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19th October 2005 Archive

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  • Web 2.0: you're not even slightly whelmed

    Letters More DOA than SOA

    This month's Web 2.0 Conference has been heralded as the birth of a new technology frontier: by people who want to sell you tickets to Web 2.0 conferences, and by web designers who want VC funding. We didn't coin the phrase Bubble 2.0 - The Economist beat us to that one by a fortnight - but we did suggest there were many other …

    Music and Media 19 Oct 2005, 04:29

  • Macromedia outs Flash on BREW

    Gunning for Java

    Macromedia will develop a version of its popular Flash player for Qualcomm's BREW runtime, helping both companies dig deeper into the market for mobile application developers. A version of Macromedia Flash Lite is due next year that extends Macromedia's relationship with Qualcomm, signed earlier this year, to develop a set of …

    Mobile 19 Oct 2005, 07:28

  • Fayrewood still mulling bid proposal

    Trading statement

    Fayrewood, the European distie, says it is still in talks that could lead to an offer to all or part of the group. It says discussions are still at an early stage. So not much movement then, since 26 August, when the company first announced that it was in discussions. What's new today is a trading update from the directors who …

    Channel Register 19 Oct 2005, 08:05

  • Two-factor banking

    Token statement

    People who lived through the Second World War, like my grandparents, had a very different view of money than those of us who grew up in the Information Age. Many of us still remember being told how foolish it is to keep one's life savings under a bed mattress, because the banks were known as trusted entities that will always do …

    Enterprise Security 19 Oct 2005, 08:06

  • Woman drops sprog on Dutch Big Brother

    Another triumph for reality TV

    Dutch channel Talpa TV has pushed back the envelope of broadcasting excellence by becoming the first to broadcast a reality TV birth - albeit eight hours after the actual event. Big Brother contestant Tanja dropped baby Joscelyn Savanna on Tuesday night in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Dutch Social Affairs …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 2005, 09:00

  • Hola Gringo, can you get me a mobile?

    Reg reader in Cuban cellular red tape madness

    European and North American mobile users irked by high tariffs and spotty coverage on mobile phones should spare a thought for the citizens of Cuba. For the land of sun, salsa and socialism is so afflicted with bureaucracy that the only way ordinary people can get a pre-paid mobile phone is to have a foreigner sign up for them …

    Mobile 19 Oct 2005, 09:22

  • Nominet votes for Argentinian solution to net ownership

    No need for regime change here

    In an historically unusual decision, the company running all .uk internet domains, Nominet, has voted for an Argentinian solution to the current crisis over internet ownership. In an official statement, Nominet's legal and policy director Emily Taylor said the company preferred Argentina's proposal over the other seven on the …

    Financial News 19 Oct 2005, 09:31

  • Saddam trial set for live webcast

    Well, almost live

    Legal junkies needing an as-it-happens fix of court-on-former-dictator action will be pleased to learn that the trial of Saddam Hussein will be broadcast live on the web - sort of. The Iraqi Special Tribunal charged with bringing Saddam to justice has its own website, but will not be running live footage itself, CNET reports. …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 2005, 09:33

  • Bullguard signs up Ingram Micro

    Europe-bound

    Bullguard, the British IT security firm, has signed up Ingram Micro European to aid expansion onto the Continent. Ingram will carry Bullguard's software for PCs and mobile devices, and says the technology is "attractive to our value-added resellers [and] represents an interesting opportunity for the retail market". Bullguard …

    Channel Register 19 Oct 2005, 09:35

  • Leeds City Council scoops technology Oscar

    Socitim's Excellence in IT awards

    Leeds City Council has scooped the tenth annual Socitm Excellence in IT award for a new mobile working initiative for its Social Services and Home Care workers. The digital pen and paper project allows staff to file information about service activity directly from clients' homes, cutting out a huge amount of paperwork and …

    Public Sector 19 Oct 2005, 09:46

  • Bruce Schneier talks cyber law

    RSA Europe 2005 Make ISPs liable

    ISPs must be made liable for viruses and other bad network traffic, Bruce Schneier, security guru and founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security, told The Register yesterday. He said: “It’s about externalities – like a chemical company polluting a river – they don’t live downstream and they don’t care what happens. You …

