The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

23rd February 2011 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Microsoft offers Azure virgins 'small' VM concession

    Play now, pay in June

    Microsoft is offering developers free access to the smallest possible compute cycles on its Azure cloud in an effort to tempt first timers. The software giant on Tuesday said devs signing up to Windows Azure will get free access to 750 hours of extra small, virtual-machine-based compute instances running on Azure until June 30 …

    Cloud 23 Feb 00:33

  • Cellphone exposure linked to changes in brain activity

    Handset radiation can alter brain function

    US researchers have shown that less than an hour of cellphone use can significantly speed up activity in the part of the brain closest to the handset antenna, a finding that could reignite the debate over the health effects of radiation emitted by the ubiquitous devices. In a study published on Wednesday in the Journal of the …

    Mobile 23 Feb 00:51

  • HP misses Q1 sales, revises 2011 downward

    Apotheker's first Carly moment

    Hewlett-Packard's new president and chief executive Leo Apotheker now knows what it is like to be Carly Fiorina, who ran the company two executives ago. Not just because they held the same power at HP, but also because they missed their numbers soon after taking the reins. In the first quarter of fiscal 2011 ended January 31, …

    Financial News 23 Feb 01:17

  • Judge offs ivi.tv

    Injunction granted against net broadcaster

    Seattle Internet-TV rebroadcaster ivi.tv has had most of its channels pulled by a US District Court judge. Judge Naomi Buchwald granted an injunction against the company, blocking it from providing its TV feeds to its customers. The company charges $4.99 per month and provided customers with a custom player to watch the …

    Music and Media 23 Feb 01:40

  • M2 buys up more Australian customers

    Austar exits mobile biz

    Regional pay TV provider Austar has sold its mobile assets to the M2 Telecommunications Group for $2m. The transaction includes approximately 15,000 active Austar mobile customers (and associated data records), which generate annual revenue of $10m. Austar’s mobile base has been falling, with the company revealing in its half- …

    Networks 23 Feb 03:53

  • Go Stop, Moto!

    Huawei wins injunction, gums up Nokia sale

    Huawei has roadblocked – at least partially – Motorola’s planned sale of its wireless network unit to Nokia Siemens Networks. The Chinese vendor has been awarded an injunction in a US District Court blocking “the transfer of Huawei intellectual property” to Nokia Siemens. Motorola had a long-standing OEM deal with Huawei …

    Telecoms 23 Feb 05:06

  • Apple 'outstrips' all brands at box office

    Product-placement king

    Apple may not sell the number-one personal computer, but it does lead in one important metric of consumer culture: movie product placement. "Apple products appeared in 30% of all films that were number one at the US box office in 2010, outstripping product placements by any other single brand," the brand-trackers at …

    Music and Media 23 Feb 06:01

  • Plextor PX-L611U portable DVD writer

    Review Optical extras on the go

    As Blu-Ray climbs to the top of the optical storage ladder, one might assume that manufacturers of optical drives would cease production of anything that doesn’t feature this technology. However, Plextor has seen fit to launch the PX-L611U, a smart external DVD writer. Etching ahead: Plextor's PX-L611U While it’s all too …

    reghardware 23 Feb 07:00

  • Cornish pasties awarded protected status

    Imitators beware tasty European Commission ruling

    Aficionados of the Cornish pasty will in future be assured that their pasty is the real deal, following a European Commission ruling that only pasties prepared in Cornwall in the traditonal way can be labelled "Cornish". The announcement that the pasty has been granted "protected geographical indication" (PGI) marks a great …

    Bootnotes 23 Feb 09:10

  • Where are the next storage startup stars?

    Comment Is there room for another 3PAR, Compellent or Data Domain ...

