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21st July 2011 Archive

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  • Go ahead and spy on customers, says judge

    Spyware okay on rental computers, for now

    A lawsuit aiming to stop rental company Aaron’s in the US from installing spyware on its machines – whose capability includes taking images of users with a PC’s webcam – has hit a setback, with a judge refusing to grant a preliminary injunction against the practise. The original complaint against Aarron’s was that its …

    Law 21 Jul 00:30

  • Mellanox revenues spike thanks to Voltaire

    SwitchX and Sandy Bridge profit boost on tap

    Expanding out from InfiniBand to Ethernet switches through its acquisition of Voltaire last November is paying off on the top line for switch and server converged networking adapter maker Mellanox Technologies, but it's hurting the bottom line in the short-term. In the second quarter ended in June, Mellanox posted sales of $63 …

    Financial News 21 Jul 01:05

  • Major overhaul makes OS X Lion king of security

    Windows 7, Ubuntu meet their match

    With Wednesday's release of Mac OS X Lion, Apple has definitively leapfrogged its rivals by offering an operating system with state-of-the-art security protections that make it more resistant to malware exploits and other hack attacks, two researchers say. Unlike the introduction of Snow Leopard in 2009, which offered mostly …

    Security 21 Jul 05:00

  • Intel CEO: 'Ultrabooks' will be 'holistic' success

    Earlier slimline efforts? 'Trial runs'

    Intel CEO Paul Otellini says that the failed CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) laptops of a few years back were merely a "trial run" for the Next Big Thing™ – ultrabooks. Perhaps you remember those svelte, lightweight laptops based on Intel's CULV platform? They were poised to conquer the world from spring 2009 until spring …

    PCs & Chips 21 Jul 06:00

  • Air Conflicts: Secret Wars

    Review Wing men

    In recent years aerial combat games have been in free fall. The genre stalled after the seminal Il-2 Sturmovick and has struggled to pull out of a seemingly irrecoverable nosedive. But, contrary to their dubious quality, the continuing popularity of the Ace Combat and Hawx series proves interest remains sky high for the genre …

    reghardware 21 Jul 06:00

  • AGs mull fate of hard-core gaming in Oz

    Canberra could be R18+ gamer haven

    Australia’s gaming industry may be rewarded with a more sophisticated classification system following a meeting with state and territory attorneys-generals today in Adelaide. The prolonged discussions over changes to gaming classification are causing agitation within the industry, which is forced to ban games tagged with a …

    Law 21 Jul 06:09

  • Nasuni puts its cloud storage balls on the line

    100 per cent uptime guarantee

    Nasuni is offering a 100 per cent uptime guarantee for data access through its cloud filer gateway appliance. Of course, it can't actually rule out service outages, so it is offering compensation for outages if the 100 per cent uptime target is breached. In his blog, Andres Rodriguez – Nasuni's CEO – says: "We have attached …

    Infrastructure 21 Jul 07:30

  • World o' Flash: El Reg roundup report

    Analysis A-aah! Saviour of the universe

    There is a flash furore going on, with flash announcements coming in at a furious rate, both product announcements and flash foundry expansion. Here's a round-up of what's going on. First, Toshiba and SanDisk have opened a new flash foundry – Fab 5 – at Toshiba's Yokkaichi facility in Japan's Mie Prefecture. The fab has been …

    Storage 21 Jul 08:00

  • iPhones look good enough to eat

    Culinary case collection

    Before you ask, this is not an iPhone being used to fry a full English. It is in fact one of the fugliest mobile cases I've ever seen. iFry One wacky Japanese company has taken it upon themselves to create iPhone cases that look like portions of food. The realistic-looking slip-ons - or iMeshi as they're formally known - …

    reghardware 21 Jul 08:28

  • Euro beaks to rule if TVCatchup.com is legal

    Is free-to-air free as air? Or not

    The UK High Court is to ask the European Court of Justice (ECJ) if streaming live TV programmes over the internet is an act subject to copyright laws after provisionally ruling that it is. Mr Justice Floyd said that TVCatchup did communicate to the public when it streamed programmes broadcast by ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five …

    Law 21 Jul 08:30

  • 'God Bless America': Atlantis prepares to return home

    Patriotic wake-up call on last day of shuttle programme

    The cargo bay doors on space shuttle Atlantis have been closed ahead of a planned return to Kennedy Space Center this morning. The wake-up call for the emotional last day of the space shuttle programme was God Bless America, interpreted by Kate Smith and dedicated to all those who'd contributed over the last 30 years. …

