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18th April 2011 Archive

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  • Whitehats pierce giant hole in Microsoft security shield

    When Redmond closes a door, it opens a window

    In late December, Microsoft researchers responding to publicly posted attack code that exploited a vulnerability in the FTP service of IIS told users it wasn't much of a threat because the worst it probably could do was crash the application. Thanks at least in part to security mitigations added to recent operating systems, …

    Malware 18 Apr 05:05

  • The Royal Mail moves to the cloud

    Live now And tells us how it did it

    When you're an organisation the size of the Royal Mail, there comes a point when you really have to stop and take stock of the IT operations. Reg reader Adrian Steele, from the Royal Mail, did this in 2008 and noted the state of their infrastructure. More than 30,000 users with multiple email systems, not enough bandwidth or …

    Cloud 18 Apr 07:47

  • Symantec and Huawei snatch storage benchmark crown

    Spinning rust pops whup-ass can on flashy stacks

    Huawei Symantec has blown EMC and its nearly all-flash VNX off the SPECsfs2008 benchmark throne with a clustered NAS system without using SSDs. Spinning rust rules, OK? An OceanSpace N8500 with eight clustered processing engines scored 636,036 operations/sec on the SPECsfs2008 NFS benchmark. EMC had the previous record score …

    Storage 18 Apr 08:33

  • A short note about Microsoft App-V

    Desktop Dev-friendly

    The application development lifecycle is less responsive than it could be. IT departments spend too much time maintaining existing software and infrastructure, time that should really be spent delivering tools to make the business run better. It's like trying to run an F1 team out of a small garage: you never have the resources …

    Desktop Strategy 18 Apr 09:00

  • Seagate to buy Samsung's disk drive biz?

    And then there were three

    Seagate may buy Samsung's hard disk drive business, according to the Wall Street Journal. Samsung wants as much as $1.5bn for the loss-making unit but may take less than $1bn. We understand Seagate chairman and CEO Stephen Luczo is spending up to three months in the Far East, convenient for talking to Korea-based Samsung. …

    Storage 18 Apr 09:04

  • Wind turbine farm hack exposed as hoax

    Updated Tilting at windmills

    Claims of a supposed hack against the computers controlling wind turbines run by NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida Power & Light, are increasingly looking like a hoax. "Bgr R" posted the information to a full disclosure mailing list over the weekend in what the poster said was an act of revenge after Florida …

    Enterprise Security 18 Apr 10:04

  • Redaction FAIL: Dull nuke sub document revealed in full

    Full text sat in Google cache for months, nobody noticed

    The news media got in a ferment this weekend as it turned out that officials at the UK Ministry of Defence had failed to effectively redact passages in a report on nuclear submarine safety published to the internet. But the revealed text - which had originally been classified only at a low level - is not terribly exciting. The …

    Applications 18 Apr 10:10

  • SCHEITERN: Scientologists want to friend schoolkids on Facebook

    German gov says Nein as 'church' tries to reach children with social media

    The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) believes Scientology is recruiting children through Facebook and other social networks. The domestic intelligence agency is ramping up its surveillance on the controversial group. Scientology has posted several videos titled "Jugend für …

    Policing 18 Apr 10:16

  • UAE looks to block BlackBerry mail, again

    Targeting the little people

    Small companies in the UAE will no longer be permitted to use BlackBerry email services, according to local reports, and access will be cut off in the next two weeks. The National, an Abu Dhabi paper, tells us that the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has issued guidelines saying that any company with fewer than 20 …

    Mobile 18 Apr 10:20

  • Yahoo! jacks data retention from 90 days to 18 months

    Extra-private! Super-transparent!

    Yahoo! is jacking up the amount of time it holds onto its log file data by a factor of six to 18 months. The move, on the face of it, sets the firm on a collision course with the EU which sees six months as a perfectly adequate period of time to hold data, other than comms data. The veteran dot com said the switcheroo was "to …

    Government 18 Apr 10:24

  • Dropbox polishes iPad practice with patch

    Put it on the tab

    File-share resource Dropbox tweaked its iPhone and iPad app today, to allow bulk uploads and faster folder access. Version 1.4 features a new tab-based interface which includes a dedicated one for uploads. This can now be done in bulk with easier and faster ways to choose which folder files are saved in. Documents can also be …

    reghardware 18 Apr 10:27

  • Royal Navy hacker claims to have broken into space agency site

    Paris, we may have a problem

    Login credentials for database, email and other key systems that a poster claims belong to the European Space Agency were posted on a full disclosure mailing list over the weekend. TinKode posted supposed admin, content management, file upload (FTP), email and other account login details after using unspecified vulnerabilities …

