12th January 2011 Archive

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IBM's mainframe-blade hybrid to do Windows

Tighter server coupling coming?

IBM is rejiggering its hybrid mainframe-blade "system of systems" that was announced last July and that began shipping in the fall. Big Blue is also providing details of the hypervisors, networks, and operating systems that will be supported on the hybrid configuration, which marries a System zEnterprise 196 mainframe with …

Servers 12 Jan 2011, 00:11
Telcos, ISPs respond to floods

Services whacked, customer assistance, relief donations

With three-quarters of Queensland now declared a disaster zone in the face of widespread and rising floods, the telecommunications industry has had to scramble to maintain services. At the same time, carriers and ISPs have also announced a range of assistance package for affected customers, and many have committed donations to …

Broadband 12 Jan 2011, 00:29
Attacks on IE drive-by bug go wild

Microsoft unloads (temporary) workaround

Microsoft on Tuesday warned that attackers have begun exploiting a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer and rolled out a temporary fix until a permanent patch is issued. The vulnerability in IE versions 6, 7 and 8, which involves the way the browser handles cascading style sheets, allows adversaries to perform drive-by …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 01:08
Google axes Jobsian codec in name of 'open'

Dubbed 'utter hypocrite' by fanboi king

Google has announced that its Chrome browser will no longer include support for H.264, the patent-encumbered video codec favored by Apple and Microsoft. Future versions of Chrome will only include support for the open source and royalty-free WebM and Ogg Theora codecs. This past May, Google itself open sourced the WebM codec …

Developer 12 Jan 2011, 01:15
Ubuntu's Narwhal rides OpenStack cloud

Two clouds a crowd?

It's official: the next Ubuntu will straddle clouds, with Natty Narwhal packing both OpenStack and current favorite Eucalyptus. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has confirmed that Ubuntu 11.04, due in April, will contain APIs that let people fluff their own private clouds built on OpenStack or Eucalyptus. Shuttleworth said in …

Cloud 12 Jan 2011, 01:28
Microsoft disputes Apple's 'App Store' trademark

'It's just a store that sells apps'

Microsoft is contesting Apple's trademark claim for the term "App Store", calling that term too generic to be granted protection. "Apple seeks to exclusively appropriate the phrase 'App Store' for use with its own store offering apps," says Microsoft's Opposition filing with the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. That …

Media 12 Jan 2011, 04:00
HTML5: An antidote for Apple App Store-itis

Open...and Shut Imitation not the sincerest form of flattery

To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Or in the case of our idea-starved tech industry, an app store. The tech world is increasingly awash in app stores. App stores have been all the rage for the past few years due to Apple's success, with more than 300,000 apps currently available for iOS devices. In a …

Developer 12 Jan 2011, 05:00
Android-powered touchscreen Wi-Fi headphones offered

7.1 fondle-cans run Skype, Pandora

With approximately 106 headphone manufacturers battling for mindspace in the marketplace, Nox Audio has come up with a gimmick that hooked our jaded eyes and ears: headphones that run Android. "The Admiral is a product like no other," said Julie Ma, Nox Audio's president, in a press release promising that her hefty cans will " …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 06:00
Google Nexus S Android smartphone

Review Powered by Samsung

What do you want from a smartphone? Good looks? New, new features? Decent battery life? The latest operating system? If so, the Nexus S should be right up your alley. The latest Android handset comes direct from Google but where its predecessor, the Nexus One, was made by HTC, this one is created for Google by Samsung. Home- …

Phones 12 Jan 2011, 07:00
Flood isolates Internode in Qld

Redundant link or equipment failure?

