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24th August 2006 Archive

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  • Royal Society awards Hawking Copley medal

    Took it to space, first

    Professor Stephen Hawking has been awarded the Royal Society's 275th Copley medal for his contribution to cosmology and theoretical physics. Hawking said he was honoured to be in the same company as previous recipients of the award - including Darwin, Einstein, Pasteur and Faraday. It was first awarded to Stephen Gray in 1731 " …

    Space 24 Aug 2006, 00:02

  • Judge slaps Microsoft with $25m fine top-up

    Says 'no' to retrial

    Microsoft has been ordered to pay an additional $25m to a tiny digital rights management company for "litigation misconduct" during a patent case with fellow defendant Autodesk. A US judge has found Microsoft guilty of acting in bad faith during its case with z4 Technologies, by "burying" vital evidence that could have helped …

    Developer 24 Aug 2006, 00:23

  • Ving Rhames and I are born to be stars...

    Separated at birth

    It has to be a wind-up, right? Some Hollywood producer has announced a grab for the rights of a "yet to be written" comedy staring Guy Goma and me. It seems not. Fourteen stories in Google news already, and counting. And my agent, Martin Veitch, asking if I want my picture updated on my column for IT Week... And the phone is …

    Entertainment 24 Aug 2006, 06:02

  • Welsh Assembly to be investigated over RIBS contract

    EC to probe 'unlawful behaviour' claims

    The Welsh Assembly Government is to be investigated by the European Commission following claims of unlawful behaviour under state aid rules in its awarding of a contract to BT to upgrade 35 exchanges in Wales that had previously been excluded from the telco's national ADSL implementation on economic grounds. The contract …

    Telecoms 24 Aug 2006, 08:02

  • Settting the radar on Visual Sciences

    Comment BI matchmaking

    My recent series of articles on next generation business intelligence has created a lot of interest, not least from vendors thinking they fit the required pattern of capabilities. Perhaps the most interesting of the companies to contact me has been Visual Sciences. Visual Sciences was launched in 2001 but continued in stealth …

    Developer 24 Aug 2006, 08:50

  • Apple pays $100m to settle iPod patent clash lawsuits

    Small change for Creative

    Apple is to pay $100m to settle its legal spat with rival MP3 player maker Creative Technology. The cash not only brings Creative's patent infringement lawsuits to a close but provides Apple with a licence to its intellectual property. Apple will also terminate its counter-suits. Creative needs the money, of course. During …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 08:54

  • Europeans' mobile love affair continues

    And Nokia still top dog

    It seems European mobile phone owners can't help investing in new devices as market penetration surpasses 100 per cent and continues to grow. New figures show the number of handsets shipped in Western Europe increased seven percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2006, indicating the mobile phone market continues to show …

    Mobile 24 Aug 2006, 09:08

  • Dell quietly switches off own-brand MP3 player line

    DJ Ditty dropped to make room for Sandisk, Creative kit

    Dell stopped selling hard drive-based digital music players in February and now it's dropped its own-brand Flash offerings too. Instead, the PC giant will sell players from SanDisk and Creative. "Dell offers only name brand MP3 players," the company's website says, among the reasons it offers why consumers should buy a …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 09:08

  • Fayrewood buffeted in first half

    Considering options - not the nice kind

    Fayrewood Plc hit heavy weather in Europe in the first half of this year, leaving management considering “options” to maximise shareholder value. Interim results released today show revenues of £210.05m for the six months ending June 30, down 11.9 per cent on the year. The previous year’s figures include £56.5m from …

    Channel Register 24 Aug 2006, 09:27

  • Microsoft flaw fix opens users to attack

    Patching the patch

    Microsoft continued to work on Tuesday to create a fix for an exploitable flaw introduced by the company's latest security update to Internet Explorer. The flaw, initially thought to only crash Internet Explorer, actually allows an attacker to run code on computers running Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 1 that have …

