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10th March 2011 Archive

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  • Apple frees iOS 4.3 two days before iPad 2 Arrival™

    First Look Wants $4.99 for Xcode

    Apple has released the free iOS 4.3 update for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, goosing Safari's JavaScript performance, adding a handful of new features (not available on all models), and providing a flurry of security updates, all two days before it's set to appear on the iPad 2. Cupertino also rolled out Xcode 4, the …

    Mobile 10 Mar 00:54

  • Mozilla delivers first Firefox 4 release candidate

    8 months and 8,000 bugs later...

    Mozilla has announced the first Firefox 4 release candidate, after eight months of beta testing on the latest version of its open source browser. The RC is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac in 79 different languages. You can download it here. If you're already testing the beta, you'll be automatically updated. The new …

    Applications 10 Mar 01:11

  • Making sport of browser security, hackers topple IE, Safari

    Once again

    Contestants in a high-stakes hacking contest had no trouble toppling the Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers, proving for a fifth year in a row that no software or application is safe from people with the expertise and motivation to exploit them. The attacks came on Day One of the Pwn2Own contest, which pays …

    Malware 10 Mar 03:59

  • IBM rides 'third supercycle of growth'

    Big Blue predicts big profits through 2015

    IBM hosted its annual investor briefing yesterday at the TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, which will probably go down in history as the place where the Watson question-answer machine (it is not a supercomputer, at least not yet) was built and whipped humanity's ass at Jeopardy!. While the 20 top brass …

    Financial News 10 Mar 04:00

  • Whitehall to puff punters: 'Hide your fags'

    Shield innocent ankle-biters

    Death-dealing coffin nails will have to be kept out of sight of impressionable Englishpersons, beginning with large retailers in April 2012 and then in small shops beginning in 2015. "Over eight million people in England still smoke and it causes more than 80,000 deaths each year," Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said in an …

    Odds and Sods 10 Mar 05:00

  • PictureBox Player 1.0.1

    iOS App of the Week Films for a fiver a month

    I’m a big fan of LoveFilm, and use it to rent DVDs through the post and to watch films online. Unfortunately, like many other video-on-demand services, LoveFilm uses Flash to deliver video, which means that it won’t work with the the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. 28 movies later... PictureBox's month worth of films is regularly …

    reghardware 10 Mar 07:00

  • Are SPEC file benchmarks broken?

    Comment Flash versus disk

    Recent EMC SPEC filer benchmarks have annihilated competing systems. EMC has used virtually all-flash systems to dramatically up its benchmark game, leaving disk-based rivals in the dust. Are the SPEC filer benchmarks now so unrealistic as to be worthless? If you think the question extreme just look at this pair of SPECsfs …

    Storage 10 Mar 08:45

  • Mophie Workbook

    Txt Take Angle poise

    Product reviews in 140 characters. Mophie Workbook Pictures Want our Txt Take on your gadget? Just send it in to Reg Hardware. Details here.

    reghardware 10 Mar 09:49

  • Computacenter celebrates 30th birthday with strong results

    Revs and profits up

    Computacenter grew sales by 10.7 per cent in 2010 to £2.68bn and managed to increase adjusted profits by 21.8 per cent to £66.1m. Earnings per share are up 19.1 per cent to 33 pence. Mike Norris, chief executive at Computacenter, said the last two years had shown the company identifying and moving into more profitable markets …

    Channel Register 10 Mar 09:51

  • Growing your web server farm to cope with fluctuating demand

    Datacentre Peaks and Troughs

    Thanks to support for multi-core processors and terabytes of memory, servers have never been more scaleable. When it comes to hosting web sites and applications, however, server farms based on relatively modest hardware still dominate because they make dealing with fluctuations in demand easier. Host a web site on a single …

    Data Centre 10 Mar 10:06

  • Ofcom steams ahead with Crown rights, prepares to sell family jewels

    Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

    Ofcom is to start providing Recognised Spectrum Access permissions to Crown bodies that previously just used frequencies by common agreement – so they can start selling them off, obviously. That process will start with two 80MHz-wide bands currently managed by the MoD that could find themselves on the open market by the end of …

