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9th June 2011 Archive

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  • Apple iCloud: Same old cage, new height

    Open...and Shut You can access anytime you like but you can never leave

    Redmonk analyst Michael Cote argues that the cloud is all about speed, at least in the enterprise. For many others, however, the cloud has promised much more: it has become shorthand for freedom from vendor lock-in at the device level, so that data is free to roam between devices without the chokeholds of operating systems or …

    SaaS 9 Jun 00:03

  • EMC forges secret VMAXe arrray

    Little Big Man

    EMC's VMAXe box – an affordable and self-tuning entry-level VMAX, providing tier one storage features – has been stealthily released inside EMC, with a public unveiling planned for mid-July. Today, we had a peek behind the curtain. EMC says the box it's optimised for virtual computing. VMAXe, fitting below VMAX but above the …

    Storage 9 Jun 00:23

  • Apple bars WinXP users from iCloud

    The past has no future on our internet

    Microsoft isn't the only company denying equal online footing to Windows XP users. Apple will not give PC users access to iCloud – its great digital locker in the sky – if their machines are running Microsoft's aging but still popular Windows XP. Tucked at the bottom of the iCloud announcement, Apple says you'll need a PC …

    SaaS 9 Jun 03:00

  • Is Microsoft's Javascript chief killing his .NET creation?

    Comment From PC to internet runtime

    A recent discussion with a friend about the origins of Microsoft's .NET runtime prompted a little research. How did it come about? A quick search doesn't throw up any detailed accounts. Part of the problem is that much of it is internal Microsoft history, confidential at the time. One strand, mentioned here, is Colusa's …

    Developer 9 Jun 04:00

  • Judge rules against firm that lost $345k to bank trojan

    Victim failed to secure account credentials

    A federal magistrate judge has ruled against a small business that lost $345,000 in an online bank heist, arguing that the theft largely resulted from its own failure to secure its account credentials, according to published news reports. Patco Construction Company sued Ocean Bank in 2009 after crooks used malware to siphon …

    Crime 9 Jun 05:00

  • Oracle whips out private cloud with blades

    No Sparc. Just Intel

    Everybody wants to sell preconfigured virtualized servers with integrated management. Otherwise known a private infrastructure cloud. Now Oracle does too, only it calls them Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure. Presumably, this is not meant to be abbreviated to OOSFECI. At the Cloud Expo 2011 in New …

    Infrastructure 9 Jun 06:00

  • HTC Flyer 7in Android tablet

    Review Palm pilot?

    The arrival of a tablet from HTC, the company that has run the furthest and fastest since picking up the Android ball was always going to be something of a Big Deal but in some ways the new Flyer is a surprisingly odd fish. In-flight entertainment: HTC's Flyer To start with it doesn’t run Honeycomb but Gingerbread. …

    reghardware 9 Jun 06:00

  • Whitehall fraud pilots save £12m

    Just £20,988m to go. This year

    The Cabinet Office says data-matching has helped its anti-fraud initiatives to stem huge losses from government funds. The government has said that three pilot projects aimed at tackling the £21bn lost each year through fraud and error have delivered £12m worth of savings in their first few months. According to an interim …

    Government 9 Jun 08:01

  • Violin scoops $40m, eyes global domination

    Comment They'll all be very sorry at Fusion-io, thinks Basile

    Violin Memory, the flash array start-up, has snagged $40m in C-round funding, just three months after a $35m B-round, signalling an acceleration of its development activities: it's going to add more flash strings to its bow. Violin supplies externally attached flash memory arrays, with a 10TB, single level cell, 3200 …

    Storage 9 Jun 08:30

  • Citibank hack lifted 200,000 names, emails, acct numbers

    US card holders' personals revealed

    Citigroup has admitted that hackers could have grabbed thousands of account details for its credit card customers. The breach hit Citi Account Online systems and information potentially accessed was limited to names, email addresses and account numbers. Birth dates, PINs and other sensitive information is held elsewhere the …

    Enterprise Security 9 Jun 08:58

  • Mind the GAP: Alert system saves lives

    Case study Azure to the rescue

    Some time in the not-too-distant future, a brave, if chilly, soul will send the following tweet: “on #K2 summit. v tired. awesome view. cu @ basecamp”. You will have the UK firm Active Web Solutions (AWS) to thank for it. AWS has developed a Global Alerting Platform (GAP) based on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service that will …

