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17th March 2011 Archive

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  • Alcatel-Lucent touts bit-blazing 100Gbps for Kiwi NBN

    Phantastically Phast Phrench Photonics

    French telco vendor Alcatel-Lucent is sending in the big guns – its 100Gbps metro networking – to New Zealand, as the competition to supply the government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband Initiative heats up. Alcatel-Lucent is bidding for the contract to supply electronics for the Layer 2 part of the UFB network currently and brought …

    Data Networking 17 Mar 01:07

  • Phishers dodge fraud protections in Firefox, Chrome

    Outmaneuver blacklists

    A recent round of phishing attacks targeting customers of Bank of America and PayPal circumvent fraud protections built in to the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers by attaching an HTML file to the spam email. According to M86 researcher Rodel Mendrez, the locally stored file opens a web form that collects the customers …

    Security 17 Mar 03:00

  • MS embraces/shuns Google's open video codec

    Redmond lawyers redefine 'the open web'

    Microsoft has teamed with the Google-backed WebM project to announce software that allows Internet Explorer 9 and other Windows applications to render video using WebM, the web-media format that Google open sourced under a royalty-free license last year. But the onus is on the user to install the software. Internet Explorer 9 …

    Music and Media 17 Mar 03:45

  • Java daddy: 'Aggressively stupid' won't work for Oracle

    Gosling says self interest rules

    Oracle has got no choice but to get it right on Java, according to Java founder James Gosling, who has voiced some support for the database giant's proposed changes. According to Infoworld, Gosling is told told TheServerSide Java Symposium that with a large part of Oracle's business dependent on Java, "it's in their own self …

    Developer 17 Mar 04:13

  • US CIOs: IT hires on the rise

    Nowhere close to lawyer hires

    Robert Half Technology, the IT unit of the eponymous headhunter, says that CIOs are more optimistic about the prospects of hiring more people and doing more IT projects than you might otherwise think. Every quarter, RHT surveys more than 1,400 CIOs at companies in the United States that have more than 100 employees and asks …

    Financial News 17 Mar 04:30

  • Apple iMovie 1.2

    iOS App of the Week Shoot happens

    I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Apple's new GarageBand app, but it’s the updated iMovie that will really benefit from the new camera and improved graphics power of the iPad 2. You can still run iMovie 1.2 on an iPhone or iPod Touch and gain minor improvements such as the new project themes and sound effects. It’s …

    reghardware 17 Mar 07:00

  • Visualisation into action

    Webcast See your data, make better decisions

    There's a whole lot of data chugging around your organisation and most of you won’t be making the best use of it. That's a picture that can only worsen as more information gets digitised and your business creates more data. When you visualise your data, you can use it to make better decisions. We're going to show you how. …

    Data Visualisation 17 Mar 08:50

  • Overland gets $15m tide-us-over cash

    Is this the last fundraising exercise?

    Overland Storage is raising $15.4m to tide it over before new product sales lift revenues. That's our take on the struggling data protection and storage appliance vendor's private placement of 8,722, 904 common stock shares plus warrants to buy up to 3,838,069 more. These warrants have an exercise price of $1.71 per share and …

    Storage 17 Mar 09:54

  • The more you know about your customers ...

    Workshop Those walking wallets have names

    Once you have measured customer purchases using the RFM (recency, frequency, money) formula, the question is how do you drive loyalty with the information you hold. The chances are your customers would be happier, and therefore more loyal, if they felt your organisation cared about them as individuals, not just walking wallets …

    Doing Better Business 17 Mar 10:00

  • Judge mulls 'wasted costs' as ACS:Law cases close

    'Out of norm conduct' could mean payout for anti-piracy lawyers

    A London court yesterday officially closed the book on allegations of illegal file-sharing brought by ACS:Law against 26 defendants. In February, senior patent court Judge Colin Birss QC heavily criticised the law firm for pursuing alleged file-sharers with threatening letters and then ditching the cases, which led to claims …

    Law 17 Mar 10:41

  • Police just rubber-stamping US data slurp

    Failing to follow the law

    Members of the European Parliament have condemned the first six months of data sharing with US terror spooks as an abject failure of data protection. The SWIFT agreement gives US authorities access to Europeans' banking information, but MEPs were told that in the first six months of operation data requests were so abstract it …

    Government 17 Mar 10:42

  • Altec Lansing inMotion Air wireless speaker

    Review Dock-free zone

    Altec Lansing’s inMotion range of portable speakers has been popular with iPod and iPhone owners for many years. However, the inMotion Air turns out to be a break with tradition – in fact, it’s not specifically designed for the iPod at all. Altec Lansing's inMotion Air I was, perhaps, taken in by the look of the unit, which …

    reghardware 17 Mar 11:00

  • A cacophony of clients

    DV Virtual desktops can run on tablets and phones - but should they?

