The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

31st January 2011 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Assange relishes US banks 'squirming' over 'megaleak'

    Accuses America of chucking free speech in rubbish bin

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he enjoys watching US banks "squirm" as he threatens to expose them with a "megaleak" of confidential documents. "I think it's great," Assange told the venerable US television news magazine 60 Minutes on Sunday evening. "We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them." "You …

    Government 31 Jan 05:06

  • Samsung loads Lovefilm onto BD boxes

    Stream at will

    DVD rental and movie streaming service Lovefilm is to be rolled out to Samsung Blu-ray Disc players. About time too. Samsung added the Amazon-owned firm's video-on-demand service to its internet-connectable tellies in May 2010. There's already a Lovefilm 'app' that Samsung BD player owners can download if they've connected …

    reghardware 31 Jan 09:46

  • Is Angry Birds 2 a Fox film spin-off?

    Rovio reveals Rio tie-in

    Games developer Rovio has struck a deal with 20th Century Fox, paving the way for a further 45 levels of Angry Birds to hit mobiles this March. Angry Birds Rio sees the furious flock from the original title forcefully dragged to South America, where they escape capture and embark on a mission to save some friends. The pals in …

    reghardware 31 Jan 09:54

  • Hansard to pulp paper processes

    Parliament's official recorder plans switchover to digital

    Parliament's official recorder is planning to leave the paper age by processing ministers' written answers electronically. In April Hansard will launch a Parliamentary Questions Project to process responses to written questions electronically, a spokesperson said. The project is part of the three-year parliamentary Procedural …

    Government 31 Jan 10:12

  • BlackBerry beats iPhone to top UK smartphone

    Rim claims 2010 lead

    Research in Motion (Rim) has insisted its BlackBerry is the most popular smartphone in Britain. The company based its claim on stats from market watcher GfK which, it said, show that more BlackBerrys were bought in December 2010 than any other brand, giving it 36 per cent of the UK smartphone market and 14.9 per cent of the …

    reghardware 31 Jan 10:20

  • Facebook system messages subverted by French pranksters

    Schoolboy schooled me in schoolboy French...

    Facebook's attempts to crowd-source translations of system messages have been abused by French pranksters. The French language equivalent of Report/Block this person (Signaler/bloquer cette personne) offers a strange option for reasons why a surfer might want to have nothing to do with another Facebook member. Zéroosiix The …

    ID 31 Jan 10:22

  • Poll confirms Reg Hardware readers' verdict

    Broadband Award winners gain follow-up gongs

    We have to agree with Broadband Genie: O2 and Virgin Media are currently the country's best service providers. The two Reg Hardware Readers Awards winners both topped the broadband price comparison site's own survey, Broadband Genie said today. BG's results came from 3000 punters across the country who were questioned by …

    reghardware 31 Jan 10:50

  • Ten... wireless keyboards

    Product Round-up Finger clicking good

    I feel sorry for keyboards. Despite tapping away constantly at one, I can't say I give mine any regard. Fairly rapidly, so it seems, they get covered in reminders of our lifestyle excesses and tacky habits. And when our computers are to blame for something, its usually the keyboard that soaks up the frustration. Well, I'm going …

    reghardware 31 Jan 11:08

  • In defence of Comic Sans

    Stob Comic Sans Relief? I already gave

    Good Morning!!! A Facebook pal recently posted to his status: Whenever you see this font, raise your fists and shout "Comic saaaaans!" This is a splendid idea, and I have already promised him on your behalf that we will all join in this game. But it made me wonder: what is it about Comic Sans that inspires such excitement? …

    Verity Stob 31 Jan 11:12

  • Hosted apps and corporate security

    Video Does security fit into the cloud

    Early last week our usual host Tim Phillips was joined by Andrew Buss, service director with Freeform Dynamics, and Eran Feigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps, to discuss security in the cloud. They look at whether SaaS is a safe option for businesses. What happens when the network is not available? Whether SaaS …

