The Week in Summary

1. Thursday, 29 July 2010

   Microsoft names September for IE9 beta

   FAM Turner promises "great" story

   The beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 will hit in September. Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner named the date for Wall Street analysts during the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft until now has not released dates on IE9, but Turner dropped the date …

   The Register 29 Jul 18:45

   Next Gnome delayed until 2011

   September previews planned

   Linux users on Gnome must wait a full year before their favorite desktop is updated – the first such delay in the project's short history. Gnome 3.0 has been postponed until March 2011 from the scheduled September due date that would have been in keeping Gnome's six-month release cycle, in practice since 2004. Instead, the …

   The Register 29 Jul 17:48

   Open source HPC file system gets startup

   Wham, cloud with Lustre

   High performance computing – by which is meant traditional parallel supercomputing as well as data analytics and hyperscale cloudy infrastructure – is facing a looming file system and storage bottleneck, and Whamcloud, a startup backed by $10m in private funding and some of the top people behind the Lustre file system, want to …

   The Register 29 Jul 16:48

   US carrier tailors 3G jacket for iPod touch?

   A Peel for your Apple

   US wireless carrier Sprint is slated to offer a kind of handset sleeve that could provide 3G wireless access to an iPod Touch, the Apple iPhone that's not a phone. As noticed by Phone Scoop, Chinese manufacturer ZTE has submitted a Sprint-branded device to the Federal Communications Commission that can house a mini-tablet like …

   The Register 29 Jul 16:34

   Lovefilm calls in the DRM brigade for media player push

   They're all at it

   Lovefilm is the UK's answer to Netflix. And like Netflix it has a pressing problem. No, not Blockbuster. It has reams of customers, 1.4 million all told, for its DVD-by-mail rental service. But for how long? Downloads and streaming is the way forward, baby - onto TV, phone and computer - the three screens strategy, as Virgin …

   reghardware 29 Jul 15:49

   Oracle and HP make a deal for Solaris on ProLiants

   Dell does deal for PowerEdges, too

   The inscrutable plan of Oracle for Solaris 10 on x64 servers became more... scrutable this morning. The company announced that Dell and Hewlett-Packard would be certifying and reselling Oracle's Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems, as well as its Oracle VM implementation of the Xen hypervisor on their respective …

   The Register 29 Jul 14:53

   IBM buys file compressor

   Storwize swallowed

   IBM is buying Storwize for its real-time, inline data compression technology and products. Storwize produces appliances, the STN-2100 and STN-6000, which sit in front of NAS (network-attached storage) arrays and compress data being written to the array, using Lempel-Ziv algorithms in its Random Access Compression Engine (RACE …

   The Register 29 Jul 14:43

   Apple coughs to iPhone 3G IOS 4 upgrade problems

   Where are we now?

   iPhone 3G users who've upgraded to iOS 4 are discovering that the roaming switch isn't working any more, for those on O2's network at least. Apple's new OS isn't running as smoothly as intended; users report the upgrade causes slow-downs and freezes, not to mention draining the battery and running up unexpected roaming bills, …

   The Register 29 Jul 14:12

   Nokia goes after Opera Mini

   It'll have you in interstitials

   Nokia has unveiled a knock-off of Opera's Mini phone browser, intended for use on its low-end handsets in emerging markets. It's the first manifestation of Nokia's own ad engine. Like Opera Mini, Ovi Browser is a Java client that uses a compression proxy to reduce bandwidth. The browser is a crude 0.1 affair, but it's the ad …

   The Register 29 Jul 14:10

   Sky clocks up £1bn profit

   HD boosts money-making machine

   Sky made a £1bn profit in the year to 30 June for the first time, with ARPU reaching £508 per subscriber. Annual revenue totalled £5.9bn, up 10 per cent year on year. The subscriber base grew modestly to 9.86 million, but more are buying subscriptions, driven by HD content. Sky now boasts 2.9 million HD subscribers, with 429, …

   The Register 29 Jul 13:59

   Quantum quivers again

   Drops a sales ball

   Quantum, the supplier of tape, reduplicating backup arrays and some file archiving software, has turned in a loss-making quarter, attributing it to poor sales in Europe and a North America region. Quantum's results for its first fiscal 2011 quarter saw revenues $3m upon the year-ago quarter to $163m, essentially flat as the …

   The Register 29 Jul 13:38

   Sky bags UK HBO exclusive

   Not showing on a TV near you

   Never saw The Wire, but I am told it is rather good. I won't be seeing it in a hurry either, now that Sky has slurped up HBO's entire library in a UK exclusive. The deal - worth £150m over five years, according to various reports - will see iconic American TV shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos , Sex and The City, True Blood …

   reghardware 29 Jul 13:14

   Pay-off or lay-off: HP calls on 700 staff to heed redundo plea

   EOW woe

   Hewlett-Packard has reduced the number of UK employees it plans to show the door in its latest round of redundancies from 934 to 720. Employees at the company received an email, seen by The Register, from management last week in which HP confirmed that it was asking for all its UK infrastructure technology outsourcing (ITO) …

   Channel Register 29 Jul 13:03

   .NET for Android prepares to get probed

   Port from Windows help

   Microsoft's .NET for Android - dubbed MonoDroid - has come a step closer. The Novell-backed MonoTouch project is about to start beta tests of a version of its open-source implementation of Microsoft's framework for use on Google's Linux operating system for devices. Final product for MonoDroid is expected in the fall, Novell …

   The Register 29 Jul 13:02

   Fragrant tech thief stalks Whitehall

   Public servants' purses exposed

   Civil servants at the Department for Communities and Local Government are living in fear of a sweet smelling mobile technology thief who carries a ladies' purse. That is the inescapable conclusion after a minister in the department detailed the terrifying catalogue of thefts within the department in a commons answer. Pete …

   The Register 29 Jul 12:53

   Courts bar dodgy documents from divorce cases

   Hildebrand rules hustled out

   People involved in divorce wrangles will no longer be able to use dodgily-obtained documents to prove their spouse is hiding money, following a landmark Court of Appeal ruling. Previously courts would consider information obtained by the poorer party about the other's finances, even if it was secretly copied from a …

   The Register 29 Jul 12:50

   Virgin hitches MTV to media player loveliness

   Three screens. When will the madness stop?

   World+dog must have a media player to call its own. Not to be outdone Virgin is in on the act as of today with the launch of Virgin Media Player, for mobile and computer use. The cableco has lined up "hundreds of hours" of content, including various youthie MTV network shows, which already appear on its on-demand TV service. …

   reghardware 29 Jul 12:45

   Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G 18.4in laptop

   Review Full HD desktop replacement with plenty of poke

   Stylish and powerful, the new 18.4in Aspire Ethos 8943G will appeal to those looking for a desktop replacement that doesn’t hold back on performance. Each of the four cores on the Core i7-720QM purr along at 1.6GHz, while ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is on hand should you want to indulge in a bit of gaming. Throw in a Blu-ray …

   reghardware 29 Jul 12:02

   Google sets Android on pirates

   Phone-home copy protection

   Android now comes with an API allowing applications to phone home to check for a licence when launched, locking out pirates and anyone with an unreliable data connection. The "Licensing Verification Library" does allow the developer to permit caching of responses, so an application shouldn't stop working when one gets on a …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:58

   Sky turns 3D on Oct 1

   Strong sports line-up. And golf

   Sky is launching a 3D TV channel, Europe's first, on October 1. To see it you have to be a Sky HD subscriber with a 3D-ready TV. No set-top box adjustments or additional fees necessary. The satellite TV broadcaster says the channel works with active and passive 3D formats and is compatible with "all of the TVs" being …

   reghardware 29 Jul 11:52

   Authentic Navy rum: Yours for £600 a bottle

   Last stocks of RN hard stuff offered to landlubbers

   Those of you with a taste for rum and 600 quid to spare might like to uncork a bottle of Black Tot "Last Consignment" British Royal Naval Rum, lovingly decanted from the official stocks held by the Senior Service since sailors' final rum ration in 1970. On July 31 of that year, at precisely six bells in the forenoon watch, …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:50

   Data breaches blamed on organised crime

   Hackers feast on financial sector security mistakes

   Cybercrooks continue to be a menace to corporate security, with hackers and malware authors collectibly responsible for 85 per cent of all stolen data. The latest edition of Verizon's annual data breach report also records a rise in insider threats and greater use of social engineering. Verizon worked with the US Secret …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:45

   UK privacy watchdog clears Google Wi-Fi slurp

   'Nothing personal'

   The “pay-load” data collected by Google’s Street View cars did not slurp up “meaningful personal details”, the UK’s privacy watchdog concluded today. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) confirmed in April that it would quiz Google about the practice. Today it ruled (pdf) that the company hadn’t grabbed information …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:16

   iPads for hospitals: is this a good idea?

   Can you wash it, drop it, stop your patients from stealing it?

   Next year, 500 doctors and nurses in Victoria hospitals, will trial the use of iPads. Graduate doctors, rather than crusty consultants, will get the devices, as the "younger group of students and graduates of the health professions have grown up with technology all around them," Daniel Andrews, Victoria's health minister said …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:14

   Papal crackdown on bare-kneed tourists sparks hypocrisy claims

   Rubbish - priests always cover their knees

   The Vatican's stripey knickerbocker-clad Swiss Guards have launched a crack down on scantily-clad tourists in and around the Holy See. Reports say that a long-standing modest dress decree has been extended from St Peter's basicilica - the big church - to the whole of the Vatican mini-state. The Pope's halberd-waving steel- …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:06

   ID card astroturf - No2ID beats the truth out of IPS

   Er yes, nearly all the happy campers did work for us

   A cackling Phil Booth, No2ID National Coordinator, writes to tell us that six months after he first pestered the Identity & Passport Service about its quotes from ID card-toting happy campers in its publicity material, it has confessed - um yes, all but one of those quoted worked for the government. "We can confirm that eight …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:04

   Supercomputer geek builds Cray-1 around home PC

   More powerful than the original?

   Daryl Brach, known as pfaffen online, has built a scale model of the Cray-1 supercomputer to house a PC. The Cray-1, (pictured above) the world's first supercomputer, was launched in 1976. It was rated at a peak performance of 250MFLOPS and had "200,000 integrated circuits, 3,400 printed circuit boards, 60 miles of wire, and …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:02

   DfT 'unwittingly' bigged-up speed camera benefits

   Exclusive Rumours of their awesomeness exaggerated, dept admits to Reg

   The Department for Transport (DfT) has "unwittingly" misled the public over the benefits of speed cameras for the last four years. That was the shock admission yesterday by a DfT spokeswoman, when finally cornered by the Department’s own research. She also told us that they have finally agreed to put matters right by adding an …

   The Register 29 Jul 11:01

   UK population to be guaranteed mobile 768Kb/sec service

   Plus new-for-old deal for PMSE

   The government has endorsed the plan to pass organisation of the digital dividend mega auction back to Ofcom, with universal service guarantees, and promises a new-for-old deal for the Programme Makers and Special Events (PMSE) crowd. Minister for Communications Ed Vaizey drafted a statutory instrument covering the plan, which …

   The Register 29 Jul 10:56

   Opposition to can Aus $1.3bn school laptops program

   Election fun and games

   Australia's general election is in full swing and disputes over tech funding and tech policy continue to intrude on today centre stage. In today's spat, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said he would scrap the government's "wasteful" computers for schools initiative if the centre right Coalition wins. That would mean Year 9 pupils …

   The Register 29 Jul 10:08

   Turkish pranksters load Facebook Translate with swears

   The rudeness of crowds

   Facebook's attempts to crowdsource translations have gone awry in Turkey. A group of Turkish pranksters banded together to submit bogus translations so that a Facebook IM error message was rendered in Turkish as "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis". The correct version should say the message could not be …

   The Register 29 Jul 10:07

   BT layoffs boost profits

   Braces for UK.gov cuts

   Layoffs and cost-cutting at BT have boosted BT's first quarter net profits by a third to £284m. However, revenues were four per cent down to £5bn, and CEO Ian Livingston said the firm is in talks with the government about how deep public spending cuts will affect it. He described the results as "an acceptable start to the …

   The Register 29 Jul 09:56

   Managing change in the application portfolio

   Workshop A can of worms?

