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6th December 2010 Archive

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  • The year's best... laptops

    2010: it's a wrap The stand-out notebooks and netbooks

    Apple's MacBook Air was undoubtledly the stand-out notebook of 2010, particularly in its compact 11.6in form, even though the bigger, 13.3in model is the better of the two: not a lot less portable, but faster, more functional and with a longer battery life. However, the 11.6in Air is a beast that can span the gap between …

    reghardware 6 Dec 07:00

  • Major Facebook redesign, smoothed-off Zuckerberg unveiled

    Social Network 'got the sandals right'... bitch

    Facebook has redesigned its user profile page, pushing more personal info and photos to the top in an effort to make it "even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends." The new-look page was unveiled on Sunday evening, just before Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the venerable TV news …

    Music and Media 6 Dec 07:18

  • Minister 'C*nt' promises £50m to get fabtastic fibre for all

    The BBC's naughty Naughtie tongue-slip

    Culture minister Jeremy Hunt has promised £50m in extra funding to put "a fibre point in every community in the UK by the end of the Parliament". Although he acknowledged that moving the UK from its poor position in world superfast broadband rankings to nearer the top would require a mix of technologies, he said pushing …

    Telecoms 6 Dec 10:03

  • Toshiba charges up battery equipped LED TV

    Aimed at nations with iffy power grids

    Toshiba has taken the wraps off what it claims is the world's first telly - a 32-incher - with a built-in battery. The goal isn't portability - who's going to want to use a 40in, LED-backlit LCD TV outdoors? - but uninterrupted viewing. The Power TV, as it's called, is aimed at the Indian market where power blackouts are …

    reghardware 6 Dec 10:11

  • Building dynamic infrastructure that reaches the private cloud

    Webcast From virtualisation to the cloud

    On December 7th at 11.00 GMT we’re going to be talking about the strategic changes required to develop a successful dynamic infrastructure and how it takes us to the heart of what’s increasingly being called the Private Cloud. Or to put it another way, virtualisation and dynamic infrastructure. The Register’s own Tim Phillips …

    Tech Panel 6 Dec 10:18

  • Alleged Russian spam-lord hauled into US court

    Bogus todger-stiffening pills flogged to Wisconsin cops

    A Russian who allegedly at one time ran a network of compromised machines responsible for a third of global spam appeared in federal court in Wisconsin on Friday to deny the charges. Oleg Y Nikolaenko, 23, a resident of Moscow, faces charges that he forged email spam messages in violation of the US CAN-SPAM Act, following his …

    Spam 6 Dec 10:20

  • Inside the Ordnance Survey's new HQ for the digital era

    Building designed with servers – and job losses – in mind

    In the past year, the Ordnance Survey organisation has survived a huge government cull of quangos, the prospect of ugly public sector cutbacks and a big shake-up of its licensing model. But the UK mapping service now arguably faces its biggest challenge yet: A move to a new office that, for many of its workers, is already …

    Government 6 Dec 10:39

  • Gov decides not to have scientific advice on drugs any more

    Get Gillian McKeith on the phone!

    The coalition government is ditching the requirement to seek scientific advice before setting drugs policy. As part of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 government must take, or at least listen to, advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. That committee needed to have at least six scientists on it. But police …

    Government 6 Dec 10:58

  • Seagate puts out Barracuda Low Power Green

    Eco-nomical

    Seagate has quietly launched a green version of its Barracuda desktop drive, with three platters holding 1.5 or 2TB and spinning at a mere 5,900rpm. There was going to be a Barracuda LP (Low Power) a while ago, but it has become the Barracuda Green. There are two versions on Seagate's website, ones with a 32MB cache and 3Gbit/ …

    Storage 6 Dec 11:20

  • BlackBerry to Indian gov: Ban us, you have to ban Skype too

    'La la la, we're not listening,' politicoes respond

    RIM reckons it has convinced the Indian government that it can't intercept customer data, and that if it gets banned it's going to take everyone else down with it. RIM's latest statement on the ongoing dispute with the Indian government is the most detailed yet, but still not very detailed. The company reckons it's working …

