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23rd March 2006 Archive

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  • Dell embraces high-cost model with Alienware buy

    Opens AMD shop

    In a bid to color up a dull computer line, Dell has agreed to purchase flashy PC maker Alienware. With the buy, Dell gains a maker of high-performance systems aimed at gamers and other demanding customers. The often pricey Alienware boxes stand out for their colorful designs and high-end components. Dell officials earlier this …

    Financial News 23 Mar 2006, 00:08

  • Three Samsung DRAMers prepare for life behind bars

    A dirty dozen

    The memory cartel saga continued today with three Samsung Electronics executives agreeing to go to the slammer and make amends for fixing DRAM prices. Senior manager of DRAM sales Sun Woo Lee will serve eight months, while two lower level DRAM staffers Yeongho Kang and Young Woo Lee will serve seven months. All three have plead …

    Financial News 23 Mar 2006, 00:13

  • IBM mulls support charges for Eclipse developers

    Where did they all go?

    Eclipse developers are to become the beneficiaries of IBM's first support package for the platform. IBM, which helped create the open source platform in 2001, is to pilot a support program for developers using the organization's tools plus commercial offerings running on Eclipse, such as IBM's Rational suite. Details are yet …

    Developer 23 Mar 2006, 00:32

  • Microsoft sets Apple straight on security

    Do as I say, not as I do

    Microsoft giving advice to Apple on software security? What next, a lecture on timely shipping of product? As crazy as it sounds, a member of Microsoft's security team has blasted Apple for failing to coordinate its security efforts and to issue proper security advice. Stephen Toulouse, communications manager for Microsoft's …

    Enterprise Security 23 Mar 2006, 01:52

  • Nature mag cooked Wikipedia study

    Britannica hits back at junk science

    Nature magazine has some tough questions to answer after it let its Wikipedia fetish get the better of its responsibilities to reporting science. The Encyclopedia Britannica has published a devastating response to Nature's December comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica, and accuses the journal of misrepresenting its own …

    Music and Media 23 Mar 2006, 03:33

  • NHS N3 network over hurdles

    Claims Granger

    The head of Connecting for Health has said that the NHS broadband network is now over its delivery problems. Richard Granger was speaking at the Healthcare Computing conference on 21 March 2006. In his update of progress on the NHS National Programme for IT he cited the installation of the N3 broadband network as one of the …

    Data Networking 23 Mar 2006, 07:02

  • Subversion versus Perforce

    Popular source code management tools go head to head

    Back in 2000, CollabNet Inc initiated a new open source SCM (Software Configuration Management) project called Subversion. Its goal was to improve on CVS (Concurrent Versions System), the de facto standard in the open source world and still hugely popular. One of the issues with CVS was lack of support for atomic commits. …

    Developer 23 Mar 2006, 07:02

  • Wanadoo UK chalks up 150K VoIP users

    'Telephony revolution'

    Wanadoo UK has signed up 150,000 VoIP users over the last year, the broadband ISP boasted yesterday. This has prompted Wanadoo UK's boss to exclaim that this marks "the beginnings of a telephony revolution in the UK and the biggest winners are the consumers". In a statement the France Telecom-owned ISP, which used to be known …

    VoIP 23 Mar 2006, 08:02

  • IBM and EMC move API goodwill to iSeries

    Symmetrix takes hold

    IBM and EMC have embraced and extended their API swapping arrangement to form stronger ties between IBM's iSeries servers and EMC's Symmetrix storage systems. Once bitter API enemies, IBM and EMC have agreed to a five-year tie-up with the iSeries/Symmetrix pact. The companies will have engineering teams work on letting EMC's …

    Storage 23 Mar 2006, 10:16

  • World Cup live on your mobile

    Plus drop dead gorgeous DAB radios and kids' MP3 players

    Certified gadget obsessives Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny scour Gizmoville for the oddest digital goodies, TV Scoop features all that’s cool in British telly and Games Digest has all the latest gaming news. World Cup live on your mobile If this had been a week later, we'd have been thinking April Fools, but according to Mobile …

    Bootnotes 23 Mar 2006, 10:23

  • Capita chairman quits over Labour loan row

    Reputation of Capita 'questioned'

    The Executive Chairman of Capita - the outsourcing giant that runs dozens of Government projects - has quit the firm he founded after it emerged he lent the Labour Party one million quid. Rod Aldridge denies he did anything wrong and described as "spurious" any suggestion "that this loan has resulted in the Group being awarded …