   Nothing stands still forever, particularly not in IT, and with good reason. When we researched the drivers that were having the most impact on how x86 server environments are architected, evolved and operated for example, we found that data growth was the number one driver, followed closely by new application requirements, and …

   The Register 29 Jul 09:36

   Call of Duty: Black Ops squeezes on to Nintendo DS

   Standalone handheld companion

   Call of Duty: Black Ops is to get a standalone "companion" for the Nintendo DS. Its little sister puts gamers "into the boots of CIA-backed operatives" who have lots of weapons to play with, including an attack helicopter and a stealth fighter jet. Call of Duty: Black Ops for the Nintendo DS has six-player online multiplayer …

   reghardware 29 Jul 08:27

   Churchill's dentures go under the hammer

   War-winning gnashers

   A set of dentures belonging to Winston Churchill and described as "a vital weapon" in Britain's struggle against Nazism come under the hammer today, the BBC reports. Churchill was keen to preserve the distinctive lisp which added essential flavour to his wartime speeches, and enlisted dental technician Derek Cudlipp to ensure …

   The Register 29 Jul 08:16

   Sage poised for huge Italian buy

   New boss plots €650m bid

   The recently installed chief executive of Sage is planning a massive bid for Italian business management firm TeamSystem. The deadline for bids is tomorrow but Sage looks likely to beat two private equity groups for control of the firm. Sage will offer £542m (€650m), outbidding offers from private equity firms HgCapital and …

   The Register 29 Jul 07:56

   Russian city blocks YouTube

   Clampdown on 'extremist' material

   The Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur has ordered ISP Rosnet to "restrict access" to YouTube and four other websites containing "extremist" material, Pravda reports. Prosecutors in the far eastern Khabarovsk region city trawled cyberspace and unearthed several examples of restricted material, including excerpts from Hitler's …

   The Register 29 Jul 07:50

   Amazon takes Kindle to the UK

   Opens Kindle store

   Amazon UK's front page is dominated today by a letter to its customers, introducing the "third generation of Kindles". In other words, Brits can buy Kindle e-Readers direct from Amazon UK, instead of the American mothership. That means UK prices - £149 for the 3G-Wi-Fi version and £109 for the Wi-Fi only version. This is …

   reghardware 29 Jul 07:38

   Cell phone eavesdropping enters script-kiddie phase

   Black Hat Get your GSM snooping tools here

   Independent researchers have made good on a promise to release a comprehensive set of tools needed to eavesdrop on cell phone calls that use the world's most widely deployed mobile technology. “The whole topic of GSM hacking now enters the script-kiddie stage, similar to Wi-Fi hacking a couple years ago, where people started …

   The Register 29 Jul 07:02

   Alcatel OT-808 fashion phone

   Review Qwerty clamshell with text appeal

   With its mirrored exterior and clamshell action, it’s quite deliberate that, looking at the Alcatel OT-808, you end up thinking it resembles a make-up compact. Evidently, it’s designed to appeal to budget conscious femmes or those who want something fun to use when out on the town, leaving the pricey smartphone at home. And if …

   reghardware 29 Jul 07:02

   NoScript 2.0 beefs border patrol

   'Saves your router's ass'

   NoScript daddy Giorgio Maone has released version 2.0 of his popular Firefox add-on, a means of blocking JavaScript, Java, Flash, and other plug-in or script content from untrusted websites. Maone is particularly pleased with a change to NoScript's Application Boundaries Enforcer (ABE) module, designed to guard against router …

   The Register 29 Jul 00:10

2. Wednesday, 28 July 2010

   Armed with exploits, ATM hacker hits the jackpot

   Black Hat 'Game over' vulns spew cash on demand

   A startling percentage of the world's automated teller machines are vulnerable to physical and remote attacks that can steal administrative passwords and personal identification numbers to say nothing of huge amounts of cash, a security researcher said Wednesday. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Barnaby Jack, …

   The Register 28 Jul 23:56

   Purdue puts HPC cluster in HP PODs

   Boilermakers of a different kind

   Purdue University, the engineering school known by the nickname "The Boilermakers", has tapped Hewlett-Packard to build a 1,000-node HPC cluster for scientific research. Rather than put the cluster into a traditional data center, Purdue is stuffing the machinery into HP's POD containerized data center. HP gave El Reg a peek of …

   The Register 28 Jul 23:04

   Citrix fluffed by XenDesktop virt in Q2

   Pumped for the future

   That $500m investment in XenSource from three summers ago is starting to pay off for Citrix Systems. The virtual desktop wave that helped lift Citrix in the first quarter continued to swell in the second quarter as the company booked $458.4m in revenue, up 16.7 per cent, and net income rose to $47.6m, up 11.8 per cent. In the …

   The Register 28 Jul 22:58

   Lonely boffins share Inception-style dreams

   Stuck on a rock without a totem?

   What with Inception tearing up the cinema box office, this is unlikely to be the last you'll hear of this particular story. A dream diary kept by biologists marooned on the Farrallon Islands, a barren rocky outcrop some 20 miles off the Northern California coast, shows they often shared the same dreams. Boffins isolated there …

   The Register 28 Jul 22:52

   Scareware victims seldom fight back

   Too embarrassed or too ignorant?

   Victims of rogue anti-virus scams rarely attempt to claw back fraudulent credit card payments for worthless software packages, according to new research. Security blogger Brian Krebs contacted victims of scareware scams after coming into possession of a list of users duped into buying rogue anti-virus packages. The data came …

   The Register 28 Jul 22:50

   Facebook beta joins web Q&A craze

   Ask 500 million people a question...bitch

   Facebook has unveiled a limited beta of its long-rumored question-and-answer service, a tool that lets you toss questions at people who spend lots of time on Facebook. The service is dubbed, yes, Facebook Questions. "Millions of people ask their friends questions on Facebook every day. What new music should I listen to? Where …

   The Register 28 Jul 22:32

   Apple fanbois not as data hungry as Big Phone says

   Verizonites munch more

   When AT&T's wireless service buckles and chokes, defenders say that Big Phone's infrastructure is being overloaded by iPhone users — but a new study shows that Jobsian handheld owners' data hunger is handily eclipsed by that of users of Verizon data plans. Average monthly data dining for Verizon smartphones is 421MB, versus …

   The Register 28 Jul 21:12

   Lara Croft, the Way in Derby

   Ring-road opens

   Lara Croft Way, part of a new ring road in Derby, officially opened this week, with a Tomb Raider look-a-like posing for photos. As any Tomb Raider fan would know, Ms. Croft was conceived in Derby, so the voluptuous star was a natural choice, topping an online poll to choose the road name. Sign, she's all over you.. …

   reghardware 28 Jul 20:15

   Microsoft biz stars won't shine in Wall Street web show

   Offline schmoozing for tired buns

   Microsoft watchers and stockholders scratching their heads over the recent cloud re-org, Bing's continued losses, and potential prospects for Office 2010 will have to personally trek to Redmond this year if they want to hear from those directly in charge about what's going on. That's because Microsoft has shaken up its annual …

   The Register 28 Jul 19:15

   X Prize offers cash for oil spill cleaners

   Today the Gulf, tomorrow the world

   This Thursday, the X Prize Foundation will announce its next competition: a challenge to inventors and entrepreneurs to find ways to clean up after such environmental disasters as BP's Gulf gusher. The effort won't encompass the entire mess that BP has made, nor will it target all the oil released in future underwater …

   The Register 28 Jul 18:57

   Convirture goes open core with 2.0 virt tools

   vCenter for KVM and Xen

   Convirture has unveiled a management tool for open source hypervisors. It's been clear from the beginning of the server virtualization wave that eventually the hypervisor would become commoditized and that the real action, in terms of functionality as well as in money, would come with the management tools that wrap around the …

   The Register 28 Jul 18:38

   Swiss do lady-friendly iPhone 4 launch

   Mildly diverting breakfasty promo shenanigans

   The iPhone 4 gets its Swiss launch on Friday, with an odd choice of attendant gender-related promotional faff. The "Orange at Globus" stores will be opening at 06.00 and offering coffee and croissants to girls, but blokes hungry for the latest Apple handset will need to find a female accomplice or look good in drag - they won' …

   The Register 28 Jul 18:12

   Google brews (another) Facebook rival, says report

   'Beyond' Buzz

   Google is in talks with various online gaming companies as part of an effort to develop (another) Facebook competitor, according to a report citing people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is in discussions with Playdom Inc. (recently purchased by Disney), Electronic Arts's Playfish, and the …

   The Register 28 Jul 17:45

   Adobe fights exploits with MAPPs

   Black Hat Microsoft's advanced vuln notice

   Following a path first taken by Microsoft, Adobe Systems plans to provide security partners with information about upcoming security patches to give providers of antivirus products and intrusion prevention systems a head start in warding off attacks that target the flaws. Rather than create the program from scratch, Adobe will …

   The Register 28 Jul 16:33

   Tight-lipped Apple fixes Safari autosnoop bug

   Black Hat Black Hat talk preempted

   Apple has fixed a flaw in Safari that exposed user names, email addresses, and other sensitive information when the browser visited booby-trapped websites. The update, which included an unrelated fix for a separate information disclosure vulnerability in Safari, comes a day before security researcher Jeremiah Grossman is …

   The Register 28 Jul 16:30

   Apple Safari extensions hit 5.0.1 deck

   About time too

   Apple has updated its Safari web browser today, less than two months after it landed with a bump for some fanbois in early June. Cupertino has switched on extensions in Safari 5.0.1 for the pleb set, and Apple has also debuted its Extensions Gallery for the browser. It initially kept extensions away from the Safari 5 party to …

   The Register 28 Jul 15:09

   Smart meters pose hacker kill-switch risk, warn boffins

   Who turned off the lights?

   A leading computer scientist has warned of the security risks of using smart meters in controlling utility supplies. A programme is underway to replace Britain’s 47 million meters with smart meters that can be turned off remotely. Utilities welcome the move because it will greatly simplify the process of collecting meter …

   The Register 28 Jul 13:50

   Hypnotic illusions at the Wikileaks Show

   Analysis Greasepaint - check. Factoids - check.

