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29th September 2010 Archive

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  • Jailbreak hole found in Apple TV firmware

    Jobsian control gets SHAttered

    The latest Apple TV isn't even in people's hands and its already close to being jailbroken, according to members of a hacker group that has a track record of successfully freeing iDevices from the artificial shackles of Steve Jobs & Co. According to a post on Monday on the iPhone Dev Team Blog, members were able to crack the …

    Security 29 Sep 2010, 00:18

  • Fedora 14 beta takes MeeGo for a spin

    Review Fast without the Ubuntu fancy

    The competition between Ubuntu and Fedora's entered a new phase, with Tuesday's release of the Fedora 14 beta. Final releases of each Linux distro's next update are due next month, and Fedora - the duller cousin - shadows Ubuntu in two areas where the Canonical team are pushing hard: netbooks and cloud computing. Fresh from …

    Operating Systems 29 Sep 2010, 04:00

  • Novell SUSE appliance toolkit hugs Amazon EC2

    Testing its WorkloadIQ

    Novell might not be sure about what it wants to do with itself, but the company has been pretty clear what it wants you to do with its products. It wants to build virtual software appliances with all kinds of software stacks running inside of virtual machines and atop its SUSE Linux Enterprise distro. Today, Novell spins up …

    Virtualization 29 Sep 2010, 04:05

  • iPhone devs' riches exceed expectations

    Light a fire under App Store plods

    Money can ease the pain of many things: a messy divorce, holding down a US contractor's job in the City of Fallujah, tripping over the paving stones on some lost and neglected city street. It can also make up for shortcomings in Apple's App Store, it seems. A significant number of iPhone developers are making more money than …

    Developer 29 Sep 2010, 05:00

  • HP soldiers on without a head

    No one follows the Hurd

    The world's longest public job interview for the chief executive officer position at a Global 25 corporation dragged on for four hours today because Hewlett-Packard did not announce a replacement for ousted top dog Mark Hurd ahead of its security analysts meeting in San Francisco. Interim CEO and chief financial officer Cathie …

    Servers 29 Sep 2010, 05:56

  • Nokia C6 smartphone

    Review Workshy workhorse?

    Nokia's midrange C6 is effectively a budget version of last year's N97 but still manages to pack in a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, a 5Mp camera and A-GPS with turn-by-turn satnav as standard. Being the C6-00, it runs on the Symbian S60 5th Edition, unlike the C6-01 unveiled at Nokiaworld this month, which runs …

    reghardware 29 Sep 2010, 07:00

  • Miliband retains Labour line on DNA and CCTV

    But criticises party's civil liberty blunders

    The new Labour leader has expressed support for DNA in policing and the role of CCTV, while criticising the party's 'casual' attitude towards civil liberties. Ed Miliband, giving his first speech to the Labour party conference on 28 September 2010, said of civil liberties, "too often we seemed casual about them. "I won't let …

    Government 29 Sep 2010, 07:56

  • Iranian blogger gets 20 years

    True price of freedom

    Canadian-Iranian journalist Hossein Derakhshan has been sentenced to nineteen and a half years in prison for crimes relating to his blog. Derakhshan, who has been in prison awaiting trial for two years, was found guilty of blasphemy offences, propaganda against the Islamic Republic and collaborating with foreign governments, …

    Law 29 Sep 2010, 08:33

  • Nintendo 3DS misses Xmas launch window

    Santa, kids said to be 'shocked'

    Nintendo's upcoming 3D handheld console, the 3DS, won't debut until next year, the videogames pioneer has admitted. Result: a lot of kids will get 'old' tech as presents this Christmas. Nintendo's global roll-out kicks off on 26 February with the Japanese launch, with the gadget arriving in the US and Europe early in March - …

    reghardware 29 Sep 2010, 08:52

  • Everything Everywhere unveils contrary figures

    Up, down, black, white

    The newly combined Orange and T-Mobile has announced its first quarterly results, with revenues and customers up or down depending how you count them. Revenue is down 4.8 per cent to £1.72bn, but that's the government's fault, and the drop in subscribers only exists if you insist on comparing to earlier this year rather than …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2010, 09:00

