The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

4th August 2006 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • MPs want to postpone ID

    Better late than never, they say

    The government has been advised to further postpone the introduction of ID Cards until it can be sure the scheme will work. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry into the thinking behind ID Cards, published today, found the government had decided what it wanted to do before it had determined if it would …

    Public Sector 4 Aug 2006, 02:02

  • People still too human for Stephen Hawking

    Damned biological units...

    "Did you have fun with your robot buddy?" --Homer Simpson to Lisa Simpson, on Stephen Hawking's departure "How can the human race survive the next hundred years?" Stephen Hawking wants to know. So much so that he posted the question on line, in quest of enlightenment from the Netizen masses and their collective wisdom. At …

    Science 4 Aug 2006, 06:02

  • Sun tempts corporate JBuilder users

    Working the uncertainty angle

    Sun Microsystems is targeting Borland Software's corporate developers in its campaign to encourage JBuilder users to migrate applications to NetBeans. Sun is offering a special NetBeans migration workshop for JBuilder users that companies can make available to teams of developers, along with up to 60 days of free programming …

    Applications 4 Aug 2006, 07:28

  • FSA prepares for website pressure

    As food scare enquiries skyrocket

    The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is upgrading its websites to handle surges of enquiries about food scares. The move follows the realisation that the main FSA website struggled to cope during the Sudan 1 dyes product recall crisis in 2005. Traffic to the website increased 15 fold during that incident. An FSA spokesperson told …

    Public Sector 4 Aug 2006, 08:37

  • World chip sales slip

    June revenues down despite higher shipments

    In the first half of 2006, some $118bn worth of semiconductors were sold. In H1 2005, the figure was $109bn, yielding a year-on-year increase of 8.3 per cent. The slight dips in revenues come despite a five per cent increase in unit shipments quarter on quarter, the SIA said. It's not hard to see the problem: price …

    Financial News 4 Aug 2006, 08:49

  • In the beginning was the mainframe...

    Comment Technical evolution

    Some say the technical platform future lies with commodity-based blade computers. Others would have us believe in a mainframe renaissance, with centralisation giving better economies and up-times. Yet others say that software as a service will drive us towards a socket-in-the-wall mentality where all computer requirements are …

    Servers 4 Aug 2006, 08:49

  • AOL prepares to slash staff

    You've got notice

    Time Warner’s struggling AOL business is to cut over a quarter of its 19,000 staff as part of its latest self-reinvention. In another reverse on its traditional strategy, it will also stop cluttering up the world with trial AOL CD-ROMs. The media giant and its online albatross announced this week that it will scale down its …

    Telecoms 4 Aug 2006, 08:55

  • Attackers pass on operating systems

    Aim for drivers and apps instead

    The disappearance of easy-to-find flaws in the major operating systems has pushed vulnerability researchers to branch out from finding security issues in core system software and instead concentrate on the device drivers and client-side agents present on all PCs, security experts said on Wednesday at the Black Hat Briefings. …

    Malware 4 Aug 2006, 09:03

  • Apple to bring Core 2 Duo to MacBook Pro this month?

    Next-gen dual-core mobile processor comin

    Expect Apple to upgrade its MacBook Pro to include Intel's mobile Core 2 Duo microprocessor - better known by its codename, 'Merom' - at the end of the month or early September, Mac buyers have been told. The claim comes from AppleInsider, which cites a source familiar with Apple's product plans. Said mole claimed Apple …

    Reg Hardware 4 Aug 2006, 09:10

  • IBM System p5: bigger, better, faster

    Comment Heading down the speedway

    IBM has announced the latest high-end servers in its System p family, the IBM System p5-590 and System p5-595, both equipped with POWER5+ processors, and up to 32 cores and 64 cores respectively. The new servers feature 16-core units called "books", each containing two eight-core multichip modules (MCM) with four dual-core …

    Servers 4 Aug 2006, 09:13

  • Apple may need to restate last 15 quarters

    Stock options probe 'likely' to warrant restatements

    Apple is "likely" to restate its financial results from 29 September 2002 onwards following the discovery of further evidence of "irregularities" concerning stock options granted between 1997 and 2001, the company warned yesterday. The Mac maker announced in June that it was commencing a third-party led independent …

    Financial News 4 Aug 2006, 09:44

  • HTC's 'Muse' music phone played out?

    Rumours of death

    HTC has knocked its 3G music phone, codenamed 'Muse', on the head, it has been alleged. The handset first surfaced in November 2005 as an HSDPA-equipped device with 4GB of built-in Flash memory for music storage. Well, if the "whisper of information from an insider" heard by PocketPC Thoughts this week is anything more than a …

    Reg Hardware 4 Aug 2006, 09:49

  • Secret agents on fire and Microsoft feels the love

    Letters Everything's gone horribly wrong

    Excuse us, but what colour is the sky out there? Is this Earth? Have we stepped through some kind of Stargate-esque parallel universe mirror? The reason we are so confused, is that so many of you have written in in support of Microsoft. Yeah. Really. Mindboggling stuff. And what did the Beast of Redmond have to do to earn …