    Space 21 Jul 08:41

  • MS bashes BlackBerry in tablet fight

    PlayBook less popular than Windows tabs

    Microsoft saw more tablets ship with one of its operating systems during Q2 than RIM shipped BlackBerry PlayBooks. So reveals market watcher Strategy Analytics (SA), which pegged RIM's share of the tablet market at 3.3 per cent, MS' at 4.6 per cent. No surprises for guessing the top two. Apple took 61.3 per cent of the …

    reghardware 21 Jul 08:45

  • Mounties charge Canadian IT guy over botnet scam

    Worldwide keylogger empire alleged

    Canadian police have arrested a man accused of planting key-logging malware on hundreds of computers across the world. Joseph Mercier, 24, of Laval, Quebec, allegedly hacked school board systems in Canada as well as computer networks in the US, France, Russia and the United Arab Emirates. Mercier – who was in charge of his …

    Malware 21 Jul 09:00

  • Superman beats up cybersquatter

    Man Of Steel takes back his web address

    DC Comics has grabbed the cybersquatted domain name manofsteel.com, just a month before shooting is due to start on the next reboot of the Superman movie franchise. The next Superman film is widely expected to be titled or subtitled Man Of Steel. DC has owned a trademark on "Man Of Steel" since 1999 and "The Man Of Steel" …

    Hosting 21 Jul 09:20

  • The greatest tech show on Earth

    We attend Campus Party Valencia

    I was invited to the Campus Party in Spain last week. After being told it's the biggest tech show on the planet, I could hardly turn the offer down. And, following some manic days at the show, I have to agree: there's nothing quite like it. Held each year in the beautiful city of Valencia, Campus Party is described as the …

    reghardware 21 Jul 09:36

  • HMRC strops its chopper, eyes £235m IT slash plan

    Plans to collect more taxes, cut own costs as it does so

    HM Revenue and Customs is aiming to save £235m from changes to IT services as part of plans to cut its running costs by some 25 per cent over the next four years, says a report by the National Audit Office. The document, "Reducing Costs in HM Revenue and Customs", says the department's annual running costs in 2010-11 were £3. …

    Government 21 Jul 09:39

  • Google turns off sidelined Labs section altogether

    'We’re+ prioritizing+ our+ product+ efforts+'. +++!

    It has been nine years since Google debuted its experimental website where it dumped prototype products for netizens to play with. But the company has now announced the end-of-the-line for its Labs project. The ad broker's CEO Larry Page hinted last week that he would slash and burn (or, in his words, "simplify and streamline …

    Applications 21 Jul 09:48

  • Panasonic pops out pair of snappers

    Super-zoom and compact sibling

    Panasonic has unwrapped a couple of new cameras today: the FZ48, a super-zoom model and the LS5 compact, both under its Lumix brand. The latter's a typical compact. A 14.1Mp sensor sits behind a 26mm wide-angle lens with a 5x optical zoom. It'll shoot video at 30fps 720p HD. DMC-LS5 It's designed to run off AA batteries - …

    reghardware 21 Jul 10:02

  • Biggest ever jump in web, non-store retail sales for June

    Tumbleweeds in the high street, roaring trade elsewhere

    The Office for National Statistics said non-store retailing jumped 24.4 per cent in June – the biggest such leap it has ever recorded. Comparing June 2011 with the same month last year, value of all retail sales went up 4 per cent and the volume of sales went up 0.4 per cent. Food sales fell 4.2 per cent – the largest fall …

    Small Biz 21 Jul 10:08

  • End of an era: Atlantis hits the tarmac

    Updated Last of the shuttles makes last ever landing

    The US's space shuttle programme wrapped today at 09:57 GMT, as Atlantis touched down at Kennedy Space Center. Commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim became the last astronauts to fly a shuttle at the end of STS-135 to the International Space Station – Atlantis' 33rd …

    Space 21 Jul 10:11

  • Ghost of 'ACS:Law' threatens alleged Greek filesharers

    'Likely to be imposter' posing as bankrupt pirate-taker

    Controversial law firm ACS:Law – or someone posing as the firm – has returned with threats to sue alleged filesharers, this time outside the UK. Andrew Crossley, the sole principal behind ACS:Law, was declared bankrupt back in May. The bankruptcy filing occurred shortly after a UK case against alleged filesharers who had …

