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19th April 2011 Archive

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  • Suit settled, PS3 hacker donates $10,000 to EFF

    Directs choice words at Sony 'goons'

    The hacker accused of violating US copyright law when he hacked the PlayStation 3 game console has donated $10,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation after Sony dropped the controversial lawsuit. George Hotz, aka GeoHot, announced the donation on Saturday, five days after he and Sony settled their legal tiff. Sony accused …

    Law 19 Apr 00:15

  • Tron: Legacy 3D Blu-ray disc set

    Review 2011's home cinema demo movie?

    The arrival of Tron: Legacy on 3D Blu-ray this week will comes as a blessed relief if you’ve been struggling to find content to play on your new 3D hardware. A year after the launch of 3D Blu-ray, there’s still little more than a trickle of 3D animation aimed at younger film fans available. Finally, here’s a movie you might …

    reghardware 19 Apr 06:00

  • NI Auditor: Data sharing could mean more dosh for pensioners

    Northern Ireland has so far found £14m in unclaimed oldsters' benefits

    Initiatives including new technologies have helped identify £14m in unclaimed benefit entitlements for senior citizens in Northern Ireland, according to the Uptake of Benefits by Pensioners report by the province's audit office. But Kieran Donnelly, the chief auditor, has said that data sharing could help drive this figure up …

    Government 19 Apr 07:00

  • BBC 'would not kill off the internet even if it could'

    W3C Beeb digi-lord's iPad fluffs Tweety slideshow sideshow

    "I was a geek before geek was cool," declared the BBC's newly installed digital, future media, and technology director at yesterday's W3C event in Oxford. The Nominet-hosted shindig marked the launch of the World Wide Web Consortium UK and Ireland office and gave the Beeb's Ralph Rivera a platform to wax lyrical about his …

    Music and Media 19 Apr 08:28

  • Dear Facebook: your privacy sucks

    Security not much chop either, says Sophos

    Sick of having its users ask what’s wrong with Facebook privacy, security vendor Sophos has taken its concerns public in this open letter. It may well be restating things that intelligent and informed users could already have worked out for themselves, but Sophos’ complaint adds to public concerns raised by credible sources. …

    Security 19 Apr 08:36

  • Law Commissions call for new consumer compo law

    Current regs lack bite, say lawyers

    A new law should be created giving consumers the right to take misleading and aggressive businesses to court, the Law Commission and Scottish Law Commission have said. The new law would only apply to transactions between a business and a consumer, the Law Commissions said as they launched a consultation into whether there …

    Small Biz 19 Apr 08:39

  • Mother of all Win 7 rollouts: Microsoft eats own dog food

    Desktop Rolling, rolling, rolling

    Globally, 190,000 Microsoft users received an OS upgrade recently from Microsoft Vista to Windows 7. It was a large and complex roll-out - but it certainly wasn't the logistical nightmare you might imagine, nor was it a heavily locked down, centrally managed operation. This is the story of how it happened for Microsoft's users …

    Desktop Strategy 19 Apr 09:00

  • Touch Calendar

    Android App of the Week Corking connected calendar

    Google’s cloudy calendar was the main reason I adopted Android as my mobile OS of choice so it’s with no apologies that I’m selecting Touch Calendar as the one third-party app that Google really should license and install as part of the system. It’s that good.    Pinch to zoom between views The genius behind Touch Calendar …

    reghardware 19 Apr 09:00

  • Lost records down even though breach incidents soared

    Conflicting findings from Verizon report puzzle security watchers

    The number of records lost to security breaches last year decreased dramatically, even though incidents of breaches actually increased. The latest Global Data Breach Investigations Report from Verizon Business found the number of breached records fell from 144 million in 2009 to only four million last year. Yet the much …

    Enterprise Security 19 Apr 09:08

  • Sony Ericsson still making money, to some surprise

    €11m in profit during 2011, thanks to Google

    The explosion of Android handsets has kept Sony Ericsson in profit, to the surprise of the markets, which were expecting a significant loss for the first quarter of 2011. With sales down by 23 per cent – to 8.1 million handsets – and gross revenue from those sales down to €1.1bn – from €1.4bn this time last year – one might be …