   There's a theatrical quality to the publication of the Wikileaks Afghan logs that's quite at odds with what they contain. You'll recall that Wikileaks obtained a large number of classified field reports from US forces in Afghanistan and gave three media outlets, the New York Times, Der Spiegel and the Guardian, advanced copies …

   The Register 28 Jul 13:05

   Adobe to buy Day Software

   Dips stick in Web2.0 content wasteland

   Adobe Systems has agreed to buy Switzerland-based Day Software Holding AG for around $240m in a clear move to bump up the Flash and Photoshop company's Web2.0 portfolio. It said Day shareholders would get 139 Swiss francs per share (£81.80) in a deal valued at around 255m Swiss francs or £154.6m. Adobe said the planned buyout …

   The Register 28 Jul 12:34

   Samsung Galaxy S Android smartphone

   Review The Android iPhone clone that has it all?

   The Galaxy S is Samsung's hero handset for 2010 and one the company clearly has high hopes for. It's the closest thing to an iPhone the Korean firm has yet produced, and packs in Android 2.1 OS, multi-touch screen, powerful 1GHz processor, 5Mp camera, GPS, an updated TouchWiz UI, social networking and Samsung's own App store in …

   reghardware 28 Jul 12:04

   UK bans Nintendo DS homebrew code installer

   King R4 uncrowned

   The R4 card, a Nintendo DS add-on that allows users to transfer Rom code to the handheld, has been banned in the UK. The high court in London ruled that the gadget may not be imported into the UK and sold here, and it must not be advertised here either. The court agreed with Nintendo's claim that the device contravenes laws …

   reghardware 28 Jul 12:02

   Vodafone fronts €150,000 for mobile start ups

   Planned, or realised

   Vodafone has launched another round of its Mobile Clicks compo, offering €100,000 to the best mobile startup - even if it hasn't actually started up just yet. The competition will be judged on economic and financial viability, the quality of the management team and the functionality offered to end users – this is about …

   The Register 28 Jul 11:59

   Reboot key Brit 'ready to save internet'

   Seven keys to BIND them all

   The Brit charged with holding one of seven digital keys necessary to re-establish a system of trust in the highly unlikely event of a collapse of the DNSSec (DNS Security Extensions) system has spoken of the practicalities of his responsibility. Paul Kane, chief exec of CommunityDNS and chair of the DNS Infrastructure …

   The Register 28 Jul 11:57

   UK.gov's phone and net snooping hits record high

   We have ears everywhere

   The expansion in official snooping on communications records has continued with a record number of requests last year for details of who is talking to whom. In the 12 months to 31 December, authorities made 525,130 requests to phone companies and inernet providers for communications data, the Interception Commissioner Sir Paul …

   The Register 28 Jul 11:45

   DreamWorks signs cloud computing deal

   How to train your HPC dragon

   DreamWorks SKG has signed a multi-year deal with Cerelink for cloud computing access. Instead of rendering movies like How To Train Your Dragon on thousands of its own computer cores, DreamWorks will use elastic compute resources housed in Cerelink's supercomputing-class facility at the New Mexico Applications Centre (NMCAC …

   The Register 28 Jul 11:32

   Firefox 4 beta 2 preaches tabs-on-top love to fanbois

   Bookmarks toolbar relegated to right-side button

   Mozilla’s second beta for Firefox 4 arrived yesterday and, as expected, it now sets its Chrome-like tabs-on-top feature as default for Mac fanbois. Windows lovers already saw that interface tweak in the first beta of Firefox 4 that was released earlier this month. The stripped-back look is supposed to make Mozilla’s latest …

   The Register 28 Jul 11:28

   Chilean tarantulas menace Bolton

   Greater Manchester on arachnid alert

   The RSPCA has warned the good burghers of Bolton to keep a sharp eye out for Chilean Rose tarantulas after a couple of the eight-legged critters were spotted in local gardens. The organisation reckons the two may be from a larger batch of arachnid escapees and, if the Telegraph's headline is to be believed, it could be just a …

   The Register 28 Jul 10:54

   Virgin Media survives World Cup, buys back shares

   Back of the net

   Did the World Cup bring any sunshine to Virgin Media? The company today announced profits of £80m on increased turnover of £964m in its most recent quarter. But long-suffering shareholders take precedence over customers - Virgin will spend £375m buying back shares. Buy-backs usually have the goal of raising the share price. …

   The Register 28 Jul 10:53

   Brits trump Ruskies with flying horse

   Parasailing donkey? Pah

   We're delighted to report that the RAF have shown Russian donkey dangler Vasily Gorobets - the man responsible for the Sea of Azov airborne ass - just how it's really done. Gorobets defiantly laughed in the face of international outrage at his asinine parasailing stunt, and declared: "I'm a hero. Nobody has ever flown a …

   The Register 28 Jul 10:25

   Carphone Warehouse overcomes 'dread' in Q3

   In your glum face, Dunstone

   Smartphone sales and American connections are keeping Carphone Warehouse healthy, with the CEO telling investors that things are only going to get better for Blighty. The company, now split from TalkTalk, still owns half of Best Buy Europe which has already opened three UK stores and plans to open another three later this year …

   The Register 28 Jul 10:15

   Watchdog rules on Hull Daily Mail 'porncoder' exposé

   Mild wrist slap for smut website scandalmongery

   The Press Complaints Commission has issued a mild wrist slap to the Hull Daily Mail for its coverage of Paul Smith - the man behind local news site HU17.net who was discovered to have a bit of previous form knocking together smut websites. Back in March, the Mail ran a series of stories headlined "Town website publisher's porn …

   The Register 28 Jul 10:10

   WIN a Belkin Play Max ADSL wireless router

   Giveaway State-of-the-art kit could be yours

   Belkin's latest line of broadband modems and wireless network gadgets are finally shipping, and Reg Hardware has one to give away. The Play Max has an integrated Torrent app, and other clever stuff to allow you to share printers and hard drives across the wireless network, and to organise your digital media for home sharing …

   reghardware 28 Jul 10:02

   Mariposa mastermind arrested in Slovenia

   Cybercrime toolkit suspect cuffed

   Investigators have released more details on the arrest of a Slovenian hacker suspected of creating the code behind the infamous Mariposa botnet. The 23-year-old suspect - known only by his hacker handle of Iserdo - was arrested in Maribor, Slovenia 10 days ago, five months after Spanish police arrested three suspects who …

   The Register 28 Jul 09:44

   SanDisk launches Cruzer Blade USB thumblet drive

   Fits in a thimble

   SanDisk has launched what it calls a paperclip-size USB thumb drive, designed to fit on a key ring and store from 2GB to 16GB of data. The Cruzer Blade is not the smallest-ever thumblet drive but is about half the size of an ordinary USB thumb drive. Traxdata claims to have the world's smallest thumb drive, the MICRO USB. …

   The Register 28 Jul 09:39

   Sage expects to fall into line after improved Q3 growth

   Biz software biz buzzes

   UK-based software maker Sage reported this morning “improving organic growth trends” in its third quarter, and said that its full-year results would be in line with market expectations. The company’s CEO Paul Walker said Sage’s second half of the year looked set to follow on from the good performance it had put in during its …

   The Register 28 Jul 09:31

   VMware automates volume discounting

   Keep buying, keep getting discounts

   I love when IT vendors simplify things and make them more consistent. Because when they do, that is the surest way to know they have made something more complex for reasons they will never explain to customers. So it is with VMware's new Volume Pricing Program for its desktop and server virtualization products. With pricing …

   The Register 28 Jul 08:58

   Apple posts Magic Trackpad drivers for Windows

   Only Boot Campers need apply

   Windows users keen to make use of Apple's Magic Trackpad, announced yesterday, can now do so - possibly. Apple has posted 64-bit and 32-bit Windows drivers for the gadget. Aimed at Mac users who have also installed Windows on their hard drives courtesy of Apple's Boot Camp dual-boot system, the drivers' .exe self-installer …

   reghardware 28 Jul 08:49

   HTC says sorry for Orange Hero Android 2.1 update delay

   Mea culpa

   HTC may have posted the very long awaited Android 2.1 update for its Hero smartphone last month, but it's been taking Orange rather longer to release a version for its own-brand Hero. And yesterday the network operator said that HTC had said sorry for the set-backs and promised that the update will arrive next week. “We …

   reghardware 28 Jul 08:18

   Government goes after outsourced staff T&Cs

   No less favourable could mean just a bit less

   The government is considering ending the right of workers at outsourcing firms to expect broadly similar working conditions to those enjoyed by their co-workers who previously worked in the public sector. The change is not about TUPE - which regulates the initial transfer of staff - but subsequent recruitment. A voluntary code …

   The Register 28 Jul 08:17

   MoD increased annual IT spending by £240m

   Defra outlay up £7m

   The Ministry of Defence has revealed that its annual ICT spending rose from £1.15bn in 2007-08 to £1.39bn in 2008-09. Defence minister Andrew Robathan said in a parliamentary written answer that the costs include both operational and non-operational IT, satellite and telecommunications. It spent £852m in 2008-09, as well as £ …

   The Register 28 Jul 08:09

   Software emulation copyright case bumped to ECJ

   SAS provisionally pwned

   A small software company did not infringe copyright in analytical software giant SAS's software by writing a program that emulated its functions, the High Court has provisionally ruled. The Court has asked the European Court of Justice, though, to check that its interpretation of laws based on the EU's Software Directive and …

   The Register 28 Jul 08:02

   Toshiba intros second-gen Cell tellies

   3D ready with 2D-to-3D conversion

   Toshiba has been talking up tellies based on the Sony PlayStation 3's Cell chip for years, and today unwrapped three new models due to go on sale in October. That's the launch day for the Regza Cell line in Japan, with European and US introductions following "in due course", Toshiba said today. Since Toshiba showed off the …

   reghardware 28 Jul 07:50

   Sony Walkman NWZ-A845 media player

   Review Thinnest Walkman yet

   If you can live without support for FLAC or Ogg Vorbis, then Sony's Walkman PMPs have long been the obvious choice for anyone concerned about sound quality but not wanting to chance lesser known players from Cowon or iRiver. Thin sound? Sony's NWZ-A845 Walkman Sony also tends to bundle decent earphones which is another …

   reghardware 28 Jul 07:02

   Russian gang uses botnets to automate check counterfeiting

   Black Hat Old-school crime with 21st century twist

   A researcher has uncovered a sophisticated check counterfeiting ring that uses compromised computers to steal and print millions of dollars worth of bogus invoices and then recruit money mules to cash them. The highly automated scheme starts by infiltrating online check archiving and verification services that store huge …

   The Register 28 Jul 02:24

3. Tuesday, 27 July 2010

   Canonical fluffs one-click Ubuntu cloud stack

   Linux, NoSQL, Hadoop – check

   Canonical is accelerating Ubuntu's push into the cloud, delivering an integrated stack of cloud platforms ready for download. Canonical has revealed that it's working with open-source project Hadoop and NoSQL database providers to deepen the level of integration between these big-data technologies and the Linux distro's next …

   The Register 27 Jul 23:34

   Mozy users caught in repeat backup hell

   Insatiable appetite

   Users are complaining that EMC's Mozy backup service is mistakenly backing up complete data sets over and over again. According to posts in five-page Mozy Forum thread, the problem has been present since mid-June, and users say they've received inadequate support. The problem occurs with Mozy for Windows. According to users, …

   The Register 27 Jul 23:13

   Apple sued over hot iPad shutdowns

   Cold blooded tablet

   Apple's iPad can shut down if it gets too hot, and Jacob Baltazar, Claudia Keller, and John Browning are as mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Those unhappy iPadders have filed suit against Apple — and they're asking the court to elevate their claim to class-action status. Their lawsuit, filed in the US District …

   The Register 27 Jul 23:13

   Intel debuts hella-zippy optical future

   45 million tweets per second!