    Law 21 Jul 10:25

  • Acer makes play for the cloud with iGware acquisition

    Internally troubled Taiwanese giant belches up $320m

    Acer is making a play to build out its own cloud infrastructure after forking out $320m for US firm iGware. The troubled Taiwanese hardware vendor is going through a make-over by top brass following the departure of CEO Gianfranco Lanci at the end of March, before it publicly admitted to inventory woes that would cost it $150m …

    Cloud Business 21 Jul 10:43

  • GE boosts micro-holo storage to Blu-ray speed

    500GB recordable compact disc as step closer

    Boffins at GE have come up with a material that might one day be used to record 20 Blu-rays' worth of data on a single disc at the same speed that data is recorded on BD-Rs today. The announcement comes from GE's Holographic Data Storage project, which has been working on the techniques and technologies need to realise über- …

    reghardware 21 Jul 10:43

  • Rupert Murdoch was never Keyser Soze

    Comment Childish media and creepy politicians created this myth

    If children didn't believe in Santa, thousands of grown men wouldn't dress up in fur-trimmed red jumpsuits, put on false beards, and give children unwanted gifts in tents every year. Perhaps some would, but they'd probably be arrested. For the past fortnight, TV and newspaper editors in the UK have pushed aside stories of …

    Music and Media 21 Jul 10:48

  • Dell: Force 10 is 'shot in the arm' for networking

    US titan plots direct and indirect sales strategy

    Dell has described the acquisition of Force 10 Networks as a requisite "shot in the arm" to beef up its networking portfolio for both resellers and direct sales staff. The Texan titan chalked up yet another acquisition yesterday – due to close in the late summer – as it re-engineers the business from a PC maker to a broader …

    Channel Register 21 Jul 10:57

  • My Translator Pro UK

    iOS App of the Week Dove the pub, s'il vous please?

    The holiday season is upon us, and a good phrase book can be a very useful addition to your collection of apps when you’re travelling abroad. Of course, most language apps tend to focus on one specific language, so I was tempted by My Translator Pro as it can translate typed-in phrases into more than 50 different languages and …

    reghardware 21 Jul 11:00

  • Hubble detects new Plutonian moon

    Small fourth companion for faraway icy dwarf-world

    A Hubble Space Telescope search for possible rings around Pluto has turned up a diminutive fourth moon orbiting the dwarf planet. The body, temporarily dubbed P4, joins Charon, Hydra and Nix in the family circling the icy world. NASA says P4 is around 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km) in diameter, as compared to Hydra and Nix's 20 …

    Space 21 Jul 11:02

  • Mobile coverage comes to embattled Misurata

    'We are experiencing an outage due to rocket attacks'

    The chaps behind rough telephone network Free Libyana are now up and running in recently-retaken Misurata, bringing much-needed mobile connectivity to Libya's third-largest city. The engineers arrived by fishing boat, having endured a 30-hour ride from Malta. Ousama Abushagur was again behind the operation, though this time …

    Mobile 21 Jul 11:14

  • Seagate beats Street, but outlook's bleak

    Q4 results signal end of Golden Platter era

    Seagate's 4th quarter results beat expectations, but profits are substantially down and cost pressures rising. It beat the Street but the outlook is bleak. For its fourth fiscal 2011 quarter, Seagate's revenues amounted to $2.86bn – 7.5 per cent higher than the $2.656bn recorded a year ago. Net income went aggressively in the …

    Storage 21 Jul 11:41

  • Virtualisation soaks up corporate IT love

    A brief history of virtualisation Getting the Big Boys excited

    Virtualisation is the in-thing in corporate IT. You’d think it was some kind of shiny new concept that had never been done before, a panacea for all computing ills. Everyone seems to be doing it. It’s not even restricted to servers any more. Suppliers and customers are both getting excited about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure …

    Enterprise Tech 21 Jul 12:00

  • Vodafone Smart Android smartphone

    Review Budget Googlephone, anyone?