    Have we witnessed the end of an era? Has the great storage company growth boom ended with a series of big bang acquisitions: 3PAR, Archivas, Compellent, Data Domain, Diligent, EqualLogic, Isilon, LeftHand Networks, Ocarina, Storwize and more? Over the last five years a whole swathe of up-and-coming storage companies has been …

    Storage 23 Feb 09:30

  • Scientists tremble before 'thunder-thighs' sauropod

    Early Cretaceous dino delivered quite a kick

    Scientists have identified a new species of Early Cretaceous sauropod - a six-tonne beast with a fearsome set of rear legs which have prompted paleontologists to dub it "thunder-thighs". A team including Dr Mike Taylor of University College London unearthed the remains of an adult and juvenile in Hotel Mesa Quarry in Grand …

    Biology 23 Feb 09:46

  • Compellent driven into datacentre by Dell

    Comment Going deeper into development

    Compellent is now formally part of Dell and it is going to develop its technology so it can go deeper into the datacentre. Dell's Darren Thomas, its VP and general manager of storage, blogs: "Our storage vision has always been to make data management easier and more affordable ... The acquisition of Exanet technology provided …

    Storage 23 Feb 10:07

  • Apple plots iPad 2 production reduction

    Moles claim output has been cut

    Apple has allegedly reduced the number of iPad 2s it wants its contract manufacturer to churn out. If true, the claim suggests Apple may indeed see the iPad 2 simply as small-scale upgrade ahead of the introduction of the iPad 3 later this year. Industry moles cited by Taiwanese trade site DigiTimes say Apple originally wanted …

    reghardware 23 Feb 10:08

  • Virgin considers dipping toes into 'daily deals' offering

    Groupon clone sought, says report

    Virgin is mulling a "daily deals" coupon service to compete with privately-held Groupon, Google and other web players that operate or have interest in that market. According to today's Financial Times, an ex-Virgin exec suggested last year that the company should get in on the online coupons game. People familiar with the …

    Financial News 23 Feb 10:12

  • Roundabouts and swings at Everything Everywhere

    Financial wizardry shows all is lost/fine

    Everything Everywhere has lower revenues and fewer customers, though you wouldn't know it from the annual figures which show year-on-year growth of 1.5 per cent and contract numbers rising. The details, inevitably, show that the growth is "excluding regulatory impact", while the 33 per cent increase in contract customers only …

    Mobile 23 Feb 10:27

  • Doing the math on IBM's real systems biz

    Sales and profits climb out of a hole

    For the past couple of quarters, I have been refining my model of IBM's server business, and I think with the incarnation I built to analyze the company's fourth quarter and full year results for 2010, I have something that is closer to reality than I have ever put together before. And it shows just how much Big Blue is, …

    Cloud 23 Feb 10:35

  • Ken's magnificent seven diagram

    Workshop Heroes to save your village from the text-only bandidos

    “The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it,” according to artist William Dobell. Achieving that goal takes some time, but the world of visualisation is exploding nevertheless. According to Ralph Lengler and Professor Martin Eppler of the University of Lugano, the latest …

    Data Visualisation 23 Feb 10:45

  • Eight years for ID fraudster

    Job Centre worker helped him steal tax credits

    An identity thief who fraudulently claimed more than £1.3m in tax credits under false names has been imprisoned for eight-and-a-half years. Olaide (John) Taiwo, 35, a security guard from Camberwell, South East London, who was earlier found guilty of conspiracy to commit tax credit fraud and acquiring criminal property, was …

    Crime 23 Feb 11:05

  • Intel to spotlight optical interconnect tomorrow

    Up to a point, Lord Copper

    Intel is going to announce "a new technology" tomorrow, and the online buzz reckons it will release 'Light Peak', its alternative to USB. Certainly CNet thinks so, citing the usual "unnamed source familiar with the event", who says Intel will indeed put the spotlight on Light Peak tomorrow. And the interweb has been buzzing …

    reghardware 23 Feb 11:20

  • EMC kills SPEC benchmark with all-flash VNX

    Watershed benchmark

    EMC has topped the SPEC NFS benchmark rankings, scoring 497,632 operations/sec, using virtually all-flash VNX arrays. The previous top SPECsfs2008 NFS v3 score was 403,326 ops/sec from an IBM SONAS (Scale-Out NAS) system using 1,975 disk drives. There were 1,680 x 600GB and 240 x 450GB SAS hard drives and a total exported …

