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28th March 2011 Archive

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  • Steve Jobs screws my wife (out of $944)

    Comment What do you do with an iPad 2?

    I couldn't tell who was more excited about our new electronic toy: me or my wife. She snuck out of bed at 3 am local time on March 11 to order me an iPad 2, and considering how much my wife likes sleep, that probably means she still likes me, even after sixteen years of dating and marriage. At least enough to shell out $729 …

    Music and Media 28 Mar 2011, 00:00

  • Quanta crams 512 cores into pizza box server

    Tilera chips spotted in wild

    Quanta Computer – the Chinese manufacturer that builds the majority of laptops in the world and that wants to break into the server racket in a big way – has started shipping its first production machine based on massively multicored processors designed and manufactured by chip upstart Tilera. The Quanta machine, known as the …

    HPC 28 Mar 2011, 01:00

  • Windows Server pushed to the super limit

    SGI puts Microsoft on 256 cores

    Server maker Silicon Graphics doesn't think it can take on the entire Windows server market, but the company – which is best known for supercomputers and hyperscale rack servers – does think it can chase and win deals in the evolving HPC market for windows. That is why it has certified Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2 on its …

    HPC 28 Mar 2011, 02:00

  • Oracle's Itanium gambit: A play for HP's checkbook

    Comment One way or another, Apotheker will pay

    Everything Oracle does is about money. You have to look at any of its actions - no matter how peculiar or provocative they may be - through an economic lens, focusing on the benefit those actions will provide to Larry Ellison and the company he co-founded decades ago. Take last week's out-of-nowhere kick in the chips Ellison …

    Servers 28 Mar 2011, 03:00

  • Dell's storage vision: From reseller to innovator

    Comment Fluid Data goes external

    Having bought storage technologies and companies to gain entry into new storage categories, Dell is now rolling out a unified storage architectural vision embracing file systems added to every storage offering, and Ocarina-deduplication everywhere. Compellent's fluid data idea is being applied across Dell's storage portfolio …

    Storage 28 Mar 2011, 04:00

  • 120 Underground Wi-Fi hotspots will erupt in 2012

    Spewing LOLcats all over 19th century caverns ...

    Transport for London is tendering for bidders to open Wi-Fi hotspots at underground stations, and possibly even at bus stations and stops. The decision follows a trial with BT OpenZone at Charing Cross tube station in central London. Transport for London said the tender was for up to 120 tube stations, out of a total of 260 …

    Wireless 28 Mar 2011, 08:00

  • iPad 2 3G price-plans compared

    Updated Three are the best

    Planning to buy a 3G-enabled iPad 2? To help you choose the right package, here are how the UK operators stack up. We'll be adding other carriers as they announce prices. Review Apple iPad 2

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 08:56

  • MPs now free to surf and tweet

    Warned not to take debate from the Chamber to the interwebs

    MPs appeared last week to have overtaken the somewhat more cautious House of Lords, with the publication of new guidelines allowing MPs to tweet – and surf – during debates in the Commons, so long as they do it tastefully, and don't take up too much room. This was the conclusion of the Third Report of the Procedure Committee, …

    Government 28 Mar 2011, 08:59

  • MoJ goes cloudy

    Savvis picks up £14m

    The Ministry of Justice is spending £14m on a five-year cloud contract. The Ministry gets to use Savvis's "infrastructure as a service platform". Civil servants will use the platform to run Enterprise Resource Planning, from Steria and Accenture. Some 80,000 people will use the ERP system, which includes a common model for …

    SaaS 28 Mar 2011, 09:03

  • Asus prices up netbook-convertible Android tablet

    Qwerty will cost you

    Asus' tablet-meets-netbook, the Eee Pad Transformer, will cost the best part of £500 when it goes on sale here on Wednesday. The Transformer is a 10in, 1280 x 800 tablet running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system - onto which Asus has slapped its own UI, Waveshare - and driven by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 09:30

  • Curiosity kills 3D Cameron cams

    No Avatar remake for NASA's new Mars rover

    NASA has decided to ditch plans to equip its Curiosity Mars rover with a pair of 3D cameras. Avatar helmsman James Cameron was behind the move to replace the rover's two cameras with some enhanced glass, but the agency says it doesn't have time to test the kit before Curiosity sets off for the Red Planet later this year. …

    Space 28 Mar 2011, 09:32

  • Osborne tosses £3bn gift to the green elite

    We're all in it together. But some are more together than others ...