    Mobile 19 Apr 09:11

  • Short domain land-rush coming to .uk

    bj.me.uk could be yours for a tenner

    Nominet is to make thousands of super-short .uk web addresses available for as little as £10 each in a "land rush", due to kick off next month. The .uk manager will release 2,640 previously reserved one- and two-character .co.uk, .org.uk, .net.uk and .me.uk domain names, starting 23 May. Many single-letter and single-number …

    Telecoms 19 Apr 09:20

  • Hunting of incredibly rare two-horned 'unicorns' forbidden

    Only hillbilly hunters have ever seen one alive

    Vietnam is to set up a nature reserve for unfeasibly rare – possibly now extinct – two-horned "unicorns". No more unicorn hunting. By order The creature in question is more formally known as the saola. It is informally referred to as being unicorn-like for its extreme rarity: no scientist has ever seen a live saola and its …

    Biology 19 Apr 09:25

  • Seagate sucks up Samsung storage biz

    Pays $1.375bn to boost market share to 40 per cent

    Seagate is taking over Samsung's hard disk operation, in a deal that will give the Korean giant almost 10 per cent of the erstwhile storage market leader. The deal had been expected, with Seagate CEO Stepehn Luczo having already cleared his calendar for a mysterious three-month sojourn in the Far East. The combined business …

    Storage 19 Apr 10:24

  • Flash cache exploit debuts in Amnesty attack

    Cash from chaos

    Miscreants have deployed a subtle variant of the well established drive-by-download attack tactics against the website of human rights organisation Amnesty International. In traditional drive-by-download attacks malicious code is planted on websites. This code redirects surfers to an exploit site, which relies on browser …

    Enterprise Security 19 Apr 10:26

  • Apple-branded unicorn spotted at 3

    It's breeding season for white iPhones

    It's breeding season for white iPhone 4s, with the fabled unicorn of the smartphone world suddenly proliferating across UK providers. The latest spotting of the mythical phone by Slashgear.com came at Three UK's site. The operator is offering both 16GB and 32GB versions across its plans. The phone itself starts at a lightly …

    reghardware 19 Apr 10:55

  • How to cut management overheads with VDI

    Not that easy, actually ...

    On the face of it, a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) should make desktop operating systems easier to manage. After all, if an organisation’s desktops are all on one server, then they should theoretically be easier to reach and manipulate. But can desktop virtualisation really help to relieve the management burden? …

    Desktop Virtualisation 19 Apr 11:00

  • The best sci-fi film never made: Also-rans take a bow

    Some classic works, but they didn't make the cut

    We're obliged to all those readers who took the time to throw over their nominations for the best sci-fi film never made, and we're delighted to report that we've whittled the contenders down to a final 50. We simply waded through all your emails and comments and picked those titles which had received the most support. On …

    Entertainment 19 Apr 11:04

  • Facebook forced to reinstate snogging men pic

    Had labelled kissing clothed chaps 'sexually suggestive'

    Overly prudish censorship by Facebook is in the firing line again today for giving offence to yet another large group of its users before being forced into a hasty retreat. This time, with word spreading rapidly around the US and UK gay communities of homophobic prejudice on the part of Facebook moderators, the social media …

    Music and Media 19 Apr 11:23

  • NASA funds commercial Shuttle-replacement spaceships

    Cheese capsule battles rivals for ISS ferry work

    NASA has chosen the companies which will receive cash in its second round of Commercial Crew Development contracts. The CCDev2 funding is intended to lead to viable commercial manned spacecraft, which NASA could then book seats on in order to keep the International Space Station crewed up in future. Boeing's offering. Not yet …

    Space 19 Apr 11:23

  • Twitter eyes up its biggest client

    But it's not the only one courting TweetDeck

    TweetDeck, the discerning Twit's desktop client, is in discussions with Twitter about selling itself to the micro-blogging service for $50m, which could be small change to prevent the client turning into a competitor. The Wall Street Journal reckons the companies are "in advanced talks" about Twitter acquiring TweetDeck and …

    Mobile 19 Apr 11:42

  • Terrorists stamp on Indy's Kate Middleton jelly bean

    Let's print this sh*t anyway, declares delightful URL

    It's hats off today to whoever it was who discovered that you can stick any text into an Independent URL, as long as you leave the terminal numeric identifier, and then used the technique to stamp on the claim that Kate Middleton had manifested in a jelly bean. In case the Indy fixes the problem, here's a screen grab of the …

    Bootnotes 19 Apr 11:45

  • Dying quango says Britons oppressed by the Man

    What did the Romans ever do for us?

