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15th June 2011 Archive

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  • Microsoft+HTML: The antidote to iOS and Android

    Open...and Shut Powerful tools will rule

    For a comparatively brief period of time, hardware companies like Nokia and telco operators like AT&T ruled the mobile roost. But as they're now learning – and not doubt stewing over – software is increasingly king in mobile, just like it is on the desktop. The winning strategy in this software-centric world is one that puts …

    Developer 15 Jun 2011, 02:11

  • Lenovo chases SMBs with Xeon E3 towers

    One socket to me

    Server maker Lenovo is one of the first vendors out the door with entry tower servers aimed at small and medium businesses based on Intel's "Sandy Bridge-DT" Xeon E3-1200 processors. The Xeon E3 chips are designed for single-socket servers and workstations. They were previewed by Intel back in March and started shipping in …

    Servers 15 Jun 2011, 02:35

  • States consider saner 'sexting' penalties for teens

    Glaring hypocrisy in post Weiner-gate era

    Lawmakers in 21 states have considered bills this year that would lessen penalties for teen sexting, in which teenagers send or receive pictures of themselves in various states of undress, according to the Associated Press. The folly of so-called sexting prosecutions, which invoke child-pornography laws to exact harsh penalties …

    Government 15 Jun 2011, 04:00

  • ARM exec: Open standards will make us all rich

    Fusion Summit ARM and AMD sittin' in a tree, heterogeneous-ily

    ARM has joined forcing with AMD to promote what they call "heterogeneous computing". ARM Fellow and vice president of technology Jem Davies took the stage on Tuesday at AMD's Fusion Developer Summit, insisting that the two chip designers share a vision of the computing future. "It may seem strange that AMD have invited …

    Hardware 15 Jun 2011, 04:20

  • Asus Eee Pad Transformer Android tablet

    Review Tabtop computing at its best?

    Billed as the year of the fondleslab, 2011 has so far failed to deliver on the hype. With sales of Motorola's Xoom sluggish at best, the BlackBerry Playbook too idiosyncratic for most and the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tantalisingly conspicuous by its absence, Asus looks to steal a march on the competition with its Eee Pad Transformer …

    Tablets 15 Jun 2011, 06:00

  • Xyratex offers Lustre clusters

    HPC here we come

    OEM disk subsystem supplier Xyratex, facing lost sales due to NetApp buying Engenio, is to supply complete, factory-configured Lustre cluster systems to its OEM channel for HPC customers. As well as supplying disk array subsystems to OEM partners, Xyratex supplies hard disk drive manufacturing test and analysis equipment to a …

    Storage 15 Jun 2011, 08:00

  • 8m health records go walkabout

    Unencrypted, password-free blackmailer's starter kit

    A London health authority has admitted losing a laptop which contains 8.6 million health records. The machine was lost three weeks ago, but has only just been reported missing to police and the Information Commissioner's Office. We've asked North Central London health board why it needed to store 8.63 million health records …

    Government 15 Jun 2011, 09:11

  • Dell app servers getting flashy

    Dell Storage Forum NetApp watch out

    Dell is looking at putting flash in application servers. It will be seen as another tier of storage by EqualLogic and Compellent arrays. Dell storage head Darren Thomas said: "Flash will revolutionise [app] servers. It might be owned by the array. … Both [EqualLogic and Compellent] can write and tier outside the sheet metal …

    Storage 15 Jun 2011, 09:23

  • IE, Excel fixes star in bumper Patch Tuesday

    More from the hamster wheel of patching pain

    Internet Explorer and Excel security updates are the most pressing patching priorities from the bumper crop of 16 bulletins issued as part of Microsoft's June Patch Tuesday updates. Nine of the bulletins carry a maximum severity of "critical" while the remaining seven earn the lesser tag of "important". Tuesday also brought …

    Security 15 Jun 2011, 09:30

  • EU ministers back centralisation of population databases

    Just the one agency dear

    A single agency will be in charge of three EU population-tracking databases under plans approved by EU ministers. The Council of Ministers have backed the creation of a centralised European agency that will manage the Schengen Information System (SIS), the Visa Information System (VIS) and the European Dactyloscopy (EURODAC), …