    Something interesting is happening in politics at a quite seismic level, and as usual, the professionals haven't noticed. Let's start with the details. Last week, Chancellor George Osborne announced a new body that would make loans and issue debt. In a harkback to the 1970s, poorly performing and deeply unprofitable businesses …

    Government 28 Mar 2011, 09:46

  • Sony Ericsson preps Gingerbread for Xperia X10

    One last Android upgrade pipelined

    Sony Ericsson has changed its corporate mind and decided to upgrade its Xperia X10 smartphone's on-board software beyond Android 2.1 Eclair. The X10 is to get an Android 2.3 Gingerbread update, the handset maker has blogged. Only the X10 - not the the X10 Mini or X10 Mini Pro. There'll be a wee wait, mind. SE won't have the …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 10:06

  • MySQL.com hacked via... SQL injection vuln

    *facepalm*

    MySQL.com was hacked over the weekend via an attack which used a blind SQL injection exploit to pull off the pawnage. Hackers extracted usernames and password hashes from the site, which were subsequently posted to pastebin.com. Any easy to guess login credentials could be easily extracted from this data using rainbow tables …

    Enterprise Security 28 Mar 2011, 10:15

  • Internet pioneer Paul Baran dies

    Packet switching? It'll never catch on

    Paul Baran, one of the pioneers of packet-switched networking, the basis for the internet, has died in his home in California aged 84. Baran devised the concept at the RAND Corporation, working under contract to the US Air Force. The idea of dispersing data around a mesh-like topology, that required the client node to …

    Telecoms 28 Mar 2011, 10:16

  • Have you thought about using a mainframe for that?

    Managing Enterprise Workloads in large environments

    Data centre managers and IT operations staff in large enterprises are now faced with a bewildering array of demands from their users, who take for granted that systems will work without any form of service interruption, planned or otherwise. At the same time the business expectations are for new services to be delivered rapidly …

    HPC 28 Mar 2011, 10:45

  • iPad 2 tougher than iPad 1. True

    Smashing revelation

    The iPad 2 is more durable than its predecessor, at least as far as its glass face is concerned. The new model incorporates a much stronger, more flexible screen than the old one did. A team from repair shop iFixYouri ran the two tablets' glass display covers through punishing tests to see how much damage they could withstand …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 10:50

  • Apple lands patent blow, but the slugfest continues

    iPhone ban looking less likely

    Apple has gained ground in the ongoing patent spat with Nokia. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) investigation judge has made an initial determination that Apple isn't infringing five Nokia patents. That means the judge feels Apple isn't infringing on the five patents remaining in this case, and – if the decision …

    Mobile 28 Mar 2011, 10:59

  • Nintendo 3DS console and games

    The hardware and the software reviewed and rated

    The latest incarnation of Nintendo's handheld games console - and the first to offer glass-free 3D viewing - family is here. See what we think of it. Nintendo 3DS launch games We rate the first batch     Nintendo 3DS Raise your glasses?     Nintendo 3DS games release schedule What to look out for     Nintendo …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 10:59

  • Visio 2010: strengths and weaknesses

    Workshop The gleaned wisdom of two visualisation experts

    Few people in the UK have worked with diagramming tools for as long as David Parker and Chris Roth. Here they give us the benefit of the wisdom gleaned from years of delving into the ever-changing world of vector graphics. David Parker Having qualified as a RIBA architect in 1986, he subsequently worked for a CAD supplier, …

    Data Visualisation 28 Mar 2011, 11:02

  • EU bodies schooled on ethical data-gathering

    You should find out before giving up your data that it might be released

    EU bodies should tell people that some personal information on them might be made public before gathering any personal data, the bodies' privacy watchdog has said. The bodies should adopt 'a presumption of openness' in certain cases, it said. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, has published revised …

    Government 28 Mar 2011, 11:06

  • Fire-quenching electric forcefield backpack invented

    Conflag stifler to replace sprinkler systems, fire hoses

    Boffins in America say they're on the track of a backpack electro-beam forcefield device capable of snuffing out raging fires without any need for water, hoses or other traditional firefighting apparatus. Apart from portable applications, they raise the possibility that the new technology might replace building sprinkler systems …