    Mobile 10 Mar 10:07

  • Amazon beefs up cloud management console

    Scale up, scale down? You decide

    Amazon has plonked a few more features into the EC2 tab of its AWS management console, in an effort it claimed would make the system easier to use and, at the same time, much gutsier. "You can now change the instance type of a stopped, EBS-backed EC2 instance. This means that you can scale up or scale down as your needs change …

    Infrastructure 10 Mar 10:08

  • Tearful NASA salutes space shuttle Discovery

    Journey's end for venerable spacecraft

    The long and distinguished career of space shuttle Discovery ended yesterday at 16:57 GMT when the venerable vehicle touched down at Kennedy Space Center at the end of its final flight. Speaking to the press shortly after landing, commander Steve Lindsey said: "It was a great day to come back and land in Florida, we're happy …

    Space 10 Mar 10:18

  • Fight Night Champion

    Review Smack my mitts up

    Team sport titles get repackaged each year with marginal improvements, justified through noticeable kit and squad differences. However, as fast-paced as boxing may be, the sport itself moves very slowly. So even though Fight Night Champion arrives almost two years since the series' last release, apart from David Haye's climb to …

    reghardware 10 Mar 10:30

  • Ofcom says no to automatically renewed contract badness

    Telcos banned from rollover contracts with leaving penalties

    Telecoms firms will be banned from automatically signing customers up to renewed contracts with minimum contract periods, telecoms regulator has said. It said that 15 per cent of home phone users are tied into such contracts. BT and a number of smaller providers operate such contracts but this must stop, Ofcom has said in a …

    Telecoms 10 Mar 10:40

  • SHOCK research reveals Wi-Fi not as nippy as Ethernet

    Shout at your hardware, not your ISP, advises study

    You'd never guess this. Connect to the internet in your home over a wireless connection and you won't get the same data throughput as you do if you connect using Ethernet. Amazing, and thank providence we have Cardiff-based network testing company Epitiro to tell us these things. It bases this staggering conclusion after …

    reghardware 10 Mar 11:04

  • Nintendo 3DS to get battery boost

    More juice for journeys

    Accessory producer Nyko has knocked up a solution for the short battery life of the Nintendo 3DS with a juice pack that attaches to the back of the console, doubling its runtime. One of the biggest complaints overseas punters have about Nintendo's forthcoming handheld - it launched in the UK on 25 March - is the battery life …

    reghardware 10 Mar 11:08

  • No more WAFL waffle: NetApp changes tactics

    Comment: From unified to diversified storage

    It's the end of one-size-fits-all WAFL waffle: NetApp HQ at Sunnyvale enters a new era today, in which it sells diversified storage systems. WAFL is no longer the defining factor. WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout) has been synonymous with NetApp's success as progressively more and more functionality has been added onto it. …

    Storage 10 Mar 11:11

  • Google squeezes thumbnails into mobile search

    Reading search results is so 20th Century

    Mobile searchers can now get thumbnails of their Google search results, generating even more traffic for the sake of enabling browse-by-picture. The new feature was launched yesterday, and adds a magnifying glass beside every search result. Tapping on the glass takes one to an interface very reminiscent of that used to browse …

    Mobile 10 Mar 11:16

  • Chickens show empathy: Official

    Chilling chick torture experiment proves hens hurt too

    A crack team from the University of Bristol has demonstrated that chickens show empathy – or at least hens do when their chicks are being tortured with puffed air. The researchers suggest that empathy "most probably evolved to facilitate parental care", so they decided to see whether mother hens "responded to an aversive …

    Biology 10 Mar 11:18

  • The desktop lifecycle: How long is it anyway?

