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16th May 2011 Archive

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  • Desktop OS revenue and growth outpace servers

    The fastest growing OS maker is... Red Hat

    It doesn't take any insight at all – or the analysts at Gartner – to figure out which operating system supplier is the largest. It's Microsoft, of course. But which ones are numbers two, three, and four? And which is the fastest-growing maker of operating systems? The answers might surprise you. Through the magic of the …

    Operating Systems 16 May 03:00

  • HP unveils stylin' new desktop line

    WebOS? 'Not yet'

    HP has spiffed up its three-PC desktop line just one week after rolling out new consumer and business notebooks and netbooks. Each of the new offerings – the entry-level Slimline s5, middle-of-the-road Pavilion p7, and workstation wannabe Pavilion HPE h8 – have been given makeovers that were designed, as HP says, to "match the …

    PCs & Chips 16 May 04:00

  • Bin Laden's porn stash: Too good to be true?

    The shadow of black propaganda

    The revelation that US commandos who stormed Osama bin Laden's Pakistan bolthole unearthed a "massive smut stash" didn't much surprise those who'd been expecting news that the terrorist wasn't quite the paragon of Islamic virtue he claimed to be. Of course, the "extensive" collection of "modern, electronically recorded video" …

    Music and Media 16 May 05:00

  • AMD chases servers with fanless FirePro GPU

    One driver, three different workloads

    There are a number of different annoying things about the fanless GPU co-processors that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are peddling as adjunct computational engines for servers. First, these Tesla and FireStream co-processors, as their lines are respectively known, cost more than regular GPUs. And they also have a different …

    Servers 16 May 06:00

  • Turks take to the streets against web filters

    How censored do you want your web?

    Thousands of people in Turkey took to the streets yesterday to protest government plans for compulsory internet filtering. All connections in the country will have to choose between four different levels of interference in their internet access. There were demonstrations in Istanbul and 40 cities around the country. Thousands …

    Government 16 May 07:49

  • Evil flash cookies easier to delete with new Adobe player

    Scrub data barnacles from your browser's keel

    Controversial "Flash cookies" can now be deleted from within web browsers like more traditional cookies, the software company behind Flash technology has said. Adobe has released a new version of its Flash player which gives users the kind of control over its cookies to which they have become accustomed with normal web page …

    Applications 16 May 08:39

  • Seagate intros Wi-Fi hard drive for iKit

    Extra storage minus the cables

    Seagate has taken the wraps off a wireless hard drive designed as additional storage for iPhones and iPads. To that end the GoFlex Satellite line - 500GB only, so far - has on board 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and a rechargeable battery. Download the app Seagate has posted for iOS devices, and 'Pads, 'Pods and 'Phones can access …

    reghardware 16 May 08:48

  • Sun attempts to ID entire FA Cup Final crowd

    Spot yourself in 360° hi-res snap

    The Sun has thrown its weight behind an attempt to ID everyone who was at Wembley for Saturday's FA Cup Final, and who were captured in an impressive 360° hi-res picture as they cheered on Manchester City and Stoke City. The paper says the "largest sized image of a sporting event ever taken" – the work of 360Cities.net in …

    Music and Media 16 May 09:01

  • EMC's all-flash benediction: Turbulence ahead

    Analysis Who's ready, who's going to have to buy in?

    A rising tide lifts all boats and the blessing EMC gave to all-flash arrays at EMC World will be gratefully seized upon by a string of established small players and start-up wannabees such as Pure Storage and SolidFire. But this tide could carry some boats into turbulent waters. Shared solid state storage has been the preserve …

    Storage 16 May 09:24

  • Autonomy engulfs 5-petabyte Iron Mountain cloud

    It's an iron, mountainous cloud. Deal with it

    Autonomy is paying $380m for Iron Mountain's archiving and online backup business. The Cambridge-based company said the purchase showed the truth of its prediction of the merging of regulatory archiving and search functions for businesses. The deal adds five petabytes of company data and 6,000 customers to Autonomy's cloud …

    Infrastructure 16 May 09:40

  • In-app payment patent scattergun fired at small devs

    Will Apple step in to protect its ecosystem?

