11th March 2005 Archive

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Nokia nails N-Gage to its perch

Remake, remodel

Nokia has vowed to give the Norwegian Blue of its phone portfolio - the N-Gage console - a fresh lick of paint. "We're looking at new colours, a new look and feel for the QD in the next few months," said Gerard Wiener at the Games Developer Conference, we learn from Tech Digest. Whether that's enough to resuscitate its …

Consoles 11 Mar 2005, 07:54
Intel's Q1 'a little better' than expected

Modest 16 per cent growth

Intel today tightened its first quarter revenue forecast to reflect stronger than usual sales. The chipmaker, during its typical mid-quarter update, said revenue should come in between $9.2bn and $9.4bn. That's at the high end of a previous forecast that ranged between $8.8bn and $9.4bn. Solid microprocessor sales and meaty …

Financial News 11 Mar 2005, 07:55
New SanDisk drive lets your fingers do the storing

Biometric flash

SanDisk is always trying to make the bland idea of a USB storage drive seem as hi-tech as possible. And its latest attempt to make flash flashy comes in the form of a drive equipped with a fingerprint scanner. The Cruzer Profile gives customers that extra bit of security they've always been looking for in a USB storage device. …

Storage 11 Mar 2005, 07:57
Time-drift technique fingers PCs

Is this the end of anonymous net access?

Security researchers have developed a technique for remotely fingerprinting an electronic device using clock skews - small, microscopic deviations in device hardware. In a paper, Remote physical device fingerprinting, Tadayoshi Kohno, lead author and PhD student from the University of California San Diego, explains how the …

Enterprise Security 11 Mar 2005, 08:08
Slim Devices adds 802.11g to wireless MP3 player

Ground-up redesign

Slim Devices will ship the second generation of its Squeezebox wireless music device at the end of the month, the company revealed this week. The appropriately named Squeezebox 2 incorporates more advanced hardware and support for a broader array of audio formats. We were a little disappointed to see that AAC, iTunes' …

Peripherals 11 Mar 2005, 09:21
UK tagging for 'terror plotters' goes live on freed suspects

Here's a restriction we prepared earlier...

The UK's 'tagging for terror suspects' programme began yesterday with the release on bail of one of the Belmarsh detainees. A further eight inmates are expected to be released today, although the legislation under which they are being bailed currently expires at midnight on Sunday. Parliament is today locked in a titanic …

Music and Media 11 Mar 2005, 09:43
Tech Data Q4 profits jump on tax settlement

Sales up

Tech Data had a good fourth quarter, generating revenues of $5.6bn , up 14.2 per cent on the same quarter last year. Net income improved too, up from $38.9m in Q404 (which ended January, 2004) to $59.3m this time around. However, the distie giant was helped along by returning into the profit line $11.5m in previously accrued …

Channel Register 11 Mar 2005, 10:01
MS calls for US patent reform

System threatened, Redmond claims

Microsoft yesterday called for reform of the US patent system, claiming that the long-term health of the system is threatened both by a flood of patent applications and an "explosion of sometimes-abusive litigation". That's how MS general counsel Brad Smith put it during a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in …

Software 11 Mar 2005, 11:04
Massive web trawl nets spammers

Multinational effort

A 'comprehensive' sweep of the net by 70 law enforcement organisations from 26 countries should help authorities combat phishers, spammers and scammers, says a leading consumer protection agency. The co-ordinated trawl last month netted a stack of data and information that authorities plan to use to tackle spammers while …

Spam 11 Mar 2005, 11:09
Global DSL tops 100m

And other broadband stuff

More than 35m new DSL lines were wired up around the world during 2004 as demand for broadband continued to soar. >By the end of 2004 there were 97m DSL lines around the world - an increase of 60 per cent on the year, according to research from PointTopic. China heads the DSL league table with 17m lines - up 4.4m on the year. …

Telecoms 11 Mar 2005, 11:20
MS UK locks in schools via 'special terms' sponsorship deal

DfES takes relaxed view of 'commercial interest'

A sponsorship deal between Microsoft and the Department for Education and Skills has positioned the giant to be the dominant supplier in English schools, and according to Register sources is already causing some schools to cancel open source projects "in case they upset the sponsor [i.e. Microsoft] or the DfES failed their bid …