    You can argue all you want about the merits of the various mobile operating systems but it’s undoubtedly Android that has put smartphones into the hands of the impecunious masses and in numbers that would have been inconceivable just eighteen months ago. Tidy price: Vodafone's Smart The new king of the cheap charlies is the …

    reghardware 21 Jul 12:00

  • Shale gas frees Europe from addiction to Putin's Pipe

    Vlad won't be able to turn the heating off any more

    Shale gas extraction in Western Europe will dramatically change the geopolitical landscape, according to a report by a think-tank backed by the US Department of Energy. The Baker Institute estimates that with shale as little as 13 per cent of Europe's gas imports will come from Russia by 2040, compared to 27 per cent today. …

    Government 21 Jul 12:02

  • Your mom, girlf, boyf: Spying on your phone and email

    If you don't call them that you're probably safe

    Three in five parents snoop on their teenager's email and calling habits, but teenagers themselves are almost as guilty of checking out the communications history of their partners. The survey was conducted by online store Retrevo, which reports that almost half of those under 25 admit to examining their partner's devices when …

    Mobile 21 Jul 12:26

  • TalkTalk drags arse in Ofcom ISP survey

    DeafDeaf, more like, say customers

    TalkTalk may be earning plaudits in Whitehall for being the first major UK ISP to implement network-level anti-malware blockers on its service, but the company's customers aren't so easy to please. Regulator Ofcom published its latest customer satisfaction findings in Blighty's communications market today, based on a survey of …

    Telecoms 21 Jul 12:29

  • Fujitsu installs Windows 7... on a phone

    Ctrl-Alt-Delboy

    Here's Fujitsu's latest phone that - wait for it - runs Windows 7. No, not Windows Phone 7, but the complete Microsoft PC platform. Fujitsu broke news of the handset today, announcing that the F-07C will be available in Japan by the weekend. The company claims it's the "world's smallest PC that fits into the palm of the user' …

    reghardware 21 Jul 12:31

  • 'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

    Dr Steven Jones' amazing claim - but Auntie agrees

    "He's a little bit too eager to bend over backwards to be politically respectable," is how Richard Dawkins describes the celebrated snail biologist and broadcaster Dr Steven Jones. Jones' recent political activity includes campaigning for the abolition of private schools and against a visit to Britain by the Pope. Now Jones has …

    Environment 21 Jul 12:43

  • Computacenter buys £5.4m-worth of DAMAX

    You have to keep a watch on the Swiss

    Computacenter (CC) has expanded its European footprint by splashing out £5.4m for a majority stake in Swiss IT service provider DAMAX AG. Under the terms of the deal, services-based reseller CC has snapped up 80 per cent of the firm, which includes over 2m CHF net cash on the balance sheet. London-based CC said this morning …

    Channel Register 21 Jul 13:00

  • Alcatel Lucent ponders offload of enterprise unit

    Cut this tentacle off, we could sell it for money

    Alcatel Lucent has confirmed it is investigating the best way forward for its enterprise biz, which could include offloading it to a third party. Feverish industry talk about the future of the unit – which punts enterprise switching, IP telephony and contact centre software – has been rife since April, when Siemens Enterprise …

    Business 21 Jul 13:02

  • Nokia posts massive loss, blames 'ambiguity'

    Horrific train crash at former world leader

    Nokia posted a large operating loss of €487m today, only its second quarterly loss in 19 years. And without the royalty settlement with Apple it would have been much worse: the settlement gifted Nokia a one-time bonus of €430m. "Our new strategy introduced ambiguity," admitted CEO Stephen Elop. The figures tell a story of unit …

    Business 21 Jul 13:29

  • SaaS for speedy relief of licence headaches

    It's simpler than you think

    Managing software licensing has to be one of the least fun aspects of an IT professional’s life. For one thing, it is medically proven* that there is no better means of inducing a headache than trying to read the whole of a software licence. And that is before you get to the logistics of managing the things: making sure they …

    SaaS 21 Jul 14:00

  • LulzSec says it will partner with media on Murdoch emails

    Inspired by Assange™?

    LulzSec has abandoned plans to release a cache of News International emails it claimed to have acquired during a redirection attack on The Sun website earlier this week. Instead the group says it plans to release select batches of the emails via a "partnership" with select media outlets, an approach akin to that applied by …

    Enterprise Security 21 Jul 14:06

  • 'NATO RESTRICTED': The lowest possible classification

    Comment Anonymous/LulzSec will have to do better than this

    So the hacktivist collective Anonymous, parts of which have recently tangled with News International title The Sun and may have looted an explosive trove of emails from Rupert Murdoch's media empire, also say they have a big stash of classified material stolen from NATO. As evidence they have released two documents marked "NATO …

    Government 21 Jul 14:47

  • WD launches twin-platter 1TB monster

    Scorpio big Blue

    WD has announced it is shipping its Scorpio Blue 1TB capacity hard drive for notebooks. This Advanced Format spinning disk spins at 5,400rpm, has an 8MB cache and a 3Gbit/s SATA interface. WD claims it is the highest capacity 2.5-inch hard drive available for mainstream notebook use. The company had already reached the 1TB …

    Storage 21 Jul 15:02

  • On counterfeits, fakes and Apple stores

    Unfair aspersions cast on good resellers of Kunming?

