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16th March 2011 Archive

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  • Message from South Oz: YouTube not for assaults

    Moral panic or aggravating circumstance?

    The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that South Australia's government is considering banning the filming of assaults. The government told the ABC it would introduce legislation making it an offence to publish "humiliating or degrading" images of people without their consent. State Attorney-General John Rau …

    Law 16 Mar 2011, 01:04

  • Microsoft and Mozilla edge towards web privacy consensus?

    Header debate beats government regulation

    Nothing helps rivals in the private sector find common ground quicker than the threat of government intervention. Microsoft and Mozilla – makers of dueling browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox – could be headed towards some kind of industry agreement on giving netizens the power to stop ad networks from tracking their …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 03:00

  • Oracle kills Sun.com after starvation diet

    Goodbye to one of the web's oldest domains

    Oracle is killing Sun.com, the online home of Sun Microsystems and one of the oldest dot-com domain names. An entry on the Oracle's OTN Garage says that sun.com will be decommissioned on June 1. The closure comes after Sun's new owner, Oracle, moved most of the content on BigAdmin, OpenSolaris.com, and some sections of Sun …

    Media 16 Mar 2011, 04:00

  • RIM tells users of bloodied BlackBerry to disable JavaScript

    More Pwn2Own fallout

    Research in Motion has suggested BlackBerry users disable JavaScript to protect themselves against a critical vulnerability that allows attackers to remotely execute malicious code and access confidential data stored on the phone. Monday's unusual recommendation came four days after contestants in an annual hacking competition …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 05:00

  • Site-saving workers evacuated from Japanese reactor disaster

    Updated If radiation drops, they will return. If not...

    The Japanese government has ordered the evacuation of the 50 remaining workers at the Fukushima Daiichi (No. 1) plant, thus bringing at minimum a temporary halt to the efforts to cool the distressed reactors at that increasingly troubled nuclear power plant. "Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors …

    Science 16 Mar 2011, 05:07

  • Intel opens kimono on Sandy Bridge Xeon E3

    Coming soon to a micro server near you

    Intel pre-launched its Sandy Bridge Xeon E3-1200 series of processors on Tuesday, letting the world know that it intends to dominate the new micro server market being created by SeaMicro, Dell, Tyan, Calxeda, and others. SeaMicro is making a lot of noise about its Atom-based SM10000 machines, which cram 512 cores into a 10U …

    Servers 16 Mar 2011, 06:00

  • Make streaming a felony: Obama

    Freetards? Throw away the key!

    The US government is proposing that "infringement by streaming" be made into a felony. That is one of a number of proposals contained in a white paper published (PDF/917KB) by the White House. The proposals also include allowing the Department of Homeland Security (that's right, intellectual property offences are now, …

    Law 16 Mar 2011, 06:17

  • Thinkflood RedEye remote for iOS

    Review Gadget mastery over Wi-Fi and the web.

    There are a number of apps and adaptors, such as the Gear4 Unity, which allow an iPhone to act as a universal remote control for your TV and other home entertainment kit. However, the RedEye from ThinkFlood is the most sophisticated remote control I’ve come across so far for this platform. Remote possibilities: Thinkflood's …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 07:00

  • Customising virtualised desktops

    Live Now! Give them what they want

    One of the biggest challenges arising from desktop virtualisation is the experience and demands of the end user. A one size fits all or lowest common denominator desktop approach is rarely a recipe for success when there are a range of use cases and expectations to cater for. Users are becoming more mobile and wanting to use a …

    Desktop Virtualisation 16 Mar 2011, 08:17

  • UK boffins to develop 'Solar Squaddie' electro-uniform

    Leaches shivering troops' body heat at night

    The cash-strapped UK Ministry of Defence is to ally with national boffinry authorities to create a camouflage uniform for soldiers which will generate electricity, so perhaps removing the crippling load of batteries currently carried by troops in combat. 'Fictitious but realistic'? Better get rid of the blank-firing …

    Science 16 Mar 2011, 09:00

  • Flash standard now twice as fast

    Fewer pins, more bits

    A new flash interface standard has been published that doubles NAND access speeds to 400MB/sec, making flash even more attractive for consumer devices and business computing. The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) working group has released its v3.0 ONFI standard. The group started up in May 2006 and has more than 100 members …

    Storage 16 Mar 2011, 09:38

  • Faster, Network! Kill! Kill!

