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17th June 2011 Archive

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  • What a mix-up: using different hypervisors

    The more the merrier?

    When asked to write about the pros and cons of deploying multiple hypervisors, my first thought was that nobody in their right mind would want to do such a thing, especially if the software was from different vendors. Management would be a nightmare and so would all kinds of compatibility issues. On further investigation, it …

    Data Centre 17 Jun 01:00

  • A$100m supercomputer project queried

    Auditor critical of Uni of Melbourne cluster of problems

    A A$100 million supercomputer facility in Victoria, funded by A$50m of government funds with the rest coming from the University of Melbourne, has come under fire from that state’s Auditor-General. The VLSCI – Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative – is due to be completed in 2013, and would create one of the world’s …

    HPC 17 Jun 01:00

  • Fun and games in NZ politics

    Data breach claim and counter-claim

    Most people think giving their names to a politician is a bad idea because they’ll spend the rest of their lives being nagged by the party. New Zealand’s Labour Party has taken this to a whole new level, leaving donor details – including names and donation amounts – in plain view. The predictable result is that a right-wing …

    Security 17 Jun 02:00

  • AMD trumpets next-gen GPU architecture

    Fusion Summit The road to the Holodeck

    AMD has trumpeted its next-generation GPU architecture, painting the design as a radical departure that has one foot in the graphics world and the other in what AMD, Microsoft, ARM, and others dub "heterogeneous computing". Essentially, the new architecture is a parallel-processor, throughput engine that can serve both …

    PCs & Chips 17 Jun 04:44

  • Citigroup breach exposed more accounts than first claimed

    Revisionist pwnage report

    The security breach that hit the website of Citigroup exposed data for more than 360,000 accounts, the bank said on Wednesday, about 80 percent more than it previously reported. Citigroup publicly disclosed the compromise last week, but said it involved about 200,000 accounts. Wednesday's revision came amid an inquiry by the …

    ID 17 Jun 04:45

  • Oracle and Itanic: Tech's nastiest ever row?

    HP vs Oracle And the pig enjoys it...

    It has never been smooth sailing on the good ship Itanic, but now the processor is at the centre of a poisonous row, one that's as nasty as any I can recall in years of tech reporting. In case you didn't notice – and you've come to the right place to catch up – HP and Oracle are at loggerheads. HP accuses Oracle, which bought …

    Servers 17 Jun 04:49

  • TomTom Start 20 satnav

    Review Travelling light

    TomTom’s entry level Start satnavs have long been the default choice for anyone wanting a reliable but basic PND. Now the range has been given a wash and brush up with the release of some new 4.3in screen devices with prices starting at £130. Baby driver: TomTom's Start 20 The design of the Start 20 addresses a couple of …

    reghardware 17 Jun 06:00

  • Weird handheld keyboard comes with laser pointer

    And touchpad

    Check out this mini handheld keyboard with a built-in touchpad. 'Aint she a weird one? The USB 2.4GHz Multimedia Keyboard consists of 85 keys, a touchpad and laser pointer. Pick one up for $36 (£22) over at Brando. ®

    reghardware 17 Jun 06:00

  • Mozilla eyes multi-threaded webpage rendering

    Velocity One page. Many cores

    Mozilla is exploring ways of building a multi-threaded browser DOM for Firefox, so that a single web page can be rendered using multiple processor cores. "We think it's possible," Mozilla open source evangelist Chris Blizzard said on Thursday at the O'Reilly Velocity conference in Santa Clara, California. "This is an active …

    Developer 17 Jun 06:05

  • Lulzsec gets hacking downunder

    Pranksters release 62,000 email details

    Notorious hackivist group Lulzsec has brought down Australian domain registrar and web hosts Distribute.IT and publicly published a list of 62,000 international email addresses and passwords. The data files appear to be cobbled together from a variety of sources, but the Australian email details include a number from …

    Hosting 17 Jun 06:35

  • Meerkats face financial regulation

    Price comparison sites may be breaking financial advice regulations, says FSA

    Price comparison sites may be in breach of financial advice regulations when they lead customers to insurance policies, regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has said. Companies must have FSA permission to provide financial advice, but some price comparison website activity could amount to a regulated activity, it …

    Financial News 17 Jun 07:54

  • Panasonic preps outdoor Android slate

    Daylight readable display, anyone?

