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3rd March 2011 Archive

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  • New charge against alleged WikiLeaker carries death penalty

    Bradley Manning accused of aiding the enemy

    The US Army has filed 22 additional charges against accused WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning, including one that carries a potential death sentence. The aiding the enemy offense filed against the Army intelligence analyst is the military equivalent of treason, but prosecutors said on Wednesday that they planned to seek …

    Music and Media 3 Mar 00:36

  • RIM brushes off HP fondleslab innuendo

    When marketing monkeys attack

    You might be sick of the pundits falling all over themselves to pour love on the iPad. You may be sick of the Apple fondleslab. But at least you can recognize one when you see one. The same can't be said for tablets from other big name outfits. Apparently, competitors have reached the breaking points of their creative …

    Mobile 3 Mar 01:44

  • iPad 2? Let's be kind and call it iPad 1.5

    Analysis Mr Jobs, your 'all-new design' isn't

    When introducing the iPad 2 on Wednesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred to it as an "all-new design." That assertion could kindly be called debatable. More accurately, the iPad 2 is a refinement and speed bump to the original iPad. Its new higher-performance processor and improved graphics are, to be sure, welcome upgrades. …

    Mobile 3 Mar 01:52

  • Intel outs 'Poulson' speeds and feeds

    ISSCC Yes, more chip porn!

    Intel has released some additional about its future eight-core "Poulson" Itanium processors. The Poulson chips are the first Itaniums to have a new microarchitecture and core redesign since the "McKinley" cores a decade ago. As previously reported, the processor has a total of 3.1 billion transistors and is implemented in …

    PCs & Chips 3 Mar 04:00

  • iPlayer Global iPad app price announced

    Be proud of the BBC for ten dollars a month

    The BBC’s director general Mark Thompson has told a London conference that the broadcaster’s global iPlayer will soon be available to users outside the UK for a US$10 per month subscription. The release date, however, remains vague – “sometime this year” is the nearest that most reports are able to get. And in the creeping …

    Music and Media 3 Mar 04:07

  • iPhone to whup Sony PSP 2

    Casual gamers won't turn out for portable console, says publisher

    The head of a casual gaming giant reckons Sony's upcoming NGP - aka the 'PSP 2' - will be "dead on arrival" and claims it will never match up to the might of iOS. Neil Young, CEO of games publisher Ngmoco, said the PSP successor will find it "difficult to compete with an app store that has hundreds of thousands of applications …

    reghardware 3 Mar 06:00

  • The Guardian 2.0.2

    iOS App of the Week Smart news app gets pricier... but better too

    Version 2.0 of The Guardian newspaper's app came out recently, but I held off downloading it at first because it now requires a subscription rather than being completely free. However, the recent uproar about Apple’s seemingly restrictive terms for in-app subscriptions piqued my interest and prompted me to take out my very …

    reghardware 3 Mar 07:00

  • Privacy groups demand one commissioner to rule them all

    How many privacy commishes do we really need?

    The UK needs a single privacy commissioner, and not the tangle of officials it is creating to police the area, an alliance of pressure groups claimed yesterday. Terri Dowty, Director of Action on Rights for Children (ARCH), warned of the uncoordinated and ineffective proliferation of commissioners now operating in this area. …

    Government 3 Mar 07:30

  • Will Drobos support Thunderbolt?

    CEBIT: Data Robotics chief breaks into song

    Will Data Robotics Drobo storage support Intel's Thunderbolt USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 replacement technology? The company isn't saying. When asked this at CeBIT, Paul Thackeray, Data Robotics European head broke into song: "Thunderbolt and lightning - very, very frightening me. Galileo, Galileo." Thank you Queen, but I don't …

    Blocks and Files 3 Mar 09:01

  • Government flies kite for VAT changes

    Tears for Tesco as Channel Islands tax holiday officially OVER

    The Coalition Government seems to be serious about changing VAT rules which currently allow big retailers to dispatch items via the Channel Islands in order to avoid paying the tax. The exemption was designed to protect Guernsey's flower growers but has been exploited by the likes of Tesco and Amazon who can undercut prices …

    Financial News 3 Mar 09:37

  • Data centre orchestration

    Webcast Marching to the beat of the business

    Data centre managers today need to get IT marching to the beat of the business and that means finely tuning the solutions and services they offer to get everything in step. On the 11th of March at 11am, we have a few special guests to talk us through the finer points of these challenges. Tim Phillips from The Register is host …

    Data Centre 3 Mar 09:54

  • ICO evidence raises Freedoms Bill data worries

    Where are the weak spots?

