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19th December 2005 Archive

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  • Action on song lyric websites is misguided

    Comment Says online sheet music retailer

    The Music Publishers’ Association of America (MPA) has announced a legal campaign targeted at unlicensed sheet music, lyrics and 'tab' sites, threatening to throw site owners into jail. But these unfortunate actions could do more damage than good. Internet forum contributors and bloggers alike have spent the last few days …

    Music and Media 19 Dec 2005, 10:22

  • Carphone swallows Onetel, Tele2

    It's good to Talk Talk

    The Carphone Warehouse is splashing out more than £150m to acquire Onetel and Tele2 as part of ambitious plans to challenge the dominance of UK telco BT. Once the deals are completed both companies will be rebranded to Carphone's TalkTalk phone service giving its 2.4m voice punters the ability to call one another for free. And …

    Financial News 19 Dec 2005, 10:24

  • Dell recalls 35,000 notebook batteries

    Fire hazard

    Dell has asked the owners of 35,000 Inspiron, Precision and Lattitude laptops to send back their batteries. According to the PC maker, the batteries in question may be faulty. If they are, they could overheat and catch fire. As yet, no one has been injured by overly hot batteries or by fires the power packs may have caused, …

    PCs 19 Dec 2005, 10:27

  • HP goes HD DVD

    Blu-ray no longer the 'superior format'

    HP has formally embraced HD DVD, the next-generation optical disc format it has been opposing for the past few years. The PC maker will no longer support Blu-ray Disc exclusively, the company said on Friday. It will also join the HD DVD Promotion Group, the Toshiba-led industry consortium of HD DVD backers. Supporting both …

    Reg Hardware 19 Dec 2005, 11:08

  • Hosted CRM: prepare your boat to be floated

    Quocirca's Changing Channels Exciting 2006 ahead

    If hosted CRM floats your boat, 2006 is going to be an exciting year. The noise created by salesforce.com and others over the last few years has created a momentum for hosted offerings in the CRM market as a whole. The vendors are heading down the hosted route faster than their customers and prospects, but if they create enough …

    Applications 19 Dec 2005, 11:15

  • Gmail goes mobile

    Big account, small screen

    Gmail users can now access their account on the move as search giant Google launches Gmail Mobile The small screen support for the popular e-mail account means that users can access their Gmail account from their mobile phone, using the URL http://m.gmail.com. According to Google, the page will automatically optimise its …

    Mobile 19 Dec 2005, 11:24

  • Private investors sniff around NTL/Telewest

    Cablecos a go-go

    A group of private investors is still interested in buying UK cableco NTL once it has completed its merger with Telewest, The Sunday Times reports. The group - comprising Apax Partners, Cinven, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Premier, Providence Equity Partners - wants to spend around £8bn on the business. The appeal of the cableco is …

    Telecoms 19 Dec 2005, 11:49

  • Update glitch spins out IE7 beta testers

    Wibbly wobbly web pages

    Last week's update for Internet Explorer has tripped up users testing an early pre-release version of IE7. Microsoft has traced back "scattered reports of odd browser behaviour" to a common cause of running IE7 Beta1 alongside IE6. When users updated IE6 last week programming conflicts meant the browser was liable to crash, …

    Enterprise Security 19 Dec 2005, 11:56

  • Warner Chappell backtracks over PearLyrics legal threat

    Waxes lyrical

    Music publisher Warner Chappell has let song lyric search tool PearLyrics off the hook. The company has apologised to the application's author, Walter Ritter, for sending him an "inappropriate" cease-and-desist letter two weeks ago. In response, Ritter stopped making PearLyrics available for download. Warner Chappell said it …

    Music and Media 19 Dec 2005, 12:54

  • 'Chav' caps banned from easyInternetCafe

    Oi! Lout! Nooooooo!

    If you're in Glasgow or Edinburgh and feel the need to pop into easyInternetCafe to check your email over Christmas, make sure you remove your baseball cap first. Otherwise, you won't be allowed in. Stelios Haji-Ioannou - who owns the chain of net cafes along with a no-frills airline and discount cellco - has banned the wearing …

    Telecoms 19 Dec 2005, 12:59

  • Festive trouser pump wafts into eBay

    While invisible Xmas tree wows the crowd

    Ah, the evocative smells of Xmas - the alpine-fresh aroma of pine needles, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, the faint bouquet of granny's sweet sherry. And, of course, the deadly, nose-crippling whiff of the brussel-sprout-fuelled trouser cough, creeping across the Yule living room like a blanket of phosgene: On Christmas …

