23rd June 2009 Archive
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Wikiland gets Euro data center
Amsterdam hub
Update: Originally, this article said this was Wikimedia's first European data center. It is not. The not-for-profit's projects have had Euro support in the past. Wikiland is adding a European data center. On Monday, the Wikimedia Foundation - the not-for-profit behind Wikipedia and other Wikiprojects - said it will set up …
Music and Media 23 Jun 01:30
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Top 500 supers - world yawns at petaflops
Not the norm. But getting there
The annual International Supercomputing Conference kicked off this morning in Hamburg, Germany, with the announcement of the 33rd edition of the Top 500 supercomputer rankings. While petaflops-scale machines are far from normal, they soon will be. Not surprisingly, HPC vendors and academics are gearing up to try to push …
Servers 23 Jun 07:02
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Asus Crosshair III Formula AM3
Review Top-notch gaming performance
Asus sent us a Crosshair III Socket AM3 Phenom motherboard to use when we tested the Republic of Gamers OC Station. This seemed like a questionable idea as it meant we were testing a £125 accessory on a £137 motherboard. To our mind, it made better sense to match the OC Station with the £299 Rampage II Extreme or a £190 …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 08:02
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Asus Republic of Gamers OC Station control box
Review Bios tinkering made simple and sweet?
The Republic of Gamers OC Station is an intriguing motherboard accessory that works as a control centre for your mobo without any of that nasty Bios business. It also handles overclocking duties. That’s what the OC stands for, see? Asus' Republic of Gamers OC Station: inspired by Polaroid - or a car radio? The OC Station …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 08:02
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Seagate polishes BlackArmor range
Panoply of disk drives
Seagate has added low-end models to the BlackArmor range and is introducing a 640GB 2.5-inch FreeAgent drive. The BlackArmor NAS range was announced in March, with two models offering automatic and continuous backup for up to 50 PCs. The 4-bay, 4-drive NAS 440 offered 4 - 8TB capacity using Barracuda SATA drives. The NAS 240 …
Storage 23 Jun 08:02
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NASA takes stick over feet and inches
Go metric, agency urged
NASA's insistence on sticking to pounds, feet and inches in its Constellation programme "could derail efforts to develop a globalised civilian space industry", New Scientist reports. Leading the fight to bring NASA into the metric fold is Mike Gold of the US civilian space outfit Bigelow Aerospace. His company is "dedicated to …
Space 23 Jun 09:07
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Manchester council caned over school data breach
Must do better
Manchester City Council has been rapped over the knuckles for the loss of two laptops containing sensitive personal information on teachers and workers at local schools. The local authority was sent to detention obliged to sign a promise to improve its performance following the loss of two unencrypted machines from the Town …
Enterprise Security 23 Jun 09:09
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Apple hikes MacBook SATA speed
3gig is the magic number
Remember the MacBook SATA degrade, meaning affected MacBooks could only operate SATA at 1.5Gbit/s, potentially slowing down SSD MacBook Pros? It's been fixed in a somewhat grudging manner by Apple. The MacBook Pro EFI firmware update 1.7: "allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbps, Apple has not qualified or …
Channel Register 23 Jun 09:18
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11 Time Lords plan charity shindig
Doctor Who special to unite every incarnation
The BBC will unite every incarnation of Doctor Who for a one-off Children in Need special in November - with new Time Lord Matt Smith making his debut alongside William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. That's …
Entertainment 23 Jun 09:19
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Rockstar to launch Grand Theft Auto on... UMD
Chinatown Wars coming to PSP
Gaming firm Rockstar has announced that GTA: ChinaTown Wars is to be launched onto the PlayStation Portable. GTA: Chinatown Wars is coming to the PSP Set for release this Autumn, the latest version of the previously Nintendo DS-only game has undergone several changes in order to bring it up to PSP quality, Rockstar claimed …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 09:20
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Kodak cuts the cord on latest digital frame
Perfect for sharing?
