The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

26th January 2011 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Man knows when you're signed in to GMail, Twitter, Digg

    Porn and warez logins ahoy!

    A UK-based web developer has figured out a simple way to tell if visitors to his site are logged in to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Digg and thousands of other websites. One method developed by Mike Cardwell of Nottingham makes use of status codes returned by many sites, which differ depending on whether a user is logged in or not …

    ID 26 Jan 2011, 03:51

  • Intel sings duet with Black Eyed Pea will.i.am

    Don't phunk with my Xeon e5620

    Intel has appointed Black Eyed Peas front man and multi-platinum artist will.i.am as its new "director of creative innovation". "Nearly everything I do involves processors and computers," Mr. am told attendees at an Intel sales and marketing conference in Anaheim, California. "And when I see an Intel chip I think of all the …

    Music and Media 26 Jan 2011, 04:18

  • Super Micro rides server upgrade wave

    $1bn breaker

    Server and system component maker Super Micro is coming out of the Great Recession riding a pent-up server upgrade cycle where plenty of customers are still looking to save a little bit more money on their iron. Many buyers are looking to Super Micro and its resellers to make them kit instead of Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM, or …

    Financial News 26 Jan 2011, 04:22

  • O2 to fling out free Wi-Fi for all

    Hotspots galore (and lots of lovely ads)

    O2 is planning to deploy 13,000 Wi-Fi hotspots over the next two years, with free internet access in exchange for your mobile number and a few quid from the venue. The network won't just be for O2 customers: anyone with a mobile phone will be able to sign up to the service, which will provide free internet access while logging …

    Mobile 26 Jan 2011, 05:00

  • Bookeen CyBook Orizon

    Review Kindle killer?

    Should you be considering Bookeen's CyBook Orizon as your new e-book reader, the only question you really need ask yourself is, do you want to pay an 80 quid extra for a touchscreen. Bookeen's Cybook Orizon: spanning the gap between e-book readers and tablets Amazon's drive to bring down the price of e-book readers means …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 07:00

  • CoD: Black Ops 'not fit for purpose', fans claim

    Call on OFT to probe Activision

    After last year's petition, in which gamers demanded their money back for Call of Duty: Black Ops, an independent pressure group has reported Activision to the Office for Fair Trading. Gamers' Voice, which lobbies on behalf of UK gamers, claims Black Ops' fails to function as advertised. In an open letter to the OFT, the …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 08:00

  • Sage reports gentle SMB spending

    Steady as she goes

    Accountancy software company Sage is seeing a steady flow of small businesses spending money on its products in the firm's first quarter. Newcastle-based Sage, which just last week launched an online accounting package aimed squarely at SMBs, said in a statement this morning that results for each of its divisions were in line …

    Small Biz 26 Jan 2011, 09:19

  • TMS doubles flash RamSan Fibre Channel speed

    Working on eMLC flash RamSan

    TMS has doubled its flash-based RamSan-630's Fibre Channel speed from 4 to 8Gbit/s, meaning 10GB/sec bandwidth, and is working on eMLC-based flash product. The 630 is a 3U enclosure holding up to 10TB of single level cell (SLC) flash with up to 10 Infiniband (IB) or Fibre Channel ports. It delivers 10GB/sec across the IB ports …

    Storage 26 Jan 2011, 10:01

  • Samsung expands Galaxy universe

    New budget smartphones for the downturn

    Samsung has taken the wraps off a quartet of smartphones ahead of next month's Mobile World Congress show, the usual launch pad for handsets this time of year. All four Galaxy-branded phones - the Ace, Mini, Fit and Gio - run Android 2.2 Froyo and sport all the usual accoutrements of modern smartphones, including 2.4GHz 802. …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 10:03

  • HP Palm tablet specs outed

    iPad meets WebOS

    It was bound to happen: the upcoming Palm tablet's specifications have leaked out of HP. And, WebOS and inductive charging aside - and both of these are Palm smartphone standards - it's unexceptional stuff considering what all the other tablet makers are going to offer. The specs were leaked to Pre Central. The CPU is a 1. …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 10:21

  • Mozilla reaches for almost perfect 10 with latest Firefox 4 beta

    Is that a browser in your trouser or...