  • Star Wars set for 3D rehash

    Phantom Menace returns in 2012

    Lucasfilm has finally announced that all six Star Wars films will get the 3D treatment, starting with Episode I: The Phantom Menace, due to hit tridimensional screens in 2012. John Knoll, visual effects supervisor at Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic, insisted he's "committed to ensuring that the 3D conversion delivers …

    Music and Media 29 Sep 2010, 09:10

  • UK cybercops cuff 19 ZeuS banking Trojan suspects

    Updated Gang blamed for £6m losses in three months

    UK police have arrested 19 cybercrime suspects who allegedly used the ZeuS crimeware toolkit to capture online banking credentials before looting victims' bank accounts. A total of 15 men and four women, aged between 23 and 47 years old, were arrested in dawn raids on in London Tuesday by officers from the newly established …

    Crime 29 Sep 2010, 09:18

  • Apple jumps the pond in Nokia fight

    Adds blighty court to world tour

    Apple has started legal proceedings against Nokia in the UK, turning the ongoing dispute between the two companies into a transatlantic affair. Reuters reports that Apple is citing the same patents it's already accused Nokia of infringing in the USA, related to touch-screen and interface techniques. Nokia, meanwhile, has …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2010, 09:34

  • Vodafone unveils second own-brand Android phone

    945 whups 845

    Vodafone will release its second own-brand budget Android handset in time for Christmas. The Vodafone 945 runs version 2.1 of the Google OS and sports a 3.2in, 480 × 272 capacitive touchscreen with haptic feedback - a big step up from its resistive touchscreen predecessor, the Vodafone 845. There's a 5Mp camera and flash on …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2010, 09:58

  • New Euro multicopter aims bitchslap at American X2, V-22

    Targeting low end of supertwirlycraft market

    Franco-Germano-Spanish helicopter agglomorocorp Eurocopter has announced its aspirations to leave a glowing handprint upon the bitchcheek of US whirlycraft titan Sikorsky. In an apparent response to the Sikorsky X2 triplex speedchopper project, Eurocopter has now pulled the wraps off its own supercopter design - which it has …

    Science 29 Sep 2010, 10:00

  • MS emergency fix plugs ASP.Net web development hole

    Yellow alert over severe server peril

    Microsoft has released an out-of-cycle patch designed to address a serious flaw in its ASP.Net web application development toolkit. The vulnerability, which has been under active attack for several weeks, creates a mechanism for attackers to read any file on a web application server. Microsoft rates the flaw as only "important …

    Enterprise Security 29 Sep 2010, 10:18

  • Dell to take on iPad with ton of tablets

    Five screen sizes, two or three OSes

    Dell will roll out its 7in tablet "within in the next few weeks" - along with a 3in version - but there will be a longer wait for the 10in version, a company exec has revealed. Said official is Dell Greater China President Amit Midha, in an interview by the Wall Street Journal. Midha said the 10in Streak won't arrive for a …

    reghardware 29 Sep 2010, 10:32

  • NetApp shoots down Virgin Blue outage claims

    Nothing to do with us, mate

    NetApp has said none of its technology was involved in the Australian Virgin Blue airline reservation system crash on Sunday. On Sunday and Monday a 21-hour outage of the New Skies system, hosted at Navitaire's Sydney data centre, on Monday caused mass delays to Virgin Blue's customers as the airline reverted to a manual …

    Storage 29 Sep 2010, 10:41

  • Hammer time as AOL nails TechCrunch

    Mike Arrington and Stanley Burrell together at last

    What do you get when you cross MC Hammer with an injured and badly limping internet giant? Well according to TechCruch’s Michael Arrington, whose website has just been bought by AOL, the answer is “awesomeness in a bottle.” The web outfit, under CEO Tim Armstrong, went on a big spending spree yesterday. It scooped up no less …

    Music and Media 29 Sep 2010, 10:57

  • Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

    'Solar convergence phenomenon'

    Poolside guests at a newly-opened Las Vegas hotel have been enjoying the complex's quick-tan facility - a solar "death ray" with the power to burn flesh and melt plastic. The architects responsible for the MGM Mirage Vdara underestimated the converging power of the building's concave facade, which concentrates a roasting beam …

    Bootnotes 29 Sep 2010, 11:08

  • YouTube accounts for 13 percent of mobile data

    Mobile TV seems to have happened

    Video streaming now makes up 35 per cent of data carried over the mobile networks, with YouTube supplying 40 per cent of that, so the airwaves are filled with TV all over again. The figures come from the Allot MobileTrends report for the fist half of 2010, based on data passing through operators around the world with a total …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2010, 11:24

  • Van driver follows satnav up goat-track, gets stuck on mountain

    HELLO! I'M HANGING OFF A HELICOPTER!