It’s probably been a while since you last sat around the family photo album. But Kodak is trying to bring those days back, with a digital frame that’s supposedly ideal for sharing. Kodak's S730: has a one-hour battery The S730’s integrated rechargeable battery pack enables you to bring the frame from its usual shelf-side …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 09:25
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Mitsubishi slashes iMiEV's price
Leccy Tech 50 per cent off within six years
Mitsubishi has announced plans to slash the price of its e-cars by 50 per cent over the next six years. Although the iMiEV is currently Mitsubishi’s only e-car in production, the firm’s President, Osamu Masuko, has promised that the leccy car’s price will drop from its current cost of ¥4.59m (£29,100/$47,800/&Euro;34,400) to …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 09:38
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Notorious spammer Ralsky pleads guilty to stock scam
Father and son-in-law spammers face slammer
Notorious spammer Alan Ralsky faces up to 87 months' imprisonment after pleading guilty to participation in a pump-and-dump stock spam scam. Ralsky, 64, of West Bloomfield, Michigan and four accomplices pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiracy to various wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and CAN-SPAM Act offences, as part …
Spam 23 Jun 10:05
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LSI hauled to court for trade libel
SanDisk tires of licence claims, bleating letters
SanDisk has got so hacked off at LSI's claims of patent infringement and threatening letters to SanDisk's customers that it's suing the company for trade libel. In its suit, filed last Friday in Northern District of California's US District Court, NAND flash and digital music player supplier SanDisk says LSI Corporation …
Channel Register 23 Jun 10:07
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Nokia to use Intel mobile chips?
'Significant' announcement due this afternoon
Nokia is to start using Intel chips in its mobile devices, it has been claimed. Intel is certainly making what it calls a "significant" announcement this afternoon, but Bloomberg said this morning that someone tipped it off that Anand Chandrasekher, the senior VP and General Manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, will say …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 10:10
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Social networking big boys must bow to EU data laws
The Fat Data Controllers
Social networking sites are legally responsible for their users' privacy, Europe's privacy watchdogs have confirmed. A committee of data protection regulators has said that the sites are 'data controllers', with all the legal obligations that brings. Users of the sites are also data controllers with legal obligations when they …
Enterprise Security 23 Jun 10:19
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Musk hits out at co-founder's Tesla Roadster allegations
Denies he insisted on '$140m door latch'
Famed PayPal hecamillionaire and space rocket kingpin Elon Musk has issued a personal retort to the lawsuit recently mounted against him by fellow co-founder of electrocar maker Tesla Motors, Martin Eberhard. In the lawsuit, mounted in the California superior court, Eberhard claims he has been repeatedly slandered by Musk, and …
Science 23 Jun 10:21
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Surveillance response 'inadequate', say Lords
Upper house forced to do Government's job for them again
The Government's response to a Parliamentary report on the monitoring and legislation surrounding surveillance is "inadequate" and it has "paid insufficient attention" to the report's recommendations, a follow up report has said. The House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution produced a report earlier this year which …
Government 23 Jun 10:29
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Toshiba hopes for 3D flash chip within three years
Very small drill needed for 16 layer hole
Toshiba has developed a 3-dimensional NAND flash chip using 2 bit multi-level cell technology. The basic idea is to stack layers of flash memory atop one another to build a higher capacity chip more cheaply than by integrating the same number of cells into a single layer chip. The stacked chip would also occupy a smaller area …
PCs & Chips 23 Jun 10:36
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Rebrand ahoy for tainted Satyam
Just like renaming Windscale as Sellafield
Indian outsourcer Satyam is to rebrand itself in order to draw a line under the revenue-boosting shenanigans of its ex-chief executive and founder, who is still awaiting trial. Ramalinga Raju admitted falsely inflating Satyam revenues by about $1bn. He is still awaiting trial along with two auditors from PwC accused of signing …
Channel Register 23 Jun 10:43
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A Geeks Guide2 ...The Illustrated Network
40% discount at Reg Books
Geeks Guide2 Due to the speed of progression in the networking industry, technologies often come and go without a hint of a whimper. However, our trusted friend TCP/IP has stuck around for over 35 years and with IPv6 seems set to remain for years to come. With this in mind, GG2 explores the book The Illustrated Network: How TCP …
Data Networking 23 Jun 10:51
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DARPA seeking Genesis-style godware capability
Self-organising Tetris AIs, smart-vat superlife on cards
US military wacky-professor bureau DARPA has outdone itself this time, issuing a request for "intelligent" electronic components and chemicals which can "self-organise" themselves to form complex items such as routers, fuel cells, biofuel factories or medical drugs. Indeed, reading between the lines it appears as though the …
Science 23 Jun 11:04
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Punters 'confuse' netbooks with notebooks
Bad news for vendors, not users
Guess what: ordinary folk don't know the difference between netbooks and notebooks, at least as far as the functionality of the two types of laptop go. That's the conclusion of a survey carried out in the US by local market watcher NPD. Almost 600 people took part in the online survey, though how many of them own netbooks, NPD …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 11:09
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Lenovo test drives 'roll cage' PC
Tougher than The Stig?