Software 11 Mar 2005, 11:23
Wi-Fi security is getting worse

Hackers' playground

London businesses are letting the security of their wireless networks slip, leaving themselves exposed to drive-by hacking. More than a third (36 per cent) of London's Wi-Fi networks are fundamentally insecure, RSA Security's fourth annual WLAN security survey reports. Last year the same survey found 15 per cent of networks …

Wireless 11 Mar 2005, 11:37
Fujitsu CTO ponders immortality

CeBIT 2005 Nano nano, I’m going to live for ever

Fujitsu’s CTO came over philosophical at CeBIT yesterday, pondering how nano-technology meant some lucky souls could end up being around as long the plastic parts of the PC you’re reading this on. In a session titled “What’s on the CTO’s mind?”, Joseph Reger speculated on how the coming together of technology and biology may …

Science 11 Mar 2005, 11:54
Yahoo! comes under Xfire

Gaming outfit countersues in IM patent punch-up

Online gaming platform and community Xfire has counterattacked in a IM patent punch-up which saw Yahoo! last month file suit against the company. Yahoo! claims that Xfire - founded by Quake world champion Dennis "Thresh" Fong and former Direct Hit CEO Mike Cassidy - has infringed Patent No. 6,699,125, which describes …

Financial News 11 Mar 2005, 11:55
Sun could plug Sparc into utility grid

Hopes to turn on customers soon

Sun Microsystems could become AMD’s biggest customer as its Opteron-based Sun Grid service takes off in earnest this spring, but the RISC giant may yet use its own Sparc architecture to help power the computing “utility” offering. The $1 per CPU per hour service will be based on 1,000s of two way Opteron processors. Robert …

Servers 11 Mar 2005, 12:03
Samsung unveils 3GB HDD smart phone

CeBIT 2005 Seven megapixel 'professional' camera handset too

Samsung today announced what it claims is the world's first phone with a seven megapixel digital camera built in. And it's not your average phone camera at that. The SCH-V770 provides a 3x optical zoom - and a 5x digital zoom - autofocus facility, flash, full manual mode, 1/2000th of a second shutter speed, and scope to add …

Mobile 11 Mar 2005, 13:21
DVD+RW 8x drives to ship in 'coming months'

CeBIT 2005 16x in the Autumn?

The DVD+RW Alliance yesterday forecast the widespread introduction of 8x DVD+RW hardware and media in Q2 and held out the prospect of 16x speeds in the Autumn. The same timeframe could see the arrival of 16x DVD+R dual-layer (DL) drives and media, the organisation announced this week at CeBIT in an update of its roadmap. Well …

Storage 11 Mar 2005, 13:25
Dyson unleashes self-replicating hoover

Bagless assassin menaces humanity

Those readers living north of the border (that's Scotland, not Canada, btw) are today warned to be on their guard against shifty-looking hoovers with malevolent intent. The reason? Vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson has developed an intelligent hoover which can order its own spare parts. We gather that the Cyberdyneson, sorry, …

Rise of the Machines 11 Mar 2005, 13:27
Corporates tackle security in-house

Too much of a mess to outsource

Eighty per cent of UK businesses concentrate on managing all security risks in-house, but 34 per cent are concerned that access to resources and IT skills affect on their ability to plan effectively. Half of the 300 UK IT managers quizzed in a Unisys-sponsored survey are concerned about issues such as their "capacity to manage" …

Enterprise Security 11 Mar 2005, 13:38
High Court orders ISPs to name file-sharers

Given 14 days to comply

The UK High Court today granted the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) an order under which six UK ISPs must supply the names and addresses of 31 individuals alleged to "have uploaded large numbers of music files on to peer-to-peer filesharing networks", as a BPI press release puts it. The ISPs have 14 days to cough up the …

Music and Media 11 Mar 2005, 14:02
Beer is fattening, say fat beer-swilling readers

Letters Can't raise the dead, though

Our astounding revelation that beer is not in fact fattening raised a few eyebrows among readers who thought we may have cooked the book on this one. Alright, we confess we omitted a few small details which didn't fit our view of beer as the elixir of the gods: Hmm - nice bit of spin by the BBPA (Alistair Campbell doesn't work …

Letters 11 Mar 2005, 14:40
BOFH: Critical Mass of Geeks

Episode 9 She's gonna blow!