    Storage 23 Feb 11:24

  • UK chip design house strides across pond

    CSR explains the logic of going video

    So CSR is supplying the CEO, the CFO and the chairman, the headquarters stay in Blighty and the shares stay on the London markets. But really, it's a merger, honestly... CSR and Zoran are merging, with California-based Zoran getting a couple of seats on the board (one reserved for the company's founder) while CSR provides …

    PCs & Chips 23 Feb 11:26

  • Russia blames Google for Egyptian revolt

    Er, right

    Russian deputy prime minister and energy minister Igor Sechin has blamed Google for unrest in Egypt, accusing the search giant of "manipulations of the energy of the people". The comments were made during an apparently ill-tempered interview about the investment climate in Russia with the Wall Street Journal. The interview …

    Government 23 Feb 11:28

  • Early warnings and how to see them

    Workshop Always pay attention to gurgling noises in customer support

    IT industry pundits love to talk about “tsunamis” and “paradigm shifts” – huge and sudden changes in the technological landscape. It’s a great way of selling reports like “Warning all users and vendors: paradigm shift imminent!” But another school of thought reckons paradigm shifts are experienced only by people too too …

    Doing Better Business 23 Feb 12:00

  • Doctor Who co-star Nicholas Courtney dies at 81

    End of era as the Brigadier checks out

    Nicholas Courtney, who starred in Doctor Who as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart opposite no less than eight incarnations of the famous Doctor, has died aged 81. The Egypt-born actor first appeared in the popular BBC sci-fi drama in the 1960s, but his Brig role wasn't his first casting in for Doctor Who. In The …

    Entertainment 23 Feb 12:18

  • Moderate boozing good for your heart: Official

    However, 'if you don't drink, this is not a reason to start'

    A study published in the British Medical Journal shows that moderate drinking can help prevent heart disease and stroke. The BBC summarises that the review of 30 years of research "showed a 14 per cent to 25 per cent reduction in heart disease in moderate drinkers compared with people who had never drunk alcohol". …

    Biology 23 Feb 12:28

  • Price war beckons for mobile payments

    Twitter founder's Square goes cheaper

    Square, the beloved mobile payment system set up by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has dropped its 15-cent transaction fee as it tries to compete in the real world. Square was touted as revolutionary when launched in 2009, and had VCs falling over themselves to contribute the $37.5m needed to implement its smart-phone-attached …

    IT Director 23 Feb 12:44

  • Bulletstorm

    Review Is there a new Duke in town?

    To say that Bulletstorm draws parallels with Duke Nukem 3D is to put it mildly. There’s that same cocksure attitude, same over-the-top one liners, the same penchant for violence, even a similar range of physics-defying weaponry on offer. No joke, splitting your insides In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that Duke Nukem …

    reghardware 23 Feb 13:00

  • No showstoppers for UK nuke approval

    On course for June

    Regulators expect to approve two reactor designs by June, they disclosed in their latest quarterly update on the UK nuclear industry. The Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency say they see no showstopper delays to the approval of the proposed designs – from Areva and Westinghouse – in their joint Generic Design …

    Government 23 Feb 13:39

  • Apple shareholders demand CEO succession plan

    What happens when Steve goes?