A thin profile and lightweight design are often the preserve of netbooks and high-end Macs, so Lenovo’s bucked the trend with a 14.1in ThinkPad that, it claimed, offers both those qualities and more. Lenovo's T400: with roll cage lid The T400s was “inspired by” Lenovo’s skinny X300 laptop, the firm said, and so is a super- …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 11:17
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Nokia Siemens clamps down on Iran snoop claims
Nothing to see here
Nokia Siemens Networks has denied it provided Iran with any special snooping equipment or capabilities when it helped install mobile networks in the country. But the company concedes it did provide lawful intercept capabilities - as it does in the UK, US and most of the rest of the world. In fact this "Lawful Intercept" is …
Telecoms 23 Jun 11:21
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Firm digs up iPhone 3.0 gaming 'bone'
Fetch?
Do iPhone owners love their games as much as dogs love bones? We’ve no idea, but peripherals firm 22Moo hopes to find out by launching a bone-shaped controller compatible with Apple’s latest iPhone OS – version 3.0. 22Moo's GameBone Pro: bona The GameBone Pro looks a lot like the Xbox 360’s controller – given the …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 11:30
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Kodak to kill Kodachrome
74-year-old film brand faces final spool
Production of Kodak’s historic Kodachrome colour film will end later this year, the company has announced. Kodachrome film has been produced by Kodak for the past 74 years, but the firm admitted that the popularity of newer films and digital photography have seen Kodachrome sales slump to account for “just a fraction of one …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 11:40
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Alleged Craigslist killer pleads not guilty
Long wait for trial
The alleged "Craigslist killer" Philip Markoff has pleaded not guilty to the murder of a woman he allegedly met through Craigslist. Apart from the 14 April murder of masseuse Julissa Brisman at the Copley Marriot, Markoff is also accused of the armed robbery of a Las Vegas prostitute on 10 April and assaulting and robbing a …
Law 23 Jun 11:53
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HTC Touch Pro2
Review The Windows Mobile iPhone antidote?
We were expecting the HTC Touch Pro2 to emerge around the same time as its cousin the Diamond2 back in April, but it looks like the wait has done the Pro2 good. Not least of its charms is a new version of HTC's TouchFLO 3D interface, which further relegates Windows Mobile to the background, but there's also a slide-out Qwerty …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 11:57
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Vodafone offers customers chance to pay for own infrastructure
Femtocell World Summit Let's hope rail companies don't pick up on the idea
Vodafone surprised delegates at today's Femtocell Summit by announcing that from the first of July, UK customers will be able to buy their own Femtocell, thereby extending Vodafone's network through their own broadband connection. Femtocells are tiny base stations, GSM in this case, which connect to a broadband connection and …
Data Networking 23 Jun 12:18
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MPs slam 'disgraceful' Type 45 destroyers
Analysis You don't know the half of it, Mr Leigh
The Royal Navy's new billion-pound Type 45 destroyers are back in the news again for unfortunate reasons, with the head of an influential parliamentary committee saying it's "disgraceful" that they will enter service without their French-supplied primary weapons ever having been fired from the ships. The Royal Navy's first …
Government 23 Jun 12:22
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Consumers think netbooks are notebooks
Terminological confusion
Customers are perplexed about the terminology currently used by different tech vendors when it comes to understanding the difference between netbooks and notebooks, a new study has found. The confusion is causing frustration among many consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook, only to find it lacked the …
Channel Register 23 Jun 12:28
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Ministry of Defence offers luvvies reprieve
Military all that stands between theatricals and free market
UK regulator Ofcom has published detailed proposals for the entertainment industry's spectrum usage, making it clear that the Program Makers and Special Events crowd will be thrown to the open market come 2018. PMSE users connect microphones, talkback systems and wireless cameras over radio spectrum licensed from the JFMG ( …
Wireless 23 Jun 12:37
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MySpace squeezes out two thirds of international staff
From MySpace to NoSpace
MySpace is slashing two thirds of its international workforce and bringing the axe down on at least four of of its international offices. The cuts will mean its international workforce dropping from 450 to 150 people. The global bloodletting comes a week after the Rupert Murdoch-owned social networking site said it would dump …