    Mozilla has pushed out another beta for Firefox 4, just nine days after the last test build iteration of the forthcoming browser arrived. Firefox 4 beta 10 comes with very few changes, given that the browser is at a stable stage and was granted the all-important feature complete level late last year. The browser will come …

    Applications 26 Jan 2011, 10:37

  • UK tech retailers are rubbish

    Stop me if you've heard this one...

    Staff at UK electrical retailers such as Currys and Comet know nothing about the products they're selling – unless you're after an extended warranty of course. This revelation comes not from usual source of the bleeding obvious WikiLeaks but from consumer organisation Which? It made 154 visits to shops including Currys, Comet …

    Channel Register 26 Jan 2011, 10:39

  • Smarter security for smartphones

    Getting that balance with ease of use

    Mobile phones are emotive devices. They have your kids as the wallpaper, texts saying who loves you and both your work and personal lives in one. Even if it’s a company device there is an emotional bond between the user and the device that is unlike any other. Very few people feel precious about their laptop. Mobile phones are …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 11:02

  • iPad propels Apple into top-three PC vendor placement

    Industry has got to tally tablets, insists researcher

    Apple is the third largest computer maker in the world... if you include the iPad in its sales tally. So shows Q4 2010 numbers from market watcher Canalys, which put the Mac maker behind HP and Acer with a market share of 10.8 per cent. That's the same as Dell, though a closer look at the figures show Apple shipped 11.5m units …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 11:04

  • Zuckerberg's Facebook page hacked

    Pranky protest pwnage

    Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page was hacked on Tuesday to promote an alternative business plan for the social network site. Unknown pranksters defaced the page with a message suggesting that Facebook ought to allow ordinary users to invest in the site in a "social way", rather than getting its financing from the banks. The …

    Enterprise Security 26 Jan 2011, 11:24

  • The cloud, security and hosted apps

    Webcast Do the 3 go together?

    Today at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT our usual host Tim Phillips will be joined by Andrew Buss, service director with Freeform Dynamics, and Eran Feigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps, to discuss the security and privacy issues surrounding hosted apps. Whatever your plans for the desktop, whether you're upgrading …

    Hosted Apps 26 Jan 2011, 11:29

  • Israeli firm readies pocket-friendly desktop PC

    Set to help Linux lovers wrestle with ARM

    Israel-based maker of wee PCs, CompuLab, has said it will ship an even more tiny machine in April. The Trim-Slice's 2.5in HDD-like dimensions are all due to Nvidia's Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip. Of course, being ARM-based, you won't be running Windows on the Trim-Slice - not yet, at any rate - and Linux-on-ARM is at a relatively …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 11:39

  • Samsung TV app competition - no winners here

    Half a million Euros fails to raise interest

    The European round of Samsung's Smart TV competition is open to voting, with half a million Euros up for grabs as developers push television way beyond distance viewing. The competition closed to entries last week, but is now open to a public vote on who should get the prizes. Those prizes are split to three regions, UK …

    Developer 26 Jan 2011, 12:00

  • Egypt slams lid on protests, Twitter

    Shut up, shut down

    The Egyptian government has banned further protests against the long rule of President Mubarak and shut off access to Twitter after a day of violent protests left three people dead. Protests, and reaction to them, left two protesters and one policeman dead. The government today banned any more demonstrations and said …

    Government 26 Jan 2011, 12:01

  • Gelsinger hails fat first year at EMC

    Results good under new COO

    EMC has posted impressive results for 2010, after a year of being driven hard by new COO Pat Gelsinger. Revenues are up 19 per cent year-on-year for its fourth 2010 quarter (Q4) to $4.9bn, while full year revenues were up 21 per cent to $17bn. Net income for Q4 was $628.6m, a 61 per cent jump, but the full year profits jump of …

    Storage 26 Jan 2011, 12:02

  • Videogame TRAINS TERRORISTS, yells pundit

    Art mirrors life - or vice versa?