    The insatiable thirst for bandwidth

    The networking landscape has altered, and altered considerably since the 1970s, a decade that saw both the introduction of shoulder pads and the beginnings of the Ethernet network. In the thirty or so years since, fashion has, thankfully, moved on and so, too, has networking, which is what concerns us here. In particular what’s …

    Data Center 16 Mar 2011, 09:39

  • Samsung goes stereoscopic rental mental

    3D VoD service coming to Blighty

    Samsung is worried about the lack of 3D content available to showcase its 3D TVs and Blu-ray players, and is to launch a 3D video-on-demand service to keep its customers stocked up with stereoscopic stuff. The service - the first of its kind, anywhere, claimed Samsung - will go live in Korea before the end of June, with roll- …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 10:20

  • Sexy eco-bulb wins Design of the Year

    'Beautiful silhouette and organic form'

    An "imaginatively sculpted energy saving lightbulb" has secured the UK's Design of the Year award. The "stunning redesign" of the dreary low-energy bulb caught the eye of the judges with its "beautiful silhouette and organic form" – the work of Samuel Wilkinson and design company Hulger and dubbed the "Plumen": Jury chairman …

    Bootnotes 16 Mar 2011, 10:27

  • Mozilla to ship Firefox 4 on 22 March

    Ready your best browser trousers

    Mozilla looks set to release Firefox 4 on 22 March, unless developers encounter any nasty bugs in their final tests. The open source outfit's Damon Sicore confirmed yesterday that the Release Candidate build of Firefox 4 that Mozilla pushed out last week is likely to be the final test version of the browser. "Firefox 4 RC1 …

    Applications 16 Mar 2011, 10:39

  • The changing nature of end user computing

    Tech Panel Remember those days?

    Life used to be pretty straightforward. An employee joined the organisation, and they were allocated a desk with a PC on it. The IT department controlled what was on that PC, always knew where it was, and generally had pretty easy access to it. Today it's different; at least for most organisations. The PC is now likely to be a …

    Tech Panel 16 Mar 2011, 11:00

  • Twitter adds HTTPS opt-in button to micro-blogging service

    Please RT: SSL crypto is, like, so sexy right now

    Twitter has followed in the footsteps of Facebook by offering an opt-in "always on" HTTPS setting to users of its micro-blogging service. The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption protects Twitter users who access the service over unsecured Wi-Fi connections. "This will improve the security of your account and better protect …

    Applications 16 Mar 2011, 11:09

  • Bloke with hammer fixes London's Olympic clock

    Photo exclusive Countdown resumes in Trafalgar Square

    We're delighted to report that London's high-tech Olympic chronometer is once again counting down to the opening of next year's celebration of performance-enhancing drugs sporting excellence. The OMEGA London 2012 countdown clock clapped out yesterday less than 24 hours after it was switched on to a backdrop of fireworks, …

    Bootnotes 16 Mar 2011, 11:10

  • More cocaine found at Kennedy Space Center

    Fly me to the Moon, part 2

    NASA officials at the Kennedy Space Center have discovered 4.2 grammes of a "white powdery substance" believed to be cocaine, Space.com reports. The suspect substance turned up on 7 March at an unspecified location on the Florida complex. A preliminary on-the-spot test by police "indicated a positive test for cocaine", …

    Science 16 Mar 2011, 11:33

  • Intel and Apple: tablet d'hôte

    Leader Both making a meal of it?