    There was a time when technology was only sexy for a narrow subset of people. These were the folks, like me, who spent their weekends programming sprites in 68000 assembly language. Then, consumerisation happened, and the world was never the same again. Suddenly, everyone was a geek, and the IT department was in serious trouble …

    Desktop Virtualisation 17 Mar 11:00

  • UK cyclists hit by fraud after online purchase at website

    Updated Caught in the middle of a chain reaction

    A suspected security breach at popular UK-based biking site chainreactioncycles.com has been linked by victims to multiple instances of fraud. Various bike enthusiast forums are alive with complaints (here and here) from customers of the site, several of whom are reporting unauthorised charges on their credit or debit cards. …

    Crime 17 Mar 11:09

  • Asus to take fight to tablets with cheap Google netbook

    Chrome-plated?

    Eee PC maker Asus will launch a dirt-cheap netbook this summer in a bid the eke out out market share before the tablets take it all. So say industry moles cited by DigiTimes. The mystery machine will be out in June and cost "$200-250", which is £124-155 in real money. The snag, of course, is that you can already pick up past- …

    reghardware 17 Mar 11:16

  • Visa goes all P2P in US

    Pay anyone, anywhere

    Americans with Visa cards will soon be able to transfer money to any other Visa account worldwide, just by entering the amount, the recipient's card number and an email address. The service isn't unprecedented - Visa already offers something similar in several countries. However, the US roll-out has the scale and branding to …

    Mobile 17 Mar 11:21

  • Texas bank robber asked for ID

    Sure, here's my Wells Fargo debit card

    A Texas master criminal's attempt to rob a Dallas bank ended badly after the teller requested two forms of ID before handing over cash. Nathan Wayne Pugh, 49, was on parole for two previous aggravated robberies when he marched into a branch of Wells Fargo to make an illegal withdrawal. Confronted by the teller's demand for …

    Bootnotes 17 Mar 11:27

  • Spectrum-guzzling operators will TAKE TV off THE AIR

    The scramble for more radio spectrum

    Ofcom has threatened to put the spectrum used by broadcast TV on the block. Speaking at this week's Westminster eForum on spectrum policy, Ofcom's Hyacinth Nwana made several references to the 700MHz band that carries about two-thirds of our national (digital) television broadcasting. He said it was "open to discussions" and …

    Mobile 17 Mar 11:44

  • Video in the workplace

    On Demand Watching you, watching me

    Last week in our central London studio, The Register's Tim Phillips discussed the value of videoconferencing with some experts to see if it's a technology that has come of age at last. We all know the many false dawns of videoconferencing and the unfulfilled promises of revolutionising our working practices. But of late, that …

    Site News 17 Mar 12:00

  • Spam levels plummet as Rustock botnet taken down... for now

    815,000 zombies with no master...

    Spam volumes shrank on Wednesday after the prolific Rustock botnet fell silent, reportedly as a result of a takedown action. Rustock, which is made up of a network of compromised (malware-infected) Windows PCs, turns an illicit income for its unknown controllers by being the biggest single source of global spam. The botnet is …

    Spam 17 Mar 12:12

  • Child abuse cop slams ICANN

    'Accurate Whois is a joke. It just doesn't happen,' says Interpol kid protector

    One of Interpol's top child porn cops has launched a blistering attack on the domain name industry and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for not doing enough to help law enforcement tackle child abuse imagery online. At ICANN's public meeting in San Francisco this week, Garda Síochána's Michael …

    Crime 17 Mar 12:18

  • Boffins build copper-crunching laptop cooler

    Kettle chips?

