14th December 2010 Archive

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Sheriff's Department database leak puts snitches at risk

Blame it on the sys admin

A Colorado sheriff's department mistakenly exposed a sensitive database that contained names, addresses and other details on about 200,000 people, including confidential drug informants. Thousands of pages of confidential information collected by the Mesa County Sheriff's Department were vulnerable from April until November 24 …

ID 14 Dec 2010, 01:12
This year's DSLR stars

2010: it's a wrap Optical profusions

This year, HD video on a DSLR wasn’t just something that would be nice to have, it was pretty much de rigeur. Shop around and it seems high definition video features on just about anything with a lens on it. However, there’s HD video and there’s HD video, or to put it another way, there’s full HD video 1080p (1920 x 1080) and …

reghardware 14 Dec 2010, 07:00
Think you know project management?

Video Prepare to be stunned

We recently had Reg reader and Lastminute.com IT director of transformation, Terry Dewhurst in our studio explaining how to do project and program management properly. Terry has a pretty serious reputation when it comes to project management in all its shapes and sizes. You'll see why. If Terry doesn't know it, it's fairly …

Project Management 14 Dec 2010, 10:03
Apple pulls jailbreak detection API

Knowing the known unknowns

Apple has dropped support for the API that allows applications to ask if an iOS device has been jailbroken, though it seems that not a lot of people trusted it anyway. The API was only introduced six months ago, but according to Infoworld has now disappeared or been disabled, leaving vendors of security products reliant on …

Mobile 14 Dec 2010, 10:44
Goldman Sachs wants clouds, tablets and divis from Microsoft

Another tough year ahead

Microsoft has another tough year ahead, a Goldman Sachs tech analyst has warned. Sarah Friar said at the weekend that 2011 would be a big challenge for Steve Ballmer's software company, principally because Microsoft will be attempting to play catch-up with Apple and Google on tablet computers and mobile phones. The analyst …

Channel Register 14 Dec 2010, 10:53
Naked cemetery man was simply photographing orbs

Not indecent exposure - just high spirits

A Mississippi man found naked in a cemetery explained to Sheriff's deputies that he was not indulging in indecent exposure but was simply looking to snap some "spirit orb" photos. Robert T Hurst, 47, was reeled in by deputies after a man was "photographed naked and setting up his own camera on a tripod by a game camera in the …

Bootnotes 14 Dec 2010, 10:57
Capita buys chunk of troubled NHS software firm iSoft

Gets iBS

Capita has bought part of the troubled Australian healthcare IT provider iSoft for £23m. iSoft Business Solutions (iBS) is a subsidiary that provides accounting and purchasing software to about 60 per cent of NHS trusts. The sell-off is part of an effort to reduce iSoft's £150m debt burden. iBS turned over £17.7m in the …

Channel Register 14 Dec 2010, 11:34
Toshiba releases killer SSD

Awesome spec numbers for the catchily-named MKx001GRZB

Tosh has announced an enterprise SSD with competitor-beating performance numbers. The MKx001GRZB – Tosh doesn't go in for catchy brand names – is a 2.5-inch form factor and comes with the same 100, 200 and 400GB capacity points as Hitachi GST's Ultrastar SSD announced in November, and has performance heavily skewed to read I/ …

Storage 14 Dec 2010, 11:38
Anonymous turns attack drones against fax machines

From cyberspace to Office Space

Pro-Wikileaks hacktivists have begun targeting the fax machines rather than the websites of firms who have withdrawn services from Wikileaks. As part of the new Leakflood mission, activists have been encouraged to send faxes to Amazon, MasterCard, Moneybookers, PayPal, Visa and Tableau Software. The group published a list of …

Enterprise Security 14 Dec 2010, 11:41
Microsoft taps up hardware pals with small biz server release

It's showtime for Standard and Premium Add-on products

Microsoft kicked its Windows Small Business Server 2011 out the door yesterday. The company released to manufacturing the Standard and Premium Add-on versions of the software. MS volume licence customers will get their hands on the products early next month, and Redmond said a trial copy will be available for download in mid- …

Small Biz 14 Dec 2010, 11:44
Robo stealth bomber piggybacks on NASA's shuttle jumbo

Pic Desperate Boeing brings Phantom Ray show to California

US arms'n'aerospace megacorp Boeing has now moved its Phantom Ray robot stealth fighter to Edwards Air Force Base in California for flight testing. The unmanned jet was shipped there on the back of one of NASA's well-known piggyback jumbo jets, more usually employed moving space shuttles about. You don't see this every day. …