The impact of Queensland's floods on telecommunications carriers is spreading. Around 6pm on Wednesday, Internode posted an advisory that its Queensland network was now isolated. "Unfortunately, the worst case scenario has been realised. The remaining inter-capital path has been severed", the advisory stated. "In the short term …

Broadband 12 Jan 2011, 07:22
Bond 23 back on track for 2012

Daniel Craig back in action after MGM returns from the brink

Daniel Craig will return for a third outing as James Bond in 2012, EON Productions and MGM announced yesterday. Take 23: 'You and I have some unfinished business' The future of the franchise was looking uncertain last year as MGM battled with $3.7bn debt, leading to the indefinite postponment of Bond 23. However, the …

Bootnotes 12 Jan 2011, 09:58
Online channel sales dodge the dip in 2010

HP, Lenovo and Dell still growing

Online channel sales continued to grow in 2010 pushed by HP, Lenovo and Sony, but Dell is growing fast too. Sales of notebooks, support products and desktops still dominate sales but other fast-growing categories include white goods and smaller form factor products such as cable locks. The numbers come from Icecat.biz which …

The Channel 12 Jan 2011, 10:00
Yorks cops bust Bradford guinea pig farm

Cannabis 'hothouse' alert ends in cavy anti-climax

Yorkshire cops have apologised after swooping on a suspected Bradford cannabis "hothouse", only to find a couple of pampered guinea pigs languishing by an electric heater. Six officers in three vehicles descended on Pam Hardcastle's house after a police chopper's dope-busting camera picked up a suspicious infrared hotspot. …

Bootnotes 12 Jan 2011, 10:08
BBC kills off WML site

Anyone still running WAP gateways?

The BBC has killed off the Wireless Markup Language version of its site, pointing out that no one uses WAP any more – not for looking at web pages anyway. The BBC's WML page now presents an apology and suggests that XHTML might be a better technology to use, while the formal announcement points out that fewer than one per cent …

Mobile 12 Jan 2011, 10:32
Archeologists toast world's oldest wine press

4,000 BC – a vintage year for dry reds

Archeologists rooting about in southern Armenia have unearthed what appears to be the world's oldest wine press, Reuters reports. The ancient booze-making facility was discovered in a cave complex in the Little Caucasus Mountains, close to the country's southern border with Turkey. The modest set-up comprises "a shallow clay …

Science 12 Jan 2011, 10:59
Nvidia to open Android games store

Tegra-centric

Google has allowed Nvidia to create an aisle in the Android Market that will be dedicated to apps that require the graphics silicon company's Tegra 2 chip. Unimaginatively named The Tegra Zone - it could have been worse, it could have been Planet Tegra - it'll be a market within the Market that provides games downloads, and …

Games 12 Jan 2011, 11:14
Ombudsman slams DWP, HMRC data dumbnesses

Catalogue of system snafus savaged

Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham today slammed bungling government departments for a series of systemic failures that left one of their clients distressed, fearful and out of pocket. Further upholding charges of maladministration and injustice against the departments involved, Ms Abraham warned that unless government bodies …

Government 12 Jan 2011, 11:19
Discovery (finally) good to go on 24 Feb

NASA confident about 'elegant' fuel tank fix

NASA has announced it has resolved the problem with Discovery's external fuel tank and the shuttle is good to launch on its STS-133 mission to the International Space Station on 24 February. The vehicle was grounded on 5 November by a fuel leak caused by cracks in two of the tank's 108 U-shaped aluminium brackets, known as " …

Science 12 Jan 2011, 11:20
EMC to launch low-end VNXe box

Celerra NX3e showed the way

Next week is a big week for EMC. Not only will it combine CLARiiON and Celerra mid-range arrays in the VNX family on 18 and 19 January, EMC will also launch a low end VNXe3000 range. According to Oz writer Simon Sharwood, the VNXe is an all-in-one integrated box, unlike the larger VNX products, and resembles the stealth …

Storage 12 Jan 2011, 11:30
Verizon Wi-Fi hotspot tool coming to all iPhones?

