5th April 2006 Archive

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Trojan-powered scam network dismantled

Malware à la carte

Banks, telecos, hotels, airlines and international betting services were among those affected by the creation and sale of Briz Trojans, a malware-creation-for-hire scam recently uncovered by security researchers. Analysis of the data stolen by one of the customised Trojans on sale to cybercrooks through the computer underground …

Security 5 Apr 2006, 00:02
Dixons ditches the High Street

Brand will live online only

Dixons Store Group (DSG) is pulling Dixons off British High Streets - the brand will continue, but only as a website. All Dixons stores will be rebranded as "Currys.digital" shops, starting in early May. The programme to rebrand and rebadge 190 stores will cost about £7m, but will deliver annual savings of £3m. The change will …

Financial News 5 Apr 2006, 08:32
Negroponte tells software industry to slim down

That includes you, Gates

Nicholas Negroponte has criticized the software industry, including those building Linux, for churning out bloatware that slows down even the fastest PCs. Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop Per Child charity and co-founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, told LinuxWorld on Tuesday we have reached a point where each new release …

Applications 5 Apr 2006, 08:41
IBM takes different track on SOA

Resetting the hype?

The one thing more predictable than mighty IBM every few months staking a bigger claim on the market for service oriented architectures (SOAs) than it did last time, is for its competitors to also wheel out some "me too" PR news. And so it was, on Monday that IBM announced nothing less than eight new products and a stonking 20 …

Software 5 Apr 2006, 08:50
Developers get busy with open source bugs

How fast?

Developers have fixed more than 900 bugs in a brace of popular open source projects and applications since details were first made public last month. Defect tracking specialist Coverity said developers have fixed bugs in 32 open source packages and applications at a rate of one every six minutes. In just seven days alone, …

Applications 5 Apr 2006, 08:53
Lucent sues Microsoft in Xbox 360 patent clash

Alleges IP infringement, seeks damages

Microsoft's Xbox 360 console contains illegally used technology, Lucent alleged last week - and filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the software giant to back up its claim. It is seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial. The complaint, filed with the US District Court in San Diego on 28 March, alleges the Xbox 360 …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 08:54
Spitzer blitzes adware

Popup suit

New York state's pugilistic Attorney General has spyware in his sights. Eliot Spitzer has sued Direct Revenue for deceptive advertising, computer tampering and trespass. The suit claims the company installed malware on PCs without users' explicit consent, typically after luring them with the offer of a browser enhancement or …

Security 5 Apr 2006, 09:24
Verizon email blockade - rebate offered

Europeans, Asians need not apply

Verizon is offering a cash rebate to net users who had messages blocked during a notorious period either side of Christmas 2004. It's part of a tentative settlement to a pair of class action suits that arose from the blockade. The catch is it only applies to Verizon's own stateside internet customers. If you were sending a …

Telecoms 5 Apr 2006, 09:27
Intel 'Conroe' pricing leaks out

Pentium D 9xx price cut claims confirmed

Freshly leaked Pentium D pricing information has added weight to claims that Intel will ship the next model in the series, the 960, at the end of this month before slashing prices in Q3 when its next-generation architecture 'Conroe' processor debuts. Pentium D pricing data provided by DailyTech confirms earlier reports that …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 09:27
P2P radio now free

Legit music sharing service revamped

Although an unscientific poll last year revealed that only 0.2 per cent of Register readers think "Web 2.0" is worthwhile, net services companies continue to believe the buzzword can buff up their brand. Today, the Mercora music service unveils a major upgrade with the 2.0 moniker prominent. The service allows you to share and …

Music and Media 5 Apr 2006, 09:36
EC calls time on internet betting bans

First step of investigation

The European Commission (EC) is making official requests for information to Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden as to why they are restricting access to internet betting services. This is the first stage to a full investigation or "infringement procedure". All the named countries restrict …

Financial News 5 Apr 2006, 09:37
NHTCU disappears into SOCA

New crime busting agency to be more effective...or not?

