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14th April 2011 Archive

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  • Huawei to forge big red Itanium iron

    Inspur goes Itanic too

    Intel has added two more server makers to the roster of those who want to build Itanium-based systems: Huawei Technologies and Inspur. That's a 50 per cent growth rate in the Itanium OEM base. At the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing this week, Kirk Skaugen, general manager of the chip maker's Data Center Group, said in his …

    Servers 14 Apr 05:32

  • 360 Browser

    iOS App of the Week Thumb from page to page, literally

    There isn’t a proper version of Firefox available for iOS, but the 360 Web Browser is perhaps the closest alternative I’ve seen so far. Version 3.0 has just been released and its feature list is ridiculously long, including an option to sync with Firefox, a built-in download and file manager, the ability to upload files to a …

    reghardware 14 Apr 07:00

  • Asus Eee Pad tablet-cum-netbook ship date slips

    Pre-order punters advised of long delay

    The Eee Pad Transformer, which maker Asus is pushing hard as a netbook-tablet combo - with the appropriate optional extras, natch - has slipped, at least according to Amazon. Originally due for release this month, the gadget is now being reported as due to ship almost two months from now, on 1 June. Says Amazon in a note …

    reghardware 14 Apr 08:45

  • Dixons' best chance? Quit the UK and move to Sweden

    When rent is greater than profits...

    Dixons' best chance of surviving is to close its UK business and concentrate on its Scandinavian business. The cold-hearted claim comes from Morgan Stanley, which studied UK electrical retailing and found the whole sector is making losses. The analysts reckon there is more than 25 million feet 2 of selling space, but a serious …

    Channel Register 14 Apr 08:55

  • US Marines splurge on Brit troops' armoured pants

    Blighty's ballistic lunchbox tech impresses Yanks

    It doesn't happen often, but today it has. US troops, serving alongside British forces in combat, have looked enviously at the kit furnished to our boys and girls and demanded that the Pentagon get off its ass and buy them similar stuff. More normally, things would be the other way around. The kit in question is the armoured …

    Science 14 Apr 08:58

  • Samsung SuperSpeed drives out next month

    USB 3.0 HDDs, anyone?

    Out next month: Samsung's latest USB 3.0 external hard drives, both 2.5in portable and 3.5in desktop units among them. The desktops fit into the M3 Station series, with capacities of 1, 1.5 and 2TB on offer. Chav drive - the beige ones are a bit... Burberry The portables include the M2 and the C2, the latter a "premium" …

    reghardware 14 Apr 09:14

  • Oregon legislators salute Rick Astley

    'Never gonna give you up', promises House of Representatives

    Oregon legislators have proved they're down with the kids by slipping the lyrics to Rick Astley's immortal Never Gonna Give You Up into otherwise deadly serious House of Representatives business. The rickrolling-inspired vid was posted on 1 April, and went viral earlier this week. It was the brainchild of Portland Democrat …

    Bootnotes 14 Apr 09:28

  • Viking Modular plugs flash chips into memory sockets

    Not a DIMM idea at all

    What a brilliant idea: put flash chips into memory sockets. That's what Viking Modular is doing this with its SATADIMM product. This is a small solid state drive device, with a 25mm or 18.75mm height, 133.35mm length and maximum 7.75mm width; giving it a 75 per cent smaller footprint than a 2.5-inch SSD. It comes with a 6Gbit/ …

    Storage 14 Apr 09:34

  • Sony Ericsson posts Android bootloader unlock code

    Open up your Xperia

    Sony Ericsson has made good on its pledge to publish details showing "advanced developers" how they can legitimately unlock the bootloader code incorporated into certain SE Android smartphones. The unlock applies only to 2011 phones running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and to handsets that haven't been tied to a network operator, …

    reghardware 14 Apr 09:35

  • Everything Everywhere accused of lining pockets with charity cash

    Just covering costs guv'

    Everything Everywhere has been taking 10 percent of charitable text messages, excepting its selected charities, on the flimsy excuse of having to cover its processing costs. The problem is that it seems the other network operators are more generous with their cut, passing on the entire payment, so the operator is being forced …

    Mobile 14 Apr 09:42

  • O2: Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone ready to go.... almost