    Some stories are so unusual, you immediately wonder if they're too good to be true. On Tuesday, a Western NGO in China posted a remarkable tale, reporting that ingenious Chinese retailers in a medium-sized provincial city called Kunming had cloned an Apple Retail Store, faithfully reproducing the staff T-shirts, furniture, …

    Bootnotes 21 Jul 15:44

  • Gamer claims complete console collection

    Largest selection ever?

    Collectors take things to extreme measures, such is the nature of their interest. Videogame enthusiasts have a similar mentality. Therefore, imagine what happens when the two combine. While in Valencia last week, I ran into 'Sergiokillo' - as mentioned in my Campus Party roundup - a bloke who has spent a long time building up …

    reghardware 21 Jul 16:10

  • Cisco confirms new world channel structure

    Impact of job cuts on partners revealed by channel chief

    Cisco has confirmed the new worldwide channel structure as it works towards laying off thousands of staff, and the changes appear to favour its indirect business with resellers. The networking goliath's global channel boss Keith Goodwin confirmed in a blog post this afternoon that it will consolidate the seven regional partner …

    Channel Register 21 Jul 16:13

  • Apple paid $2.6bn of $4.5bn Nortel patent grab

    Worth it to give Google's 'pi' a poke in the eye?

    Apple has revealed that it paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.6bn for its share of the recent Nortel patent-acquisition deal. "On June 27, 2011, the Company, as part of a consortium, participated in the acquisition of Nortel's patent portfolio for an overall purchase price of $4.5 billion, of which the Company's …

    Mobile 21 Jul 17:26

  • Adobe releases lengthy list of Apple Lion woes

    19 apps with foul-ups from fatal to decidedly annoying

    One day after Apple's Mac OS X Lion was released into the wild, Steve Jobs' bête noire, Adobe, has released an extensive list of wounds that the big cat has clawed into its products. The appropriately titled "Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion" is a 1,500-word litany of woe, listing Lion-caused problems in 19 …

    Software 21 Jul 19:22

  • 19,000 papers leaked to protest 'war against knowledge'

    Prosecution of Reddit founder cited

    A critic of academic publishers has uploaded 19,000 scientific papers to the internet to protest the prosecution of a prominent programmer and activist accused of hacking into a college computer system and downloading almost 5 million scholarly documents from an archive service. The 18,592 documents made available Wednesday …

    Law 21 Jul 20:26

  • Clouds and server refresh pump up Intel

    Data Center Group carries its weight

    The server business went great guns again for chip giant Intel in the second quarter, with its Data Center Group raking in $2.44bn in revenues, up 15.2 per cent from the year ago period. The Data Center Group makes chips, chipsets, and motherboards for servers, workstations, storage arrays, and wired networking gear, with the …

    Servers 21 Jul 20:46

  • Microsoft surprises Street with double-digit growth

    Windows downturn masked by Office and giddy game gains

    Amid mumblings and grumblings that it had lost its mojo, Microsoft surprised Wall Street by reporting revenues and earning for its fourth fiscal 2011 quarter that exceeded the moneymen's expectations. "Throughout fiscal 2011, we delivered to market a strong lineup of products and services which translated into double-digit …

    Financial News 21 Jul 21:31

  • Groupon: Scoopon’s catch of the day

    Quarter of a million settles squatting, trademark lawsuit

    Australia’s Scoopon founders and group buying millionaires, Gabby and Hezi Leibovich, have settled a prolonged legal battle with group buying giant Groupon. Groupon took the duo to court last year, filing cases in the US, New Zealand and Australia, after discovering that not only did the Leibovich’s launch a Groupon clone with …

    Business 21 Jul 22:13

  • Oz lawmakers mull Facebook parental snoop rules

    Could social networks go ‘R18+’?

    The big story about the meeting of Australian attorneys-general happening today (July 22) is that they’re going to reconsider Australia’s classification system, and might revisit the question of R18+ game classifications. However, it has emerged that the nation’s lawmakers will also consider the vexed question of privacy on …

    Telecoms 21 Jul 22:14