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14th June 2006 Archive

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  • Digging into the future of data mining

    Comment Crystal ball gazing

    The first thing to appreciate about data mining is that it should be thought of as R&D. That is, you do a bunch of research, some of which (but by no means all) is then deployable in the business. Moreover, some of it becomes so well established that it becomes a mass market product. For example, market basket analysis (which …

    Developer 14 Jun 2006, 08:37

  • Retain or restrain access logs?

    Comment If the system ain't broke, don't fix it

    A recent proposal by the US Department of Justice that would mandate Internet Service Providers to retain certain records represents a dangerous trend of turning private companies into proxies for law enforcement or intelligence agencies against the interests of their clients or customers. When you use the internet, a certain …

    Music and Media 14 Jun 2006, 09:04

  • EU has rethink over roaming charges

    'Fine-tuning' apparently

    The European Commission (EC) has watered down plans to force mobile operators in Europe to slash the cost of using a mobile phone abroad. The EC had wanted mobile users to be charged the same price for using their phone while abroad as they pay in their country of residence, according to proposals put forward by Commissioner …

    Mobile 14 Jun 2006, 09:15

  • Google Earth v.4 comes to Linux

    Higher-res images, too

    Some excellent news this morning for all you Linux jockeys - you can now join the rest of the planet in enjoying Google Earth, as the search monolith has just released Version 4 beta of the programme in PC, Mac and Linux flavours. Version 4 reportedly offers "greater coverage and higher resolution" and comes in French, German, …

    Applications 14 Jun 2006, 09:16

  • MySpace to auction off its search

    Google, Yahoo! and MSN

    Music and networking site MySpace plans to sell off its search function to Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp paid $580m for MySpace in July 2005. Now all he needs to do is find a way to make some money from it. The site is good at collecting page impressions, but has had less success selling ads. Chief …

    Financial News 14 Jun 2006, 09:40

  • Non-scents from Nokia

    A nose at the new concept phones

    For six months, 25 Industrial Design MA students from London's CSM College of Art and Design have been working to create concepts for a premium but mass market mobile device capable of providing 4G or 5G multimedia services. The students worked for a cash prize and, more importantly, for the chance to work side-by-side with …

    Reg Hardware 14 Jun 2006, 09:45

  • Airbus A380 delayed - again

    Wiring woes

    Customers eager to get their hands on the new Airbus A380 may face a further six-month delay in getting their new toy - bringing the total time they've spent twiddling their thumbs to a year. An Airbus statement attributes the case to "to bottlenecks formed in the definition, manufacturing and installation of electrical systems …

    Science 14 Jun 2006, 09:47

  • NI wins 1,000 call centre jobs

    A passage from India

    An Indian outsourcing company is to create 1,000 jobs in Northern Ireland over the next two years. ICICI OneSource, one of India's largest business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, is to create the jobs at two sites in Northern Ireland. The first is due to be up and running by the end of next month at a site in Belfast and …

    Channel Register 14 Jun 2006, 09:55

  • eBay poised to stick Skype on site

    Probably won't get $2.6bn for it...

    Online auctioneer eBay is to integrate Skype onto its website - and try and convince the world of the wisdom of its $2.6bn purchase. The idea is to simplify communication between buyers and seller. Sellers will have the option of including a "Skype Me" button on the pages they set so bidders can call them using Voice over …

    VoIP 14 Jun 2006, 10:04

  • UK homes to be rated for energy efficiency

    Loft insulation salesmen ready stocks

    From June next year, all homes in England and Wales must be given an energy efficiency rating before they can be sold. The government says the move, which is in line with European agreements, will help the UK reduce its carbon emissions. The Energy Performance Certificate will form part of the Home Information Packs, to be …

    Physics 14 Jun 2006, 10:08

  • G8 warned not to be blinkered by bird flu

    Scientists push for focus ahead of leaders' summit

    Scientists around the world have urged the G8 leaders not to get so caught up in the threat of bird flu that they divert their attention from the real global killers: TB, HIV/AIDS and malaria. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that between them the three kill around six million people every year. An assemblage of …

    Biology 14 Jun 2006, 10:35

  • eBay racks up 200m users

    Historic moment for online tat bazaar

    Online tat bazaar eBay has racked up 200m registered users, Reuters reports. Chief exec Meg Whitman announced the milestone figure - which excludes those enjoying other eBay "properties" such as Rent.com and Shopping.com - at the company's annual user shindig in Las Vegas on Saturday. To underline the scale of the achievement …

    Financial News 14 Jun 2006, 10:36

  • UK paper buys smallpox online

    Well, nearly...

    UK newspaper the Guardian has bought a sequence of smallpox virus DNA. The sequence was 78 letters long while the full smallpox genome is 185,000 letters long. The paper claimed: "So to build a virus from scratch, a terrorist would simply order consecutive lengths of DNA along the sequence and glue them together in the correct …

    Biology 14 Jun 2006, 11:16

  • CA snaffles records manager

    MDY waters in archiving

    CA has bought itself yet another storage bowstring, in the form of records management firm MDY Group. MDY's FileSurf software automates record-keeping for email and other bottomless file dumps produced by businesses. CA says the snaffle represents a continuation of its "Intelligent Storage Management" strategy. Last year the …

    Applications 14 Jun 2006, 11:19

  • Hawking: Leave Earth or die!

