The Week’s Headlines
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Wednesday, 25 November 2009
'Black box for buses' datachip survives 900° conflag
Tech so secret, even DHS project chief knows naught
Dastardly terrorists and/or incompetent drivers can no longer hope that the evidence of their catastrophic misdeeds, recorded by security cameras aboard public transport, will be erased in the hellish conflagrations following train wrecks and bus crashes. That's because the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has …
Data Direct offers native file system
Nehalem replaces FPGA hardware
DataDirect, a shipper of very high-speed block-access storage to the high performance computing (HPC) and media worlds, is now offering native file access. The company has seen the way two winds are blowing. The first is that multi-core commodity CPUs are outpacing what it can do with its in-house FPGA hardware. The second …
EMC stages $100m international reorganisation
One holding company to bind them all
EMC is reorganising its various international operations into a single holding company and repatriating $4bn to EMC USA at a cost of $100m in taxes. The bare details are laid out in a November 18 SEC filing. This says EMC will transfer: Certain assets of its RSA and Data Domain entities and legacy foreign corporations owned …
OCZ promising USB 3 desktop SSD
Partnering with Symwave
The dreary wait for slow desktop and notebook booting could be halted in its tracks for those with USB 3 interfaces and and cash, as OCZ is developing a fast and large capacity USB 3 SSD. What's happening is that OCZ is getting together with Symwave, a supplier of USB 3.0 silicon, to add a USB 3 interface to a desktop solid …
Satyam investigation jacks up fraud bill by 40 per cent
Money was funnelled into land, houses
The Satyam Computer Services scandal has flared back into life with allegations that the fraud perpetuated at the firm was 40 per cent bigger than previously thought. India's Central Bureau of Investigation released a supplementary charge sheet today which claims that the ten people it says were behind the scam inflated …
Unified networking: Reality or a marketing myth?
We all know that the IT Infrastructure has a life of its own. In the vast majority of organisations the infrastructure evolves over time rather than being designed as a whole. This applie s to all of the underlying components: the servers, the storage and -an area very easy to overlook - the network or networks that tie …
US senators tell EC: Butt out of Oracle-Sun
Damn foreigners unfairly impeding US business
John Kerry, Orrin Hatch and 57 other senators have written to the European Commission accusing it of taking too long to approve Oracle's takeover of Sun in order to deliberately damage US business. In an open letter Senator John Kerry (Mass) said: "The EC is within its sovereign rights to set the rules for operation in its …
Xiotech definitely not using SSDs in near future
Are we clear on that?
A Xiotech blog post says unequivocally that Xiotech will not be using solid state drives (SSDs) in its Emprise arrays in the near future. The post, made to rebut a Techopsguys blog, is written as though it comes from someone like Jim MacDonald, Xiotech's new Chief Strategy Officer, although it is not attributed to any …
Apple wants life ban for clone maker
No sequel for Psystar
Apple is seeking a permanent injunction to stop Psystar ever again selling cloned Mac software or hardware. Apple won a recent injunction but wants this to be extended to cover Snow Leopard, because otherwise Psystar will not stop copying its intellectual property. The company is also seeking damages and attorney fees. It is …
Man guilty of selling fake chips to US Navy
Go tell it to the Marines fella
A 32-year-old California man has pleaded guilty to selling thousands of counterfeit computer processors to the US Navy. Neil Felahy of Newport Coast, California pleaded guilty to conspiracy and trafficking in counterfeit goods charges. As part of a plea bargain Felahy has agreed to co-operate with the US authorities. He faces …
Wikipedia bans Volvo's IT over racist rants
Swedish vandalism
Wikipedia has banned editing from machines inside Volvo Information Technology - the outfit that operates the Swedish auto maker's IT infrastructure - after someone in the organization vandalized the free encyclopedia with a pair of profanity-laden racist rants. Yesterday, an anonymous Wikifiddler sitting behind the IP address …
Apple sues over knock-off power bricks
Imitation not flattery
Apple has sued a California company for alleging infringing a laptop AC-adapter patent granted to Cupertino in 2003. And they may have already won. Filed in federal court on Monday, the suit alleges that the California company, Media Solutions Holdings, infringes on Apple design patent entitled simply "Power adapter" which …
Why can't Google be more like Microsoft?
