25th January 2011 Archive

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VMware double-stuffs profits in Q4

Revenues rise 37%

Server and desktop virtualization juggernaut VMware said that it saw the strongest "budget flush" in the fourth quarter of 2010 since it went public more than three years ago, and the extra spending helped pump revenues a bit and profits a lot. In the quarter ended December 31, 2010, VMware reported revenues of $835.7m, up 37. …

Financial News 25 Jan 00:36
Tunisia plants country-wide keystroke logger on Facebook

Gmail and Yahoo! too

Malicious code injected into Tunisian versions of Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo! stole login credentials of users critical of the North African nation's authoritarian government, according to security experts and news reports. The rogue JavaScript, which was individually customized to steal passwords for each site, worked when …

Enterprise Security 25 Jan 01:37
What's worth more in Startup Land? Popularity or cash?

Open...and Shut The developer as currency

Do new startups need to choose between making money or making friends? The obvious answer is that startups should focus on revenue, that they should be "hungry for profit", as Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen writes. That is, after all, what companies are valued on, right? Their ability to generate cash? …

Developer 25 Jan 06:30
Ten... fitness gadgets

Product Round-up Kit and apps to help you get in trim

OK, so it's that time of year again, and every newspaper, website, daytime television show and franchised gymnasium is bombarding you with Xmas-excess guilt. But if you have decided to get fit in 2011, you might find some of these gadgets useful in your quest to attract the opposite sex... er, sorry... improve your health. …

reghardware 25 Jan 07:00
Privacy watchdog urges stronger data protection in EU law review

Also calls for 'right to be forgotten' data-deletion right for citizens

Organisations that have lost personal data should be forced to disclose the data security breach, the European Union's privacy watchdog has said. Planned changes to EU privacy law do not go far enough, said the official. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Peter Hustinx has published an opinion urging the European …

Government 25 Jan 09:43
Coalition failing on UK economy

Slow handclaps from scarpering CBI boss

The Coalition government might be doing a good job of slashing public spending, but it lacks the vision needed to get the UK economy back on track. The criticism comes from outgoing CBI boss Richard Lambert, who used his final speech as boss of the lobby group to lambast the government's failure to outline a path to economic …

Small Biz 25 Jan 09:45
Sepaton whups Data Domain on performance

Cluster-wise, not node-wise

Sepaton's sixth generation dedupe software with OST support makes its clustered system faster than Data Domain's top system, rampaging through incoming data at 43TB/hour. Sepaton produces S2100-ES2 1910 and 2910 high-end deduplicating virtual tape libraries that can have up to eight 2U head nodes clustered together, with a …

Channel Register 25 Jan 10:02
Climategate - the Select Committee reports

Peer review or Pal review? MPs don't want to know

A Parliamentary committee has found the University of East Anglia's two "independent" enquiries into Climategate mildly troubling in parts – but says everyone should keep calm and carry on, only with a little more transparency. The MPs on the Select Committee on Science acknowledge they were misled by University of East Anglia …

Environment 25 Jan 10:26
China plans city 'twice the size of Wales'

Cue 35,636,280 linguine of new rail lines

It's official: the inexorable rise of China has rendered meaningless ancient units of area such as the square mile, as reporters struggle to express the extent of the country's megacities in terms the average reader can understand. Handily for the Telegraph, it can fall back on the accepted Reg standard – the Wales – in …

Bootnotes 25 Jan 10:36
Virgin extends 100Mb/s broadband reach

More lucky locations named

Virgin Media has added five more towns to its list of areas connected to its 100Mb/s cable telly broadband technology. The lucky locations are Cheshunt and Hatfield in Hertfordshire, Cardiff suburb Pentwyn, Treforest in Rhondda, and Southport on Merseyside. Virgin's 100Mb/s service is already available to households in Barry …

reghardware 25 Jan 10:48
ACS:Law turns back on file-sharer court case

We want to litigate, honest

A UK lawyer who was controversially targeting online file-sharers has quit working on the cases currently underway in a patent court in London. Solicitor Andrew Crossley of ACS:Law had been representing the law firm’s client MediaCAT in cases brought against 26 file-sharers. Crossley said in a statement read out in court …

Law 25 Jan 10:49
Reg Hardware Reader Awards 2010 Winners

Reg Hardware Reader Awards 2010 And the Rusty Dodo Award goes to...

