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30th November 2005 Archive

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  • Microsoft proud to hand over Vista 'features' early

    Too bad the OS is late

    Microsoft will include most of the "final" features in pre-release editions of its next Windows client for early evaluation to help produce a more stable product. The company claimed Tuesday it has accelerated development of Windows Vista to get most features code complete by the end of December, and that all features would be …

    Operating Systems 30 Nov 2005, 00:25

  • New Orleans gets free Wi-Fi

    Monster Mesh

    New Orleans remains under a state of emergency, but the intrepid blogger can now enter the city to suck up an RSS feed, ping a trackback, or fiddle with a Wiki. That's thanks to a new, municipal Wi-Fi network which launched to the public today. The mesh-style network begins operation in the historic French Quarter and the …

    Music and Media 30 Nov 2005, 00:35

  • Former exec and start-ups criticize 'Byzantine' Microsoft

    Beware the next IBM

    An ex-Microsoft executive turned venture capitalist has joined start-ups in warning about the Byzantine nature of doing business with the Microsoft empire. Sam Jadallah, Mohr Davidow Ventures general manager, told an audience of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs they should "stay focused" when dealing with Microsoft which, he said, …

    Software 30 Nov 2005, 00:57

  • Sage ups profits and revenues

    Solid accounts from accountants...

    Accountancy software specialist Sage increased turnover by 14 per cent and profits by 13 per cent for the financial year ended 30 September 2005. Turnover was up to £776.6m, from £682.6m last year, and pre-tax profits were up from £181.1m last year to £205.4m this year. The firm claimed organic growth of six per cent and said …

    Financial News 30 Nov 2005, 09:48

  • Citrix moving up in the world

    Analysis: Strategic status at last?

    Citrix is one of those vendors that has been an integral part of the IT industry for as long as many people can remember. It is a company with a solid reputation for delivering an effective solution to the problem of runaway PC costs. Through its original Metaframe product line, now known as Presentation Server, it has achieved …

    Applications 30 Nov 2005, 10:36

  • Intel ponders Oregon fab upgrade

    Gains Israel grant too

    Intel may upgrade its Hillsboro, Oregon 200mm-wafer fab, dubbed Fab 20, to a 300mm-wafer plant, local press reports claim. The move, noted in the Oregonian, could be followed by the construction of a further development fab, to be called D1E, at the location. No decision has been made, it seems - these are simply options the …

    PCs 30 Nov 2005, 10:42

  • Mio GPS smart phone to ship mid-December

    A701 launched at last

    Mio has formally unveiled its Windows Mobile 5.0-based smart phone with integrated GPS, the A701. The handset was exclusively revealed by The Register in August, and the company yesterday unwrapped the device in Beijing. The A701 is a PDA-style phone sporting a 2.7in, 240 x 320, 272,000-colour display. There's a 1.3mp camera …

    Mobile 30 Nov 2005, 10:46

  • Sony's DRM woes worsen

    World + Dog queues to give Sony shoeing...

    Sony BMG has done a marvellous job of dealing with fallout from secretly installing spyware on consumers' machines - but now unfortunately it has attracted the attention of New York's Attorney General Eliot (the Blitzer) Spitzer. Spitzer's office found that despite Sony's claim that it had recalled the affected products Sony's …

    Security 30 Nov 2005, 10:51

  • Mozilla Firefox 1.5 has landed

    Praise be

    The much-anticipated final release of Firefox 1.5 was released on Tuesday. Linux, Mac and Windows users of the popular open source browser can download it via the Mozilla website. Key improvements with the browser include automatic updates (which means users no longer need to download a complete new version of the browser to …

    Applications 30 Nov 2005, 11:10

  • TDC gives the nod to $12bn take-over

    Another telecoms saga

    Execs at TDC have agreed to flog the Danish telco to a group of investment companies ending weeks of speculation about the future of business. Widely trailed already, an outfit called Nordic Telephone Company (backed by investors Apax Partners, The Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, Permira and Providence Equity …

    Financial News 30 Nov 2005, 11:16

  • Taiwan's Blu-ray, HD DVD rival goes mass-market

    FVD players enter volume production

    Taiwan's home-grown answer to next-generation optical disc formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc has gone into mass production. The FVD (Forward Versatile Disc) format provides HD content on a disc capable of being read by red lasers of the kind used in today's DVD players. Content is encoded in Microsoft's WMV HD format. FVD …

    Peripherals 30 Nov 2005, 11:19

  • Reg loves Scotland - true

    So, where's the Saltire, eh?

