The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

11th July 2011 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Diary of a cameraman at the last shuttle launch

    Photos Blinded by the sight

    Gordon Laing is the editor of CameraLabs.com, where an extended version of this story originally appeared. The launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on its final mission was an awesome sight. I’ve seen many launches on TV – most with a tear in my eye – but this was my first in person, and it didn’t disappoint. Indeed, it was quite …

    Science 11 Jul 2011, 05:28

  • Atlantis hooks up with ISS

    Smooth mating of final shuttle to visit station

    Space shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station at 15:07 GMT yesterday, on its final visit to the orbiting outpost as the US prepares to wrap the shuttle programme. Before connecting with the ISS, the venerable vehicle did the customary backflip to allow station crew to photograph its heatshield. The snaps …

    Science 11 Jul 2011, 08:28

  • Intel 320 SSD bug causes forum despair

    'Intel doesn't include firmware failures in the MTBF!'

    Users are reporting that Intel 320 SSDs are dying, and power cycle limitations appear to be at fault. The company had not issued a fix at time of writing. There is an active forum about the faulty solid state drives at the Intel Support Community website. "Poster Goose" wrote a message on 1 June, quoting from a PC Review …

    Storage 11 Jul 2011, 08:39

  • News International grabs SunOnSunday.co.uk domain

    Switcheroo after unknown individual registered url

    News International bought the sunonsunday.co.uk and thesunonsunday.co.uk domain names late last week, after they had originally been grabbed by unknown individuals as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed the News of the World Sunday tabloid. The final edition of that rag was published yesterday. But it's understood that News …

    Networks 11 Jul 2011, 08:59

  • How to virtualise critical apps

    Broadcast Time to get your hands dirty

    Tomorrow, 12th of July, at 15:00BST we have a team of experts in our studio to talk about how and why you would virtualise your mission critical apps. The Register’s Tim Phillips is your host for the hour. With him are Andrew Buss from our friends at Freeform Dynamics, Andrew Fryer from Microsoft and Alun Rogers from Risual. …

    Data Center 11 Jul 2011, 09:07

  • So, LOHAN: What's it to be?

    Low Orbital High Altitude Norks? Ballockets to that

    The El Reg Special Projects Bureau team is greatly obliged to all of you who chipped in with suggestions as to just what our audacious rocket-powered spaceplane project should be called. If you're not yet up to speed on the successor to the Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) project, then you can check out our intitial …

    SPB 11 Jul 2011, 09:15

  • Apple said to have 3G-enabled iPod in pipeline

    Cutting voice ties with carriers?

    Apple may be gearing up to release a version of the iPod Touch with 3G cellular connectivity built-in. So suggests Dutch-language fansite AppleSpot without shaying who told dem and vot was being shmoked during de convurshashion. It's certainly a bizarre notion since Apple would undoubteldy hope any iPod Touch owner wanting a …

    Hardware 11 Jul 2011, 09:42

  • Burg 5 watch phone

    Geek Treat of the Week Tick-tock, ring-ring

    Considering I grew up with Inspector Gadget, Knight Rider and Warren Beatty's portrayal of Dick Tracy, it's unsurprising that I've always craved a watch that doubles up as a phone. A 'photch' perhaps? Fortunately, my wishes are no longer a pipe-dream, as watchphones have been on the market for years. Chinese manufacturer Burg …

    Phones 11 Jul 2011, 10:00

  • How scareware scumbags avoid getting flagged by banks

    White hats infiltrate, monitor three networks

    A study of cybercrime economics shows that peddlers of rogue antivirus scams rely on legitimate banks to run their businesses, carefully ensuring that the volume of chargebacks they incur stay just on the right side of being flagged-up as obviously fraudulent. Researchers from the University of California in Santa Barbara …

    Security 11 Jul 2011, 10:00

  • HTC says smartphone bootloader unlock software out next month

    Sensational

    HTC will begin releasing unlocked version of its Android smartphones' bootloader code next month. The first phone to get the update will be the dual-core HTC Sensation, which will get a "software update to support bootloader unlocking... in August", HTC said. "We’re in the testing phase for the unlocking capability now, and …