The Government yesterday launched the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), dubbed the British FBI, with the aim of tackling drug trafficking, organised immigration crime, money laundering, and identity fraud. The new agency is drawing on officers from the former National Crime Squad and National Criminal Intelligence Agency. …

Music and Media 5 Apr 2006, 09:41
Unipalm adds to security offering

Network Engines get the nod

Unipalm is to distribute Network Engines' security appliances in the UK and Ireland. Network Engines developed the appliances to provide web caching and firewall protection. They are based on ISA Server 2004 and Websense Security Suite. David Ellis, director of e-security at Unipalm, said 65 per cent of the firm's Websense …

Channel Register 5 Apr 2006, 09:41
BT broadband punters must register for 8 meg upgrade

First come, first served

BT Retail's 2.3m broadband customers will not be automatically upgraded to the telco's new ADSL Max 8 meg service. Instead, BT broadband customers desperate for more speed will have to register their interest at a BT website (www.bt.com/getbroadband) and wait their turn. Although the upgrade is free, those signing up to the …

Telecoms 5 Apr 2006, 09:43
Overseas credit card purchases are protected

Appeal court ruling good news for consumers

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has won an appeal ruling which means consumer safeguards on credit card purchases made in the UK will generally extend to cover purchases made abroad, whether in person or online. Three judges of the Appeals Court last month overturned a High Court ruling which refused protection for overseas …

Financial News 5 Apr 2006, 09:49
Hitachi readies high-density desktop hard drives

CE-oriented versions too

Hitachi will ship its latest 3.5in desktop hard disk drives in Q3, the company said yesterday. The new units will feature the company's latest, 160GB-plus, 1.2bn bits per square inch density platters allowing it to deliver 500GB of storage capacity using just three disks, reducing drive complexity and power consumption. The …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 10:00
More accurate on the eye

Iris scan tech improves but other biometrics still unreliable

The Home Office identity cards team has reported progress in improving verification by iris scans, but problems with other biometrics apparently persist. In response to questions from Government Computing News, the Home Office has claimed that the technology for iris scanning has improved. It has not, however, made any claims …

ID 5 Apr 2006, 10:05
VIA preps single-chip C7, Eden chipset

CX700 pitched at embedded roles

VIA today said it will begin shipping its first single-chip chipset for its C7 and Eden CPUs later this quarter, the better to pitch the low-power x86 processors at embedded applications. Cramming North Bridge and South Bridge components into one chip reduces the motherboard area requirement by 34 per cent, VIA said. The …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 10:25
Intel and Red Hat team for speed

And celebrate increase in resellers

Intel and Red Hat are working together to help customers speed up deployment of solutions by testing them either online or at one of 14 global centres. Main centres will be in Mumbai and McLean, Virginia, with 14 other "satellite locations". They will be fitted out with Intel desktops and servers so customers can check …

Servers 5 Apr 2006, 10:26
Jesus's 'walk on water' illusion exposed?

A different kind of Bible bashing

Florida scientists have said the 'walk on water' miracle described in Matthew's gospel may have been no more than a spot of ice skating. In a move certain to enrage the faithful, Professor Doron Nof at Florida State University's Bible belt Tallahassee campus and his co-authors say a combination of unusual atmospheric conditions …

Physics 5 Apr 2006, 10:29
BT takes on cellcos in converged services for SMEs

Launches Business Plan for Mobile

The cellular operators have been chasing the small and medium enterprise (SME) market aggressively in the past year, but in the UK they look to have been trumped by the wireline carrier, BT. The incumbent recently announced its Business Plan with Mobile for smaller businesses with an annual communications spend of £5,000 or …

Mobile 5 Apr 2006, 10:42
UK retailer claims Bluetooth iPod imminent

Accessory after the fact

Is there a Bluetooth-equipped iPod on the way? UK girls'n'gadgets magazine Stuff certainly thinks so, based on a conversation it's had with an unnamed British retailer. If Apple's telling retailers to prepare for such a product, it can't be far off launching the thing. CEO Steve Jobs has, of course, been sceptical about such …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 10:51
IBM and Novell go after SMBs

Watch out small biz...

IBM and Novell are teaming up to sell middleware to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). The WebSphere Application Server Community Edition WAS CE is based on Apache Geronimo web server, DB2 Express-C and IBM eServers, blades or storage. Called Integrated Stack for Linux the product will make it easier for customers to …

Small Biz 5 Apr 2006, 10:51
EU caps may dent competition

But cellcos brought it on themselves: Reding

The debate over international roaming charges in the EU has raised the issue that always dogs telecoms in the region – whether consumers should be safeguarded by legislation or by the free market. Time and again mobile operators – and not only in Europe of course – have weakened their own argument that competition supports …

Mobile 5 Apr 2006, 11:13
Mastercare to be folded into DSGi

Insiders fear job losses

Mastercare - the outfit that provides after sales service for customers of high street electrical retailers Dixons and Currys - is to be folded into its parent company DSGi. DSGi, or Dixons as it used to be known, adopted Mastercare in 1984 when it bought Currys, the then owner of Mastercare. The firm has always been a …

Financial News 5 Apr 2006, 11:28
Clash fan nicked

Terror profiling finds punk...