   Intel has announced the development of an integrated, end-to-end, silicon-based optical system that it says may drive down the cost of high-speed, error-free interconnects to under a dollar per port — and it leaves Chipzilla's Light Peak interconnect in the dust. "Optical as a technology is coming, and its coming very fast," …

   The Register 27 Jul 21:10

   Google patents search that tracks your mouse moves

   Hover-over-but-don't-click-through rate

   Google has patented a system that displays search results and ads based on where you move your mouse. Mountain View first filed for the patent — dubbed a "system and method for modulating search relevancy using pointer activity monitoring" — in February 2005, and the US patent office rubber-stamped the application earlier this …

   The Register 27 Jul 21:05

   HP spreads wings with 'butterfly' data centers

   Modules take flight

   There may be a glut in the housing market in many of the Western economies, but when it comes to data centers, there's pent-up demand for more modern facilities. So business should be booming then, right? Wrong. As the cost of compute, storage, and networking capacity has dropped, allowing companies to – in theory – get a lot …

   The Register 27 Jul 19:22

   Wireless network security weakness to demo at DEFCON

   Et tu, WPA2?

   Security researchers have discovered security shortcomings in the WPA2 protocol that threaten the security of wireless networks, even if they are running up-to-date security software. The hack involves generating arbitrary broadcast packets from a spoofed node that trick legitimate nodes in a targeted network into responding …

   The Register 27 Jul 18:51

   Proprietary software puts pacemaker users at risk

   Open source group wants mandatory code review

   More than one-fourth of defective implantable medical devices discovered this year were probably the result of bugs in the software used to control them, a group advocating open source software claimed in a report that argues against the use of proprietary code in the life-saving products. Although the pacemakers, implantable …

   The Register 27 Jul 18:46

   Ask.com embraces its inner Jeeves

   Q&A butler reborn as web 'community'

   Ask.com has gone back to the future, unveiling a public beta version of a major redesign that returns the site to its days as a butler that answered your questions. But this being the age of "social media," the IAC-owned company has added a new twist to its old question-and-answer setup. In addition to using automated …

   The Register 27 Jul 18:19

   Location-based Web2.0rhea not an epidemic

   Most US adults unaware of Foursquare and friends

   People who feel compelled to constantly apprise you of their location on via the web are a tiny minority of the population. They're also mostly men. Just four per cent of US adults have ever used location-based Foursquare, Gowalla, or Loopt, with only one per cent updating the service once a week, according to a Forrester …

   The Register 27 Jul 18:18

   Novell opens Linux appliance gallery

   Not quite the Apple App Store

   Novell has opened an online gallery for SUSE software appliances. It has been a year since Novell launched its SUSE Appliance Program, which offers a set of online tools, dubbed SUSE Studio, for spinning up software appliances based on its SUSE Linux distro. The appliance tools were aimed at software developers who wanted to …

   The Register 27 Jul 15:54

   iPad alert: Are you a selfish elite or an independent geek?

   Apple fondle slab wars are go!

   Thus spoke a 'selfish elite' earlier today: "I think I'm kinder than the survey suggests. Tough love, largely." Apple iPad owners tick all the obvious boxes when it comes to the kind of crowd Cupertino has happily been wooing with its fondle slab since launch in March this year. They're six times more likely to be "wealthy, …

   The Register 27 Jul 15:45

   Oracle unleashes robo-tapeswapping monster

   StreamLine gets more slots and LTO-5

   Oracle has upgraded its StorageTek StreamLine 8500 tape library with more slots, LT05 support and redundant robotics and electronics for increased reliability. The 8500's maximum capacity has risen to 100,000 slots from 70,000, by linking ten 10,000 slot libraries together, and managing them as a single entity. Support has …

   The Register 27 Jul 15:42

   Police force more suspects to give up crypto keys

   Password powers practised

   Police have expanded their use of powers to force suspects to decrypt files by 50 per cent in the last year, figures released today reveal. In the 12 months to March 31 this year, government officials approved 38 notices under Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, compared to 26 in the previous year. The …

   The Register 27 Jul 15:37

   Emmerdale shoves jam rags in innocent kiddies' faces

   Traumatised mums recount ITV soap outrage

   The Daily Mail has worked itself up into a right tizz over last Friday's episode of ITV1 soap Emmerdale, in which a chalked shopping list was seen to contain the items "jam rags" and "pile cream". PA explains that the outrage was "visible during Friday's episode as a drunk Shadrach Dingle stumbled into his nephew Marlon's …

   The Register 27 Jul 15:00

   Aussie hacker pleads guilty to banking Trojan scam

   3,000 computers infected? Strewth

   An Australian hacker has pleaded guilty to infecting 3,000 computers with an information-stealing Trojan. Anthony Scott Harrison, 21, from the Black Forest area near Adelaide, pleaded guilty on Monday to seven computer hacking offences over the attempted cybercrime scam, UPI reports. He used an unnamed strain of malware to …

   The Register 27 Jul 14:24

   Mainframes drive strong Q2 for Unisys

   Dark horse pulls through

   Suddenly, it is feeling a bit like the post-recessional early 1990s, at least in MainframeLand. Mainframe maker Unisys reported its financial results for the second quarter this morning, before the market opened on Wall Street. Thanks to booming sales of its profitable ClearPath mainframes, the company booked $59.4m in net …

   The Register 27 Jul 14:09

   Police chief: Yes, my plods sometimes forget photo laws

   9am morning judgment not ubiquitous

   The Metropolitan Police Force cannot be guaranteed to abide by the law when it comes to allowing the public their right to take photographs. That was the startling admission made last week by Met Police Commissioner John Stephenson under sharp questioning from Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Dee Doocey during a Police …

   The Register 27 Jul 14:01

   Dodeca-core Apple Mac Pro coming next month

   32nm CPUs at last

   Apple hasn't - contrary to expectations - updated the Mac Pro, but it did today promise to do so soon. The new version will sport one or two CPUs for a total of four, six, eight or 12 cores, all Intel 32nm Xeon workstation and - on the dual-processor rigs - server chips. Since they have HyperThreading on board, that makes for …

   reghardware 27 Jul 13:50

   UAE sees security threat in BlackBerrys

   Gulf of confusion

   The United Arab Emirates has decided that BlackBerry handsets constitute a threat to national security, and is considering an outright ban. The UAE regulator has made explicit its fears, in a statement to local media picked up by the Associated Press, that users might "abuse" the BlackBerry service to place their communication …

   The Register 27 Jul 13:37

   Apple brings iMac line up to date

   Better CPUs, more Ram, ATI graphics, SDXC card support

   Apple has indeed updated its iMac line, as anticipated, beefing up the line's speeds'n'feeds and adding support for the new SDXC memory card format. The new models sport a selection of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and come with 4GB of 1333MHz DDR 3 as standard. And Apple has dropped Nvidia graphics in favour of a …

   reghardware 27 Jul 13:27

   Apple releases multi-touch 'magic' trackpad

   Eco battery packs too

   Apple has introduced the much-rumoured and Federal Communications Commission-approved Magic Trackpad, a wireless touchpad for all you fanboys who hate mice. The £59 Bluetooth gadget a multi-touch unit designed to bring to desktops the same tap-and-drag, pinch-to-zoom, page-flipping, two-finger scrolling actions that Apple's …

   reghardware 27 Jul 13:13

   Valve unbans 12,000 Steam 'cheaters'

   False Positive

   Valve "erroneously" banned 12,000 gamers for cheating playing Modern Warfare 2 on Steam. In an email today, Gabe Newell, President of Valve, apologised to the banned and confirmed that their accounts were restored. To make amends, the company has given all affected two free copies of Left 4 Dead 2, one to own and one to give …

   reghardware 27 Jul 13:06

   NatWest sets lawyers on student site

   Don't speak of us without our permission

   A student finance website which offers summaries of bank accounts available for the feckless unwashed masses has been hit with a copyright infringement claim by NatWest. The bank's hungry lawyers claim this page which summarises NatWest's student offer is infringement of its copyright. The letter claims that 118student.co.uk …

   The Register 27 Jul 12:56

   O2 extends iPhone 4 return-for-refund window

   But not for long

   O2 has - temporarily - extended its returns policy for the iPhone Flaw. Usually, the operator offers a 14-day 'change your mind and get your money back' deal, but for the latest iPhone, its customers now have until close of play on 6 August to return the device. After that date, O2 will revert to the 14-day return window, it …

   reghardware 27 Jul 12:54

   Limbo

   Left in the shade

   Left, right, jump, push, pull. As far as mechanics go, they are some of gaming's oldest conventions. In its 2D salad days little else was needed to captivate players the world over. But then 2D almost did a Dodo around the mid-1990s, as developers migrated from the plane to the shiny new third co-ordinate. Rock and Roll 2D …

   reghardware 27 Jul 12:54

   Zeus bot latches onto Windows shortcut security hole

   bLNKing hell

   Miscreants behind the Zeus cybercrime toolkit and other strains of malware have begun taking advantage of an unpatched shortcut handling flaws in Windows. It was first used by a sophisticated worm to target SCADA-based industrial control and power plant systems. Isolated strains of mainstream malware that took advantage of how …

   The Register 27 Jul 12:21

   SAP Q2 sales up 12% despite gloomy Euro market

   Tucks Sybase up in bed

   German business software maker SAP AG reported US second quarter sales growth that offset a licence revenues slump in the European market. Total sales grew 12 per cent to nearly €2.9bn from €2.6bn in the same period a year earlier. Overall software and software-related services revenues for the period climbed 16 per cent to € …

   The Register 27 Jul 12:17

   Motorola Milestone XT720

   Review First xenon flash Android camphone

   Motorola's original Milestone, along with the Dext last year, proved to the world that Motorola was back, back, back after a period in the wilderness when it was struggling to keep up with the innovations of other manufacturers. Building on those phones' success, this Android 2.1 device has a distinctive new look and includes an …

   reghardware 27 Jul 12:02

   Toshiba notebook drive spins level with Samsung

   Hits 7,200rpm

   Toshiba has caught up with Samsung and launched its own 640GB notebook drive spinning at 7,200rpm. Samsung announced its SpinPoint MP4 in April. General notebook SATA drives spin at 5,400rpm, whereas the MP4 rotates at 7,200rpm, delivering faster disk I/O for high-end notebooks and gaming applications. It used the 3Gbit/s SATA …

   The Register 27 Jul 11:56

   The Camel: Nokia unveils user designed phone

   What you get when you design by committee

   Nokia's Designed By Community project has reached the sketch stage, with three designs being put to the public vote to decide what the perfect Nokia handset should look like. Nokia's project - inviting the general public to vote and debate what constitutes the perfect mobile phone - has created a specification with all the …

   The Register 27 Jul 11:41

   Foxconn India closes factory as 250 workers fall ill

   28 still in hospital

   Foxconn has been forced to shut down a factory in India after 250 workers were hospitalised after what appears to have been an overzealous bout of pesticide spraying. According to AFP the firm - famous for building the iPhone as well as a myriad of other gadgets - suspended operations at its Chennai plant yesterday after the …