    New code quashes bugs, but not all of them

    O2 has said Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play smartphone - aka the PlayStation phone - is ready to go on sale.... nearly. The UK network operator was to have joined other carriers and launch the handset on 1 April. At the eleventh hour, however, O2 admitted its testing had revealed bugs in the SE firmware and its participation in …

    reghardware 14 Apr 09:57

  • When information sharing goes wrong

    Workshop Trust in the supply chain

    One of the most troubling phone calls I have ever received was from the irate managing director of an IT reseller. I was working as a channel manager for a major software company at the time and the complaint was that we had a leak. Extreme carelessness After a bit of investigation, we figured out what had happened. A few …

    Doing Better Business 14 Apr 10:00

  • Fujitsu £2bn broadband project throttled at both ends

    Needs £500m from public purse, and for BT to get real with pricing

    Fujitsu's plans to bring rural broadband to five million UK homes over the next three to five years could be seriously hamstrung not only over a row with BT about its prices, but also if it fails to secure £500m from the public purse. The Japanese company confirmed a proposed joint venture yesterday with Virgin Media, TalkTalk …

    Telecoms 14 Apr 10:16

  • Sony Pictures opens wallet for Bond 23

    Co-financing deal for 007

    Sony Pictures has inked a deal with MGM to co-finance and distribute Bond 23 – the next outing for 007 slated hit to hit cinemas on 9 November 2012. In April last year, the movie was suspended indefinitely as MGM struggled with a hefty $3.7bn debt. In January, it was announced Daniel Craig could dust off his Walther after all …

    Entertainment 14 Apr 10:20

  • French hacker cuffed after bragging on telly

    Updated D'eau!

    A French hacker who boasted of breaking into the systems of a government security contractor on national television has suffered some unsurprising consequences. The alleged miscreant, identified only as Carl, appeared on a programme called Complément d'enquête (Further Investigation) to demonstrate how he broke into the …

    Crime 14 Apr 10:42

  • White iPhone 4 out by month's end

    Wait over?

    Apple's almost mythological, fully vapourous white iPhone 4 is merely a few weeks away from launch. You'll have to take the word of a trio of unofficial sources, cited by Bloomberg, for it - Apple itself has yet to announce availability. Last month, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller Tweeted that the oft-delayed shiny white …

    reghardware 14 Apr 10:43

  • Spotify throttles free listeners

    Puts on a shrinking cap

    Spotify is throttling the amount of free listening available to users of the service in a set of small but complex changes. The main change is that users who sign up to the free ad-supported Spotify will be restricted to 10 hours of listening a month, with a maximum of five plays for an individual song. There's a six month …

    Music and Media 14 Apr 10:45

  • Apple cloud strategy changes with the weather

    Looking to recruit cloud engineers... or not

    Apple is looking to build up its cloud computing engineering team. Or maybe not. A discreet ad looking for a cloud engineer was spotted yesterday by Apple Insider. The ad, as reproduced by Apple Insider, calls for a "cloud systems software engineer" for a "full time" position in which the successful candidate(s) will get to " …

    Cloud 14 Apr 11:11

  • Supercomputer simulates neutron star-black hole SMACKDOWN

    Datura will measure crashing waves of space-time

    A German supercomputer will simulate what happens when neutron stars collide with black holes. The Datura supercomputer at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, will be used by the Numerical Relativity Group at the Albert Einstein Institute there. They will search for the gravitational waves …

    HPC 14 Apr 11:15

  • OFT probes extended warranties

    More bad news for Dixons

    The Office of Fair Trading is launching a short, sharp investigation into the market for extended warranties, having found some stores are not complying with rules imposed after a previous probe. The OFT will investigate the £750m market to see if consumers are getting a fair deal when buying extra guarantees for domestic …

    Channel Register 14 Apr 11:16

  • Mozilla rejigs Firefox release schedule in nod to Google's Chrome

    Channelling browser energy online

    Mozilla has added a new channel to its Firefox release schedule in a move to release more browser software code at various stages of its pregnancy. The latest tweak to the open-source outfit's roadmap is another clear nod in the direction of Google, which is arguably winning the PR war on the browser front by refreshing its …