    Phones 11 Jul 2011, 10:02

  • Cambridge IT guy 'was the Spanish Guy Fawkes', say cops

    Techie allegedly plotted to blow up king

    A Cambridge IT worker known locally as "Cyril" was actually a wanted terrorist who plotted to kill the King of Spain, according to police. Scotland Yard announced last week that Spanish national Eneko Gogeaskoetxea Arronategui, 44, had been arrested by armed cops in a "pro-active, intelligence-led operation" which saw the …

    Security 11 Jul 2011, 10:06

  • Culture sec consults Ofcom, OFT on BSkyB merger

    Updated Miliband the Younger calls for Commons vote on Murdoch bid

    Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is writing to Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading today to seek advice from the regulators over the proposed merger of television broadcaster BSkyB with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire. The move, reported by the BBC, follows the sudden shuttering of Sunday tabloid the News of the World. …

    Media 11 Jul 2011, 10:29

  • Google+ disk space cockup creates notification spam-storm

    'Yikes', squeals global data centre gigantocorp

    Google+ blitzed early adopters of the social networking service with spammy notifications over the weekend following a technical glitch. The Chocolate Factory said the problem was due to the service having run out of disk space. The spam messages carried some of the hallmarks of those generated by dodgy apps of the type that …

    Security 11 Jul 2011, 10:35

  • Yahoo! reads! your! emails!

    And it's your job to warn all your mates

    Yahoo! is being criticised for the new Ts & Cs for its webmail service, which give it the right to scan your emails as well as making you responsible for telling anyone who might be emailing you, but the ICO has no problem with the changes. Such scanning has been common for some time; Google was the first to scan all messages …

    Security 11 Jul 2011, 11:05

  • Researcher ups fondleslab forecast

    Don't let the traditionally weak Q1 get you down

    Don't write off the tablet, just because retailers ordered fewer of them in the first three months of 2011 than they did in the final three months of 2010. Rather a lot of pundits seem to be doing so, based on a communication from market watcher IDC headed "Media Tablet Sales Lag Optimistic First Quarter Targets". According …

    Tablets 11 Jul 2011, 11:06

  • Game gears up for Mac OS X Lion release with... Panther

    Eight-year-old OS yours for £100

    Looking forward to Lion, but think it's too advanced an operating system for you? Pop over to Game's shop in Swindon's Regent Street, which is still flogging copies of Mac OS X 10.3 circa 2003. Yes, the branch of the retail chain has three copies of Panther, any one of which can be yours for a penny short of £100. Psst, don' …

    Software 11 Jul 2011, 11:31

  • Wikileaks loses briefly-open Icelandic payment channel

    Back to Bitcoin, banks and brown envelopes for Assange™

    So WikiLeaks and Julian Assange™ have been frustrated again: on the money front that is. They're back to cash, Bitcoin and bank transfers as a method of receiving donations. There had been a hope last week that DataCell would be able to start processing donations, for it had made an agreement with the Icelandic bank Valitor to …

    Media 11 Jul 2011, 11:35

  • MS security centre search poisoned with infectious smut

    Chapeau-noir SEOs seed results with seediness

    Microsoft has disabled the search results on its Security Centre after malware-spreaders abused the function to promote shady pornographic websites serving Trojans as well as cheap thrills. Only the Security Section of Microsoft's website was affected by the search-engine poisoning attack. Such attacks are often used to place …

    Security 11 Jul 2011, 11:49

  • Samsung RF711 17.3in Core i7 laptop

    Review Sandy Bridge heavyweight

    It’s not unusual for desktop replacements to have a bit of heft, but Samsung’s RF711 positively throws caution to the wind. Tipping the scales at an obese 2.9kg and measuring 416mm across (almost one-and-a-half feet), it’s only a laptop in the sense that the screen folds down to cover the keyboard when you’ve finished using it. …

    Laptops 11 Jul 2011, 12:05

  • Chambers of Commerce say UK recovery is weak

    Manufacturing confidence high, but growth 'too slow'

    The UK's economic recovery remains weak and the Coalition has failed to tackle the underlying reasons. The British Chambers of Commerce surveyed 6,600 of its members and found efforts to move the economy towards increasing exports has failed. Although manufacturers are having more luck with exports than with domestic sales, …