   The Register 27 Jul 11:41

   Opening UK cyber-security challenge cracked

   Prelude puzzle unpicked

   Enthusiasts claim to have already solved the first test in the Cyber Security Challenge UK hunt for would-be cyber-security experts. The challenge, consisting of a series of online and face-to-face competitions, was launched by UK security minister Baroness Neville-Jones on Monday. It is intended to inspire talented …

   The Register 27 Jul 11:24

   Brigitte Bardot demands flying donkey action

   Kremlin cops an earful over airborne ass

   A furious Brigitte Bardot has demanded that those responsible for the Sea of Azov flying donkey outrage be brought to book, the Sun reports. Police apparently quizzed one Vasily Gorobets over the parasailing stunt in Golubitskaya, during which 17-year-old Anapka was sent heavenwards to promote a private beach. Despite an …

   The Register 27 Jul 10:48

   Apple Store shut to add updated desktops

   Back soon, apparently

   The Apple Store is offline ahead of - it now seems reasonable to assume - new desktop Macs. Recent rumours have implied that Apple's iMac and Mac Pro lines will be refreshed in the near future. What with the Apple Store website currently presenting nothing but a "We'll be back soon" notice, and the fact that Apple UK is …

   reghardware 27 Jul 10:47

   Serpent imprisons rattled Yorkshire family

   Confined to conservatory by toad-murdering adder

   An East Yorkshire couple are awaiting the intervention of trained operatives to banish a toad-eating serpent which has confined them to their Withernsea home, according to this chilling report. Steven Leathley, his wife Christine and son Shaun dare not venture into their garden lest they are set upon by an adder which prowls …

   The Register 27 Jul 10:26

   Bigger than iTunes? Mobile operators lay out their app stall

   WAC takes the warehouse approach

   Operator consortium the Wireless Application Community has laid out its stall as an iTunes alternative, modelling itself as a clearing warehouse and leaving the retailing to network operators. The WAC was announced in February, and since then has been busy assimilating the useful bits of the OMTP. It will now be swallowing the …

   The Register 27 Jul 10:25

   Yahoo! Japan! turns! wing! against! Bing! in! Google! deal!

   Microsoft cold-shouldered

   Yahoo Japan has inked a deal to use Google's search engine in an apparent snub to Microsoft's Bing. All Things Digital reported on Monday that a deal between the two firms looked imminent. Google Japan then confirmed the partnership in a blog post yesterday. Mountain View's Asia Pacific ops veep Daniel Alegre said Yahoo Japan …

   The Register 27 Jul 10:13

   Nvidia Tegra 2 tablet to debut at IFA show

   Interpad inbound

   German company Interpad will be showing off an interesting tablet at the upcoming IFA show in Berlin: a 10in boy running Android 2.1 on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. Said system-on-a-chip operates at 1GHz and has 1GB of DDR 2 memory to play with. Tegra-based tablets have been few and far between since Nvidia announced the …

   reghardware 27 Jul 10:09

   Battle joined for future of open source IPS

   Analysis Snort bares teeth at DHS-backed project

   The battle to develop the next generation of open source intrusion prevention systems (IPS) technology is intensifying between incumbent Snort and a US government-backed project, the Open Information Security Foundation (OISF). Disagreements over technical issues such as the relative importance of developing IPS systems that …

   The Register 27 Jul 09:50

   Minister calls for more cyber security experts

   'Holistic national response' needed

   The minister for security has said the government has to do something about a shortage of emerging cyber security professionals. Baroness Neville-Jones said the problem Britain faces is that it has "a talented, but small pool of highly skilled public and private sector cyber security individuals". Speaking at the Cyber …

   The Register 27 Jul 09:44

   Virgin cables up Pot Noodle place via power poles

   Instant broadband

   Do you live in the Welsh village of Crumlin, Caerphilly? Then you may well be getting fast broadband next month, delivered via the town's many power poles. Virgin Media today said it had selected the settlement - population 5724, welcomes careful drivers - to play host to its trial of the technology, which will see fibre-optic …

   reghardware 27 Jul 09:42

   Broadband advertising speed gap widens

   Reality now less than half as good

   The gap between the marketing and reality of broadband speeds has grown even wider, according to figures released today by Ofcom. The average package is now sold as 11.5Mbit/s but in fact delivers just 5.2Mbit/s downstream, a 54 per cent shortfall. A year ago the average actual performance of 4.1Mbit/s was 42 per cent less …

   The Register 27 Jul 09:41

   Motorola making Android 3.0 tablet

   Platform emerging?

   Motorola is the latest company to have its name associated with an upcoming - well, Q4 at the earliest - Android-based tablet computer. Like the others - from Acer, Asus, Lenovo, LG, Toshiba and co - Motorola's offering will sport a 10in display and run Android 3.0 - aka 'Gingerbread'. What little we know about comes from …

   reghardware 27 Jul 09:19

   Hitachi on purchase prowl

   Sage on shopping list

   Japanese giant Hitachi is looking to buy an IT services business to bolster its information and communications system business. Hitachi made its acquisition ambition public last month, saying it wanted to buy a European or US IT services company with a strong customer base and annual revenues of around $3bn, to help it compete …

   The Register 27 Jul 09:05

   Caringo gets cash to carry on

   Storing content as objects

   The world of object storage is seeing consolidation to large vendors making life difficult for start-ups like Caringo. However, it has gained new funding. That firm is selling and developing its CAStor software to stir digital content as objects in clustered, commodity-based servers and storage. It was founded in 2005 by …

   The Register 27 Jul 08:18

   Withings Wi-Fi bathroom scales

   Review I tweet your weight

   Sometimes, there are problems that cry out for a technological solution. Problems like “How do I remember my weight and BMI for the time it takes to go from the bathroom to the computer.” And the WiFi bathroom scales from Withings, sold by Firebox, are the solution to just that problem. Weight and see: Withings’ Wi-Fi scales …

   reghardware 27 Jul 07:02

   UK.gov pledges licence fee 'rethink' over heavy catch-up use

   You can't watch that for free!

   The government has pledged to 'rethink' the licence fee because so much television is watched via catch-up services on computers, which does not require the payment of the licence fee. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ruled out introducing a licence fee for PCs but has said that his administration will need to find a way to …

   The Register 27 Jul 07:02

   Android's UK phone sales quadruple

   iPhone shrinkage, RIM on the up

   Sales of Android-based phones more than quadrupled in the UK during the most-recent quarter. This news comes to us in a report from GfK Retail and Technology, a self-styled "global knowledge provider" based in Nuremberg, Germany. According to GfK, Android's share of UK smartphone contract sales sales was a mere three per cent …

   The Register 27 Jul 05:02

   Citigroup says its iPhone app puts customers at risk

   Warning: contents include account details

   Citigroup is urging customers who use their iPhones for online banking to immediately upgrade to a new version of the application because a security weakness in the the old one puts them at risk. In a letter, the US banking giant said the Citi Mobile app saved user information in a hidden file that could be used by attackers …

   The Register 27 Jul 00:00

4. Monday, 26 July 2010

   Google Apps for Gov battles fear of floating data

   Analysis Here's your certification. And your comfort blanket

   Google Apps for Government is designed to meet the information-security laws that bind federal agencies. But it's also meant to provide a kind of comfort blanket for any government agency — from the federal level down to the local — that's wary of moving their data onto third-party servers in the so-called cloud. "There is a …

   The Register 26 Jul 23:05

   Cray ships first massively parallel XE6

   Baby super exec exits

   Cray has staked most of its financial 2010 on the Baker XE6 massively parallel supercomputers and their Gemini XE interconnect. With the first of a wave of multi-cabinet systems now out the door, Cray - and its investors - have some hope of making the numbers for 2010. Cray launched the XE interconnect in May, and shipped a …

   The Register 26 Jul 22:51

   Peer 1 launches GPU compute cloud

   Rise of the fluffy ceepie-geepies

   Peer 1 Hosting, an IT service provider that does traditional hosting as well as selling virtual, cloudy infrastructure, is claiming to be the first to fluff up a CPU-GPU hybrid cloud that supports supercomputing workloads. The company announced its GPU Cloud service at the annual Siggraph International Conference in Los …

   The Register 26 Jul 22:21

   AT&T delivers iPhone data choke relief

   And Big Phone finds love beyond the bright lights

   AT&T has begun rolling out a fix for the glitch choking two per cent of its wireless customers' uplink speeds. The bug-squashing is scheduled to take two to three weeks. The data-strangling gremlin resides, according to an AT&T statement of July 7, in Alcatel-Lucent equipment employed by Big Phone in its HSUPA service, and …

   The Register 26 Jul 21:32

   Windows Phone 7 misses big-business support tools

   Marketplace for your important apps

   Microsoft's re-reinvention of Windows Mobile risks hurting Windows Phone 7's widespread adoption by large companies. Phones from HTC, Dell, LG, and Samsung won't work out of the gate in October with standard Microsoft technologies used by corporations to deploy and manage their apps. That's because Windows Phone 7 won't work …

   The Register 26 Jul 20:31

   US legalizes jailbroken iPhones

   Updated Unlockers shielded from Jobsian storm

   US citizens can legally jailbreak and unlock their smartphones — notably Apple's iPhone — and videographers can circumvent copy protection to use short movie snippets for "criticism or comment". This rulemaking decision by the US Copyright Office's Librarian of Congress to grant exceptions to the Digital Milleneium Copyright …

   The Register 26 Jul 19:47

   Google Apps rubber-stamped for use by US gov

   Data center segregation

   Google has introduced a version of Google Apps certified for use by the US government. Announced today during a press event at the company's Mountain View headquarters, Google Apps for Government offers the same applications as the existing Premiere Edition of the online application suite, and it carries the same price tag: $ …

   The Register 26 Jul 18:03

   Android terms point to operator billing

   The killer feature customers won't care about

   Changes to the small print of the Android Developers' agreement show Google's plan to hand over application revenue collection to network operators - a task they'll be glad to take on. The changes, highlighted in a post on the Android Developers' blog, adds "authorized carriers" to the list of indemnified parties and creates a …

   The Register 26 Jul 15:50

   Apple reminds Aussies they can buy iPhone 4s on Friday

   Citizens of 16 other countries will be able to too

   By the weekend, the iPhone Flaw - sorry, iPhone 4* - will be avilable to buy in 17 countries in addition to the five it's currently available in. On Friday, 30 July, the handset will go on sale in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, …

   reghardware 26 Jul 15:20

   Canadian flyboy prangs CF-18 Hornet

   Dramatic last-second ejection caught on camera

   Canadian flyboy Captain Brian Bews had a narrow escape last Friday when his CF-18 Hornet decided to give up the ghost during a practice run at an airshow at Lethbridge airport in Alberta. Bews' injuries following his low-level ejection were described as "non-life threatening", although he's probably lost his no-claims …

   The Register 26 Jul 15:09

   Dell's fraud settlement explodes PC market myths

   Analysis Getting sick on cookie jars and bags of chips

   Even us jaded hacks, who think we've seen everything in the business, can find our chins hitting the trackpad. So it is with the Dell legal settlement last week. It may have a familiar ring to it, as it concerns a kind of business arrangement almost 20 years old - but don't let that fool you. It's the scale of the amounts …

   The Register 26 Jul 15:09

   EC launches formal probes into IBM's mainframe biz

   Emulators and maintenance services

   Antitrust authorities at the European Commission have been listening to clone mainframe seller T3 Technologies' cries after IBM ate and killed clone mainframe maker Platform Solutions a few years back. Complaints from TurboHercules, a supplier of a mainframe hardware emulator for x64 servers that IBM refuses to license software …