    Hosted Apps 31 Jan 11:22

  • Facebook launches location-tracking Places Deals

    Targeted advertising is go

    Facebook sank its teeth into more corners of Europe’s consumer market today, with the launch of a new mobile phone feature that it has dubbed ‘Places Deals’. The social network’s latest service tentacle rewards users who are happy to provide information about their whereabouts to Facebook with discounts and other offers. …

    Mobile 31 Jan 11:38

  • Google wants Android developers

    Step right up, all of you

    Google is about to hire "dozens" of mobile developers to stock up its Android marketplace, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google has made it very clear that it will be focusing on mobile this year, and on mobile commerce in particular. Stealing PayPal's VP of product development is a good start, but the chocolate …

    Mobile 31 Jan 11:52

  • Five essential BlackBerry apps for business

    Widgets while you work

    For most users, BlackBerry means business. And these days that means more than on-the-go immediate access to email. The BlackBerry App World contains a host of downloads you can grab to help you become more productive. Here are the five we reckon every BlackBerry owner should obtain. AddTo AddTo neatly improves integration …

    reghardware 31 Jan 12:01

  • 'Air laser' tech could sniff bombs, probe atmos from afar

    Cunning analysis pulse remotely generated from thin air

    Military- and security-funded boffins have been trying to develop better bomb-detecting technology for many years now. Most of what they come up with has obvious defects: typically sensors either don't actually detect explosives but rather associated substances or shapes (metal detectors, X-ray systems) or they need to be very …

    Science 31 Jan 12:06

  • John Barry dies at 77

    RIP the man with the golden musical touch

    Composer John Barry has died at the age of 77, following an illustrious career which encompassed work on The Ipcress File, Midnight Cowboy, Zulu, Born Free and Dances With Wolves. His family announced in a statement: "It is with great sadness that the family of composer John Barry announce his passing on the 30th of January …

    Entertainment 31 Jan 12:28

  • SourceForge applies global password reset after hack attack

    Just a precaution, you understand

    Open-source code repository SourceForge has advised users to change their passwords following a concerted hacking attack. The attack, launched last Wednesday, targeted developer infrastructure and involved the compromise of SourceForge.net servers. SourceForge detected the attack and quickly disabled CVS, ishell, file uploads …

    Enterprise Security 31 Jan 12:31

  • Panorama stalks alleged stalker's twin brother

    Beeb in mistaken identity fiasco

    The Beeb's Panorama team demonstrated they've got the investigative right stuff by stalking an alleged stalker's twin brother. The hit squad working on Stop Stalking Me staked out the chap's house in Ormskirk, Lancashire, for a week, then moved in for the kill. Front man Richard Bilton collared his victim on the street and " …

    Bootnotes 31 Jan 12:56

  • Official: Android rules OK

    Slides past Symbian to take smartphone lead

    Android has surged past Symbian to become the world's most popular smartphone operating system. So show Q4 2010 figures from market watcher Canalys, released today, which give Google a 32.9 per cent market share ahead of Nokia, which took 30.6 per cent of the market. Apple took 16 per cent of the market, Research in Motion ( …

    reghardware 31 Jan 12:59

  • Alacritech apprehends an NFS anomaly

    Comment Wildly unbalanced filer I/O

    Alacritech claims NFS filer I/O is grossly skewed towards reads and suffers from read metadata processing that chokes controller CPUs. It has just launched its ANX 1500 filer accelerating cache product based on its recognition of NFS read metadata filer I/O loads that can overwhelm filer processors and delay file delivery. A …

    Storage 31 Jan 13:00

  • Sony slips out Mac app for Bloggie Touch

    Parity with PCs

    Sony has released OS X software to connect Macs to its Bloggie Touch pocket camcorder and do a little more with your pics and video than the basic USB link allows. That means features like direct editing and uploading to Facebook, Picase, Flickr, YouTube and the like. In the UK, that means the £220 Bloggie Touch MHS-T20K, and …

    reghardware 31 Jan 13:12

  • Chinese 'repurpose' Top Gun footage

    Explosive fake news report raises eyebrows

    China's state broadcaster CCTV has been left looking a bit daft after local netizens spotted it had swiped a choice snippet of footage from Top Gun. The outrage featured in a 23 November broadcast about an air force training exercise, in which "a target was hit by the air-to-air missile fired by a J-10 fighter aircraft". In …

    Bootnotes 31 Jan 13:13

  • LCD pushbutton sunglasses issued to US Navy SEALs

    Hitchhikers style Joo Janta Peril Sensitive jobs next?

