24th June 2004 Archive

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Penis pill peddler stiffs AOL spam insider

Employee sells 92m names

An AOL employee has been arrested and charged with conspiracy, after selling 92 million screen names to an Internet gambling operator in Las Vegas. 24-year-old Jason Smathers found out how to access what the charges describe as AOL's "highly secure database" when he was assigned another employee's laptop PC. All the instructions …

Spam 24 Jun 2004, 00:32
Microsoft patents the body electric

Humans, pets as power supplies

After you shake hands with Microsoft, according to the company's critics, count your fingers. But the warning can be seen in a whole new light after Redmond was granted a patent for "transmitting power and data using the human body". It's a technology first demonstrated and patented by IBM in 1996, when Lou Gerstner used Comdex …

Science 24 Jun 2004, 02:41
Tyan to ship Socket T mobos next quarter

Unveils i915, i925-based boards

Mobo maker Tyan this week launched itself into the Socket T market with a pair of motherboards based on Intel's new i915 and i925 chipsets, better known as Grantsdale and Alderwood. The Tomcat i915 is based on the i915G integrated chipset, which incorporates Intel's third-generation Media Graphics Accelerator 900 engine, with …

Channel 24 Jun 2004, 08:41
Intel Wi-Fi module trims Centrino prices

Updated Launches new Pentium Ms too

Intel yesterday announced a pair of new 90nm Pentium M processors, this time extending the line downwards. The chip giant also brought in a host of Centrino bundles, not only based on the new PMs, but adding its 802.11b/g wireless adaptor to the 90nm PMs it launched in May this year. The PMs launched this week are the 715 and …

Channel 24 Jun 2004, 09:06
Taiwan notebook makers 'unwilling' to sell Athlon 64 kit locally

US, Europe more important

Taiwanese notebook makers are reluctant to offer AMD Athlon 64-based machines under their own names, according to insider sources cited by DigiTimes, who claim that Asia-Pacific buyers prefer Intel-based notebooks. AMD needs to address this issue, but the unwillingness of manufacturers to offer own-brand 64-bit notebooks is …

Channel 24 Jun 2004, 09:34
Sony, PalmOne and the death of the PDA?

The beginning of the end?

Sony pulls out of PDA market shouts the headlines - but why should they be expected to be there forever? Certainly their percentage of PDA market share figures were good, and the design of the Sony devices was excellent as always. I'm a huge fan of Sony's industrial design prowess. But as is often the case, it's not about the …

Mobile 24 Jun 2004, 09:45
MSN hikes Hotmail storage

My inbox is bigger than yours

Microsoft's MSN today entered the email storage race, upping inbox limits for non-paying Hotmail customers to 250MB - 125 times bigger than today. The upgrade has been prompted by Google's entry into the free email game. The search company upped the ante in April, when it announced beta tests for Gmail, a service offering 1GB …

Financial News 24 Jun 2004, 09:45
eBayer fires salvo at PS2-vending mum

Distributing clue to parent

The mother who sold her son's PS2 on eBay has received an online admonition from a fellow eBayer. Those readers who wrote in after our original piece to point out the linguistic deficiencies of the enraged mum's auction blurb will be delighted that the seller of a "new parenting clue" has well and truly taken her to task on the …

Bootnotes 24 Jun 2004, 09:46
Feds urge secrecy over network outages

No 'virtual road map' for terrorists

Giving the public too many details about significant network service outages could present cyberterrorists with a "virtual road map" to targeting critical infrastructures, according to the US Department of Homeland Security, which this month urged regulators to keep such information secret. At issue is an FCC proposal that …

Enterprise Security 24 Jun 2004, 09:46
When spyware crosses the line

Punting porn to children

One of my friends called me in a panic the other day. It seems his eight-year-old daughter was surfing the Internet, searching for Barbie dolls, games designed for children, and other things of interest to eight-year-old girls, when something bad popped up on the screen. She may not have understood what she saw, but she knew it …

Malware 24 Jun 2004, 09:47
BT's phone network hit by 'illicit access'

Punters billed for premium-rate XXX action

BT has admitted that someone has gained "illicit access" to its network after half the homes in Norfolk village Thurne were billed for calls made to premium-rate XXX phone numbers. The cluster of calls - which wildly inflated bills of those hit - happened in the middle of the night during early May. At first, BT didn't believe …