    Physics 28 Mar 2011, 11:08

  • Nokia talks Pure typographic cobblers

    LogoWatch Whalesong heralds new 'seamless, fluid' font

    As we announced last week, Nokia has unleashed its new "Nokia Pure" font on an unsuspecting world, but we seriously underestimated just how much whalesong and joss-sticks went into the creation of its "humanist sans face". Typographic geezer Bruno Maag, having already admitted that Nokia Pure has "clarity of purpose and as …

    Bootnotes 28 Mar 2011, 11:09

  • El Reg is recruiting reporters

    Think of it as journalism with benefits

    The Register is looking for ambitious reporters to join its London editorial team. The Register is the UK’s biggest technology and science news website. We’re also pretty big in the US, Canada, Europe and India. We are looking for reporters with at least two years’ experience covering the technology, science or business …

    Site News 28 Mar 2011, 11:21

  • Sales, meet Finance (redux)

    Workshop Business process re-tweaking

    Both public and private organisations deploy business applications as a way of providing a more joined-up view of company information across departments. In many cases the aim is to minimise re-keying – two people entering the same data, or worse, one person taking information from one computer system and typing it into another …

    Doing Better Business 28 Mar 2011, 11:25

  • The challenges of desktop configuration

    Desktop Firing at moving targets

    For businesses, many of the problems with PCs come from the 'personal' part of personal computer. If every system is set up differently, with different applications, updates, security settings, power management and interface options, the individual user might be happier. They might even be more productive, although it’s equally …

    Desktop Strategy 28 Mar 2011, 11:28

  • Nvidia flexes Tesla muscles

    Opens kimono, talks strategy

    2010 was the breakout year for Nvidia’s Tesla division, according to Tesla VP Andy Keane, who spoke at the company’s Industry Analyst Day earlier this month. I think it’s pretty obvious that he’s right, and a quick review of the last year tells the story. Three of the top five systems on the Top500 list sport Nvidia GPU …

    HPC Blog 28 Mar 2011, 11:51

  • Google in mobile payments ménage à trois

    MasterCard and Citigroup slip into bed with search giant

    MasterCard and Citigroup will be deploying NFC payment applications into Google's Nexus S phone, with other handsets to follow, as part of the chocolate factory's bid to turn phones into wallets. The news comes from the Wall Street Journal, which cites the ever-present "people familiar with the matter" as telling the paper …

    Mobile 28 Mar 2011, 11:52

  • Zomm wireless leash

    Review For your dog and bone

    The Zomm is a pebble-shaped wireless ‘leash’ for mobile phones. It pairs to a phone using Bluetooth and if the two devices are separated by a few meters then the Zomm alerts you, first by vibrating, then flashing and a few seconds later by beeping. Protect and survive: Zomm's wireless leash is controlled by just one button …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 11:58

  • Lindsay Lohan ditches her surname

    Serious blow to El Reg space plane bureau

    Bespeckled thespiatrix Lindsay Lohan has dealt a serious blow to the El Reg space paper plane bureau by announcing she's going to drop the "Lohan" and emerge as just "Lindsay". According to her mum Dina, there are two reasons for the rebrand: first up, loads of megacelebs like Oprah and Beyonce thrive on a first-name-only …

    SPB 28 Mar 2011, 12:09

  • Making the decision on hosted apps

    Webcast What’s the risk and reward?

    On the 29th March at we have Reg reader Chet Loveland – who’s also the CISO from MeadWestvaco Corporation (MWV), a 20,000 strong global business – giving us a practical run through how and why he moved a large chunk of his users into the cloud. Chet is joined by The Register’s own inimitable host, Tim Phillips, Dale Vile from …

    Hosted Apps 28 Mar 2011, 12:19

  • The Professionals set to abseil into cinema

    Big screen outing for Bodie and Doyle

    Arse-kicking CI5 operatives Bodie and Doyle are to be brought out of retirement for a big-screen version of The Professionals. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate UK has acquired the rights to adapt the TV series for cinema, some 28 years after the last of 57 episodes aired on London Weekend Television. Lionsgate …