    Enterprise Security 18 Apr 10:52

  • Five desktop virtualisation tips for IT project managers

    Learning to work together

    There’s a good reason why the word ‘strategic’ should drive fear into the heart of the most hardened project manager. Strategic decisions are generally wide-reaching, and therefore involve multiple stakeholders (which, incidentally, is another word in corporate bureaucracy’s dark lexicon). The more stakeholders there are, the …

    Desktop Virtualisation 18 Apr 11:00

  • Asus N73SV Core i7 Sandy Bridge 17.3in laptop

    Review Desktop replacement with B&O audio

    As a multi-media laptop the Asus NX90 is undoubtedly desirable but it's as big as a barge, weighs a ton and costs an arm and a leg. However, now you can get the same Bang & Olufsen sound system, full HD screen and the latest Sandy Bridge i7 processor in the altogether more practical N73. Sound prospect: Asus' N73SV After …

    reghardware 18 Apr 11:00

  • Love means never having to say where’s the soap

    Workshop Be nice to your indirect suppliers

    When thinking about supply chains, what usually comes to mind is the manufacturing company that sits mid-chain. Raw materials flow in from suppliers and finished goods flow out to customers. But there is another part of the chain: indirect, or MRO (maintenance, repair and operations), supplies. These are the goods and services …

    Doing Better Business 18 Apr 11:25

  • Microsoft opens Office 365 beta floodgates to the world

    Raises roof on marketplace

    Microsoft Office 365 hit public beta yesterday as Redmond uncorked a marketplace to support the long-gestating cloud-based Office suite. The public beta pushes the suite out to 38 markets, in 17 languages. It comes in two flavours: small business on a month-to-month deal with "community support", or enterprise with 24x7 admin …

    Cloud 18 Apr 11:31

  • UK is fifth free-est nation on the internet

    At risk of relegation to 'Partly Free' status

    The UK is the fifth free-est place on the internet, according to a thinktank report. Of those countries assessed, only Estonia, the USA, Germany and Australia offered more internet freeness than Britain. According to the rating system developed by NGO Freedom House, which counts former HP chief and unsuccessful would-be …

    Government 18 Apr 11:32

  • Citroën lifts lid on looming diesel hybrid

    Lax on tax

    Citroën has stepped its green gears up a level with its first diesel hybrid vehicle, the DS5. The five-door hatchback was unveiled at the Shanghai motor show today and the first car to incorporate the company's HYbrid4 diesel technology. This will help keep CO2 emissions down to 99g/km, which means the DS5 qualifies for the …

    reghardware 18 Apr 11:40

  • HP prepping Spotify-like music service for iPad-killer?

    Rumours of cloud music and offline storage for new WebOS tablet-touchers

    Having acquired the quite lovely WebOS, Hewlett Packard owns potentially the strongest tablet software of them all, and it's all wrapped up in the TouchPad, the most attractive competitor to the iPad. But HP knows this is not enough. Tablets need to be more than expensive colour Kindles, and leaked details at PreCentral …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 12:02

  • Pope says gravity proves technology can't supplant God

    Baits physicists, Colombia warmongers

    The Pope has warned the faithful of the folly of thinking that technology could replace the almighty. Pope Benedict, speaking at a Palm Sunday Mass to kick off Holy Week, noted that mankind had always sought to become "like God". But, Reuters reports, Pope Benedict said: "Mankind has managed to accomplish so many things: we …

    Bootnotes 18 Apr 12:07

  • City of London takes non-profit to the cloud

    Case study Helping hand

    Who is the shadowy City of London Corporation? Actually it is not shadowy at all, it's the City's local government. In our latest Future of Productivity podcast Adam Hand tells Tim Phillips how the City of London Corporation helped TheCityUK, a non-profit organisation that promotes UK financial services, to migrate its …

    Cloud 18 Apr 12:11

  • EU Data retention directive 'flawed, unlawful'

    Lib Dem and digital rights group have privacy gripes

    European state powers to retain data about customers’ telecommunications are set to come in for a kicking with the release of an offical report from the European Commission. The report, due out this afternoon, is expected to evaluate and gently prod the Commission towards taking further steps to harmonising existing …

    Government 18 Apr 12:13

  • Officials scoop up bacteria bubbling away in Playboy hot tub

    Possible cause for Domainfest outbreak

    An investigation into an outbreak of respiratory illness amongst techies who'd attended Domainfest has found legionella bacteria bubbling away in a hot tub at the Playboy mansion. LA health officials investigated after at least 100 attendees at Domainfest became horribly ill. Fingers were pointed at both the conference venue, …

