1st September 2010 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

SGI bleeds less than expected

Vows 2011 break-even

Supercomputer and hyperscale server maker Silicon Graphics is still losing money, but it's hopeful that the years ahead will actually yield some profits. And thus, as the company announced its fiscal 2010 financial results today, SGI's board of directors reanimated a latent $40m stock buyback program that the merger between …

Financial News 1 Sep 00:14
Scottish iSchool goes 100% iPad

'The best equipment available'

A Scottish independent Christian school has forsworn books, pencils, pens, and paper, and will now educate its young charges solely via Apple's iPad. "We wanted to give each of the pupils an opportunity to use the best equipment available," IT teacher Fraser Speirs told the Daily Record Each and every one of the 105 students …

Music and Media 1 Sep 06:02
Acer Aspire One D260

Review A great-value option

Acer has churned out some impressive models in its Aspire One series, and the D260 is its latest creation. At 1.21kg, it’s one of the lightest 10.1in netbooks available, and throughout testing it remained impressively cool with no significant hotspots on the keyboard or wrist rest. The keyboard is of the low-profile variety …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Asus Eee PC T101MT

Review Take the tablet approach

The Eee PC T101MT differs from the majority of netbooks in a number of ways, with the flip-and-twist touchscreen display being the most obvious. The screen is multi-touch - although only recognises two fingers at a time - and also of the resistive variety, so it requires a slightly firmer touch compared to capacitive …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
HP Mini 210

Review The typist's favourite?

With its curved chassis, HP’s Mini 210 has a slightly different look to most netbooks. Usability is good and the keyboard stretches right to the very edges. And with responsive, well-spaced keys, it has one of the best netbook keyboards I’ve ever typed on. The only anomaly is arrow key section – the up and down keys are shrunk …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3

Review The ThinkPad of netbooks?

With a chequered design on the lid, Lenovo’s S10-3 certainly stands out from the crowd. It has a few differences inside too, and this model - the M33DDUK - benefits from a built-in 3G module. Slip in a Sim card and the internet will follow you on your travels. The S10-3 isn’t picky as to which mobile operator you’re with, and it …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Samsung N230

Review The long runner

With the majority of netbooks - and indeed laptops - sporting glossy displays, Samsung is sticking its neck out by giving the N230’s 10.1in panel a matte coating. While this minimises reflections from overhead lighting, windows and other light sources, it also means it’s not quite as vibrant as netbooks with a glossy screen …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Toshiba NB250

Review Sports the latest Atom chippery

With a very plasticy shell and a rather odd rough texture both inside and out, the NB250 has a rather cheap feel to it. It’s one of the few netbooks to make use of Intel’s Atom N455. Although very similar to the N450 - 1.66GHz clock speed, single-core, 45nm etc. - the N455 supports DDR 3 memory. With this in mind, Toshiba has …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Buyer's Guide: Netbooks

Group Test Watch out for the gotchas

With so many netbooks vying for your attention, choosing which model to go for isn’t the easiest of decisions to make. In contrast with most other technology purchases, performance is one of the least important factors. Almost all netboooks use Intel’s Atom processor, and although there are a range of Atoms available you’re very …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Netbooks Best Buys

Group Test The pick of the pack

So which netbooks get the thumbs up? As far as performance goes, they’re all essentially in the same boat, so the judgement comes down to usability, features, battery life and price. You can see the similarity in performance from the test results: PCMark 05 Longer bars are better Video Playback Battery Life Battery life …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Back-to-school 10in Netbooks

Group Test Which machines score top marks?