So I'm having a quiet lager at a downtown pub whilst waiting for a presentation on wireless networking to start when I notice a brace of Windows geeks all jabbering away to each other. (You know the sort of thing - "I ported Server 2003 to my cellphone in Java in two days - want to browse my file share?" war stories, etc.) I …

BOFH 11 Mar 2005, 14:55
Beware auction sites, says Citizens Advice

Reports rise in fraud complaints

The UK's leading consumer advice charity is warning punters to be careful when buying goods over internet auction sites after seeing a sharp rise in the number of people who've been ripped off by unscrupulous traders. Citizens Advice (CAB) says that people who use auction sites such as eBay have "very little protection" since …

Financial News 11 Mar 2005, 15:24
Mobile phone gunman jailed

Interesting ringtone

A man has been jailed for five years for firing a miniature gun disguised as a mobile phone handset. Two bullets from the miniature weapon were fired last July in a street in Nottingham. Manchester-based Leon Ellison, 26, admitted firing the weapon but said he did it after being stabbed in the back after a late-night scuffle. …

Mobile 11 Mar 2005, 16:15
Madrid plotter used ID stolen from Spanish mint, say police

One of 300 swiped in 2002...

The terrorists responsible for last year's Madrid bombings used at least one genuine ID document stolen from the Spanish Mint, according to a report in elconfidencial.com (Spanish language). Spain, according to UK Immigration Minister Des Browne, regards ID cards as valuable in the fight against terrorism, but this ID was one of …

Music and Media 11 Mar 2005, 16:20
Quantum previews SuperDLT

CeBIT 2005 But looks to LTO for growth

As Quantum previews its next generation SuperDLT tape technology, called DLT-S4, at CeBIT, it has also acknowledged that LTO has won the battle for hearts and minds. Alongside the prototype drive, which will store 800GB of uncompressed data per cartridge, is something else new - a whole range of LTO, DDS-DAT and Travan tape …

Storage 11 Mar 2005, 16:37
Alternative browser spyware infects IE

Backdoor attack

Some useful citizen has created an installer that will nail IE with spyware, even if a surfer is using Firefox (or another alternative browser) or has blocked access to the malicious site in IE beforehand. The technique allows a raft of spyware to be served up to Windows users in spite of any security measures that might be in …

Enterprise Security 11 Mar 2005, 16:54
IBM rediscovers ancient plan for renting powerful computers

Blue Gene brilliance

A server announcement put out today by IBM has confirmed at least one thing - the computing gods have a sense of humor. IBM has boldly made its Blue Gene supercomputer - the fastest system on the planet - available for rent. Customers can pay close to $10,000 per week to use a small chunk of a Blue Gene system. The idea being …

Servers 11 Mar 2005, 17:45
Microsoft's Sun server fetish revealed

Blabby blogger spills the secrets

Shocking pictures leaked by a careless Microsoft blogger reveal a love that dare not speak its name. The photos from the Redmond campus are, in fact, so raunchy and audacious that a special Register editorial meeting was held to discuss whether or not they should even be discussed in an open forum. In the end, we decided to go …

Bootnotes 11 Mar 2005, 19:28
Microsoft pot calls Patent Office black

Comment Cleanliness starts at home

Microsoft's chief lawyer has said the US Patent Office needs to be clean up its act - forgetting that cleanliness starts at home. The US Patent Office is being deluged by a flood of trivial tech patents, Brad Smith told a right-wing think tank this week. Smith presented a four-point remedy, aimed at raising the quality and …

Music and Media 11 Mar 2005, 19:32
IDC's storage winners and losers

CeBIT 2005 EMC goes top in Europe, SOX goes bottom

EMC overtook its rivals to become the largest supplier of disk arrays in Western Europe in the last three months of 2004, as more and more storage became networked, but Europeans don't give a stuff for regulatory compliance, according to IDC analysts at the research company's annual CeBIT conference. Eric Sheppard, IDC's …

Storage 11 Mar 2005, 20:40
Chem student tames Microsoft's legal eagles

eBay educator wins

A not so bright Kent State University student has defeated the world's largest software company. Microsoft today dropped its lawsuit against David Zamos, and Zamos dropped his countersuit against Microsoft, The Register has learned. It seems that the public scrutiny over suing a student for moving a couple copies of software on …

Software 11 Mar 2005, 22:44