    General Electric nanotech scientists have have come up with a heat-conducting system that's more than twice as efficient as copper yet has a quarter of the metal's weight. The design paves the way for faster, lighter computers and mobiles, the company claimed. The system can be laid on top of a chip - and pretty much any …

    reghardware 17 Mar 12:33

  • Broadband minister asks ISPs to better 'regulate' industry

    UK.gov enlists Sir Tim Berners-Lee to make noises about 'open web'

    Communications minister Ed Vaizey is calling on ISPs to beef up their commitments to providing UK customers with information about how they manage online traffic. At a meeting attended by broadband firms BT, TalkTalk, BSkyB and Virgin Media yesterday, the minister approved of the industry's efforts to agree to "greater …

    Telecoms 17 Mar 12:56

  • Accolades and anguish at the Baftas

    Games get gongs

    Heavy Rain was a critical success at last night's British Academy of Film and Television Videogames Awards, scooping three gongs amid the roar of much applause. The PlayStation exclusive won the Bafta for Technical Innovation, Story and Original Music at the ceremony held last night at London's Park Lane Hilton and presented …

    reghardware 17 Mar 12:58

  • Dell Inspiron Duo

    Review Flip your lid

    Devices that try to reconcile the essentially irreconcilable often come a cropper. As the Good Book says, “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Trying to combine the best of the netbook with the best of the tablet is what Dell’s new Inspiron Duo is all about, but does it work as …

    reghardware 17 Mar 13:00

  • Police, Google and Facebook warned on data protection

    Reding details plans for stronger privacy rights

    European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said citizens have the right to proper data protection, and the "right to be forgotten", and deserve national regulators which will enforce the rules. Legislation will be published in the summer to ensure that all Europeans' personal information is properly protected. Reding told …

    Government 17 Mar 13:02

  • Virgin turns on third Tivo tuner

    One box, three pick-ups

    Virgin Media has begun pushing out an firmware update that will activate the third tuner built into its new, Tivo-branded set-top box. Most DVRs have two tuners, allowing you to record one channel while watching another. Virgin's box will now let you record three shows at once - assuming, of course, you can find something …

    reghardware 17 Mar 13:17

  • Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

    'Worst probably over' says Australian prof

    The story of the quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant continues to unfold, with reports suggesting that the situation with respect to the three damaged reactors at the plant may soon be stabilised without serious consequences. The focus of attention has now moved to problems at a pool used to keep …

    Physics 17 Mar 13:48

  • Google copyright purge leaves Android developers exposed

    Could be forced to hand over source code

    Google's attempt to purge copyright from header files has put mobile developers at risk of being forced to reveal their own source code, according to legal experts. This time it's not patents or Android's reinterpretation of Java that's causing problems, but the Linux code that compiles down into Android itself. Google …

    Mobile 17 Mar 13:56

  • New cheap gas, not nature, is nuclear's biggest worry

    Nuke CEO says nuclear reactors just aren't economical

    New nuclear reactors just aren't economical, says the CEO of the largest nuclear operator in the United States. Exelon's CEO John Rowe says that the economics of cheap gas makes a nuclear renaissance unforeseeable for the next few years – and had done so before the quake prompted regulators to politicians to review their …

    Environment 17 Mar 14:27

  • Pervasive encryption: Just say yes

    Cloud Never mind the performance penalty

    In my day job as a sysadmin for a small business, and in my moonlighting as a freelance tech consultant, I get to do a lot of thinking about security. Ignorance of information security among small businesses is hardly news but in my experience many small businesses are only now getting the hang of securing their local PCs - …

    Enterprise Tech 17 Mar 14:30

  • Seeing the answer

    Workshop Diagramming boosts your (business) intelligence

    Business intelligence (BI) is a many-headed beast that has spawned a thousand different analytical applications in areas such as financials, key performance indicators, supply chain and so on. In essence, though, BI is about dipping into data and delivering it for viewing in a relevant format. Diagramming software offers the …

    Data Visualisation 17 Mar 14:30

  • IBM tunes up Java for z196 mainframes

    64-bit and 31-bit JVMs

    Software almost always lags behind the hardware it runs on. This week, IBM tuned up its Java virtual machines and software development kits for its System z mainframe line to take advantage of new instructions in the new zEnterprise 196 mainframes. The zEnterprise 196 mainframes were announced last July and began shipping in …

    Servers 17 Mar 15:45

  • Intel buys Silicon Hive for SoC smarts

    Philips Electronics spinout caught

    Intel continues to build up its capabilities in software in general and in parallel processing in particular, as it announced today it has acquired Silicon Hive. Silicon Hive was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The company incubated by Philips Electronics to develop compiler and other …

    PCs & Chips 17 Mar 16:01

  • New York Times tucks skirt behind stilted paywall

    Gray Lady asks regular readers to cough up $15 a month

    Regular readers of the online version of the New York Times will be asked to pay for a monthly subscription to the newspaper after perusing 20 articles on the site for free. On 28 March the Gray Lady will begin charging frequent visitors to its website. The newspaper described the "loyal readers" paywall as a "bet" based on …