    Law 15 Jun 2011, 09:33

  • Acer slashes tablet forecast, banks on notebooks

    Game of executive musical chairs ongoing too

    Acer today cut its 2011 tablet PC shipment forecasts by 60 per cent, but predicted a gradual recovery in its traditional notebook stomping ground. According to reports, Chairman and CEO JT Wang told shareholders at a meeting in Taiwan that he expects tablet sales of 2.5 to three million units for the full year, down from …

    Hardware 15 Jun 2011, 09:38

  • Apple pulls app after dev publishes users' PINs

    Too many folk use too-easy-to-guess passcodes

    Is your phone PIN '1234'? If you're an iPhone owner, there's a good chance that it is. In fact, there's a good chance it's your PIN whatever handset you use. iOS software developer Daniel Amitay, creator of an app called Big Brother Camera Security, added iPhone-style four-digit passcode access to his program. He was staggered …

    Phones 15 Jun 2011, 09:47

  • Steer clear of the desktop virtualisation bootstorm

    Prepare to form an orderly queue

    It is every IT administrator’s worst nightmare. All the employees’ desktops have been virtualised and are running on a server. The pilot project worked well and everyone was happy, but then the team tried to scale it up and now it’s Monday morning and 3,000 users have just walked in with their lattes and croissants, sat down at …

    Desktop Virtualisation 15 Jun 2011, 10:01

  • High Performance Computing for you?

    Video New apps, new opps, new start

    Last week The Register's Tim Phillips packed the studio with a series of experts on the area of HPC to talk about what HPC means today. They argued that it's time to start thinking creatively about HPC. That it can it be standardised, commoditised and applied to more of your compute-intensive problems. And, that virtualisation …

    HPC 15 Jun 2011, 10:01

  • New York Times takes on Apple-baiting troll

    LodSys patent makes infringers of us all

    Mobile-developer-bothering patent hoard LodSys is under attack from the New York Times and OpinionLabs, with the latter alleging that LodSys threatened its customers and should pay restitution. Both are calling for dismissal of the same patent that LodSys has been waving at Apple developers along with demands for money. That …

    Mobile 15 Jun 2011, 10:05

  • Profit-free Pandora floats, valued at $2.6bn

    Is there a music bubble?

    That’s nice: the profit-free streaming music service Pandora has successfully gone public, raising $235m in the process. The public offering values the company at $2.6bn - twice as much as what it hoped for back in February, and not too shabby for an outfit that hasn’t yet turned a profit and is faced with rising royalty costs …

    Media 15 Jun 2011, 10:14

  • IRIS gets close up and SaaS-y with accountants

    Video Will the beancounters bite?

    IRIS Software and Services produces packaged apps that half the UK's accountants use. But continually updating them as regulations change is a pain - so why not provide its software as a service? That's the plan that Accountancy Division CEO Phill Robinson explains to The Reg. Phill talks about why a stable, profitable …

    Cloud 15 Jun 2011, 10:28

  • What does mission critical mean, anyway?

    Video Trevor talks non-stop

    Since when did 'five nines' really mean anything? 99.999% uptime may have been a relevant mantra a decade ago, says Register contributor Trevor Pott, but in 2011, it is an outdated way to sell systems. IT has matured, and line of business customers just want to hear that their systems stand a very good chance of working when …

    Enterprise Tech 15 Jun 2011, 11:00

  • MoD plans 'name and shame' crackdown on crap projects

    If they don't buck up... we'll name them again!

    UK Defence secretary Liam Fox has pledged to crack down hard on poorly performing defence procurement projects, by "naming and shaming" them on a quarterly published list. Announcing the commencement of operations by the new Major Projects Review Board, which he will chair, Dr Fox said: "I want to send a clear message across …

    Government 15 Jun 2011, 11:03

  • Microsoft integrates OAuth 2.0 in play for Facebook goodness

    Single sign-on trend hooks up Windows Live dev platform

    Microsoft has suckered up to Facebook's social graph API with the implementation of OAuth 2.0 on its Windows Live developer platform. The company announced plans to hook its next version of Microsoft's Messenger Connect coder system into the open authorisation standard in early May, when its ID expert Kim Cameron quit Redmond …