    The latest gizmo to be adopted by top-secret special forces troops fighting the Wars on Stuff is liquid crystal ballistic sunglasses which can change colour automatically much faster than traditional "photochromic" offerings - or at the touch of a button. The US Office of Naval Research says it designed the new Fast-Tint …

    Science 31 Jan 13:25

  • Boffins squeeze a mesh onto Android handsets

    Mobile phone, or network relay?

    Australian researchers have ported Wi-Fi mesh-networking onto the Android platform, potentially turning any Android handset into a relay able to extend network coverage into disaster areas. The newly-demonstrated project is called Serval, after a kind of cat, and enables a standard Android handset to make voice calls (VoIP), …

    Wireless 31 Jan 13:35

  • Death, grit and climate: Met Office drama unfolds

    Mandarins and meteorologists form circular firing squad

    If a hit West End play can be made out of Bohr meeting Heisenberg, there must be some promising dramatic material in the blame-game now unravelling in Whitehall. Airports, energy providers, local authorities and health trusts were caught short by record cold weather extremes this year, for the third winter running – raising …

    Environment 31 Jan 13:52

  • Android bites big chunk out of Apple iPad market share

    Set to leap ahead in 2011?

    The world's computer makers shipped 17.6m tablets during 2010, 9.7m of them in Q4 alone. It'll surprise no one that the full-year total was dominated by Apple, which shipped 14.8m iPads during the year - it was actually on sale for just nine months or so - or 84.1 per cent of the total, numbers from market watcher Strategy …

    reghardware 31 Jan 13:53

  • Scaled-down EU patent system moves a step closer to approval

    12 countries take part in the simplified patent scheme

    A committee of the European Parliament has approved plans to create a 12-country patent system in Europe as countries including the UK seek to break a decades-old deadlock on whether patents should be translated, and, if so, how this should be done. The whole Parliament will vote on the plans next month, after which the …

    Government 31 Jan 14:08

  • VMware creates private clouds for newbies

    The software is the hard part

    VMware is still a pretty young software company in a fairly nascent market and relies on software license and maintenance fees for the bulk of its revenues. But the company wants to get more sales providing services, too, and today announced two offerings that will have VMware's techs come in and puff up your cloud in a jiffy …

    Cloud 31 Jan 15:18

  • Orange blames switch for data problems

    Call centres thanked for dealing with angry users 'per the standard process'

    Orange said today a switch problem was to blame for 3g outages in recent weeks, which seem to be concentrated in London. We've received several emails from irritated Orange customers. We were also sent updated advice from the telco to staff working in Orange call centres who are dealing with the problems. The mail said: We’ …

    Mobile 31 Jan 15:19

  • EU may re-ignite carbon trading following hack attack

    Blowing smoke

    Some EU carbon emission trading registries may start trading again later this week following the Europe-wide suspension of trading in response to a hacking attack on 19 January. The cross-continental shutdown followed the theft of around two-million pollution licence allowances worth about €30m in the most serious of three …

    Crime 31 Jan 15:21

  • Firm offers punter prints pronto

    Mini me in 3D

    Many of our children, perhaps even our spouses, have had aspirations of becoming a model. Now it's possible to wind them up by turning them into one - 'figure'-atively speaking. French 3D printing firm Sculpteo is now offering a way for punters to transform photos into 3D models which can then be physically created and posted …

    reghardware 31 Jan 15:25

  • UK.gov taps up DWP's IT boss for all of Whitehall

    Joe Harley takes on wider portfolio, 'ICT futures' wonk sought

    Joe Harley has been appointed as UK.gov's new IT boss, the Cabinet Office confirmed today. He replaces John Suffolk, who resigned from his £207,000 Chief Information Officer post at the end of last year. Harley is the current Department for Work and Pensions CIO. From today, the government beefed up his portfolio - while …