    Intel's Android efforts: products, please, not prototypes Is it really news that Intel is encouraging Asian netbook and tablet makers to use its processors in their Android products, as Taiwan's DigiTimes and the many sites citing it believe? We'd think it news if the chip giant wasn't making such a move. Intel is in the …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 11:34

  • Privacy group demands answers from Skype

    How secure is secure?

    Lobby group Privacy International is demanding Skype improves its VoIP service to properly protect the privacy of its users. PI said it had reviewed Skype's security and had specific concerns including the VoIP service's use of full names on the contact list, which makes it easy for people to impersonate others. The lack of …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 11:39

  • Vodafone, Three fall under 'magical' iPad 2 spell

    Operators issue identical pledges of loyalty

    Three and Vodafone have joined Orange and T-Mobile - though these two are now essentially one and the same - to sign up to sell the iPad 2 when it arrives in the UK. Whenever that may be. Apple is sticking to the previously announced 25 March release date, but the widespread failure of many queueing Mac fans to leave US Apple …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 11:46

  • 12Mb/sec to a mobile telephone, but is it a new generation?

    Verizon launches what it likes to call 4G telephony

    Verizon has launched the HTC Thunderbolt, bringing 12Mb/sec data to a mobile phone if you can get coverage, but whether or not it is the first 4G phone is a rather more complicated question. The Thunderbolt is certainly a nice enough phone – Android 2.2 with HTC's Sense interface layered on top, up to 12Mb/sec download and 5Mb …

    Mobile 16 Mar 2011, 11:52

  • The Register Primer on Enterprise Virtualization

    Reg reader study

    Here's the score, a seven-pager on enterprise virtualization, inspired by an online survey of 301 IT Pros. Most are already engaged in virtualization projects and all were Reg readers to a man (or woman) - yes it was our online survey. Based on the study's findings, we produced this editorially independent Register primer, …

    Virtualization 16 Mar 2011, 12:00

  • Virgin Media, Readers - an apology

    Elementary, my dear million homes

    Dear readers, we owe you an apology. This morning, we could - darn it, we should - have written up Virgin Media's announcement that the "UK’s fastest broadband reaches one million homes" and drawn the obvious - but erroneous - conclusion that a million customers have signed up for Virgin's 100Mb/s broadband package. Many of …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 12:19

  • Soyuz capsule 'nauts touch down safely

    Kazakhstan landing for ISS crew

    Alexander Kaleri, Scott Kelly and Oleg Skripochka returned safely from the International Space Station this morning when their Soyuz TMA-01M capsule touched down on the "frigid" Kazakhstan steppe at 07:54 GMT. The trio launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 8 October, and clocked up 159 days in space, 157 of them aboard the ISS …

    Science 16 Mar 2011, 12:36

  • York Uni exposes students' private info

    17,000 sets of details fall through website holes

    The University of York has leaked confidential personal information on students due to website security vulnerabilities. Details including mobile phone numbers, addresses and A-Level grades of an estimated 17,000 students were exposed as a result of the breach. University administrators have reported the incident to privacy …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 12:41

  • Internet Watch Foundation: Abuse images takedown speeds up

    But scale of problem remains the same

    The number of URLs hosting child abuse content has risen significantly over the last year – but the scale of the problem has not changed, and take-down time has improved dramatically. Those were the highlights of yesterday's Internet Watch Foundation 2010 Annual Report (PDF/3.9MB) presented to an assembly of the great and the …

    Law 16 Mar 2011, 12:51

  • What is Mark Hurd working on?

    Oracle loves NetApp - true?

    Blocks and Files Look, this is off the wall, and I'm putting together an absence from the public eye and thoughts from a couple of sources - and maybe wishful thinking - but, here we go; what is Mark Hurd working on at Oracle? The Hurdster has been absent from public engagements for a couple of months it seems. He gets …

    Storage 16 Mar 2011, 13:06

  • EA dubs Nintendo Wii a 'legacy platform'

    Wii 2 on its way?

