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15th September 2005 Archive

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  • Belgium primes self-destructing briefcase

    James Bond for real

    The idea of transporting boot in a mechanised and booby-trapped suitcase was already explored in the 60s in one the episodes of The Avengers. Now, it is for real. Belgium is to introduce 'intelligent' briefcases programmed to destroy large sums of cash in the event of a robbery. According to Expatica a royal decree has been …

    Security 15 Sep 2005, 08:01

  • CD sales fall disguises a lack of choice

    Less is less

    While music consumers in Australia patiently wait for the introduction of iTunes, they find they have less choice than ever. The Australian Recording Industry Association has reported that for the first six months of 2005, the volume of recorded music product shipments to retailers fell 7.54 per cent, while their wholesale …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2005, 08:06

  • Microsoft smack down with WWF

    Workflows won't be the same again

    Microsoft's mission to "democratize" application lifecycle tools is moving into the creation and management of workflows with Windows Vista, the Office 12 family and business software. Microsoft's delayed client operating system will introduce Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) enabling developers to build workflows for business …

    Developer 15 Sep 2005, 08:07

  • Microsoft expresses designs on website teams

    Windows on the web

    Microsoft is moving into Adobe and Macromedia territory with graphics and web tools designed to improve the way illustrators and coders work together when building websites. David Treadwell, a Microsoft corporate vice president, introduced the Expression family of Acrylic Graphic Designer, Sparkle Interactive Designer and …

    Developer 15 Sep 2005, 08:11

  • Google swaps hippy talk for happy talk

    Flotation No.2 100% less cosmic

    Google has detailed its second public share offering. This time, it's dispensed with the Hallmark Card sentiments that characterized its first trip to the stock market - see Google files Coca Cola jingle with SEC - and the relief from the button-down Wall Street Journal is palpable. "Its second crack at the public markets seems …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2005, 08:13

  • MS reveals Xbox 360 release dates

    Gears up for Japanese offensive

    Microsoft will release its next-generation Xbox 360 games console on Tuesday, 22 November, the software giant announced last night. Consumers in Europe will be able to get their mitts on the machine on Friday, 2 December - though we note Amazon.co.uk still has 28 November down as the release date, a timeframe more consistent …

    Consoles 15 Sep 2005, 09:03

  • MySQL 5 Certification Study Guide

    Site offer It's all yours at 30% off

    With more than 4 million active installations, MySQL is the world's most popular open-source database. Known for its speed, reliability and ease of use, MySQL has become a low-cost alternative database system. MySQL AB has aggressively improved the feature set of MySQL with MySQL 5, making it more suitable for enterprise-level …

    Site News 15 Sep 2005, 09:06

  • German inventor denies cats-for-fuel story

    Tiger in my tank? No thanks!

    Animal rights campaigners were up in arms yesterday over reports that a German inventor was making diesel from dead cats. Wolfgang Apel, president of the German Society for the Protection of Animals, told Reuters that using dead cats for fuel was outlawed in Germany. "We're going to keep an eye on this case," he told the news …

    Science 15 Sep 2005, 09:24

  • Apple iPod Nano sales 'slow' - analyst

    Updated MP3 player 'selling well', claims another

    Apple is not selling as many iPod Nanos as it expected, a market watcher has claimed. According to American Technology Research (ATR) analyst Shaw Wu, sales of the skinny Flash-based player have been "good but not great", basing that claim on checks made with Apple retail outlets. In a research note to ATR clients, given a …

    Peripherals 15 Sep 2005, 09:28

  • OneTel for sale

    Any takers?

    Centrica - which owns British Gas - has confirmed it plans to flog-off its OneTel telecoms business. The UK utility wants to concentrate on its energy operations and will use the cash from the sale of OneTel to invest in this business. In a statement today the company said: "Although the ability to offer a telecoms solution to …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2005, 09:36

  • Small company chases big holographic storage

    InPhase aims for 300Mbpsi

    Tiny, privately funded, InPhase Technology is on the brink of replacing film tape with holographic storage in the broadcasting industries, offering densities beyond anything currently seen in other archival storage. It is already working with industry giants like Hitachi, Sony, Sanyo, HP, IBM, Toshiba, Samsung and Matsushita …

