1st November 2007 Archive

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Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

Video 'Sometimes I just turn it off then on again'

The Royal Navy has a long history of backfiring recruiting tactics. Back in the days of the press gang, apparently, there were sometimes expensive lawsuits - the impress law only permitted trained sailors to be pressed, not landsmen, and there were other grounds for dispute. On occasion, too, eighteenth-century naval recruiting …

Enterprise 1 Nov 10:00
Learning Ruby

Book review Hot on syntax

To some, Ruby is going to take over the world. With prominent Java developers and propagandists jumping ship, there has seemed to be no stopping its momentum, particularly in web development. Part of the reason for the popularity with hackers (in the programming sense of the word), is that it's easy for a programmer in an …

Software & Security 1 Nov 10:02
LG fills its DVD rewriter gap

20X writer now available

It may seem unbelievable, but until this week LG didn’t have an external 20x DVD rewriter in its product portfolio. So it’s created one to fill the gap. LG's GSA-E60N/L: 20x writing speeds LG’s GSA-E60N/L Super Multi Drive is USB 2.0 powered and writes to DVD±R discs at 20x speed. Other formats are catered for too, such as …

Reg Hardware 1 Nov 10:16
Developer keeps software rights as implied term argument fails in court

Ownership claim not stated in contract

A company's claim for ownership of the copyright in a piece of software has failed because it was not explicitly stated in a contract. Meridian International Services had said that its ownership was an implied term of an agreement. The High Court said the company failed to prove that its ownership of the material was a term of …

Software & Security 1 Nov 10:51
Computerland predicts 'satisfactory' year

Sailing by

Computerland UK sounded steady as she goes in an interim trading statement this morning. The reseller and services group said its managed services, project services and product supply businesses had seen strong trading, and revenues and profits should be up on last year. Pre-tax profits for the six months to October 31 should …

IT Channel 1 Nov 10:52
Qimonda samples GDDR 5

Hold up, we're only just adopting version 4

Memory maker Qimonda has begun sampling GDDR 5 video-memory chips, producing what it claimed today was the world's first 512Mb part. Like past GDDR revisions, GDDR 5 ups the maximum available data transfer rate between video memory and GPU - to 20GB/s, in this case. Error compensation, adaptive interface timing and the ability …

PC Builder 1 Nov 11:04
Pirate Bay aims to sink BitTorrent

File-sharing arms race

The buccaneers of Pirate Bay are working on a replacement for the BitTorrent protocol in fear their access to free music, video and software could be blocked by commercial interests. The Swedish anti-copyright collective is building a new P2P system aimed at reducing the influence of BitTorrent's inventor Bram Cohen and the …

Software & Security 1 Nov 11:33
Fujitsu Siemens says bye-bye to VXA

SNW While Infortrend says hello to 2.5-inch RAID

The storage side of Fujitsu Siemens Computers has given VXA tape the heave-ho, dumping it in favour of LTO. The company has brought out two new models in its FibreCAT range of storage systems, aimed at SMEs. While the FibreCAT SX88 disk box is mostly a faster version of its predecessor, the TX08 backup system represents a …

PC Builder 1 Nov 11:37
Microsoft to search browsers for JavaScript compatibility

Online irony

Microsoft's Internet Explorer unit has started the Herculean - and ironic - task of identifying which leading browsers work properly with JavaScript. The company's JScript development team has promised to crawl through the guts of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0.0.5, Opera 9.02 and Safari 3.0 running on the 32-bit edition of …

Software & Security 1 Nov 12:02
Asus intros 'quietest' HD DVD drive

Sssshhh...

Asus has launched an add-in HD DVD drive for PCs, pitching the product as a quietest of its kind - handy for folk building living-room systems. Asus' HR-0205T: Ssshhh... The HR-0205T is a read-only unit that can handled single- and dual-layer HD DVD media, and single-layer HD DVD-R discs, all at 2.4x. It'll also read all the …

PC Builder 1 Nov 12:41
Lenovo ditches IBM from ThinkPad early

IB-who?