    Small Biz 11 Jul 2011, 12:30

  • B&W outs its first in-ear 'phones

    Superior sound, noise isolation, natch

    World+Dog prefers wedged-in earphones - 70 per cent of the headphone market, apparently - so posh audio kit maker Bowers & Wilkins has come up with a pair. Enter the C5 - hopefully not named after Sir Clive Sinclair's heroically ridiculous electric car thing - a pair of noise-isolating 'phones with a clever band that hooks …

    Hardware 11 Jul 2011, 12:33

  • GOLDENBALLSUP! Beckham website defaced

    Lulz seekers bend parrot-sickener past web goalies

    David Beckham's website was hacked and defaced on Sunday in an attack timed to coincide with the birth of his first daughter. Instead of the usual content about football and his celebrity friends, visitors to Golden Balls' website who showed up on Sunday were confronted with a picture of a dog attempting to eat a poster …

    Security 11 Jul 2011, 12:36

  • Redstone looks to future after tough fiscal 2011

    Networking integrator posts £11m losses, sales slide

    Networking integrator Redstone is hailing the return of its mojo after getting through a year of significant upheaval. Exiting markets, carving up operations and more than halving its workforce took a toll on financials in the year to 31 March 2010 as the firm notched up losses of £11m – albeit better than the £14.8m posted a …

    The Channel 11 Jul 2011, 12:42

  • Novell jobs slashed by stepmother Attachmate

    'We are grateful' to our ex-employees

    Novell's new owners Attachmate have swung the axe far and wide, with massive staff cuts right across the organisation. According to sources, casualties include some 800 back office staff and all local country managers, including Sean McCarry in the UK and Ireland. At a more senior level, Novell SVP of global sales Javier …

    The Channel 11 Jul 2011, 12:46

  • Adaptec adds DRAM cache to entry-level RAID

    It's like performance-enhancing drugs. Kind of

    DRAM-caching boosts entry-level Adaptec RAID controller performance past software RAID and cache-less host bus adapters. Adaptec, the adapter company that vanished down the Steele Partners plughole, exists as a RAID controller operation and brand inside PMC-Sierra. And now it has announced the "Adaptec by PMC family of Series …

    Storage 11 Jul 2011, 13:03

  • Before 'the cloud' was cool: Virtualising the un-virtualisable

    A brief history of virtualisation

    Buzzwords often have very short lifetimes in IT. Today it's cloud computing, but there would be no infinitely scalable cloud without the previous "big new thing": virtualisation. We take it for granted now, but it's worth remembering that it is still quite a new and relatively immature technology, with a long way to go. In …

    Enterprise Tech 11 Jul 2011, 13:36

  • Hitchhiking snails scoffed, pooped out alive by birds

    Gastro-pod birdshit paratroopers conquer new territories

    Scientists have discovered that certain species of Japanese snail can not only survive being eaten and then excreted by birds, they actually benefit from the process in many cases by finding themselves deposited in new uncropped habitats. The revelations were uncovered by scientifically feeding Japanese white-eye or mejiro …

    Science 11 Jul 2011, 14:41

  • Sweaties decode ultimate mystery of chips

    Development cycle for new types expected to halve

    Scottish boffins have decoded the full genome for the humble potato, opening the door for a new world of Scottish cuisine. The discovery could slash the time taken to breed new types of potato, if they can just get genetically modified crop-planting made legal. However, the information obtained could also be used to aid …

    Science 11 Jul 2011, 15:02

  • Android up, Symbian down

    Smartphone OS shares shuffled

    Android is the clear winner in the market for smartphone operating systems, showing big year-on-year jumps across Western Europe and in the US. Not so Symbian, which plunged over here - and has now nearly vanished on the other side of the pond. The latest figures come from Kantar, a self-styled "inspiration supplier" which …

    Phones 11 Jul 2011, 15:14

  • Hunt refers News Corp/BSkyB bid to Competition Commish

    Corpse of NotW fails to stop vast controversy snowball

    News Corp's planned bid to merge with BSkyB will be referred to the Competition Commission, the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed in the House of Commons this afternoon. Labour leader Ed Miliband said the government had been slow to respond to the public mood following the unfolding phone-tapping scandal that has …

    Government 11 Jul 2011, 15:58

  • Unix still data center darling, says survey

    Updated Linux? Fuggedaboutit

    Unix systems may not be all the rage that they were two decades ago, but in nearly eight out of 10 data centers based on them, their use is either holding steady or increasing. That's the assessment of a recent survey of the HP, IBM, and Oracle Unix customer bases by Gabriel Consulting Group, which has just finished up its …

    Servers 11 Jul 2011, 16:09

  • HPC storage purchasing exposed!