    Desktop Strategy You wanna roll, or you wanna forklift

    It's a recession so do you look to squeeze an extra year out of the desktop. How and is it wise to do this? How long is the lifecycle anyway? Once the desktop PC had successfully colonised the office, it became clear that they would need replacing regularly to keep up software and hardware developments. Hardware has become …

    Desktop Strategy 10 Mar 11:55

  • Mobile Trojan mimics Android clean-up tool

    Sneaky VXers spread infected version of security update

    Malware makers have released a Trojan version of an Android clean-up tool released by Google earlier this week. Google pushed a security update (kill switch) that purged the DroidDream Trojan from infected handsets last weekend. DroidDream found its way onto the official Android marketplace, typically under the guise of mobile …

    Malware 10 Mar 11:58

  • Illinois scrubs death penalty

    Governor makes 'most difficult' decision

    The governor of Illinois yesterday officially abolished the death penalty in the state, more than 10 years after executions there were halted amid fears innocent people could be condemned to die. Democrat Pat Quinn described the decision as the "most difficult" he's made during his tenure, but insisted: "If the system can't be …

    Government 10 Mar 12:01

  • Microsoft cut 'n' pastes Office market boss into undisclosed role

    Chris Capossela does truffle shuffle at Redmond

    Microsoft has shunted Chris Capossela, who had been the company's marketing head of Office and other business software, over to a yet-to-be-announced "leadership role". Up until yesterday, the senior Redmond veteran had been responsible for flogging the vendor's Office, SharePoint, Exchange and – most recently – Office 365 …

    Applications 10 Mar 12:03

  • Microsoft Kinect faster seller than iPad, says Guinness

    10m shipments break record

    Microsoft is celebrating a motion-controlled milestone: it has sold 10m Kinect accessories and a further 10m Kinect-able games on top of that. Since its launch in November 2010, sales of the device have gone through the roof, with Microsoft at one point selling five times more Xbox 360 Kinect bundles than Sony's PS3 Move. In …

    reghardware 10 Mar 12:06

  • Chicken Little report: Sat-nav dependency spells DISASTER!

    Analysis Quango pushes 1940s tech as backup for GPS

    A heavyweight UK tech body has just issued a report claiming that growing dependence on satellite navigation systems poses serious economic and safety risks to society. There's some truth in the report, but unfortunately it verges on scaremongering at times and appears to have been unduly influenced by organisations which can't …

    Government 10 Mar 12:15

  • Retailer warns anti-pirate 3DS firmware imminent

    Update said to brick consoles running iffy game copies

    Hackers beware: Nintendo's next-gen handheld, the 3DS, is out of bounds. According to one online retailer, Nintendo is readying a firmware update that will brick the device completely should any dodgy tampering be detected. Japanese store Enterking alerted customers who wish to resell their console, that if any illegal …

    reghardware 10 Mar 12:37

  • Lady Gaga puts the squeeze on breast milk ice cream

    Objects to creamy 'Baby Gaga' blend

    The Covent Garden ice cream parlour which recently got busted by Westminster council health operatives over its creamy blend of human mam milk, vanilla pods and lemon zest, now faces a far more serious threat to its jub juice concoction: Lady Gaga. The singer has taken serious exception to the "Baby Gaga" name which …

    Bootnotes 10 Mar 12:39

  • Router-rooting malware pwns Linux-based network devices

    Bad for your ELF

    Security researchers have discovered a rare strain of router-rooting malware that targets network devices running either Linux or Unix. The malware, which poses as an Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) file, carries out a brute-force attack on router user name-password pairs from compromised PCs. If successful, the malware …

    Enterprise Security 10 Mar 12:46

  • BT vs Sky vs Virgin

    Group Test Top pay-telly providers go head to head

    When the final old-style analogue broadcasts cease in 2012 the default way of receiving TV will be Freeview. For years there have been alternatives for those willing to pay more, and you can end up with as many channels as Lady Gaga has costumes. Like those outfits, you might think: is it necessary to have so many? That …

    reghardware 10 Mar 13:00

  • Spooks' secret TEMPEST-busting tech reinvented by US student

    Young boffin blows gaff on mystery BAE submarine kit

    A mysterious secret technology, apparently in use by the British intelligence services in an undisclosed role, has been reinvented by a graduate student in America. Full details of the working principles are now available. Works through glass, too. Tristan Lawry, doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering, …

    Physics 10 Mar 13:01

  • VeriFone ramps up the fear factor

    Apparently it's far from hip to be Square

    Payment processor VeriFone has launched a blistering attack on newcomer Square, claiming Square's hardware opens the way for criminals to skim cards – without noting that such skimming is already commonplace. So concerned is VeriFone with your security that it has set up a special website explaining what Square is doing wrong …