    Government 31 Jan 15:26

  • Indonesian pop star jailed over sex videos

    Hard time for homemade hardcore

    Indonesian pop star Nazril "Ariel" Irham has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for participating in two homemade sex videos. The 29-year-old was arrested last June after footage of him romping with TV presenter girlfriend Luna Maya and soap actress Cut Tari leaked onto the internet. Irham was charged with distributing …

    Bootnotes 31 Jan 15:47

  • Intel finds flaw in Sandy Bridge chipset

    Cougar Point bites SATA ports

    Chip giant Intel was ecstatic about the rollout of the Sandy Bridge Core family of chips for desktops and laptops and is prepping for single-socket servers and workstations next month based on the Xeon variants of these chips. But the discovery of a bug in the Intel 6 Cougar Point chipset announced this morning just threw a …

    PCs & Chips 31 Jan 15:49

  • IBM floats Microsoft Office web challenger

    Force feeds Google APIs to Redmondware

    IBM is gunning for Microsoft's multi–billion dollar Office franchise with a hosted incarnation of its personal productivity suite built on OpenOffice. On Monday, IBM announced a cloud edition of its Symphony suite in a broad push to take business from Microsoft's $14bn-plus Office and email business. Symphony is also intended …

    Cloud 31 Jan 16:00

  • Dixons offers Angry Birds on the house

    Hit game free from own-brand app store

    Want Angry Birds for nowt? From tomorrow you can try and get a copy from the Currys- and PC World-branded versions of Intel's AppUp, the chip giant's netbook-centric online app store. You'll need an Intel-based computer running Windows of course. While AppUp is intended for netbooks, since the Atom chip is thoroughly x86 …

    reghardware 31 Jan 16:27

  • 419ers strip lonely heart mum of £80k

    Handsome US soldier actually Lad from Lagos

    A divorced mother of three was taken for £80,000 by 419ers posing as a US soldier, the Daily Mail reports. Kate Roberts, 47, of Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, was hooked when she posted a profile on Friends Reunited Dating in October 2009. She was soon "exchanging emails with a man calling himself Sergeant Ray Smith and …

    Crime 31 Jan 16:28

  • DataCore rewrites SANsymphony score

    Better caching and protection

    Storage virtualisation software supplier DataCore has revved its SANsymphony product to provide faster access to virtualised and pooled block-access storage for its mid-market customers. The product sits in an X86 server between block storage-accessing servers and storage arrays and presents the storage in the arrays – plus …

    Storage 31 Jan 16:31

  • India calls RIM's bluff on email access

    But RIM ain't bluffing

    RIM has only hours left to achieve the impossible, with the Indian government reiterating threats of retaliation if it's denied access to corporate emails tomorrow. The Indians gave RIM until the end of January to provide lawful intercept capabilities to emails sent from BlackBerry handsets, and since then has been pointedly …

    Mobile 31 Jan 16:33

  • Google open sources its Mac deployment engine

    Post China hack Apple love

    Google has open sourced its internal software for deploying Mac OS X packages across a network. Known as Simian, the platform was built after Google's Mac Operations and Security teams evaluated several Mac package deployment tools and failed to find one that suited their needs. After alleged Chinese hackers broke into Google' …

    Software 31 Jan 18:19

  • Network attacks (allegedly) ravage London Stock Exchange

    Open source trade system breach?