Tethering rebranded

Apple's next big iOS release - presumably iOS 4.3 - will bring the Verizon iPhone 4's personal Wi-Fi hotspot feature to the GSM versions of the handset. So says a Dutch telco mole cited by local iPhone fansite iPhoneclub. A Greek site makes the same claim, though there's nothing to indicate that it got the info independently …

Phones 12 Jan 2011, 11:41
And here's how a datacentre network works...

It's all about layers

The job of a datacentre network is to connect the equipment inside to the outside world, and to connect the internal systems to each other. It needs to be secure, high performance and operate with an eye on energy consumption, with a guiding principle of minimising device numbers and costs, so you end up with a system that can …

Data Center 12 Jan 2011, 11:51
JVC intros 'world first' 3D HD consumer camcorder

Double vision

JVC has released the GS-TD1 and claims the gadget is the world's first HD 3D camcorder for ordinary punters rather than professionals. Folk bored of repetitive Avatar viewings on their new 3D TVs can now paint themselves blue and shoot their own 1080i versions of the film. So that's where Wall-E's head went The GS-TD1 …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 11:52
Keira Knightley, Jessica Biel eye Batman

Thesps to test for The Dark Knight Rises

Jessica Biel, Anne Hathaway and Keira Knightley are three of the star thesps in the frame to join Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises, the Hollywood Reporter, er, reports. Helmsman Christopher Nolan is looking to fill two meaty female roles in the next Batman outing, one of those being the daughter of villain Ra's Al Ghul …

Bootnotes 12 Jan 2011, 11:53
Financial fraud hits 23-year high

High-tech scams and tax fraud cost UK economy £1.37bn, says KPMG

High-end financial fraud hit a record 23-year high during the course of 2010, management accountancy and consultancy firm KPMG reports. KPMG's latest annual Fraud Barometer report records 314 incidents of fraud with a combined total of £1.4bn, up 16 per cent on 2009. This is the highest level recorded in the 23-year history of …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 11:55
MySpace unfriends 500 staff

Lesson in how not to run a social network

MySpace's workforce is being slashed by half, the struggling website's owner News Corp confirmed yesterday. Around 500 staff will lose their jobs, said the company's boss Mike Jones. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product," said …

Media 12 Jan 2011, 12:19
Ofcom: T-Mobile probe? Er, not really

Operator steps into the firing line after fair-use cut

T-Mobile's attempt to rein back heavy users of mobile data has put the operator up against the wall, but talk of Ofcom investigations and contract breaches is still premature. Not that T-Mobile will confirm its stance either way, the operator tells us it is still preparing a statement on the matter (and has been for 24 hours …

Mobile 12 Jan 2011, 12:36
Mozilla plots February Firefox 4 release

'Tired and stressed' team prepare for lift off

Firefox 4 is nearly ready for showtime, according to a recent post on Mozilla's mailing list. "I'm seeing the same burst of excitement and activity that we've seen in the endgame of every release," the open source browser maker's platform engineering director Damon Sicore enthusiastically noted yesterday. He said that Mozilla …

Applications 12 Jan 2011, 12:45
Sony Ericsson LiveView remote phone viewer

Review The Android accessory that puts on a display

With top-end smartphones costing an arm and a leg, anything that reduces the chances of your cellular pride and joy getting damaged or pinched should find a buyer. Certainly, that's the thinking behind Sony Ericsson's LiveView remote viewer for Android handsets. For Android 2 and above: Sony Ericsson's LiveView The idea is …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 13:00
EMC follows NetApp's lead with VNX line

We all need bigger numbers, right?