The summer hols are over, and it's back to school for the kids. Or to college, for the older ones. Whatever their age, though, your offspring - perhaps even you yourself - are likely to have their eye on a new computer for the new term. And with prices never being lower, there's no longer a financial reason to restrict junior …

reghardware 1 Sep 07:02
Hardware hackers defeat quantum crypto

Tripping the light fantastic

Security researchers using hardware hacking techniques have unearthed generic flaws in supposedly ultra-secure quantum cryptography systems. The security of quantum cryptography hinges on using the fundamental properties of quantum physics for quantum key exchange. Any attempts to monitor this exchange would inevitably be …

Enterprise Security 1 Sep 08:11
Consumers should get price transparency, says OFT

Calls for tougher contract law

Current law on fairness in consumer contracts contains a loophole that may be harmful to consumers, according to consumer watchdog the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). Businesses should be more restricted in their freedom to charge ancillary fees, it says. The OFT has expressed (pdf) its views in a response to a consultation (pdf …

Law 1 Sep 08:12
Ad watchdog to bite Facebook, Twitter

ASA extends tentacles online

The Advertising Standards Authority is to take responsibility for more online content, not just the paid-for advertisements it currently regulates. The ASA already covers content like banner adverts, pop-ups and paid-for search terms. From 1 March 2011 the new ASA rules cover content hosted by companies themselves, such as …

Music and Media 1 Sep 08:18
HP & Hynix join forces for memristor fab

3-year joint development

HP is partnering with Hynix to bring Memristor technology from lab to fab. The Memristor, posited as a fourth basic electrical circuit element, is said by HP to have the potential to be a form of uniform memory that could replace flash (being non-volatile), DRAM and even hard disk drives. It could possibly perform logic …

Storage 1 Sep 09:01
Porn-browsing Oz minister quits

So that's why they need a firewall..

The point of the Great Australian Firewall is revealed at last today - it's to keep Aussie politicians in line. A New South Wales minister has resigned after admitting using his parliamentary computer to visit porn and gambling sites. Paul McLeay was the state's minister for ports and waterways. ABC News reports that Premier …

Government 1 Sep 09:04
NZ woman pays motorised tribute to A RYAN 1

Ex-boyf numberplate a ~~white~~ right sight

The New Zealand Transport Agency has declined to withdraw a woman's numberplate tribute to her ex-boyfriend, despite another motorist's complaint that ARYAN1 wasn't particularly well thought through. Lisa Marie Thompson, 32, of Upper Hutt, coughed NZ$700 for the whiter-than-white nod to Andrew Ryan four years back, and it's …

Bootnotes 1 Sep 09:23
Ofcom makes space for luvvy radio until August 2021

Unless someone else wants it

Ofcom has ended various rounds of consultation by laying out its plans for the Program Makers & Special Event spectrum users, promising them priority access to interleaved spectrum and channel 38 until August 2021. Users will have to pay market rates, with Ofcom setting those rates based on what it thinks others would pay for …

Mobile 1 Sep 09:34
New super-Flash chips to run on SiO_x, not graphite

'They said I was mad! But they'll all be very sorry'

Stateside chip boffins say they have developed a radical new method of building memory, which will smash through the "brick wall" that Moore's Law is about to run into. The underlying technique was thought to be dependent on the use of graphite, but in fact this has now been shown to be untrue. A plucky grad student studying …

Storage 1 Sep 09:55
Russian cops cuff 10 ransomware Trojan suspects

Cybercrime gang allegedly raked in $16m

Russian police have arrested 10 suspected members of a ransomware gang who allegedly made millions via a locked computer malware scam. PCs infected by the WinLock Trojan at the centre of the scam were rendered unusable because the malware disabled key Windows components. More embarrassingly pornographic images were displayed …

Crime 1 Sep 09:58
The Large Hadron Collider's mega-pic churn

Blogs If you can't destroy the world, drown it in data

The Large Hadron Collider has been operating for a few months now, and it hasn’t ripped apart the space/time continuum – not where I live, anyway, and that’s mostly all I care about. Of course, it could be that it’s still early, and that the cumulative effects of accelerating particles really fast could still spell the end of …

HPC Blog 1 Sep 10:02
Orange rolls out HD Voice calls in UK

New phones required

Desperately unhappy with the call quality of the your mobile phone? Orange reckons its HD Voice service is the answer. You'll need a new phone, of course - Orange has the Nokia 5230, Nokia X6, Nokia E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro in its line of HD Voice-branded handsets. Once you've bought one of these, the HD Voice service is free …

reghardware 1 Sep 10:07
Sony to announce iTunes-alike streaming service

Apple quakes, a bit

Sony is set to announce a streaming service to rival Apple's iTunes at a trade show in Germany. The consumer giant wants to sell content to its own range of devices from MP3 players to TVs and PlayStation 3 consoles. Sony also has a toehold in the mobile phone market through its joint venture with Ericsson. The service won't …

Mobile 1 Sep 10:08
VMworld: Oi, no sneaky meetings!