    Mobile developers using in-app purchasing have been hit with letters requesting they hand over half a per cent of their US revenue as a licence for using the patented concept. The letters arrived by FedEx on Friday, addressed to individual developers of applications that allow the user to unlock additional functionality in …

    Applications 16 May 09:58

  • Sony restores PlayStation Network parts

    Kill each other again

    Sony reinstated several features of the PlayStation Network yesterday in a phased return of service throughout Europe and North America. Tweeters and Facebook fiends were in full swing last night, with gamers rejoicing like they'd just killed Osama Bin Laden. The return comes almost an entire month since the service was first …

    reghardware 16 May 10:13

  • RM reports first-half loss, nasty sales dip

    But ups its divvy, forecasts goodness ahead

    Education technology provider RM saw revenue decline 15 per cent in the first six months of the company's fiscal year. Sales fell to £133m for the period ended 31 March, compared to £156.4m for the same H1 in 2010. It was also hit with a first-half pre-tax loss of £1.4m, after restructuring charges of £1.8m and a £1.2m charge …

    Business 16 May 10:17

  • Yahoo! boo-hoo over Alibaba boo-boo

    We (finally) know what you did last summer

    Yahoo! has told its long-suffering investors that it is still in discussions with Alibaba over the fate of its payment business Alipay. Its stake in Alibaba - a leading Chinese ecommerce business - is seen as one of the better reasons to own Yahoo! shares. But relations between the two seem to be under strain. Alibaba span …

    Business 16 May 10:29

  • Square Enix confirms data lifted in website raids

    Hackers grab 350 jobseeker resumes, 25k email addresses

    Japanese video game developer Square Enix has confirmed that email address and resumes of job seekers have been exposed following a website hack. Miscreants made off with the information after cracking into the website of subsidiary Eidos and a site dedicated to the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Square Enix pulled both …

    Enterprise Security 16 May 10:38

  • Vodafone touts 'new concept' smartphone

    Smartphone with the smarts removed?

    You'd have thought Vodafone had low-cost Android smartphone a-plenty to sell, but it still feels it needs another, this one an own-brander aimed at folk who haven't used a smartphone before. The Vodafone 858 Smart only runs Android 2.2 Froyo, but comes with the usual array of Google apps, plus 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth …

    reghardware 16 May 10:41

  • Rambus litigation imperilled by document shredding

    Up to nine tons of paper minced

    A US Appeal court has found that Rambus had shredded documents pertinent to two lawsuits it had won, and has asked lower courts to re-examine the cases, threatening Rambus licence revenues. A Reuters report on Friday revealed that Rambus, a serial and largely successful litigator in defence of its memory chip intellectual …

    Law 16 May 10:56

  • Hargreaves review 'to bring in digital rights clearing house'

    But drops fair use, apparently

    Strategic leaks from the ongoing review of the UK's copyright law suggest Ian Hargreaves' team will establish a new intermediary agency he hopes will speed up digital licensing. The review was announced by PM David Cameron last October and surprised the Intellectual Property Office. Cameron said he wanted to reform UK IP laws …

    Law 16 May 11:10

  • Freecom looks to leather for drive dress

    Tan your hide

    Freecom has introduced a leather-clad external hard drive. Kinky. Actually, it's branded the XXS rather than XXX, so picture a drive that looks like it's in a case rather than a second skin. The Mobile Drive XXS Leather - to give it its full name - is a 2.5-incher, has USB 3.0 connectivity, weighs 140g, and is available in …

    reghardware 16 May 11:13

  • Boy George plonks tech centre onto Silicon Roundabout

    White House 'Wiki government' expert to revamp UK.gov

    An energy, transport and social data "research centre" was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne this morning. Speaking at the annual Google Zeitgeist event, Osborne said that teams at Imperial College London and University College London were working together to create the new centre in collaboration …