    Today is, as every proud Scotsman knows, St Andrew's Day and tradition dictates that we at El Reg make over our masthead to celebrate the anniversary. And quite right too, since we are always having a pop at Google for not celebrating important dates appropriately. However, this year marks the inauguration of a hitherto unknown …

    Site News 30 Nov 2005, 11:22

  • Intel to 'drop Pentium name' with Merom, Conroe debut

    Retired after 12 years?

    When Intel debuts its 'Intel Core' brand-name in July 2006, it will mark the end of the familiar Pentium name. Out too goes any distinction between mobile and desktop versions. So claims Japanese-language website PCWatch. It's not an unreasonable claim, however. According to the latest roadmaps to leak out of the chip giant, …

    Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2005, 11:25

  • Stob joins The Reg

    Veteran satirist finds web home

    Verity Stob, the pseudonymous columnist who has made a career out of poking fun at her fellow programmers, has eschewed the dead tree world of print journalism to join The Register. Starting this month, we will be carrying her column on our server. Stob first appeared as long ago as 1988 in the back of .EXE Magazine, a …

    Site News 30 Nov 2005, 11:29

  • El Salvador cops cuff naked tunnelling blaggers

    Hot excavation action

    Two naked would-be blaggers have had their collars felt (in a manner of speaking) in El Salavdor after the tunnel they were digging towards a bank collapsed, provoking an emergency evacuation by the naked ne'er-do-wells. Their lack of clothing was apparently due to the terrific heat inside the excavation, which stretched 75m …

    Bootnotes 30 Nov 2005, 12:02

  • Intel's 'Yonah' benchmarked

    Upcoming 65nm mobile chip acquits itself well

    Intel's upcoming 'Yonah' 65nm dual-core Pentium M processor looks set to provide a significant boost to notebook performance, if the first independent evaluation of the new CPU is anything to go by. Anandtech's tests, published today, pitch a 2GHz Yonah against a 2.13GHz 'Dothan' Pentium M, a 3GHz Pentium D 380 and a pair of …

    Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2005, 12:15

  • Griffin offers to end tangled earphone misery

    No more bother for iPod Shuffle users

    Accessory specialist Griffin Technology has begun shipping sets of anti-tangle earphones for iPod Shuffle users. TuneBuds combines a lanyard and earphones, threading the phones' wires through the woven neck-loop. The upshot, says Griffin, is freedom from "excess cords and tangled lines". The $20 earphones "make no compromise on …

    Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2005, 12:39

  • Ofcom rules on broadband charges

    What else does 16p buy you these days?

    Critics of Ofcom should hang their heads in shame after the regulator managed to enforce tough price restrictions on the UK's dominant fixed line telco. In August, BT cut the rental charge for fully unbundled lines from £105.09 to £80.00 a year. But in a bid to ensure that the former monopoly didn't then sneak up prices at a …

    Networks 30 Nov 2005, 12:45

  • Gillingham FC auctioned on eBay

    notfittoweartheshirt

    Disheartened Gillingham fans have set up an auction for the team on eBay following the latest in a string of disappointing results by the English League One outfit this season. Die-hard supporters had enough following the team's dismal 5-0 drubbing away at Colchester last Saturday prompting the frivolous sale that kill-joy eBay …

    Bootnotes 30 Nov 2005, 13:16

  • Blu-ray set for Spring 06 debut

    Format's supporters to say more next month

    The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) will formally roll-out its next-generation optical disc format in Spring 2006, the organisation confirmed yesterday. The announcement came as BDA member companies start gearing up to make their own product plans known at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CES is similarly …