    Cloud Developer 9 Jun 09:10

  • Amsterdam internet hub gets ready for 4G mobile VoIP

    AMS-IX now offering guaranteed IP links

    The Amsterdam Internet Exchange will soon offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) across its infrastructure - providing the guaranteed bandwidth needed if IP is going to conquer the world. AMS-IX, as the public peering hub is known, already provides public peering between internet companies, but from 1 July the hub will be able …

    Networks 9 Jun 09:19

  • Psychology graduates remain poor for life, study shows

    It's not a science, it's a liberal art

    A study in America has found that taking a degree in Psychology condemns you to a lifetime of being lower paid than those who study proper sciences, and lower paid than the average among university graduates. "Psychology educators say liberal arts skills should be valuable in the workplace. Employers say they value liberal …

    Science 9 Jun 09:37

  • Blu-ray sales to overtake DVD... next year

    Packaged media on last legs?

    Blu-ray Disc sales will finally surpass those of DVDs next year. So says market watcher Futuresource. Its numbers are based on revenues. Next year, BD will account for 41 per cent of home entertainment spending on content, DVD for 26 per cent. Online-sourced video content will account for 15 per cent, and video-on-demand …

    reghardware 9 Jun 09:38

  • Cloud tuning: getting the network up to speed

    Get out of the slow lane

    Many problems in IT can be put down to the simple but flawed assumption that resources are infinite. It is obviously wrong but we repeatedly see examples of where it leads: running out of storage (the technology equivalent of the wardrobe principle that if you have the space, you will fill it), running too many applications at …

    Infrastructure 9 Jun 10:00

  • James Sherwood 1983-2011

    Much-liked ex-Reg writer passes on

    Former Reg Hardware reporter James Sherwood died this weekend after suffering an epileptic seizure during his sleep. He was 28. James joined El Reg in 2007, returning to journalism - he had been a reporter on Computer Reseller News - after a foray to the Dark Side as PR manager for networking distributor Zycko. But his …

    Site News 9 Jun 10:10

  • Creators: EU cares about turnips more than copyright

    World Copyright Summit Brussels sprouts more ideas

    If someone had given me a pound in Brussels this week for every time I heard the phrase "we don't want to make the same mistakes as the music industry", I'd be a richer man. Not by much, but enough for a round of drinks. Every four years the world's copyright royalty collecting societies meet in Brussels, representing every …

    Music and Media 9 Jun 10:14

  • PlayStation Vita priced up for UK punters

    Predictably poor exchange rates

    Prices are up for the PlayStation Vita, with Amazon UK now accepting advance orders. As predicted, Brits will fork out more than the Americans, with prices for the Vita at £230 for the Wi-Fi version and £280 for the 3G-connected model. According to Sony's announcements earlier this week, buyers in the US can pick one up for $ …

    reghardware 9 Jun 10:29

  • Another Groupon ad complaint upheld

    Backlash: Eyelash slash trashed

    Online voucher service Groupon has been whacked with yet another Advertising Standards Authority judgement. Previous problems were blamed on new staff, and the Germans. This time the offer was for eyelash extensions for a bargain basement £24 instead of £90. But the ASA said Groupon had failed to provide documentary evidence …

    Business 9 Jun 10:36

  • EQu

    iOS App of the Week Pump up the volume

    There are dozens of equalisers, visualisers and similar audio apps available for iOS devices, but I have to tip my hat to Reg reader Danny Mann for bringing EQu to my attention, as it’s one of the best audio apps I’ve seen of late. EQu: tap and drag to change the equalisation curve EQu is a fairly straightforward equaliser …

    reghardware 9 Jun 10:44

  • Unique imagery of Shuttle docked to ISS released

    Vid+Pic First and last chance to see

    There's been something of a wait for it, but unique imagery showing the International Space Station with a Space Shuttle docked has now been released. The vid above and photo below were taken from a Soyuz spacecraft which departed the station on 23 May carrying Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Cady Coleman …

    Space 9 Jun 10:57

  • Sony restores online VoD shop Qriocity

    Normal service resumed?