    Letters 4 Aug 2006, 09:50

  • Horizon scoops up e-learning biz

    A little cash, a lot of shares

    Horizon Technology has bought a fellow Irish IT company WBT Systems Ltd. And it is definitely a case of jam tomorrow for WBT's owners. They get €1.15m upfront – less than the €1.5m net cash within the business. And they will get up to 1m new shares in Horizon in February 2007. At today's price, this is worth £570,000, but it …

    Channel Register 4 Aug 2006, 10:17

  • The game maker's apprentice

    Book review Learn OO programming by writing games

    Subtitled "Game Development for Beginners", The Game Maker's Apprentice is just that, a guide to developing your own games using the free Game Maker games development software (available for download here, if you don’t buy the book). Everything you need to build the games described in the book is on its companion CD, …

    Developer 4 Aug 2006, 10:19

  • Kinpo preps second-gen iDo smart phones

    Eastern promise

    Taiwanese gadget maker Kinpo launched its iDo smart-phone brand in July 2005 and is preparing a trio of new devices to supersede its launch product, the S600. One, dubbed Saturn, features a landscape-oriented QWERTY keyboard not unlike the one on the T-Mobile Sidekick III or the HTC TyTN. Saturn - aka the SP90 - incorporates …

    Reg Hardware 4 Aug 2006, 10:30

  • Norton smites ecclesiastical app

    Unholy row

    A faulty definition update from Symantec left vicars in a quandary after it identified a popular ecclesiastical application as spyware. An 8 July update to Norton Anti-Virus identified a key component of Visual Liturgy - a component called vlutils.dll - as a piece of malware called SniferSpy. Visual Liturgy is a legitimate …

    Malware 4 Aug 2006, 10:40

  • BOFH: Bastard gets fired

    Episode 26 An undocumented bonus

    "BUT I DILIGENTLY BACKED MY FILES UP!" the user wails. "TWO YEARS AGO!" I respond, not feeling the slightest bit of sympathy for my caller. "It's still a backup!" "No, what you wanted was an archive, not a backup." "But the system let me backup the files and didn't warn me not to!" "The system would also let you send your …

    BOFH 4 Aug 2006, 11:02

  • Creative draws bead on iPod Nano with second-gen Neeon

    Bigger screen, more capacity... er... shorter battery life

    MP3 player maker Creative this week upgraded its Zen Neeon line of Flash-based digital music players with a second-generation product that sports a bigger display and more storage capacity but at the cost of a shorter battery life. The Neeon 2 has a 1.5in colour screen in place of the original's four-line, 128 x 64, two- …

    Reg Hardware 4 Aug 2006, 11:12

  • ISPs suffer in the summer

    To subscribe to The Register's weekly newsletter - seven days of IT in a single hit - click here

    Law, law is jaw jaw The US House of Representatives has got a bee in its bonnet about social networking sites such as MySpace, so it has passed a law making it illegal to access such sites from public institutions. Why are these sites such an evil? Because they are used by paedophiles to contact children, apparently. But in …

    Business 4 Aug 2006, 11:39

  • Acer Ferrari 5000 dual-core AMD laptop

    Review No driving licence needed, but only Tifosi need apply...

    Acer's Ferrari-branded notebooks have always favoured AMD-made engines, and the very latest model, the 5000, features the latest Turion 64 X2 twin-core processor. This fifth-generation Ferrari laptop brings yet more features, as well as higher performance, but like the titular sportscars, you'll need quite deep pockets to be …

    Reg Hardware 4 Aug 2006, 12:17

  • Reg plan to take over Ireland thwarted

    World dominance campaign grounded...for now

    And we thought we'd got away with it. You Reg readers don't often miss a trick, and the hawk-eye observance skills of reader Simon are responsible for the abrupt uncovering of our latest attempt at world domination. So, we thought we'd fess up to our blatant attempt to drum up Irish readership numbers by subliminally …

    Bootnotes 4 Aug 2006, 12:43

  • Northerners in hard boozing shocker

    Dying for a drink

    A study has revealed drinkers in the north are guzzling their way to an early grave compared to their rosé-sipping southern counterparts. Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University reckon the binge culture could be slashing life expectancies north of Watford Gap by as much as two years. Newcastle, Liverpool and Durham …

    Biology 4 Aug 2006, 12:48

  • How to clone the copy-friendly biometric passport

    Analysis So easy the manual tells you that you can do it

    At Black Hat yesterday, security consultant Lukas Grunwald of German company DN-Systems demonstrated the cloning of a biometric passport, observing beforehand to Wired that the "whole passport design is totally brain damaged." But should we be surprised? Not exactly, because that's precisely what it says on the tin. Grunwald …

    Music and Media 4 Aug 2006, 13:08

  • Will eating crusts make your hair grow curly?

    The benefits of bread

    Also in this week's column: Was human skin really used in book binding? Does thumb-sucking run in families? How do I taste things? Will eating crusts make your hair grow curly? Asked by Jill Rogers of Perth, Western Australia There is no medical evidence to support the myth that eating bread crusts will make your hair …

    Biology 4 Aug 2006, 13:35

  • Does thumb-sucking run in families?