    Government 16 May 11:18

  • RIM confirms 'limited' BlackBerry Playbook recall

    OS woe

    Research in Motion has confirmed claims that a number of 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook tablets are faulty and must be recalled. An RIM insider told Engadget that nearly a thousand of the dodgy tablets were shipped to Staples last week, and that the US retailer was taking steps to recall purchased units. RIM has since verified the …

    reghardware 16 May 11:23

  • Nokia finally gives Ovi brand a mercy bullet

    Services are still there for now

    "People often ask, 'What's a "Nokia"? – is it some new kind of yoga or a fashionable new diet?' Then you remind them – it's the platform for the Ovi mobile services experience – and the fog of confusion quickly clears." – The Register, August 2010 Tears will be shed in Shoreditch and Soho tonight as Nokia has confirmed it is …

    Applications 16 May 11:33

  • Dropbox 'insecure and misleading' – crypto researcher

    Updated Soghoian, PGP founder say no bargepole is long enough

    Popular cloud storage service Dropbox is misleading users into thinking it is more secure than it really is, says a security researcher and academic, who has asked for the FTC to investigate. Dropbox has around 25 million users. It's often used as an escape hatch by owners of Apple's iPhone and iPad: the iOS slabs don't expose …

    Security 16 May 11:39

  • Sony Ericsson walks away from Clearwire logo fight

    Losing 4G contender looking too poorly to be a threat

    Sony Ericsson has given up its action against Clearwire for having a swirly green logo, as Clearwire concedes it is unlikely to ever launch a competing range of mobile phones. Sony Ericsson's action was taken in January, when Clearwire was still planning to launch the handsets it announced last year. Since then the operator …

    Mobile 16 May 12:07

  • RIM BlackBerry PlayBook 7in tablet

    Review A blank slate?

    The PlayBook is described by makers RIM as the first professional-grade tablet. RIM, of course, is best known for its e-mail handset, the BlackBerry. A good deal larger and minus the distinctive keyboard, RIM’s Playbook is a handsome machine, well-designed and with great build quality. Building bridges: RIM's BlackBerry …

    reghardware 16 May 12:17

  • McKinnon battles renewed Obama-era extradition push

    Gary's mum briefs the Reg on latest manoeuvres

    Family and supporters of Gary McKinnon remain confident that their campaign against his extradition to the US will ultimately prove successful, despite the insistence of a senior Obama government law official that the alleged hacker ought to stand trial in the US. Eric Holder, the US Attorney General, vowed that the Obama …

    Law 16 May 12:28

  • Comet owner boosted by closure rumours

    May flee UK in pursuit of Darty French love

    Kesa Electricals – the owner of Comet – has seen its shares jump almost 8 per cent today, on rumours that it may close the UK chain Comet and return to its roots in France. Kesa said last week that UK trading had been poor, while French revenue, through the Darty chain, was up 5 per cent despite the downturn. Group like-for- …

    Business 16 May 12:51

  • Endeavour heads off on final mission

    Successful launch of veteran shuttle

    Space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on its 25th and final mission today, carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts to the International Space Station. The venerable vehicle departed Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A at 12:56 GMT. Speaking from the flight deck shortly before launch, commander Mark …

    Space 16 May 13:10

  • Digital Music: a collective failure of imagination

    Analysis Google's whinges don't wash

    It's about 10 years since I rigged up dynamic DNS in my apartment in San Francisco so I could play my music library remotely. I suspect many of you have tried something similar, and many more have subsequently used Orb or a Slingbox to achieve the same goal. This was before the iPod, and it seemed like a good idea at the time …

    Music and Media 16 May 14:07

  • Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp chum up against VMware

    The Blockening

    Who needs VMware? NetApp, Microsoft and Cisco are releasing validated server/hypervisor/storage designs for Hyper-V cloud data centres. We definitely won't call them vBlocks. These template designs are part of Microsoft's clumsily named Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program and NetApp's storage component is called the even less- …