Blog Press pass kerfuffle makes for excellent start

GCG staff were summarily kicked out of the VMworld press and analyst area this morning. Our crime? Trying to have a short meeting with an industry contact while sitting inside the cordoned-off analyst/press corral. Last year, and in years past, we routinely took briefings in this area with no trouble. The problem was that our …

HPC Blog 1 Sep 10:10
Orange goes High Definition

Can you hear me now?

Orange UK has launched an HD Voice service, so now a mobile phone can sound as clear as a good Skype connection if the technology is available end-to-end. The Orange service launches today, so if you rush out and buy one of the four available HD-Voice-compatible handsets and find some good 3G coverage, then you can make a …

Mobile 1 Sep 10:33
Samsung shows curvy computers

New netbooks and notebooks in-bound

Samsung has introduced the NF netbook family it plans to bring to market here in October. The new machines sports Intel's new dual-core Atom N550 chip. There are three members of the NF line: the 110, 210 and 310. The NF110 is the budget option, Samsung said, and the NF210 a version packed with a bigger, longer-running, …

reghardware 1 Sep 10:42
SCO gets sale approval

Software biz is go

SCO's request to sell off its software business has been approved by the bankruptcy courts. The Delaware court approved the motion to sell SCO's software business leaving a rump company to pursue what's left of its Linux legal action. SCO's Unix is still in use, and still bringing in revenues. Potential bidders must file …

Operating Systems 1 Sep 10:45
Nandos 'village bike' ad not sexist, rules ASA

Just ask nicely in a Portuguese accent

Referring to the village bike or asking to borrow a friend's girlfriend is not sexist, offensive or derogatory to women, the ASA has ruled, as long as it is done in a comical Portuguese accent. The Advertising Standards Authority made the ruling in response to a series of complaints about adverts for Nandos, the periperi …

Bootnotes 1 Sep 10:51
MS unveils 'transforming' Xbox controller

Twist and turn

Microsoft's new Xbox 360 controller - this one with a "transforming" five-way navpad - is official. The wireless unit sports a D-pad that can be rotated to raise the + shape for more accurate thumbing. Prefer the old approach? Twist the pad the other way and the + flattens flush with the surface of the control. Here's a vid …

reghardware 1 Sep 10:58
Motorola unveils re-chiselled Milestone smartphone

'Lifestyle-resistant' Android handsets unwrapped

Motorola has introduced two new Android handsets: its second incarnation of the Milestone and the all-weather Defy. Both feature enhanced Motoblur, the company’s widget-based management tool that integrates e-mail, messages and social networking updates. Milestone 2 runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) and takes 720p video The …

reghardware 1 Sep 11:05
US undergrads crash NASA satellite into Arctic

Whoa, dude, check this out

Undergraduate students in America managed to get control of the manoeuvring thrusters of an orbiting 2000-lb NASA satellite at the weekend, sending it plummeting into the Earth's atmosphere to rain burning fragments across the chilly seas north of Norway and Russia. "They ran calculations to determine where the spacecraft was …

Space 1 Sep 11:11
Google Wave limps on until year end and beyond (maybe)

Haunts interwebs for rest of 2010

Mountain View will keep its Google Wave engine running until at least the end of 2010. The ad broker confirmed on Monday that its unpopular Wave product, which Google ditched in August, would limp on for the next few months. "We're looking at ways to continue and extend Wave technology in other Google products, open sourcing …