    Malware 24 Aug 2006, 09:36

  • AMD reckons 40% server share is achievable

    Not until 2009, though

    AMD wants to win 40 per cent of the world's server-chip sales, but it's willing to wait until 2009 to get it. Company executive Marty Seyer this week said there's "no reason" why AMD can't hit that target. AMD took 25.9 per cent of the server market in Q2, up from 22.1 per cent in Q1, 16.4 per cent in Q4 2005 and 12.7 per …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 09:44

  • NHS provider looking critical

    iSoft faces FSA probe

    The company providing the lion's share of the government's programme to transform NHS IT is facing a formal investigation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). In a statement given to the London Stock Exchange today, iSoft said: On 8 August iSOFT announced that it had completed an initial investigation into possible …

    Public Sector 24 Aug 2006, 09:50

  • Digger breaks own speed record

    Hits 350mph and still not in top gear

    JCBDieselmax broke its own speed record for a diesel-powered vehicle yesterday hitting an average speed of 350 miles per hour - and the team still hasn't made it into top gear. At the Bonneville Salt Flats, JCBDieselmax got to 365.8mph on its first run and 335.7mph on the return run, giving an average of 350.1mph. This breaks …

    Science 24 Aug 2006, 10:18

  • Fujitsu Siemens kicks off football club coloured laptop line

    In a league of their own?

    Fujitsu Siemens is marking the start of the soccer season with a set of club colour-coordinated notebooks. The machines are kitted out in the team colours and stamped with the club logo. At the top of the laptop league are notebooks pitched at fans of Celtic, Aston Villa, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur, but FS promised other …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 10:19

  • China bans strippers at funerals

    'Obscene performances' clampdown

    China has added strippers at funerals to its burgeoning list of proscribed activities, the BBC reports. Bare-assed ladies are apparently deployed at rural send-offs to boost mourner numbers, since "large crowds are seen as a mark of honour". To show they mean business, the authorities have arrested the leaders of five …

    Music and Media 24 Aug 2006, 10:19

  • Ansari prize founder heads for space

    Lucky break

    The woman behind the Ansari-X prize has been confirmed as the next space tourist. She was given a seat on the next Russian mission to the International Space Station after a Japanese businessman was found medically unfit for the journey. Anousheh Ansari signed up to be a reserve for Daisuke Enomoto last month, telling reporters …

    Space 24 Aug 2006, 10:29

  • Sony to show 27 playable PS3 games next month

    GPS unit for PSP, too

    Sony will have not 25, not 26 but 27 playable PlayStation 3 games on show at the Tokyo Game Show, the company said this week. The event, which takes place at the end of September, will also host the launch of a GPS module for the PlayStation Portable. Among the list of PS3 titles Japanese gamers will be able to sample: Namco' …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 10:46

  • Rumours persist about AT&T's U-verse service

    Comment IPTV catastrophe - hype or horror?

    There are still stories emerging about the technology in the AT&T IPTV system U-verse, which suggest that the design of the Microsoft middleware will make something cataclysmic happen one day to all of the AT&T IPTV customers. The scenario that is always put forward is that during the Superbowl the final deciding score might be …

    Telecoms 24 Aug 2006, 10:49

  • Unpatched enterprise security bugs proliferate

    175 0-day vulns menace mankind

    The backlog of unpatched security vulnerabilities in enterprise products is growing. NGSSoftware, the firm that first identified the underlying security flaw exploited by the infamous Slammer worm, is sitting on a backlog of 175 unresolved vulns. The security consultancy is working with the UK's National Infrastructure Security …

    Security 24 Aug 2006, 10:52

  • Amazon leak offers sneak peek at new video service

    Unbox-ed early

    Amazon this week left a few doors open and gave a sneak peek at its new film downloading service to hackers smart enough to uncover the links. The company has now changed the offending unprotected URLs, but not before it revealed some key details about its new film downloading service. Referred to as Amazon "Unbox" Video …

    Financial News 24 Aug 2006, 11:00

  • Europe wallops Tech Data

    Charges wipe out profits in Q2

    Tech Data revealed the depth of its problems in Europe today when it unveiled a $155.5m loss for the second quarter. The distributor warned earlier this month sales would come in at $4.94bn for the quarter ending 31 July, compared to the $4.95bn to $5.1bn it had predicted. Last year it reported sales of $4.8bn. It also said …