Chrome OS and the wonders of closed open source
Jeff Haynie has a wish. He wishes that when building an operating system, Google was as open as Microsoft. Or at least as open as Apple. He's well aware that Google likes to open source Android code. He realizes the company just freed code for an early version of its netbook-happy Chrome OS. And, yes, he heard über-Googler …
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Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Adaptec sacks sales chief, boots CEO from board
Gotta Steel yourself
Adaptec has suddenly fired John Noellert, its worldwide sales boss, and Adaptec's CEO has been voted off the board. Adaptec is the server I/O adapter company that has been struggling to make profits and lost a boardroom and investor battle two weeks ago when activist investor Steel Partners gained control of the board in a …
HP floats Q4 profit on services biz
Everything else takes a swim
Hewlett-Packard's profits grew 14 per cent in the fiscal fourth quarter, boosted by corporate cost-cutting and solid performance by its enormous services unit. The vendor's successes helped offset major losses in revenue in just about everything that's not services, including consumer PCs; enterprise storage and servers; …
HP storage looking limp
Comment NetApp revenues could overtake it
HP's fourth quarter storage results show that NetApp is catching it up on a revenue basis. HP made $918m from its storage business in its fourth fiscal 2009 quarter, while NetApp recorded $910m. A year ago HP earned $1.15bn though, whereas NetApp made $908.4m, with HP showing a 20 per cent year-on-year decline and NetApp …
HP takes one in the servers
Comment Hurd hails 3Com 'convergence'
Well, it looks the enterprise slammed on the server spending brakes a lot quicker and a lot harder than smaller outfits this fall. HP released its fourth quarter earnings yesterday, and its Enterprise Storage and Servers group took a serious hit, with sales down 16.6 per cent to $4.22bn in the quarter ended October 31. The …
LinkedIn wedges open API door
Developers need key first, mind
LinkedIn has opened its platform to developers who are prepared to try and pass a rigorous application process. Previously the business-oriented social networking site only offered a select bunch of partners access to its Web 2.0 platform, which many use as a CV hub and biz man stalking tool. LinkedIn, which claims about 50m …
Imation notebook flash upgrade as easy as pi to 30 places
This isn't rocket science... it's brain surgery!
You now have the option of pepping up your sorry notebook by using an Imation solid state drive (SSD) upgrade kit, but only if you are happy getting inside its casing and swapping out its hard drive for the SSD. The aim is to replace the HDD with an Imation M-Class 2.5-inch SSD, with either 64G or 128GB capacity. The upgrade …
Corel begs for survival by giving takeover thumbs up
As long as I know how to love I know I'll stay alive
WordPerfect maker Corel Corp confirmed yesterday that its majority investor, Vector Capital, planned to take the software vendor private in an effort to prevent a default on loans. The firm filed an amendment with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. It said it had expanded, added and clarified “certain …
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Monday, 23 November 2009
Drobo restrings boxes to double-up product range
New storage boxes are bigger on the inside
Data Robotics has added two new products, enhancing both the basic Drobo and the more capable Drobo Pro. It now claims to provide the simplest and best value iSCSI SAN in the world. Drobo has - had - two products; the basic Drobo and Drobo Pro. These provide a protected and consolidated pool of storage that can withstand drive …
Fusion-io whips out fast gov-grade ioDrive
Cramming eight on a card
Fusion-io has put eight of its ioDrives on a single PCIe card to produce 800,000 IOPS and 6GB/sec bandwidth. The ioDrive is a NAND flash solid state drive (SSD) that sits on a PCIe X4 card and comes with 80 or 120GB of single level cell (SLC) flash or 320GB of slower but cheaper multi-level cell (MLC) flash. These ioDrives …
Imation ships wirelessly-connected hard drive
USB 2.0 wireless
Imation has announced its external hard drive that connects by wireless USB to PCs and Macs is now shipping. The Pro WX Wireless USB hard drive comes in a 3.5in form-factor and holds up to 1.5TB of data. It is based on Imation's Apollo external hard drive platform fitted with a USB wireless facility that talks on a one-to-one …
O/S bloat: What's the cure?