   The Register 26 Jul 14:33

   EU climate exchange website hit by green-hat hacker

   APB for Neil from The Young Ones

   An EU Climate Exchange website was hacked as part of a political protest against carbon credits by a green-hat defacement crew. The front page of the ECX.eu website was sprayed with digital graffiti lampooning the concept of applying a market-based approach to tackling carbon emissions. An anonymous group of hacktivists called …

   The Register 26 Jul 14:13

   Europe must cut duties on US gadgets

   Set-top box and printer tax illegal, reports

   The World Trade Organisation has ruled that EU import duties on certain gadgets imported from the US, Japan and Taiwan are illegal. An agreement reached in 1996 removed import tariffs on 72 different products in order to boost trade in technology goods. But the European Union later moved some of these items into a taxable …

   The Register 26 Jul 14:10

   Hitachi GST SVP takes a punt on STT-RAM

   Joins Grandis

   The general manager and VP of Engineering at Hitachi GST has left to join a NAND and DRAM replacement technology company, Grandis. That seems like a risky move. Said GM and VP Mohamad Krounbi is joining Grandis to be its SVP for engineering, taking on responsibility for "all STT-RAM technology and product development at …

   The Register 26 Jul 14:09

   Hitachi Data Systems: A storage giant lost in translation

   I just don't know what I'm supposed to be

   Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is the only world-class Japanese storage company, with its USP-V high-end enterprise arrays and AMS mid-range systems. Its fellow Japanese corporations, Fujitsu and NEC, are under-performers in comparison. In fact, the USP-V arrays are so good that HP OEMs them and Sun did resell them. Acer OEMs a …

   The Register 26 Jul 14:05

   Successful desktop virtualization

   Regcast Difficult, but not impossible

   Desktop virtualization: it's complex, it's controversial, it's hard to budget. It is, however, easy to make a mess of it. And if you do get it wrong, every single person in your company will want to know why. Mess this one up and you’ll be lucky if they let you project manage buying toner cartridges for the rest of your career …

   The Register 26 Jul 14:01

   Daily Star is sorry for Grand Theft Auto Raoul Moat blunder

   Journalism at its best

   Last week the Daily Star published the sensational scoop that Rockstar Games was prepping Grand Theft Auto Rothbury, inspired by the murderer Raoul Moat. It was a hoax of course, but it would be much too kind to describe the Star as a victim. The paper compounded its error by mocking up a fake cover (see here) and by …

   reghardware 26 Jul 13:45

   HMV takes on mighty iTunes with 40p promo

   Probably better than last effort

   HMV has a new music download site and lots of offers to tempt punters away from iTunes. The UK music retailer kicks off hmvdigital today by selling any song in the top 40 for 40p a pop. Chart albums are retailing for as little as £4.99. The service has some 10 million DRM-free MP3 songs in its catalogue - and users can …

   reghardware 26 Jul 12:46

   3G at 2G frequencies edges closer in UK

   One more consultation, and we're there

   Ofcom has laid out the legal changes that will permit 3G technology at 2G frequencies, along with allowing radar-equipped level crossings, and radio for scuba divers, all by November. The changes come as part of a general tidying up of legislation that clarifies licence-free deployments of radar at level crossings, and two-way …

   The Register 26 Jul 12:34

   LAPD questions Google Apps security credentials

   Huge roll out hits delay

   Google has reportedly missed a deadline to fully implement Google Apps into the city of Los Angeles' various departments by the end of last month. As a result, the ad broker might have to shell out $135,000 to complete the upgrade of LA's computer system from Novell tech to its email and collaboration software. MarketWatch, …

   The Register 26 Jul 12:22

   CTIA claims SF phone radiation law unconstitutional

   Take my emissions figures from my cold, dead hands

   Cellular trade body The CTIA is challenging a San Francisco ordinance that requires radiation labels on every mobile phone sold, claiming that such a rule breaches the US constitution. The ordinance, passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in June, requires buyers to be informed "at the point of sale" about the …

   The Register 26 Jul 12:02

   Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV

   Review Picture perfect?

   Samsung got the 3D ball rolling earlier this year when its C7000 became the first 3D TV to hit the shops in the UK. However, the more expensive C8000 is the one that really turned my head. Even if you dismiss the 3D option as a novelty the C8000 is simply a superb flat-screen TV. Samsung's UE46C8000: a great viewing …

   reghardware 26 Jul 12:02

   3D films fall flat

   Audiences abandon 'a waste of a perfectly good dimension'

   There are indications that Hollywood's rush to extract extra cash from cinemagoers in return for an extra visual dimension might be doomed to follow previous 3D initiatives into the cutting room bin. The release of Avatar last December - the James Cameron epic which grossed $2.7bn - had movie execs licking their lips at the …

   The Register 26 Jul 11:55

   TomTom update breaks satnav live links

   Older GPS boxes borked

   TomTom has posted an update to its old Go x40 Live satnav range - now superseded by the Go x50 Live line that has broken the devices' ability to access online data sources. Users have reported that after the company released version 9.054 of the satnav's firmware, the devices stopped receiving Live - the name TomTom gives to …

   reghardware 26 Jul 11:47

   SOCA 'faces axe'

   'British FBI' to replace 'British FBI'

   The Serious and Organised Crime Agency, created just four years ago and presented as Britain's answer to the FBI, is to be scrapped by coalition ministers, it's reported. A Home Office consultation to be published today will propose replacing the secretive organisation with a National Crime Agency, which would include a new …

   The Register 26 Jul 11:37

   iPad pitches Apple onto world PC top table

   Vendor Number Five

   Fellow market watchers may not include the iPad in Apple's computer sales figures, but Canalys does, and it reckons doing so puts the Mac maker into world's top five. Looking back at Q2, the three million or more tablets Apple shipped during the quarter amounted to six per cent of the portable computer segment, Canalys said. …

   reghardware 26 Jul 11:31

   Cutbacks strip speed cameras from Blighty's roads

   Crash test imminent

   The proposition that speed cameras improve road safety looks likely to be severely crash-tested this summer, as government cutbacks make the likelihood of some counties becoming camera-free zones a near certainty. According to the Guardian, all 72 fixed speeding cameras in Oxfordshire are likely to disappear as the county …

   The Register 26 Jul 11:30

   Evidence mounts for iMac, Mac Pro Revamp

   Rumour mill churns furiously

   Rumours are doing the rounds that Apple is about to refresh its two key desktop lines: the iMac and the Mac Pro. That conclusion comes from claims that US distributors are running low on their stock of these items as supply of current models is winnowed, it is presumed, ahead of the release of new models. Incidentally, Apple …

   reghardware 26 Jul 11:11

   The basics of app management

   Workshop A case of diminishing returns

   IT may be complex, but from the perspective of the business, it is just a lot of technical gubbins that sits between the screen and the data. Users access applications and systems with no real clue about what goes on behind the scenes, nor any desire to understand more than how to change a toner cartridge. We can rail at their …

   The Register 26 Jul 11:08

   DMA sets rules on kids' data and 'greenwashing'

   Gotta earn those green credentials

   Companies engaged in direct marketing to consumers must not use the internet to gather data about children under 12 and must be able to back up any green claims they make, according to a new code of practice for the industry. The Direct Marketing Association has published a new version of its Code of Practice, the set of rules …

   The Register 26 Jul 10:53

   Firefox 4 second beta hits minor delay

   All good things comes to those who bait?

   Mozilla has delayed the second beta release of Firefox 4 by about a week. The open source browser maker had tentatively planned to sling out Firefox 4 beta 2 late last week. However, Mozilla has now pushed that release back to Thursday, 29 July. “Hi! We're glad you're interested in Firefox 4 Beta 2 - it's not quite ready yet …

   The Register 26 Jul 10:49

   SanDisk CEO to ride off into the sunset

   Goodbye Eli Harari. Hello Sanjay

   SanDisk founder, CEO and chairman Eli Harari is to retire at the end of 2010, after 22 years with the firm. It's a planned event with the replacement CEO being Harari's co-founder, Sanjay Mehrotra, who is currently SanDisk's president and chief operating officer. He gets the CEO's office on January 1, 2011 and was promoted to …

   The Register 26 Jul 10:19

   How effective is your security monitoring?

   Workshop Poll Can you police the policing?

   For many organisations, the litmus test for IT security effectiveness is whether or not security breaches are reduced as a result. Security monitoring should help, but modern environments are complex and multi-faceted, and it can be difficult to determine how much is down to the tools, and how much is down to other factors such …

   The Register 26 Jul 10:03

   NHS spunks £7.5k on porn room

   Fertility clinic bins jazz mags for hi-tech smutmongery

   Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust has incurred the wrath of the Sun by spunking £7,500 on a "special room" kitted out to help chaps deliver vital supplies of man oysters. The trust's fertility centre shared the cost of "computer equipment worth £4,625, flat screen TVs costing £2,225 - plus £500 of blue movies" with …

   The Register 26 Jul 09:48

   Firefox update fixes plug-in snafu

   Stabilising patch rushed out

   Mozilla has responded to plugin stability issues with a new version of Firefox. Firefox 3.6.8 was published on Friday just three days after the release of 3.6.7, a far more substantial update that addressed eight critical flaws and six less serious bugs Most of the reported problems involved an Adobe Flash player plugin for …

   The Register 26 Jul 09:46

   TalkTalk turns StalkStalk to build malware blocker

   Unheralded system shadows browsers round the web

   It's less TalkTalk, more StalkStalk: the UK's second largest ISP has quietly begun following its customers around the web and scanning what they look at for a new anti-malware system it is developing. Without telling customers, the firm has switched on the compulsory first part of the system, which is harvesting lists of the …

   The Register 26 Jul 09:25

   Her Maj gets Flickred up

   Gawd bless yer Ma'am 2.0

   Buck House today launched its very own Flickr page, featuring lots of lovely snaps of the British Monarchy. Currently on offer are 682 photos in 36 sets, with each member of the Royals given his or her own corner, so fans of Chaz of Wales can get straight down to it. We're glad to see that the Queen of Hearts™, the sainted …

   The Register 26 Jul 09:21

   Lord Peter views the logfile

   Stob Top hole, Bunter

   "What is design? Dorothy Sayers (English writer and dramatist - quoted by Brooks) suggests that design has three phases" - InfoQ reviewing Fred 'Mythical Man' Brook's latest tome. I had never realised that the famous crime writer Dorothy L Sayers was one of us - VS. The morning sunshine, filtered, as it were, through London's …

   The Register 26 Jul 09:02

   Wikileaks creaks under demand for Afghan war logs

   Thousands of front line reports released

   Tens of thousands of US Army documents revealing details of the war in Afghanistan were published by Wikileaks late last night and interest is almost bringing the website to a halt. The "War Logs" were also given to newspapers and reveal far more civilian casualties than previously admitted and deep concerns about the role of …

   The Register 26 Jul 08:08

   NASA unveils global Martian map

   Odyssey view offers plenty of detail, but no roadsigns

   NASA has unveiled "the most accurate global Martian map ever" - a 21,000 image mosaic from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) aboard its Mars Odyssey spacecraft. According to the agency, the snaps have been "smoothed, matched, blended and cartographically controlled" to produce the final result, which at full zoom …

   The Register 26 Jul 08:02

   Lite-on iHBS112 internal Blu-ray writer

   Review Cheap and fast - cheerful too?