    Mobile 10 Mar 13:16

  • Firefox bloke blasts Microsoft IE 9 hardware acceleration claims

    So much browser war-mongering, so little time

    A New Zealand-based Mozilla programmer has spanked Microsoft's marketeers for making what he believes to be misleading claims about Internet Explorer 9's hardware acceleration credentials. Robert O'Callahan is so narked that, just one day after Microsoft confirmed IE 9 would be pumped out to the world on 14 March, he once …

    Applications 10 Mar 13:18

  • No toys to throw from the PRAM

    Comment Phase-change memory could be going nowhere slowly

    Phase-change memory (PCM or Phase-change RAM - PRAM) seems to be changing its phase, from promising-newcomer-technology to fading-candidate-going-nowhere. PCM is a memory technology involving a change of material state and electrical resistance in a memory cell's chalcogenide layer. The theoretical attractions are that it is …

    PCs & Chips 10 Mar 13:53

  • Direct action group defaces Vodafone in tax avoidance protest

    UK Uncut scampers all over website

    Anti-cuts group UK Uncut has hijacked a Vodafone website as part of a protest against alleged tax avoidance by the mobile phone giant. UK Uncut boasted that it had taken over the blogs on the World of Difference website, a site that normally promotes Vodafone's corporate and social responsibility initiatives. The initiative …

    Mobile 10 Mar 14:01

  • Is videoconferencing ready for the big time?

    Live now Lights, camera, network

    Today at 15:00, The Register's Tim Phillips will be debating the value of videoconferencing with Cisco's Nick Sheppard and Dale Vile from Freeform Dynamics. The three of them will look at what it takes, technically, to get videoconferencing working in your company. They'll look at past technologies in this space, the user …

    Tech Panel 10 Mar 14:09

  • Why Nokia failed: 'Wasted 2,000 man years' on UIs that didn't work

    For want of a nail, the Kingdom was lost?

    When Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced that Nokia was abandoning its development of its own smartphone platforms and APIs, and betting the farm on somebody else's, many people asked why it was necessary. Nokia had spent 15 years trying to develop and maintain its own software, which it regarded as strategic to maintaining its …

    Mobile 10 Mar 14:29

  • Connecticut suspect's 'half-ro' haircut wows web

    Quite a head of hair, police mugshot shows

    The police photo of a Connecticut stabbing suspect has shown why it is a really bad idea to flee the scene of an afro braiding before your hair has been fully been brought under control. The snap of 21-year-old David Davis has joined that of David Jonathan Winkelman in the internet hall of mugshot fame following the …

    Bootnotes 10 Mar 15:18

  • Tablet hype brings e-book readers a more merry Xmas

    Sales up - but 2011 will be the tablet's year

    E-book readers appear to have sold better during 2010 than some analysts anticipated, if new numbers from market watcher IDC are anything to go by. IDC today said some 12.8m e-book readers shipped during 2010 - more than 6m of then in the Christmas quarter alone. That total is 18.5 per cent up on the 10.8m units IDC forecast …

    reghardware 10 Mar 15:26

  • PlayStation update couples console to cloud and disconnects hackers

    But for how long?

    Sony has released a PlayStation firmware update today which not only gives customers cloud space, but attempts to plug all penetrable gaps and make hackers rethink their approach. Firmware 3.60 adds the cloud-based service for PS Plus subscribers that we mentioned last month. Those who pay subscription fees are now able to …

    reghardware 10 Mar 15:35

  • HPC student cluster WAR begins

    SC11 Let slip the dogs of clustering

    The ultimate competition for student techies has begun. To be more precise, the starting gate is in sight: submissions for the 2011 Student Cluster Competition (SCC) are now open. The SCC is the ultimate challenge – pitting student teams against hardware, software, electricity, heat - and each other. This year, the SCC …

    SC 2011 10 Mar 16:00

  • Apple security update leaves iPhone 3G users unprotected

    Security FAIL

    Apple is leaving some of its older mobile devices unprotected with its latest patch batch. An iOS 4.3 update, which includes a number of critical security fixes, is incompatible with the still widely used iPhone 3G and older versions of the iPod Touch. The latest version of Apple's mobile software can only be applied on the …

    Malware 10 Mar 16:10

  • NASA aims for space tests of Mars-in-a-month plasma drive

    270hp Star Wars-esque blue glow engine for the ISS?