    Public Sector 23 Mar 2006, 10:26

  • Nvidia fills out GeForce 7 line-up

    New 7300, 7600 models

    Nvidia yesterday launched the latest additions to its GeForce 7 series of GPUs, padding out the graphics chip family at the low end and mid-range with two new models, as forecast. The GeForce 7600 GS - aka G73 - joins the already-available 7600 GT. It's a 90nm part with a 128-bit memory bus connecting to DDR 2 or GDDR 3 SDRAM …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 10:34

  • New mgt. please, demands star Microsoft blogger

    Heads must roll for Vista death march

    So who should carry the can for the Vista death march? While software invariably ships late, Microsoft's successor to Windows XP is not only years late - missing its 2006 ship date for consumers - but more painfully, is short of the radical features we were talking about more than five years ago. Now Microsoft's best-known and …

    Operating Systems 23 Mar 2006, 10:43

  • Sony to ship Mac-compatible MiniDisc Walkman

    MZ-RH1 to let MDs be archived on computer

    Sony may have embraced the digital music revolution, but it hasn't left its MiniDisc format behind and today announced that it's fighting back with a new high-density model that will even - well, eventually - offer Mac support and the ability to archive MiniDisc content on a computer. The 1.5cm-thick MZ-RH1 supports Hi-MD …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 10:46

  • 'Firefox flaw wrecked my relationship'

    Sex, lies and browser bugs

    Web browser bugs are routinely blamed for creating huge networks of compromised PCs and undermining the safety of ecommerce transactions. Now one woman says a "security bug" in Mozilla led to the break up of her engagement. The anonymous woman shared a Windows PC with her former fiancé. Both had separate user logins on the same …

    Malware 23 Mar 2006, 11:12

  • Black helicopter lands on eBay

    Longbow Apache, pre-owned, £49m

    Here's one for all you flyboy conspiracy theorists - the chance to own your very own AH64A/D Longbow Apache chopper - in any colour you like as long as it's black: Yes indeed, if you've got the readies then this beauty is yours for a minimum bid of £10m. Here's the bangs you get for your bucks: You are bidding for a Pre- …

    Bootnotes 23 Mar 2006, 11:26

  • AMD confirms Athlon 64 X2 5000+

    And dual-core Turions due early May, apparently

    AMD will release its first batch of dual-core Turion 64 mobile processors on 9 May, lining up seven chips clocked between 1.6GHz and 2.2GHz, and accompanied by low-voltage variants, according to online claims. Separately, the vendor has itself confirmed the existence of the upcoming Athlon 64 X2 5000+. The Turion date comes …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 11:27

  • NASA deploys satellite swarm

    How's the 'space weather'?

    NASA has dispatched a trio of experimental satellites into orbit. Each of the fun-sized microsatellites carries miniaturised kit for investigating Earth's magnetic field. A Pegasus rocket blasted off from a carrier plane over Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, yesterday. The launch was delayed from 11 March by technical …

    Science 23 Mar 2006, 11:29

  • MPs pick at ID threads

    Will industry lead gov by biometric nose?

    A Commons committee has expressed doubts that existing technology can handle the government's national identity card scheme Members of Parliament's Science and Technology Committee used a hearing on biometric ID cards, taking place on 22 March 2006, to suggest that Home Office officials do not yet have a clear enough grasp of …

    Music and Media 23 Mar 2006, 11:52

  • Wireless stereo coming to PSP

    Bluetooth headphone adaptor, anyone?

    Taiwanese manufacturer Bluetake has announced a Bluetooth stereo audio adaptor for Sony's PlayStation Portable. The gizmo's neatly contoured to fit along the base of the handheld console and clip into the PSP's earphone socket. The iPhono Mini - aka the BT450Px - uses the A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) extension …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 11:52

  • UK.gov ditches home PC subsidies

    Who did they benefit anyway?

