24th November 2003 Archive

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Dutch blogsites fight cyberwar against spammer

Shock and awe

Dutch blogsites Retecool.com, Volkomenkut.com and Bastard-inc.com got a taste of their own medicine last Friday after they declared cyberwar on US spam firm Customerblast.com. The weblogs, known for their satirical pranks, had written a script of war to push Customerblast off the web with sustained distributed denial of service …

Security 24 Nov 2003, 09:58
Racism makes you thick – official

Sadly, no PDA-based cure for this one

Following our report last week that low self esteem can shrink your brain, we have been informed of another threat to IQ - racism. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, researchers at Dartmouth College in the US have found that "interracial interactions are cognitively demanding". In short, racism makes you thick. To …

Bootnotes 24 Nov 2003, 09:59
Numbers to be patentable

Stob 10, 9, 8, miss out ‘thing’

In a move that has surprised naïve observers, the US Patent Office has announced that from now on it will consider ‘serious’ applications to patent specific integer numbers. "It was the logical next step," grey-haired and twinkling Patent Laureate Mr J Dall Swanhuffer twinkled to a shocked press conference today. "Remember …

Bootnotes 24 Nov 2003, 10:30
US man threatens anthrax attack on spammers

Spam rage vigilante really didn't want a larger penis

A computer programmer from Sunnyvale, California faces up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine after being arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of a spam company, Yahoo! News reports. Charles Booher, 44, apparently snapped after his computer was deluged with ads offering a larger penis and, presumably not …

Music and Media 24 Nov 2003, 10:31
Exploit Code on Trial

Publicity shots

Security pros gathering at a Stanford University Law School conference on responsible vulnerability disclosure Saturday harmonized on the principle that vendors should be privately notified of holes in their products, and given at least some time to produce a patch before any public disclosure is made. But there was pronounced …

Anti-Virus 24 Nov 2003, 11:01
Check your sums, Debian advises developers after breach

GNU/Linux hacked

Servers hosting the GNU/Linux source code for the Debian project have been compromised, and project leads are advising developers to place close attention to their checksums. While it isn't certain that source code has been tampered with, the intrusion has caused the delay to a point release of the distro, release 3.0r2. …

Software 24 Nov 2003, 11:02
O2 to honour returning England Rugby team

'Proud sponsors'

O2 - sponsors of the world-beating England rugby team that walloped the Wallabies on Saturday - is talking to the Rugby Football Union (RFU) about honouring the returning team. A spokesman for O2 declined to say what it had up its sleeve except to say that the plans "had not been finalised yet". However, O2 did manage to …

Mobile 24 Nov 2003, 11:15
Aussies triumph with online dunny map

Who needs the Rugby World Cup?

Well, our Australian cousins may not have the Rugby World Cup, but they do have something which should be the envy of any civilised nation - a National Public Toilet Map. This outstanding initiative, brought to cross-legged and desperate Aussies by the superbly-named National Continence Management Strategy, is claimed to enable …

Bootnotes 24 Nov 2003, 11:19
MS scorns Israeli OpenOffice defection

'Immature and unproven software package'

The Israeli Ministry of Commerce - essentially the treasury - has suspended all contracts with Microsoft. First out of the door is the Israeli employment agency, which will replace 550 out of 700 users with OpenOffice. The contract represents a hardware win for IBM. Some 150 staff will stay on Microsoft Office. For now, all the …

Software 24 Nov 2003, 12:34
MS faces EU shackles on Media Player, Windows servers

Beast goes into 'good to talk' phase

A bruising antitrust hearing in Brussels two weeks ago has left Microsoft and its agents expressing even more interest in a settlement, but it's difficult to see how the company - notoriously and self-righteously intransigent in these and so many other situations - can bring itself to offer enough for the European Commission to …

Software 24 Nov 2003, 12:44
Road Runner update

Black Helicopters

On Monday we wrote: "Media giant Time Warner appears to be censoring subscribers to its Road Runner Net access service by corrupting newsgroup messages it fears contain pirated material." Road Runner messages 'censored', newsgroups complain Time Warner Cable has at last contacted The Register to tell us the reason for the …

Site News 24 Nov 2003, 12:44
Grid Computing for real

Things your PC can't do (yet)

For the first time supercomputers in the UK and the US have been linked to carry out a larger than life scientific experiment. During the Supercomputing 2003 conference last week in Phoenix, Arizona, Three of the most powerful computing resources in the world worked in parallel with each other (using optical bandwidth from BT …

Servers 24 Nov 2003, 12:57
Next-gen console unveilings in spring '04?

So say rumour sites

A number of Internet news sites have claimed that Microsoft and Sony will take the wraps off their next generation console offerings at events next spring - but what exactly might be shown is not discussed. Rumour reporting site C&VG was first out of the blocks with a story stating that Microsoft will show its next console, …

Personal 24 Nov 2003, 13:24
118 866 behind Thus' DQ flop

'Regrettable'

The company that provided directory enquiries (DQ) services for Thus said it is "regrettable" that the Scottish telco decided to pull out of the market. Thus, best known for its Demon Internet brand, announced on Friday that it was exiting the 118 DQ business to "protect its reputation". Its decision followed a damning report …

Telecoms 24 Nov 2003, 13:31
Parlez vous Umlaut?