    Later today Apple's board will be asked to reveal its plans for replacing the company's absent boss Steve Jobs. The current CEO is on medical leave from Cupertino for the third time in the past seven years. The Apple chief told staff in January that the company board had agreed to his taking time off from the Mac and iPhone …

    PCs & Chips 23 Feb 13:42

  • Met investigates medical school hack

    Updated Docs get nasty, libellous emails

    Police are investigating a security breach at a London university medical school that resulted in users getting a stream of obscene and defamatory emails. Unidentified hackers sent a series of libellous, obscene and abusive emails, one of which falsely claiming that executive members of the St George's University of London …

    Crime 23 Feb 14:24

  • Apple brands Intel 'Light Peak' as Thunderbolt

    High-speed IO just rebranded DisplayPort tech?

    Apple's take on Intel's 'Light Peak' high-speed IO technology will be call Thunderbolt, it has emerged, and it will be delivered through the new MacBook Pro's DisplayPort connector. Throughout the morning, snaps have appeared online showing the specification stickers on the back on the new MacBook boxes. The first ones were in …

    reghardware 23 Feb 15:03

  • Gears of War 3 release date confirmed

    Gunning for glory

    Hardcore gamers should grab their diaries and mark down 20 September as the day Gears of War 3 is released. The hugely successful franchise was originally penned in for release this April, but Microsoft later said it had to be pushed back. The story continues 18 months after GoW 2, with familiar characters continuing to …

    reghardware 23 Feb 15:04

  • Bionic leg builder makes huge step in prosthetics

    Robot knee has a mind of its own

    Humans are now even closer to a Six Million Dollar Man bionic body, thanks to the world's first motorised prosthetic knee, which is now readily available to lower-limb amputees in parts of Europe and the US. The Power Knee, from orthopaedic and prosthetic specialist Óssur, is said to be the first artificial leg pivot to …

    reghardware 23 Feb 15:14

  • Council loses USB of patient records

    Worker 'had problems' using encrypted stick

    Cambridgeshire County Council has had its wrist slapped for losing an unencrypted memory stick containing the details of vulnerable adults. The unencrypted memory stick contained the personal details of at least six individuals. The stick including case notes and minutes of meetings where staff discussed the care of the at- …

    IT Director 23 Feb 15:56

  • Android and iOS get a little Minecraft love

    Time-wasting goes mobile

    Despite never being advertised, or having a publisher, the Java game Minecraft has sold more than 1 million copies, and is now on its way into mobile phones. The game itself is remarkable only in its lack of objective, primitive graphics and (critically) infinite variety that allows players to create intricate landscapes for …

    Mobile 23 Feb 15:58

  • Nokia flings out WinPho 7 phones

    Concept snaps prefigure real thing

    Nokia has posted snaps showing what it its first Windows Phone 7 smartphones to may look like. Well, sort of. "These are not actual products, just artist renderings of what the Nokia-Microsoft collaboration could produce," confessed the Finnish phone giant. They look rather swish, so we hope these speculative drawings are …

    reghardware 23 Feb 16:02

  • Sony debuts 3D laptop

    Big specs, of course

    Sony has unveiled its attempt at a 3D computer with its latest Vaio F Series, a beefy laptop with a 16in stereoscopic screen. Announced at CES 2011, the Vaio VPCF21Z1E/BI is a heavy piece of kit, but packs a punch, including a quad-core second-gen Intel Core i7 processor, a 640GB HD, 1GB dedicated graphics card and the …

    reghardware 23 Feb 16:09

  • ECJ asked to rule on re-sale of software licences

    Oracle says usedSoft's sale of used licences is illegal

    A German court has asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to clarify whether or not a company can sell second-hand versions of downloaded business software in a case involving software company Oracle. Oracle took action against usedSoft, arguing that that its sale of used licences for software is illegal. Customers who buy …

    Law 23 Feb 16:17

  • Chemists create current-bearing plastic

    Polymer breakthrough points way to cheaper PCs

    Chemists have found a new way of producing plastic that conducts electricity, potentially paving the way to cheaper, more robust and er, more plasticky computers. Polymer electronics isn't new, and the printed electronics business is reckoned to be worth around $2bn, although not all the printing goes onto polymers. But with …