    But not before you buy my new book...

    Stephen Hawking has called for a new diaspora, telling a Hong Kong press conference that humanity must leave Earth and colonise the rest of the solar system if it is to avoid extinction. The respected physicist warned of the increasing risk that some kind of natural or man made disaster - such as global warming, or a nuclear …

    Space 14 Jun 2006, 11:20

  • US Marines investigate singing squaddie

    Does war make you less sensitive, and tone deaf?

    The US army is investigating whether a video which purports to show a serving Marine singing and playing the guitar on YouTube is genuine. The clip appears to show a chubby US soldier playing acoustic guitar and singing into a microphone in front of an audience. The man's voice might upset Simon Cowell, but it is hardly the …

    Music and Media 14 Jun 2006, 11:41

  • Virgin Mobile stuffs England fans with free kebabs

    Heart attack and minds campaign

    Those fans who are currently camped out at England's footie enclave in Achern and are worried about the effect on their of health of excessive consumption of post-beer bratwurst will be relieved to know that Virgin Mobile is offering customers some proper healthy British nosh in the form of a free kebab. The company has …

    Mobile 14 Jun 2006, 11:47

  • MS June update fixes dangerous Word flaw

    And IE flaw, Windows flaw, PowerPoint flaw...

    Microsoft has released a bumper batches of 12 security updates - eight of them critical - as part of its regular Patch Tuesday update cycle. The security patches address various critical vulnerabilities involving Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Media Player, Word, and PowerPoint that create a means for hackers to …

    Security 14 Jun 2006, 11:58

  • NPfIT letter raises more reader hackles

    Letter of the Week Shooting the messenger

    Every now and then we get a letter of such quality that we can't wait 'till the next batch of correspondence to run it. This is such an occasion. Allow us to remind you of the story last week detailing the latest financial difficulties to beset the NHS's National Programme for IT. Shortly after this story ran, the NPfIT itself …

    Letters 14 Jun 2006, 12:52

  • Akasa Combo multi-format memory card reader

    Review Leave the adaptors at home

    Memory card readers come in all shapes and sizes, and it can be a challenge finding the one you need. Multi-format models tend to be the easy answer, but even then you can't be sure it supports all the memory cards you have. Fortunately, Akasa has come to the rescue with the Combo card reader, that not only supports most memory …

    Reg Hardware 14 Jun 2006, 12:53

  • ISS to brighten Europe's night skies

    Starry starry night...

    A diary marker for all you stargazers out there. This weekend (given clear skies, of course) most of Europe ought to be able to get a clear view of the International Space Station as it passes overhead. The ISS is generally only visible just after sunset or just before dawn. Twice a year, however, it moves out of the Earth's …

    Space 14 Jun 2006, 15:02

  • Brit workers love to snoop

    How much money does Fred from sales make?

    Nearly a quarter (22 per cent) of UK employees admit to having illegally accessed sensitive data such as salary details from their firms employer's IT systems. More than half (54 per cent) of 2,200 adults polled during a YouGov survey said they'd forgo any scruples to do the same, given half a chance, according to a Microsoft …

    IT Director 14 Jun 2006, 15:13

  • Baseball puts dugout phones on steroids

    Gentlemen callers go wireless

    With steroids and human growth hormone scandals surrounding it, Major League Baseball (MLB) has gone into a desperation mode where it tries to find dignity in the strangest of places. On Tuesday, for example, MLB and Hall of Fame officials were on hand in Chicago to celebrate - get this - the use of a cellphone. For the first …

    Mobile 14 Jun 2006, 15:19

  • Italians put Pammy into orbit

    Probing for anti-matter

    Tomorrow will see the launch of Pamela, a satellite designed to seek out evidence of dark matter and anti-matter in cosmic rays. Pamela (Payload for Anti-matter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) is a joint project between the Italian and Russian space agencies, with contributions from their equivalents in …

    Space 14 Jun 2006, 16:02

  • HP aims to stick IBM with new blades

    Presents c-Class

    The surgeons within HP have performed an impressive gutting and reconstruction of the company's blade server line. HP today revealed a new chassis and new blade servers that make up its c-Class systems. HP has been working on the fresh hardware for three years, and the arrival of the c-Class gear marks the most significant …

    Servers 14 Jun 2006, 17:25

  • JBoss drops JMX architecture

    Small panic at conference

    JBoss World is a pretty calm place - even Marc Fleury is pretty laid back (I suppose he has cause to be). But there was a flurry of interest when a speaker announced that the next smoother, faster JBoss architecture would do without JMX (Java Management Extensions, which JBoss currently uses, not for management particularly, but …

    Developer 14 Jun 2006, 23:20