    Applications 15 Jun 2011, 11:08

  • LulzSec hacks EVE Online as rampage goes on

    Updated Pwn party shows no sign of flagging

    Prolific hacker pranksters LulzSec took out sci-fi game EVE Online on Tuesday as part of a run of attacks apparently perpetrated purely for the lulz. A DDoS attack left EVE Online offline for around five hours as part of an operation called Titanic Takeover Tuesday. CCP Games, the firm behind the popular multiplayer game, said …

    Security 15 Jun 2011, 11:26

  • iOS 5 files restoke iPad 3 retina display rumour

    2048 x 1536 graphics discovered

    Evidence has emerged that a future iPad will sport a massive 1536 x 2048 resolution, though hopes that the next one will may be premature. Apple's new Twitter framework iOS 5 contains graphics files that extend to 2048 x 1536 pixels, reports website Techunwrapped. Newsstand, a special folder that corrals newspaper and …

    Tablets 15 Jun 2011, 11:32

  • Wii U has 50 per cent more power than rivals

    Nintendo wants the entire market, and more

    After Nintendo revealed the Wii U at this year's E3, a continuous stream of rumours and further details have emerged. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are all now battling for a piece of consumers' lives, evolving their respective hardware into home entertainment hubs, rather than simply gaming systems. In a discussion with All …

    Games 15 Jun 2011, 11:40

  • Peugeot 508 Active e-HDI micro-hybrid

    Review No, it's not an e-car for very small people...

    Peugeot has been criticised for losing the plot with its small and medium cars over the last decade, but that shouldn’t obscure the fact that it has made some fine D-segment motors in the same period, including the 406 and 407. The 508 Active e-HDI: Peugeot’s latest micro-hybrid stop-start system on board The newest …

    Science 15 Jun 2011, 12:00

  • Will Ofcom have to stick up its hands on 4G auction?

    Comment Speed > fairness

    Ofcom will do anything to avoid seeing the 4G auctions scheduled for next year mired in legal battles - but deciding to whom it would surrender will be tough. The regulator has told the FT it stands ready to fight for its proposed 4G mega-auction, in the face of operators who seem keen to resort to legal action, but not at the …

    Phones 15 Jun 2011, 12:05

  • 'A SHARK attacked my ROBOT', gasps ex-Sun exec

    Tin fish limps home after deep-sea gobblement attempt

    A robot from a startup company helmed by a former Sun Microsystems executive was attacked by a shark in the Gulf of Mexico recently, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal has the story, recounting the tale of machine versus elasmobranch as told to it by Bill Vass, late of Sun. Vass is nowadays CEO of Liquid Robotics, a …

    Science 15 Jun 2011, 12:11

  • Nokia nukes online store in UK

    Direct sales all but Finnish

    Nokia's UK online store is set to shut, following recent closures in France, Spain and the Netherlands. Nokia's UK page has allegedly struggled to generate sales and as a result, will be shut down, continuing the company's push to overhaul the business. Source: Omio.com Confirmed in an email to affiliate network …

    Phones 15 Jun 2011, 12:13

  • Creditsafe suspends website in wake of drive-by download attack

    Precautionary disconnect

    UK credit reference and credit recovery agency creditsafe.co.uk took its site offline on Tuesday, as a precaution, following a hacking attack. The site remains offline at the time of writing on Wednesday afternoon. Miscreants planted malicious code on Creditsafe Limited's1 website. This code had the effect of redirecting …

    Security 15 Jun 2011, 12:20

  • Cloud 'not ready for public sector market'

    Still presents a risk for public services, warns local government IT chief

    Chris Pope, director of transformation at Merton council, told the Guardian's SmartGov Live event in London that he was "nervous" about adopting cloud computing and being infrastructure free. "Why? Because I do not trust the supply market yet," he said. "The number of instances of organisations taking their IT services back in …

    Cloud 15 Jun 2011, 13:11

  • HTC U-turns over Desire Android 2.3 update

    Smartphone WILL get Gingerbread after all

    HTC has hastily backtracked on yesterday's announcement that Desire owners won't get Gingerbread, announcing today that the Android 2.3 update will go ahead after all. Posting on its Facecrack page, the Taiwanese mobile giant said simply: "Contrary to what we said earlier, we are going to bring Gingerbread to HTC Desire." …