    Storage 15 Sep 2005, 09:52

  • Teen jailed over Paris Hilton hack

    Sidekick cracker linked to LexisNexis breach

    An unnamed Massachusetts teenager who hacked into the mobile phone of Paris Hilton and posted her celebrity contacts online has been sentenced to 11 months in a juvenile detention facility. The teenage tearaway, who can't be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to nine counts of juvenile delinquency last week before Judge Rya …

    Enterprise Security 15 Sep 2005, 10:06

  • French to enjoy 50 mobile TV channels

    Orange ups the ante

    Cellco Orange is driving up its French mobile TV services and has now reach 60 channels, according to supplier satellite services company Globecast. David Justin, Senior VP Marketing and Product Development at Globecast told us at the IBC conference in Amsterdam this week: “We aggregate the content and provide our own 3GPP …

    Mobile 15 Sep 2005, 10:08

  • Intel founds Chinese R&D company

    Shangai surprise

    Intel has set up a software and hardware focused research and development subsidiary in China, the chip giant said today. The operation, formally named Asia-Pacific R&D Ltd., will concentrate on products that span Intel's platform-centric business units and target markets around the globe as well as a China itself. Located in …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2005, 10:22

  • Blackberry 'Electron' details appear on web

    8700 said to sport GPS, EDGE, EVDO support

    Research in Motion appears to be preparing its latest would-be Treo killer, a classic form-factor Blackberry with support for the EDGE and EVDO GSM and CDMA data throughput enhancement technologies, not to mention integrated GPS. Said to be codenamed 'Electron' but more formally dubbed the 8700, the device incorporates the …

    Mobile 15 Sep 2005, 10:25

  • Palm to pull Tungsten line down-market?

    Claimed T5 successor will get Wi-Fi, though

    Palm appears to be gearing up to launch the successor to its Tungsten T5 PDA next month, along with a new low-end colour handheld. The new Tungsten is described as the Tungsten X, though we'd suggest that from the picture of the machine posted on PalmInfocenter, that's a placeholder name rather than a codename or the device's …

    Mobile 15 Sep 2005, 10:32

  • 888 flutter price set

    Wanna bet?

    888 has reduced the price of its shares ahead of its floatation later this month amid concerns that the online gaming market is running out of steam. The e-casino today set the price of its shares at between 162p and 212p a share - valuing the company at between £546m and £715m. When plans to float the Gibraltar-based business …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2005, 11:00

  • NZ finds Black Cocks hard to swallow

    Chinese not too keen, either

    It was a bloody silly idea in the first place, but New Zealand's badminton world may finally have to concede that calling the national team the "Black Cocks" really is a bit too strong, the New Zealand Herald reports. Badminton New Zealand adopted the name a year ago as "a gimmicky label to attract sponsors and fans". It worked …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2005, 11:34

  • Homeless quasar poses intergalactic mystery

    Paging Mr. Holmes

    European astronomers have discovered a true space oddity: a quasar without a detectable home galaxy. The discovery has led to speculation that the host galaxy could be made up entirely of dark matter, or that a normal galaxy collided with another object that happened to contain a quasar. The research team studied 20 relatively …

    Science 15 Sep 2005, 12:11

  • CPUs smarter than 'every human brain combined' by 2060

    Bell labs chief also punts smell-o-phones

    Computers will be able to out-think the entire world population put together within the next 60 years, the head of Lucent's research division has forecast. First, though, phones will be able to tell how their owners smell, Jeong Kim, Bell Labs' president told reporters in Seoul yesterday. Kim's comments, conveyed by local …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2005, 12:23

  • TomTom website goes titsup

    In brief Off the grid

    Services from satellite navigation outfit TomTom have suffered after a server migration fell behind schedule. The firm's website has been sporadically unavailable since Tuesday while Reg reader Steve reports that TomTom's traffic update service was out for around 12 hours. A spokeswoman for TomTom acknowledged that the website …

    Mobile 15 Sep 2005, 12:25

  • Govt backs digital TV switch

    Details released in next exciting episode of...

    The UK Government finally seems to have made a decision about plans to ditch analogue TV and replace it with digital services. Culture secretary Tessa Jowell is expected to announce to an audience of TV execs tonight that the first regions will have the analogue plug pulled in 2008, with all parts of the UK switching to digital …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2005, 13:07

  • HP iPaq hw6515 Mobile Messenger

    Review Treo-beater?