Applications 1 Sep 11:18
.XXX domain deal stripped bare

Gun-totin' pornsters step up

The company behind a proposal to create .xxx, an adults-only top-level internet domain, is set to run the gauntlet of objections from angry pornographers and appalled Christians for the sixth time. ICANN last week published a draft contract that, if signed, could allow Florida-based ICM Registry to start offering .xxx domains …

Telecoms 1 Sep 11:28
Crowds greet A380 at Manchester Airport

Enthusiastic welcome for new Emirates service

An enthusiastic crowd greeted the first Airbus A380 to land at Manchester Airport earlier this afternoon, marking the end of an 18-month, £10m upgrade of the airport to accommodate the beast. Emirates will operate a daily Manchester-Dubai service, meaning the former has the honour of being the first regional airport anywhere …

Science 1 Sep 11:34
Every cloud has a platinum lining

Says 3PAR CEO

Conversations with various people suggest that 3PAR is keen to rebut any suggestion it has been shopping itself. The background to the HP and Dell bid battle is that 3PAR was exploring ways to increase its addressable market with channel arrangements such as a potential reseller deal with Dell, and also a potential supply deal …

Blocks and Files 1 Sep 11:41
webOS 2 launches early access

It's really real!

Palm has made public details of webOS 2, and launched an Early Access Program for developers, proving that HP has plans for the platform it acquired back in April. webOS is the platform used on the Palm Pre and its siblings, but version 2 promises great things in the form of stacked multitasking, identity aggregation, and HTML …

Mobile 1 Sep 11:42
Apple livestreaming heralds Jobs-to-fanboi brain-linking

Cupertino's chilling plan to sideline journos, bloggers

Apple's live streaming of its latest revolutionary product launch today is a dry run for the Mac maker's massive server farm which will eventually allow Steve Jobs to bypass mainstream media and download news directly to fanbois' brains. That is roughly what Cultofmac has claimed ahead of today's launch in San Francisco of a …

Servers 1 Sep 11:45
Speculation swells as Apple event draws near

What Steve Jobs is expected to unveil

Apple's media event draws close - it kicks off it 6pm this evening - but the rumours regarding just what CEO Steve Jobs - with halo or horns, it's your choice - will announce. The Wall Street Journal has it on good authority - it says - that Apple will announce 99c (64p) rentals of TV shows from US stations Fox and ABC. UK TV …

reghardware 1 Sep 11:54
BlueLock: Risky cloud business

VMworld Admitting the imbalance is a good start

One of our first meetings at VMworld was with BlueLock, who have the distinction of being one of a small handful of cloud service providers participating in VMware’s big vCloud Datacenter initiative. We spent a bit of time grilling Pat O’Day, BlueLock CTO, in their booth and learned some new things about the cloud value …

HPC Blog 1 Sep 12:13
Google butterfingers slip jazz hands bug into Gmail

Party like it's 1929 (whether you want to or not)

An extremely annoying bug that plays an old ragtime tune has commandeered Google’s Gmail, after the company debuted its ‘Priority Inbox’ feature earlier this week. Gmail users, some of whom were spooked by the glitch, bombarded the company’s email forum last night. “Whenever I sign into my Gmail using Chrome, music …

Applications 1 Sep 12:15
Survey scammers serve up supposed shelter from survey scams

Kind of ironic when you think about it

Cheeky scammers are offering prospective marks an application that supposedly shields them from exposure to survey scams. Naturally, you first have to fill in a survey to install the script, which is punted through Userscripts(dot)org. Odds are that even after jumping through these hoops users will still be exposed to surveys …

Malware 1 Sep 12:18
Archos announces five Android tablets

Big ones, small ones

Archos will release a raft of Android-based tablets later this month, with more following in October. The line-up comprises devices with screen sizes ranging from 2.8in to 10.1in, with 3.2, 4.3 and 7.0in offerings in between. Archos 28 The Archos 28 - the 2.8in, 240 x 320 tablet - is heralded by the company as the first …

reghardware 1 Sep 12:28
DARPA's video search push gets another $11m

Not content with giving Google just one business model

Pentagon R&D chiefs at DARPA have awarded $11m to discover a technical secret for which, one may be sure, Google executives would pay a substantially larger sum - that of true video search. Google would like to make video searching work as well as text searching does, the better to serve ads alongside the ensuing results and …

