Daniel Robinson, V3.co.uk, Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 13:17:00

Customers can dynamically change CPU, memory and storage as needed

UK hosting provider Fasthosts has introduced a range of virtual server options that allows customers dynamically to adjust the configuration to meet changing business needs.

Available now, Fasthosts Virtual Servers offer a Windows Server 2008 R2 instance that can be configured with up to four virtual CPUs, from 1GB to 16GB of memory and up to 1TB of storage.

Customers can select from a range of suggested configurations, or design a server by choosing capacity, processor power and control settings, the firm said, all of which can be dynamically adjusted without losing data or functionality.

Readjusting the server means that the user pays only for the resources they need, according to Fasthosts.

Prices start at £29.32 per month for an entry-level package with one CPU, 1GB RAM and 80GB disk space. All packages have 100Mbit/s connectivity, with unlimited bandwidth.

Fasthosts is using a datacentre infrastructure based on quad-core Intel Xeon kit and Microsoft's Hyper-V platform to deliver its new service, while customer deployment control of the virtual server is provided by Parallels Plesk 9.

Fasthosts chief marketing officer Steve Holford expects to see virtual servers become a popular choice for even the most demanding users.

"As a long-standing expert for Microsoft web hosting, we have taken our time to invest in and develop a range of virtual servers that deliver the performance and strength traditionally seen only with dedicated server hardware," he said.

James Murray, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 12:24:00

New report predicts that skills shortages, investment uncertainty and planning delays could cripple nuclear build programme

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMech) has today warned that the government's plan for a "renaissance" in low carbon nuclear power is in danger of stalling as a result of skills shortages, planning barriers and funding issues.

In a major new report the group predicted that, without increased investment in training programmes, the acceleration of planning processes and measures to incentivise investment in new reactors, the UK will not meet the government's target of building 10 new nuclear power stations over the next 15 years, the first of which is expected to come online by 2017.

The government last year announced high profile plans to develop a new fleet of reactors in the UK as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions and enhance energy security.

Ten new sites have been provisionally approved, while many of the UK's leading energy firms have confirmed plans to build new reactors and begun work on planning applications.

However, environmental groups are also preparing a host of legal challenges to the government's nuclear plans and, according to the IMech report, the strategy is already falling behind schedule.

The report states that, while the government has set a goal of producing 25GW of nuclear electricity by 2025, the industry has just this year cut back its nuclear connection plans by 28 per cent to 18.4GW. It warns that this figure could drop further to just 13GW once plans are finalised.

The report recommends that the government strengthens the investment case for new nuclear reactors by either guaranteeing a floor price for carbon through the emissions trading scheme in order to improve the competitiveness of low carbon energy sources, or offering loan guarantees to developers.

It also argues that, with each nuclear power plant expected to require 10,000 workers, including highly skilled engineers, the government should increase investment in skills development as part of a new training programme that would identify the "vital occupations" needed to develop low carbon infrastructure.

"Industry may well perceive government's good intentions towards a low carbon economy as nothing more than that," said Dr Tim Fox, head of energy and environment at IMech.

"For the nuclear energy sector to have the confidence to invest tens of billions in new plants or technologies, it will need strong and binding commitment, delivered in actions that will last, whichever party enters into power."

The report warned that, without greater support for new nuclear projects, the UK risked seeing emissions rise during the 2020s as all but one of Britain's 10 operating nuclear reactors are retired, and energy firms undertake a second " dash-for-gas" in an attempt to keep the lights on.

David Neal, V3.co.uk, Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 12:07:00

Jonathan Schwartz dishes the dirt on Steve Jobs

Former Sun Microsystems chief executive Jonathan Schwartz has revealed that both Microsoft and Apple threatened to sue his firm over alleged intellectual property theft.

Schwartz said in his first post on a new blog, entitled Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal, that he "feels for Google" because Apple chief executive Steve Jobs had "threatened to sue me too".

Schwartz then detailed a phone call from Jobs in which the Apple boss attempted to flex his litigious muscles.

According to the blog post, Jobs had called Schwartz to discuss a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass that he said was "stepping all over Apple's intellectual property", and that Jobs would sue if Sun commercialised the product.

Schwartz said in the blog post that his response was simple. "'Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence. Do you own that intellectual property? And last time I checked, Mac OS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few operating system patents too.' Steve was silent," he wrote.

Soon after this episode, Schwartz got to see Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in action as the pair tried to get Sun to pay royalties for OpenOffice.

"Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice," said Gates, according to the post.

Schwartz wrote: "Bill was delivering a slightly more sophisticated variant of the threat Steve [Jobs] had made, but he had a different solution in mind. 'We're happy to get you under licence.' That was code for: 'We'll go away if you pay us a royalty for every download.'"

Schwartz described this as "the digital version of a protection racket".

"When companies turn to litigation, you know they are concerned about their position in the marketplace and the impact of competing products," wrote Schwartz, adding that such activity often backfires regardless of the court's decision.

"For a technology company, going on the offensive with software patents seems like an act of desperation, relying on the courts instead of the marketplace," said Schwartz.

"Having watched this movie play out many times, suing a competitor typically makes them more relevant, not less. Developers I know aren't getting less interested in Google's Android platform, they're getting more interested. Apple's actions are enhancing that interest."

Sector inspector

Western Digital is to help Windows XP users more easily make the transition to so-called '4K' hard drive technology, the new standard for basic drive formatting.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Rachel Fielding, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 11:20:00

Team from IBM and Stanford University claim polymer breakthrough could result in a new plastic that can be recycled numerous times without weakening

Scientists at IBM and Stanford University announced this week that they have discovered a way to make plastic that can be continuously recycled, potentially slashing the amount of waste sent to landfill sites.

Current limitations in recycling and material technology mean that common plastics used in water bottles and food containers weaken so much when recycled that they cannot be used again for the same purpose.

While a small amount of the recycled plastic might make it into another bottle, more often than not it will be turned into another product such as synthetic carpet or clothing that cannot easily be recycled for a second time. As a result many plastics tend to be recycled only once before ending up in landfill sites.

However, according to a paper published in Macromolecules, a journal of the American Chemical Society, scientists have developed a new type of polymer that addresses the problem by using organic catalysts instead of the metal oxide or metal hydroxide catalysts typically used in plastic.

Chandrasekhar Narayan, who leads IBM's science and technology team at its Almaden Research Centre in San José, California, told Green Inc blog in The New York Times that it is the metal-based catalysts that are behind the degradation of recycled plastics.

"When you try to take a product and recycle it, the metal in the polymer continues to degrade the polymer so it gets increasingly less strong," he explained. "If you use organic reactants, you can make certain types of new polymers that are quite different and have other properties plastics don't have. "

The researchers said that the organic catalysts could be used to create a new class of biodegradable plastics to replace those that are difficult to recycle, such as polyethylene terephthalate. They added that the new technology means recycled plastic bottles could be converted to higher value plastics like body panels for cars.

Narayan said that biodegradable versions of the plastic could also be used as drug delivery devices for cancer patients.

"The pharma industry has a lot of good drugs on the shelf that they can't use because they are very toxic," he said. "You could encapsulate drugs in a bioplastic polymer and deliver them directly to the cancer site. The polymer degrades locally at the site and releases the cargo."

The organic catalysts used in the new plastics would have the additional advantage of being relatively cheap to produce.

The announcement has potentially significant implications for the huge quantities of plastics thrown away every year, and the researchers are now planning a larger pilot project at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, home to Saudi Arabia's national laboratories.

The team said that the technology could be commercially available within five years if the pilot goes well.