    Entertainment 28 Mar 2011, 12:30

  • Mobile phones immobilise bones

    Not just your brain you have to worry about

    Forget about brain tumours, mobile phones may also cause your bones to crumble, scientists in Argentina appear to have discovered. Medical researchers at the National University of Cuyo believe that cellular phones may increase the likelihood of developing Osteoporosis, a skeletal disease characterised by reduced bone mass and …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 12:41

  • Comodo-gate hacker brags about forged certificate exploit

    Tiger-blooded Persian cracker boasts of mighty exploits

    An Iranian hacker has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the SSL certificate hack against Comodo, providing an insight into how the high-profile hack might have been pulled off. The lock-picker – who claimed he had "1,000 times" the experience of any hacker or programmer – asserted that after compromising Comodo's …

    Enterprise Security 28 Mar 2011, 12:46

  • The Reg Guide to server virtualisation scale-up

    Removing barriers to entry

    In December, our research partner Freeform Dynamics polled Reg readers about your experiences with server virtualisation projects: some 458 IT pros took time out to reply. Thank-you. Analysts Tony Lock and Dale Vile have distilled your answers into a whitepaper, sponsored by Microsoft, called Server Virtualisation Scale-up. …

    Servers 28 Mar 2011, 13:26

  • Airship 'Sky Tugs' ordered from Lockheed for Canadian oilfields

    P-791 military hover suck-blimp gets civil application

    The famous P-791 prototype airship - built last decade for a military transport programme which eventually came to nothing - is to give birth to new, mighty commercial versions of itself with Canadian financial backing. Alberta-based private company Aviation Capital Enterprises says it has inked a deal with US aerospace …

    Science 28 Mar 2011, 13:56

  • Facebook friends Obama's ex-press rep

    Ready to fight regulators

    Social networking giant Facebook is shortly to hire Obama's ex-press secretary. Gibbs left the White House in January, and Facebook wants him to sort out their communications before an initial public offering next year, according to the New York Times. The only difficulty is that Gibbs wants to play a role in Obama's re- …

    Government 28 Mar 2011, 13:57

  • Spotify apologises for tainted ad kerfuffle

    Can't stop the music

    Spotify has promised to review its security following an attack that exposed users of the free version of its music streaming service to malware on Thursday. Tainted ads displayed to music fans served up content from sites that used the Blackhole Exploit Kit in an attempt to infect users with the Windows Recovery fake anti- …

    Enterprise Security 28 Mar 2011, 14:38

  • HMS Ark Royal goes under the hammer

    Get your bids in for some serious kit

    We at El Reg have always fancied our own navy, so we're seriously considering making a bid for the recently-decommissioned aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. The MoD is offloading the venerable vessel down at edisposals.com, along with Type-42 destroyers HMS Exeter, HMS Southampton and HMS Nottingham. Anyone interested in …

    Bootnotes 28 Mar 2011, 14:39

  • iOS 5 falls back to autumn, say moles

    Sensational September iStuff revamp? Yes please

    Don't expect iOS 5.0 to be available to download as early as June - it'll be out in September. So say two "solid sources" cited by TechCrunch, though neither appears to say why Apple will stop using a timetable that has served it well for many a year. Certainly, the company didn't say anything about the next major release of …

    reghardware 28 Mar 2011, 14:47

  • Hosts with the mosts: Getting to grips with SLAs for the cloud

    Hey baby, I’m your telephone man

    When email is down, businesses cease to function. If the email goes down due to a mishandling of the Exchange server, the appropriate sysadmin is found and duly berated. Finger pointing exercises are less well defined when email stops working because Gmail is down. Again. In this case the sysadmin in question bears no direct …

    Cloud Business 28 Mar 2011, 14:48

  • eBay splashes $2.4bn for ecommerce services firm

    It's entirely complementary

    eBay has splashed out $2.4bn to buy ecommerce services outfit GSI Commerce in a deal will do little to dampen concerns about wonky valuations in the tech sector. eBay is paying $29.25 a share for the firm, which it says is a 51 per cent premium over the target's Friday closing price, and a 47 per cent premium over its average …

