Biting the hand that feeds IT — sci/tech news and views for the world
Updated: 39 min 13 sec ago
UK.gov fishes for ID ideas
Turns to IT suppliers, says 'Er, what do you think?'
Directgov has asked IT suppliers to come up with new thinking on identity verification.…
How much aircraft fatigue is too much?
HPC eases the strain
Here’s another “How HPC saves your worthless hide” type of story - our pals at InsideHPC publicized a collaboration between the Federal Aviation Administration and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) that should increase air safety for people riding on planes and for the people standing around underneath them.…
Cyber-jihadists deface home of teddy bears' picnic
Get their Belvoirs mixed up
Geographically mixed-up Algerian hackers made themselves look rather silly by defacing the website of an English stately home instead of Belvoir Fortress in Israel, their intended target.…
Dixons sales ain't all that
iPads and World Cup should've been a bigger boost
DSGi shares fell very slightly this morning after the company said trading had held steady in the three months ended 24 July.…
Boffins explain greatest ever free kick
Roberto Carlos and his amazing exponential spiral
Scientists have agreeably concluded that Roberto Carlos's 1997 free kick against France - a seemingly impossible blast into the back of the net from 115ft - was not the fluke some have claimed.…
Large companies ignore data centre advice - survey
Feel the need for it though
Large companies across the UK increasingly turn to independent consultants when they want advice on the design and specification of a data centre. Almost all of them then ignore some or all of that advice, according to research released today.…
D-Link DHP-306AV powerline Ethernet adaptor
Network your mains cabling
Review I use a couple of Devolo dLAN AVplus powerline Ethernet adaptors at home, to hook up my wired-only Sony Bravia connected telly to my router. They're great adaptors, but with a pass-through three-pin power socket, they're bulky. D-Link's latest adaptor, the DHP-306AV, offers a more compact alternative.…
MokaFive outs bare-metal PC hypervisor
Somewhere between VMware and Citrix
Disappointed with the ridiculously skinny PC coverage offered by the XenClient bare-metal hypervisor just announced by Citrix Systems? Annoyed that VMware took its Client Virtualization Platform, also a so-called type 1 hypervisor for PCs, out behind the barn and gave it the Old Yeller? Then MokaFive is cooking up something you might find useful.…
New iPod crew: 'Phoney, futuristic, retro, doomed'
Apple admits error shock
Apple has revamped three quarters of its iPod line. Or, more accurately, it upgraded one quarter, redesigned another, took a step back in time with a third, and left the final, not-even-mentioned quarter alone.…
Microsoft locks down Windows Phone 7 code
10 million hours of test
Windows Phone 7 is finally finished.…
Feds crack phone clone scam that cost Sprint $15m
More than 10,000 accounts spoofed
Federal prosecutors have uncovered a scam that used tens of thousands of cloned cellphones to defraud Sprint out of $15m in lost long distance revenue.…
Red Hat in talks to buy JBoss cloud fluffer Makara
Middleware union
Red Hat is in talks to buy a JBoss cloud provisioning startup called Makara, according to a source familiar with the matter.…
SUSE Linux hitches ride on enemy hypervisor
Straddles vSphere in search of cash
VMworld Strange bedfellows VMware and Novell have officially released SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware, a version of Novell's open source OS that piggybacks on every copy of VMware's vSphere hypervisor.…
Apple goes social with musical Ping
Games, networking and music
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has unveiled the next two generations of iOS, updates that will bring multiplayer gaming and high-definition photography to iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches next week and wireless printing and media streaming in November.…
Cray and SGI push upgrades to latest supers
Tickle me, Elmo
Supercomputer makers Cray and Silicon Graphics have done years of engineering to get their respective XE6 and Altix UV 1000 massively parallel supercomputers to market. And now, despite research funding woes among governments, research institutions, and corporations, the two companies face the challenging task of convincing customers of their prior machines to upgrade to the new iron.…
VMware app dev platform gazes beyond SpringSource Java
Eyes Ruby, PHP, .NET
VMworld VMware says that its Cloud Application Platform – a means of building and deploying applications that has grown up around the SpringSource Java framework – will eventually embrace other programming languages, including Ruby-on-Rails, PHP, and perhaps .NET.…
Microsoft releases FixIt for critical flaw in 100 apps
Relief for Firefox, Nvidia, PowerPoint
Microsoft has released a software tool that helps system administrators protect PCs against a critical class of vulnerabilities found in more than 100 applications from a variety of software makers.…
LightSquared illuminates 'partners' on US 4G roll out
America has a middle?
Wholesale 4G network LightSquared is planning to start deployment in the middle of the USA and then spread to the coasts, according to documents sent out to potential partners.…
We've been here before: MS tweaks volume licensing site again
Partners prep brollies for November rain
Microsoft will once again overhaul its error-prone volume licensing website in November, following months of glitches with the portal since Redmond relaunched it late last year.…
Tosh has tiniest flash bits
24nm? It's what you do with it that counts, etc
Toshiba has started mass-producing NAND flash ships using a 24nm process, and is offering the world's smallest 8GB flash chips.…
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