Comment Code belly's gonna get you
It is becoming increasingly obvious that a virtual server wastes great chunks of its memory occupied by the operating system wrappers around the applications in the virtual machines (VM) running in the physical server. If each VM occupies 50MB, and 20MB of that is the Windows O/S, then around 40 per cent of the servers's DRAM …
Credit crunch? It won't be over by Christmas
Cheap credit is over and its not coming back, says CBI
The impact of the recession on British businesses may well be permanent, and will certainly last until well into the next decade, the UK's union for bosses has declared. The downturn has had four major impacts on UK firms, according to business lobby group the Confederation of British Industry. British business does not …
PC sales bounce up (and down)
Netbooks drag year-end uptick
The box counters at Gartner have revised their PC shipment estimates for 2009, saying that PC makers did better than expected pumping out machines in the third quarter. But because average selling prices are falling - thanks in part to the advent of cheap netbooks and general price erosion across all PC types - sales are still …
Symantec Japan website bamboozled by hacker
Plaintext passwords revealed
A Symantec-run website was vulnerable to Blind SQL Injection problems that reportedly exposes a wealth of potentially sensitive information. Romanian hacker Unu used off-the-shelf tools (Pangolin and sqlmap) to steal a glimpse at the database behind Symantec's Japanese website. A peek at the Symantec store revealed by the hack …
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Saturday, 21 November 2009
SQL Server 2008 - from semi-relational to sublime
Review Inside Microsoft's R2 preview
SQL Server 2008 R2 is a step closer to reality. On the heels of August's first code drop, Microsoft has released a second, more-fully-featured community technology preview (CTP) of its next database server. It promises a number of things, including improved business intelligence through database changes and integration with …
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Friday, 20 November 2009
Atrato replaces sales boss - again
To lose one is unfortunate, to lose two looks like carelessness
Atrato has replaced its sales VP, Marty Sos, after just three months, and recruited a marketing VP as well. Marty Sos joined Atrato, which makes disk drive storage arrays with canisters of 2.5-inch drives, in late August this year, having left collapsed optical disk drive and archive vendor Plasmon. He's now VP of sales at …
Datacentre black box recorder gets take-off cash
$9m series B funding round
Axxana - the startup manufacturing the Phoenix RP black box data centre data recorder which can withstand a jumbo jet crash - has just received $9m in a funding round to help it take off. The Phoenix RP hardened box receives real-time data in the data centre and asynchronously replicates it to a remote site for complete data …
IBM chases HP (and Sun) with tiny mem prices
AIX pipeline lubrication
In an effort to boost the amount of money that IBM is getting from competitive takeouts of Unix systems from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, Big Blue has taken a sharp machete to the memory prices on its Power Systems, reducing prices by between 28 and 70 per cent. The Power Systems line of servers is based on IBM's …
Riverbed going virtually into public cloud
Virtual Steelhead speeds iSCSI WAN traffic
WAN optimiser Riverbed has announced virtual Steelhead for the cloud and a way to speed up iSCSI data traffic. Riverbed's Steelhead is a physical appliance that sites inline at the entry/exit port to a data centre and speeds wide area network (WAN) traffic to and from the data centre. It co-operates with another Steelhead at …
Asus serves up Windows 7 Home Server box
Updated 2TB of on-board storage - add more using eSata
Asus has taken the wraps off a home server build out of an Atom processor and up to 2TB of internal storage. The Home Server TS Mini uses the 1.66GHz Atom N280 allied with 1-2GB of 800MHz DDR 2 memory to run Windows 7 Home Server. Asus' Home Server TS Mini: bionic nettop, basically On-board storage slots into a pair of 3. …
Dell is beat by The Street
Awaits Win7 bonanza
Dell released its financial results for Q3 ended 30 October on Thursday, and for its troubles, it took a beating in after hours trading. The good news is that the company remains profitable. The bad news is that those profits have sunk 54 per cent since last year - and were 5 cents a share worse than analyst estimates. And …
Ballmer waxes lyrical about Windows 7 double bubble sales
Shy about numbers, mind
Microsoft’s shouty boss Steve Ballmer made a few big noises about Windows 7 sales yesterday, by declaring it was jumping off retail shelves at twice the level of its unloved Vista operating system. However, he didn’t reveal any sales figures during the firm’s annual shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington on Thursday. “ …
Google Chrome OS - do we want another monoculture?