    Mobile 6 Dec 11:36

  • Microsoft 'Xbox TV' rumours: Over the Cable Guy's dead body

    TVoIP, not one to hold your breath waiting for

    Xbox TV? We've heard it all before, and this time the rumour has replaced the word Apple with the name Microsoft, but it's essentially the same: saying that it will come to market as a virtual cable operator, delivering TV channels over the internet in return for a monthly fee. Let's just examine that for a moment. Apple, with …

    Music and Media 6 Dec 11:55

  • Stuxnet expert nuke-boffin killing: Iran claims arrests

    Sticky-bomb assassins took out worm cleanup chief

    Iranian authorities claim to have arrested suspects over the murder of a nuclear scientist in the country last Monday. Motorcylists placed bombs on the windows of cars as the targets of the attack were driving to work, in two identical but separate attacks last Monday. Each device was detonated seconds later leaving little …

    Enterprise Security 6 Dec 12:01

  • White iPhone inbound for spring of 2011

    Will be invisible in typical fanboi white-cube dwelling

    The long-delayed white iPhone is back on the road map, scheduled for Spring next year, according to shop signage spotted by 9to5 Mac. The angelic iPhone 4 will be available next year, according to the small print on the bottom of signs now going up in the Apple stores. So anyone hoping for a white (iPhone) Christmas is going …

    Mobile 6 Dec 12:09

  • How I went from punting PCs to betting a quarter billion on Betfair

    Interview But failed to convince Warren Buffett...

    Former channel man Peter Webb has become one of Betfair's leading customers and bets a quarter of a billion pounds annually on horseracing alone. He also sloshes a good amount on the X Factor market. The ex Compaq and Medion man finally left the UK's computer distribution channel in 2003 to make a full time go of trading on …

    Channel Register 6 Dec 12:23

  • Crazed reindeer stalks, attacks Scottish woman with antlers

    Victim forced to jettison lunch in festive horror chase

    Children are advised to hide under the duvet if they hear sleighbells this Christmas Eve, after it emerged that reindeers appear to have developed a taste for human flesh. The reindeer's ability to transform from Santa's little helper to ravening maneater was illustrated by the tale of a 57-year-old woman who was subjected to …

    Bootnotes 6 Dec 12:24

  • Doctor Who: Return to Earth

    Review Return to Shop?

    Doctor Who has not fared well on Planet Videogame. So many titles been merely mediocre or just plain crap, often barely connected to the TV series and pumped out by publishers keen to cash in on the brand with minimal effort. Silver nemesis There are a few exceptions, most notably Admiral Software's Dalek Attack a rather …

    reghardware 6 Dec 12:26

  • SpaceX's Dragon poised to go orbital

    Falcon 9 fired up ahead of Tuesday's capsule launch

    Elon Musk's SpaceX looks poised to send its Dragon capsule into orbit, following a successful static engine test of the Falcon 9 lifter. After two aborted attempts, Saturday's two-second static fire of Falcon 9's nine liquid oxygen and kerosene-powered Merlin boosters apparently went well. Launch from Cape Canaveral Air …

    Space 6 Dec 12:29

  • Groupon shuns Google's $6bn takeover bonanza

    What? You want my kids to starve, is that it?

    Groupon walked away from acquisition talks with Google late last week, after speculative reports suggested that the world’s largest ad broker was willing to splurge up to $6bn to buy the e-commerce coupon outfit. According to the Chicago Tribune, which cited sources familiar with the matter, Groupon turned its back on Google …

    Financial News 6 Dec 12:39

  • Smartphone users are faithless slappers - survey

    Wide open to all comers

    Smartphone users have little brand loyalty, according to a survey of global consumers by GfK. Only Apple comes out of it well, with 59 per cent of iPhone users inclined to a repeat purchase. Smartphones now have 29 per cent of the US market, according to a separate Nielsen survey today, and this is reckoned to reach 50 per …