Applications 1 Sep 12:37
Texan cooks up deep-fried Guinness

Beer in pretzel dough. Tasty

Visitors to the forthcoming Texas State Fair will be able to enjoy* what can rightly be described as a culinary first - deep fried Guinness. Texan chef Mark Zable says he has wrestled for three years to encapsulate beer in a ravioliesque packet of pretzel-like dough which will survive 20 seconds in oil at 190°C. Zable …

Bootnotes 1 Sep 12:52
Lock up your Crackberries

Sysadmin blog Smartphones can be secure

Most of the articles about the security of Research In Motion’s Blackberries have focused on governments that want a peek behind RIM’s encryption, but other elements of the Blackberry make it well-designed for a business environment. Administrators who work with Blackberries are familiar with the ways in which handhelds can be …

Sysadmin blog 1 Sep 13:09
Panasonic signs Ubisoft for games on TV

Stereo 3D titles to run on your ~~console~~ telly

Panasonic and Ubisoft are to develop games for the consumer electronics giant's 3D TVs, the pair said today. Shaun White Skateboarding: coming to Panasonic tellies The agreement will see Ubisoft create "new 3D games and related television applications" which will be delivered via Panasonic's IPTV platform, VieraCast. …

reghardware 1 Sep 13:49
SEC doesn't do a Moody

Credit rating allegations? Not our job

The Securities and Exchange Commission is dropping an investigation into alleged fraudulent behaviour at ratings agency Moody's because it is not sure if it has legal jurisdiction over the company. Moody's was accused of awarding wrongly high ratings to various constant proportion debt obligation notes - the infamous …

Financial News 1 Sep 14:07
Open source PS3 hack code posted

Homebrewers 1, Sony 0

Want a PlayStation 3 hacking dongle but worried Sony's legal fight with the gadget's suppliers will prevent you from buying one? Fear not, because a build-your-own kit has appeared on the web. Called PSGroove, it comprises software that can be downloaded and run on a specific type of USB Flash drive and used in much the same …

reghardware 1 Sep 14:14
Gartner chops PC shipment forecasts for 2010

Treat yourself to a new PC before Halloween

It is looking like Friday, October 22, is going to be a fabulous day to buy a new desktop, notebook, or netbook. That's a week before Hewlett-Packard finishes its fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 and also a week before PC rival Dell completes its third quarter of its fiscal 2011. Why those days, and why now? The answer is simple …

PCs & Chips 1 Sep 14:34
Geek tech firm loses Jedi credentials

Lucasfilm swoop crushes opposition

Jedi Mind Inc has conceded that someone else might just own the term Jedi, and has changed its name to Mind Technologies Inc. The decision follows legal action from Lucasfilm, which reckons it owns the Jedi Knights and everything associated with them. The action will probably now be dropped. Jedi Mind Inc reportedly agreed to …

PCs & Chips 1 Sep 14:36
Symbian users Swype Samsung's tricks

World-beating text entry comes to Nokia

The world's fastest text entry system, Swype, is now in Beta for Symbian S60 5th edition, allowing Nokia users to write by tracing a path rather than the old-fashioned tapping on keys. Swype allows text entry by tracing a finger past the keys rather than pressing them one at a time. The software recognises the pattern and …

Servers 1 Sep 15:01
Microsoft reshuffles Windows 7 Family Pack

Toast marshmallows, burn Vista

Microsoft has decided to rerun its Windows 7 Family Pack promotion, which was iced by Redmond at the end of last year. The software vendor said today that US customers would be able to buy the Family Pack edition of Microsoft’s current operating system on 3 October. Other parts of the world including the UK, Canada, France, …

Operating Systems 1 Sep 15:17
Tosh has tiniest flash bits

24nm? It's what you do with it that counts, etc

Toshiba has started mass-producing NAND flash ships using a 24nm process, and is offering the world's smallest 8GB flash chips. They use 2 bit multi-level cell (MLC) technology, and Toshiba will also add 32Gbit (4GB) and 3 bit per cell products fabricated with the 24nm process technology to its product line-up. The 24nm …

