14th September 2005 Archive

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How PalmOS lost it - readers

Warning: contains strong language

You're not exactly backward in coming forward, are you? In the latest twist of PalmOS soap opera last week, Japanese mobile browser company Access bought PalmSource. Could Palm's fate have been any different, we asked. This selection of views contains pretty strong language - so be warned. Many Reg readers and Palm fans have …

Operating Systems 14 Sep 2005, 04:40
Teachers take timid approach to classroom tech

The kids love it, though

Teachers are generally reluctant to go high tech in the classroom, fearing that electronic white-boards and laptops could interfere with the teaching process. A four-year study of 1,500 UK teachers, conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol found that 30 per cent shun the shiny gizmos altogether, despite the …

Public Sector 14 Sep 2005, 06:02
Google and Microsoft both claim victory in court

News from the Ministry of Truth...

The cliché that no one wins in court but the lawyers was turned on its head yesterday when both Google and Microsoft claimed victory in their ongoing fight over former Redmond employee Kai-Fu Lee. Microsoft was in court to stop Lee from joining Google China - in July it gained a temporary injunction to stop Lee taking up his …

Financial News 14 Sep 2005, 08:50
CopperEye for the database guy

Life beyond Oracle

There are two points of view on databases. Database experts tend to be enthusiastic, as you'd expect, and point to excellent scalability; business resilience (including transaction processing and automated backup/restore) and the availability of utility programs that let you add functionality without programming. Others …

Software 14 Sep 2005, 08:57
Techscape: on Gore, Clinton and the internet

Interview Gore-Tex

Dean Laura Tyson of the London Business School (LBS) is a former University of California at Berkeley Professor of Economics, Dean of its Haas School of Business and ultimately President Clinton’s Economic Advisor A chance meeting and conversation at the recent London Business School graduation gave me an opportunity to …

Financial News 14 Sep 2005, 09:11
Uk.com wildcard raises Net stability worries

Automated domain redirection sets dangerous trend

A decision by British company CentralNic to make all unregistered domains ending with "uk.com" direct to its own webpage has raised concerns over the future stability of the Internet. CentralNic owns a series of valuable dotcoms including uk.com, us.com, eu.com and de.com and sells third-level domains e.g. www.theregister.uk. …

Financial News 14 Sep 2005, 09:33
New logo leaves Quark green at the gills

LogoWatch 'Uncanny resemblence' to arts council image

Quark has got itself into a bit of a rumpus over its new logo - described as "fresh, inviting, and open" by the company, but also as "indeed uncanny" by a Scottish Arts Council (SAC) spokesperson for its, well, indeed uncanny resemblence to the SAC brand frontage. Quark unveiled its new look on Friday. Here's the usual press …

Bootnotes 14 Sep 2005, 09:38
Google blog search lives

But so does Gmail court case

Google has at last launched the beta version of its blog search engine. You can have a look here. The page is laid out in familiar Google style and results are brought up with headlines and paragraphs similar to standard Google web searches. There is a proper review of the site on searchenginewatch here. In other Google news …

Financial News 14 Sep 2005, 09:43
186K buys Mailbox

That explains the party in Trafalgar Sq then

Business ISP 186k has snapped up London-based provider Mailbox Internet. Financial details were not disclosed but The Reg understands that 186k probably didn't get much change from a couple of million quid. Mailbox - a finalist in the best business broadband category of the UK's "ISPA" awards for two years on the trot - is one …

Financial News 14 Sep 2005, 09:45
Cassini spots its first spokes

Ghostly

Imaging scientists working on the data from the Cassini spacecraft have identified ghostly spokes in Saturn's rings. These faint, radial lines were first observed by Voyager, 25 years ago, and have also been seen in pictures from Hubble. But there had been no sign of them in pictures from Cassini's cameras until now. …

Science 14 Sep 2005, 09:57
Intel chips cost $40 to make - report

And have done for three years, apparently

It's not hard to see how Intel makes its money. According to market watcher In-Stat, the chip giant's average cost per die is a mere $40 - significantly less than it the prices it attaches to its processors. That figure, the researcher calculates, has remained consistent over the past two years and will continue through 2005. …

System Builder 14 Sep 2005, 10:24
Microsoft's delay to patch fuels concerns

Upto the month security policy

Microsoft's decision to cancel a security fix after finding problems with the patch has security experts questioning whether waiting for the fix to come next month might leave them open to attack. The concerns come after Microsoft announced last Thursday that a critical fix for the Windows operating system would be …

Enterprise Security 14 Sep 2005, 11:03
OK to depict call centre workers as chickens

Clucking 'ell

The Call Centre Association Ltd - an industry body representing 700 organisations - has failed to get a commercial depicting call centre workers as chickens banned from UK TV screens. The CCA - along with 80 other complainers - were upset by the ad for online insurance outfit Swiftcover.com. The ad showed a man phoning his …

IT Director 14 Sep 2005, 11:07
Airgo third-gen Wi-Fi chip outperforms 100Mbps Ethernet

Real-world tests confirm it, claims company

Wi-Fi chip maker Airgo today said it has begun sampling its third-generation, 'Gen3' MIMO chip, which it maintains will offer raw wireless data transfer rates of up to 240Mbps. That's almost three times as fast as rival "premium wireless" solutions, the company claimed, and clearly well beyond the 802.11g standard's 54Mbps. …