    The London Stock Exchange and one of its counterparts in the US are investigating attacks that hit their networks last year and were intended to disrupt their operations, The Times reported on Monday. Officials for the LSE are investigating a possible breach of the open-source trading system last year that may have led to the …

    Security 31 Jan 18:58

  • Enterprise fanbois yawn at death of Apple Xserve

    Few loved it while alive

    On Monday, Apple ended its nine-and-one-half-year Xserve experiment, and reactions are mixed. One outspoken analyst says the decision "sucks," but a broad-ranging survey reveals that most users of that Jobsian rack-mounted server don't hold a grudge against Cupertino. "I understand the decision. The truth is, I don't think …

    Channel Register 31 Jan 19:29

  • D-Link hooks up with new channel partner

    Whitegold to service D-Link Oz VARs

    Australian disto Whitegold Solutions has been appointed a D-Link “value added partner” to help drive the vendor’s products into the SMB markets. According to D-Link’s announcement, the appointment “extends the company’s footprint to service a growing number of channel sales opportunities in the SMB and SME markets in Australia …

    Channel Register 31 Jan 20:31

  • Google Docs morphs into once and future 'GDrive'

    'Shhh,' says Google. 'Don't tell'

    Google has updated Google Docs – its online word processor cum online file repository – offering new tools for finding, exploring, and sharing files stored on the service. Little more than a year ago, Google first allowed netizens to upload any file to Google Docs, a move that transformed the service into something not unlike …

    Cloud 31 Jan 20:56

  • Oracle promises to obey own OpenJDK rules

    A community process we can believe in

    Oracle is drafting rules it says even it can obey to run the open-source reference implementation of Java, OpenJDK. The giant's Java platform group chief architect Mark Reinhold revealed on Monday that his company has been working since November on a series of bylaws intended to govern the recently expanded OpenJDK project. …

    Developer 31 Jan 21:14

  • Mac Tel money in the clouds

    Hosted services drive earnings upgrade

    Listed carrier Macquarie Telecom has added $5 million to its earnings forecast for the year ended December 2010, attributing the upswing to the performance of its hosted services division. In an announcement issued to the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday, the company said its half-year earnings are likely to be around $20 …

    Cloud 31 Jan 21:33

  • Oracle uncloaks 5TB tape

    T10000 C stuffs exabyte library

    Oracle is increasing the capacity of its T10000 tape fivefold, doubling its I/O speed, and enabling a 5-exabyte tape library. The T10000 C (T10K C) tape has a 5TB native capacity – the highest in the industry – and the associated drive has a 240MB/sec throughput. In comparison, the current T10K B format, introduced in August …

    Storage 31 Jan 22:07

  • Intel shakes off $1bn chipset flaw

    Sandy Bridge ramp repair

    How much did a little design flaw in one metal layer on the Cougar Point Intel 6 chipset used with Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 chips cost Intel? A cool $1bn, that's how much. And in a conference call with Wall Street analysts on Monday, Intel's two Smiths – Stacey Smith, Intel's chief financial officer, and Steve Smith, …

    Channel Register 31 Jan 22:35

  • Netgear CEO says 'closed' Apple is doomed

    Seen it all before, co-founder tells Aussies

    Apple CEO Steve Jobs' insistence on a closed iOS platform is dragging his company down, dooming it to be overtaken by Google Android, according to the chairman and CEO of... Netgear. "Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform …

    Software 31 Jan 22:46

  • VMware Go promoted to Pro

    More features, fee for VM control freakery

    Server hypervisor juggernaut VMware is known for charging a hefty premium for its virtualization and related management tools, but its ESXi hypervisor has been free for years and for a year it has been shipping a tool called VMware Go to manage its freebie hypervisors. These moves were reactions to Microsoft entering the market …

    Virtualization 31 Jan 22:56

  • Judge rebukes 'World's No. 1 Hacker'

    Quashes 'extremely troubling' subpoenas

    A judge in Georgia has scolded a controversial security figure for improperly subpoenaing Yahoo! and Twitter in an attempt to get user names and passwords belonging to some 25 researchers. Gregory D. Evans, CEO of Ligatt Security and the self-proclaimed "World's No. 1 Hacker", sought the the highly personal information in a …

    Security 31 Jan 23:03

  • Google exec 'missing' amid Egypt protests

    Web giant grants voice to silenced tweeters

    Google's head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa has gone missing after joining protests against the Egyptian government, according to report citing the exec's brother. The Wall Street Journal reports that Wael Ghonim – who joined Google in late 2008 – has not been heard from since Friday at 6pm. It should be …

    Software 31 Jan 23:46