    Sony will reactivate its Qriocity video- and music-on-demand services today following their post PSN-hack 20 April shutdown. The services will resume in all countries in which they had already been launched, with the exception of Japan. There the service will remain deactivated. Sony didn't say when it might return. Qriocity …

    reghardware 9 Jun 10:57

  • HP assigns $2bn of finance in CIO cloud investment prod

    Let us take care of raising the cash

    Hewlett-Packard's financial services arm has set aside $2bn (£1.2bn) for customers to buy its cloud technologies. At the same time, the US tech monster lifted the covers off the CloudAgile Service Provider programme which it is piloting with 10 services providers globally, including reseller SCC in the UK. The financing …

    Cloud Business 9 Jun 11:19

  • Dell: 10in Android dual-core tablet for China, not West

    So we'll get the quad-core model, yes?

    Dell has confirmed it is developing 10in Windows and Android tablets - and that it plans to use them to conquer China. But it may also bring the gadget to the West during the second half of the year, the company's South-East Asia chief said. The Streak 10 Pro - set to be followed by a separate, big biz-oriented version …

    reghardware 9 Jun 11:26

  • Apple purges drunk-driving apps

    Speeding still OK, apparently

    Apple has changed the T&C for its iTunes app store to specifically exclude applications that warn of approaching police check-points. Applications alerting users to police activity ahead have already been expunged from the RIM App World, and with Apple’s new rules (spotted by AutoBlog) it’s now only Android users who’ll be …

    Applications 9 Jun 11:28

  • Sony Ericsson reveals handsets for TwitBookers

    Walkman, Tweet man

    Sony Ericsson has unveiled a pair of handsets today, the Mix Walkman and txt pro, both aimed at social networkers. The company boosted its MP3-phone series with the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman, which features a 3in touchscreen display and heaps of musical tools. There's a karaoke function which EQs-out vocals, as well as that …

    reghardware 9 Jun 11:32

  • Boris-Bike firm penalised by £5m over system hiccups

    London rentacycle project not having smooth ride

    Transport for London is witholding £5m in payments to Serco, the company behind the capital's bike rental scheme. TfL is unhappy that problems with the back-end system have seen users overcharged. It has given Serco a timetable to fix problems, according to the Beeb, and is witholding the money because of missed targets. It is …

    Business 9 Jun 11:43

  • MP claims NotW sleuths targeted royals, politicians, Blair

    Kate Middleton's privacy penetrated, claims paper

    Private detectives working for the News of the World targeted Tony Blair, the royal family and senior politicians, including a former Home Secretary, an MP claimed in the House of Commons Wednesday. Meanwhile, quoting "close associates" of Jonathan Rees, a private investigator who worked for the tabloid around 2005, the …

    Security 9 Jun 11:54

  • Hunted: The Demon's Forge

    Review Take a bow

    Let's get one thing straight, Hunted: The Demon's Forge is not an RPG. Hanging in the green room before a shoot Sure, you fight through enough besieged villages, possessed forests and dank and gloomy dungeons to fill Middle Earth twice over. Your standard enemies, the Wargar, bear an uncanny resemblance to Orcs. You wield …

    reghardware 9 Jun 12:00

  • Netherlands first European nation to adopt net neutrality

    Telcos wail as revenues snatched from paws

    The Dutch Parliament yesterday agreed to make the Netherlands the first nation in Europe to officially put net neutrality principles into law. The law will force ISPs and telecom operators to ensure access to all types of content, services or applications available on the network. The new telecom law has won a near unanimous …

    Networks 9 Jun 12:13

  • British music collects 10 per cent more royalties

    Blighty rakes it in from NZ, Jamaica

    British musicians saw a 10.7 per cent increase from the public performance of recorded music last year despite the recession. The revenue growth, revealed in the PPL AGM yesterday (pdf), was mostly down to more countries sending music royalties back to the UK via reciprocal agreements. New Zealand and Jamaica were new this year …

    Music and Media 9 Jun 12:26

  • London Ambulance Service downed by upgrade cockup

    999 operators driven back to pen and paper

    Operators at the London Ambulance Service (LAS) were forced to use pen and paper when fielding emergency 999 calls yesterday, after a computer system upgrade went horribly wrong. The LAS said the botched upgrade, which was intended to replace a 20-year-old system, failed and caused technical havoc for its workers for more than …