The votes are in and counted, and so, without further ado, are the results of the 2010 Reg Hardware Awards. The Awards were split into two groups: Editors' Awards for the best Computer, Lifestyle, Photo, Mobile and Games products of 2010, and ten gongs selected by you, Reg Hardware's readers. We'll cover your winners first. …

reghardware 25 Jan 11:00
Bastard child of SpyEye/ZeuS merger appears online

Updated Malware lovechild monst(e)r/demon

Security researchers have got their hands on the first sample of code from the merger of the ZeuS and SpyEye cybercrime Trojan toolkits. Posts on Russian underground forums last year suggested that Slavik/Monstr, the author of ZeuS, was "retiring"1 from cybercrime and handing over the ZeuS source code to Gribodemon/Harderman, …

Crime 25 Jan 11:21
Google's cloud printing goes physical

Not just a pretty test page

Android and iPhone users of Google's online services can now print too, probably, and if they've got the right supporting equipment. Google launched its cloud printing solution early in December last year, as an essential component of its Chrome OS. That release was only capable of printing out a single test page, limiting its …

Cloud 25 Jan 11:22
Panasonic puts rugged photography on the map

GPS built in to geotag your snaps

Panasonic has extended its range of cameras with a quartet of point-and-shoot snappers, including two that use GPS to ensure that users will never forget where they took their pictures. The company has two new additions to the Lumix TZ range, with the 14.1Mp DMC-TZ18 and DMC-TZ20. Both feature a 24mm wide-angle lenses, a 16x …

reghardware 25 Jan 11:37
Will cloudy Cirtas be a rainmaker?

More VC funding and new CEO

Can it cross the chasm? Cirtas, a cloud storage startup, has hired a professional CEO and secured a $22.5m B-round funding boost. The two-year-old company now has to sustain its momentum and prove its technology's worth. The market for cloud storage gateways is unproven, but technology start-ups are convinced that if cloud …

Cloud 25 Jan 11:43
Greece tells Siemens it wants damages

Bribery probe

The Greek investment minister Haris Pamboukis said yesterday he wanted damages from Siemens following a year-long investigation into bribery allegations. The Greek government has spent 11 months looking at Siemens' track record. It estimates the German conglomerate has cost the country £1.7bn (€2bn). The investigation found …

Channel Register 25 Jan 11:49
HP offers enterprise cloud service

Plus cloud-building infrastructure

HP is offering its own Enterprise Cloud Services directly to enterprises, and announcing a cloud infrastructure building service based on a hybrid delivery model. HP says its hybrid delivery is an integration of traditional IT with private and public cloud services based on service level agreements (SLAs). It wants to offer a …

Cloud 25 Jan 12:01
Motorists' e-car interest revs up

But brake still on buying while prices high, driving range low

Research shows that Britons are now keener than ever on e-car technology, but their willingness to ditch their fossil fuel motors for hybrids or battery vehicles is still being hindered by big rocks in the road. UK vehicle valuation company Glass' recently commissioned a series of surveys designed to measure punters' e-car …

reghardware 25 Jan 12:08
Huawei moves to stop Nokia's Motorola grab

We've left our trade secrets in there

Huawei has applied for an injunction to stop Nokia Siemens Networks getting its hands on Motorola, claiming Moto is still stuffed with its trade secrets. Huawei alleges that Motorola has been reselling its cellular technology for years, having given up doing its own research and development to stick labels on Huawei kit. But …

Mobile 25 Jan 12:13
Tosh intros largest smallest disk

220gig and 1.8-inch...

Toshiba, the effective monopoly supplier of 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD), has announced a 220GB tiny whopper. IDC says Tosh supplied more than 92 per cent of all the 1.8-inch drives shipped in the third quarter of last year. This sector of the HDD market may have been abandoned or avoided by the other three main drive …

Storage 25 Jan 12:26
Crematorium to heat council swimming pool

'A bit strange and eerie', shudders funeral director

A funeral director has described Redditch Borough Council's plan to use crematorium furnaces to heat a municipal swimming pool as "a bit strange and eerie". The authority's novel idea involves sucking calories from Borough Of Redditch Cemeteries & Crematorium to the nearby Abbey Stadium Sports Centre. The facility's cremators …

Bootnotes 25 Jan 12:30
Facebook tightens privacy after friendly warning from Germany

Unsolicited email gets a little tougher in Hamburg, if not world

Facebook will tighten up privacy in its "Friend Finder" feature, following demands from German data protection watchdogs. A deal was struck with German data protection officials in Hamburg yesterday, after Facebook was hit with a privacy storm over unsolicited emailed invites it sent to individuals who hadn't signed up to the …