    Blow by blow, byte by byte account

    In a recent HPCwire report, Nicole Hemsoth discloses the back story behind a major storage purchase by Utah’s Center for HPC (CHPC). This story isn’t noteworthy because it’s a particularly large deal or because of the use case. It’s interesting because of its insider perspective on the procurement process, starting with taking …

    HPC 11 Jul 2011, 16:10

  • Cisco needs to slash 5,000 jobs, says analyst

    Shake-up looms as global channel boss waves goodbye

    Cisco may fire up to 5,000 staff this August under a restructuring plan, according to analyst Brian Marshall at Gleacher and Co. This equates to 7 per cent of the networking Goliath's global base of employees, which stood at more than 73,000 in April. "While this is a difficult decision to make, in our view it is required in …

    Business 11 Jul 2011, 17:00

  • Monolithic supers nab power efficiency crown

    But ceepee-geepees threaten green revolution

    Old-school monolithic, massively parallel supercomputers based on Power and Sparc processors hold their own in flops-per-watt comparisons against the new hotness: hybrid machines that combine x64 processors and GPU coprocessors. So say two researchers at Virginia Tech who, in the wake of the recent June rankings of the Top 500 …

    HPC 11 Jul 2011, 17:58

  • EMC boss: There can be only one

    Rounded experience, financial flair, or product dash?

    The EMC succession is out in the open now, with Tucci talking to the Wall Street business media and financial analysts opining about the merits of Pat "Product" Gelsinger or David "Greenback" Goulden. The timescale is that Joe Tucci withdraws from the CEO-ship and goes on to become executive chairman or chairman of the board …

    Storage 11 Jul 2011, 18:00

  • Apple flings patent lawsuit at HTC (again)

    Déjà vu all over again. But with new targets

    Apple has ratcheted up its attack on Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC, filing a second patent-infringement complaint that, if successful, could bar HTC products from being imported into the US. The complaint was filed with US International Trade Commission (USITC) on Friday, Bloomberg reports, and was revealed in a brief …

    Phones 11 Jul 2011, 19:40

  • Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

    Comment Taxing CO2 without hitting the less-well-off

    So Oz has finally announced the details of its carbon tax plan, and actually, compared to the normal dogs' dinners that come out of the political process, it's not all that bad. Must be something to do with the way that the Green Party only gets to influence it rather than actually write it. For those who want the full …

    Science 11 Jul 2011, 22:00

  • Foxtel gets closer to Austar swoop

    Regulatory approval still pending for monopoly

    The phone-hacking scandal might have slammed the brakes on Murdoch's bid for BSkyB in the UK, but in Australia Foxtel is getting closer to creating a national Australian Pay-TV monopoly with the acquisition of rival Austar. Definitive agreements have been announced between Austar's parent company, Liberty Global, and the …

    Business 11 Jul 2011, 23:09

  • Ballmer begs partners to love Microsoft clouds

    Promises 'full vim and vigor'

    Steve Ballmer wants to rally business partners around Microsoft's flagship internet and mobile initiatives, but in the process, he reveals just how far Microsoft has to go and how much the company relies on decision-makers outside of its control. Opening Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles on Monday …

    Software 11 Jul 2011, 23:15

  • Heroku: A development cloud for all seasons

    Rails, Node, Clojure, and other hipness

    Heroku began life as an online service for building, hosting, and readily scaling Ruby on Rails applications. But the "platform cloud" has since expanded beyond the decidedly hip net programming language, embracing two other decidedly hip options: Node.js and Clojure. In May, the Salesforce.com-owned Heroku rolled out a new …

    Cloud 11 Jul 2011, 23:24

  • Apple ordered to pay $8m over playlist patents

    Personal Audio spat

    A federal jury has ordered Apple to pay a patent-holding firm $8m for violating two patents, after a protracted battle in the Eastern District of Texas, a jurisdiction notorious for handing down decisions friendly to patent holders. Eight million dollars, however, is substantially less than first claimed by Personal Audio LLC …

    Media 11 Jul 2011, 23:56