Music and Media 23 Jun 12:45
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Street View projects Woolworths through temporal portal
Sic transit gloria Woolies
Here's a good one for those of you who might have considered the time-shifting capabilities of Google's Street View: An impressive example of how to project a Woolworths store through a temporal portal... That's the Edgware Road branch of Woolies in London, seen in better days and evidently unaware of the terrible fate which …
Bootnotes 23 Jun 13:02
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Nine-ball attack splits security researchers
Ruck over whether figures stack up
Security researchers are split over the seriousness of a web attack dubbed "Nine-ball" which broke onto the internet last week. Websense last week reported a web attack dubbed "Nine-ball", a moniker derived from the name of ninetorag.in, one of the malware hosts associated with the assault, had claimed 40,000 website victims …
Enterprise Security 23 Jun 13:28
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Demanding times for storage platforms
Regcast Download at your leisure
Our Regcast “Storage Platforms and Business Advantage” is now available on-demand . Our experts look at the pressures that ever-changing business requirements place on storage platforms. And the panel discusses the solutions that help to better align storage performance, protection and availability with business needs. Over …
Storage 23 Jun 13:30
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Transformers helmsman demolishes English language
Pearl Harbor sucked... and so does your grammar
A whiny email from Transformers director Michael Bay to bosses at Paramount Studio pits the recreator of Optimus Prime against the rules of English grammar. The electronic missive (pdf), sent in May and leaked to gossip site TMZ, takes issue with Paramount's alleged lack of effort in promoting Transformers: Revenge of the …
Entertainment 23 Jun 13:47
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Freetard Prof faces fine, jail
And the trial hasn't even begun
Harvard professor Charlie Nesson's loony-tunes defence tactics in a file-sharing case against the US record industry may land him in the clink. The 69-year old co-founder of the New Age think-tank the Berkman Center, is defending former student Joel Tenenbaum in a copyright infringement case, using Harvard undergrads to do the …
Music and Media 23 Jun 14:10
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Recession will destroy 40,000 UK IT services jobs
They won't come back till 2013
Just under 40,000 UK IT services jobs are expected to disappear by 2010, although then the sector will slowly begin to recover. In 2008 there were 559,000 people employed in IT services - this is expected to fall to 542,000 this year, 522,000 in 2010 before rising to 528,000 in 2011. Not until 2013, when there should be 573, …
Financial News 23 Jun 14:22
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JustGiving.com website goes titsup after upgrade
Better to give than receive
Update: This story originally referred to JustGiving as a not-for-profit. It is not. Online charity outfit JustGiving has been hit by a series of major glitches since it launched a new website last Saturday morning. The organisation admitted deployment had been less than smooth and the site continues to have a number of “ …
IT Director 23 Jun 14:49
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Dreamliner first flight delayed yet again
Boeing's 787 woes continue
Boeing has announced the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner will not now go ahead on 30 June as planned due to "a need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft". The company's press release explains: "The need was identified during the recent regularly scheduled tests on the full-scale static test …
Science 23 Jun 15:26
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Nokia to develop Intel-based pocket internet gadgets
Pair to pool Linux resources
Intel and Nokia will jointly develop x86 CPUs, chipsets and a "user-friendly pocketable" internet access device to put the parts in, the two giants said today. The new platform will go "beyond today’s smartphones, notebooks and netbooks", they proclaimed. But to us it sounds a lot like the Mobile Internet Device (MID) notion …
Reg Hardware 23 Jun 15:37
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Steve Jobs spotted at Apple HQ
Black turtleneck, jeans
Steve Jobs was spotted yesterday at Apple headquarters. According to Reuters, the Apple co-founder was seen leaving the company's Cupertino, California campus dressed in, yes, a black turtleneck and jeans. And some Apple employees couldn't help but discuss his long-awaited return with CNBC. It's unclear whether the Apple co- …
Mobile 23 Jun 16:02
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DHS killing satellite self-spying program