    There's a large big biz shaped hole at the heart of the Android tablet market, Panasonic reckons, but it's one the company aims to fill. Enter the Toughbook tablet, a 10.1in machine with extra padding at the edges to make it more resistant to knocks and bumps than your average fondleslab. We don't know about big business, …

    reghardware 17 Jun 08:16

  • NetApp may serve app server flash cache

    Comment 'Won't catch us with our Flash pants down' says NetApp

    We've seen EMC and Dell looking to manage flash caches in application servers and contrasting this with NetApp's array controller Flash Cache strategy. Actually NetApp is involved with storage array management of flash caches in app servers - witness its Project Mercury presentation at the FAST '11 conference at San Jose in …

    Storage 17 Jun 08:30

  • Sony teases tablet fans with bizarre 'mousetrap' vid

    Ad team goes to town

    Sony has posted a teaser video for its upcoming 9.4in Android tablet, the S1, and its a good 'un. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it says absolutely nothing about the gadget itself, focusing instead on creating a buzz around the device through snappy visuals and a seemingly single-take spectacle. Well, you see what we mean: The …

    reghardware 17 Jun 08:41

  • Does a flash motor act as a fanny magnet or not?

    What girls really think about boys, cars and money

    The long-debated question of whether women find a man more attractive if he drives a flash car (or in other ways spends cash conspicuously) has been further muddied by an alliance of trick-cyclists and biz profs in the States. Carrying out a survey among 1,000 American subjects, the soft-studies profs sought to find out what …

    Bootnotes 17 Jun 09:26

  • Dell hails happier UK reseller relations

    Don't go to bed mad - stay up and fight

    Dell's head of global channels has conceded that it has some way to go yet before it can expunge conflict between resellers and its direct sales bods, but in the three years since it began a partner love-in there is less tension. Talking to The Reg following an EMEA Partner Advisory Council in Hamburg, Greg Davis, Dell veep …

    Channel Register 17 Jun 09:30

  • Licensed to bill: software vendors love virtualisation

    Video Intel's Dave Buchholz runs through the numbers

    If you thought managing traditional software licences was a challenge, then just wait till you're accessing an Remote Desktop Services-delivered application, on a virtual machine precariously balanced atop a type-two hypervisor. How much should you pay? Given the state of some vendors' licencing schemes, you might as well throw …

    Enterprise Tech 17 Jun 10:00

  • Yuri Gagarin lands at Royal Albert Hall

    'I must find a telephone to call Moscow'

    The Royal Albert Hall is hosting a Yuri Gagarin photo restrospective featuring "iconic and previously unseen images" from the collection of RIA Novosti. The Russian news agency has hooked up with Science Photo Library to offer Poyekhali! Yuri Gagarin and The Dawn of Space Exploration.* Science Photo Library's Gary Evans said …

    Space 17 Jun 10:00

  • US reveals Stuxnet-style vuln in Chinese SCADA 'ware

    Nothing must interrupt our supply of iPads and bras

    The US Department of Homeland Security is warning of holes in Chinese infrastructure software which could leave factories and power stations vulnerable to hack attacks. The problems, similar to those suffered by Siemens in Iran, are within Sunway ForceControl 6.1 and pNetPower Version 6 - used to runcontrol systems for …

    Enterprise Security 17 Jun 10:13

  • Microsoft launches official Windows code kit for Kinect

    Set things in motion

    Microsoft launched the Windows SDK for Kinect last night, granting developers an official tool for taking the motion sensor beyond the realm of Xbox gaming. The company promised to launch an SDK back in February, by which time, the developer community was already hacking Kinect for a range of wacky inventions, from search and …

    reghardware 17 Jun 10:16

  • Wireless networking without paying The Man, man

    Slow, short range, incompatible ... but it's pure

    So you want wireless networking, but you don’t want to hand over patent fees and licence money to the nasty megacorporations? Qi Hardware, the company responsible for the Ben Nanonote, has created a USB dongle offering wireless networking on open-sourced hardware conforming to the 6LoWPAN standard from as little as £25 …

