded. The plane was flying over the North Sea at the time. …

    Bootnotes 27 Aug 19:16

  • Paul Allen launches patent broadside on world+dog

    (Microsoft not included)

    Billionaire Paul Allen on Friday became the latest tech titan to launch a major patent offensive, filing a far-reaching complaint against Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and seven other companies over technology that was developed almost a decade ago. The complaint (PDF), filed in federal court in Washington state, asserts …

    Software 27 Aug 21:13

  • VW to eliminate worst road hazard: drivers

    Hot Chips In 2028, the car you won't drive won't be yours

    Soon you won't own a car, but one will come to you on its own when you call it, then whisk you away in perfect safety without you having to drive it — and that day may be closer than you think. "If you ask, 'Is it a future story you're telling us?' No, it's not," said Burkhard Huhnke, executive director of the Volkswagen Group …

    Science 27 Aug 22:09

  • Dell data center biz invaded by California hippies

    'Cisco makes refrigerators. We open your mind'

    Dell has reinvented itself as a California hippie. In recent months, the famously-Texan hardware maker has acquired three separate Silicon Valley outfits, and it's loudly preaching what you might call data center free love. Its new attitude is best embodied by the Palo Alto-based Scalent, the data center management outfit that …

    Servers 27 Aug 22:19

  • Porn and pirates hide Android's money maker

    Google's invisible hand slapped

    Android might be eating up smartphone market share, but Google's marketplace is leaving developers disgruntled. Nearly half aren't making the money they'd imagined they'd make off of Android, and the lack of decent search, filtering, and ratings have been blamed. Also: Google's laissez faire approach to gate keeping means the …

    Mobile 27 Aug 23:47

  • Google eats pseudo Swedish social startup

    Mmmm, Ångströ

    Google has acquired the Palo Alto-based startup Ångströ, an outfit that built all sorts of apps that hook into "social" sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In a Friday blog post, Ångströ co-founder Rohit Khare indicated that his company had been snapped up by Mountain View, and though Google has not responded to our …

    Business 27 Aug 23:50