    Bootnotes 19 Dec 2005, 13:36

  • NZ devil Santas terrorise Auckland

    When St Nick goes bad

    The shaken residents of Auckland, New Zealand, are today recovering from a terrifying ordeal provoked by 40 rioting Santas who robbed stores, assaulted security guards and, shockingly, "urinated from highway overpasses", as The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Auckland Central Police operative Noreen Hegarty told the paper how …

    Bootnotes 19 Dec 2005, 13:45

  • MS pulls plug on Mac IE

    No more downloads after January 2006

    Microsoft will formally kill the Mac version of Internet Explorer on 31 January 2006, the software giant has admitted. The software's been moribund since June 2003, of course, when the company said it would no longer develop the code. At the time, it said it would stop supporting the product in 2005, and indeed, the appropriate …

    Applications 19 Dec 2005, 13:56

  • US scramjet hits Mach 5

    Jet fuel-powered test flight

    US defence contractor Alliant Techsystems has successfully tested a rocket-launched scramjet at Mach 5.5. The project, in association with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) - and which forms part of the Freeflight Atmospheric Scramjet Test Technique (FASTT) programme - did …

    Science 19 Dec 2005, 14:17

  • EU slaps import duty on large LCD screens

    Puts squeeze on 19 inches plus

    The EU plans to impose a 14 per cent import duty on imports of larger LCD screens, leading pundits to forecast a huge hike in sticker prices. Dutch trade organisation ICT Office believes the tariff will cost its members "millions". The tariff would be applied to all monitors that are not produced within the EU, which is the …

    Reg Hardware 19 Dec 2005, 14:41

  • Chile and Peru fight merciless hacker war

    Official websites hit as fish crisis escalates

    Long gone are the good old days when obstreperous Latin American nations would invade each other over a World Cup qualifying match* - nowadays your belligerent sons of Cortez are battling it out in cyberspace. Take if you will Peru and Chile, currently engaged in a no-holds-barred hack war in which no government website is …

    Bootnotes 19 Dec 2005, 14:44

  • Cash'n'Carrion opens tech bookstore to online masses

    Cash'n'Carrion Choice cuts

    Cash'n'Carrion, The Register's venerable online store, has had a makeover. As well as titivating the design, we have expanded our massive retail empire with a brand new bookshop. To celebrate its birth, assembled some of the books that our hacks and techies have come to rely upon and love over the course of their many varied …

    Developer 19 Dec 2005, 14:48

  • Pipex rejigs SME sales team

    'Overall headcount will not be reduced'

    Pipex is restructuring its SME sales team in Hertfordshire but denied claims that the shake-up would lead to job losses. A spokesman for the broadband ISP said that those affected by the changes would be offered other jobs in the company with most of them at its Welwyn office. However, he admitted that some of the jobs could be …

    Telecoms 19 Dec 2005, 15:18

  • Terror phone clone scam exposed

    Rogers bill probe unveils abuse

    Affiliates of terrorist organization Hezbollah cloned the mobiles of senior executives of Canadian operator Rogers Communications, including chief exec Ted Rogers. Even though the firm had technology in place to trigger alerts over suspicious departures in call activity, Rogers staffers were too frightened of inconveniencing …

    ID 19 Dec 2005, 15:28

  • UK shelters from smut Trojan blitz

    Danger BXP

    UK businesses were targeted in a blitz of 215,000 emails containing a new Trojan on Monday (19 December), according to email filtering firm BlackSpider Technologies. The malware - called Small-BXP - comes in the payload to a message that poses as a receipt for access to an online porn site. Infected emails have the subject line …

    Malware 19 Dec 2005, 16:16

  • $10m for a Wikipedia for grown-ups

    Co-founder's new venture has experts - and it's going to use them

    Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is to launch an alternative to the utopian, all-comers, anything-goes web site, and has raised $10m to hire experts to help edit it. A year ago Sanger, who worked on Wikipedia's predecessor Nupedia and left the project in 2002, criticized its bias against expertise, and his new venture reflects …

    Music and Media 19 Dec 2005, 17:26

  • Gates joins PC as 'person' of year

    Bonage à trois

    Twenty-three years after the PC, the device responsible for much of his personal fortune, was named Time Magazine's "person of the year," Bill Gates has been honored in kind. Gates, his wife Melinda and Irish rocker Bono have been jointly named "persons" of the year by Time Magazine. Gates has not been honored for his work in …

    PCs 19 Dec 2005, 18:21

  • How Pixar's graphics gods made Lucas and Jobs look really smart

    Book review DroidMaker

    When first looking at Michael Rubin's droidMaker, you can't help but be nervous that another 400 pages have been wasted on the special effects magic behind Star Wars. Thankfully, that's not the case - far from it. DroidMaker really captures the 20-year technology journey that runs through Lucasfilm for a period and ends with …

    Developer 19 Dec 2005, 19:41