    NASA will work with a firm started by a former astronaut to build a spaceworthy plasma drive capable of revolutionising travel beyond Earth orbit. However it appears that the space tests may not take place aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as had been planned. The blue glowing engine exhausts in Star Wars are …

    Space 10 Mar 17:14

  • eBay douses PHP ecommerce shop in money love

    $22.5m and a 49% stake - our final bid!

    Auction giant eBay's emerged as the stealth investor in tiny PHP shopping engine specialist Magento. eBay has invested $22.5m in Magento in return for a 49 per cent stake in the four-year-old company. eBay made the investment in March 2010 but the name of Magento's backer was kept secret until a recent eBay analyst event …

    Financial News 10 Mar 17:45

  • Super Micro uncloaks dense Westmere-EX server

    64 cores, 4 GPUs, and 2TB memory in a 5U racker

    Super Micro, the motherboard and whitebox server maker that is soon going to break through $1bn in sales, wants a bigger piece of the high-end server action. That's why the company has bent some metal into a dense eight-way server design based on Intel's forthcoming Westmere-EX Xeon processors. Intel has not said when it will …

    Servers 10 Mar 18:13

  • Townsville gets Smarter Cities dollars

    IBM invests in a data-driven makeover

    Townsville in North Queensland is evolving into a digital hub after being selected by IBM as one of 24 international cities to receive a Smarter Cities Challenge Grant. The grants provide cities with access to IBM's top experts to analyse and recommend ways to improve the economic and social viability of the city. Townsville …

    Business 10 Mar 20:22

  • HP gets data centre fever in NZ

    Rolls out plans for third data hub

    Hewlett Packard is constructing a NZ$60 million data centre in Auckland, New Zealand as part of the vendor’s billion dollar global rollout programme for HP data centres. The 500m2 facility located outside of Auckland in Tuakau is expected to open in March 2012. HP enterprise services country manager Gavin Greaves said the …

    Infrastructure 10 Mar 20:23

  • Oz PC shipments still growing

    Market researchers insist that not all retailing is a dead duck

    In spite of a disappointing Christmas season – one which saw gloomy predictions from most retailers – market researcher IDC says Australia’s PC shipments grew strongly in 2010. The researcher says the market reached 5.7 million units in 2010, which would represent more than one unit for every fixed broadband household in the …

    Channel Register 10 Mar 20:24

  • iPad 2 sales kick off in dead of night

    Erects 'popup store' in Texas

    Yesterday, iOS 4.3. Tomorrow, iPad 2. And if you're planning a trip to Austin, Texas, to catch Bad Brains at the annual South by Southwest mega-fest, Apple will provide a "popup store" just for your iPad-purchasing pleasure. On Thursday, Apple also announced that it will begin accepting online orders at 1am Pacific Time on …

    Mobile 10 Mar 20:29

  • HP: 'Yes, we're keeping the PC biz'

    Sell-off rumor squashed like bug

    The Commercial Times, a Chinese business newspaper based in Taipei, Taiwan, is in hot water with Hewlett-Packard this morning after reporting that the company was considering selling off its notebook PC business. Yes, that sounds crazy, doesn't it? If you want to subscribe to the paper, you can check it out for yourself here …

    Channel Register 10 Mar 20:32

  • Microsoft compares Amazon cloud to 'horseless carriage'

    The Economics (and mixed metaphors) of Cloud Computing

    In the early days of the automobile, says Microsoft corporate strategy man Rolf Harms, cars were built like horse-drawn carriages. Some manufacturers even equipped their cars with whip holders. Others attached a faux horse head. Harms calls it "horseless carriage syndrome", and he sees it as the ideal metaphor for today's cloud …

    Channel Register 10 Mar 22:07

  • Microsoft drops Windows desktop virtualization pair

    Skinny clients coming

    Microsoft is prolonging the life of Windows XP apps with the latest release of its MED-V desktop virtualization software. MED-V is pitched by Microsoft as something to help customers migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7, letting Windows XP apps run in the new operating system environment. Version 2.0 – released Thursday for …

    Channel Register 10 Mar 23:42