    Physics 23 Feb 16:38

  • Oracle: 'Eight Android files are decompiled Oracle code'

    Google OS based on 'hundreds of copyrighted Java files'

    Oracle has claimed that Google derived its Android code from the specifications for "hundreds" of Oracle's copyrighted Java files, and that at least eight Android files are actually decompiled Oracle object code. Last week, Google asked a federal court to consider dismissing the copyright portion of the patent and copyright …

    Developer 23 Feb 17:36

  • Protecting users from themselves

    Live Now! Because yesterday's security doesn’t work

    ‘“The problem with making things foolproof is that we keep evolving a better class of fool”, as the old saying goes. And nowhere is this more true than in security where breaches remain regular and commonplace despite all the investment that has gone into it. Part of the problem is that we expect users to be experts in …

    Security 23 Feb 17:41

  • New Relic climbs Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk

    This cloud will spread

    Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk application-management layer has drawn interest from the latest start-up of Wily Technologies' founder Lew Cirne. Cirne's New Relic has announced that it's integrating its RPM cloud-management system for Java, Ruby, PHP, and .NET applications with Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk after it was approached by …

    Cloud 23 Feb 19:21

  • Apple names iPad 2 reveal date

    'Magical and revolutionary', part deux

    Apple will uncloak the next generation of its überpopular fondleslab, the iPad, on March 2 in San Francisco. Fanbois, mark your calendars. This news comes to us from The Loop, which – clearly being on better terms with Cupertino than The Reg – received its invitation to the event on Wednesday morning. It's not hard to guess …

    PCs & Chips 23 Feb 19:29

  • WikiLeaks' Assange 'very likely' to lose extradition fight

    Barrister pokes ahead of Thursday's hearing

    An expert in UK extradition law says it's “very likely” that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will lose his battle against extradition to Sweden, where he's wanted for questioning in an investigation into rape and sexual assault allegations. Julian Knowles, a barrister for law firm Matrix Chambers and the author of books on …

    Law 23 Feb 19:46

  • Belarusian admits running site that catered to 2000+ ID thieves

    Faces 37+ years in prison

    A Belarusian man has copped to a charge that he ran a website which helped thousands of criminals commit identity theft by exploiting stolen financial information. Dmitry M. Naskovets, 26, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and credit card fraud on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan. He faces a maximum …

    Crime 23 Feb 21:16

  • Microsoft student mail checkmates Google state grab

    Updated Portland swings away

    Microsoft is claiming victory in its increasingly personal battle with Google to deliver web mail and collaboration. The software giant has named the Portland Public Schools system, home to 46,000 students across 85 schools, as planning a move to its Live@edu online collaboration suite. The hipster-heavy city's school system …

    Cloud 23 Feb 21:32

  • Google sweetens Android with full Honeycomb SDK

    Fondleslab OS Xooming into view

    Google has released a full SDK for Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb, Mountain View's mobile operating system targeted squarely at fondleslabs. "The APIs are final, and you can now develop apps targeting this new platform and publish them to Android Market," SDK Tech Lead Xavier Ducrohet announced in a post on the Android Developer …

    Developer 23 Feb 21:33

  • Australian utility evaluates EV charging kit

    Plug your 'leccy cars into Ergon

    Queensland-based electricity utility Ergon Energy is seeking expressions of interest for companies to help it evaluate electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Earlier this month, US-based Portus announced that Ergon would run tests in the north Queensland city of Townsville to see how well Portus’s electric vehicle support …

    Odds and Sods 23 Feb 21:34

  • Apple shareholders nix disclosure of Jobs succession plan

    The first rule of Jobs Club is: You do not talk about Jobs Club

    Apple shareholders have rejected a proposal that would have required the company to disclose its CEO succession plans. So we still have no way of knowing how the company is handling the ongoing health problems facing current CEO and spiritual leader Steve Jobs. The succession plan proposal was floated by the Central Laborers' …

    Business 23 Feb 23:17