    Public Sector 9 Jun 12:43

  • HTC does the ChaCha with Three and Vodafone

    Improved and contracted

    The HTC ChaCha has danced its way onto the UK telco scene, with Vodafone and Three now offering the handset on monthly plans. While it still has the fixed Qwerty keyboard and 2.6in display, the Facebook-branded ChaCha defied last month's spec-ulation and arrives rejuvenated with an 800MHz CPU running Android 2.3. The HTC …

    reghardware 9 Jun 12:56

  • BP world energy review: Chinese coal drives up CO2

    EU's emissions cuts paltry in comparison

    Last year saw the highest surge in energy demand for almost 40 years, according to BP's 60th annual review* of energy. Despite record renewable energy production – with hydroelectric energy use rising 6.5 per cent – fossil fuel consumption surged to the highest level ever. Gas was up 7.4 per cent and coal, which still accounts …

    Energy 9 Jun 12:57

  • Two new Ofcom board members appointed

    There is nothin' like a dame

    The government's culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has appointed two non-executive members to Ofcom's board. Britain's communications watchdog said Dame Patricia Hodgson had quit her position at the BBC Trust to join Ofcom's board at the start of next month. She had failed to bag the chairman and vice-chairman roles at Aunties …

    Networks 9 Jun 13:19

  • Cybercrime figures 'as true as sexual-conquest scores'

    I've slept with many ladies, and caught lots of viruses

    Microsoft researchers have rubbished figures from cyber-crime surveys, deeming them subject to the types of distortions that have long bedevilled sex surveys. It's well enough established that men claim to have more female sexual partners in sex surveys than women claim male partners, a discrepancy that can't be explained by …

    Crime 9 Jun 13:38

  • Cloud: today, tomorrow, not yet

    Broadcast Assessing how your business moves apps into the cloud

    Cloud isn't all or nothing: you can move the services and apps you want to move at the right time for your business. But which apps, and when? Given all the hype and conjecture recently, we could be forgiven for thinking that we should have decommissioned our server rooms or data centres and moved everything to the Cloud …

    Tech Panel 9 Jun 13:49

  • Dell's dedupe story still unfolding

    Comment Ocarina rocket scientists look to crack the block

    Dell's spreading of Ocarina dedupe goodness across its storage platforms has to overcome several obstacles, none of which are show-stoppers. Ocarina deduplicates files – or more accurately, optimises and compresses files – and is content-aware so that it can work its specific magic on JPEGs and cast different spells on PACS …

    Storage 9 Jun 13:58

  • IBM to commercialize chip-design cluster tools

    You'll be able to provision a cluster 'in minutes'

    IBM is to commercialize the management software behind the chip design cluster used by more than 3,000 engineers to create its homegrown server processors. The offering comes out in July and sports a set of internally developed HPC cluster management tools that provide cloud-like clustering and system pooling capabilities. …

    Servers 9 Jun 14:17

  • HP WebOS tablet to ship early July

    TouchPad inbound

    HP's WebOS-based tablet - the TouchPad, as it's officially known - hits Blighty's shores early next month following its 1 July arrival in the US. Punters in France and Germany get it on the same day we do - delivers in Canada commence mid-July, HP said today. Australians will have to wait until "later this year". So far, HP …

    reghardware 9 Jun 14:23

  • Nokia CTO replaced by Professor of Karma

    It's deja vu, all over again

    Rich Green is no longer Nokia's Chief Technology Officer, and is taking a leave of absence from the troubled Finnish company. The company has confirmed that Henry Tirri, a distinguished academic and research fellow at Nokia Research, will step into his shoes. Nokia said Green was on leave for personal reasons. Green, who is …

    Business 9 Jun 14:38

  • BioWare blows brains with intro cinematics for Star Wars MMO

    Old Republic gets CG makeover

    BioWare has bowled over E3 with a taste of its highly-anticipated MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Fans have been patiently waiting for this particular Star Wars title to appear since it was first announced in 2008 amid bold claims it would attract more players than World of Warcraft. Periodically, we've been reminded the game …

    reghardware 9 Jun 14:46

  • Griffin Window Mount in-car phone holder

    Txt Take Hands-free handsets

    Daily Product reviews in 140 characters... Griffin Window Mount Pictures Want our Txt Take on your gadget? Just send it in to Reg Hardware - details here.

    reghardware 9 Jun 15:00

  • Cornish cow plucked from jaws of death by Navy chopper

    'A Mooooving experience', says rapier-witted chief

    A Cornish cow, trapped on steep cliffs near Port Isaac, was hoisted to safety recently slung beneath a Royal Navy rescue helicopter. West-country whirlybird flying cattle action. Had the naval copter not been called in by the RSPCA, the trapped bovine would have had to be killed as it could not escape by any other means. …