    A Swiss van driver got stuck near the top a mountain after his satnav directed him onto a "glorified goat track". A helicopter crew winched Robert Ziegler, 37, and his van to safety - check out the amazing photos of his rescue. Ziegler told police he was lost but pressed on, hoping to find a way back to the main road. Rescue …

    reghardware 29 Sep 2010, 11:25

  • US consumers don't want web-enabled toasters

    And three-quarters downloaded nothing in last quarter

    A survey of previous NPD research has found US consumers not fully embracing the connected future so beloved of tech marketeers. Researchers found that for most US users a PC, with email and web browsing, is enough. Although some are using games consoles and smartphones to get online the vast majority are not. 75 per cent of …

    Music and Media 29 Sep 2010, 11:31

  • Nigerian perv scanners lay Lagos ladies bare

    Operators ogling passengers 'for fun'

    Security officials at Nigerian airports are using perv scanners to ogle female passengers "for fun", according to a report from This Day. The 3D body imaging kit - installed in the wake of the Xmas Day Farouk AbdulMutallab (non-) exploding underpants outrage - protects the identity of the scanee by blurring the face. However …

    Government 29 Sep 2010, 11:41

  • Dead Rising 2

    Review Yawn of the Dead?

    Zombies, I love 'em. Sometime during my acne years in the mid-1980s I became obsessed after chancing upon Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead in a late-night Channel 4 horror season. If I hadn't messed up the timed recording of Day of the Dead a week later, my fascination with the undead might have... well... died …

    reghardware 29 Sep 2010, 12:00

  • Bing! man! drops! Microsoft! for! Yahoo! job!

    Like quitting Selfridge's food hall for tills at Asda

    Microsoft has lost one of its Bing engineering managers to Yahoo!, after veteran Redmondian Don Bradford quit the software vendor. Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reported Bradford’s departure, but Yahoo! hasn’t confirmed his job title yet. It’s not clear when he’ll be leaving Microsoft either. Bradford has been at MS on-and-off for …

    Applications 29 Sep 2010, 12:19

  • US.gov set IPv6 upgrade deadlines

    Get set, go

    The Obama administration has set an ambitious target for all US government agencies to upgrade their networks and services to the next generation internet protocol, IPv6, by the end of September 2012. A directive from Vivek Kundra, the US chief information officer, issued on Tuesday, also calls for internal networks to be …

    Data Networking 29 Sep 2010, 12:36

  • Tech firms promise EU they might cut electricity use

    16 new signatories. Well, 12. Or maybe 10 or less

    The EU claimed it had strong-armed another 16 ICT firms into putting their names to an effort to reduce electricity consumption in their broadband kit and datacentres. Brussels has declared that the firms' commitment could lead them to reduce their leccy consumption by as much as 50 per cent, should they subsequently not …

    Servers 29 Sep 2010, 12:44

  • Flying gyrocopter jump-jeep gets $3m from DARPA

    VTOL Humvee/autogyro/plane combo aimed at US Marines

    More news out of the US military's "Transformer TX" flying car project today, as an alliance of aviation firms is awarded initial funds to start work on a combination of 4x4 Chelsea tractor and autogyro jump-copter. If they shoot the wings off we've still got the rotors According to an official contract notification issued …

    Science 29 Sep 2010, 12:51

  • Net TV to consign Net Neutrality debate to dustbin of history. Why?