    Applications 14 Apr 11:25

  • Victorian cops collar camera cooker

    Thousands of infringements altered

    The E-Crime Squad of Victoria Police has arrested a 36-year-old man for tampering with infringement data from red light cameras and speed cameras. The police allege the unnamed man, from the suburb of Craigeburn, altered more than 67,000 infringement records. In its statement, the Victorian police says it was investigating …

    Policing 14 Apr 11:28

  • Reconceptualising IT security

    Whitepaper Back to basics

    Traditional approaches to information security are incapable of dealing with today's threats. Just as the attackers have evolved, so the security industry needs to adopt new architectural models and techniques to deliver appropriate protection without imposing unnecessary costs. In a nutshell this is the thesis of our latest …

    Security 14 Apr 11:30

  • Research scientist: Cloud is good for IT pros

    Skilling up

    “Cloud computing does not mean the end of the IT professional.” So says Professor Marin Litoiu, research professor at York University in Canada, erstwhile IBM research director and now one of the world’s foremost thinkers on cloud. This may seem a strange statement - coming from a man who has predicted that cloud computing will …

    Cloud 14 Apr 11:45

  • WTF is... 4K x 2K?

    What, Full HD not good enough for you?

    If you’re a keen Reg Hardware reader, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve already got a high definition TV, and possibly a Blu-ray player too. Technology, of course, doesn’t stop there. While the switch over from analogue 405-lines to 625-line broadcasts - and TVs - took decades, changes occur more swiftly in the digital …

    reghardware 14 Apr 12:00

  • Obama gets personal V-22 Osprey tiltrotor

    Plane-copter combocraft take on 'Marine One' role

    President Obama's personal helicopter fleet will soon include the famous, controversial V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, according to reports. However it seems unlikely that the amazing plane-copter combo craft will land on the White House lawn very often. It's OK for the Pentagon. Is it OK for the White House? Military.com reports …

    Science 14 Apr 12:01

  • Dell flings Froyo tablet at Brits

    Seven-incher to take on Galaxy Tab

    Dell has released its 7in Android tablet, the Streak 7, in the UK, pricing the fondleslab at £299. The gadget only has 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity and only runs Android 2.2 Froyo. It comes with 16GB of on-board storage - there's an SD card slot for more - and is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2. The 7in touchscreen has a …

    reghardware 14 Apr 12:04

  • Free Libyana: Gadaffi networkjacker speaks!

    Abushagur tells The Reg how he nabbed a network

    Ousama Abushagur stole a mobile phone network from Colonel Gadaffi's son, and has told El Reg how it was done and what the future holds for Free Libyana. The Wall Street Journal covered the launch of Free Libyana yesterday, how the Libyana network was subverted and hijacked to serve the country without reference to Tripoli. …

    Mobile 14 Apr 12:09

  • Fired-up eco-boffin gives it '180 per cent'

    Leaves 110 per cent footballing lads sick as a parrot

    Old school football managers are often heard to confess they're "as sick as a parrot" because despite the lads "giving it 110 percent", their team has just taken a severe pasting. The problem is, 110 per cent just isn't enough of an overcrank for the modern world we live in. The proof comes in the form of environmental …

    Bootnotes 14 Apr 12:19

  • Winfrasoft touts pattern-based password alternative

    Sudoku for secure remote access

    UK software developer Winfrasoft is pushing visual patterns as an alternative to traditional passwords. Users would select, or be allocated, a pattern of squares on a six-by-six grid. Each time they logged onto a system, they would be presented with a grid of numbers (as illustrated here), from which they would have to enter …

    Enterprise Security 14 Apr 12:25

  • What did the Open Data Center Alliance ever do for us?

    Cloud Podcast Let Intel cloud man be your guide

    The Open Data Centre Alliance is an independent group of vendors and end users - who seem to constitute the core of the steering committee - that aims to help smooth the inevitable standards wars that emerge with the battle for the Cloud space. Part of its remit is to develop a ‘vendor agnostic Usage Road Map’ that everyone can …

    Enterprise Tech 14 Apr 13:00

  • NetApp becomes Quantum reseller

    For StorNext

    NetApp has signed up to resell Quantum's StorNext software, opening the way for it to sell hybrid disk and tape systems. StorNext is a virtualised file system manager that provides both SAN and LAN access to a shared set of files with automated data tiering across fast disk, capacity disk and tape libraries, plus deduplication …

    Channel Register 14 Apr 13:25

  • Best practices in virtualisation

    A pitch for ITIL

    Getting IT aligned with the business's needs and strategies is probably one of the toughest elements of any IT manager's job - yet remains among the most essential, right up there with keeping the lights on. It's about ensuring that IT delivers a return on investment, demonstrates its business value, provides continuous …

    Data Centre 14 Apr 14:00

  • Whatever happened to ... website-blocking?