Law 25 Jan 12:37
iTunes gifting scam plunges Reg reader into the red

'Apple has turned iTunes into pseudo-PayPal, without security'

Surfers who link their debit or credit card to iTunes have reason to be cautious after a Reg reader found his bank account plunged into the red overnight following £1,000 in fraudulent iTunes gift purchases. Reg reader Peter woke up one morning last week to discover an email informing him of a "£10 Monthly Gift for wqfaqapk445 …

Crime 25 Jan 12:38
BlackBerry to Balance free time and the daily grind

Software to keep work separate from play

Research In Motion (RIM) is developing software that will keep BlackBerry users' business use separate from pleasure. CrackBerry owners will be able to maintain their preferred work-life balance with, well, Balance, an app the RIM bosses say will give them effectively two phones in one, Reuters reports. Mobile phone networks …

reghardware 25 Jan 12:40
Kodak fails to stifle iPhone and BlackBerry imports

Patent case winds on

The American International Trade Commission has ruled that neither the iPhone nor RIM's BlackBerry infringe Kodak's patent on previewing images, and so both can continue to be legally imported into the USA. The presiding judge has decided that the patent, which covers previewing HD content in standard definition, isn't being …

Mobile 25 Jan 12:41
Couple crash into church, curse satnav

'Only went where it told me,' says stunned driver

Two Britons landed themselves in a German hospital after they allegedly followed satnav instructions - and drove straight into a church. The unnamed couple were driving in freezing conditions from Austria to France on Friday when the car's satnav said, "turn right", The Times reports. The 76-year-old driver did as he was told …

reghardware 25 Jan 12:50
Scotland bans smut. What smut? Won't say

Filth-lovers won't know what the law is until they break it

The Scottish legal authorities have no time for criminals who – unsportingly – try to change their behaviour in order to avoid committing criminal acts and ending up in court. That is the strange conclusion that follows from a reply we received last week from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which is responsible …

Law 25 Jan 13:01
Microsoft files US trade complaint against TiVo

Square eye meets black eye in dark alley

Microsoft has filed a US trade complaint against TiVo in which it has demanded the company halts the import of television set-top boxes. In the complaint, which was presented to the US International Trade Commission in Washington yesterday, Microsoft accused TiVo of infringing four patents, Bloomberg reports. The software …

Music and Media 25 Jan 13:10
Next smartphone tech? Predator style thermal cameras

Soon we'll all be picking keypad locks with our mobes

It's seemed like a long road, perhaps, but arguably the destination has been reached. PDAs have incorporated mobile phones and acquired increasingly zippy and flexible mobile/wireless data connections. Cameras have come aboard, and in some cases have become quite good. The resulting smartphones have since added the capabilities …

Mobile 25 Jan 13:21
Hitachi GST leads 3TB enterprise drive pack

First out of the gate

Hitachi GST has announced the highest capacity large enterprise drive at 3TB. The Ultrastar 7K3000 spins at 7,200rpm with a two million hour mean time before failure rating, the industry’s highest MTBF on a 7200rpm HDD. It has five platters and sports both SAS and SATA interface options at 6Gbit/s, another first. There is a …

Storage 25 Jan 13:35
Why can't we do better than these crappy torrent sites?

P2P sites are getting poisoned again – and nobody seems to care

Here's a puzzling thing that gets lost in the copyright wars. Why don't we demand more from music services? Today's P2P services are embarrassingly crappy – but is this the best we're ever going to get? The very proposition is an insult to our intelligence. Since Napster closed, they've always been a dispiriting experience. …

Music and Media 25 Jan 14:00
US Wikileaks investigators can't link Assange to Manning

Imprisoned soldier looks set to take all the heat

American media are reporting that investigators are unable to prove that WikiLeaks and its colourful figurehead Julian Assange obtained classified US files from jailed soldier Bradley Manning, allegedly the source of most of WikiLeaks' significant material. If true, this is likely to present serious obstacles to US-based …

Government 25 Jan 14:03
Angry Birds 2 shots spied on web?

