20th July 2006 Archive

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Orange puts squeeze on customers

If you won't use our 3G services...

What is it with cellular operators these days? One minute they’re calling you up and offering you ADSL for free, the next they’re billing you for services which used to be free and chucking in charges where there used to be none. The operator in question, this time, is Orange, who are keenly promoting their fixed-broadband …

Mobile 20 Jul 2006, 06:02
French MoD questions OpenOffice security

Quit your sniggering Microsoft

The French Ministry of Defense has reportedly raised a red flag on OpenOffice, saying the open source desktop suite is less secure than Microsoft's product. A classified report by the ministry into OpenOffice has apparently concluded the suite is more susceptible to attack from macros than Microsoft Office. Details of the …

Applications 20 Jul 2006, 08:27
Apple and Juniper results overshadowed by SEC

Warnings and postponements

The shadow of an SEC probe into irregular share allocations by public companies loomed over both Apple Computer and Juniper Networks Wednesday, as they reported their latest financial results. Juniper delayed reporting a second quarter profit and filing its 10-K after an internal investigation found discrepancies between share …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 08:32
Geologists have ringside seats for an ocean's birth

A new sea forming in Africa

A rift that opened in Africa after a massive earthquake last September could be the beginning of a new Ocean, scientists say. The crack in the ground appeared along a fault line in the Afar desert in Ethiopia. The crack is heading for the Red Sea. If it makes it that far, it would carve a new ocean that would separate Eritrea …

Science 20 Jul 2006, 08:36
Vodafone rewrites customers' calendars

How many days in a month? As many as we say there are

When cellular network operators aren't trying to find new and interesting things to charge for they are making sure that they don't have to wait until the end of the month to get their money. On Friday a mailing list for people working in Public Relations was buzzing with stories of calls from Vodafone with demands that …

Mobile 20 Jul 2006, 08:38
Nvida working on switcheable GPU tech for laptops?

One chip for best, another for everyday wear

Nvidia is working on technology that would allow notebooks equipped with an integrated GPU and a dedicated graphics chip to flip between the two engines at will. Even though the system doesn't appear to allow the two GPUs to render co-operatively, it's claimed Nvidia will dub the technology 'SLI Power'. According to a Laptop …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 08:57
eBay losing its 'magic' - CEO

Auctioneers - please come back

Has the shine come off online auctions? eBay chief Meg Whitman has acknowledged that the site has lots some of its "magic", as the balance tilts away from home sellers to professional retailers. Not that eBay is grumbling too much. The company reported profits of $310m on turnover of $1.4bn for 2Q 2006 yesterday. eBay also has …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 09:11
Leadtek readies Nvidia 7600-based AGP boards

High-performance GPU for older PCs

Leadtek will next month ship a pair of AGP graphics cards based on Nvidia's GeForce 7600 family of GPUs, pitching the parts at PC users who have yet to make the transition to PCI Express but still want high-speed graphics. The A7600 GT TDH is fitted with a GeForce 7600 GT chip and 256MB of GDDR 3 memory connected across a 128 …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 09:19
NHS has another stab at records

Going one step at a time after all

A high-powered taskforce has been assigned to tackle problems with the overdue care records system, the core element of the troublesome £12.4bn National Programme for IT. The reputation of the national care records system was undermined in last month's House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on the NHS programme. It found …

Public Sector 20 Jul 2006, 09:40
Intel speeds quad-core CPU roll-out to Q4

CEO pulls forward server, desktop chip launches

Intel's quad-core processors 'Kentsfield' and 'Clovertown' may debut sooner than expected. Originally roadmapped for an H1 2007 introduction, the chips will now appear in Q4 2006, the chip giant's CEO, Paul Otellini, indicated yesterday. In March this year, it emerged that Kentsfield, Intel's four-core successor to its Core 2 …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 09:42
Palm 3G Euro Treo to ship 'September 2006'

Earlier than officially announced

The Vodafone-branded Euro-centric 3G Palm Treo will ship in September, Reg Hardware has learned. When the device was announced last week, Palm and Vodafone would only say the device will debut before the end of the year. Following last week's announcement, Vodafone posted a page on its website touting the upcoming handheld's …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 10:03
Virtual – the new reality for developers

New assumptions needed by code cutters

“The life of the developer has just become a lot harder,” said Sharad Singhal, Distinguished Technologist HP Labs, Palo Alto, “and the reason is that the assumptions they make about their environment are not necessarily true any more.” He was talking about the way that the rush towards virtualised systems infrastructures is …