    Britons are suffering under the yoke of the world's most oppressive copyright laws, says quango Consumer Focus. The taxpayer-funded fake charity, which is due to be abolished, agrees that the UK has the third worst "copyright regime" behind Chile and Jordan. Moldova is praised as the most admirable in the world. The rankings …

    Music and Media 19 Apr 11:53

  • Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Android smartphone

    Review The Playstation phone in all but name

    The evolution of smartphones has introduced a divide between gaming capability and gaming playability. Powerful processors and operating systems allow increasingly complex gaming. But complex games demand complex controls. Finger swishing and prodding might suffice when flinging belligerent avians around the screen, but virtual …

    reghardware 19 Apr 11:58

  • Scottish news site hit by 'DDoS attack' in run-up to elections

    Not happy

    Politically-motivated hackers are thought to be behind a DDoS attack on alternative news site Newsnet Scotland, launched on Monday days before Scotland is due to vote in fiercely contested national elections. The attack, if that's what it is, left the site unavailable from Monday afternoon into the early hours of Tuesday …

    Enterprise Security 19 Apr 11:59

  • US proposes online IDs for Americans

    Obama administration moves ahead with plans for adoption of internet IDs

    The US Government has published plans to create digital identities for Americans. The US Government wants to create a voluntary system that will allow Americans to access financial services online using one account. It hopes the new system will help protect against fraud and identity theft and reduce the barriers to trade that …

    Government 19 Apr 12:31

  • Acer announces shock slump in Q2 PC shipments

    New prez, new problems

    Acer has said its PC shipments will be down 10 per cent this quarter, highlighting the scale of the problems facing its new company president. The forecast came as the firm announced that Jim Wong would be taking over as corporate president, one of the slots left vacant by Gianfranco Lanci last month. Lanci had also held the …

    Channel Register 19 Apr 12:47

  • Virgin Media Superhub customers still hitting big speed bump

    Firmware updates yet to fix glitches

    It's been nearly two months since our exclusive report about Virgin Media's Superhub router/modem combo boxes playing havoc with newly-upgraded customers' connections - but sadly for the telco there's still trouble at the mill. That's despite Virgin Media promising to fix the dips in speed and stability problems by issuing a …

    Telecoms 19 Apr 12:49

  • Angry Birds Magic up some NFC love

    Nokia finds a use for the C7 ...

    Nokia has finally discovered what Near Field Communications is for – unlocking new levels of Angry Birds by tapping Nokia handsets together. Angry Birds Magic will come preinstalled with the NFC-enabled C7, and distributed as part of the Symbian update to those handsets – enabling players to unlock additional levels by tapping …

    Mobile 19 Apr 12:52

  • Microsoft markets 'collection' of PCs to consider

    Thirty choices

    Microsoft UK has unveiled its first 'collection' of PCs, chosen by the company to suit lifestyles and budgets. The spring collection features 30 models from nine manufacturers and will be available from all major retailers. The PC makers are Sony, Dell, Packard Bell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Alienware and Scan. The …

    reghardware 19 Apr 12:54

  • Rogue Twitter counter app punts survey scam

    #duhhhh

    A rogue application ultimately designed to punt a survey scam began spreading rapidly on Twitter on Tuesday. Follow Finder 332 promises to provide users with information on who might have "unfollowed" them (unsubscribed from their Twitter feed). In reality it does nothing but offer up a worthless survey that falsely promises …

    Spam 19 Apr 14:12

  • UN promises self-driving intelligent cars

    Only thing lacking is... standards

    The United Nations' ICT agency says that intelligent cars able to drive themselves could easily be built today - but they won't become available unless industry adopts global standards for the technologies underpinning them. According to a statement issued yesterday by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU - "the …

    Mobile 19 Apr 14:17

  • Modern-day ninja in epic battle with riot police, robot

    Swordsman who laughed at bot, gas, baton rounds felled by Taser

    A man who was plainly an invincible ninja warrior or similar tangled with police in Maryland recently. The sword-wielding scofflaw successfully resisted ordinary meatbag cops, a police robot, gassing with a "chemical agent" and a volley of low-velocity cosh projectiles from a SWAT team before finally succumbing to the crippling …