    The Information Commissioner (ICO) has just published a critique of the Home Office’s Freedoms Bill, which is being sold to the public as reining in New Labour’s surveillance state. Although there is general applause for the fact that the Government has recognised that there has been excessive intrusion into privacy, the ICO’s …

    Law 3 Mar 10:11

  • Nintendo readies iTunes-like app store for 3DS

    Update to bring web browsing too

    Nintendo is to bring an iTunes-style app store to the Nintendo 3DS. Dubbed the eShop, the store will allow owners of the handheld console the opportunity to buy and download not only old Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, GameGear and TurboGrafx games but also "3D Classics" - titles recoded to take advantage of the 3DS' auto- …

    reghardware 3 Mar 10:37

  • Wales calls on ICANN to unleash .cymru

    .cym on now

    Welsh deputy first minister Ieuan Wyn Jones has complained about delays to ICANN's new generic top-level domains programme, which are holding up a plan to offer citizens ".cymru" domain names. dotCYM, which is proposing the domain, had originally planned to apply for ".cym", but was forced into a rethink after ICANN changed …

    Telecoms 3 Mar 10:50

  • Surfing while driving – that's multitasking

    If you can read this you should be looking at the road

    One in five Americans with a smartphone admits to using the internet while driving, with social networking ranking as one of the most popular distractions that's taking eyes off the road. The survey was carried out by US insurance company State Farm, which obviously has a vested interested in knowing who is paying attention …

    Mobile 3 Mar 10:59

  • Hungry boffins turn 3D printer into snack maker

    From Little Chef to Robo Chef?

    When it comes to exquisite cuisine, who said you need pots and pans? Maybe soon we'll use computers and printers to fix up meals. A team at New York's Cornell University has been hard at work with 3D food printers, creating strange dishes with ingredients from chocolate and hummus to turkey and celery, CBC News reports. …

    reghardware 3 Mar 11:01

  • Discovery 'nauts wrap second spacewalk

    ISS maintenance jobs done and dusted

    Discovery mission specialists Steve Bowen and Alvin Drew yesterday wrapped the second STS-133 spacewalk, completing a series of maintenance tasks on the International Space Station. During the six-hour, 14-minute EVA, Bowen (see pic) first retrieved "a lightweight adapter plate assembly, an experiment holder, from the outer …

    Space 3 Mar 11:01

  • Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

    Analysis RAF gets just 107 jets – and new budget trainwreck looms

    Yesterday the UK National Audit Office published a detailed report on the current status of the infamous Eurofighter combat jet – nowadays officially known as Typhoon. We here on the Reg defence desk have always had a low opinion of the cripplingly expensive, marginally useful fighter: but even we were amazed by the new facts …

    Government 3 Mar 11:13

  • WikiLeaks movie screen rights secured by DreamWorks

    Julian Assange gets his 'phone home' moment

    A movie about the WikiLeaks drama looks set to get a sprinkling of stardust from Steven Spielberg, after the ET director reportedly secured the screen rights to a book chronicling the life of the whistleblower site's founder Julian Assange. According to the Guardian, a film will be "conceived as an investigative thriller in …

    Entertainment 3 Mar 11:17

  • 'Self-incriminators' may be forced to tell the court what they know

    High Court extends ability to strip people of right not to self-incriminate

    People accused of misusing confidential commercial or technical information have lost the right to avoid self-incrimination in court cases, following a High Court ruling. The ruling means that a law previously thought to apply only to intellectual property cases now applies to any case in which confidential commercial or …

    Law 3 Mar 11:48

  • Teen cybercrime forum boss jailed

    Five years for Ghostmarket mastermind

    A UK teenager who ran a prolific cybercrime forum from home has been jailed for five years. Nick Webber, 19, maintained the Ghostmarket.net market which boasted 8,000 memberships and facilitated a range of crimes including the sale of stolen credit card and personal details. Police recovered the details of thousands of credit …