IDNs from March 1

Good news for all Müllers, Jägers or Schröders in Germany. They will no longer have to write out their surnames as mueller.de, jaeger.de or schroeder.de if they want to use them for Internet domain names. Starting 1 March 2004, domains with Umlauts and other additional letters (so called IDNs) can be registered under the Top …

Music and Media 24 Nov 2003, 14:13
Princeton open-source hater a loose cannon

Boss distances Uni from small-fry geek

By now most of us are acquainted with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's recent PR rant at the Gartner Fall Symposium in Orlando, where he dismissed open-source developers as a lot of teenage hobbyists with questionable motives. "The vulnerabilities are there [in open source software]. The fact that somebody in the middle of the …

Software 24 Nov 2003, 14:52
Reg Review Dell Axim x3i Wi-Fi Pocket PC

Dell's first foray into the PDA world, the Axim x5, was big, bulky and frankly no looker, but with a price tag of just a few hundred bucks, no one could complain. Indeed, there have been few grumbles: the x5's price and the Dell brand have pushed the PC maker's share of the global PDA market to 5.5 per cent and it has taken 7.6 …

Reviews 24 Nov 2003, 14:56
BT Mobile appoints chief exec

That's all

BT has appointed former One 2 One (UK) exec Steven Evans as chief exec of its new mobile service. If he's to succeed, Evans, 48, will have to develop "new and innovative services" in the mobile market. while growing BT Mobile's customer base and revenues. BT announced in the summer that it was re-entering the mobile telecoms …

Mobile 24 Nov 2003, 14:58
US anti-spam bill edges towards law

Will it work?

The US anti-spam bill moved closer to approval at the weekend after securing the overwhelming support of the House of Representatives. Congressional representatives voted 392-5 in favour of the Can-Spam Act 2003. Can-Spam, a modification of measures already approved by Senate, is expected to find little opposition from that …

Security 24 Nov 2003, 15:08
What WAN technology is right for your business?

Briefing WAN bam, thank you MAN

For the majority of enterprise corporates Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructures will form one of their biggest operational expenses in terms of total cost of networking ownership. Given this fact, selecting the most appropriate wide area solution - or indeed combination of solutions - is a choice that firms cannot afford to …

Data Networking 24 Nov 2003, 16:25
DSL shipments soar

Growth predicted to continue

The sale of DSL gear is breaking all records as more and more people hook up to high-speed Net access. Overall, the total number of digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) port shipments topped 12.4 million units in Q3 - a 182 per cent increase from the same period a year ago. Worldwide customer premise equipment ( …

Telecoms 24 Nov 2003, 16:26
Will December make or break the Internet?

Geneva world summit could change the world

There are always defining moments in anything’s lifetime and the Internet is no exception. A meeting in Geneva on 10-12 December promises to be one of them - to define what is, what was and what shall become of the global electronic medium known as the Internet. The World Summit on the Information Society, organised by the …

Music and Media 24 Nov 2003, 16:36
Voodoo ships first DirectX 9 ‘Centrino’ notebook

Reg Kit Watch Well, Pentium M, anyway

Notebook VoodooPC last week launched what it claims is the world's first Centrino-class notebook with DirectX 9 graphics support. The Envy m:460 isn't a true Centrino machine - it simply uses Intel's Pentium M processor, offered at 1.4GHz to 1.7GHz. VoodooPC will provide an Intel Centrino 802.11b wireless card, but it's …

Personal 24 Nov 2003, 17:04
Former HP/Compaq server guru heads to Nokia

Compaq clan shrinking

Nokia is the latest company to raid HP's executive ranks, signing up Mary McDowell to head its mobile enterprise business. McDowell takes on the official role of senior vice president and general manager of enterprise solutions at Nokia. The exec recently left HP where she was SVP of strategy and corporate development. Over the …

Servers 24 Nov 2003, 18:45
Intel talks up 65nm process with SRAM cell demo

But don't mention 90nm...

Intel is having a tough time convincing the world that it's 90nm chip manufacturing process hasn't run into difficulties, so it's already starting the public relations offensive intended to push its upcoming 65nm process, due to go live in 2005. The chip giant today said it had built a working array of memory cells using said …

Channel 24 Nov 2003, 22:10
Nigerian fraudsters ‘shop early for Xmas’

Bogus cheque scam targets UK resellers

African fraudsters are attempting to fleece UK computer resellers in the run up to Christmas with scams involving counterfeit cheques and bogus credit card payments. The Register has learned that one reseller specialising in audio-visual products has received bogus payments totalling £100,000 this month. This is not an isolated …

Channel 24 Nov 2003, 22:18