    Wireless 17 Jun 10:27

  • Gloomy forecast, job cuts, product delays at RIM

    Apple v BlackBerry fruit-fight going poorly

    Research In Motion (RIM) has issued a profit warning, plans to cut the workforce and delay product launches amid fierce competition from smartphone rivals. The BlackBerry and PlayBook maker grew 2012 fiscal first quarter revenues 16 per cent year-on-year to $4.9bn (£3bn) as profits slid nine per cent to $695m. But on a …

    Business 17 Jun 10:43

  • BOFH: CSI Haxploitation Cube Farm Apocalypse

    Episode 8 The new nanovector viruses hide in the parity handshaking

    “Can you just come here for a moment?” Ray - the brand spanking new Boss with the IQ of a pot plant - asks, ducking into Mission Control. The PFY and I follow – after all it’s a Friday morning and there’s an hour or so till the pub opens for lunch. “Can you tell me what happened here?” Ray asks, once he’s led us to the …

    BOFH 17 Jun 11:09

  • ICO drops News of the Screws probe

    Missing emails might be missing, might not be

    The Information Commissioner's Office is dropping an investigation into alleged disappearance of emails at Sunday redtop the News of the World. The data regulator was looking at allegations that emails between senior executives and journalists at the News of the World had been lost while being transported to India. It said it …

    Policing 17 Jun 11:16

  • RedBubble CEO drops role at Aconex

    Hitler not so hipster

    The executive at the centre of the RedBubble Hipster Hitler scandal has quit from his key role as chairman on software as a service company Aconex. High profile internet entrepreneur Martin Hosking has resigned as a director and Chairman of Aconex on Friday ahead of a directions hearing that was scheduled for Monday in a …

    Business 17 Jun 11:20

  • NAME that DONKEY: Bella bests Barbarella

    Inadvertent Twilight moment at Reg Asinine Affairs Bureau

    I'm pleased to report that after a not inconsiderable amount of pondering, and some behind-the-scenes third-party lobbying, my daughter has finally decided on a name for the latest addition to the El Reg Iberian bureau's asinine fold. Since the fine jenny was born during our second year of breeding operations, we asked readers …

    Bootnotes 17 Jun 11:30

  • BBC to stream news site to Samsung tellies

    Web repurposed for IPTV

    The BBC has favoured Samsung's networkable TVs for the release of its first internet-streamed news feed. The "BBC News product for connected TVs", as only the Corporation could call it, "combines existing video and text content from BBC News Online", the BBC said, saving viewers the need to turn to their browsers. The content …

    reghardware 17 Jun 11:44

  • Ten thousand OLEDs unite in live Earth replica

    World on display

    Check out this crazy globe - a live replica of the Earth made from over 10,000 OLED display panels. The exhibit, made by Mitsubishi Electric, is on show at The Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. The "Geo-Cosmos" measures six metres across and is perpetually fed satellite images to provide an up-to-date visual …

    reghardware 17 Jun 11:49

  • Which apps belong in the cloud?

    Broadcast Reg reader joins us, speaks from experience

    Next Thursday, June 23rd, at 11:00 BST Reg editor Tim Phillips is joined by Reg reader James Greenman, Group IT Director at Care UK, to talk about where, when and why cloud might make sense for your apps. Care UK has started creeping into cloud and James has kindly agreed to join us to share his experiences. He'll explain what …

    Tech Panel 17 Jun 11:54

  • Inside the Royal Mail's Internal Cloud

    Broadcast Back by public demand: this time it's private

    Holmes and Watson. Kirk and Spock. The Chuckle Brothers. And now, Steel and Knaresborough. Recently we brought you the feel-good tale "Royal Mail Moves to the Cloud" , in which intrepid Adrian Steel and trusty companion Glyn Knaresborough migrated 30,000 desktops - and lived to tell Reg readers their heartwarming story. They …

    Cloud 17 Jun 12:00

  • Google: Our rapid load won't give you anything nasty

    You could get exploited without even saying yes

    Google has downplayed concerns that refinements to its search technology could leave surfers more exposed to search engine manipulation attacks. Google Inside Search aims to speed up web searches by pre-loading content from remote sites. The so-called Instant Pages technology only works with Google Chrome. Miscreants often …