   Lite-On is certainly pushing the boundaries of optical disc burning at aggressive prices. The iHBS112 is an internal drive that goes beyond the combo by letting you read and write Blu-ray, DVD and CD media in one unit. Its Blu-ray writing speed, 12x, matches the current fastest on the market. That's not bad for £123. As a …

   reghardware 26 Jul 07:02

   Before the iPad, there was the Newton

   This Old Box MessagePad 120 – it didn't suck

   If any old-tech devotees are more rabid than Amiga amigos, the Newtonians are. So, for those lovers of Apple's pioneering handheld, here's an up-close-and-personal visual caressing of the Newton MessagePad 120, circa 1995. The MessagePad 120 had the longest lifespan of any device based on Apple's Newton platform: from its …

   The Register 26 Jul 04:16

   IBM splits with Solaris 10 on x64

   Oracle severs another OEM deal?

   IBM will soon cease to sell Solaris 10 on x64 machines. Oracle, it seems, has decided that companies who have their own Unix iron can't peddle Solaris on their x64 tin. Oracle yanked Hewlett-Packard's Solaris OEM contract, which allows it to distribute Solaris 10 and sell support contracts for it on its ProLiant servers, and …

   The Register 26 Jul 02:57

5. Sunday, 25 July 2010

   Australian Senate censors print link to cartoon

   Over-reaction to reaction porn

   Questions were being asked in Australia last week as to just how far the moral majority was prepared to go to protect the ordinary voter from interweb nastiness. First we had the clampdown by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on a range of material that was not illegal, but clearly too controversial for …

   The Register 25 Jul 08:02

   The Wrath of Jobs' latest victim: Motorola

   Antennagate blitz assails Droid X

   Motorola is the latest smartphone manufacturer to endure the Wrath of Jobs. That'd be Steve Jobs, of course, the armchair physicist who wants you to believe that the iPhone 4's external, touchable, and shortable antenna has reception problems equivalent to those experienced by phones that shield their antennas inside …

   The Register 25 Jul 06:21

6. Saturday, 24 July 2010

   Reg Hardware Reviews Digest

   Second chance to see last week's stuff

   In the past seven days, Reg Hardware reviewed many products from the worlds of consumer electronics, photography, gaming, mobile communications and information technology. If you missed anything, here are all the products we looked at this past week. Lifestyle Panasonic DMR-BW880 HD DVR HD recording, Blu-ray archiving …

   The Register 24 Jul 08:02

   Mrs Brin's Medicine Show deceived customers, says report

   DNA tests: new century, new snake oil

   Companies selling DNA kits have been deceiving customers with "fictitious" and "misleading" medical advice, an undercover sting operation by Congressional watchdog the GAO has discovered. One of the companies, 23andMe, was co-founded by Mrs Sergey Brin - Anne Wojowcki - and boasts veteran Silicon Valley socialite Esther Dyson as …

   The Register 24 Jul 00:04

7. Friday, 23 July 2010

   Mozilla tames Firefox tab monster with Candy

   Sweet organization

   Mozilla is testing a new Firefox interface designed to tame that seemingly endless string of tabs stretching across the top of your browser – and beyond. Known as Tab Candy, this alpha prototype provides a separate window where you can lay out your tabs like playing cards and sort them into groups. You can move tabs from group …

   The Register 23 Jul 23:45

   Security world ill-equipped to solve digital whodunnits

   'Unqualified and pedestrian'

   When anthrax-laced letters killed five people and sickened 17 others shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, investigators were able to pin point the precise lab where the deadly spores were manufactured. And when Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was shot on the battle field some 150 years ago, forensics …

   The Register 23 Jul 23:45

   Empires built on free code aren't cheap

   Open...and Shut Starting up is cheap. Success is expensive

   Five years ago, Joe Kraus declared that it was a "great time to be an entrepreneur." In the midst of dwindling hardware and software costs, among other things, it's never been easier to start and scale a company. Or so the reasoning goes. It's undoubtedly true that startup costs have gone down. Ironically, this comes at the …

   The Register 23 Jul 23:42

   Google tests (semi) HTML5 YouTube embed code

   It works with HTML5. Except when it doesn't

   Google is testing new YouTube embed code that plays videos using either the company's experimental HTML5 player or its standard Flash player, depending on the video and the setup of the user's system. YouTube is still very much wedded to its Flash player, but since January, Google has offered an experimental HTML5 player that …

   The Register 23 Jul 20:25

   vBulletin vuln gifts admin credentials to unwashed masses

   Just type 'database'

   Websites using software from vBulletin have been stung by a critical vulnerability that makes it trivial to steal credentials needed to administer site panels. The flaw in version 3.8.6 of vBulletin makes it possible for anyone with a web browser to infiltrate a forum's back end, where sensitive data about users is often …

   The Register 23 Jul 20:00

   Blacklight: Tango Down

   Shoot, is that all you got?

   One of the few things I learnt at university was Pareto’s Principle, or the 80/20 rule, which states that in anything, 20 per cent is vital and 80 per cent is trivial. Pedestrian crossing? Doubtful Originally calculated to describe the distribution of wealth in society - where 20 per cent of a population owns 80 per cent of …

   reghardware 23 Jul 19:02

   Judas Phone: more Photoshop tomfoolery

   How many fingers does a guy need?

   Some sites call for Photoshop submissions [Fark and B3ta.com]. And some reject them, as Reg reader Bill discovered today. His "bored Friday stuff" was knocked back by the estimable site Judasphone.com, so he sent them to us instead. We thought you would like to see these: Thanks, Bill. Bootnote We are not really set up …

   reghardware 23 Jul 18:35

   Intel and Nokia's MeeGo Linux gets car boost

   Penguin is my co-pilot

   Nokia and Intel's MeeGo mobile Linux effort has been given a leg up in cars. Car-industry alliance GENIVI has officially chosen MeeGo as the reference release for its In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system. MeeGo will provide the basis for the upcoming GENIVI Apollo release, it was announced Friday. There was not date for when …

   The Register 23 Jul 18:24

   Riverbed removes steel from WAN juicing Steelhead

   Fake appliance goes anywhere

   Riverbed has released a version of its Steelhead WAN optimization appliance that isn't an appliance. You might say it's a Steelhead without the steel. Yes, it's a Virtual Steelhead, and the company tells us it's meant for offices that just don't have room for a (real) appliance, data centers that have already virtualized …

   The Register 23 Jul 17:33

   Google is ‘Obama’s Halliburton’

   So who's Dick Cheney?

   A discovery motion filed part of an investigation into Google’s former chief lobbyist turned Obama’s “Deputy CTO” failed this week. Former lobbyists are prohibited from involvement in policies that affect their former employer - in the case of Andrew McLaughlin, Google's former Head of Global Public Policy - it's hard to see …

   The Register 23 Jul 16:06

   Forrester: IT spending growth holding up

   Asia and Latin America counterbalance Europe

   The prognosticators at IT watcher Forrester Research are not letting a little debt crisis in Greece and the fears by some that it will "metastasize across the European Union" put a damper on global IT spending growth for 2010. In a report released this week from Andrew Bartels, the vice president and principal analyst who is …

   The Register 23 Jul 15:56

   UK's Zephyr robo sun-plane in record-buster 2-week flight

   Ideal for missions not too far from the Equator

   The "Zephyr" solar-powered unmanned plane, which has been airborne continuously for the past two weeks above the Arizona desert, has made a successful landing to break several aviation records. Today, Arizona. Tomorrow, the world - well, the hot bits anyway. The Zephyr was built by controversial UK defence boffinry selloff …

   The Register 23 Jul 15:35

   Ex-staffer pleads guilty to massive T-Mobile data scam

   Another yet to face the beak

   A former T-Mobile employee has admitted his role in the illegal sale of massive volumes of customer data to marketers. David Turley, of Birmingham, 39, pleaded guilty to 18 charges under section 55 of the Data Protection Act at Chester Crown Court on Thursday. He is yet to be sentenced. A second former T-Mobile employee, …

   The Register 23 Jul 15:17

   Software giant SAS loses copyright case in London

   David beats Goliath, Goliath says he's fine actually

   SAS has lost an important copyright case in the High Court in London, although SAS insists it has not lost at all. The software giant sued Worldwide Programming Ltd - a small UK firm - for breach of copyright and breach of license conditions. SAS said WPL had breached its license relating to SAS Learning Edition in order to …

   The Register 23 Jul 14:59

   Forget the Jesus Phone, here's the Rude Phone

   NSFW A grubby little handset

   It costs $78, it is available in black, red or white and it is called the WANK E5. No, not an personalised number plate, but the name of a Nokia handset on sale at SoloMobi, a Chinese retailer. Going Solo? That sounds about right. We guess the name will change soon enough; and before sniggering too hard, we happily …

   reghardware 23 Jul 14:57

   BBC news apps squeeze onto iPhone, iPad

   Android stays paranoid

   The BBC Trust has waved through a Beeb news app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, just a few months after the Corporation’s governing body mulled whether development of the software could be justified. Auntie announced today that apps had been launched for the Jesus Phone and the Jobsian fondle slab in the UK. The BBC had …

   The Register 23 Jul 14:55

   Oracle has '$70bn, five-year acquisition plan'

   Oh wait, no it doesn't

   Charles Phillips, one of the co-presidents at software giant and unenthusiastic server maker Oracle, reportedly said the company had plans to double its acquisition budget over the next five years to a total of $70bn. But apparently this is not true. Phillips was speaking on Thursday at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2010 …

   The Register 23 Jul 14:40

   UK.gov soaps up public in latest data appeal

   Sleepless in see-through panties

   The Cabinet Office is once again asking British citizens to pony up ideas about what government information should be released via the data.gov.uk website. Francis Maude, the department’s minister, is calling on the public to log on to the site and post their views about what data should be made available. He said the Public …

   The Register 23 Jul 14:10

   Home Office mobe theft fight doubles in importance

   Stolen phones in runaway value explosion

   The Home Office has published guidelines asking recyclers to check if phones are stolen, claiming that the business is worth £5m a year despite it being only worth £2.5m eight weeks ago. When the then-Labour government started on the guidelines telling companies to continue doing what most of them were doing already, we were …

   The Register 23 Jul 14:08

   IBM's zEnterprise 196 CPU: Cache is king

   Analysis 'The fastest CPU in the world.' And more

   IBM is a funny technology company in that its top brass doesn't like to talk about feeds and speeds and seems to be allergic to hardware in particular. Which is particularly idiotic for a hardware company that sells servers, storage, and chips. Thursday, in launching the new System zEnterprise 196 mainframe, IBM didn't say …

   The Register 23 Jul 14:02

   London bike hire scheme suffers pre-launch wobbles

   Tourists excluded, payment site punctured

   Anyone wishing to use one of Boris's hire bikes from next week will need a UK address registered with a credit card company in order to pre-register because the 'casual use' system has been delayed. Londoners - and visitors to the smoke - will be be able to hire push bikes across the centre of the capital under the scheme. In …

   The Register 23 Jul 13:47

   Couple charged over hybrid car industrial espionage plot

   GM secrets allegedly offered to Chinese rival

   A Michigan couple faces charges of stealing industrial secrets on hybrid cars from GM before attempting to sell the data to a Chinese auto manufacturer. Yu Qin, 49, and his wife, Shanshan Du, 51, of Troy, Michigan have been charged with four offences, including unauthorised possession of trade secrets and wire fraud under an …

   The Register 23 Jul 13:23

   Apple delays white iPhone 4 - again

   Real antenna fix coming?