    Phones 15 Jun 2011, 13:13

  • Europe flashes report card on data protection

    The good, the bad and the ugly

    The European Data Protection Supervisor has had a busy year - with a wider remit to cover all EU institutions as well as helping to write a new legal framework for data protection across the European Union. It took some unpopular positions against handing passenger name records to the US and called for stronger legal …

    Government 15 Jun 2011, 13:34

  • Go Daddy sued over email alerts

    Tubby patent troll wants seconds

    Go Daddy has been sued for allegedly infringing two patents when it sends email alerts to customers whose domain names and web hosting accounts are about to expire. Its accuser is WhitServe, a patent licensing company based in Connecticut. It also runs NetDocket, a service designed to make renewing trademark registrations and …

    Hosting 15 Jun 2011, 13:52

  • Best Buy gives big boxes the boot

    Small is beautiful

    Best Buy has put its "big box" strategy under review worldwide, with management braced for considerable shrinkage. The US retailer set up shop in the UK last year - it has ten megastores with another on the way in Enfield - but has shelved plans to set up another 80 as hard-pressed shoppers spend cash on food and utility bills …

    The Channel 15 Jun 2011, 14:20

  • Groupon hug from small businesses? Not so much

    Daily deal sites lack loyalty from bar owners, barbers and cooks

    Daily deal sites such as Groupon are just a fad with little individual staying power, a new study has claimed. According to the Rice University, Groupon and other coupon promotion websites lack a key ingredient for sustainability because businesses don't remain loyal to one site. "Our findings also uncovered a number of red …

    Small Biz 15 Jun 2011, 14:44

  • iLuv International Triple USB AC Charger

    Txt Take Three-port power

    Daily product reviews in 140 characters... iLuv International Triple USB AC Charger Pictures Want our Txt Take on your gadget? Just send it in to Reg Hardware - details here.

    Hardware 15 Jun 2011, 15:00

  • Hitachi keen to be cloud content king

    Comment Fluff as far as the eye can see

    Hitachi Data Systems is planning to provide a sophisticated content storage cloud infrastructure with end-to-end deduplication and local file servers accessing a content core having both archive and data discovery functions. According to information the Reg has received, HDS has a concept of a content core, composed of the …

    Cloud 15 Jun 2011, 15:03

  • IBM slashes prices on Opteron 6100 racker

    Freebie CPUs and a server discount

    IBM was late to the Opteron 6100 party last year, behind rivals Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Acer. But Big Blue did put a compact machine in the field crammed with lots of cores, and it does want to sell them. To that end, IBM is offering customers a pretty sweet deal on its System x3755 M3 server, which debuted back in August …

    Servers 15 Jun 2011, 15:19

  • Next-gen Xbox to debut at next year's E3

    Games already in development, apparently

    Microsoft is a year away from major announcements concerning the Xbox 360's successor, it has been claimed. A "high ranking industry source" at Far Cry developer Crytek confirmed that a new Timesplitters game is in development, VideoGamer reports, and reckons Microsoft will announce the Xbox followup at E3 next year. Blimey, …

    Games 15 Jun 2011, 15:20

  • Rogue software consultant's vast stash of DIY explosives

    Bomb squad forced to blow up likeable bank robber's house

    A software consultant in California has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after he embarked on a spree of armed bank robberies and amassed a huge stockpile of homemade explosives at his home, residues from which blew up and injured a local gardener and necessitated the total destruction of the building on grounds of …

    Law 15 Jun 2011, 15:55

  • NHS trust issues nurse jub flash alert

    You're not Babs Windsor, so put 'em away

    East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust has decided that its patients do not subscribe to the Sid James school of healthcare and has ordered Babs Windsors to keep their nursely chesticles firmly under wraps. The clampdown on excessive jubliness forms part of a drive to promote a "professional and consistent" image for doctors …

    Bootnotes 15 Jun 2011, 15:57

  • LexisNexis open sources Hadoop challenger

    Behold! Thor and Roxie

    A super-computer architecture that crunches big data for banks, police, and spooks will soon be open sourced as a super-fast alternative to the Googlesque Hadoop. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is opening up its High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC), a system written in C++ that it claims is four-times faster than Hadoop when …