    Bootnotes 19 Apr 14:28

  • Wills and Kate to wed live on YouTube

    Gawd bless yer Web 2.0 highnesses

    Those of you hoping to escape the forthcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton had better stick YouTube on your list of proscribed media, because the 29 April wedding will be streamed live on The Royal Channel. According to St James's Palace, you'll need to switch off your PC and hide in a darkened room between …

    Bootnotes 19 Apr 14:36

  • Smartphones eat games handhelds and cameras for lunch

    Serial category killer?

    As iPhones and other smartphone devices increase in popularity, their foothold in the mobile gaming market strengthens. This looks like bad news for traditional handheld options we generally associate Nintendo and Sony with. Some suggest the iPhone could even have a negative impact to the point & shoot camera industry, as …

    reghardware 19 Apr 14:44

  • Music spending stops defying recession (and gravity)

    We've run out of wrinklies who can reform

    Despite a booming live concert and festival scene, consumer spending on music is down again, according to an economic analysis of "wallet share" - how much people actually fork out for the stuff. Whether this is bad news or not as bad as it could be is a fascinating question. According to Will Page, economist at the PRS (or …

    Music and Media 19 Apr 14:48

  • Top IT sales guy leaves HP

    'The time was right'

    IT industry juggernaut Hewlett-Packard is parting ways with Tom Hogan, its top sales person for IT products. Hogan joined HP in 2006 to beef up the company's software business, and in the three years Hogan ran HP Software, the company made a number of big acquisitions, including the $4.5bn in shelled out for Mercury …

    Channel Register 19 Apr 14:51

  • Brussels threatens to name ISPs with 'doubtful' market practices

    ISPs: If you rip us off, Neelie Kroes will cut you

    The European Union's digital agenda commissioner warned today that she would consider prohibiting "the blocking of lawful services or applications" if some ISPs are found to have "ripped off" consumers on connection speeds. Neelie Kroes said that between now and end of 2011, member states will come under scrutiny from …

    Telecoms 19 Apr 15:13

  • Opsview beefs up Nagios system monitor

    Some REST APIs for the wicked

    Opsview has created a layer of open source software that wraps around and plugs into popular server monitoring tool Nagios, to fill in the features enterprise customers want. The tool, also known as Opsview, has been tweaked with a 3.12 release. With the update, the Opsview monitoring server can now run on Novell's SUSE Linux …

    Cloud 19 Apr 16:04

  • Samsung threatens Apple in response to patent lawsuit

    'You sue us, we'll sue you'

    Korean electronics giant Samsung has responded to Apple's patent-infringment lawsuit against them. As might be guessed, they're not happy – and they're considering legal retaliation. "Samsung will respond actively to this legal action taken against us through appropriate legal measures to protect our intellectual property," a …

    Mobile 19 Apr 17:43

  • Man arrested in crackdown on pro-WikiLeaks DDoS spree

    And then there were six

    Police in the UK have arrested a 22-year-old county Cleveland man in their investigation into web attacks waged by the Anonymous hacking collective against companies accused of retaliating against WikiLeaks, The Telegraph reports. The unnamed suspect was questioned by specialist computer-crime detectives at a local police …

    Crime 19 Apr 18:46

  • People watch movies on stuff

    Streaming remains minority pursuit

    Digital downloads may be ever increasing in popularity, but physical discs reign supreme when it comes to movie viewing and expenditure. For now. In the last three months, 77 per cent of US consumers reported watching films on DVD or BD - a stat that is unchanged from last year, the market research firm NPD reports. By …

    reghardware 19 Apr 18:52

  • Fedora's Lovelock Linux is beta ready

    Gives GNOME a big hug

    The Fedora Project has released the first and only beta for their next Linux distro, fully embracing the GNOME desktop that rival Ubuntu will shuffle away from later this month. The beta for Fedora 15, announced on Tuesday and codenamed Lovelock, becomes the first major Linux distro to include GNOME 3, which was released …