    Virtualization 16 May 14:08

  • Brussels opens ears on cloud computing

    Steely Neelie wants to hear from the cloudbase

    The European Commission has opened a consultation on cloud computing ahead of the creation of a Europe-wide strategy. Neelie Kroes, Digital Agenda Commissioner, said she wanted to hear from cloud developers as well as users. Of particular interest is feedback on cross-border data protection and liability, standards and …

    Cloud Business 16 May 14:19

  • SanDisk gobbles Pliant in $327m deal

    Trousers with reinforced wallet pockets for VCs

    Embedded and Smart Card flash supplier SanDisk is buying enterprise SSD start-up Pliant Technology for $327m. The move could well signal the start of SSD supplier consolidation. There are some equity-based incentives as well as the cash, and both company boards have approved the deal. Pliant has developed single-level cell …

    Storage 16 May 14:37

  • UK public-sector union DDoS'd

    You don't get me, I'm part of the <bzzt>

    The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union says that its website has been under sustained cyberattack for the past five days. A statement on the union's site, which is running slowly at time of writing, said on Monday that the union "has been experiencing ongoing severe technical problems that have affected some visitors' …

    Enterprise Security 16 May 14:48

  • Designer punts ultimate customisable keyboard

    Your keys, exactly where you want 'em

    If we wrote stories for every concept design that crossed our desks, we wouldn't have time to bring you much else. Some designs are worth a mention, though, and this idea of a fully customisable keyboard certainly raises a few eyebrows. The Keyless Lifebook concept, designed by American Laura Lahti, has been shortlisted from …

    reghardware 16 May 15:00

  • Mozilla to shift 12m surfers off 2-year-old Firefox 3.5

    Forced upgrade incoming

    Mozilla is planning to shunt 12 million users, who are still surfing the web on its aged Firefox 3.5 browser, over to a more recent version. "We need a plan to obsolete [sic] Firefox 3.5 as we can't support it into perpetuity," said Mozilla. "We have been frustrated with our efforts to move users off of old releases and are …

    Applications 16 May 15:03

  • Obama gov wants 3 yrs porridge for infrastructure hackers

    Plans to slap cybercrooks with RICO gangbuster laws

    The Obama administration is looking to make hacking attacks against critical infrastructure systems punishable by a mandatory three years imprisonment. It also wants an Act normally applied to mobsters to be applied to online criminals too. The proposal (8-page PDF/154KB) was among a long list for improvements to cybersecurity …

    Law 16 May 15:18

  • Up to $650 for a .xxx domain - or to keep your name off one

    Prices for what wheresalltheporngone.com will point at

    Pornographers and brand owners can expect to pay between $75 and $650 to register .xxx domain names, newly published registrar pricing schemes have revealed. Trademark owners concerned about having their brands associated with online pornography may be hit especially hard by the forthcoming domain launch, according to reports …

    Hosting 16 May 15:32

  • Adobe lets audio and video onto SendNow file transfer cloud

    Desktop client in works

    Adobe has announced that you can now send audio and video files via SendNow, the file-transfer service the company introduced last November. SendNow is designed to facilitate the transfer of large files in ways that email can't. "With SendNow, you don't have to worry about email bounces or tricky FTP servers," Acrobat …

    Infrastructure 16 May 17:14

  • Win free tickets to Hadoop Summit

    Competition Open source Big Data confab calling

    The Register is offering its beloved readers the chance to win free tickets to Yahoo!'s fourth-annual Hadoop Summit, a one-day confab dedicated to the open source distributed number-crunching platform. This year's summit is slated for June 29 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Santa Clara, California. The Reg is offering five free …