    Channel Register 24 Aug 2006, 11:22

  • Union boss proposes ethical offshoring

    Pay your employees after you sack them

    Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber has proposed that employers who transplant British jobs oversees should take some responsibility for the holes they leave in the economy and peoples' lives back home. They should do this, he wrote in today's Financial Times, by taking out insurance to cover 70 per cent of …

    IT Director 24 Aug 2006, 11:39

  • Aztecs sacrificed and ate 550 captives

    Skeletons bear witness to ritual slaughter

    Mexican archaelogists have unearthed grisly evidence of Aztec resistance to the Spanish conquest of their land: around 550 skeletons of men, women and children who were ritually sacrified and partially eaten by their captors, Reuters reports. The unfortunate individuals were mostly "mulatto, mestizo, Maya Indian and Caribbean …

    Science 24 Aug 2006, 11:41

  • Logitech spins 'revolutionary' free-wheeling mouse

    No more clicky, sticky scroll wheels

    Mouse maker Logitech today introduced its first input device with a freely-rotating scroll wheel, aiming the system at gamers looking for fast weapon changes and Microsoft Office users who need to be able to whizz through long documents. Logitech launched two mice: one, the MX, for desktop users and the other, the VX, for …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 11:50

  • Intel Wi-Fi update ate my CPU cycles

    Memory leak glitch

    Security researchers have identified performance problems with a recent wireless driver security update from Intel. Vulnerabilities in Centrino device drivers for Windows and Intel's PROSet management software prompted a security update three weeks ago. The initial update weighed in at more than 100MB, though Intel did produce …

    Security 24 Aug 2006, 12:58

  • Plane passenger tells security penis pump is bomb

    Embarrassment leads to disorderly conduct rap

    A passenger who rather ill-advisedly told security at Chicago's O'Hare Airport that part of his penis pump was a bomb faces a possible three years' jail on a felony disorderly conduct rap, The Chicago Sun-Times reports. Mardin Amin, 29, was en route to Turkey on 16 August with his dear old ma and two small children when a …

    Security 24 Aug 2006, 13:11

  • Japanese do u-turn over naked Britney

    Pregnant chanteuse will grace Tokyo metro

    Officials from the Tokyo subway system have reversed an earlier decision not to display a "overly stimulating" poster of highly-talented and highly-pregnant US chanteuse Britney Spears in her birthday suit on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The powers that be originally ordered the image, which graced the cover of the magazine's …

    Entertainment 24 Aug 2006, 13:15

  • Echo2 versus GWT

    Another toolkit that hides AJAX's implementation details

    A little while ago, I wrote about the GWT (Google Web Toolkit) here, which I'm particularly interested in as it provides a pure Java environment that can be translated into pure AJAX-style code. This means that a Java developer can work with the GWT and create effective, lightweight, interactive websites without the need to …

    Developer 24 Aug 2006, 13:29

  • BenQ aims to pull with 'mauve sensation' lady-phone

    'Shimmering luxury'

    BenQ Mobile certainly has an eye for the ladies. Having announced butterfly-branded and Hello Kitty kitted versions of its AL26 slider phone, the company today said it's out to captivate women "women with a desire for elegance and dazzling color" by seducing them with its upcoming "luxury style statement" SL80 handset. The …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 13:39

  • T-Mobile UK introduces latest phone-like BlackBerry

    Carrier takes on 7130g

    T-Mobile UK has launched its incarnation of Research in Motion's BlackBerry 7130, the push provider's latest phone-style email gadget. Dubbed the 7130g, the handset incorporates quad-band radio, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, MP3 ringtones - but no MP3 playback - and a "bright, high resolution colour display" with a light-level …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 14:27

  • Ozone hole stable, possibly on the mend

    Put the giant darning needle away, Ma

    After last season's bumper ozone hole, this year things look set to be much less dramatic, and scientists even say the hole may have stopped widening. At a conference in Washington, two of the scientists who first raised the alarm about the hole in the protective atmospheric layer said they were hopeful the hole would heal …