German TV shows Valentine's version too

Shots of what may be one of the year's most eagerly awaited sequels, Angry Birds 2, have appeared on German telly. A Valentine's Day update to the original is coming next month too. Deutsche Welle last week posted a feature piece on Angry Birds - winner of the Reg Hardware Readers' Awards Mobile Game of the Year - developer …

reghardware 25 Jan 14:14
Fujitsu hails first bio-mouse

How fantastic, no oil-based plastic

This, apparently, is the world's greenest mouse. The Fujitsu rodent, dubbed the M440, can be entirely recycled, the company claims, because it contains no plastic. It's also bio-degradable. The mouse's non-metallic parts are made from a mix of materials all created using biologically sourced renewable compounds such as …

reghardware 25 Jan 14:33
Apple patents miracle combo mouse-keyboard

Fondlebutton stroker device: rodent slayer?

Apple has filed a patent for a hybrid keyboard, combining the utility of a FingerWorks surface with the tactility of physical keys though the practical application of cameras. Since Apple bought FingerWorks - makers of multi-function keyboards for the well-heeled - it's applied multitouch technology to everything; except the …

Hardware 25 Jan 14:48
Facebook flick up for 8 Oscars, King's Speech for 12

Inarticulate geeks, royals tussle for doco glory

David Fincher's flick The Social Network has gobbled up eight Oscar nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards. The movie, which loosely chronicles the early life of Facebook and its baby-faced founders, is in the best picture category alongside Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, 127 …

Entertainment 25 Jan 14:51
Amazon offers cloud based bulk emailer to SMEs

It's raining spam! Hallelujah

Amazon is offering a bulk emailer for businesses via its cloud services arm Amazon Web Services. Amazon's Simple Email Service - Amazon SES to its friends - allows you to send up to 2,000 emails a day for free, if they come from another Amazon cloud service. The book and services giant says that messages can be sent for as …

Small Biz 25 Jan 15:03
Bagle shoots ahead of Rustock in spam-pumping triumph

Gets off more bot deliveries than rival

The Bagle botnet has replaced Rustock as the single biggest source of email spam since the start of January. The miscreants behind Rustock took a break from sending out pharmaceutical spam over the festive season before returning earlier this month. Since its return on 10 January, Rustock made up for lost time and sent 17.5 …

Spam 25 Jan 15:25
Aussies demand Poms cough up first 'Australia' map

Oz 'Elgin Marbles' were drawn by Brit while in Mauritius

A group of Oz agitators is demanding Blighty hand over the first map of the Lucky Country to use the word "Australia". The Australian "birth certificate" was drawn up by Brit explorer and cartographer Matthew Flinders, a Royal Navy officer, who from 1801-1803 surveyed Terra Australis, as it was then known. The home leg of his …

Bootnotes 25 Jan 15:59
Google is hiring 1,000 in Europe

Half techies, half sales monkeys - get your CVs in

Google is hiring 1,000 more people to deal with European expansion. Eric Schmidt, soon-to-be-ex-chief exec at the search and ad giant, told a conference in Germany that the company will increase European headcount by 20 per cent, from 5,000 to 6,000 by the end of the year. Schmidt told the DLD conference in Munich that the …

Business 25 Jan 16:01
HP blackens the skies with Cloud offerings

Analysis CloudSystem, CloudStart also punted as, well ... clouds

As El Reg previously reported, HP this morning announced a private cloud stack of integrated servers, storage, switches, systems management tools, and virtualization hypervisors called CloudSystem. The CloudSystem setup is comprised of the BladeSystem Matrix blade servers, announced in April 2009, ironically on the same day that …

Cloud 25 Jan 16:30
Bookshop swaps Kindles for real books

Paperback righter

Are you entirely unsatisfied with the digital publishing revolution? Do you curse your Kindle? One bookseller has the answer: it'll swap your unwanted e-book reader for a stack of paperbacks, hardbacks and magazines. Portland, Oregon-based Microcosm Publishing said it will trade a Kindle - a gadget it slams as "soulless faux- …

reghardware 25 Jan 16:49
Apple plotting point-of-sale putsch?

iPhone, iPads in NFC rumor

The next round of Apple iPhones and iPads will include near-field communications tech, says one industry watcher, a move that would give further legitimacy to that point-of-sale payment system. "Apple could be the game-changer," Richard Doherty, director of the consulting firm Envisioneering Group, told Bloomberg on Tuesday, …

Mobile 25 Jan 19:01
Fedora servers breached after external compromise

Open sourcer account hacked

Servers belonging to the Fedora Project were breached over the weekend by an unknown hacker who gained access though a team member's account. The compromise of fedorapeople.org meant that the attacker had the ability, however briefly, to push changes to Fedora's SCM system. There's no evidence any such updates were made or that …

Security 25 Jan 19:19
Google gives Voice to your mobile number

Number ports go live

Google now lets you port your existing mobile phone number to Google Voice, the new-age telephony web service that lets you attach a single number to multiple phones and turn your voicemail messages into emails. This means you can now turn your existing mobile phone number into your Google Voice number – the number you can use …

Mobile 25 Jan 19:22
Unix dynamic duo awarded Japan Prize

Torvalds, Gosling next?