EMC will have three VNX product lines, copying NetApp's FAS trio, in its attempt to provide better virtual server integration. The VNX range starts with the VNXe3000 at the bottom, moves on to the VNX5000 mid-range products, and tops out with the VNX7000. For comparison, NetApp has the FAS2000, FAS3000 and FAS6000. EMC has …

Storage 12 Jan 2011, 13:10
Symbian’s Secret History: Davies on what went right (and wrong)

Part Three Former CTO Charles Davies shares his memories

Leading British technologist Charles Davies was Psion’s first employee – and as a director for two decades he was instrumental in the success of the British computer company. The plasma physics PhD was Symbian’s CTO for five years and left Nokia earlier this year. He rarely gives interviews but kindly agreed to talk about …

Mobile 12 Jan 2011, 13:22
Government joins European fingerprint database

Home Office in on collecting asylum seeker smudges

The Home Office has opted in to the Eurodac fingerprint database, which collects the fingerprints of asylum seekers and some illegal entrants to the European Union. Immigration minister Damien Green said in a parliamentary written statement, published on 11 January, that the move will help member states determine who is …

Law 12 Jan 2011, 13:28
Sony to spill PSP 2 beans this month

Handheld making headway

Information about the Sony PSP 2 will be made public soon, with an official announcement round the corner. Industry moles have divulged the news to gaming trade title MCV that all will be revealed at an event in Tokyo on 27 January. Major developers are already working on titles for the device after publishers were informed …

Games 12 Jan 2011, 13:41
ISPs battle EU child pornography filter laws

Filtering at network level just pushes hardcore users underground, say ISPs

ISPs are battling proposals by officials in Brussels that would force them to block access to child pornography, arguing that such systems only hide the problem. The European Commission has drafted new laws that will be voted on by the European Parliament next month. The technical solutions envisaged are broadly based on …

Broadband 12 Jan 2011, 13:52
Sony sues PlayStation 3 'hackers'

Updated No dongle, no problem

Sony has set the lawyers on hackers who figured out a way to run unsigned code on PlayStation 3 consoles without the use of a dongle. The hack, made possible by the discovery of the private key Sony used to sign its software, was demonstrated by a group called fail0verflow at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin late …

Games 12 Jan 2011, 14:04
Silicon to stop next-gen powerline standards war

Will the mains networking biz put its squabbles behind it?

Powerline networking, which uses ubiquitous home electrical wiring as a pipeline for data, has had a hard time winning popular support. Wireless networking has grabbed most of the public's mindshare, largely thanks to the Intel marketing machine. And the mains wiring technology has struggled with the industry's inability to …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 14:19
China's 'stealth fighter' flies – brown trouser time, or not?

Analysis Benefits the US aerospace industry more than China's

The death-tech beat has spoken of little else but China's new "stealth fighter" for some weeks now – and yesterday, funnily enough just as the US Defense Secretary was visiting Beijing, the J-20 (or whatever it may turn out to be officially called) finally took to the air. The People's Republic is making no real effort to keep …

Science 12 Jan 2011, 14:21
Sony puts PlayStation app on iPhone

Jaw-jaw not war-war

If you can't manage a day away from your PS3, then fear no more, there's an app for that. An official PlayStation app for iPhone is now available from Sony. The application won't, alas, allow users to play games, but they can sign into their PSN account and browse the PlayStation network. Once there, they can read friends' …

Games 12 Jan 2011, 14:27
Friends, GenesReunited cuts losses

Jute, jam, journalism and jeanyology?

Brightsolid – owner of Friendsreunited and several genealogy sites, and provider of IT services – has cut its losses for the year ended 31 March 2010. Brightsolid online technology division provides tech services and support to the company's publishing division and to outside companies. Over the year the division focused on …

The Channel 12 Jan 2011, 14:38
Cuts 'could hit NHS patient record plans'

BMA frets online access will be hard

The British Medical Association believes cutbacks will hinder efforts to allow patients to access their records online. The professional association for doctors says that many NHS organisations do not have IT systems which would allow patients online access to their medical details, and that computing is one of the first areas …

Government 12 Jan 2011, 14:39
Bogus Kama Sutra presentation opens your backdoor to hackers

NSFW 'PowerPoint' file rogers Windows machines

A booby-trapped Kama Sutra-themed presentation will plant a backdoor when run on Windows machines, security watchers warn. The supposed PowerPoint presentation file – called Real kamasutra.pps.exe* – supposedly demonstrates different sexual positions. The file does include a NSFW slideshow of 13 different positions, but this …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 15:05
Airbus secures whopping 180 plane deal