   Apple still can't work out how to mass-produce an iPhone 4 coloured white and has now delayed the handset - again - until "later this year". To, say, 1 October? That's the day after Apple's free case offer for the black iPhone 4 runs out. The black model is the only iPhone 4 variant available so it is, by default, the iPhone 4 …

   reghardware 23 Jul 13:18

   Olympus PEN E-PL1 Micro Four-Thirds camera

   Review Superb

   Adding another variation to its popular PEN range of Micro Four-Thirds cameras, the Olympus E-PL1 has done away with the retro style of its siblings, added a pop-up flash and a dedicated movie record button. It has re-designed the menu layout for even simpler navigation, introduced a Live Guide mode for complete novices and …

   reghardware 23 Jul 12:55

   The Sun saves parasailing donkey's ass

   Flying days over, red top assures

   There's some top quality news today for the animal lovers among you: the Sun has moved with lightning speed to save the Sea of Azov's very own flying donkey, Anapka, who recently found herself on the wrong end of an asinine promotional stunt: The Telegraph reports that the beast is none the worse for her ordeal, with a vet …

   The Register 23 Jul 12:30

   'Soft robots' will use gut-wrenching propulsion method

   Bowel-churning caterpillar boffinry breakthrough

   American boffins say they are poised to invent a new class of shape-shifting "soft bodied robots" which will manoeuvre - perhaps inside the human body - by mimicking the literally gut-wrenching means by which certain species of creepy-crawly get about. Assembled experts in the States have opened the door to a fearsome new …

   The Register 23 Jul 12:09

   ACTA leaks - but secret squirrel stays secret

   Fingers point to the USA

   Just who is the bad apple at the ACTA negotiations, excluding the public and forcing discussions between the parties to be held in secret? Not us, says the EU, which has come in for some stick of late – not least from Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstroem - for its refusal to allow MEPs to disseminate anything from the talks …

   The Register 23 Jul 12:07

   Possibly the world's most pointless review

   The Sumo Lounge Sway Couple Beanbag Chair

   Each week we receive dozens of link-to-article requests from tech websites. Much as we want to oblige, we rarely have time to read the articles, let alone link to them. We make an exception for this, from BigBruin.com and its review of the Sumo Lounge Sway Couple Beanbag Chair. Four pages, unboxing pics, a texture fetish... …

   reghardware 23 Jul 12:02

   BBC Trust green lights Corporation's news app

   No brainer

   The BBC is now allowed to release smartphone apps able to present its news feeds to viewers on the move. So says the BBC Trust, the organisation charged with ensuring the Corporation does right by licence holders, though in this instance seems to be more concerned with the BBC's competitors than its stakeholders. Why wouldn't …

   reghardware 23 Jul 11:40

   Google cranks up Chrome release schedule

   Quantity and quality - together at last

   Google plans to release new stable versions of Chrome every six weeks as it continues to try and smash through as many builds as possible of its increasingly popular browser. Mountain View’s Chrome program manager Anthony Laforge explained that Google had decided to ramp up the number of stable versions of the browser the …

   The Register 23 Jul 11:37

   Microsoft's ARM deal fuels hope of a chilled-out Xbox

   Planning an A4, or perhaps a Cell?

   Microsoft has licensed ARM's architecture, but while an ARM might be found in every mobile phone it seems Redmond is more interested in putting some ARM goodness into the Xbox. An architecture licence isn't necessary for most things – 200 licensees happily make ARM chips without bothering to licence the architecture itself, …

   The Register 23 Jul 11:26

   PARIS skins up with Rizlas and dope

   Well, tissue paper and PVA...

   Work continues apace down at the Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) workshop, where we've been looking at just how to skin our Vulture 1-X vehicle. Before we get to that, though, we're delighted to announce that our audacious upper atmosphere project now officially exists, because Wikipedia says so. Lovely. Now, on …

   The Register 23 Jul 11:00

   'Freeware' phishing kit dupes s'kiddies

   Dishonour among thieves

   Skilled malware authors have duped less skilled cybercrooks into doing their dirty work with a new phishing kit. A "freeware" phishing kit posted onto hacker forums poses as a way to set up fraudulent websites pretending to be, for example, PayPal or webmail providers. Spam emails masquerading as security checks are then …

   The Register 23 Jul 10:52

   Spitzer 'scope spots Buckyballs in spaaace

   Carbon-60 confirmed in distant nebula

   NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has sniffed out Carbon-60 molecules in a distant nebula - the first detection of "Buckyballs" in outer space. A team led by astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute, unexpectedly spotted the miniature footballs in planetary nebula dubbed Tc 1. A …

   The Register 23 Jul 10:47

   HP to pitch Windows Slate at Big Biz

   WebOS tablets, netbooks for consumers

   HP has confirmed that its Windows 7-based Slate 500 tablet hasn't been canned and will be pitched at big biz customers this coming autumn. HP's plan, mentioned to Engadget, is no great surprise. As we noted earlier this week, HP's acquisition of Palm led many observers to assume that the Slate 500 might be replaced, before its …

   reghardware 23 Jul 10:22

   Canvas chairman gives up Phorm job

   Kip Meek to appoint CEO

   Kip Meek has been appointed chairman of the Canvas company, and will lead the hunt for a CEO for the TV platform. He'll be giving up his non-executive directorships at the Broadband Stakeholder Group and Phorm. Meek's association with the latter raised a few eyebrows when he was linked with the post recently - Canvas boxes will …

   The Register 23 Jul 10:21

   Unpatched shortcut vuln exploited by mainstream malware

   'Bottom feeders' latch onto zero-day bug

   Virus writers have begun using the unpatched shortcut flaw in Windows first exploited by the Stuxnet worm, which targets power plant control systems, to create malware that infects the general population of vulnerable Windows machines. Slovakian security firm Eset reports the appearance of two malware strains that exploit …

   The Register 23 Jul 10:13

   Country plods still not carrying mobile data devices

   Seven forces have no digital coppers at all

   Police forces across England and Wales have wildly differing attitudes to the use of mobile-data gadgets. Almost 45,000 "hand-held IT devices" are in use by plods up and down the land, but seven forces have issued none at all. The league table of gadgets issued by forces was released yesterday in answer to a written …

   The Register 23 Jul 10:06

   iPhones dialling up premium-rate bills again

   It's enough to make one side with Apple

   AdMob has been placing premium-rate numbers into iPhone applications again, this time in an application targeted at kids, who are even more likely than adults to hit the link without noticing. The application concerned is "Talking Tom Cat". The free app records the user's voice, and plays it back with comedy animations to the …

   The Register 23 Jul 09:38

   NAND flash bottleneck being blown away

   Thank you Samsung and Toshiba

   A looming NAND flash memory bottleneck will be pre-empted by a tenfold increase in data rate due to a new industry standard being promoted by Samsung and Toshiba. NAND chips in use today generally use a 40Mbit/s single data rate (SDR) interface. There is a toggle double data rate (DDR) 1.0 specification which provides 133Mbit/ …

   The Register 23 Jul 09:32

   Voting reform finally on the agenda

   How fair MPs want the system is debatable

   The opening salvoes of the 2015 general election were fired this week, with publication of the wording of a proposed referendum on alternative voting, to take place next year. The question that will be put to voters was announced by Deputy PM Nick Clegg and published for the first time yesterday in the Parliamentary Voting …

   The Register 23 Jul 09:26

   OFT outlines plans to protect online shoppers

   Punters need scam education

   UK consumers still need to be educated about online shopping to prevent them falling victim to scams and problems, consumer protection regulator the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said. The OFT has published plans to improve the protections available for consumers when they are shopping online. It does not recommend the …

   Channel Register 23 Jul 09:21

   Dell blames staff for malware infection

   Bloody humans

   Dell said human error was to blame for mistakes which led it to ship a number of replacement server motherboards to customers pre-loaded with spyware. The company declined to say whether it was running anti-virus software at its factory but said it had taken 16 steps to improve processes. The infection hit replacement …

   The Register 23 Jul 08:23

   HDS coy about future compression tech

   Who, us?

   Hitachi Data Systems doesn't have its own compression/deduplication technology but looks set to get it. Dell is buying Ocarina for such technology and HDS is the array supplier holdout, as competitors EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp each have their own technology for data reduction. What is HDS going to do? Senior executives are …

   The Register 23 Jul 07:59

   Premium rate rants plummet again

   I just called to say I hate you rather less

   The number of complaints to premium rate phone regulator PhonepayPlus (PPP) dropped by 52 per cent in the last year, it has said. PPP said it received 11,249 complaints in 2009/10, down from 23,244 the previous year. PPP, which regulates the premium rate services industry under powers granted by telecoms watchdog Ofcom, has …

   The Register 23 Jul 07:02

   Acer beTouch E400 Android smartphone

   Review HTC beater?

   Acer is fully committed to producing smartphones, but seems to be slightly schizophrenic in its approach. There are devices in the Liquid range, which tote Android and are nicely high end, devices in the neoTouch range which run Windows Mobile, and devices in the beTouch range which again run Android and occupy the mid to lower …

   reghardware 23 Jul 07:02

   Google offers IE users faster Wave gravy

   OSCON Splash it all over

   Microsoft web surfers have been promised faster helpings of Wave gravy following Google's release of Splash. Splash is an open-source client for Internet Explorer users to view and consume Google Wave applications and conversations embedded in websites. It replaces use of Google's Chrome Frame – the IE plug-in that the company …

   The Register 23 Jul 04:37

   Overland Storage overhauls tape library and SnapServers

   Bigger tape library and SnapServer

   Overland Storage has announced a larger and LTO-5-supporting NEO tape library as well as a higher-capacity SnapServer. These are two evolutionary product moves by Overland and it's good to see the company improving its products as it climbs out of a period of poor company revenue performance. The NEO 8000e supports the latest …

   The Register 23 Jul 01:59

   Apple, Google, NASA, and the Rainbow connection

   Roger Penrose's Silicon Valley crash pad

   When Sir Roger Penrose visited Silicon Valley this spring, he stopped off at Google, NASA, and the Rainbow Mansion. But he spent most of his time at Rainbow, Silicon Valley's answer to the 17th-century French salon. Penrose — the English mathematical physicist renowned for his work on general relativity and cosmology — gave a …

   The Register 23 Jul 01:13

   IBM launches zEnterprise 196 'data center in a box'

   Mainframe battles back

   IBM has launched its next-generation System z mainframe, the zEnterprise 196. Now we will get to find out, in the next few quarters or so, if the mainframe business still has some legs and can grow or the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 has permanently knocked it down a peg or two. At the launch event today in New York, IBM's …

   The Register 23 Jul 00:45

   Microsoft 'record' results beat Jedi mind trickery

   Cloud company you are not

   Microsoft has reported record financial results for the quarter ending June 30, and the big money maker was Windows. Despite attempts at Jedi mind trickery involving cloud services, the company remains firmly wedded to the earth-bound PC. Revenue for Windows jumped 43 per cent during the company's fiscal fourth quarter, to $4. …

   The Register 23 Jul 00:22