Science 14 Dec 2010, 11:52
Prisoners plot strike action over mobile phones

Fag-deprived Georgia lags pull labour, refuse to shop

Prisoners in Georgia (the US one) are striking for better conditions and pay, in an action coordinated across institutions thanks to the wonders of modern technology and poor contraband enforcement. The prisoners, some of who were interviewed by the New York Times, reckon that about one in ten local lags is mobile-equipped, …

Mobile 14 Dec 2010, 12:09
Hardware spending to cool, not freeze

Don't look for a lot of growth beyond 2011

Hardware spending is a leading indicator for overall IT spending, even after you adjust for Moore's Law improvements, because the appetite for processing, memory, and I/O capacity has not abated much in the past 40 years. But spending does rise and fall with the economy, and even though late 2009 and through 2010 has seen some …

Channel Register 14 Dec 2010, 12:21
IBM tosses in freebie Linux with Power servers

RHEL only, no SLES love

IBM has been hoping for years that Linux would drive new workloads on Power-based systems where OS/400-i platforms are the back-end systems – just as Linux-based partitions have, to a certain extent, been the salvation of the System z mainframe. It is hard to say for sure how much traction Linux has with OS/400 and i shops – or …

Servers 14 Dec 2010, 12:26
Txt tax would wipe out half UK deficit, claims union baron

Oh no it wouldn't

Railway union boss Bob Crow reckons putting a one-penny tax on text messaging would wipe out half the UK's deficit, demonstrating a rather optimistic approach to financial planning. The comment comes in an interview with The Guardian, and is followed by the assertion that if in charge, the good Mr Crow would "squeeze the rich …

Mobile 14 Dec 2010, 12:33
Toshiba growing plant to source iPhone screens

Low-temperature polycrystalline silicon, anyone?

Toshiba is building a factory to make LCDs for iPhones and allow it to double its output, it has been claimed. So says Japanese newspaper Nikkei, by way of Reuters, which adds that the iDevice display dealing plant is being built in Ishikawa prefecture alongside an existing screen factory. It will begin punching out small …

reghardware 14 Dec 2010, 12:34
UK.gov braces for possible Wikileaks hacklash

Bail denial for Assange 'may spark DDoS attack'

UK government websites are bracing themselves for an attack from Anonymous. Failure to grant Julian Assange bail at a hearing due to take place on Tuesday could be enough to push pro-Wikileaks activists – who have already attacked Mastercard, Amazon, PayPal and Swedish prosecutors – into an assault on UK government systems. …

Government 14 Dec 2010, 12:41
iPad gets portable TV tuner

Stream to the small screen

You can now watch Freeview shows on your iPad or iPhone - on the move. Making mobile telly possible is Tizi, a gadget from Equinux which combines DVB-T tuner, Wi-Fi hotspot and a battery to keep them both ticking over. The £150 device picks up programmes and streams them over Wi-Fi to an app running on your tablet or phone. …

reghardware 14 Dec 2010, 12:53
BBC Online ordered to be more 'distinctive' as cuts kick in

Meta navel-gazing: There will be a review of the review

The BBC has agreed to make its web presence more “distinctive”, following the Corporation’s director-general Mark Thompson’s decision in July to scale back its online operation and cut the budget by a quarter. That’s the conclusion of the Beeb’s ‘Strategy Review’, which the BBC Trust published a final report on today. It said …

Music and Media 14 Dec 2010, 13:05
DfT spends £196m with IBM

The five percenters

IBM took five per cent of the money spent by the Department for Transport with its 100 biggest suppliers in 2009-10. Figures released by the department in response to a Freedom of Information request from Kable show that the technology company came second on its supplier list after construction firm Balfour Beatty. Genesys …

Channel Register 14 Dec 2010, 13:15
US Army 'to issue every soldier with a smartphone'

Any phone you like, trooper: iPhone, Droid, ~~WinPho7~~

The US Army is working on plans to issue every one of its soldiers with a smartphone – either an iPhone, Android device or perhaps even a "Palm Trio" [sic]. Windows 7 was not mentioned. The Army Times reports on the military smartphone plans, which have been rumbling along for a while now in various forms. Some US units have …

Mobile 14 Dec 2010, 13:16
Want to bring your own PC?