Developer 20 Jul 2006, 10:04
Moto makes billion buck profit

Piling up like pebbles on a beach

Motorola made $1.38bn profit in the quarter ending June on sales of $10.88bn - both record numbers for the company. Only another so-so performance from the networks division, which made a profit of $394m in the period, down from $494m a year ago, on sales of $2.9bn, could take the shine off the results. Motorola said it …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 10:12
Vietnam to offer 'healthy sex' website

Coupling guides for couples

The Vietnamese government has decided to combat the country's rising divorce and abortion rates and "rampant prostitution" by offering citizens the chance to download educational "healthy sexual intercourse" movies from the internet, Reuters reports. Vietnam normally takes a dim view of web smut, and recently ordered net cafes …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 10:17
Daewoo dips into UMPC pool

Solo M1 ships in Korea

South Korea's Daewoo - probably better known over here for its cars than its computers - is to follow Samsung into the ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) arena: the firm's Lucoms subsidiary has announced the Solo M1. Like the Samsung Q1, the M1 sports a 7in LCD, but this time its a spacier 800 x 480 unit, better than the Q1's too- …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 10:34
Voice of the Daleks dies at 82

RIP Peter Hawkins

The man who originally gave voice to the Daleks has died at the age of 82, The Stage reports. Peter Hawkins' impressive list of TV credits also included Bill and Ben (for which he created the "flobadob" lingo), Super Ted, Captain Pugwash, Zippy in Rainbow* and the Martian robots in the 1970s Cadbury's Smash ads. Hawkins …

Entertainment 20 Jul 2006, 10:35
Excel scientific and engineering cookbook

Book review Celebrity chef’ing by numbers

Most people have a schizophrenic attitude to Excel, seeing it as “trivial” because they can use it with almost no training, but too difficult to use on more meaty problems. By way of response, David Bourg delivers a set of recipes that cook up some increasingly non trivial problems. The cookbook style does however mean that …

Developer 20 Jul 2006, 10:40
Macs get Windows Mobile 5.0 gadget sync support

Mark/Space to the rescue... again

Synchronisation software specialist Mark/Space has brought Windows Mobile 5.0 support to its Mac OS X-based utility The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile. The tool runs natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. The $40 download links the Apple operating system's personal information utilities, plus Microsoft Entourage …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 10:55
Microsoft steps on recruitment consultant

Relationship dynamics

A Microsoft plan that involves undercutting the recruitment consultants that feed skills into its sales channel has caused particular alarm for a recruiter that is already operating under the name the software giant had wanted for its own service. DymanicsCareers.com was alarmed to read on The Register last week about Microsoft …

IT Director 20 Jul 2006, 11:07
Child abuse website takedown delays can take years

Depraved images flourish online

Only one in 500 (0.2 per cent) of child abuse images on the net are hosted in the UK, down from 18 per cent in 1997. That's according to a half-yearly study from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) which found that paedophile sites hosted overseas remain accessible for up to five years despite being reported to the relevant …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 11:25
Amnesty calls for action on China

Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Nortel, Sun and Yahoo! named and shamed

Amnesty International is calling on internet users to join its campaign to reclaim the web as a place of freedom. The lobby group names Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Sun and Yahoo! as companies who have co-operated to censor the internet or to help track down individuals. Amnesty wants users of these services to …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 11:29
Boffins use hypnosis to induce déjà vu

Boffins use hypnosis to induce déjà vu

A post graduate student at Leeds University claims to have replicated the phenomenon of déjà vu in the laboratory. The basic mechanism behind the phenomenon is thought to work as follows: When it is presented with a scene, the brain runs through two processes. First it checks to see if it has seen or experienced any of the …

Biology 20 Jul 2006, 11:38
Hard drive shipments soar in Q1

Rumours of demise greatly exaggerated

The global hard drive market is in rude health, according to figures from analysts iSuppli. Shipments in Q1 2006 were up 16.5 per cent on the same period in 2005. The Seagate-Maxtor twosome accounted for a whopping 41 percent of the total 101.7m units shipped. Western Digital swallowed 18.5 per cent, with Hitachi taking bronze …

Storage 20 Jul 2006, 11:39
Wi-Fi Skype phones to connect this month

Edge-Core joins Netgear, D-link, Linksys etc

Taiwan's Edge-Core will ship its first Wi-Fi phone with on-board Skype software at the end of the month, the company said today. The gadget uses Wi-Fi's Wireless Multimedia (WMM) add-on technology to enhance call quality. The WM4201 sports a colour display on which your Skype contacts, downloaded automatically, are …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 11:39
ABN Amro introduces voice recognition

You want HOW much?