    Enterprise Security 19 Oct 2005, 10:01

  • Boffins hook bone-eating snot flower

    Dines on dead minke whales, apparently

    Scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Göteborg University have pulled off a bit of a coup in discovering a previously-unknown species of worm feeding on a dead minke whale bones. The 1-2cm creature, boasting "frond-like tentacles" was found devouring a minke skeleton off the Swedish coast at a depth of 120m, the …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 2005, 10:02

  • Tackle Linux kernel programming

    Site offer Save 30% on top-down guide

    The Linux® Kernel Primer is the definitive guide to Linux kernel programming. The authors' unique top-down approach makes kernel programming easier to understand by systematically tracing functionality from user space into the kernel and carefully associating kernel internals with user-level programming fundamentals. Their …

    Site News 19 Oct 2005, 10:05

  • Tom's Hardware probes the front bottom

    Boasts a screwless fan bracket, no less

    Reader Alan Potter has just written in to point us in the direction of an illuminating Tom's Hardware review of Chenbro's Granite Case: Yes indeed, what caught Alan's eye was the unit's Front Bottom - not a common sight on a PC it must be said. What's more, the front bottom in question "has two interesting features. The first …

    Bootnotes 19 Oct 2005, 10:09

  • Google loses its G-spot

    Drops Gmail in UK as trademark spat lumbers on

    A trademark dispute has forced Google to re-brand its Gmail web mail service in the UK. Existing users get to retain their Gmail address (at least for now) but from Wednesday onwards new UK users will be given a Googlemail email address instead. UK-based financial services firm Independent International Investment Research ( …

    Financial News 19 Oct 2005, 10:32

  • BT waking up to unbundling threat

    Analysis That's why LLU important, says Wanadoo

    Thanks to local loop unbundling (LLU), internet users in the UK are now able to hook up to broadband services with speeds of up to 24 meg - a million miles away from just a couple of years ago when getting your hands on a 512k service was all that many could hope for. Snag is, LLU is only economically viable in large towns and …

    Telecoms 19 Oct 2005, 10:48

  • Ofcom gives Bulldog the all clear

    ISP promises to behave from now on

    Ofcom has closed its investigation into Bulldog after receiving assurances from the broadband ISP that it's introduced a range of measures to improve customer service. Bulldog has also promised to compensate punters who were with the ISP back in July during the height of the problems. And the ISP - which is owned by Cable & …

    Telecoms 19 Oct 2005, 10:57

  • Men still take lion's share of IT management salaries

    Exclusive ONS numbers undermine CMI findings

    Number-crunchers at Britain's Office of National Statistics have trashed claims that women are earning more than men in IT management positions. Women IT managers still earn less than men, ONS figures produced for The Register show. But their salaries are growing - and men's are starting to droop. In September the Chartered …

    IT Director 19 Oct 2005, 11:31

  • DSG speeds up Euro expansion

    Getting on with it

    DSG international plc is stepping up its expansion into Central Europe. The UK-based retail outfit, formerly known as Dixons, is to open an Electro World store in Warsaw tomorrow with a second store due to open in Poland before Christmas. Electro World is also accelerating its store opening plan for Central Europe with plans …

    Financial News 19 Oct 2005, 11:33

  • Kaliski not convinced on electronic passports

    RSA Europe 2005 Better but not perfect…

    RSA's cryptography guru Burt Kaliski has warned the US' planned introduction of electronic passports represents a long-term challenge for the security industry. The US government will begin trialling the passports containing an RFID chip in December before the full introduction early next year. United Airlines staff have been …

    ID 19 Oct 2005, 13:01

  • RAS puts the case for manned space missions

    Robots can't do everything, you know

    The Royal Astronomical Society Commission has called on the UK government to reconsider its deep-seated opposition to space exploration by humans, and outlined several areas of scientific exploration that can only be done with real people. The University of Oxford's Professor Frank Close, lead author on the report and chair of …

    Science 19 Oct 2005, 13:18

  • Read two biometrics, get worse results - how it works

    Iris algorithm originator shows how obvious isn't so obvious

    A regular correspondent (thanks, you know who you are) points us to some calculations by John Daugman, originator of the Daugman algorithms for iris recognition. These ought to provide disturbing reading for Home Office Ministers who casually claim that by using multiple biometrics you'll get a better result than by using just …

    Music and Media 19 Oct 2005, 14:47

  • Whereonearth is Yahoo!'s

    Barely a pebble off Yahoo!'s cash mountain?