    People who have got jobs and can afford to buy their own home computers will no longer be offered a government tax break to buy PCs after 6 April, when The Home Computing Initiative is scrapped. Through HCI, firms rented computers to their employees, for a pre-tax monthly fee. About 1,250 companies had joined the government …

    Small Biz 23 Mar 2006, 12:17

  • Sendmail flaw poses critical hacker risk

    Kill the messenger

    Security researchers have unearthed a flaw in Sendmail, the popular email server package that's widely used by ISPs. A security bug involving improper handling of asynchronous signal data by Sendmail when receiving and processing mail might be used to corrupt stack memory. By sending specially malformed data at controlled time …

    Enterprise Security 23 Mar 2006, 12:23

  • Intel launches 3.73GHz Extreme dual-core Pentium

    Sssh! PEE 965 shipped quietly

    Intel has quietly rolled out the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 965, its anticipated upgrade to the gaming-oriented CPU family that ups the clock speed to 3.73GHz. Due in Q2, the part is already making appearances on the chip giant's website. In other respects, the new chip matches the previous top-of-the-range PEE …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 12:27

  • Pipex buys Caudwell's fixed line phone biz

    One million punters and counting

    Pipex has bought fixed line business Homecall from telecoms tycoon John Caudwell adding more than 500,000 phone punters to its existing customer base. Coupled with its existing broadband, voice and hosting business Pipex now has more than a million punters giving it ample opportunity to sell multiple services to its expanding …

    Networks 23 Mar 2006, 12:41

  • You open? We're Certified!

    Combatting technology lock-in in local government

    An initiative to inform council IT buying decisions is launched today. The new scheme entitled Certified Open aims to assess the degree of "openness" of a suppliers' products, services and staff. Certified Open will be launched with a kitemark that will make is easier for buyers to identify "open" companies. The kitemark is …

    Public Sector 23 Mar 2006, 12:58

  • BenQ exec claims Apple's iPhone 'definitely coming'

    Analysis Confirmation?

    Taiwan's BenQ believes Apple will indeed offer a mobile phone product. One company executive this week said the 'iPhone' is "definitely coming", claiming the iPod maker has been talking to Taiwanese component manufacturers, some of whom also supply BenQ's handset operation. The BenQ staffer's comment comes courtesy of …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 13:19

  • Mobile TV nightmare

    Window of opportunity smaller than your phone screen

    Broadcasters and operators have four years to beat each other senseless as they try and make a payback in what they think will be a lucrative market for delivering video to mobile devices. Yet even then, many of the technologies they are investing in are likely to be virtually obsolete, with only those able to accommodate high …

    Mobile 23 Mar 2006, 13:26

  • BT targets broadband hogs

    4,000 face the chop

    BT is pulling the plug on around 4,000 broadband hogs because of "excessive usage". The giant telco reckons these punters - who make up less than 0.2 per cent of the firm's 2.3m broadband users - are consistently hoovering up more 100 gig each a month. Letters have already been sent to those fingered by BT with the telco …

    Networks 23 Mar 2006, 14:30

  • Lucent fends off Ericsson for Riverstone

    Tripleplaytastic!

    Lucent has won the auction for Riverstone, the bankrupt networking equipment maker, with a bid of $207m. Originally, it had offered $170m for the firm's assets, but its pitch was queered by Ericsson. Ericsson unexpectedly offered $178m for the assets, forcing Lucent to up the ante. Riverstone makes carrier-class Ethernet …

    Data Networking 23 Mar 2006, 14:41

  • Septuagenarian drag queen caught in the act

    Enough!

    News of a troubling Atlantic-traversing epilogue to the Reg's recent coverage of priapic pensioners has come in from Ohio. A 72-year old cross-dresser was charged with public indecency after being caught pleasuring himself in a library, The Smoking Gun reports. Samuel McGilton was allegedy captured on CCTV earlier this month …

    Bootnotes 23 Mar 2006, 14:58

  • Ingram flashes Sandisk to European dealers

    No flash-in-the-pan

    Ingram Micro is to flog Sandisk flash storage cards in Europe. The Über-distie is kick-starting the relationship in Germany and the Nordic region, and will then flash the products elsewhere in Europe. Ingram has sold Sandisk in the US for several years and has a worldwide distribution agreement in place with the vendor. So it …

    Channel Register 23 Mar 2006, 15:00

  • PayPal goes mobile

    In brief Preps bills via text messaging

    PayPal is set to lauch a none-too-surprising service for mobile phones. PayPal mobile will launch within the next two weeks, and will allow users to pay bills and receive funds using a text message interface. A spokeswoman said the service would only be available in the US, Canada and Britain at first. Other international …

    Financial News 23 Mar 2006, 15:11

  • 3 cracks open bubbly after winning O2 court case

    O2 mulling appeal

    3 has won its High Court battle with O2 over the use of bubbles when advertising its service. Two years ago 3 ran an ad which claimed that its pay-as-you-go service was cheaper than rival O2. The ad contained "bubble imagery to highlight that 3's service was being compared to O2's. But O2 - which is now owned by Spanish telco …

    Mobile 23 Mar 2006, 15:32

  • European tech innovators honoured

    And the IST Prize goes to...