Gray beard Bell Labs scientists and Unix operating system co-creators Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson have been awarded the 2011 Japan Prize for information and communications. Ritchie worked at Bell Labs (in its many incarnations) until he retired in 2007. Thompson held positions at Bell Labs as well as at the University of …

Operating Systems 25 Jan 19:28
Coder Android love (nearly) matches iPhone lust

Googasm rising

Android handsets are nearly as popular as the iPhone among mobile app developers, according to a new study. The latest mobile survey from IDC and Appcelerator – the outfit whose Titantium kit lets developers build mobile applications with traditional web tools – indicates that 87 per cent of mobile developers are "very …

Developer 25 Jan 20:53
Verizon backpedals on unlimited iPhone data

Secure hook, reel in

Verizon performed a "two steps forward, one step back" dance on Tuesday, first announcing that it would offer an unlimited data plan for its upcoming CDMA iPhone, then revealing that its bandwidth munificence would be available only as an introductory offer. "I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot," Verizon COO Lowell …

Mobile 25 Jan 20:54
HomeGrid makes a date for powerline testing trysts

Is my G.hn adaptor compatible with yours?

The HomeGrid Forum, the organisation promoting the use of the G.hn, a next-generation powerline networking standard, has pledged to put in place what it needs to begin device interoperability testing during the first half of the year. It's a rather broad timeline, but many slip twixt cup and lip, and all that. Still, does it …

reghardware 25 Jan 21:48
Oracle retains open source dictatorship

Hudson fork movement swells

A popular Oracle-controlled open-source project faces a forking after the software giant reiterated that it will restrict what coders can change.</p Oracle has said that open sourcers are free to extend Project Hudson, the software-build and monitoring service it inherited from Sun Microsystems. They can add as many plug-ins …

Developer 25 Jan 21:51
Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down

Man fought the law and the ~~law~~ man won

A Seattle man has been acquitted of all charges brought against him when he refused to show ID to TSA officials and videotaped the incident at an airport security checkpoint. Prosecutors' case against Phil Mocek was so weak that he was found not guilty without testifying or calling a single witness, the Papers, Please! blog …

ID 25 Jan 22:27
Jaspersoft open sources Big Data connectors

Surfs Hadoop, NoSQL, MMP

Jaspersoft has introduced an open source project designed to help you digest information held in Big Data web stores. The company's Native Reporting Big Data project seeks to build connectors that can natively query data in a slew of NoSQL databases and other stores. Currently, the project offers connectors for NoSQL databases …

Software 25 Jan 23:23
Yahoo! revenues! dip! 4! per! cent!

Microsoft marriage pains

Yahoo! revenues dipped 4 per cent during its fourth quarter as the company adjusts to life as a Microsoft spouse. During the quarter ending December 31, Yahoo!' pulled in $1.2bn if you exclude traffic acquisition costs, down from $1.26bn in the same quarter last year. The company said the 4 per cent drop was due in large part …

Financial News 25 Jan 23:24
Chocolate Factory gets new Charlie in Oz

Murdoch’s Leeder takes helm in old media-new media ship-jump

Google Australia and New Zealand has appointed former deputy editor of The Australian Nick Leeder as its new managing director. Leeder will lead the company in what Google's Asia Pacific & Japan VP Daniel Alegre calls an exciting time (well, apparently the Google statement says that he said this, and who am I to argue?). …

Business 25 Jan 23:37
Platform Computing fluffs cloudy control freak

Strap yourself into a 'cloud cockpit'

HPC management-tool provider Platform Computing has tweaked its Infrastructure Sharing Facility tools, adding support for public as well as private clouds, deepening integration with VMware's vSphere stack, and adding a "cloud cockpit" with which sysadmins can monitor all of their cloudy services. "As an open, end-to-end …

Cloud 25 Jan 23:46
IANA address space running on empty

'I’m not an optimist' – APNIC's Geoff Huston

APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston – long known as an address space tracker and one of the founders of Australia’s Internet connectivity – has warned Linux Conference Australia 2011 delegates that new address allocations are about to cease. He has told the conference that IANA [the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] will …

Networks 25 Jan 23:51