Workshop No need to get personal

There’s a problem brewing in the workplace - employees want to bring to work aspects of technology that they use in their personal life, be it their mobile phones, laptops or even just specific applications. If businesses haven’t come up against this consumerisation already, the chances are that they will, sooner rather than …

Desktop Management 14 Dec 2010, 13:34
BT accidentally chokes bandwidth to 'superfast' customers

Infinity minus one

BT has said sorry to subscribers to its "Infinity" packages, who have seen their "superfast" broadband connections slowed to a relative crawl in the evening recently. It blamed the problems on a "technical fault", but did not provide any further details. Hundreds of postings on BT's customer forums in the last week report a …

Telecoms 14 Dec 2010, 14:15
McDonald's breach bares nuggets of customer data

Oh burger

An unknown number of personal details about McDonald's customers was exposed after hackers broke into the database of a partner of the burger giant. Miscreants may have made off with email, contact information and birthdates as a result of the breach. Fans of the fast food franchise supplied the information when they signed …

Enterprise Security 14 Dec 2010, 14:59
Ethics? There's an app for that

Bar code scanner unmasks can of coffee as Compaq server

Ethically-responsible shoppers can get the help they obviously need with a new app that will scan a bar code and decide if your coffee was ethically sourced, or is actually a Compaq server. The Barcoo app is free to download for iPhone, Android, Symbian and Bada, and provides the usual price-comparison service common to such …

Mobile 14 Dec 2010, 15:02
Govt to grant £5k to e-car buyers

Money off your green motor

Buy an e-car next year and the government will pay a quarter of the asking price - up to a maximum of £5000. You'll have to buy one of nine named electric vehicles, and your choice will be limited further by the fact that only three of them will actually be available to buy. The e-cars subsidised by the £43m scheme include …

reghardware 14 Dec 2010, 15:09
ASSANGE GRANTED BAIL

Court leaks WikiLeaker

WikiLeaks supremo Julian Assange was granted bail on appeal by a London court this afternoon. After six days in jail he will be released with conditions, including a £240,000 surety. The next hearing in Sweden's attempt to extradite him in relation to alleged sex crimes against two women was scheduled for 11 January. However …

Law 14 Dec 2010, 15:30
Instant storage cloud: just add Atmos

DIY self-service approach

EMC has added a self-service capability to Atmos so that service providers can add a cloud storage offering to their services – because they don't have to write their own user-metering modules. EMC says that its Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform (ACDP) has end-user identity provisioning along with reporting on bandwidth and …

Infrastructure 14 Dec 2010, 16:20
Microsoft boss to wave tablets in CES faces – again

Satisfaction's what you need, Steve

Microsoft is reportedly going to attempt to conjure some magic from slate computing at next month's CES event in Las Vegas. According to the New York Times, which cites people familiar with the matter, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer will announce a number of devices built by hardware pals Samsung, Dell and others. Apparently, …

PCs & Chips 14 Dec 2010, 16:50
Gmail's daddy predicts Chrome OS assassination

Not so shiny eh?

The creator of Google's AdSense technology and lead developer of Gmail reckons Chrome OS will be merged with Android or killed off within the next 12 months. The prediction was posted to Paul Buchheit's FriendFeed account - FriendFeed being a Twitter-like service started by Mr Buchheit after his time at Google, and later sold …

Operating Systems 14 Dec 2010, 16:51
Sacked health care BOFH jailed for revenge hack

Bring the restraints, nurse

A former IT worker at a Florida medical facility has been jailed for 19 months after she was convicted of hacking into the network of her former employers, deleting records and locking out legitimate users by deleting passwords. Patricia Marie Fowler, 30, of Palmetto, Florida, mounted the attack on Suncoast Community Health …

Crime 14 Dec 2010, 16:53
Oracle mobile Java licensing suit boomerangs

Breach-of-contract allegations fly

Oracle and a hot-selling Java mobile software maker have fired lawsuits at each other over who controls Java - and at what price. Oracle and Myriad Group have filed dueling suits in the US, both alleging unfair competition and breach of license agreements, among other charges. Both suits were filed on December 10, with the …

Developer 14 Dec 2010, 21:28
Google Cr-48: Inside the Chrome OS 'unstable isotope'

Review Mountain View goes to extremes

Microsoft gives you the Windows Explorer. Apple gives you the Mac OS X Finder. And Google gives you, well, nothing. With Google's Chrome OS – the browser-based operating system that reached a handful of outside beta testers late last week – there's no ready means of browsing files on your own machine. In their lightning …

Operating Systems 14 Dec 2010, 21:55
WikiLeaks.org resurrected in US of A

Whistleblower back in 'land of the free'

Update: This story has been updated to show that PayPal shut WikiLeaks' account after reading a letter sent to WikiLeaks by the US government. Wikileaks.org has reappeared in the US of A, after American outfit Dynadot picked up the site's DNS service. On December 3, WikiLeaks' primary URL vanished after its previous DNS …

Networks 14 Dec 2010, 22:41