    A computer memory that can survive radiation, a face recognition system and a digital content "finger-printing" system to deter multimedia pirates have jointly been awarded a top European prize for innovation. The Grand Prize Winners of the 2006 European IST Prize - Dutch firm Cavendish Kinetics, Guardia of Denmark and French …

    Science 23 Mar 2006, 15:53

  • O2 recalls incendiary X1

    Phone spontaneously combusts

    O2 is recalling its own-brand X1 handset after reports that the phones can overheat while charging and pose a fire risk. The panic forced O2 to pay for ads in the national newspapers this morning. The warning on O2's website says: For safety reasons O2 recommend that you do not re-charge your X1 phone and return it to us …

    Mobile 23 Mar 2006, 15:57

  • £10,000 damages awarded for internet libel

    Mind your language

    A former parliamentary candidate for the UK Independence Party has been awarded £10,000 in damages after winning a defamation case. Michael Keith Smith had sued over postings in an internet chat room. According to reports, Smith, who put himself forward for the Portsmouth North seat at the last election, was a participant in a …

    Music and Media 23 Mar 2006, 16:35

  • LaCie Skwarim 30GB pocket hard drive

    Review Is storage really this funky?

    Don't ask me what the word 'skwarim' actually means - I don't know and neither, I suspect, does LaCie. It's pronounced 'square-im', and it's meant to suggest of the hard drive's shape, which is indeed square. Though with its fluorescent pink hue and eyestrain-inviting pattern, this certainly isn't a square product, in the other …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 16:50

  • Engineers tweak scramjet

    Oz test set for Saturday

    A new international entry into the hypersonic arena will be tested on Saturday. Hyshot III, a prototype scramjet part-developed by Ministry of Defence spin-out Qinetiq will be released from aboard a rocket over the South Australian desert at 12.30PM local time. The University of Queensland-run trial is a kamikaze mission for …

    Science 23 Mar 2006, 16:52

  • Gateway updates all-in-one PC line with easy-open case

    Trusted Platform chip on board too

    Gateway will next month ship what it claims is not only the most serviceable all-in-one desktop PC but one of the most secure - thanks to its Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, used to encrypt data stored on the machine's hard drive. The Profile 6 is built around an adjustable, detachable 17in LCD driven by an Intel 945G …

    Reg Hardware 23 Mar 2006, 17:13

  • 40,000 BP workers exposed in Ernst & Young laptop loss

    Exclusive Sun, IBM and Cisco welcome BP to club

    Like sands through the hourglass, these are The Days of Ernst & Young laptop loss. Yes, friends, The Register can confirm that BP has been added to the list of Ernst & Young customers whose personal data has been exposed after a laptop theft. BP joins Sun Microsystems, Cisco and IBM in this not so exclusive club. Ernst & Young …

    Enterprise Security 23 Mar 2006, 20:40

  • NEC accuses hungry, thirsty worker of stealing $300m

    A man has to eat

    NEC this week warned that it will need to restate past financial results after a worker allegedly booked some $310m in faked transactions over three years. The reason for such abuse? NEC claims the worker wanted the money for "drinking and eating". You can't make this stuff up. In a lengthy statement, NEC accuses an unnamed …

    Financial News 23 Mar 2006, 20:48

  • Borland CEO promises 'caring' IDE overlord

    Won't go Lex Luthor on ya'll

    Borland's chief executive has stressed his company's commitment to developers, by promising to pass the soon-to-be divested tools business to a "caring" investor. Tod Nielsen told EclipseCon attendees that Borland is screening companies who will invest in and drive the IDE business forward, rather than looking for a "Lex Luthor …

    Developer 23 Mar 2006, 22:17

  • Hackers put the futility back in Sun's grid utility

    DOS attack - or the Slashdot effect?

    Just hours after it went live, Sun Microsystems' grid computing service was felled by hackers using a denial-of-service attack. Sun, however, won't reveal any hints about the culprits or confirm whether or not it has contacted law enforcement about the attack. Sun yesterday turned on its $1 per chip per hour service that lets …

    Data Networking 23 Mar 2006, 22:53