ABN Amro is to introduce voice recoginition for its customers, the Dutch bank announced today. Customers in the Netherlands can soon be identified over the phone without the need for passwords and PIN codes. The system distinguishes more than 100 biometric characteristics in a person's voice, including pitch, frequency, soft …

Applications 20 Jul 2006, 11:43
MXI Outbacker MXP 40GB biometric hard drive

Review Serious security

It used to be sufficient just to punch in a password to prove you have a right to read to the information your trying to access, but faster processors and smarter crackers means such methods are falling from favour, especially among those with very hush-hush information to guard. Instead, they're turning to biometrics - factors …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 11:44
PlusNet hit by storm in a forum

Marketing director goes on the attack

PlusNet's marketing director seems to have lost patience with posters slagging off his company in the forums at ADSLguide. In a lengthy post made yesterday Marco Potesta accepts that "PlusNet is not going through a great time right now" but says the forum "has degenerated into a personal conflict zone pandering to self …

Telecoms 20 Jul 2006, 11:53
Carbon trading for all will save the planet!

Analysis Minister moots new, parallel currency as solution

David Miliband is widely viewed as quite the cleverest of the younger generation of New Labour Ministers, a fast riser headed for greater things, not excluding the top job. But puzzling over the text of his speech extolling the virtues of personal carbon allowance swipe-cards, one begins to suspect that maybe he's not so smart …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 13:06
Channel Five to air cryonic freezing

'Death in the Deep Freeze'

Channel Five is to broadcast a documentary on the cryonic freezing of a terminally-ill cancer victim, The Guardian reports. The one-hour doco shows the American woman's "emotional journey" - illustrated by interviews with her and her husband - to eventual cryonic preservation. It will show for the first time the "shocking and …

Entertainment 20 Jul 2006, 13:23
Conservative council snubs private sector

Outsourcing is worst option

Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council has opted to keep its struggling benefits services in-house after assessing the outsourcing ventures of other councils and coming to the conclusion that the the private sector was not up to the job. The council has been wondering what to do with its worst performing departments since January …

Public Sector 20 Jul 2006, 13:30
US drunks face abuse from talking urinal

Taking the piss

Drunks in Nassau County, New York, are advised that the traditional dash to the john, normally accompanied only by sighs of relief and cries of "jeez, that feels better" may in future be interrupted by public messages broadcast from talking urinals. Safety officials in said county have bought 100 examples of Dr Richard Deutsch' …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 13:33
Cassini finds land on Titan

An Oz-sized continent called Xanadu?

New radar images sent back from the Cassini spacecraft have revealed an Australia-sized land mass on Saturn's moon, Titan. The continent is in a region known as Xanadu, but readers are asked to kindly refrain from any Olivia Newton-John references. The Xanadu region had been observed before the Cassini mission. It was snapped …

Space 20 Jul 2006, 13:36
PC growth dives during World Cup

Crossed off shopping lists

Zidane, Rooney and the rest put the boot into PC vendors in the second quarter with unit shipments knocked off course as punters tuned into the World Cup. Analysts IDC said that while the market overall grew at a “healthy” 12 per cent to 52 million units, there were unexpected twists at regional level. The most significant …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 14:31
Trojan poses as Google Toolbar

In brief Botnet ruse

Virus writers have developed a Trojan downloader attack that poses as an offer for the latest edition of Google's Toolbar, the popular search tool. Spam messages that began circulating on Wednesday attempt to trick users into visiting a maliciously constructed website, disguised to resemble the genuine Google Toolbar site, …

Security 20 Jul 2006, 14:37
US 419 victim shoots preacher husband

Row over money ends in tragedy

A row over money which provoked a US woman to shoot dead her husband may have been exacerbated by the couple's fleecing by 419 scammers, AP reports. Mary Winkler, of Selmer, Tennessee, allegedly shot her preacher husband in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun as he lay in bed on 22 March. The body of Matthew Winkler, described as …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 14:54
Multivalue datatypes

Editors blog What a lot of people like repeating groups...