    Yahoo! has beamed up British local search developer Whereonearth as the big global web players continue their scramble to get really really local. If nothing else, the deal means Yahoo! redresses one of its biggest current failings: the lack of a major product line with Earth in the title. Since the launch of Google Earth and …

    Financial News 19 Oct 2005, 14:50

  • DVD Jon joins MP3tunes.com

    Project Oboe puts wind up music industry

    Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen, AKA "DVD Jon", has moved to San Diego after being hired by tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson to work on a new digital media project called Oboe. Wired describes the link up as the most portentous since Butch linked up with Sundance and although this one is unlikely to end up in a shot- …

    Applications 19 Oct 2005, 15:04

  • Fujitsu and Software AG set sail to chart services

    Be there Dragons out there?

    Fujitsu Software and Software AG are collaborating to make it at least a little bit easier to map the software services floating free around the typical organizaton. One of the troubles with Service-Oriented Architectures is the very obvious fact that just about every software vendor in the world has a story to tell users, and …

    Applications 19 Oct 2005, 15:56

  • Cautious welcome for new MS shared source licences

    OS community not horrified

    Microsoft has announced three new licence templates for its Shared Source Initiative that it says should help combat the problem of licence proliferation in the open source developer community. Jason Matusow, director of the SSI, said Microsoft has tried to write licences that are simple to understand without the assistance of …

    Developer 19 Oct 2005, 16:00

  • Snort plugs Back Orifice as Oracle issues mega-fix

    Patch roundup Enter the matrix

    Wednesday became a busy patching day for sys admins with the release of Oracle's quarterly patch roundup - boasting an impressive 85 software fixes - and an update designed to defend the popular Snort open source intrusion detection application against possible hacker attack. Oracle's mega update covers a variety of security …

    Enterprise Security 19 Oct 2005, 16:06

  • EMC cheers software surge and Q3 sales swell

    CEO proud and happy to say so

    Aided by higher software and services revenue, EMC posted double-digit growth in its third quarter. This session marked the ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit gains for the storage giant. EMC posted revenue of $2.37bn - a 17 per cent year-over-year rise from the $2.03bn posted in the same quarter last year. Net income …

    Storage 19 Oct 2005, 16:45

  • IBM unsheaths blade PCs

    Let's get virtual

    PCs live on at IBM, where Big Blue reckons it can squeeze up to 20 traditional desktop users on a single blade server, and has tapped VMware and Citrix as software partners for its new "IBM Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure" program. Start-up ClearCube has been hammering away at the blade PC idea for some time, and …

    Servers 19 Oct 2005, 20:22

  • Apple intros dual core PowerPC Macs

    PowerBooks polished too

    With what may be the final crank of the PowerPC handle, Apple has introduced dual-core machines into its professional desktop line-up, including a liquid-cooled virtual 4-way machine. The PowerBook range doesn't gain any chip improvements, but two of the models gain higher resolution screens. The base PowerMac now features a …

    Mac Channel 19 Oct 2005, 21:31

  • Acopia promises to give you a good look at a very broad NAS

    Virtual Wide Load

    The last thing the folks at Acopia Networks said to us was, "Be nice." So, of course, we'll have to be mean as hell. Only it's hard to eviscerate a storage and networking virtualization start-up. You can hardly ever tell exactly what these companies do. Their customers, although few, tend to love the product in question. And …

    Storage 19 Oct 2005, 22:30

  • Exchange Server SP arrives

    More mobility, better security

    Microsoft has beefed up mobile capabilities and security in its collaboration platform, with the release of Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack (SP) 2. This updated email server now uses an http connection to automatically push out new email messages, calendar and contact information to the end user, instead of relying on short …

    Applications 19 Oct 2005, 22:32

  • Process in crosshairs at Rational, Borland

    Rational thinking

    The sparring match for developer mindshare between Borland Software and IBM/Rational has continued, as the companies focus on "process" instead of tools. IBM/Rational is reported to have replaced its Rational Unified Process (RUP) product and Rational Process Workbench with the IBM Rational Method Composer with a new offering, …

    Developer 19 Oct 2005, 22:33

  • What does Microsoft's new shared source mean for you?

    Analysis We read the small print

    Open source advocates are doing what was once unthinkable - giving the thumbs up to a Microsoft source code licensing program. The Free Software Foundation has said new licenses for Microsoft's pseudo open source program, the Shared Source Initiative, appears to satisfy the four requirements defining Free Software. Professors …

    Hardware 19 Oct 2005, 22:43