5th September 2006 Archive

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A third of dodgy emails are phishing attacks

Whatever happened to mass-mailing viruses?

The lazy, hazy days of summer witnessed a continuation of the ongoing shift from large-scale virus outbreaks toward phishing and more targeted attacks, according to a study by net security firm MessageLabs. Online criminals are developing sophisticated new phishing attacks and Trojans that exploit widespread vulnerabilities, …

Security 5 Sep 2006, 08:31
Japanese internet guru pleads not guilty

Livedoor boss denies securities law breach

The unconventional internet businessman at the centre of a Japanese corporate scandal has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him by prosecutors. Takafumi Horie was the chief executive of internet firm Livedoor until forced to resign in January. Horie is accused of breaking securities law. Prosecutors allege that the 33- …

Music and Media 5 Sep 2006, 08:45
Pope will publish evolution chat

Should be interesting

The Vatican will publish the minutes of the Pope's recent meeting with his former doctoral students in which he discussed the Catholic Church's position on the origins of life, evolution, and creationism. The meeting was called, aides say, not to align the Catholic Church with the Intelligent Design camp from the US, but to …

Science 5 Sep 2006, 09:02
Westcoast acquires Clarity for €6.2m

Expands product portfolio

Clarity Ireland, the distribution wing of IT company Horizon Technology Group, is to be sold to British IT distributor Westcoast for €6.2m. The Reading-based business will also assume Clarity's debt of €9.1m. Clarity, which employs 60 people at its headquarters in Tallaght, had revenues of €118m and profits of €1.4m last year …

Channel Register 5 Sep 2006, 09:07
UK solicitor pimped hookers on net

Lucrative business ends in jail

A former solicitor who set up an internet prostitution business has been jailed for a year at Guildford Crown Court for "prostitution offences", UK tabloid The Sun reports. Father of two Davy Tang, 42, netted up to £14,000 a week by advertising the services of 30 women. One, named "Sonia", earned her pimp £535 in two days, …

Music and Media 5 Sep 2006, 09:07
LLU taking off, but lift off slower than hoped

Slap on the wrist for Openreach

The UK now has 735,000 unbundled phone lines in BT's local exchanges, but "planned quality levels" have not been met for Business As Usual lines (individual lines rather than bulk migrations), according to the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator's monthly report. More worryingly, the delivery of backhaul in exchanges has …

Networks 5 Sep 2006, 09:36
Blind drivers are dangerous, notes BBC

No MOT, no licence, no insurance, no eyes

The BBC can award itself a "department of the bleedin' obvious" commendation for the headline adorning this piece yesterday concerning the case of 31-year-old Omed Aziz who was nicked while driving through Oldbury, West Midlands, while in possession of neither MOT nor licence nor insurance nor those most useful of driving aids …

Bootnotes 5 Sep 2006, 09:48
Trojan targets 0-day Word vuln

MS Office hijack hi-jinks

An unpatched Microsoft Word 2000 vulnerability is being actively exploited by hackers to spread malware. The MDropper-Q Trojan downloader, recently detected by Symantec, takes advantage of the unspecified zero-day vuln to load other malware onto compromised PCs, including a backdoor Trojan called Backdoor-Femo, which surrenders …

Security 5 Sep 2006, 10:36
Google eyes filing cabinets

Paper files next for the great data hoover

Google has revealed plans to help convert the world's paper filing cabinets, in Tron-like fashion, into mere nodes in the great hive mind. The firm will be using an optical character recognition program called Tesseract that was found gathering dust in Hewlett Packard's garage. "In a nutshell, we are all about making …

Software 5 Sep 2006, 10:47
Suicide squirrel in opera-hating kamikaze bike spoke mangle

RZSL Finnished

A Helsinki squirrel dived into the bicycle wheel of passing opera singer Esa Ruuttunen, hospitalising him and killing itself. The squirrel - apparently not an opera fan - ran headlong at Ruuttunen's spokes. Alarmed, the bicycling bass baritone hit the deck. Instead of attending rehearsals for new Finnish opus Kaarmeen hetki ( …