    Crime 3 Mar 11:56

  • Mario Sports Mix

    Review Ball's up

    It's not hard to see why Nintendo added the third word to Mario Sports Mix. A mix it is, not only of four individual sports, but two games too: Wii Sports and Mario Kart Wii. Unfortunately, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The North American-centric games on offer here are Basketball, Ice Hockey, Volleyball and …

    reghardware 3 Mar 12:00

  • BT fibre-to-the-premises trial takes 7 hours per install

    Knee deep in cable Fingers, blowers and splitters in Milton Keynes

    BT's new fibre optic upgrade is delivering better real world speeds than the company's old copper-based network when compared to advertised "up to" broadband rates, according to the latest figures from Ofcom. Meanwhile, the UK telecoms giant is continuing to test out its latest fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) kit. As part of that …

    Telecoms 3 Mar 12:08

  • Sky News spun out as BSkyB takeover OK'd, more or less

    Rupe gets Hunt thumbs up

    News Corporation's buyout of satellite payTV operator BSkyB has been accepted in principle by the Culture Secretary, following advice from UK regulators Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading. News Corp has agreed to spin out and fund the Sky News operation for 10 years. Although the European Commission has said the buyout would …

    Music and Media 3 Mar 12:09

  • Scientists crack spotless Sun mystery

    Temperamental conveyor belt to blame for deep solar minimum

    Scientists reckon they've cracked the mystery as to why during 2008-2009, the Sun was completely devoid of sunspots for almost two years. This deepest solar minimum in a century, marking the end of sunspot cycle 23, saw the Sun's global magnetic field and solar wind weaken, allowing dangerous cosmic rays to sweep the inner …

    Space 3 Mar 12:13

  • Ford punts prang-prompted auto cops-calling kit

    Sync tech talks to smartphones, speaks the local lingo

    Ford has announced that, come 2012, European drivers will be able to opt for its all-singing, all-dancing vehicle connectivity suite, Sync. Initially, the system, which sports a "class leading" 8in touchscreen UI, will be available in the new Ford Focus. With the help of a couple of USB ports, Bluetooth, an SD card slot and …

    reghardware 3 Mar 12:14

  • Julian Assange sets out bid to appeal extradition to Sweden

    Life is so unfair

    Lawyers representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lodged papers at the UK's High Court this morning, in an effort to appeal against his extradition to Sweden. A spokeswoman told The Register that the High Court had received the papers but added that "no date was set, and no guidance has been issued." Last week it was …

    Law 3 Mar 12:21

  • Apple iPad 2: from rumour to reality

    The stories, the speculation, the second-gen slab

    The Reality iPad 2? Let's be kind and call it iPad 1.5 iPad 2 spawns updated iOS and apps Apple cuts iPad price Steve Jobs unveils iPad 2 Apple iPad 2 snapped in all its skinny glory Apple names iPad 2 reveal date The Rumours Fanboi rumor mill dances for iPad 2 iPad 3 Faces of the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 revealed Apple …

    reghardware 3 Mar 12:36

  • Welsh battle killer shrimp invasion

    Caspian crustacean cows Cardiff

    The Welsh have taken to nets and catfood to battle a Caspian crustacean invasion that could have a "devastating impact on native species". According to the BBC, the 3cm Dikerogammarus villosus shrimp has over the last decade made its way from the Black and Caspian seas via arteries such as the Danube and Rhine Canal. It was …

    Biology 3 Mar 13:01

  • Cobalt-barrel machine guns could fire full auto Hollywood style

    Movie/videogame spray-and-pray gunfights real at last

    You know in the movies, where people get hold of powerful automatic weapons - rifles or machine guns - and fire them on full automatic for ages? Goddammit Kowalski, it's supposed to come off in your hand That's quite unrealistic - even in modern movies which make a nod to reality by now and then showing someone reloading. …