'Biggest single order in commercial aviation history'

Airbus is celebrating the "biggest single order in commercial aviation history" today, having secured a Memorandum of Understanding from Indian operator IndiGo for 180 Airbus A320s. Louis Gallois, chief executive of Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), enthused to the press: "It is the best way …

Science 12 Jan 2011, 15:49
Rackspace accelerates clouds with Akamai

Limelight CDN being phased out

Rackspace Hosting – which is trying to position itself as the alternative to Amazon when it comes to cloud computing and which is one of the big suppliers of traditional hosted servers – has partnered with Akamai Technologies to help speed up application performance on its clouds. This is not the first time that Rackspace has …

The Channel 12 Jan 2011, 15:50
Custom ICs in small numbers to be cheap as (normal) chips

DARPA boffins' amazing claim

The US military says it is on track to revolutionise the world of chip manufacturing by making it possible to produce advanced sub-65-nanometer ICs in small numbers - at the same low unit costs delivered by today's billion-dollar, mass production chip factories. As most Reg readers will be aware, the standard method of putting …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 16:16
T-Mobile backtracks on retrospective mobe data caps

But won't renew generous packages

Having announced a new fair-use limit on existing customers, and facing a huge backlash, T-Mobile has caved and will now only introduce the change for new contracts. Existing customers will keep their existing limits, with for web browsing and media streaming lumped together, while new contracts will only get 500MB of general- …

Mobile 12 Jan 2011, 16:44
T-Mobile u-turns on data cap

Puts the 'fair' back in 'fair use'

A customer backlash has prompted T-Mobile UK to scrap plans to cut fair-use mobile data limits on existing contracts. The company told customers two days ago - Monday, 11 January - that it was reducing fair use data limits to 500MB - previously set as high as 3GB on Android phone contracts - on 1 February. This provoked a …

Mobile 12 Jan 2011, 16:58
Virgin Mobile to throttle 'unlimited' mobile broadband

Bandwidth penalty for transferring 5GB imposed

Virgin Mobile's US division has decided its network can no longer support truly all-you-can-eat mobile broadband without slowing down uploads and downloads. VM's Broadband2Go package provides customers with unlimited data transfers for a $40-a-month fee. From 15 February, they will still have access to as much data as they …

Broadband 12 Jan 2011, 17:13
EMC sidelines Data Domain boss

Update 15-year vet takes over

In a startling turn of events, EMC has apparently sidelined Data Domain boss Frank Slootman, who has led EMC's Backup and Recovery Systems (BRS) division since EMC acquired Data Domain, the leading deduplication systems vendor, in 2009. It's not a spoof announcement. Fifteen-year EMC staffer William "BJ" Jenkins replaces …

Storage 12 Jan 2011, 17:39
Mythical 'iPad 2' caught on camera

'Dummy' vid

There's a smattering of videos YouTubing their way across the web that purport to show the oft-rumored iPad 2 in plain view at last week's Consumer Electronics Show. The Reg is highly skeptical as to their authenticity, but here are two for your edification and enjoyment: The videos are purported to be of a dummy case …

Tablets 12 Jan 2011, 17:57
Open source Java 7 for Mac code appears

Port project, ahoy!