    Financial News 28 Mar 2011, 14:56

  • Composers, songwriters feel squeeze from disappearing CD

    While miserable tight-fisted internet giants won't pay up

    Composers and songwriters are feeling the pinch as the CD disappears from the High Street, and tight-fisted internet giants refused to pay for music. Music royalty collection society the PRS, or as it styles itself after a spell in the Strategy Boutique, "PRS for Music" (so as not to be confused with PRS for Fish Food, …

    Music and Media 28 Mar 2011, 14:57

  • Apple confirms dev conference, but not much else

    Fanboys head to San Francisco

    Apple developers will be heading to San Francisco in June for a five-day beano of coding and fondle-slabbing. The conference includes stuff for iOS and Mac OS devs and will have over 100 sessions. There will be sneak previews of new features planned for Mac OSX Lion – the eighth big release of the OS. Lion is thought to be …

    Developer 28 Mar 2011, 15:20

  • Intel gets spanking new SSD

    X25-M replacement

    Intel has replaced its mainstream X25-M solid state drive with the 320, which is more than two times faster doing sequential writes. The 320 uses third-generation 25nm process technology, unlike the 510, which Intel announced earlier this month and which relied on older, second generation 34nm technology. The smaller process …

    Storage 28 Mar 2011, 15:55

  • Kaminario drops DRAM SSD pricing drawers

    Raises capacity knickers

    Kaminario, which supplies DRAM-based solid state drives, has dropped its entry-level pricing and raised its maximum capacity. When introduced in June last year its K2 DRAM product cost $200,000 for a 500GB entry-level version with two I/O directors, and scaled up to 1.25TB. The big box supplied 1.5 million IOPS and 16GB/sec …

    Storage 28 Mar 2011, 16:05

  • Java daddy borged by Google

    Gosling succumbs to 'road more travelled'

    James Gosling, the father of Java, has joined Google – despite his previous criticism of the company's Java-happy Android operating system. Gosling announced his new job with a post to his personal blog entitled "Next step on the road", but did not provide specifics. "Through some odd twists in the road over the past year, and …

    Developer 28 Mar 2011, 17:26

  • Apple limits Design Awards to App Store residents

    You're either on the bus, or you're off the bus

    Apple has piled another brick onto the ramparts of its walled garden: to be eligible for this year's Apple Design Awards, Mac OS X developers must sell their apps through the Mac App Store. "How are apps selected for the Apple Design Awards?" Jobs & Co ask themselves in the ADA FAQ. Their answer: "iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps on …

    Developer 28 Mar 2011, 18:52

  • Bomb threat forces Apple campus evacuation

    Disgruntled fanboi phone fun?

    A bomb threat cleared an Apple facility outside Sacramento, California on Monday morning, but a subsequent search turned up no iXplosives. According to a video report from Sacramento television station KCRA, "several hundred employees" were evacuated from three buildings at Apple's Laguna Blvd. campus in Elk Grove, a suburb of …

    Odds and Sods 28 Mar 2011, 21:14

  • Arista punts 10/40 GbE juice-sipper

    Swift switch joins jitterless, low-latency 10GbE sibling

    Arista Networks – the fourth major startup created by Andy Bechtolsheim of Sun Microsystems fame – has again pushed the 10 Gigabit Ethernet performance and efficiency envelope by pumping out a new switch that delivers a port for under two watts of juice when under load. The Arista 7050S-64 switch is based on the "Trident+" 10 …

    Data Networking 28 Mar 2011, 22:03

  • Oz parliamentary network breached

    Unidentified finger points uncertainly at China

    In a security breach that presumably now has Chinese spies trawling through the kind of letters MPs do their best to deflect or ignore, the Australian Parliament House network has been invaded. The network is not rated as suitable for “sensitive” communications. According to News Limited, Australian government officials were …

    Security 28 Mar 2011, 22:44

  • Vocus buys Perth data centre

    Acquisition hunger mounts

    ASX listed data centre provider Vocus Communications is expanding its footprint to Perth, entering into negotiations to buy Perth data centre operator PerthiX. Vocus has paid an upfront consideration of $6.275m in cash with an additional performance earn out of up to $725,000 should the business exceed FY12 forecasts. Vocus …

    Financial News 28 Mar 2011, 22:45