    Malware 17 Jun 12:00

  • Nokia takes hit in High Court priority-calls patent battle

    Battle goes on, lawyers drool over war-chests

    The UK High Court ruling on Nokia's infringement of patents held by IPCom has both sides declaring victory, which is jolly friendly but not entirely accurate. The latest chapter in the ongoing dispute, which goes back to 2007, falls largely in IPCom's favour in dismissing Nokia's various attempts to have the patent invalidated …

    Business 17 Jun 12:15

  • Kindle Store awash with auto-generated crap 'books'

    Bargain barrelscrape rubbish obscuring decent reads

    Tsk, kids of today, eh? Give them something free and they spam it, thus making it all entirely unusable for the rest of us. As Reuters reports, this is now happening with the Kindle Store. Now that you can upload an e-book, price it and sell it, for free, hordes of wouldbe publishing millionaires are doing exactly that. Except …

    Music and Media 17 Jun 12:24

  • Apple iMac 27in

    Review Don’t try this at home, kids

    For those of you who revel in Mac versus Windows shouting matches, click the Comments link now. You’ve already made up your minds, so feel free to dive into the debate without reading the review. That’s what you normally do, anyway. Widescreen viewing: Apple's iMac 27in If you’re still with me, let me confirm the worst: …

    reghardware 17 Jun 12:38

  • Samsung to refresh 7in Galaxy Tab this September

    Gingerbread baked in

    Samsung is reportedly gearing up to release a second generation of the 7in Galaxy Tab, one year on from the launch of the original Android tablet. According to Italian site HDBlog, the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 will come with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of Ram and Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread rather than last year's Froyo. …

    reghardware 17 Jun 12:41

  • Aunty squirts serendipity into TV apps

    Fondleslabs are now the "second TV"

    The BBC is piping stuff into ever more devices - showing off delivery to a Samsung Connected TV today. Actually, the first thing that appeared on the giant Samsung - literally a wall-to-wall experience - was a Socialist Worker placard emblazoned with "Smash The Tories" from a "Save Our Pensions" demonstration. It's the big …

    Music and Media 17 Jun 12:50

  • NHS Trusts in the dark over CfH licence transfer

    Please shed light on our software budgets

    Local NHS Trusts are still waiting to receive licensing allocation from Connecting for Health to budget for software procurement. They are refusing to sign off new purchase orders with resellers, a year after the coalition binned its enterprise-wide agreement with Microsoft. The three-year £80m EWA was not renewed in June …

    Government 17 Jun 13:04

  • Infosmack LIVE! with Michael Dell

    Dell Storage Forum Oh yes

    This is a special episode from the Dell Storage Forum 2011 in Orlando, Florida. Andy es, Michael Dell is on the Infosmack, the world's best podcast about enterprise tech. Let's have some show notes: Phil Soren, President of Dell Compellent, on the progress of Compellent's integration with Dell Brian Bell, Executive Director …

    Infosmack 17 Jun 13:36

  • ALK revamps CoPilot smartphone satnav

    Bing, Facebook, Wikipedia added and more

    ALK is gearing up to launch a major update to its smartphone satnav app, CoPilot Live. The app, which is to be re-styled CoPilot Live Premium HD, will run on iOS and Android devices. Guidance for drivers and (right) pedestrians The new release incorporates direct Wikipedia look-ups for its many Places of Interest entries …

    reghardware 17 Jun 14:08

  • Refusal to unveil scuppers French refusal-to-unveil trial

    Blind justice finds itself in a blind alley

    A burqa-clad woman yesterday rather brilliantly exposed a fatal flaw in France's ban on the traditional Muslim garb when she attended court to face a charge of "covering her face in a public place", and then simply refused to take off her burqa for the hearing. The 31-year-old mum, identified only by her first name Hind, was …