    EA has described Nintendo Wii as a "legacy platform", a console that picks up dust on the shelf along with the likes of the PS2 and the original Xbox, while HD consoles rule the show. The Wii has seen a decline in sales over the last year, and with Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's PS Move taking motion-controlled gaming into the …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 13:09

  • Rift

    Review Conflict resolution for the Warcraft weary?

    Carpal tunnel syndrome has almost set in since the release of WoW Cataclysm – bash, level, bash, ow, ow – so perhaps change is as good as a rest. Well, one look at Rift and I am left with nightmarish flashbacks of DC Universe another MMO that is ultimately flawed with a levelling cap, a boring character build system and no …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 13:11

  • Watchdog disses City of Medway

    Not a city, actually, says ASA

    The Advertising Standards Authority has earned its keep by ruling on the critical matter of whether Medway can describe itself as a city. The answer is: no it can't – which is a bit of a blow for Medway Council, which had been punting its delights as the "City of Medway". That description popped up in a leaflet promoting " …

    Bootnotes 16 Mar 2011, 13:19

  • Foreign Office endorses 'free' Microsoft travel advice API

    Civil servants not equipped to build mobile apps

    The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has endorsed an application programming interface created by Microsoft, after the software giant took the government department's RSS feeds and cobbled together an API. While a Commons committee is busily scrutinising the government's IT procurement record, the Foreign Office has been …

    Cloud 16 Mar 2011, 13:23

  • Rambus gets Tosh top-up

    Another five years please

    Toshiba has renewed a five-year memory licensing agreement with Rambus, providing a plentiful flow of royalty dollars to the litigious company. The deal is concerned with intellectual property relating to speeding up SDR, DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memory chip performance, as well as some other DRAM chip types. The royalties will …

    Hardware 16 Mar 2011, 13:40

  • Green Parrot to cure YouTube shakes

    Google acquires Irish image enhancement firm

    Google has announced that it has acquired a Dublin firm "specialising in motion based manipulation of film and video" – with an eye to improving the quality of YouTube videos. Down at the YouTube blog, Google Video Technology big cheese Jeremy Doig says of the sometimes less than top-notch YouTube footage: "What if there was a …

    Applications 16 Mar 2011, 13:46

  • Phone, car companies collaborate to connect cars, phones

    Motoring, there's an app for that

    Eleven companies want to make it easier to connect your mobile gadgetry to your car, and to get the two talking a common language. They have formed the inevitable industry consortium to do it. Said body is the Car Connectivity Consortium, and it's backed by phone manufacturers Nokia, Samsung and LG; in-car electronics firms …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 13:52

  • FTC sanctions behavioural ads firm over deceptive 'opt-outs'

    Sing a new song, Chiquitita Chitika

    The FTC has settled a complaint with a behavioural advertising firm alleged to have misled consumers into believing they had opted out of its services. Chitika uses cookies to track surfers' actions on the web as well as the searches they make in order to serve them with ads that more closely match their perceived interests. …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 13:56

  • Google Docs plugs into email, turns 'comments' into 'discussions'

    Google Wave without the Google Wave

    Google has equipped its Google Docs online word processor with a new discussion system designed to enhance collaboration between users. The setup augments the traditional "comments" system popularized by Microsoft Word, letting users not only attach comments to a document, but also readily discuss the document with collaborators …

    Cloud 16 Mar 2011, 14:00

  • Power and cooling in the data centre

    Hot and hotter

    Power and cooling are the critical services demanded of a data centre facility, yet diagnosing problems and fixing them while keeping the infrastructure running can be surprisingly difficult. Yet they've never been more important as virtualisation increases the concentration of critical resources in the data centre. For …

    Data Center 16 Mar 2011, 14:00

  • Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

    Situation worsens - still no cause for alarm

    The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi powerplant has worsened significantly as it becomes clear that one and possibly two reactors there have suffered a breach in primary containment, making the incident definitely the second worst nuclear accident yet seen. Nonetheless its human consequences seem certain to remain …

    Science 16 Mar 2011, 14:14

  • Gov and ISPs clash over informal policing of net

    If I said you should have a beautiful self-regulatory body...