Lenovo, the desktop maker formerly known as IBM, is celebrating a solid set of quarterly results by announcing it will drop IBM's logo from its Think brand two years early. Revenue for the quarter ended 30 September was up 20 per cent to $4.4bn and profit before tax and restructuring costs was $125m, up from $45m last year. …

PC Builder 1 Nov 15:31
Acer and HP patent rumble rumbles on

Lawsuits aplenty

A patent dispute between two of the world's top computer vendors continued apace yesterday, with Acer confirming that it planned to once again counter sue Hewlett-Packard (HP). Taiwan-based Acer, which looks set to be ranked third in the world among PC vendors following its imminent takeover of Gateway, said it had filed patent …

PC Builder 1 Nov 15:40
Half-petaflop IBM BlueGene supercomputer plan announced

Open source supercomp OS next year

IBM will provide extra processing power to the US Department of Energy (DOE)'s Argonne National Lab, quintupling Argonne's power to 556 trillion floating point operations per second (teraflops)by using Blue Gene/P supercomputer tech. “[Argonne Lab] has been a valuable contributor in the development of Blue Gene/P,” said Leo …

Enterprise 1 Nov 15:51
IBM launches $1.5bn IT security push

Compliance and control

IBM has launched a major push to grow its presence in the information security market. The initiative is centered around two particular areas - compliance and content control - and weaves together technologies from recent IBM acquisitions Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Watchfire with technologies developed inhouse, many …

Software & Security 1 Nov 16:16
Web 2.0 - carry on, don't lose your job

Been there, seen that

The IT industry is masterful at recycling old concepts under new names. Web 2.0's transition from the mass market to the enterprise is a case in point. Every aspect of Web 2.0 has its historic parallel. Software as a service (SaaS) providers used to be called time-sharing bureaus. Wikis were content management systems and …

Software & Security 1 Nov 16:20
IEEE powerline networking group selects HomePlug AV

Will choice be confirmed at second ballot?

The IEEE has moved a step closer to establishing the HomePlug AV brand of powerline Ethernet networking as the basis for a future mains networking standard. But its adoption is not yet a certainty. The latest round of balloting on the IEEE P1901 specification took place last month. Two options were put to the vote: a proposal …

Reg Hardware 1 Nov 17:19
Irish man rescued after falling for 419 scam

After being swindled, man traveled to Ghana to recover funds

An Irish man who was kidnapped after falling for an email fraud scam was rescued when police raided a hotel in the capital of Ghana where he was being held captive. James Lafferty, 49, from Ennis, Co Clare, had been held hostage for about five days while kidnappers demanded money for his safe return. He was freed after police …

Software & Security 1 Nov 17:59
Ubuntu laptop clan trapped in hard drive hell

OS 'not to blame' for maniacal disks

The Ubuntu operating system has been charged with crimes against hard drives. A number of users have complained this week about the OS (7.04/7.10) forcing drives to spin up and down at an unnatural rate due to some very aggressive power management features. According to Ubuntu wizards, however, this is a firmware/BIOS issue and …

PC Builder 1 Nov 18:10
Laggard Apple lets Leopard virtualize

Tired of thinking different

Apple has tweaked its Mac OS X Server software license for Leopard, allowing the operating system to run legally in a virtual environment for the first time. The change could be a telling relinquishment of control in Apple's traditional manic dominion of all its gear. Or it's a sign of the Apocalypse. Tough call. We'll know …

Enterprise 1 Nov 18:33
Mandriva bigwig (nearly) accuses Ballmer of b-word

17,000 Nigerian Linux boxes mysteriously switched to Windows

Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon has asked Steve Ballmer what it feels like to look at himself in the mirror. In an open letter to the Microsoft head honcho, posted to the web late last night, Bancilhon claims that the Nigerian government has somehow decided to install Windows on 17,000 brand new PCs already equipped with …

PC Builder 1 Nov 19:17
HP accelerates server accelerator effort

Like code on a rocket ship

Not content to rely on the computing muscle supplied by Intel and AMD, HP has upped its focus on server accelerators. The hardware maker today announced a new program aimed right at incorporating things such as floating point boosters into its machines. The fresh HP Accelerator program joins a Multi-Core Optimization Program …

Enterprise 1 Nov 19:42
Irish jobs safe following HP plant closure

One site fits all

No jobs are expected to be lost as a result of Hewlett-Packard's decision to close its Clonskeagh facility in Ireland, the company said. Yesterday, HP announced plans to consolidate its Clonskeagh, Dublin 14 and Leixlip, Co Kildare facilities on a single site at Liffey Park Technology Campus in Leixlip, which will become the …

IT Channel 1 Nov 22:06
Cisco borgs Securent for $100m

And sprays China with cash

Cisco is dipping into loose change to buy Securent, a Silicon Valley data security startup, for $100m cash. Securent makes software for companies to restrict user access to data on a network, helping prevent sensitive information from falling into nefarious hands. The firm has 57 employees in Mountain View, California, with R …

PC Builder 1 Nov 23:33
Avnet buys Aussie networking distie

ChannelWorx

Avnet today bought itself another distributor, this time a networking and security specialist in Australia called Channelworx. Terms are undisclosed for the company, which pulled in US$30m revenues for the year to June 30. Channelworx is to be integrated into Avnet Technology Solution's Australia business. It brings to the …

IT Channel 1 Nov 23:54