    Modern combat-inspired first-person shooter series Call of Duty may have unwittingly influenced the attack on Moscow's Domodedovo airport, it has been claimed. The allegation was made by TV channel Russia Today and arises from a mission in CoD: Modern Warfare 2 called "No Russian" in which a player goes on a rampage gunning …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 12:08

  • Seagate tells flash bigots to get real

    Comment No way flash will boot disks out of notebooks

    Disk drive vendor Seagate has issued a document that tells flash evangelists to get real – there is no way flash will kick disk drives out of notebook storage for many years to come. The pdf document is called "NAND Flash: Can It Meet the Growing StorageCapacity Demands of the LaptopPC Market?" and it's short enough to …

    Storage 26 Jan 2011, 12:17

  • US cyberwar firing range to demo by July

    Weapons-grade warez to hammer 'replicant' sim-people

    DARPA has announced that its planned "National Cyber Range" – an artificial, sealed-off internet inhabited by simulated nodes, computers, sysadmins, users etc in which the USA can test-fire cyber weapons and practice cyber combat – is to reach demonstration status by July this year. Lockheed Martin, working on the Range on …

    Science 26 Jan 2011, 12:21

  • Single complaint sparks police raid and total ban on rental movie

    DVD-pushers de-shelf necrophilia-themed porn star's tale

    Northampton police have seized A Serbian Film from Blockbusters, despite the fact that the version on offer had been approved by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The raid’s chilling effect was instant, with Blockbuster taking down links to the film from their website and removing it from from stores across the …

    Policing 26 Jan 2011, 12:30

  • Storage array vendors vs. the cloud

    New kids on the blocks

    Storage array vendors have a problem with their customers storing data in the cloud. They already sell to these customers but cloud service providers are cannier buyers typically and may favour cheaper and cloud-specific kit from other suppliers. What should storage array vendors do? Their value is not in the disk drive …

    Infrastructure 26 Jan 2011, 12:33

  • Tory MP accidentally endorses... German pr0n site

    As one does

    Red-faced Tory MP Francis Maude last night denied all responsibility for the content of a German SmutSite – and then quietly removed a link to it from his own personal front page. The embarrassment seems to have arisen after Francis Maude, the member for Horsham, and Henry Smith, MP for neighbouring Crawley, got together to …

    Government 26 Jan 2011, 12:50

  • More than just snow hurting small biz

    Time for Osborne to act, say SMB groups

    Yesterday's fall in GDP cannot be blamed on mere bad weather and shows the government must do more for small businesses or risk a double-dip recession, business lobby groups have said. Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics said the GDP fell by 0.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to 0.7 per cent growth …

    Small Biz 26 Jan 2011, 12:52

  • Rescue mission begins for Hitchhiker's Real Guide

    BBC offloads h2g2, but don't panic!

    Members of the h2g2 community consortium are in the market for someone to buy the site or donate some cash to the cause, after the BBC confirmed earlier this week that it was ending its 10-year hosting of Douglas Adams’ Real Guide to the Galaxy. The portal, a forerunner to Jimbo Wales’s runaway train Wikipedia, was unleashed …

    Music and Media 26 Jan 2011, 12:55

  • WTF is... wireless HDMI?

    Look, ma, no cables

    We’re now all used to HDMI, the digital equivalent of the once-ubiquitous Scart connector, the latest versions of which are capable of supporting multi-channel audio, 3D TV and a return channel, so you can feed the sound back from your TV’s tuner to a surround sound system. It has, to be honest, some rough edges here and there …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 13:00

  • Tesco axes VAT from laptops

    20 per cent off while stocks last

    Tesco is knocking the VAT off a stack of notebooks and netbooks in a bid to get downturn-dashed Britons buying again. The deal will see prices in stores and online reduced by 20 per cent, effectively removing the impact of the new, higher VAT rate. A case in point: Samsung's Galaxy Tab, which Tesco was selling for £449, will …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 13:28

  • Croc feels crummy after chomping on phone

    See ya later, alligator

    Nibbling a Nokia for lunch could have health implications - just ask the ravenous crocodile that swallowed one whole. Clumsy Kiev aquarium visitor Rimma Golovko dropped her phone while trying to snap a shot of Gena, a 14-year-old croc, who subsequently shot in with a snap of its own and wolfed the handset down, AP reports. …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 13:38

  • Little Big Planet 2

    Review Salvador Dali eat your heart out

    Sorry, did I forget your birthday? Ah, well that’s because the Mexican and Japanese levels of the first Little Big Planet constantly occupy a large part of my addled brain. With the latest incarnation, Sony could have easily cashed in on people of my ilk, as we would have brought an inferior product just because it reminded us …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 13:58