    Mobile 6 Dec 12:50

  • Final mission of shuttle Discovery postponed until February

    'Strong confidence' that leaky tank can be sorted out

    Space shuttle Discovery will not now lift off on its final STS-133 mission to the International Space Station until 3 February at the earliest. The venerable vehicle was grounded on November 5 when NASA discovered cracks in two of 108 U-shaped aluminium brackets, known as "stringers", located on the external fuel tank. …

    Space 6 Dec 13:00

  • CNN flashes gay todger over interwebs

    NSFW Hot and hard same-sex marriage news

    God alone knows what rotund gobshite Rush Limbaugh will make of it, but we suspect CNN editors will be wishing they'd never been born after they get the Excellence in Broadcasting treatment for this outrage: A shaken Bootnotes department has added a handy arrow demonstrating just where Limbaugh should look for evidence that …

    Bootnotes 6 Dec 13:09

  • Indian feds' site besmirched in tit-for-tat Pak hack attack

    'Cyber Armies' clash, befoul gov sites

    Pakistani hackers have responded to attacks by their Indian counterparts by defacing the website of India's federal crime investigation bureau over the weekend. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) website was pulled offline for rebuilding following an assault by a group calling itself the Pakistani Cyber Army on Friday …

    Crime 6 Dec 13:26

  • Google acquires DRM henchmen with Widevine buy

    Content enshacklement comes to the Chocolate Factory

    Google has bought DRM software outfit Widevine for an undisclosed sum. The company, which agreed to purchase Seattle-based Widevine last Friday, said it plans to fold the Widevine’s digital rights management tech presumably into its newborn television platform, Google TV. “By forging partnerships across the entire ecosystem, …

    Music and Media 6 Dec 13:34

  • Apple: white iPhone 4 out 'Spring 2011'

    Vernal blooming

    World+Dog will finally get their hands on official white iPhone 4s in "Spring 2011", according to signs posted in Apple Stores across the US. The revelation is tucked away in the banners' small print: "The white iPhone 4 will be available Spring 2011." The text was spotted by an eagle-eyed reader of 9 To 5 Mac, and is …

    reghardware 6 Dec 13:44

  • Nottinghamshire back-end taken over by giant reseller

    Logica grabs pork in gov savings plan

    Nottinghamshire County Council is handing back office processes to Logica in a deal which hopes to save the local authority £5m a year thanks to shared services. The deal covers human resources, payroll, procurement and finance processes and is worth £7.4m over five years. The reseller and services giant will install an SAP …

    Channel Register 6 Dec 14:08

  • Judges reject Operation Ore appeal

    Claims of card fraud in child abuse pics case dismissed

    The Court of Appeal has rejected claims that some individuals prosecuted under Operation Ore for incitement to distribute indecent photographs were themselves the victims of credit card fraud. Operation Ore was a major, long-running investigation by UK police into individuals who appeared on a US-based database – Landslide – …

    Law 6 Dec 14:12

  • Nokia patents touch-tastic NFC operator leapfrog

    Rub your equipment against things you like

    A US patent from Nokia shows how a handset manufacturer can make money from NFC, without being forced into a relationship with the banks or even the network operators. The idea, explained in detail over at NFC World, is to forget about proximity payments and tap-to-pair networking. The suggestion is to concentrate on …

    Mobile 6 Dec 14:37

  • Anonymous attacks PayPal in 'Operation Avenge Assange'

    Wikileaks = 'freedom and democracy', say 4chan anarchists

    Anonymous has launched a broad-ranging campaign in support of Wikileaks, starting with a DDoS assault on a PayPal website. The denial of service attack lasted for eight hours and resulted in numerous service disruptions, Panda Security reports. The group, spawned from anarchic message board 4chan, first came to prominence …

    Crime 6 Dec 15:19

  • Operation Ore decision a 'serious miscarriage of justice' - lawyer

    Judges ignored evidence, lacked expertise

    The solicitor who brought the Operation Ore appeal that was finally rejected today has questioned whether the British courts had the expertise to consider deeply technical cases. Chris Saltrese, the solicitor who brought the case on behalf of Anthony O'Shea, told us today that in his view, the verdict was "not based on the …