    Applications 19 Apr 19:02

  • Rackspace fluffs up load balancing for clouds

    Goodbye HAProxy and Nginx, hello virtual Zeus

    The whole point of cloud computing is to make infrastructure not only easier, but as transparent as possible. And so Rackspace Hosting, which wants to dominate commercial cloud computing, has added a much-needed feature to its cloudy infrastructure: integrated load balancing. Load balancing is nothing new among Rackspace's …

    Cloud 19 Apr 19:52

  • Microsoft imposes security disclosure policy on all workers

    Redmond joins security advisory mill

    Microsoft has implemented a new company policy requiring all employees to follow a detailed set of procedures when reporting security vulnerabilities in third-party products. The practices are an evolution of the coordinated vulnerability disclosure doctrine it proposed in July. They're intended to simplify communication among …

    Malware 19 Apr 21:18

  • Intel reports record first quarter

    Double-digit growth across the board

    Intel's first-quarter 2011 revenue set a new company record at $12.8bn, exceeding the Wall Street moneymen's predictions and causing Chipzilla's stock to pop up as high as six per cent in after-hours trading. "The first-quarter revenue was an all-time record for Intel fueled by double digit annual revenue growth in every major …

    Financial News 19 Apr 21:32

  • Texas grandma gets first 'Super Wi-Fi'

    White spaces open for email, Skype, religious videos

    A Houston, Texas, grandma will finally be able to watch the religious videos that she's been missing, now that she has become the first host of a residential "Super W-Fi" hotspot. "I've wanted to have the Internet for a long time, but it's very expensive" said Leticia Aguirre, described in a statement from Rice University, co- …

    Wireless 19 Apr 21:40

  • Kindle beats Apple's closed book on choice

    Open...and Shut Sync sells (some things)

    Despite the fact that our gadgets increasingly multi-task as cameras, phones, email devices, and more, we continue to accumulate different devices to serve different functions. Perhaps because of this multi-device reality, those digital goods vendors who persist in seeing the world as one big Apple iOS party are likely to lose …

    Music and Media 19 Apr 21:55

  • Hardware boom boosts IBM in Q1

    Software, services keep the dollars rollin'

    A bullish hardware upgrade cycle coming out of the Great Recession in the Western economies and continuing booms in several dozen growth markets around the globe helped IBM boost its revenues in the first quarter of 2011 by 7.7 per cent, to $24.6bn. An ever-weakening US dollar didn't hurt Big Blue's books, either, since a …

    Financial News 19 Apr 23:07

  • Google pours millions into wind power

    How to blow your cash

    Why stop at global digital domination when you can add natural power resources to back up your electric empire? Fanning its green credentials, Google will invest US$100 million in a wind farm situated in the US’s Shepards Flat in eastern Oregon. The $2 billion project has also attracted investment from turbine manufacturer …

    Business 19 Apr 23:27

  • Carriers have bad rep

    ‘Telcos suck’ says AMR

    In the reputation stakes Australian carrier’s are falling down the charts. The network woes that have plagued Vodafone Hutchison (VHA) over the last 18 months caused the carrier to drop in ranking from 35 to 59th in AMR’s annual corporate reputation survey. While retailer JB Hi-Fi topped the list and was joined by Australia …

    Business 19 Apr 23:28

  • Fraudsters target disaster searches again

    The usual scumbag sucker-punch

    Adding to the public’s growing disaster fatigue following the Japan and New Zealand earthquakes, online fraudsters have been prolific in attempts to try and scam charity donors. According to Symantec’s April report, phishers have been trying to take advantage of the situation in Japan and New Zealand by creating fake donation …

    Security 19 Apr 23:31

  • Top-secret US lab infiltrated by spear phishers – again

    IE 0day leads to theft of data

    One of the most sensitive science labs in the US has shut down all internet access after attackers exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to steal data from some of its servers, according to published news reports. The security breach at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is at least the second time …

    Malware 19 Apr 23:34

  • Yahoo! blames quarterly tumble on Microsoft search pact

    Not what we earn, how we report it

    Yahoo! reported a drop in revenue and sales for the first quarter, blaming the mechanics of reporting its search pact with Microsoft for the fall. GAAP sales fell 24 per cent to $1.21bn, compared with the same period in 2010. Net income fell 28 per cent to $223m while earnings per share were down 23 per cent to $0.17. The …

    Financial News 19 Apr 23:49