Storage 1 Sep 15:26
We've been here before: MS tweaks volume licensing site again

Partners prep brollies for November rain

Microsoft will once again overhaul its error-prone volume licensing website in November, following months of glitches with the portal since Redmond relaunched it late last year. The company’s global partner boss Eric Ligman confirmed in a blog post today that Microsoft would tweak the service, after customers continued to …

Applications 1 Sep 15:55
LightSquared illuminates 'partners' on US 4G roll out

America has a middle?

Wholesale 4G network LightSquared is planning to start deployment in the middle of the USA and then spread to the coasts, according to documents sent out to potential partners. The plan, which was leaked to Bloomberg, involves connecting up Dallas, Chicago and Minneapolis next year, with New York, San Francisco and 18 other …

Mobile 1 Sep 16:03
Microsoft releases FixIt for critical flaw in 100 apps

Relief for Firefox, Nvidia, PowerPoint

Microsoft has released a software tool that helps system administrators protect PCs against a critical class of vulnerabilities found in more than 100 applications from a variety of software makers. The FixIt Tool works only on machines that have already installed the workaround Microsoft published last week. The latest point- …

Enterprise Security 1 Sep 16:57
VMware app dev platform gazes beyond SpringSource Java

VMworld Eyes Ruby, PHP, .NET

VMware says that its Cloud Application Platform – a means of building and deploying applications that has grown up around the SpringSource Java framework – will eventually embrace other programming languages, including Ruby-on-Rails, PHP, and perhaps .NET. "Initially, we want to target the 2.5-million-strong Spring Java …

Developer 1 Sep 18:46
Cray and SGI push upgrades to latest supers

Tickle me, Elmo

Supercomputer makers Cray and Silicon Graphics have done years of engineering to get their respective XE6 and Altix UV 1000 massively parallel supercomputers to market. And now, despite research funding woes among governments, research institutions, and corporations, the two companies face the challenging task of convincing …

HPC 1 Sep 18:55
Apple goes social with musical Ping

Games, networking and music

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has unveiled the next two generations of iOS, updates that will bring multiplayer gaming and high-definition photography to iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches next week and wireless printing and media streaming in November. At the company's heavily promoted “special event” in San Francisco on Wednesday, Jobs …

Music and Media 1 Sep 19:46
SUSE Linux hitches ride on enemy hypervisor

VMworld Straddles vSphere in search of cash

Strange bedfellows VMware and Novell have officially released SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware, a version of Novell's open source OS that piggybacks on every copy of VMware's vSphere hypervisor. In June, VMware and Novell told the world they had agreed to an OEM deal that would see VMware distribute SUSE Linux with …

Operating Systems 1 Sep 21:58
Red Hat in talks to buy JBoss cloud fluffer Makara

Middleware union

Red Hat is in talks to buy a JBoss cloud provisioning startup called Makara, according to a source familiar with the matter. Makara – a Red Hat JBoss partner – produces a portal enabling IT teams to set up, provision, and administer public Amazon and private Xen and VMware clouds. The two-year old company is believed to have …

Developer 1 Sep 22:39
Feds crack phone clone scam that cost Sprint $15m

More than 10,000 accounts spoofed

Federal prosecutors have uncovered a scam that used tens of thousands of cloned cellphones to defraud Sprint out of $15m in lost long distance revenue. The operation dates back to at least the latter half of 2009, when cellular customers began complaining that they were billed for international calls they didn't make, according …

Crime 1 Sep 23:51
Microsoft locks down Windows Phone 7 code

10 million hours of test

Windows Phone 7 is finally finished. On Wednesday, Microsoft said that code for Windows Phone 7 has been released to manufacturing, meaning OEMs who made Microsoft's tight cut as phone suppliers can start installing version 1.0 of Microsoft's smartphone operating system on devices. Vice president of Windows Phone engineering …

Mobile 1 Sep 23:57