    Peripherals 30 Nov 2005, 13:19

  • Royal Society president warns on fundaMentalists

    That's you, George

    It was 345 years ago that Christopher Wren and eleven mates met in London to set up a "College for the promoting of Physic-Mathematical Experimental Learning" - which later became the Royal Society. But in a speech due to be delivered tonight RS president Lord May will warn that fundamentalist religious loons threaten the …

    Science 30 Nov 2005, 13:21

  • UK hit by BT broadband network snafu

    'Major service outage' floors evening surfers

    Hundreds of thousands of UK broadband users are thought to have struggled to access the net last night following a major glitch on BT's network. All the UK's ISPs - including BT's own broadband ISP - that operate high-speed internet services from BT Wholesale were hit by the "major service outage" yesterday evening. It appears …

    Telecoms 30 Nov 2005, 13:38

  • Beyond Java

    Book review Not everybody is convinced that Java, or even C#, are the languages of the future

    Bruce Tate is not a happy Java bunny, and hasn’t been for some time. In a previous book, ‘Better, Faster, Lighter Java’ (O’Reilly, 2004), he advocated the use of a number of popular open-source frameworks as alternatives to the perceived heavyweight bloat of J2EE using EJBs. Rather than be bogged down in layers of code and XML …

    Developer 30 Nov 2005, 14:12

  • Sober storms November virus chart

    FBI investigation ruse dupes thousands

    A new variant of the prolific Sober worm has come from nowhere to dominate November malware charts. Despite being detected very late in the month, the Sober-Z worm has stormed to the top of the latest monthly chart compiled by anti-virus firm Sophos. At its peak, Sober-Z accounted for one in every 13 emails sent and 42.9 per …

    Spam 30 Nov 2005, 14:42

  • It's official: Diebold election bugware can't be trusted

    The company implies as much

    Diebold would rather lose all of its voting machine business in North Carolina than open its source code to state election officials as required by law, the Associated Press reports. Due to irregularities in the 2004 election traced to touch screen terminals, North Carolina has taken the very reasonable precaution of requiring …

    Music and Media 30 Nov 2005, 14:50

  • Review Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe twin x16 SLI mobo

    Asus' A8N32-SLI Deluxe is one of the first motherboards with two PCI Express graphics card slots that offer the full PCI-E bandwidth of 16 lanes to each slot. Rather than releasing a new chipset altogether Nvidia made a standalone x16 lane PCI-E controller, the SPP 100. Whether all this results in higher performance with today' …

    Reviews 30 Nov 2005, 14:51

  • Plymouth to Dakar rally: On your marks...

    Charity rally heads for Africa

    The fourth Plymouth-Dakar rally is ready for take off - the first contestants leave Blighty in early December for the six thousand kilometre journey to west Africa. The challenge is to spend less than £100 on a car and less than £15 on preparing it. Once the budget has been spent simply drive to Gambia (via Morrocco, Mauritania …

    Bootnotes 30 Nov 2005, 15:36

  • Card makers punt Nvidia 6600 DDR 2 boards

    Duelling graphics cards

    Albatron has announced a pair of 512MB Nvidia GeForce 6600-series graphics cards, the 6600 512 and the 6600LE 512, both fitted with dual-channel DDR 2 SDRAM. Separately, Club 3D this week began shipping its own dual-channel DDR 2-equipped GeForce 6600 card, but this time with 256MB of memory. Both Albatron's boards contain …

    Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2005, 15:51

  • Phishing email poses as IRS tax refund

    Your check's in our account

    Email fraudsters are taking advantage of lax government security around a US government website to run a scam designed to trick US taxpayers into handing over sensitive personal information. A phishing email which pose as notification of a refund from the US's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) takes advantage of security …

    Spam 30 Nov 2005, 16:01

  • C2000 finds sales head

    Briefly New man for new post

    Computer 2000, the UK arm of Tech Data, has made John Doughty its sales director. Doughty was previously at telecoms firm Caudwell and was MD at games maker Radica. Prior to this he was at Kingfisher Group for three years.®

    Channel Register 30 Nov 2005, 16:02

  • Asus revs 'fastest R520' graphics card

    Radeon X1800 XT core hits 700MHz

    Asus has become the latest graphics card company to announce a board based on a high-speed version of ATI's Radeon X1800 XT chip. It claims the product is the fastest R520-based board yet. Asus' EAX1800XT Top clocks its GPU to 700MHz, while the GDDR 3 memory is set to 1.6GHz effective - both above the 625MHz and 1.5GHz speeds …

    Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2005, 16:09

  • Amazon.co.uk restricts orders for Xbox 360

    I can only have one? But I ordered 20!