Mobile 14 Sep 2005, 11:18
Fetish club sets up on Home Secretary's turf

Clarke confronted by naughtiness in Norwich

A concerned Register reader from Norwich has got in touch with some disturbing news from the constituency of liberty-eating Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Despite Clarke's best efforts a fetish club is shortly to open in the East Anglian town. The Trample Fetish Club offers the citizens of Norwich, and beyond, the chance to be …

Bootnotes 14 Sep 2005, 11:44
Debutante Xena provokes planetary punch-up

Telescopes at ~~dawn~~ sunset

A fight has broken out between two groups of astronomers over who exactly has the bragging rights over the discovery of the possible 10th planet Xena. In late July 2005, researchers in Spain and the US both announced, independently, that they had discovered a candidate tenth planet. At the time, the director of the Astronomical …

Science 14 Sep 2005, 12:09
US games watchdog orders hidden-content audit

ESRB senses threat to ratings scheme

US games software watchdog the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has told games publishers they must reveal any hidden content included in all the software they have released since 1 September 2004. The order was sent by email, a copy of which was leaked to games-oriented website Gamasutra this week. In the email, the …

Consoles 14 Sep 2005, 12:13
O2 confirms 3G, Wi-Fi smart phone

Universal offering

O2 UK has formally announced the O2 XDA Exec, the network's own-brand version of HTC's Universal 3G clamshell smart phone. The device, which is based on Windows Mobile 5.0 and incorporates 802.11b Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 1.2 and GPRS connectivity in addition to 3G, was spotted in an O2 brochure earlier this month, though at time time …

Mobile 14 Sep 2005, 12:44
Apple iPod Nano

Review Apple's master-stroke?

Unless you were hiding in a cave last week, you'll have heard about the latest changes made to Apple's iPod range. Out went the iPod Mini, which on the surface seemed like a strange decision. The Mini enjoyed a fanatical reception from the millions of style-conscious consumers who realised that they'd never fill a 20GB iPod no …

Reviews 14 Sep 2005, 12:57
Telstra sale given go-ahead

Just needs a rubber stamp

The Australian Government has moved a step closer to flogging its 51.8 per cent state in incumbent telco Telstra after winning a key vote earlier today. The Australian Senate backed plans to flog the Government's stake in the business despite a concerted campaign by opposition MPs and trade unions. The Government is set to …

Financial News 14 Sep 2005, 13:15
More tech fails to exorcise security risks

Complexity = Risk, deal with IT

Current IT systems are inherently insecure and growing complexity will simply increase these risks, a leading academic has warned. Users should rebel and demand vendors compensate them for security foul-ups, said pugnacisous Professor Klaus Brunnstein of the University of Hamburg Brunnstein told delegates to an IT security …

Security 14 Sep 2005, 13:43
Sun adverts promise to offend

Handbags at dawn for Dell and Sun

Sun Microsystems is well known for being quietly-spoken and polite. So it comes as quite a shock to us at Register Towers to hear that some of their latest server adverts have been rejected by "top business publications" as just too controversial. Sun has had many enemies over the years but current Number One is Dell. So the …

Servers 14 Sep 2005, 13:53
Researchers make twisted nanobelts

Rigid, not springy

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new, helical, zinc-oxide nanostructure that could be very useful to engineers working on nanoscale devices that rely on electromechanical coupling, such as sensors, resonators and transducers. Although the nanostructure looks like a spring, it is actually …

Science 14 Sep 2005, 14:12
UK council pays £7.7m to escape outsourcing deal

Ouch!

Bedfordshire County Council has paid business service provider HBS £7.7m to terminate its £250m, 12-year outsourcing contract prematurely. Details of the settlement reached last month had been confidential, but were disclosed by the Council under the Freedom of Information Act. According to newly-released documents, the local …

IT Director 14 Sep 2005, 14:46
Eatoni sues RIM over SureType

Text-entry specialist claims patent infringement

Predictive-text technology developer Eatoni Ergonomics has asked the US District Court of Northern Texas to ban Research in Motion (RIM) from selling its Blackberry 7100 smart-phone family, claiming the devices violate the small company's intellectual property rights. The legal battle has been brewing since April when Eatoni …

Applications 14 Sep 2005, 15:05
TV to become web-like

Internet TV set to take-off

IPTV - TV that's beamed over the net - is set to become the next big thing for boggle-eyed couch potatoes everywhere. Within the next ten years, you won't have to leg it home early to settle down and watch the latest instalment of Eastenders or Corrie. Instead, you'll be able to stay out all night and watch it whenever you like …

Telecoms 14 Sep 2005, 15:13
Redbus and Demon founder appears in court

Intercepting email charges

Internet pioneer Cliff Stanford yesterday went on trial at Southwark Crown Court on charges of unlawfully intercepting emails at his former company, Redbus Interhouse, according to reports. Cliff Stanford is a well-known figure in the internet industry. He founded Demon Internet in 1992 and sold it in 1998 to Scottish Telecom …

Telecoms 14 Sep 2005, 15:14
Wobbly planet triggered massive methane burps

Made like Icarus

Three huge eruptions of methane 180 million years ago triggered a catastrophic increase in global temperatures, according to research funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The results, which are published in the current issue of Nature, could provide clues about the global warming process most scientists …

Science 14 Sep 2005, 18:02
Eolas cashes in on Katrina

Make a difference! Buy our stuff!

Eolas, the one-man software outfit which took Microsoft to the cleaners in a patent dispute, has given its new software launch a topical spin. In a press release entitled 'Eolas Releases Multimedia Application to Support Hurricane Relief' we learn that Eolas CEO Michael Doyle is introducing what's billed as Muze version 1.0 ' …

Odds and Sods 14 Sep 2005, 19:57