The OpenJDK project has released the first code for the Apple-backed open source version of Java Development Kit 7 for Mac OS X. The initial code – a BSD port – is now available from the new Mac OS X Port Project on the OpenJDK website. The project already offers a mailing list and project wiki, and a bug reporter in on the …

Developer 12 Jan 2011, 18:51
Gawker makes a hash of non-ASCII characters in passwords

Media site becomes a byword for password FAIL

Gawker is phasing out the use of email-address-and-password login in favour of more modern OAuth authentication and the use of anonymous one-off accounts. Tom Plunkett, CTO at Gawker Media, briefly explained the plans in responding to the discovery of another password-related security snafu involving the media news and gossip …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 19:28
Men sentenced for role in international ATM skimming ring

Scammer outted on MySpace

Two men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Tuesday for their roles in an ATM skimming spree that authorities say targeted gas station pumps throughout the United States. David Karapetyan, 32, received a seven-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to 37 felonies related to the scam, which prosecutors said netted more …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 19:36
Microsoft's Novell patent cartel dodges German regulators

Reports of death greatly exaggerated

A Microsoft-led consortium is still set to buy 882 Novell patents. Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. PC World reported here that plans to create CPTN Holdings have been withdrawn, with the publication citing information from the website of the German Federal Cartel Office. CPTN withdrew its application to …

The Channel 12 Jan 2011, 19:51
Supercomputer boffins warm to clouds

High performance ~~computing~~ clouding

A straw poll conducted at the SC10 supercomputing conference indicates that big HPC shops may be eyeing cloudy setups. HPC folks have had to share their servers, storage, and networks for many decades because of the high cost of building large-scale machines, but in general they've been loath to share and have therefore been …

HPC 12 Jan 2011, 20:14
Coming soon: the girl with liquid eyes

I am a long-lasting lightweight liquid lenses camera

Liquid lenses with the potential to "enable a new generation of mobile phone cameras, medical imaging equipment ... and possibly even implantable eye lenses" are on their way. So say researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US, who are working with 'liquid pistons' which double up as liquid lenses. The …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 20:34
Assange vows to drop 'insurance' files on Rupert Murdoch

News Corp and Bank of America too

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he has a trove of private documents on Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp empire and is prepared to release them in the event the whistle-blower website is taken down. “If something happens to me or to WikiLeaks, 'insurance' files will be released,” he told The New Statesman. “There are 504 …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 21:32
Disgruntled TSA data analyst sentenced for sabotage attempt

50 ways to leave your employer

A former data analyst for the Transportation Security Administration was sentenced to two years in prison for planting code in a terrorist screening database server after he was told his position was going to be eliminated. Douglas James Duchak, 46, received the sentence on Tuesday after admitting he planted the sabotage code …

Security 12 Jan 2011, 22:38
Telstra, Samsung launch ~~tied~~ integrated IPTV devices

We’ll give you the DRM for free

When radio was the new, disruptive technology, broadcasters in Australia had a great idea: sell radios that were tied to one station. That way, the sale of the devices would fund the operation of the station. The “walled garden” approach to radio lasted a little over a year, destroyed by hobbyists that built their own, tunable …

Media 12 Jan 2011, 23:00
Pac Fibre secures more funding

PayPal co-founder included in $NZ5.5 million raising

The proposed Pacific Fibre, which if built would add both capacity and competition to the trans-Pacific fibre route, has announced $NZ5.5 million of funding from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel via his Valar Ventures investment vehicle. In an announcement posted on the Pacific Fibre Website, Thiel is quoted as describing the …

Broadband 12 Jan 2011, 23:01
Spain grovels to penguins over 'Linux' anti-terror plot

Violent separatist IT genius crackdown in codename kerfuffle

The Spanish Ministry of the Interior has expressed its regret that an international crackdown on IT masterminds inside the violent Basque separatist group ETA was dubbed "Operation Linux". Apparently, penguin-loving outfits are complaining that the antiterrorist operation sullies their good name. "The Ministry of Home Affairs …

Government 12 Jan 2011, 23:15
Without Meyer, what will AMD do next?

Analysis ARM Micro Devices

Things seemed poised to turn around for AMD in 2011. But the abrupt departure of CEO Dirk Meyer on Monday afternoon – at the exact same time that rivals Intel and Nvidia ceased their hostilities and a week after Nvidia jumped into the processor racket – indicates that AMD's board of directors sees challenges that aren't obvious …

Hardware 12 Jan 2011, 23:16