Biology 5 Sep 2006, 10:51
Cardiff gets first go on BT's IP network

BT lays out schedule for 21CN deployment

BT has announced the first deployment of hardware for its much-touted new network, known as 21CN. Cardiff is the lucky city, and will see 10 per cent of its subscribers moved onto the Internet Protocol-based technology by March next year, with the rest of Cardiff migrated by the end of summer 2007. Once Cardiff has tested …

Networks 5 Sep 2006, 11:09
Crashing moon probes, lost croc hunters and bouncing bombs

Letters And we find out where our Da is

Europe's first ever mission to the moon came to a smashing end on Sunday (bad punning, we know) as the mission scientists deliberately crashed the probe into the lunar surface. That's all very well, you said, but where are all the pictures? Is it just me or has there been a distinct lack of sexy visual imagery? Where's the …

Letters 5 Sep 2006, 11:16
Buy Steve Irwin dead on eBay!

Google search result outrage

Online tat bazaar eBay has a penchant for slipping plugs for itself into your Google search results page, invariably offering to sell you whatever you type into the search field, regardless of plausibility. Reader Jeremy Hooks wonders if on this occassion it hasn't gone a pitch too far: Hmmm. For the record, there's a few …

Music and Media 5 Sep 2006, 11:22
Hackers hijack UK.gov wiki

Environment contract party - will it have cake?

An attempt by a UK cabinet minister to discuss proposed environment policy using a wiki has ended in embarrassment after pranksters made merry at the expense of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra). Tech-savvy environment secretary David Milliband was left with egg on his face after his department's …

Security 5 Sep 2006, 11:33
iMac-ulate ENlight LP791 chassis

A barebones that isn't a box

Chassis manufacturer ENlight has come up with a barebones offering that is out of the ordinary for us PC boys, but iMac users may find it strangely familiar. In essence, you build your PC into a 19inch TFT display which has a resolution of 1,280 x 1,024, contrast ratio of 500:1 and brightness of 270cd/m2. Your micro-ATX …

Reg Hardware 5 Sep 2006, 11:57
NZ power company decimated by rebranding madness

LogoWatch Whalesong and joss-stick induced meltdown

LogoWatch regulars among you know that the symptoms of rebranding madness (the process by which companies pay suitcases full of cash to Strategy Boutiques who then, high on the scent of joss-sticks and to the distant sound of whalesong, fearlessly redefine the corporate brand frontage paradigm) range from light motivational …

Bootnotes 5 Sep 2006, 11:58
NetApp gets new channel manager

EU've heard it all before

Network Appliance has appointed a new boss to run its European sales channels. Juan de Zulueta left his post as director of southern Europe and Latin America at Brocade to take the NetApp job. Prior to that he was EU director of storage at IBM. In a statement, NetApp said Zuletta will take responsibility for NetApp's channel …

Channel Register 5 Sep 2006, 13:09
Sun, Unisys sue Hynix for price-fixing

Cashback

Sun and Unisys are going after South Korean memory chip maker Hynix for damages related to its role in a price-fixing cartel. The US companies jointly filed a suit Friday in the US District Court in San Francisco claiming compensation for losses incurred in DRAM purchasing. According to AP, Hynix spokesman Park Hyun yesterday …

Hardware 5 Sep 2006, 13:11
NetServices share price takes an early bath

Reviving the 10 per cent club?