  • Sat-spotters find secret payload launched by giant US rocket

    Basically a Hubble telescope – but pointed down, not up

    Amateur skywatchers say they have located the secret spacecraft launched aboard a giant US rocket on Friday. It is thought to be an optical spy satellite of a type which had been retired, but has now been brought back into service due to the failure of its replacement. The spacecraft, initially referred to as NROL-49*, has …

    Space 26 Jan 2011, 14:00

  • Google buys social network-compatible voicemail operation

    Ma Bell Tinkerbell Zuckerbell

    Google has splashed out on SayNow, a start-up service that provides celebrities with Twitter-like voicemail, as it tries to take voice into the 21st century. SayNow is only five years old, but claims 15 million people use its SayNow Broadcast service, which delivers celebrity soundbites to interested fans while enabling them …

    VoIP 26 Jan 2011, 14:03

  • Israelis seize woman packing 44 iPhones

    Pervscanner thwarts stocking-smuggling plan

    Operatives at Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport last week thwarted an elderly woman's attempt to enter the country packing 44 iPhone 4s. According to Haaretz, the sexagenarian Israeli smuggler had flown in from London, dressed in "a traditional Georgian outfit". She aroused suspicion by "walking with difficulty", and …

    Bootnotes 26 Jan 2011, 14:04

  • 'You offend me, sir, with your pathetic writing'

    FoTW What the f*ck is this piece even about?

    It has been a while since we've had a decent Flame of the Week. This is a strong candidate who breathes life into this venerable Reg institution. It is in response to my piece Why can't we do better than these crappy torrent sites? (P2P sites are getting poisoned again – and nobody seems to care)... What the fuck is this …

    Letters 26 Jan 2011, 14:27

  • Conficker Group muses on hits and misses

    New report puts whack-a-worm tactics to bed

    The Conficker Working Group has hailed its success in neutralising domains programmed to act as control hubs for the infamous worm, while lamenting its failure to mount a comprehensive clean-up operation against infected PCs or to bring its authors to justice. Members of the Group reflect on the long battle against the …

    Malware 26 Jan 2011, 14:45

  • TalkTalk talks job cuts

    Restructuring ahoy

    TalkTalk, the broadband provider spun off from CarphoneWarehouse, is cutting jobs. The company held meetings with staff this morning as part of the consultation process. In total 580 jobs will go as part of a major restructure. TalkTalk is the result of several mergers and takeovers, including Tiscali UK. Chief Executive …

    Telecoms 26 Jan 2011, 15:03

  • The weakest link in Software as a Service

    Is that an elephant I see in the room?

    The delivery of cloud based application functionality via the Software as a Service (SaaS) model frequently sparks security-related concerns. In our latest workshop on hosted apps, Reg readers have been very forthcoming about their nervousness in this area. In parallel with the workshop, however, we have been gathering data …

    Hosted Apps 26 Jan 2011, 15:21

  • Mid-Atlantic Ocean temperatures peaked in 1998

    Cooling since then 'not caused by climate change'

    The water temperature in the subtropical Atlantic Ocean has cooled down since 1998, oceanographers report. Measurements since 1957 had shown a rise of more than ¼ of a degree up to that point, but between 1998 and 2006 the ocean stopped warming and cooled by 0.15°C in the same area. The measurements of sea temperature were …

    Energy 26 Jan 2011, 15:52

  • Femtocell experts create even tinier porta-base station

    Everywhere you go, you take the network with you. If it lets you

    Femtocell experts Ubiquisys have designed an even smaller network base station that you can take on holiday to dispense with roaming rates forever - if your network will let you. The Attocell, as Ubiquisys would have it, broadcasts at such low power that it's legal to use in many countries, including America, without a licence …

    Mobile 26 Jan 2011, 16:16

  • Dell: Alienware m11x hinge crisis closure near

    Fix coming even if your PC's out of warranty

    Problems some punters have experience with the hinges on the Alienware M11x gaming laptop may soon be sorted out, at long last. In a brief post on a Dell support forum, spied by Engadget, Dell staffer Chris M reports that M11x hinge fixes will come "around March". He couldn't be more specific than that, he admitted, because …

    reghardware 26 Jan 2011, 16:39

  • Robust network spending drives Juniper's Q4

    Too expensive to be acquired

    All eyes were on upstart network equipment maker Juniper Networks concerning its fourth quarter, as the company has become a bellwether of sorts for cloudy infrastructure spending. Juniper made Wall Street happy because it had a better than expected end to 2010, and gave a guidance for 2011 that was consistent with its …