    Hunt received Code months ago, and stalled

    Why has the Digital Economy Act run into the mud? The laborious business of implementing the Act is taking longer than anyone envisaged a year ago. We've now learned of one reason. Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt received Ofcom's Code of Practice last December, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport tells us. The Code is …

    Music and Media 14 Apr 14:08

  • Lads from Lagos pop up in Libya

    GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to trouser vast wad of wonga

    They get about a bit, the Lads from Lagos, and evidently couldn't resist a quick jaunt to Libya, where they've stumbled across a vast wad of wonga. We've said it before and we'll say it again: we do wish the lads would invest a small portion of their riches beyond the wildest dreams of avarice on a decent guide to the English …

    Bootnotes 14 Apr 14:11

  • Apple's 'Do Not Track' feature goes on Safari

    Never eat yellow snow

    The next version of Apple's Safari browser will reportedly come loaded with a "Do Not Track" feature that Mozilla has already debuted in Firefox. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple plans to slot the tool into its latest Safari iteration when it releases its forthcoming Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, operating system. …

    Applications 14 Apr 14:26

  • Belgian ISP does not have to filter out copyright-infringing traffic

    European Court of Justice advisor says it would violate users' rights

    Belgian ISP Scarlet should not have to filter copyright-infringing traffic from its service because to do so would invade users' privacy, an advisor to the EU's top court has said. Scarlet had been ordered by a Belgian court to filter traffic that infringed copyrights belonging to members of artists' rights agency Sabam ( …

    Telecoms 14 Apr 14:47

  • Help desk tools for Windows shops

    Desktop Support tools and patience?

    Getting managed desktops under control is all about getting some distance; you need to get away from expensive, time-consuming deskside visits. Self service for common issues like password replacement will save you a lot of calls and you can take advantage of the Windows 7 Troubleshooting Platform which gives you a user- …

    Desktop Strategy 14 Apr 15:00

  • German prangs dad's £275k supercar

    225 mph Gumpert Apollo a total write-off

    German cops are investigating whether a 20-year-old may have been doing a tad over the 50 mph speed limit when he pranged his dad's £275k, 225 mph Gumpert Apollo. The driver failed to negotiate a bend near the town of Brokdorf, 50 miles north of Hamburg. He and his 19-year-old female passenger walked away from the crash with …

    Bootnotes 14 Apr 15:06

  • Iron Mountain dislodges CEO

    Bob Brennan goes

    Iron Mountain, the successful supplier of physical record vaulting and unsuccessful supplier of digital vaulting services, has dumped its CEO, Bob Brennan, and made board chairman Richard Reese CEO in his stead. It appears Brennan has taken the hit for Iron Mountain's disastrous foray into its recently closed public cloud …

    Cloud 14 Apr 15:18

  • Everything Everywhere stops plundering the charity box

    Enter the repentant villain, stage left

    Everything Everywhere has suspended its practice of taking 10 per cent of charitable donations, and claims it is now working on an alternative, and more sustainable, model. EE had been taking the cut from text donations to cover its costs, other than those charities selected as "partners" by the operator. The operator still …

    Mobile 14 Apr 15:46

  • Google native code browser plug-in gets tickled

    It's like JavaScript without the JavaScript

    The Tcl scripting language has been plugged into Google's Native Client, allowing Tcl code to run inside the Google Chrome browser in much the same way that JavaScript does. Using Native Client – a Google-created plug-in for securely running native code inside the browser – Tcl now has direct access to the Chrome DOM. "The net …

    Developer 14 Apr 16:00

  • Serial hacker admits breaching Federal Reserve computers

    Faces 10 years in slammer

    A Malaysian national has admitted hacking a computer network operated by the US Federal Reserve Bank and possessing stolen payment card data. Lin Mun Poo, 32, entered a guilty plea on Wednesday in US District Court in Brooklyn. In November, prosecutors brought a four-count indictment against him that charged him with fraud, …