    Easy. ISPs can charge more, says BBC boss

    Who pays for all that Internet video winging our way? Answer: we all will, through higher broadband charges, according to the BBC's Mark Thompson. Speaking at the Royal Television Society's International conference today, the BBC Director General acknowledged that working out who pays for this "revolution" is problematic. You …

    reghardware 29 Sep 2010, 12:58

  • Satyam financials detail £1bn in dodgy transactions

    Revenues, losses, and lots and lots of notes

    Satyam today issued its first results since becoming engulfed in an accounting scandal early last year that almost broke the Indian services firm. The scandal erupted when B Ramalinga Raju resigned in January 2009, after writing an extraordinary letter to directors admitting inflating profits at the firm by almost a billion …

    Channel Register 29 Sep 2010, 14:50

  • Youth of today demand mobile payments

    They're sick, don't you know

    Old fogies might worry about wireless pickpockets and dead batteries, but the next generation is crying out to be able to buy stuff on their mobile phones, according to Alcatel-Lucent. The company's Youth Lab - a research arm limited to those born between 1977 and 1998 - found that almost 90 per cent of youth would happily pay …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2010, 15:10

  • Aussie bloggers forced to balance anonymity with influence

    Media group faces both ways on the issue

    The outing of a political blogger in Australia once again brings the issue of online anonymity into the spotlight. Harsh words have also been directed at the Murdoch-owned News Ltd group, with suggestions that at the very least it is being inconsistent in its stance on blogging. The immediate cause of all the fuss is the …

    Music and Media 29 Sep 2010, 15:20

  • Tweety profs offer political smear-meme 'truthiness' ratings

    Wisdom of crowds to be improved by, er ... the wisdom of crowds

    Earnest academics in Indiana have set up an internet project designed to thwart evil right-wing internet smear campaigns against Democratic politicians, astroturfing, "and other social pollution". The website, truthy.indiana.edu, uses the Twitter API to identify internet memes and measure their "truthiness" - ie how bullshitty …

    Government 29 Sep 2010, 15:30

  • Dell adds self-service to AIM virty tools

    A virtually integrated - and open - system

    A year ago, Dell partnered with Scalent to get some virtualization management tools to compete with its peers in the server racket, and this summer the company had to acquire Scalent to keep it from falling into enemy hands. Today sees Dell roll out a beefed up stack of tools based on the Scalent wares called the Virtual …

    Virtualization 29 Sep 2010, 15:41

  • Google shocks world with unthreaded Gmail

    Conversation View death switch

    Google has shocked the tech world by letting Gmail users "unthread" their inbox — i.e., turn off the tool that was billed as an email revolution when Gmail launched six years ago, but ended up as an infamous annoyance that undoubtedly hampered uptake of the service among all-important business users. With a Wednesday blog post …

    Applications 29 Sep 2010, 17:03

  • Fujitsu starts building 10 petaflops Sparc64 super

    Special Kei

    Server and chip maker Fujitsu is starting to ship the Sparc-based supercomputer server nodes that are part part of Japan's "Kei" 10 petaflops supercomputer. As El Reg previously reported, back in January 2006 Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) hired indigenous server makers NEC, …

    HPC 29 Sep 2010, 17:48

  • Car wrecks rise after texting bans imposed

    Blame shaving, makeup, bees

    Laws banning texting or talking on a mobile phone while driving don't reduce car accidents. "In fact," concludes the US Highway Loss Data Institute, "[texting] bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes." This counter- …

    Mobile 29 Sep 2010, 18:51

  • Microsoft claims state first with Minnesota cloud

    Email money saver

    Microsoft's crusade to convert earth-bound customers into cloud floaters has landed an army of 30,000 government email and collaboration users in the US state of Minnesota. The state will stop running its own Exchange email servers for executive-branch communications, and will switch to Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS …

    Applications 29 Sep 2010, 19:12

  • LinkedIn Zeus spam run targets prospective business marks

    Let's connect

    Cybercrooks on Tuesday targeted users of the LinkedIn social network with a spam attack aimed at infecting victims with the infamous Zeus Trojan. Prospective marks were emailed an alert link that posed as a social media contact request but actually sent victims to a malware-loaded site that attempted to infect users via a …

    Malware 29 Sep 2010, 19:36

  • Judge orders turnover of woman's deleted Facebook posts

    Does content ever die online?

    A New York state judge has ruled that a woman's deleted postings on Facebook and MySpace must be turned over to a company fighting allegations she suffered “permanent injuries” that have prevented her from living an active lifestyle. Last week's decision from the Supreme Court of New York's Suffolk County said that under the …

    ID 29 Sep 2010, 20:07