Mark Whitehorn's recent article on multivalue data types in Access (here) sure attracted some comments. No, multivalue fields (non-atomic fields or repeating groups as I think I remember them) are not new. I didn't like them when I was an IMS DBA back in the eighties - and I met most of the arguments in favour of them back …

Developer 20 Jul 2006, 15:07
PowerColor to ship HDMI, HDCP X1600 board next week

Hi-def ready

Tul has become the latest graphics card maker to launch a board supporting HDMI. The company's PowerColor-branded board is based on an ATI Radeon X1600-class GPU and incorporates an HDCP anti-piracy crypto chip for full HD readiness. The PowerColor X1600 Pro HDMI has a 500MHz core connected across a 128-bit bus to 256MB of …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 15:15
Medion preps personalised portable PC

Your own pic pressed onto a 400 quid Centrino laptop

Centrino notebook for a mere 400 quid, anyone? That's the deal Germany's Medion is offering British buyers next month when Woolworths begins selling its latest machine. Buy direct and you get the chance to have your favourite picture or logo fitted on the lid. The MIM 2220 incorporates a 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M 735A processor …

Reg Hardware 20 Jul 2006, 15:35
Microsoft so very, very proud of its ties to open source Xen

Analysis VMware spat gets nasty

Few people outside of the server virtualization debate have encountered the mutual dislike that Microsoft and VMware have for each other. However, the spat between the two software makers has started edging closer to the general tech public due to events transpiring this week. And this is the kind of squabble that you want to …

Servers 20 Jul 2006, 16:09
Capita finds new contracts 'pleasing'

More business than ever

Capita notched up record contract wins for the seven months of 2006, the firm's chairman Rod Aldridge OBE noted today in the last set of results he will report to city before he steps down. Aldridge announced his resignation in March following allegations that his donations to the Labour party had been rewarded with contracts …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 16:20
CIO wanted - must be good at fixing broken ID card schemes

Jobs from hell...

The ID scheme is the most obvious of the Home Office's IT headaches, but it's by no means the only one. The Immigration and Nationality Directorate's recent discovery of up to 450,000 records associated with asylum seekers speaks volumes about the state (or indeed the very existence) of the asylum and immigration database, while …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 16:55
SEC outs itself in case against ex-Brocade CEO

Not so civil

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to have revealed its intentions to go after former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes. The commission earlier today announced a press conference in San Francisco via a covertly named Word file dubbed "brocademedia.doc". "You can't draw any conclusion from that," SEC spokesman John …

Storage 20 Jul 2006, 19:45
SEC hits former Brocade CEO first in operation 'Options Fiasco'

The new Martha Stewart

You can slap an apron on Greg Reyes and hand him a rolling pin. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has just turned the former Brocade CEO into the Martha Stewart of the options expensing scandal. The SEC today hit Reyes with criminal and civil charges, alleging that the CEO backdated stock options to make …

Storage 20 Jul 2006, 20:44
MySpace faces royalty challenge

Is that a song I hear?

MySpace should set aside some of its revenues into a pool to compensate musicians, says an industry group. "We think they should pay," a spokesman for British Music Rights, a group representing songwriters, publishers and performers, told us today. At a MusicAlly music industry seminar this week, MySpace's European VP rejected …

Music and Media 20 Jul 2006, 20:51
Nokia bounds along in Q2

Margins steady as phone price falls

Mobile phone market leader Nokia showed a strong Q2 recording a profit of €1.14bn ($1.44bn) on revenues of €9.83bn ($12.42bn). That's up 22 per cent and 43 per cent from a year ago. Under intense pricing pressure from rivals, and with most growth coming from markets which want cheaper phones, Nokia also managed to increase its …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 20:55
AMD delivers on promise of Q2 disappointment

Server up, desktop down

AMD did everything it promised during the second quarter. The company underwhelmed investors, while posting healthier results than rival Intel. AMD reported revenue of $1.22bn and a profit of $89m for the second quarter. Those figures compare to revenue of $797m and a profit of $11m in the same period last year, excluding the …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 21:19
Investors' hopes rise as Microsoft's Q4 profit falls

Buyback Mountain

Microsoft today erased investor worries over a 24 per cent drop in fourth quarter profits by announcing a massive stock buyback program and bullish results for its fiscal year. Redmond's fourth quarter revenue came in at $11.80bn - a 16 per cent year-over-year increase. The revenue gains, however, were offset by the large …

Financial News 20 Jul 2006, 23:52