NetServices has seen its share price tumble after it warned that full-year losses would be higher than expected. It was the second profits warning the company has issued since it floated back in March. The 8.5p shares are now worth just 10 per cent of their highest value. Despite this apparently gloomy situation, company …

Networks 5 Sep 2006, 13:13
Nokia puts more love in L'Amour collection

The Finnish of love, or what a lovely Finnish

Nokia has launched three new mobile phones as an update to its L'Amour collection, the Nokia 7390 WCDMA (3G), Nokia 7373 and Nokia 7360. The 7390 offers high speed streaming and video calling, a three megapixel camera with autofocus and integrated flash, and music player with one-button access. The Nokia 7373 has a 2 Megapixel …

Reg Hardware 5 Sep 2006, 13:19
German mobile market sluggish

Down 3.7% from last year

The German mobile market will experience sluggish growth in 2006, according to a report from analyst Telecompaper. The report predicts a 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent increase this year, a far cry from figures in previous years. Last year, the market enjoyed 4.7 per cent growth. The first half of 2006 has seen growth of 0.6 per …

Mobile 5 Sep 2006, 13:40
Ice cores reveal historic heights of CO₂

Very long icicles

Deep ice cores from Antarctica reveal there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than at any time in the last 800,000 years. The data comes from analysis of tiny air bubbles buried 3.2km down in the Antarctic ice sheets. These provide a record of the ancient atmosphere and give insight into how climate was affected by …

Science 5 Sep 2006, 14:38
Socket to me VIA

At last, a tiny VIA motherboard that doesn't use a VIA CPU

VIA’s Mini-ITX EPIA PN motherboard has been spotted on sale in Tokyo, Japan and while two versions use a VIA C7-M processor (choice of 1.5GHz or 1.8GHz if you really want to know), the third version has a 479-pin processor socket. Combine that with the VN800+VT8237R chipset combo and it’s a safe bet that the PN supports the …

Reg Hardware 5 Sep 2006, 14:38
Digital prints finger blaggers faster

The appliance of science

UK police are using digital fingerprint technology to speed up the detection of crime. Six police forces are using the technology, which allows police to transmit digital print images from the field using mobile devices, reducing the time it takes to establish matches from days to hours. The approach has allowed police to …

ID 5 Sep 2006, 14:42
Scientist probes 'telephone telepathy'

'It's funny you called because I was just...'

A UK scientist claims he has evidence of what he calls "telephone telepathy" - the phenomenon by which you think about someone and, lo and behold, the phone rings... According to Reuters, Rupert Sheldrake reported on Tuesday the results of experiments which "proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even …

Science 5 Sep 2006, 14:46
NAO to re-review NPfIT

Shock revisit just three months after first report

The National Audit Office (NAO) has confirmed that it is to hold a new review of the NHS National Programme for IT. A spokesperson for the NAO confirmed to GC News that it was planning to produce a fresh report on the programme. "We have always indicated that we would look at it again," the spokesperson said, adding that "it …

Public Sector 5 Sep 2006, 14:59
DWP ditches £141m IT programme

Delayed project delayed even more

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has said a change in the focus of its benefits operations contributed to the shelving of work on new computer systems. A spokesperson for the DWP confirmed to GC News that it had halted work on an IT project for the Benefits Processing Repayments Programme, which was intended to bring …

Public Sector 5 Sep 2006, 15:07
New LocationFree kit from Sony

Sony Place Shifting – no, it’s not a Slingbox

Sony launched its LocationFree media streaming system in May of this year and now it seems that Version 2 with Added Bling is on its way. The Americans have been treated to a stack of new kit today which consists of a choice of two Base Stations as well as a new Location Free TV Box. You stream media from the Base Station and …

Reg Hardware 5 Sep 2006, 17:13
Intel fires 10,500 to make up for past mistakes

The 'Barrett Hangover'

Intel doesn't mess around when its sales slow. The chipmaker today revealed that it will fire 10,500 workers over the next year in the hopes of improving its bottom line. Through a combination of layoffs, attrition and the sale of business units, Intel plans to trim its 102,500 person workforce down to 92,000 people by the …

IT Director 5 Sep 2006, 20:49
IBM and AMD feed on Los Alamos' ample supercomputing pork

Opteron and Cell fuel 'Roadrunner'

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will turn to both AMD's Opteron chip and IBM's Cell in an effort to breath new life into its supercomputing program. Companies have been bidding for months, hoping to win LANL's "Roadrunner" supercomputer contract. The system, which will be built over the next year, should end up as one of …

Servers 5 Sep 2006, 22:28