    Bootnotes 17 Jun 14:12

  • Captain Cyborg: Computers are alive, like bats or cows

    'I'm like Yuri Gagarin, me,' says moggy-chipping prof

    Consummate attention-seeker Kevin Warwick has admitted to snooping on the public in a previous life. Warwick made the creepy confession on Radio 4, recalling an earlier job as a GPO engineer: "I remember taking ten different calls and plugging them all together; one call would continue, the other nine would listen in. Then I'd …

    Rise of the Machines 17 Jun 14:48

  • True Utility FlyEye 7 LED torch

    Txt Take Fiat lux

    Daily product reviews in 140 characters. True Utility FlyEye 7 Pictures

    reghardware 17 Jun 15:00

  • Brit CompSci student faces extradition to US over link site

    'He's just a geeky boy,' pleads mum

    A British computer science student is facing extradition to the US where he is accused of setting up a site which provided links to websites that infringed copyright owned by US companies. Richard O'Dwyer, 23, was in court in Westminster this week. He ran the TVShack website - one of seven shut down by US authorities last …

    Law 17 Jun 15:26

  • German DDoSer jailed for World Cup gambling extortion

    Frankfurter menaced bookies with rented bots

    A hacker based in Germany has been jailed for 34 months over a DDoS-based extortion scam against gambling websites in the run-up to last year's World Cup. The unnamed Frankfurt resident was also ordered to pay damages of 350,000 Euros ($504,000) by a Düsseldorf court following his conviction for attempting to run a protection …

    Crime 17 Jun 15:38

  • The world wants cloud coders. Where are the cloud coders?

    Open...and Shut There's an open source project for that

    Recent survey data from the Eclipse Foundation and elsewhere make it abundantly clear that cloud computing is top of mind for a majority of enterprises…and that no one really has a clue where to hire cloud developers. According to Dice (warning: PDF), demand for cloud-savvy job candidates spiked 221 percent in the last year, …

    Developer 17 Jun 16:48

  • Oracle seeks 'billions' with Google Android suit

    'That's right. Billions. Tell the world. Billions'

    Oracle is seeking "billions of dollars" in damages from Google with its sweeping copyright and patent infringement lawsuit over the use of Java on Android. According to an Oracle court filing released on Thursday, Google attempted to hide the scope of Oracle's damages claims and other related information from public view. But …

    Developer 17 Jun 17:41

  • GlobalFoundries shuffles top brass

    Hey, AMD. Want some sloppy seconds?

    Advanced Technology Investment Company – the moneybags of the Abu Dhabi government that bought foundries from Advanced Micro Devices in 2008 to become a player in chip manufacturing – is shuffling its top brass as it prepares to pump more money in the business and knock its foundries into shape. The executive changes at ATIC …

    Financial News 17 Jun 18:23

  • Hacker wrists slapped for stealing Lady Gaga songs

    Trojan attack nets racy Kesha photos

    Two German hackers have been convicted of stealing unpublished songs from some of the most popular recording stars, including Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey and Justin Timberlake, and selling them for a tidy profit. The unidentified youths, aged 18 and 23, used phishing attacks and trojans to plant malware on the computers of the …

    Security 17 Jun 19:46

  • Adobe offloads unwanted Linux AIR onto OEMs

    Mercy killing

    Adobe Software is putting the future of Linux AIR in the hands of OEMs, admitting its own attempts to promote the Flash-based media runtime on Linux have had very little impact. The company has said it plans no new versions of the AIR runtime or development tools for Linux. Adobe seems to believe AIR stands a better chance …

    Developer 17 Jun 21:14

  • iOS 5 closes Apple's infamous homescreen webapp gap

    So says Xuzz

    Apple's iOS 5 will close the speed gap between web apps run inside the company's Safari browser and those that run in "fullscreen mode" from the iOS home screen, according to a web post from a developer with early access to the operating system. With the current version of iOS, web applications saved to the iOS home screen and …

    Mobile 17 Jun 21:27

  • Visual Studio infected with HTML5 by 'rogue faction'

    Passion in action

    There's nothing to stop you working with HTML5 in Visual Studio. Except for the fact that you can't use many of the features that polish the .NET-editing experience. That wasn't a problem for Microsoft until it decided HTML5 was the future of coding on PCs, devices, and the web, unveiling a very Web- and HTML-centric next …

    Developer 17 Jun 23:57