    Bootnotes 18 Apr 12:14

  • Oracle tests find NFC lags in execution

    Just wait a sec, or two

    Oracle has been looking at NFC, and decided that the technology needs to be a good deal faster if it is going to have any hope of going mainstream. In Oracle's tests it took two seconds to open and read the three files required by their proposed application. That time could be reduced by combining the data into a single file, …

    Mobile 18 Apr 12:25

  • Virgin hits 3D screens with fresh range of flicks

    No need to splash out

    It's all very well having a 3D TV and a service to match, but content can be hard to come by. Virgin Media is addressing this, with today's revelation of a new 3D movie line-up available at no extra cost. The company has inked deals with Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney, to supply 3D films for its Virgin Media 3D On Demand …

    reghardware 18 Apr 12:28

  • Police head-cam TV show debuts in US

    Nice beating, Lance. Hey, is this on? Sh*t

    Reality TV took its next step at the weekend with the inaugural broadcasts in the USA of new show Police POV, featuring video footage from headcams worn by cops on the job. The first episodes of Police POV were broadcast on Sunday night by Time Warner channel truTV (motto: "Not reality. Actuality") which features court …

    Policing 18 Apr 12:45

  • UK net banking website falls flat on its bank

    Nationwide BS site isn't, again

    Nationwide Building Society's online presence has been floored for the second time in two months. The main site is unavailable, and while customers can access online banking by going direct to the logon page, they're unlikely to see details of their accounts once they've logged in. A spokesman for Nationwide confirmed that …

    CIO 18 Apr 12:59

  • EMC Avamar gets jiggy wit Data Domain

    Let's dedupe together

    EMC's 6.0 release of Avamar protects virtual machines faster and can use a boosted central Data Domain data store, as well as Avamar's own Data Store (now doubled in capacity). EMC says Avamar provides the first integration with Data Domain, implying that more is coming. In an ideal world users might wish to have a single …

    Storage 18 Apr 13:01

  • El Reg buried under unmade sci-fi movie entries

    Thanks for your numerous nominations

    We're closing the nominations for the greatest sci-fi film never made, having received well over 1,000 individual emails and comments suggesting just which written work you'd like to see brought to the silver screen. Now there's just the small matter of whittling down hundreds of potential movies into a manageable shortlist. …

    Entertainment 18 Apr 13:15

  • Leaked US cables finger Chinese army hackers for cyber-spying

    Byzantine Hades

    Leaked US diplomatic cables have provided some of the first hard evidence that the US is engaged in a heated cyberespionage battle with China, a conflict diplomats reckon is showing few signs of cooling off. Diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released to the media by a third party last week, trace a series of …

    Enterprise Security 18 Apr 14:15

  • Semi sales air-kiss $300bn in 2010

    Best year in history

    The prognosticators at chip market watcher Gartner have had a tough time trying to predict what the world's appetite for semiconductors would be in 2010, but they knew one thing for sure. People are hungry for the electronic gadgets and gizmos that have lots of chips in them, and the numbers were going to be up from 2009 and …

    PCs & Chips 18 Apr 14:29

  • Hauppauge offers global vision with Broadway 2T

    Tech tonic for travelling telly addicts

    Here in Blighty, we’re lucky enough to have on-line services such as the BBC iPlayer to watch our favourite TV shows again on-line, but travel abroad and access to those services is verboten. If you’re a telly addict with a local language problem, this does rather limit the entertainment to hand. Remote TV viewing is one answer …

    reghardware 18 Apr 15:17

  • Yahoo! Buzz! Given! Mercy! Bullet!

    Digg-alike topples into self-dug grave this week

    Yahoo! is pulling the plug on its Buzz service, making it the latest service/product/wild goose chase to be shuttered by the company. Buzz was a Digg-alike service, which allowed users to flagup content, and add their own headlines. Thus it was that last December Buzz users were informed they could expect: "Nonce Pope to …

    Applications 18 Apr 15:21

  • Tim Berners-Lee: Coalition mustn't be 'lazy' on open data

    W3C Cheaper to store data publicly, says GLB

    The inventor of the World Wide Web told The Register today that it would be a great disappointment to see open data projects such as the data.gov.uk example, and the seemingly doomed data.gov version over in the US, closed in an effort to cut costs. "What would be a shame would be if people use 'depend on money' as an excuse …