A man from Teeside was dragged from a plane and questioned for three hours under the Terrorism Act after a cabbie reported him because he was worried about his choice of music. Harraj Mann, from Teeside, suffered the interogation after he got a cab to Durham airport and plugged his MP3 player into the taxi's stereo. After …

Bootnotes 5 Apr 2006, 11:36
NEC spotlights 'brightest' semi-reflective LCD yet

Super screen tech for PSPs, PDAs, iPods etc, company claims

NEC today unveiled a 3.5in LCD it claims can reproduce colours "clearly and vividly" in brightly lit conditions. It does the trick by increasing the amount of light the display reflects back through its screen and also by boosting its luminance beyond that of any other panel of its kind. The LCD - prosaically dubbed the …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 12:03
EU beats MS with jewel-encrusted PDA

Letters Reg hack also takes a shoeing

God alone knows what people used to talk about before Microsoft locked horns with the EU. Well actually, it was the weather, but these days you rarely see farmers leaning over five-bar gates discussing the possibility of rain with their neighbour. The conversation is more likely to begin: "So, Wurzel, do you think it's right …

Letters 5 Apr 2006, 12:29
Crackpot satnav route leads to 100ft cliff

North Yorkshire road of death

Locals in a North Yorkshire village are demanding that satnav companies remove from their databases a rural track recommended by in-car systems as a plausible route from Swaledale to Wensleydale, the BBC reports. The problem is, the road is unsurfaced and runs alongside a 100ft cliff over which, the concerned villagers reckon, …

Bootnotes 5 Apr 2006, 12:31
US Senators edge toward carbon cutting consensus

Heel-dragging committee gets industry kick up the behind

US Senators have made baby steps toward introducing federal carbon caps on the back of evidence from industry. Bizarrely, some electricity firms pleaded for the politicians to speed up the process. Energy giant Exelon's Elizabeth Moler said: "It is critical that we start now." She also noted that Congress had first taken …

Science 5 Apr 2006, 12:33
Infected Windows PC? Just nuke it

Forget repairing virus infected systems, says MS security manager

The latest types of malware are so potent that organisations should forget about trying to cleanse infected systems, a top Microsoft security officer has advised. Mike Danseglio, a program manager in Microsoft's security group, said firms should think about establishing a process for backup and recovering rather than relying on …

Anti-Virus 5 Apr 2006, 12:51
One-legged sexagenarian in car chase crash-and-burn

Jail possible

A one-legged, 60 year old woman has been warned she faces jail over a one hour, 24 mile car pursuit, which saw the sexagenarian low-speed merchant jump red lights, drive on the pavement and overtake on dangerous bends while a fleet of police cars and a spotter plane gave chase. The blue-rinse Canonball Run - which began in a …

Bootnotes 5 Apr 2006, 12:53
NY Times administers coup de grâce to crippled website

Death by a thousand gimmicks

The New York Times website has certainly seen better days. The financially-strapped company blundered late last year with its TimesSelect gimmick, placing its regular columnists behind a subscription scheme and strangling its circulation. Until the TimesSelect fiasco, the regular columnists were nearly always among the "most …

Financial News 5 Apr 2006, 12:55
New style reviews

Making product reviews more useful and interactive

We’re experimenting with various new review styles. One is to compare two products, both good of their type, and look at the different purposes each is fit for – there’s an example (for Perforce and Subversion) here. We think this makes it easier to get a feel for the products in context and moves away from the “this product is …

Developer 5 Apr 2006, 13:25
Apple blesses Windows XP on Macs

Boot Camp download makes installation more easy

Apple has formally given its thumbs-up to attempts to install and run Windows XP on Intel-based Macs. It has posted a tool called Boot Camp that allows iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini owners to run the Microsoft OS more easily. The company also confirmed the next major Mac OS X release, Leopard, will integrate the twin-OS …

Reg Hardware 5 Apr 2006, 13:49
Skunkworks roundup

Stob It's a far, far beta thing

Natch, the Reg is your first port of call for the low-down on all the big product announcements. But today we're taking it one step further. As a special treat, we have a preview of some hot stuff that even the CTO doesn't know about yet. ++SatNav == SatNag SatNav has certainly come a long way since the days when we watched …