    Music and Media 17 Mar 16:12

  • WD outs 6TB monster drive

    External HDD gets Raid treatment

    Western Digital has upgraded its two-disk My Book Studio II external hard drive to a whopping 6TB of capacity. Aimed at Mac fans, the drive comes formatted using the HFS+ file system. That makes it ready for Mac OS X's Time Machine auto-backup system. You'll need OS X 10.5 Leopard or above - 10.4 doesn't support drives …

    reghardware 17 Mar 16:23

  • Nintendo 3DS smashes advance order record

    Unusually high demand, claims Amazon - but won't say how many

    Nintendo 3DS has become the most pre-ordered console on Amazon, beating the likes of PS3 and Wii, the online retailer has claimed. According to Chris Poad, director of games at Amazon.co.uk, the level of demand demonstrated by advance orders is "unusual" for a handheld console. "Such high levels of interest are normally …

    reghardware 17 Mar 16:24

  • Prof debuts miniature laser diode for fast networking

    And even faster hair removal

    Miniature laser diodes emitting intense single wavelength light could speed data networking. A professor Denis Deppe of the University of Central Florida has invented a new small laser diode that has fewer impurities in it. This brings several benefits. Firstly, the emitted light has a single wavelength, making its detection …

    Data Networking 17 Mar 16:37

  • HBGary's nemesis is a '16-year-old schoolgirl'

    Tales of mystery and imagination

    Forbes has bagged an interview with the "teenage girl" who supposedly played a key role in hacking security firm HBGary on behalf of Anonymous. HBGary Federal earned the enmity of the loosely knit hacker collective by threatening to expose its membership at the B-Sides security conference last month. The security consultancy …

    Enterprise Security 17 Mar 16:53

  • ChinaNet bestows free Wi-Fi upon lucky Android few

    Shanghai phone booths get souped up

    ChinaNet, the ISP brand of China Telecom, has launched a public Wi-Fi service in 500 of its Shanghai telephone booths, and while most users will have to pay Android handsets get in for free. The service launched on 15 March, and covers the Yu Garden, Huaihai Road and the People's Square. ChinaNet helpfully describes the Wi-Fi …

    Wireless 17 Mar 17:04

  • Dell brings 2G Core i, swappable covers to Inspiron laptops

    A kick up the R series

    Dell has updated its Inspiron R laptop line, decking the 14in, 15in and 17in machines out not only with a vast selection of clip on, clip off lids but also Intel's second-gen Core i processors. Screen resolution increases as you move up the line: 1280 x 720 for the 14in, 1366 x 768 for the 15-incher and 1600 x 900 for the 17in …

    reghardware 17 Mar 17:25

  • Apple: Yes, Safari outperforms embedded iOS web viewer

    iPhone web API lacks optimizations, Apple tells El Reg

    Apple has confirmed that the web viewer embedded with iOS 4.3 does not offer certain optimizations included with the Safari browser bundled with Apple's mobile operating system. "The embedded web viewer does not take advantage of Safari's web performance optimizations." Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller tells The Register. It …

    Developer 17 Mar 20:58

  • Patent-pimping pair attacks Apple, PayPal, Victoria's Secret

    Amazon '1-Click' imbroglio redux

    Apple, PayPal, and Victoria's Secret have been slapped with a patent-infringement suit which alleges that their one-click online transaction-processing systems violate a 2004 patent held by a pair of companies that are no strangers to legal dust-ups. The suit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware – a …

    Music and Media 17 Mar 21:25

  • IE9: Downloads beat Angry Birds, lag Firefox and Opera

    2.3 million hits in perspective

    Microsoft is claiming 2.3 million downloads of Internet Explorer 9 in the first 24 hours since the browser was officially released on Monday. As is customary among tech vendors releasing download stats, there's no way of validating the numbers' authenticity or assessing what they mean. Microsoft's stat certainly sounds …

    Applications 17 Mar 21:47

  • Download data versus piracy claims: the figures don’t add up

    Comment Debunking the content industry's scare campaign

    First, a declaration of interest. Before I joined El Reg, I was working on an analyst project (PDF/721 KB) with Sydney company Market Clarity led by long-time friend Shara Evans. This project yielded a couple of data points that are relevant to claims about internet piracy in this country. The first is that while most …

    Policing 17 Mar 22:55