    Genetic tie up

    Also in this week's column: Was human skin really used in book binding? Will eating crusts make your hair grow curly? How do I taste things? Does thumb-sucking run in families? Asked by Michael Woodhams of Palmerston North, New Zealand Thumb-sucking is a "childhood body-focused behaviour". Others are nail-biting, …

    Biology 4 Aug 2006, 13:36

  • How do I taste things?

    Mmmmm Mmmmmm

    Also in this week's column: Was human skin really used in book binding? Does thumb-sucking run in families? Will eating crusts make your hair grow curly? How do I taste things? This is the work of your gustatory taste receptor cells (TRCs). Taste buds nestle inside the tiny bumps (papillae) you feel on your tongue. Each …

    Biology 4 Aug 2006, 13:37

  • e-passport cloning risks exposed

    RFID hack attack

    A security consultant has shown how to clone electronic passports based on internationally agreed designs due to begin distribution this year. The demo came as part of a presentation by Lukas Grunwald, CTO of German security consultancy DN-Systems Enterprise Internet Solutions, on hacking new RFID technologies used for dual- …

    ID 4 Aug 2006, 13:38

  • Was human skin really used in book binding?

    Creative uses for corpses

    Also in this week's column: Does thumb-sucking run in families? Will eating crusts make your hair grow curly? How do I taste things? Was human skin really used in book binding? Asked by Jill Pascoe of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia The use of human skin to bind books would disgust us today, but it was fairly widely …

    Biology 4 Aug 2006, 13:39

  • Orange SPV M31000 pops up on carrier's UK site

    The M3000's successor is official

    Orange's upcoming 3G, QWERTY-keyboard equipped smart phone, the SPV M31000, has appeared on the carrier's UK website, something its predecessor, the M3000, never managed. The new model is listed as 'coming soon', but alas there's no pricing information yet. Like the M3000, the M3100 comes from HTC's stable - it's also known …

    Reg Hardware 4 Aug 2006, 14:21

  • Pipex, Tiscali and TalkTalk problems

    ISPs dropping like sick flies

    Worried Pipex customers who pay by direct debit can relax - they are not about to be cut off. Several Reg readers got in touch after they received emails warning them they were about to be cut off for not paying their bills. The email read: "Your Pipex account has now fallen overdue as we are yet to receive payment from you. …

    Telecoms 4 Aug 2006, 14:28

  • Man strip searched for packing overactive thyroid gland

    US border patrol steps over the line

    A man who had receieved radiotherapy set off alarms at US airport security and was detained, interrogated and strip searched. A report in the British Medical Journal says the 46-year-old had been treated with radioiodine for thyroid problems six weeks prior to the incident. Learning of the invasive episode, the man's doctors …

    Biology 4 Aug 2006, 14:33

  • Lenovo moves into the black

    China rocks

    Lenovo bounced back into the black in Q1 – just. But a slump in European sales took the shine off an otherwise reasonable quarter for the world's number three PC maker. Lenovo turned over $3.5bn for the quarter ended 30 June, from which it squeezed a teeny net profit of $5m. Strip out restructuring charges, and pre-tax income …

    Financial News 4 Aug 2006, 14:48

  • UK universities love open source

    Firefox doing well

    UK colleges and universities routinely consider open source solutions to IT problems - even when official policy might not support it. A survey of colleges and universities by the Open Source Software Advisory Service (OSS Watch) found 77 per cent regularly consider open source software during procurement even though only 25 …

    Software 4 Aug 2006, 14:59

  • No prison break on BT prices

    It's a captive audience, Mr Grout

    Prisoners rights campaigners have accused BT of profiteering on the back of the UK's prison population. In a letter yesterday to the FT, the Prison Reform Trust notes the telco's recent consumer price cuts, before saying: "It is regrettable that this benefit is not being extended to people in prison who are not in a position to …

    Telecoms 4 Aug 2006, 15:11

  • Thai police crack credit card wiretap scam

    Noise on the wire

    Tourists from Australia and New Zealand are among an estimated 48,000 victims of a highly-organised credit card fraud ring in Thailand. According to local reports, crooks intercepted credit card data between merchants and banks in Phuket, the popular Thai resort town. The fraudsters loaded this data onto MP3 players, which …

    ID 4 Aug 2006, 15:17

  • Team Three Pair go code complete

    Imagine Cup And head off for fun in India

    We're down in Reading at the moment, flying out to India tomorrow morning for the Imagine Cup World Finals. We've been working hard and finally went as code complete as we are going to get before we head out. All the features we want to show off are fully functional and we've just this minute finished presenting a 20 minute …

    Developer 4 Aug 2006, 15:19

  • Back from the dead, Silicon Valley icons hitchhike across the US

    Into the Valley Believe it when you GPS it

    A new, rather high mark has been set for those hoping to secure lasting fame here in Silicon Valley. You have to die, be modeled out of wood, have a GPS device secured to your back and hitchhike your way around the country. Many of you CEOs and top engineers out there are no doubt wondering - am I willing to be made out of …

    Music and Media 4 Aug 2006, 19:35