Verity Stob 5 Apr 2006, 13:53
Intel, EMC eye up SMB storage

Marriage of convenience begets new kit

Intel and EMC have teamed up to target the SMB storage market, particularly in emerging nations China and India. The tie-up, announced at Storage Networking World, is aimed at pushing Intel's SSR212PP storage solution to small and medium size customers. The Intel kit is based on EMC's Clariion AX150, also unveiled this week. …

Storage 5 Apr 2006, 14:26
BT silent on 'green goo' results

Readers finger giant maggots for mess

There's still no word on the identity of the "mysterious green goo" that has halted repairs to damaged cables in Aldershot for fears that it might be toxic. A fault was discovered on the cables last week leaving around 420 homes and businesses in the Aldershot area completely cut off without access to phone or broadband. Work …

Telecoms 5 Apr 2006, 14:37
Samsung SGH-Z320i 3G i-mode mobile phone

Review O2's first 3G i-mode combi phone

Chelsea FC seems hell bent on alienating the entire world, but new sponsor Samsung has gone for a far more inclusive approach with the first 3G and i-mode combination handset, now ready for O2's UK customers. From a very young age I was always told that putting all your eggs in one basket was a bad thing - so how come this …

Mobile 5 Apr 2006, 14:45
LSD appeal for ~~cash~~ global consciousness

Hofmann's mates want another party

The organisers of January's 100th birthday bash for the inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, have run out of cash. What happened? Gatecrashers, of course. Now, 11 weeks since the sun came up on the biggest psychedelic shindig ever held in high society, and reality has come back with a thud. But the torch bearers of the spiritual …

Science 5 Apr 2006, 14:49
Tripe is absolutely offal: official

Tops UK crap food poll

A poll of 4,903 people by the Beeb's foodie mag Olive has proved what anyone south of Lancashire has always known: tripe is completely disgusting and no-one in their right mind would touch it with a ten-foot fork. And before the good burghers of Manchester get shirty and start banging on about how they remember their dear old …

Bootnotes 5 Apr 2006, 14:54
Virus writers at war

Rival gangs and security industry both under attack

The confrontation between virus writers and the anti-virus industry is escalating, with malware authors also going after fellow VXers. The dog eat dog atmosphere has resulted in cybercriminals stepping up their attacks against the security industry and government organisations, according to a report Kaspersky Labs published …

Anti-Virus 5 Apr 2006, 15:20
Negroponte defends the hundred dollar laptop

One laptop per child...

Nicholas Negroponte has defended his proposed $100 laptop for kids in the developing world and promised they'll be shipping by later this year or early 2007. Giving the opening keynote at LinuxWorld - not an open source theme park, but an IDG conference - Negroponte played to the crowd by saying: "When you have Intel and …

Music and Media 5 Apr 2006, 15:26
Final drug trial victim out of the woods

As placebo man balks at follow-ups

All of the volunteers given an experimental immune drug in a London trial have now made it off the critical list at Northwick Park hospital. The last of six men given biotech firm TeGenero's TGN1412 compound is now fully conscious and looks set to make a full recovery. Intensive care clinical director Dr Ganesh Suntharalingam …

Biology 5 Apr 2006, 16:03
Unisys sets LinuxWorld alight

Literally

This just in from open source love-in LinuxWorld, currently being enjoyed by pizza-lovers aplenty in Boston: Unisys this morning set the event alight with a magnificent display of inflammability on its booth 422: According to our man on the spot, Smilin' Stan Wesolowski, some vendors will "do anything to attract attention". …

Servers 5 Apr 2006, 16:08
From Boot Camp to Legacy API? An Apple timeline

Analysis Developers, developers, developers...

So Apple has endorsed dual-boot Macs, and the only surprise is that it took Apple so long to disclose. What follows is an imaginary time-line that illustrates the opportunities and perils for ahead for Apple. August 2006: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.5 or Leopard, the "HyperVisor OS", promising the seamless run-time …

Operating Systems 5 Apr 2006, 20:13
Net neutrality bid fails

Again

A legislative bid to prevent US network operators from introducing discriminatory pricing for their own services has been defeated at the sub-committee phase in the lower house. The proposed legislation, an amendment to the Telecommunications Act, would have outlawed an ISP from "offering varied service plans to users at …

Music and Media 5 Apr 2006, 22:12
MLB.com hands baseball to Microsoft

As American as a software monopoly

America's pastime has become a Microsoft-only affair with Major League Baseball's (MLB) online arm scrapping support for Real media during the 2006 season. For years, MLB Advanced Media delivered audio and video streams of baseball games to fans via both Windows and Real media. No more. Due to what it calls a lack of demand, …

Financial News 5 Apr 2006, 22:27