    Physics 3 Mar 13:01

  • Novell paints Red Hat Linux manager green

    SUSE Manager drives RHEL

    The quickest way to build a commercial Linux business is to clone whatever Red Hat does. That's what Oracle and CentOS do with their Enterprise Linux redistributions and accompanying paid-for support offerings, and it is now what Novell is doing with a "new" product called SUSE Manager. With SUSE Manager, announced today, …

    Operating Systems 3 Mar 13:30

  • Yanks outweigh Canucks: Official

    US leads in obesity stakes

    It's official: US adults have the edge in the heavyweight stakes over their Canadian counterparts, with the 2007-9 figures showing "the prevalence of obesity among adults in Canada is lower than it is in the United States". That's according to a study which took data from the Canadian Health Measures Survey, 2007–2009; the …

    Biology 3 Mar 13:37

  • Firesheep hack catches out Mr Demi Moore

    aplusk minus for security

    Ashton Kutcher's Twitter profile was hacked on Wedesday to spout pro-SSL graffiti. Instead of the usual updates of the life of Mr Demi Moore, the aplusk account regaled its 6.4 million followers with security warnings, such as the one below. Ashton, you've been Punk'd. This account is not secure. Dude, where's my SSL? The …

    Enterprise Security 3 Mar 14:04

  • Ten... fantasy swords you wish you owned

    Weapon round-up A slice of the action

    At Reg Hardware, with the honorable exception of videogames, we tend to talk up tools that generally assist in everyday life. Today, though, we're going to break tradition altogether and run through some weaponry. Well, bladed replicas to be precise. If you've ever fancied yourself as a modern-day knight - Jedi or Dunedain - or …

    reghardware 3 Mar 14:08

  • Google insists it couldn't have been British. Excuse me?

    Some of my best friends are creators, says Hargreaves

    How curious. The Government's review into IP and growth may have been set up by mistake, or at least on a false premise. On announcing the review last November, Prime Minister David Cameron said something quite curious. Cameron explained that the review was a response to Google's concerns... "The founders of Google have said …

    Music and Media 3 Mar 14:39

  • Hollywood eyes Blade Runner replicants

    Prequel and sequel on the cards

    Fans of Blade Runner will certainly raise an eyebrow at the news that production outfit Alcon Entertainment is in "final negotiations" to acquire the prequel and sequel rights to the 1982 sci-fi classic. According to Reuters, the company is cutting a deal with holder Bud Yorkin, who was exec producer on Ridley Scott's orginal …

    Entertainment 3 Mar 14:41

  • Sage Pay suffers 2nd day of downtime

    Blue sky for cloud service

    Sage's online payment service SagePay is mainly not working for its 32,000 customers today, and it wasn't really working yesterday either. There seems to be a slight discrepancy between Sage's Twitter feed and its system monitor page on its website. The company's Twitter feed warns that live processing is not working but its …

    Channel Register 3 Mar 14:46

  • O2 boots up boobies blocker

    A bit of the old opt-in-out for phone filth

    O2 has finally switched on its porn-blocker, much to the annoyance of customers who don't see why they should prove their age. British mobile operators are required to provide age-verification before allowing access to "adult" content, but different operators opt customers in and out by default. It seems that O2 is now …

    Mobile 3 Mar 14:59

  • Introduction to data protection

    Deep dive Backup to Tape, Disk and Beyond

    El Reg has teamed up with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) for a series of deep dive articles. Each month, the SNIA will deliver a comprehensive introduction to basic storage networking concepts. The first article explored data protection. This second one looks at building and operating a backup system. Part …

    Storage 3 Mar 15:00

  • UK.gov closes door against foreign boners

    Still short of doctors, nurses and scientists

    The UK government has declared the country has quite enough boners, and has pulled up the drawbridge against any foreign boners wishing to immigrate. The Home Office announced today that following a Migration Advisory Council's recommendation, it had removed eight job titles from the "shortage occupation list". This is part of …

    Government 3 Mar 15:51

  • EU czar stomps into digital radio

    Stone the Kroes

    Europe's digital radio sector is a not a happy place, as consumers vote with their wallets. It isn't just a DAB thing, which is a uniquely British disaster: the appetite for digital radio is similarly depressed all over the continent. And this is not good enough for Neelie Kroes, Europe's unelected digital czar. "Some people …