    Public Sector 18 Apr 15:38

  • Blighty's Skylon spaceplane faces key tech test in June

    Helium pre-cooler vital for SABRE airbreather rocket

    A British firm seeking to build a radical spaceplane – the Skylon – able to fly to orbit from a runway takeoff without any jettisoning of fuel tanks or boosters says that it will test its main technical special sauce this year. The announcement was made at a spaceplanes conference in California last week. Roger Longstaff, …

    Space 18 Apr 15:39

  • European Space Agency plays down hack impact

    Crucial alien files remain nonexistent

    The European Space Agency has confirmed that a hacker breached its network over the weekend, while playing down the significance of the hack. TinKode posted admin, content management and file upload (FTP) login credentials on Sunday after pulling off the attack on the space agency. The hacker also posted Apache server …

    Enterprise Security 18 Apr 16:00

  • Westminster Abbey cashes in on Royal Wedding with ... App

    One for the Reg demographic

    Today, Prince William and Kate Middleton gave 'royal approval' to Abbey 3D, an app that offers a tour of Westminster Abbey in 3D, even showing users areas that are off-limit on Wedding Day. Bless. There's also a photo gallery of previous weddings as well as biographies of those involved, not to mention the regular updates and …

    reghardware 18 Apr 16:44

  • 'Fierce competition' drives Apple's iPhone 6 changes

    iPhone 5 in 2011: 'slight modifications"

    If you're hoping that the iPhone 5 will be a thoroughly redesigned handset, one analyst says to chill: the next iPhone will make only "slight modifications" to the iPhone 4 when it ships in the fourth quarter of this year. For bigger changes, you'll have to wait for 2012's iPhone 6. AppleInsider reported on Monday that Ming- …

    Mobile 18 Apr 17:15

  • Google to close pre-YouTube Video service

    Last of the first picture show

    Google is shutting down its YouTube-predecessor Google Video, according to an email sent to users. The search giant has given people until May 13 to remove videos from the site, with the addition of a download button on the video-status page. After May 13, the button will be disabled and any remaining videos will be deleted …

    Music and Media 18 Apr 17:44

  • Bull, SGI tag team on Japanese nuke petaflopper

    A whole lot of Sandy Bridge bullx

    French supercomputer maker Bull, working in conjunction with sometime partner and sometime rival Silicon Graphics, has landed a contract to supply Japanese fusion researchers with a supercomputer rated at nearly 1.3 petaflops of number-crunching oomph and based on a future "Sandy Bridge" Xeon processor from Intel. The …

    HPC 18 Apr 17:56

  • Iran lays blame for Stuxnet worm on Siemens

    SCADA maker 'provided the enemies' with help

    A senior Iranian commander has accused the German engineering firm Siemens of helping the US and Israeli to build the Stuxnet computer worm that infiltrated his country's nuclear facilities. The claim by Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali came on Saturday in the Islamic Republic News Service, Iran's state news agency, which …

    Enterprise Security 18 Apr 19:24

  • Apple smears Web2.0rhea across online support

    Talk of future products forbidden

    Apple has moved its online support discussion forum into Web 2.0–land by inaugurating a new social-networking service called Apple Support Communities (ASC). The ASC service has been a long time in gestation: it was first announced in mid-August of last year – so long ago that one of the topics discussed in the original …

    Software 18 Apr 20:26

  • Microsoft's Word fight opens in US Supreme Court

    Argues for lowered burden of proof

    Microsoft has tried to persuade judges in America's top court that those defending against patent litigation cases should be held to a lower burden of proof than at present. A lawyer representing Microsoft at the Supreme Court told judges on Monday they should reject the long-held need for a defendant in patent-infringement …

    Software 18 Apr 21:02

  • Lawsuit targeting RockYou data breach gets green light

    Personally identifiable info has inherent value

    A federal judge has declined to dismiss a lawsuit filed against social-media application developer RockYou for exposing the personally identifiable information of 32 million of its users, which the site stored unencrypted when it suffered a major security breach 16 months ago. Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the US District Court in …

    ID 18 Apr 21:21

  • HP quietly revamps ProLiant SL hyperscale servers

    'We don't beat our chest'

    Dell makes a lot of noise about its bespoke servers cobbled together by its Data Center Solutions unit, and this gets under Hewlett-Packard's skin a bit considering that it is the largest shipper of servers in the world and it has its own quasi-custom, dense, energy-efficient servers aimed at hyperscale customers, too. So you …

    Servers 18 Apr 21:50

  • Apple sues Samsung over Galaxy look-and-feel

    The battle of 'rounded corners'

    Apple has sued Samsung for allegedly copying the iOS look-and-feel in its line of Galaxy smartphones and tablets. "Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple's technology, user interface and innovative style in …

    Mobile 18 Apr 23:38