    Law 6 Dec 15:31

  • Steelie Neelie floats pan-European phone number notion

    Apparently just writing +44 in front of it won't do

    The European Commission is opening a consultation on whether businesses would find a pan-European telephone number useful, or useless. One contact number which would work across the European Union might reduce costs for multi-national businesses and make cross-border trade simpler for consumers. Neelie Kroes, VP of the …

    Telecoms 6 Dec 15:36

  • Juniper gobbles Altor Networks in $95m startup snack

    Now the beefening of virty cloud firewalls can begin

    Juniper Networks has acquired partner Altor Networks for $95m in cash, to beef up the security of networks and virtualized servers using its switches. Altor, which was founded in 2007, is located in Redwood Shores, California, and has created a firewall and intrusion protection system combination that was designed from the …

    Virtualization 6 Dec 15:49

  • Google launches 'free' 'open' 'cloud' eBooks digiback service

    Our cloud is open for you to freely give us money

    Google has begun flogging books to US customers with the launch today of the company’s rather flat-sounding ‘Google eBooks’ business. Last May the company confirmed it would enter the retail digital book biz. An online store dubbed ‘Google Editions’ was expected to follow in July this year. That didn’t materialise, however, …

    Music and Media 6 Dec 16:40

  • Google aims Nexus S smartphone at US, UK

    Gingerbread taster

    It's official: the next Nexus smartphone will be out on 20 December. As expected, Samsung is the manufacturer, branding the Googlephone as the Nexus S. The handset will run Gingerbread - Android 2.3. It'll sport a 4in, 480 x 800 display; a 5Mp camera; tri-band HSDPA 3G connectivity; 16GB of Flash storage; GPS; Bluetooth 2.1 …

    reghardware 6 Dec 16:41

  • Burmese junta strongman considered buying Manchester United

    Wikileaks bonkersness will plainly never, ever stop

    The leader of the Burmese military junta seriously considered a $1bn bid for Manchester United in January 2009. The Asian republic was coping with the aftermath of cyclone Nargis (which killed around 140,000) at the time, but Than Shwe, commander of the armed forces in the south-east Asian state, was urged by his grandson to …

    Bootnotes 6 Dec 16:48

  • Browser confab woos Reg readers

    Promo Silicon Valley Add-on-Con waves super secret discount

    Add-on-Con — the annual Silicon Valley developer pow-wow dedicated to web browser extensions — is offering Reg readers a super-secret discount on this year's confab. This year's conference has expanded into a two-day affair. The likes of Google, Mozilla, and Opera offer a wide range of developer tutorials on Wednesday, …

    Developer 6 Dec 19:01

  • WikiLeaks: Intel strong-armed Russian apparatchiks

    Updated Cryptographic end run

    A WikiLeaked cable reveals that Intel was able to arm-twist Russian apparatchiks into letting it import 1,000 development platforms that ran afoul of import restrictions imposed by the government of that worker's paradise struggling economy. To bend the Russian bureaucrats to their will, Chipzilla used the magic word that …

    PCs & Chips 6 Dec 19:40

  • Chinese hackers 'slurped 50 MB of US gov email'

    Windows source code tapped, say WikiLeaked docs

    The Chinese government may have used its access to Microsoft source code to develop attacks that exploited weaknesses in the Windows operating system, according to a US diplomatic memo recently published by Wikileaks. The June 29, 2009 diplomatic cable claims that a Chinese security firm with close ties to the People's Republic …

    Security 6 Dec 20:14

  • Feds arrest man who juiced Google's 'just be evil' search

    Comeuppance for foul-mouthed bully

    Federal authorities on Monday arrested a website operator accused of selling counterfeit eyeglasses who subjected customers to foul-mouthed tirades when they complained about the quality of the goods. “GO FUCK YOURSELF COCKSUCKER ... I pee on your negative [comments]” Vitaly Borker, 34, of Brooklyn, New York, allegedly wrote in …

    Crime 6 Dec 22:20