Telecoms 24 Jun 2004, 10:02
MS to request stay of EC ruling

Delaying action pending appeal

Microsoft is to ask for a stay of the EC ruling that it must share information with its competitors, pending its appeal. The full appeal process - already filed with the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg - is legally complex and could take as long as five years to complete. A decision on a stay could be made much more …

Operating Systems 24 Jun 2004, 10:07
Napster pays BestBuy $10m to promote music service

But cash registers will still ring up iPod sales

Napster has followed its joint-marketing deal with British high street consumer electronics retailer Dixons by signing a similar promotional arrangement with US giant Best Buy. In return for promoting Napster as its "leading" - but not, you'll note, 'only' - digital music service, Best Buy will receive $10m worth of shares from …

Financial News 24 Jun 2004, 10:10
Java Database Connection and RMI

Register Training A new course for get-ahead Java bods

The Register's new Training Site has proved to be hugely popular with readers, and today we're taking the opportunity to highlight a new course: Java Database Connection and RMI. According to the blurb: The JDBC API is the industry standard for database-independent connectivity between the Java programming language and a wide …

Site News 24 Jun 2004, 10:50
'Leaked' Xbox 2 spec no hoax, claim developers

And if it is, it's close enough to the truth

The controversy over what will be included in Microsoft's second-generation Xbox console continued yesterday with the publication across the Net a purported internal Microsoft whitepaper describing the console's specifications. Opinion is divided as to whether the document, said to come from the pen of Pete Isensee, Xbox …

Consoles 24 Jun 2004, 11:14
Oracle-Peoplesoft merger will boost competition - SAP

Counter-intuitive testimony

An senior SAP executive has testified that a merger between Oracle and Peoplesoft would increase competition in the enterprise software market. Combined with Microsoft's evident expansion into the sector, the testimony could strengthen Oracle's case in its fight with the Department of Justice, which moved to block the buy …

Applications 24 Jun 2004, 11:38
Accenture wins £400m Barclays outsourcing gig

In brief Inherits 900 staff

Barclays has appointed Accenture to run its banking systems applications development in a six-year £400m deal. The outsourcing contract will see 900 bank staff handed over to Accenture under TUPE rules. So jobs and benefits should be safe for two years. No-one appears to be complaining - banking union Unifi says the deal was …

IT Director 24 Jun 2004, 11:52
AOL splashes $435m on Advertising.com

Ad-tastic

America Online (AOL) is to splash out $435m (£240m) cash to buy online ad outfit Advertising.com. The deal is expected to be completed by late Summer - subject to the usual checks - and should help boost advertising revenues for the Internet giant. Combining AOL's own advertising inventory with the Advertising.com network will …

Financial News 24 Jun 2004, 11:58
Cisco sued in Wi-Fi patent clash

All your 802.11g, WiMAX are belong to us

Canadian wireless technology licensing company Wi-LAN has begun legal action against Cisco, alleging the networking giant's Linksys and Aironet products are making use of its intellectual property without permission. It wants the court to force Cisco to license the technology and to pay unspecified "punitive damages". At issue …

Wireless 24 Jun 2004, 12:04
If Slot A is Athlon, is Slot B Bi-Athlon?

It was five years ago today... 24 June 1999

Short, sweet and pleasing - that's today's dip into the well of history: If Slot A is Athlon, is Slot B Bi-Athlon? By Team Register Published Wednesday 23rd June 1999 11:13 GMT A reader points out Athlon is AMD's uniprocessor, and that should make Slot B, which we announced at the end of last week, the Bi-Athlon. He also …

Bootnotes 24 Jun 2004, 12:09
We have the knife for the man who has everything

Cash'n'Carrion Polished silver Victorinox Classic

If you're the kind of person who has climbed to the very pinnacle of the achievement tree and has the trophies to prove it - Bentley, beach house in Bermuda, motor cruiser on a Roman Abramovich scale - then you will definitely need to get your hands on the latest Victorinox knife from Cash'n'Carrion. The Victorinox Classic …

Site News 24 Jun 2004, 12:28
Sony Ericsson Vodafone-only phone to go Live! in July