    Amazon.co.uk is restricting the number of Xbox 360 Consoles its punters can have to ensure that as many people can get hold of one in time for Christmas. The new Xbox 360 is due to hit UK shops this Friday but reports suggest that only 300,000 consoles have made it to Europe. Retailers have already warned that lack of supply …

    Consoles 30 Nov 2005, 16:13

  • ICANN faces monopoly action

    God and UN next...

    The World Association of Domain Name Developers (WADND) is taking legal action against Verisign and ICANN. The action centres on ICANN's recent decision to hand over control of .com and .net addresses to Verisign - the 2005 Registry Agreement. WADND believes the agreement is "an unlawful contract to fix prices and monopolize …

    Music and Media 30 Nov 2005, 16:16

  • French carry out first face transplant

    Disfigured woman gets 'hybrid' visage

    French surgeons have carried out the first face transplant using material from a brain-dead donor to rebuild the face of an anonymous 38-year-old woman who lost her nose, lips and chin during a dog attack. According to the BBC, the surgical team, led by Professor Bernard Devauchelle and Professor Jean Michel Dubernard, carried …

    Science 30 Nov 2005, 16:18

  • Intel recruits TiVo to Viiv cause

    Big names line up behind Intel marketing dollars... er... home PC platform

    Intel has persuaded TiVo to support its Viiv media centre PC platform. According to reports, the PVR pioneer will ensure programmes recorded on its set-top boxes will play on Viiv-based machines. Intel today said it will be partnering with around 40 content companies to promote Viiv, and TiVo is one of them, a number of online …

    PCs 30 Nov 2005, 16:23

  • HP carves up Itanium boxes for the holidays

    Have a slice or 250

    Without much fanfare, HP last month released a top-notch tool for slicing and dicing its HP-UX servers into different partitions. With the Integrity Virtual Machines (VM) software, HP customers can carve up Itanium-based servers and/or nPartitions to form multiple virtual boxes. Key to the software is the ability to create sub- …

    Servers 30 Nov 2005, 16:28

  • UK wows world with computerised butter dish

    Marlon Brando would have loved it

    There is some truly exceptional news today for those readers who have ever tried to replicate the infamous scene from Last Tango in Paris only to whip the butter out of the fridge and find it is rock-hard and completely unspreadable on even the hottest surface - the computerised ButterWizard. Yup, the UK has proved once again …

    Bootnotes 30 Nov 2005, 16:38

  • NASDAQ reprieve for Mercury

    Dodging the drop

    Mercury Interactive has been given a temporary reprieve from NASDAQ de-listing, and has until January to file its second- and third-quarter results. The self-styled business technology optimization (BTO) specialist must file its fiscal results by January 3, the company said Wednesday. Mercury faced de-listing after its third- …

    Financial News 30 Nov 2005, 22:38

  • Sun continues great software giveway

    Free, as in you pay for services

    Sun Microsystems is giving away more software in another stab at building a "volume" business based on commanding market share among developers. Software developers can now download unsupported copies of Sun's Java Enterprise System (JES), SeeBeyond integration suite, C, C++ and Fortran tools, and N1 grid engine and systems …

    Applications 30 Nov 2005, 22:54

  • IBM wants Solaris to Linux converts

    Port-O-Party

    The kind engineers at IBM have delivered a new tool for moving customers off Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system and onto Linux. The Migration Kit for Solaris to Linux arrives at no charge and can be picked up by business partners, ISVs and customers. Those interested in the kit will likely use it to shift Solaris C/C++ …

    Servers 30 Nov 2005, 22:54