Microsoft ball breakers. Strings attached
Yes, Google has open-sourced Chrome OS, its much-discussed browser-based operating system. But as usual, the open sourcing only says so much about its openness. After all, this isn't something you can load on any PC. And it's not much of an operating system. You can't load local applications - not even one. As part of its …
Google Wave relies on kindness of strangers
Dreamforce 09 Copy our cloud, please
Google has been stumping for its Wave real-time collaboration system among the Salesforce.com faithful. Wave lead business development manager Jeff Eddies told Dreamforce the search behemoth needs their support for Wave to succeed. Unveiled in May, Wave is still in an embryonic state. Google's manager told Salesforce.com …
Hackers free Snow Leopard from Jobsian cage
Apple Atomness restored
Snow Leopard users are once again free to run the Apple operating system on hardware with Atom processors, courtesy of hackers in Russia. A custom version of OS 10.6.2 distributed here works around changes introduced earlier this month that prevented the latest OS X version from running on the Intel netbook processor. A …
Major IE8 flaw makes 'safe' sites unsafe
Exclusive Microsoft's XSS buster busted
The latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser contains a bug that can enable serious security attacks against websites that are otherwise safe. The flaw in IE 8 can be exploited to introduce XSS, or cross-site scripting, errors on webpages that are otherwise safe, according to two Register sources, who discussed …
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Thursday, 19 November 2009
IBM greases mainframe app pipe
System zware boost
IBM is sweeping cobwebs off big iron with a host of new software products and updates aimed at streamlining maintenance and squeezing more workloads out of the System z mainframe. The company said System z has renewed life as a platform for its cost-cutting and consolidation values, but alas, software today requires better …
NetApp doubles profits ahead of Fujitsu love-in
Mighty strong quarter there
NetApp recorded more than doubled profits for its second fiscal 2010 quarter, out-performing its largest competitors and beating its own plans and Wall Street’s expectations alike. Revenues were $910m, essentially flat being down just $1.6m on the year-ago quarter, and up nine per cent sequentially, but net income of $96m was …
Nuke labs show the future of hybrid computing
SC09 Share and share alike
The Hybrid Multicore Consortium is on a mission that perhaps all of computing - on the desktop and in the data center - will one day embark on: making hybrid computing architectures as easy to program and use as monolithic platforms have been. There is a growing consensus - but by no means a complete one - that the future of …
Toshiba plans new enterprise: High capacity 3.5-inch HDDs
Wants to be a bigger player in the big drive market
Toshiba is planning to enter the high-capacity enterprise 3.5-inch hard disk drive market. Toshiba Storage Division Europe hosted a press event in London yesterday, following on the completion of its acquisition of Fujitsu's hard disk drive (HDD) business. Following the acquisition Toshiba has a portfolio of HDDs that are …
Fedora 12 - it's a horse, not a camel
Review Design by committee makes good
The Fedora Project has announced the latest version of its popular open source Linux distribution. Nicknamed Constantine, Fedora 12 has quite a few impressive new features and demonstrates that the project has gained a renewed sense of direction. In the build-up to the release of Fedora 12, the Fedora community has focused its …
IBM squishes systems software into new business unit
Making programs play nice with each other
As is usually the case at IBM, the official convergence is often announced long after various product lines were already well on their way toward a confluence behind the scenes. And so it is with a new unit of Big Blue's Systems and Technology Group, which put all of its operating systems and hypervisor virtualization software …
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