    Software 15 Jun 2011, 16:00

  • Duke Nukem flack eats words over threat to reviewers

    Grovelling apology follows 'no praise, no games' Tweet

    The PR team behind the US launch of Duke Nukem Forever has apologised for threatening to blacklist publications who gave the eagerly anticipated title bad write-ups. After the game received critical brickbats, it seems topping the games sales charts wasn't enough of a consolation for The Redner Group. One staffer posted …

    Games 15 Jun 2011, 17:06

  • T-Platforms CPU-GPU hybrid hits 1.3 petaflops at Moscow State

    Russian super maker invades Amerika

    Moscow State University has moved into the upper echelons of the HPC field with an upgrade to its top-end supercomputer and moved to hybrid CPU-GPU blade servers from indigenous supercomputer maker T-Platforms. It comes as no surprise that MSU has bulked up the math skills of the supercomputer, which is named after 18th …

    HPC 15 Jun 2011, 19:11

  • Google's HTTP Archive merges with Internet Archive

    Velocity One records pages. The other records speed

    The HTTP Archive – a fledgling effort to record the performance of sites across the interwebs – has merged with the Internet Archive, whose Wayback Machine has long kept a similar record of internet content. Google's Steve Souders – who founded the HTTP Archive and will continue to run it – announced the merger this morning at …

    Applications 15 Jun 2011, 19:42

  • Adobe patches critical bugs in Flash and Reader

    Second emergency Flash patch in 9 days

    Adobe has rolled out updates for its widely used Reader PDF viewer and Flash animation programs that fix flaws, some that hackers have been exploiting to hijack end user computers. The emergency patch for Flash was the second time in nine days that Adobe has rushed out a fix for a serious bug in the program. The vulnerability …

    Security 15 Jun 2011, 21:08

  • LTE vs broadcasters: let the spectrum wars begin

    ACMA scratches head over 4G interference

    As mobile carriers prepare to upgrade to 4G/LTE networks, Australia’s free to air broadcasters and Foxtel are bracing for potentially significant and costly interference to their transmissions. Earlier this month UK regulator Ofcom estimated that it would cost £100m to deal with the disruption caused by 4G transmitters to over …

    Broadband 15 Jun 2011, 22:26

  • Gummint security is utterly hopeless

    Auditor strolls through West Oz networks

    In the kind of report that really spoils your day, Western Australia’s Auditor-General has presented the findings of a study into that state’s government network security. The finding? Fourteen out of the 15 agencies subjected to “hostile scans” of their networks failed to notice anything amiss. The Auditor-General also went …

    Broadband 15 Jun 2011, 22:27

  • SGI boasts of Altix UV installs

    Prefabs Hadoop clusters to chew big data

    Supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics says it has shipped more than 500 of its Altix UV line of machines in the past year, perhaps a larger number than you thought was possible and possibly indicative of the benefit of selling a Xeon-based system over one based on Itanium processors. The Altix UV family is made up of three …

    HPC 15 Jun 2011, 22:46

  • Chandra tags ancient black holes

    ‘Growing like gangbusters’

    Black holes may have been all over the early universe, according to new findings announced by NASA. A starfield gathered by its Chandra X-ray observatory, known as Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS), and analyzed in conjunction with the Hubble Space Telescope, has turned up a mass of previously-undiscovered black holes from when …

    Science 15 Jun 2011, 23:00

  • Microsoft juices C++ for massively parallel computing

    Fusion Summit Plug in the AMP

    Microsoft has announced a new technology designed to help C++ developers build massively parallel applications. Known as C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism – or C++ AMP for short – the technology will be included in the next version of the company's Visual C++ compiler, and Microsoft plans to open up the specification for …

    Developer 15 Jun 2011, 23:02

  • Rupert and Wendi go shopping in China

    Grab stake in P2P giant ahead of US$200m IPO

    The Murdochs are taking another stab at the Chinese media market, confirming a US$29.4 million stake in Chinese P2P video site Xunlei, which has filed for a US$200 million Nasdaq IPO. Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi made the investment via one of their private investment, vehicles RW Investments (yes, it stands for Rupert …

    Financial News 15 Jun 2011, 23:30