    Science 24 Aug 2006, 14:56

  • Canon unveils its first dust-busting digital SLR

    EOS 400D gets 10Mp sensor, too

    Canon has launched the follow-up to its hugely popular digital SLR camera, the EOS 350D, bumping the new model's image sensor up to ten megapixels and adding a dust-busting technology to its internal workings. The EOS 400D also sports a bigger LCD viewfinder than in predecessor: it's 2.5in in size and has a 160° viewing angle …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 15:01

  • Pluto booted out of league of planets

    Then there were eight

    The International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly shindig in Prague has voted to boot Pluto out of the league of planets, declaring in a resolution: "The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune." In the process, it rejected a proposal to actually increase the number of …

    Space 24 Aug 2006, 15:12

  • Lite-on reveals external Blu-ray Disc writer

    Reschedules internal drive's ship date

    Lite-on unveiled its internal Blu-ray Disc writer, the LH-2B1S, in June this year, promising to ship it in August. It hasn't shipped the drive - it'll now appear in October - but that hasn't stopped the company announcing a new, external model, the LX-2B1U. The drive's capable of working with single- and dual-layer Blu-ray …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 15:27

  • Pizza fraudsters get a slice of the action

    Telephone redirect ruse hits California

    US fraudsters were able to pose as a pizza outlet after a credulous AT&T service rep redirected calls from cooks to crooks. Con-men claiming that the phone at pizza outlets was malfunctioning persuaded the rep to set in place a call forwarding request to a number of their choosing. AT&T failed to make any checks. As a result, …

    ID 24 Aug 2006, 15:27

  • Reg unleashes turbocharged search engine

    Now with added va-va-voom

    We're delighted to announce today what some you may have already noticed: El Reg now has a new, improved, search engine facility to better help you navigate our burgeoning roster of sites. You can peruse our handy search help page for details on just how the upgraded facility will enhance your Register experience and help …

    Site News 24 Aug 2006, 15:41

  • El Reg unleashes turbocharged search engine

    Goggle

    We're delighted to announce today what some you may have already noticed: Reg Hardware now has a new, improved search engine. You can peruse our handy search help page for details on just how the upgraded facility will enhance your Reg experience and help create a better world for your children and your children's children - or …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 15:59

  • Lack of love for Intel's 'Tulsa' chip bruises egos

    Come on, guys, this chip is great

    Plenty of controversy will greet Intel's "Tulsa" processor for servers when it arrives next week. Tulsa - a version of Xeon aimed at multi-processor servers - stands as Intel's last chip built on the speedy but power-hungry NetBurst architecture, and that's a sticky issue with some Intel insiders. Jeff Gilbert, one of Intel's …

    Servers 24 Aug 2006, 18:31

  • MS fits Messenger with sex police panic button

    Dirty talk 911

    Microsoft has been persuaded to install a panic button in UK editions of Messenger, enabling every crackpot and prankster to distract police with claims that online sexual predators are pursuing them. A mere mouse click will alert the authorities that an online sex offender has been discovered. Child-protective hysterics from …

    Applications 24 Aug 2006, 21:10

  • Oracle buys realtime analytics assets

    Boosts middleware and BI

    Oracle has bought real-time analytics technology from Sigma Dynamics to boost its own capabilities in online sales, marketing and call-center analysis. The database giant said Thursday it would integrate Sigma's Real-Time Decision software into its business intelligence suite and middleware. The deal extends Oracle's use of …

    Developer 24 Aug 2006, 21:18

  • 'Hindenbook' returns to burn Apple users

    It's not just Dell in battery hell

    Dell isn't the only manufacturer affected by Sony's exploding batteries. Apple has issued a recall of 1.8m batteries for PowerBooks and iBooks sold between October 2003 and August 2006 inclusive. It's the fourth time in two years that Apple has issued a recall, but this time it's by far the most serious. "We want [users] to …

    Reg Hardware 24 Aug 2006, 21:23