    Bootnotes 9 Jun 15:00

  • Storage DEATHMATCH: Permabit v Isilon

    Opinions 'Respectfully disagree with everything you say'

    Permabit has taken issue with our Isilon and a question of Big Data story, insisting that its Albireo deduplication technology can be applied to scale-out file data storage, and deliver a tenfold reduction in storage costs with no performance penalty. We had previously asked Isilon's chief technology officer for the Americas, …

    Storage 9 Jun 15:23

  • World IPv6 Day fails to kill the internet

    Publicity stunt over, now the work begins

    World IPv6 Day was the non-event everybody hoped it would be. For 24 hours yesterday, more than 400 major internet companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, joined in with the largest-scale production test of the next generation Internet Protocol to date. Organised by the Internet Society, the project was intended …

    Hosting 9 Jun 15:47

  • Win an HP TouchPad!

    Promo One Reg reader just bagged fine HP kit – now it's your turn

    This February, The Register ran an exclusive competition in which our readers had the opportunity to win an HP Slate. From over one thousand entries, we randomly selected Donald Kaplan as the lucky winner. Kaplan, a New York City–based PR exec, has been a loyal Reg reader throughout the current millennium – since the year 2000 …

    Site News 9 Jun 17:33

  • Apple backs down (a bit) on iOS subscription rules

    Thanks to Android. And the Financial Times

    Apple has backed down from its requirement that content and subscription providers who offer their wares through the Jobsian App Store must charge the same or less for that content when it's offered from a provider's own website. Cupertino has also axed their requirement that content providers must offer the same content and …

    Mobile 9 Jun 19:11

  • Microsoft loses Supreme patent fight over Word

    Have-it-both-ways defense fails

    America's top court has rejected Microsoft's appeal against a ruling that Microsoft Word infringed on patents owned by a tiny Canadian software maker.. The US Supreme Court unanimously upheld an earlier court's ruling that said Microsoft willfully infringed on i4i's XML patents in Word 2003 and 2007. Microsoft was ordered to …

    Applications 9 Jun 19:35

  • A peek inside Apple's iCloud data center

    Teradata gear, maybe HP and NetApp

    At the very end of his keynote address at Apple's WorldWide Developer Conference this week in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs flashed up some photos of the exterior and interior of the new $1bn data center the company has built in Maiden, North Carolina to support its new iCloud storage cloud. "If you don't think we're …

    Infrastructure 9 Jun 19:36

  • Intel invests in 'personal robot' future

    Today, healthcare. Tomorrow, perambulating laptops

    Intel Capital has made its first-ever investment in robotics, becoming the lead investor in a $13m funding round for Aldebaran Robotics, a Paris-based designer of humanoid robots. "This investment from Intel Capital enables Aldebaran to become a key player in this nascent industry," Aldebaran founder and CEO Bruno Maisonnier …

    Financial News 9 Jun 20:17

  • Feds seize $15m from scareware monger's Swiss account

    Fugitive accused of bilking millions

    Federal authorities have seized $15m from a fugitive accused of bilking millions of people in scareware and counterfeit antivirus software scams. Mugshot of Shaileshkumar Jain Members of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customers Enforcement division confiscated the $14.8m windfall from a Swiss bank …

    Crime 9 Jun 21:01

  • Peeping Tom Mac spyware suspect cuffed

    Sleazy does it

    A PC repair technician has been charged with planting spyware on the machines of clients as part of a ruse designed to capture pictures of them in various states of undress. Trevor Harwell, 20, a former Mac specialist at Los Angeles-area home computer repair outfit Rezitech, allegedly surreptitiously planted a package called …

    Malware 9 Jun 22:27

  • Australian banks start replacing RSA tokens

    Singing from the same song-sheet

    The ongoing fallout in Australia from the RSA security hack continues, with both Westpac and ANZ Bank announcing they will replace customers’ tokens. Another of Australia’s “big four”, the Commonwealth Bank, is yet to decide its course of action, while there’s been no word yet from the National Australia Bank. Westpac has not …

    Security 9 Jun 23:00

  • Google borgs display ad optimizer for $400m

    Bring on the regulators

    Google has agreed to acquire international online-advertising outfit AdMeld for $400m, according to a report citing "multiple sources". An ad-related deal of this size will almost certainly bring more antitrust scrutiny onto the company. TechCrunch first reported the acquisition on Thursday, and it was later confirmed by AdAge …

    Music and Media 9 Jun 23:32