    Site News 16 May 17:39

  • VMware gets Go-ing with Shavlik buy

    Network, patch, and VM management play

    Server virtualization juggernaut VMware has bought Shavlik Technologies, one of its partners in virtual machine management and a provider of patch management and network security tools. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Shavlik was founded in 1993 in St Paul, Minnesota, by Mark Shavlik, a developer at …

    Virtualization 16 May 17:40

  • VIA double stuffs x64 clone chips

    Two Nano X2s, one package

    Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are not the only ones innovating in the x64 chip racket. VIA Technologies has carved out a niche for itself for low-powered chips suitable for netbooks, small form factor PCs, micro servers, and other embedded devices, and is double-stuffing its sockets with the QuadCore X4 chips to better …

    PCs & Chips 16 May 18:48

  • Teenage duo sentenced over credit card Ghostmarket

    'I will never get a job in IT,' laments hacker

    Two UK teenagers received sentences for repeated hack attacks that stole credit card data and took one online webhost offline. Zachary Woodham, 19, and Louis Tobenhouse, 18, pleaded guilty to the online offenses in late December, members of the Metropolitan Police Service's Police Central e-Crime Unit said on Monday. Using the …

    Crime 16 May 18:54

  • HP breakthrough to hasten flash memory's demise?

    Memristor secrets revealed

    HP scientists have made a breakthrough in the development of memristors, a fundamental circuit type that looks increasingly likely to replace NAND flash and possibly DRAM. Essentially, they've figured out the physical and chemical mechanisms that make memristors work. "We were on a path where we would have had something that …

    Storage 16 May 19:52

  • Russian rumor: Microsoft to buy Nokia for $30bn

    Elop conspiracy theories thicken

    Today's unsubstantiated but intriguing rumor: Microsoft will buy Nokia's mobile division – smartphones, feature phones, plain-vanilla phones – for $30bn, and the deal will be completed this year because "обе компании очень сильно торопятся." That last phrase is Russian for "both companies are very much in a hurry," and comes …

    Mobile 16 May 21:06

  • 99% of Android phones leak secret account credentials

    'Impersonation attacks' target Google services

    The vast majority of devices running Google's Android operating system are vulnerable to attacks that allow adversaries to steal the digital credentials used to access calendars, contacts, and other sensitive data stored on the search giant's servers, university researchers have warned. The weakness stems from the improper …

    Security 16 May 21:44

  • Microsoft welcomes CentOS Linux onto virtualized Windows

    OSBC Red Hat support hurdles lowered for Hyper-V

    Microsoft is taking a swing at Red Hat, promoting freebie Linux CentOS on Windows Server via its hypervisor and offering technical support for service providers. On Monday, the software giant announced that CentOS now runs as a "first class citizen" on Windows Server R2 Hyper-V, while hinting at more work in the pipeline to …

    Virtualization 16 May 21:57

  • NBN looks for more wireless spectrum

    In other news, Quigley apologises for misplacing Costa Rica

    NBN Co is on the hunt for more wireless spectrum and is currently in talks with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to acquire unallocated 2.2 GHz blocks. The national carrier is deploying fixed wireless internet services for 4 percent of Australia’s population where the NBN or satellite does not reach. It …

    Telecoms 16 May 22:30

  • Open source .NET mimic rises from Novell ashes

    On the fourteenth day, there was Xamarin

    The founders of Mono – an effort to build an open source version of Microsoft's .NET platform – have launched a new company around the project, just fourteen days after they were laid off by new Novell owner Attachmate. The new company is known as Xamarin, and according to a blog post from Mono founder Miguel de Icaza, it will …

    Developer 16 May 22:54

  • Kiwi virtual world creators get $2.5m

    TradeMe founder bets on social gaming

    The growing investment frenzy for anything "social" continues, with SmallWorlds attracting the eye of New Zealand entrepreneur Sam Morgan, who has tipped NZ$2.5 million into the company. As world+dog hopes to emulate the success of Zynga's Farmville, the sector has attracted dollars from the likes of News Corporation and …

    Entertainment 16 May 23:30