Space cops 'not an urgent issue'
America is reportedly abandoning its plans to use satellites to spy on itself. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has decided to nix the Bush-era domestic space security scheme after discussions with law enforcement officials, the Associated Press reports. Citing an unnamed government official, the AP says …
ID 23 Jun 17:09
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Intel and Nokia's brave new world
They have seen the future. And it is Linux
Intel and Nokia today announced a long-term relationship focused on future mobile products, then hosted a conference call with reporters and analysts to discuss why, what, when, where, and how. You can be sure that Redmond is listening closely. Today's discussion was long on why, cagey on what, and noncommittal on when, where …
Mobile 23 Jun 18:44
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Oracle plucks meat from Virtual Iron carcass
Mmm, tastes good to us
Oracle plans to add various Virtual Iron management tools to its Oracle VM product, and the combined offering is scheduled for release "early to mid next calendar year." "With Virtual Iron, we are able to take the pieces that they're very strong at and include that into our virtualization management component," Wim Coekaerts, …
Virtualization 23 Jun 18:46
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Microsoft begins Security Essentials downloads
To Morro comes today
Microsoft has begun offering limited trial downloads of its no-added-cost anti-malware tool, targeted at consumer desktops. Beta versions of Microsoft Security Essentials (formerly codenamed Morro) will be available to 75,000 US, Israeli, and Brazilian customers running XP, Vista, or Windows 7 machines. The software will …
Malware 23 Jun 19:00
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Shutters brought down on mortgage foreclosure racket
Sub-prime scam
A bogus mortgage foreclosure prevention operation that traded in misery has been shut down by a US court. The court acted in an action brought by the Federal Trade Commission against Freedom Foreclosure Prevention Services, Loss Mitigation Training Center of America, Jeffrey C. Segal, and Michael R. Workman. The defendants …
Crime 23 Jun 19:20
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NASA moon-attack probe beams home first lunar shots
Next meeting won't be so friendly
NASA's new lunar probe beamed home images from the far side of the moon early Tuesday as the spacecraft eased into position for slamming down on the surface this October. The $79m Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) lifted off on June 18 along with its sister spacecraft, the $504m Lunar Reconnaissance …
Space 23 Jun 20:29
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Titsup TSA partner closes airport express lanes
You are not in the Clear
America's airport security checkpoints just lost some express lanes. Late last night, Verified Identity Pass shut down its Clear program, a post-9/11 operation that promised to briskly shuttle rich people through security checkpoints in exchange for a yearly fee. Founded by Steven Brill - he of the short-lived navel-gazing pub …
Security 23 Jun 22:06
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Super Micro stuffs super node into pizza box
Thin crust CPU-GPU
Motherboard and whitebox system maker Super Micro is talking up its products at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany this week, including a hybrid Xeon-GPU cluster node, blade servers sporting the new six-core "Istanbul" Opterons, and a baby super workstation. Perhaps the most interesting machine …
Servers 23 Jun 22:32
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Sun buffs InfiniBand for Constellation supers
Over two petaflops sold
The second-generation InfiniBand switch that Sun Microsystems has been showing off since last November made its debut this morning at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany. The new switch - coupled to new servers based on Intel's "Nehalem EP" Xeon 5500 processors as well as existing quad-core "Shanghai …
Servers 23 Jun 22:55
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Web-based Zoho jumps into bed with Microsoft Sharepoint
Add-on does Office collaboration
Zoho wants to bridge the gap between its online productivity apps and traditional in-house office software with a new plug-in that lets Zoho Office users save documents to Microsoft SharePoint. Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint is a software module that temporarily plops documents stored inside Microsoft SharePoint into …
Applications 23 Jun 22:58
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Ruby shines in North American developer survey
Use up 40% from 2008
Ruby use is up 40 per cent amongst North American software developers since 2008, according to a new study from Evans Data. Despite the jump in popularity, Ruby still occupies a relatively small niche in the developer community as a whole, the company says. Only 14 per cent of developers polled in North America use Ruby at …
Developer 23 Jun 23:53