F500i tied into MMS package

Sony Ericsson will begin selling its first Vodafone-only handset next month. The F500i is tied into Vodafone's Live! multimedia service, so naturally it features an integrated digicam with 4x digital zoom and a dedicated activation button on the side of the handset. Snaps can be edited and have special effects applied directly …

Mobile 24 Jun 2004, 12:37
ABIT AS8 Socket T mobo with AGP

Review New CPUs meet old(ish) graphics cards

With all the fuss about the new Intel chipsets, DDR 2 memory, new CPUs and PCI Express, one might wonder if there is a path for people who want to upgrade their PC, but want to stick with their AGP graphics card and DDR memory. The good news is that ABIT already has a product ready if you fancy a new Socket T processor, but don' …

Reviews 24 Jun 2004, 13:08
Fancy appearing in Hitchhiker's Guide movie?

Yes? Get your skates on then

If you fancy winning a spot as an extra on the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then you'd better get your camera out and your skates on. The BBC is holding a competition which asks entrants to submit "a photograph of the place on Earth you think deserves to survive the planet's destruction". One lucky …

Bootnotes 24 Jun 2004, 13:12
IT outsourcing goes east

Unlike the Village People

Could Oymyakon in eastern Siberia - named the world's coldest inhabited village according to Guinness World Records - ever be the Silicon Valley of the future? It's not as unlikely as it sounds. Analysts see the early signs of an eastward migration of white-collar jobs in IT services. Polish company ComArch, the country's third …

Hardware 24 Jun 2004, 13:16
Germany tops porn Web hosting superleague

Excluding the US, that is

Germany is the Web host with the most - at least in terms of pornography. The .de TLD boasts 10,030,200 pages of smut, beating the UK's 8,506,800 pages into the runners-up spot. That's according to Secure Computing, which has just carried out a study of the global distribution of pornographic web pages by the top 100 individual …

Music and Media 24 Jun 2004, 13:55
Calling a BT Bluephone could cost you dear

Telco undecided on tariff charges

People phoning BT's yet-to-be-launched "Bluephone" service could be stung for the cost of a mobile phone call - even if the Bluephone they're calling is connected to BT's fixed-line network. So far BT is keeping mum on pricing for the new service and will not say whether it plans to differentiate the cost of calling a Bluephone …

Telecoms 24 Jun 2004, 14:08
Britain's Web presence to be saved

Stop those Net pages dropping like flies

A group of British archiving and educational institutions, including the British Library and the National Archives, have come together with the aim of preserving a record of Britain's Web presence. The UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) is the latest of several online archiving projects, and follows in the footsteps of high …

Music and Media 24 Jun 2004, 14:32
Shuttle shows Socket T SFF PCs

Bare bones, bare bones, dem bare bones...

Taiwanese small form-factor barebones PC specialist Shuttle this week said it was adding Intel's new i915G chipset - one of the Grantsdale family - to its XPC desktop line-up. Two machines are getting the new chipset: the SB81P and the SB83G5 - the former the world's first SFF PC with a Socket T processor, Shuttle claims. Both …

Channel 24 Jun 2004, 15:28
ESA on mission to surf gravity's waves

Pathfinder craft to test Einstein prediction

A UK company has won the contract to build the heart of an ESA experiment designed to detect gravity waves, predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. The Lisa (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) Pathfinder mission, scheduled for launch in 2008, is a precursor to the main event. The Lisa mission itself could …

Science 24 Jun 2004, 16:31
BOFH and the workplace hazards

Episode 20 Bloody lucky we had a health and safety bloke

What the hell's that?" the PFY asks as he enters Mission Control, narrowly missing a huge pile of paper just inside the door. "That would be the identified hazards in our workplace," I reply. "What the BLOODY HELL are they playing at?!" the PFY snaps, echoing my own frustration. "They've been annoying us for more than a …

BOFH 24 Jun 2004, 21:07
Programming pioneer Bob Bemer dies at 84

ASCII, ESC, /, COBOL, Y2K, RIP

Bob Bemer - the man who helped bring ASCII, the ESCape and backslash keys, and Y2K warnings to the world - died this week at his home on Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas. Bemer, 84, died as a result of cancer, his stepson told the AP. During his storied career, Bemer worked at RAND Corp. Marquardt, Lockheed, IBM, Univac, Bull, …

Bootnotes 24 Jun 2004, 22:21