    Crime 14 Apr 18:16

  • Dell uncages Xeon E3 servers for SMBs

    Homegrown PowerConnect switches

    Dell has made a good living selling single-socket servers to small and medium businesses, and it is out there in front again supporting Intel's just-announced "Sandy Bridge-DT" Xeon E3-1200 processors in its PowerEdge machines. There are eleven Xeon E3-1200 chips, with four of them being aimed at workstations specifically …

    Channel Register 14 Apr 19:35

  • HP price tag could nix Marrickville council's 'Israel boycott'

    Too costly to replace computers?

    It starts with the kind of loopy idea most likely to emerge in local government (the lowest of Australia’s three tiers of government): Marrickville Council in Sydney had conceived the idea of boycotting Israeli goods and services. This was so popular it's partly attributed to the Greens missing out on the seat of Marrickville …

    Odds and Sods 14 Apr 21:13

  • Australia might need the NBN, but the OECD data is meaningless

    International broadband measures run wide but not deep

    No, please no, not another argument about whose position the OECD broadband data supports. This happens every time there's an OECD data release, or even when there's no release, but merely a statement about the last data. It starts, as always, with a political interpretation of OECD broadband data. Since this is practically …

    Networks 14 Apr 21:19

  • Meet Dell, your internet service provider

    The Small Partial Switch

    Dell may be playing coy about its plan to become an internet service provider. But it's already an internet service provider. As the once and future hardware maker builds its own Amazon-like "infrastructure cloud" – presumably based on the open source OpenStack platform – Dell is also offering businesses its very own web-based …

    Cloud 14 Apr 21:27

  • Google cranks ad money machine to $8.58bn

    Page presides over 27% leap

    Google's first quarter profits weren't quite as stellar as Wall Street expected, as the web giant boosted salaries across the company, hired an additional 1,900 minds, and continued to pour money into its worldwide network of data centers. The company's non-GAAP earnings reached $3.23 billion in quarter ending March 31, or …

    Financial News 14 Apr 21:39

  • Kogan hits 'net-on-TV', Android, Ubuntu markets all at once

    Tablet price smackdown

    Serial stirrer Ruslan Kogan has decided that Gerry Harvey is too boring a target, and wants to stick his thumbs in Steve Jobs' eye instead. To that end, the latest release list from the upstart vendor includes a 7" Android tablet starting at $139 (£99). The latest Kogan Technologies lineup also includes an internet-on-TV …

    Hardware 14 Apr 21:42

  • Five cuffed over $37m heist of Google flash chips

    'Largest chip heist in Silicon Valley history'

    California law enforcement officials have arrested five people who allegedly took part in a heist that nabbed $37m in Intel flash memory chips from a memory module manufacturer assembling products for Google. Silicon Valley's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team – a task force of local, state, and federal agencies focused on …

    Channel Register 14 Apr 22:32

  • Sex harassment case hits IBM Australia

    Verbal and physical claims

    A former IBM employee is suing the company for more than A$1m over repeated and ongoing harassment from a superior, according to The Australian. The report, picked up by the ABC's AM programme, says the staff member (who cannot be named) suffered both verbal and physical harassment. This included her supervisor rubbing himself …

    Channel Register 14 Apr 22:48

  • Silverlight's star shines in Microsoft's HTML5 show

    Happiness is a Kinect-steered armchair

    Microsoft has announced that the beta of Silverlight 5 is now available. That announcement, made by Redmond's corporate developer division VP Scott Guthrie during his MIX conference keynote on Wednesday, won the .NET faithful's biggest applause – more than the news of multitasking or access to smartphones' cameras in the next …

    Developer 14 Apr 23:24

  • Canonical delivers second Natty Ubuntu beta

    Updated Easter's no time for an RC

    Canonical has released a second beta for a new version of Ubuntu, having changed its nomenclature for betas and release candidates ahead of final code. The Ubuntu team delivered the beta for Natty Narwhal, Ubuntu 11.04, on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Canonical's Ubuntu release manager Kate Stewart told the Ubuntu mailing …

    Developer 14 Apr 23:57