    Just as the great unwashed now think that all MP3 players are called an iPod, so there was a time when all handheld devices were simply known as iPaqs. This must have annoyed most vendors, especially Palm, but HP was never heard to complain, writes Stephen Patrick. Now, the company is attempting to do the same with the …

    Reviews 15 Sep 2005, 13:17

  • Intel Celeron to gain improved AMD64 compatibility

    A lot less lead in its pencil, too

    Intel's desktop Celeron D chips are to be the latest processors to get the chip giant's NetBurst core update, The Register has learned. According to Intel documentation, Celeron model numbers 326, 331, 336, 341, 346 and 351 will switch from today's E-0 core to the updated G-1 core on 2 December. The G-1 core stepping will not …

    System Builder 15 Sep 2005, 13:19

  • Apple share of MP3 player market to shrink... sort of

    The Nano effect

    Prepare yourself now for some triumphant headlines in the coming months from rivals of Apple's iPod - along the lines of 'Apple MP3 player market share drops'. And you know what? Apple half-expects them too. Why? Because its new iPod Nano is going to be so hugely successful, taking over as the world's most popular MP3 player …

    Peripherals 15 Sep 2005, 13:55

  • Time Warner plots 'AOL - MSN merger'

    So says the New York Post

    Microsoft and Time Warner are holding "advanced" talks that could lead to the merger of their MSN and AOL internet businesses. The New York Post quotes two unnamed sources who claim that TW is looking to sell a stake in its AOL business to Microsoft. This would then be rolled into MSN, giving both TW and Microsoft an equal …

    Telecoms 15 Sep 2005, 13:58

  • Demon founder pleads guilty to email hacking

    Updated Suspended sentence. Appeal planned

    Cliff Stanford, founder of Demon Internet and Redbus, has pleaded guilty to email interception charges. Stanford along with co-defendant George Liddell were accused of conspiring to intercept emails sent to Redbus chairman John Porter (son of Dame Shirley Porter, the disgraced former Conservative leader of Westminster council) …

    Security 15 Sep 2005, 14:16

  • Defrosted sheep ovaries offer cancer fertility hope

    One step closer to ovary transplants

    Israeli scientists have for the first time successfully developed embryos from eggs taken from frozen, thawed and transplanted ovaries. So far, the procedure has been carried out in sheep only, but the research team is optimistic that it could one day be used in humans. The team at the Institute of Animal Science in Israel …

    Science 15 Sep 2005, 14:21

  • Job losses loom at Siemens

    Oh dear

    Siemens could be about to announce a rack of job cuts as part of moves to restructure the business and stem losses, according to reports from Germany. Some 1,300 jobs are due for the chop at Siemens' SBS IT division, according to a report by Sueddeutsche-Zeitung by way of AFX, as it seeks to find €1.5bn in cost savings. …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2005, 15:17

  • Massive sunspot has Earth in its sights

    Brace for impact

    A sunspot five times the size of Earth could wreak havoc with satellites and radio communication systems, scientists warn, as it moves across the face of the sun and Earth moves directly into its firing line. Seven huge X-class flares have already erupted from the spot, including one of magnitude X17 last Wednesday that made it …

    Science 15 Sep 2005, 15:37

  • Techies don't get security either

    Risky business

    Heads of information security functions are more likely to be business managers than techies in future as companies take a more strategic approach that balances IT security threats against business drivers. That's according to analyst house Gartner which predicts security will evolve into an element of a wider risk management …

    IT Director 15 Sep 2005, 16:17

  • FileMaker Pro 8 advances beyond mere developers

    The March of Time

    If FileMaker Pro 7 was the technical redesign of the FileMaker desktop database product for the modern world, FileMaker Pro 8 makes all the new functionality more accessible – even to non-FileMaker users. FileMaker Pro 8 and Pro 8 Advanced are available now (at £219 and £329 respectively; you can upgrade for about £100 less and …

    Developer 15 Sep 2005, 20:36

  • Abandon ship! Dell jumps off Itanium

    No volumes in this vessel

    Dell has become the latest OEM to abandon Itanium, Intel's ill-fated 64 bit chip. The processor's future has been looking downbeat since Intel decided to adopt AMD's 64 bit instruction set for its future servers, relegating IA-64 to high end niches. Dell's decision is hardly surprising given its poor sales figures. Dell lives …

    Servers 15 Sep 2005, 20:45