    Music and Media 3 Mar 16:30

  • Second US 'secret space warplane' to launch tomorrow

    They did tell one chap what it's for... had to kill him, obviously

    The US Air Force is set to launch its second X-37B miniature unmanned spaceplane - the type famously dubbed a "secret space warplane" by the Iranian government - on Friday. What's in the payload bay, eh? The USAF Rapid Capabilities Office, which oversees the X-37B programme, says that the second Orbital Test Vehicle mission …

    Science 3 Mar 16:34

  • Teradata snaps up Aster Data for $263m

    Big data analytics

    Data warehousing appliance maker Teradata has figured out that it needs a software business that it controls above and beyond its clustered parallel database. It has ponied up $263m to acquire Aster Data Systems, which has created tools for chewing on monstrous amounts of unstructured data. Aster Data sells a product called …

    Applications 3 Mar 16:48

  • Can HPC methods yield 92% help desk satisfaction?

    It's all about personal compatibility

    You know how when you call a help desk or customer service number they have that short ‘this call may be recorded’ message? Have you ever wondered what they do with the recordings? I always figured they played them at company parties as jokes, or that they had ‘Can you top this?’ contests with one another: “OK, get this: Last …

    HPC Blog 3 Mar 18:00

  • WordPress comes under 'extremely large' web attack

    Resistance futile

    WordPress came under massive attack on Thursday, causing disruptions for many of the sites that rely on the webhosting platform to publish their content. “WordPress.com is currently being targeted by a extremely large Distributed Denial of Service attack which is affecting connectivity in some cases,” Sara Rosso, a …

    Security 3 Mar 18:53

  • Apple cures iPad buyer's remorse

    This pill will work for 14 days. Maybe 30

    If you recently bought an iPad and you're feeling buyer's remorse after yesterday's introduction of the iPad 2, there's hope – and we've discovered that the amount of that hope varies depending upon where you live. As The Reg reported on Wednesday, Apple has dropped the prices of the original iPad line by $100 in the US and ₤ …

    Mobile 3 Mar 19:12

  • WebGL: Interwebs 3D tech emerges from puberty

    Google. Mozilla. Opera. Apple. Microsoft

    WebGL – the emerging standard that provides hardware-accelerated 3D inside the browser –  has reached the 1.0 milestone. On Thursday, media-happy standards organization The Khronos Group announced the final 1.0 release of the WebGL specification, which maps JavaScript to the existing OpenGL desktop graphics interface. "We've …

    Developer 3 Mar 20:02

  • Solution found for climate change: Nuclear war

    Just a 'splendid little war' would do

    A solution has been found to those pesky climate change problems being caused by global warming: nuclear war. One minor niggle: "Widespread famine and disease would likely follow," even if the war were a small-scale one, writes Charles Choi for National Geographic News, describing the study conducted by scientists from NASA …

    Environment 3 Mar 21:01

  • 'Linux kernel for the cloud' gets new government

    Rackspace rejiggers OpenStack board

    Rackspace has overhauled the governance of OpenStack – the eight-month-old open source effort to build Amazon-like "infrastructure clouds" – relinquishing some of the control it gained by acquiring one of the project's other major contributors. After acquiring Anso Labs – the tiny outfit that built the Nova compute fabric …

    Cloud 3 Mar 22:51

  • Microsoft and Google tag-team GeoTag patent

    Demands satisfaction on 300 Maps cases

    Microsoft and Google have found a common cause. The two companies just joined forces to sue a tiny geo-location patent jihadist. The giants have taken GeoTag to court, claiming that the company sued more than 300 outfits that use Bing Maps and Google Maps. The pair want a US court to rule that the Bing and Google Maps …

    Channel Register 3 Mar 23:16

  • Apple, Google, RIM in smartphone dead heat

    Android rising, Symbian flaccid

    Although Android-based smartphones now have a larger US market share that do handsets from Apple or RIM, the three-way battle remains a tight one. "When it comes to consumer marketshare by operating system, Android (29%) appears to be pulling ahead of RIM Blackberry (27%) and Apple iOS (27%)," a Nielsen survey released on …

    Mobile 3 Mar 23:55