    A row is brewing today between government and ISPs following suggestions that greater informal policing of internet content might be needed, along with a new self-regulatory body to carry out the task. The proposal arose as Culture Minister Ed Vaizey spoke at the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) 2010 Annual Report launch …

    Government 16 Mar 2011, 14:28

  • OCZ opens wide and swallows Indilinx

    Embedded SSD controller tech gives it deeper penetration into new markets

    Speedy SSD maker OCZ is buying fabless Indilinx, which makes controller software and silicon for SSDs, especially embedded SSDs. OCZ is based in San Jose and privately held Indilinx is headquartered in Bundang, South Korea, where it also has a research and development centre. There is an office in Milpitas, not far from San …

    Storage 16 Mar 2011, 15:35

  • Still talking about desktops ... haven't we moved on?

    Evidently not

    The desktop computer remains a fixture in just about every business – a fixture that still needs to be maintained, secured and eventually, refreshed. At the same time, the pressures to provide more flexible, cost-effective access to corporate systems is leading organisations to look at mobile and cloud computing desktop …

    Desktop Strategy 16 Mar 2011, 16:24

  • Wi-Fi security befuddles clueless home users

    Have you tried turning it off and on again?

    Two out of five UK home users don't have a clue about how to change the security settings of their home wireless network. The 21st century equivalent of a failure in understanding how to program home video recorders was exposed in a survey commissioned by privacy watchdogs at the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). The …

    Broadband 16 Mar 2011, 16:30

  • TV judge holds court over Wii modchip case

    Piracy isn't the problem, though

    Here's a video clip of a televised court case about a pay dispute between a man and his neighbour over the modification of a Wii console. Amusing as all this 'he didn't pay me' stuff is, The People's Court judge appears to express no concern that the act of modifying a console to "play free games" is illegal. The 1998 US …

    reghardware 16 Mar 2011, 16:35

  • Euro police smash online paedophile ring

    184 arrests so far, 230 children 'safeguarded'

    A huge paedophile network behind a Netherlands-based online forum called boylover.net has been smashed and 184 suspects have been arrested, following a worldwide police operation. More than 4,000 intelligence reports were issued to police authorities in over 30 countries in Europe and elsewhere, said Europol. So far 230 …

    Law 16 Mar 2011, 17:04

  • Hadron Collider 'could act as telephone for talking to the past'

    Brane brainboxes' brainstorm predicts un-sticky singlets

    Spurs-a-jingle boffins in America say that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), most puissant matter-rending machine ever assembled by humanity, may also turn out to be the first time machine ever built. According to the physicists' calculations, instruments at the mighty particle-smasher may soon detect signs of "singlets" which it …

    Science 16 Mar 2011, 17:12

  • SGI talks Windows on Altix UV

    Datacenter Edition glows UltraViolet

    Supercomputer and general-purpose server maker Silicon Graphics has shed some light on its support for Microsoft's Windows Server on its "UltraViolet" Altix UV 1000 supercomputers. SGI president and CEO Mark Barrenechea first outted the company's Windows plans during a conference call with Wall Street analysts in early …

    Servers 16 Mar 2011, 17:51

  • Teen charged for Facebook birthday hoax that drew 200,000

    Invite goes viral

    Australian police arrested a Sydney teenager and accused him of posting an invitation to Facebook that generated 200,000 positive replies to a girl's 16th birthday party. The unnamed 17-year-old was arrested on Tuesday when police visited his home, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. He was charged with using the internet to “ …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 17:55

  • Drizzle: Big-Data-happy MySQL fork debuts

    Not your enterprise relational database

    Drizzle – a lightweight fork of Oracle's MySQL database for cloud computing – has been released by open sourcers. Drizzle tarball version 2011.03.13 has been released as general availability (GA) version. It comes nearly three years after the project was announced by Brian Aker, one of MySQL's key architects,. Drizzle aims to …