    Data Networking 26 Jan 2011, 17:04

  • Utah to honour Browning M1911 semi-automatic

    Official state gun 'has defended American values'

    Utah is poised to adopt the classic Browning M1911 semi-automatic as its official "state gun", in honour of native John Browning who invented the weapon in 1911. The proposal to add the M1911 to Utah's roster of approved symbols, including state cooking pot and state folk dance*, "breezed" through a House Political …

    Bootnotes 26 Jan 2011, 17:10

  • Facebook offers 500 million users SSL crypto

    Turn it on yourself...bitch

    Facebook is giving all users the option of accessing its social networking service via SSL encryption. The move comes a day after pranksters hacked into the Facebook page of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and less than a month after the company reportedly turned on SSL encryption for anyone viewing the site inside Tunisia, where …

    Security 26 Jan 2011, 18:08

  • Intel pumps $100m into university research

    Philanthropy or enlightened self interest?

    Intel is launching a $100M, five-year program to juice university research in the US on advanced computing projects, an effort that will attempt to walk the fine line between pure research and marketable product development. "What makes this different from other industry efforts to engage the academic researcher is that we're …

    Hardware 26 Jan 2011, 18:51

  • Newspaper site pulls plug after 'sustained' hack attack

    'Crisis management'

    South African newspaper The Mail & Guardian pulled down its website on Wednesday to protect readers against “sustained attacks” that attempted to infect them with malware. Online editor Chris Roper told The New Age that the hackers had been conducting phishing attacks on the site and the worry was that someone would be duped. …

    Security 26 Jan 2011, 19:21

  • Verizon bundles Google Apps with small biz broadband

    Strange BFFs in web office suite tag team

    Verizon is now bundling Google's online Apps suite with broadband services for small- and medium-sized businesses. Known as Google Apps for Verizon, the new offering is available to any business that subcribes to Verizon internet service and Verizon's voice or TV service (or both), and it includes three free Google Apps …

    SaaS 26 Jan 2011, 19:40

  • Oracle eases Java's Oracle big-boy bias

    Apache swapped for Brazilians

    Oracle wants to slip one of the world's largest Java user groups into the JCP seat abandoned by Apache. The database giant has nominated Brazil's SouJava to fill Apache's old seat on the Java Community Processes' Standard Edition/Enterprise Edition Executive Committee (EC), and group founder and recent president Bruno Souza – …

    Developer 26 Jan 2011, 20:06

  • CA buys Torokina Networks

    Absorbs Sydney integration, implementation partner

    Torokina Networks, a small Sydney-based developer and CA channel partner, has been acquired by CA. Announcing the acquisition, CA described the company as “a leader in delivering state-of-the-art service assurance management solutions to 3G, 4G and LTE communication service providers worldside”. Prior to its acquisition, …

    Channel Register 26 Jan 2011, 21:22

  • Cisco borgs network 'guardian angel'

    Pari prodigal sons

    Networking giant Cisco Systems is acquiring privately held Pari Networks for an undisclosed sum. Pari, according to company co-founder and CEO Kishore Kumar, means "guardian angel" in Sanskrit, and the Paritra Security Appliance that the company created is supposed to be an angel watching over your network devices, doing …

    Financial News 26 Jan 2011, 22:05

  • Google unleashes Android fondleslab SDK

    'Holographic' interface sneak peek

    Google has released an unfinished SDK for the upcoming Honeycomb incarnation of Android, a release intended for touch tablets as well as smartphones. According to Xavier Ducrohet, Google's Android SDK tech lead, Honeycomb is "specifically designed to give developers the tools and capabilities they need to create great …

    Developer 26 Jan 2011, 22:13

  • Dell talks shopping in Davos

    $13.4bn $7.4bn to burn

    Everybody wants to know what Dell is going to do to build up its business through acquisitions, but founder Michael Dell is only talking in vagaries, as is the norm at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dell – the man – was on hand for the Forum, and took the opportunity to take a swipe at rival HP while at the …

    Servers 26 Jan 2011, 22:34