    Applications 16 Mar 2011, 18:35

  • Jon Bon Jovi accuses Steve Jobs of murdering music biz

    Apple boss 'personally responsible'

    Aging 80s hair-band demigod Jon Bon Jovi knows who killed the increasingly moribund music market: Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am," the 49-year-old Bon Jovi (née John Francis Bongiovi, Jr.) told The Sunday Times Magazine, "and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to …

    Media 16 Mar 2011, 18:39

  • Cloud.com revs open source data center makeover kit

    Three hypervisors, one floating infrastructure

    Cloud.com has released a new version of its CloudStack platform, a means of transforming your existing data center setup into an Amazon EC2–like "infrastructure cloud". This week, the Silicon Valley outfit introduced CloudStack 2.2, which lets you manage virtual machines based on VMware vSphere, Xen, and KVM hypervisors from …

    Cloud 16 Mar 2011, 18:49

  • Microsoft malware removal tool takes out Public Enemy No. 4

    Crafty backdoor gets de-wormed

    Microsoft this week used its Malicious Software Removal Tool to take out the fourth-biggest threat in automated program's history, which dates back to at least 2005. The malware, known as Win32/Renocide, is a crafty backdoor-enabled worm that spreads through removable drives, network shares and popular file-sharing applications …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 19:41

  • 'iPad cads' dash fanboi fondleslab hopes

    Scalpers demand $2,000 per 'Pad

    If you've tried and failed to snag the latest Cupertinian shiny-shiny – aka the iPad 2 – perhaps the reason is not merely the herd of legitimate iPad purchasers crowding Apple's retail stores. Perhaps you've been outmaneuvered by what the New York Post has labeled "iPad cads". "A cutthroat Asian group has set its crosshairs on …

    Media 16 Mar 2011, 19:58

  • Telstra restores Japan cable link

    Staff staying in Tokyo for now

    Telstra International has reported that all services have been fully restored to its undersea cable infrastructure in Japan. Meanwhile Chunghwa Telecom is struggling to restore full services to the damaged cables APCN-2 and Japan-US which serve as links for internet and voice services between Taiwan with the US. The Taiwanese …

    Networks 16 Mar 2011, 19:59

  • News Corp to trade music for games, readies MySpace sale

    Can Rupert replicate FarmVille?

    News Corp is poised to enter the social gaming sector to get a slice of some of the action Zynga is enjoying with its FarmVille success. Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, the head of News Corp’s digital media group, Jonathan Miller said: "Social gaming has a business model. People who play FarmVille actually spend real …

    Business 16 Mar 2011, 20:00

  • Skyhook vows to take Google suit to bitter end

    One way or another, says boss, we'll get on every Android phone

    The CEO of Skyhook Wireless has vowed to take the company's lawsuits against Google to the bitter end and – "one way or another" – get its location services onto every Android phone. In September, the Boston-based Skyhook – which offers a service for pinpointing a mobile device's location via Wi-Fi signals – launched two suits …

    Mobile 16 Mar 2011, 21:40

  • GaleForce blows into the cloud

    Fluffs servers, storage, networking

    It seems like everyone who ever sold a system or network management tool is now repositioning themselves as a controller of clouds. Gale Technologies, which you probably never heard of because it hasn't been marketing itself for very long, is coming to clouds from the network side and expanding out into controlling all physical …

    Cloud 16 Mar 2011, 21:51

  • Sony wins subpoena for PS3 hacker's PayPal records

    Noose slowly tightens around GeoHot

    A federal judge in San Francisco has given Sony permission to subpoena the PayPal records of George Hotz, the hacker being sued for jailbreaking the company's PlayStation 3 game console. Tuesday's order by US Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero said the information subject to Sony's subpoena “shall be provided on an Attorneys' …

    Security 16 Mar 2011, 23:53