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5th January 2007 Archive

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  • Computer 2000 fills board of directors

    New Year appointments

    Computer 2000, the UK arm of Tech Data, has appointed Andrew Shepperd as Director of Azlan UK and of Alice Smitheman as Product Marketing Director. It is also today announcing a number of internal appointments which will complete its board of directors. Shepperd returns to Tech Data after spending the last four years as Sales …

    Channel Register 5 Jan 2007, 06:02

  • Phishing fraudsters get flashy

    Counter-strike

    Fraudsters are starting to use Flash-based content instead of regular HTML on phishing websites. The ruse, recently noted on PayPal-mimicking fraud sites www.ppal-form-ssl.com and www.welcome-ppl.com, is reckoned to be an attempt to fool basic anti-phishing defences (such as browser toolbars) that look at page content. The move …

    ID 5 Jan 2007, 06:02

  • Month of Apple Bugs scheme yields first fixes

    Full disclosure

    A former Apple engineer is leading efforts to produce unofficial fixes unearthed by the Month of Apple Bugs project, resulting in the first three solutions. Landon Fuller, a Darwin developer and former engineer in Apple's BSD Technology Group, is providing runtime fixes ahead of official patches from Apple. Fixes for the …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 07:02

  • Lack of cash claims email pioneer

    Pegasus has wings clipped

    Lack of funding and the pressure of keeping up with the big boys has killed a free email pioneer, used by millions of users, after 17 years. David Harris, creator of both the Pegasus and Mercury systems, said in an online posting development and distribution of the software has ceased. Users on subscriptions will continue to …

    Applications 5 Jan 2007, 09:52

  • ISPA hunts heroes and villains of 2006

    Who helped/hindered, the UK internet industry

    The self-appointed guardians of the UK internet business, the Internet Service Providers Association, have announced their nominations for Heroes and Villains for 2006. Heroes in the fight against child porn include the Home Secretary’s Task Force for Child Protection on the Internet for trying to make the internet a nice place …

    Networks 5 Jan 2007, 10:04

  • Hitachi hails 'industry first' 1TB desktop hard drive

    Travelstar 7K1000 to ship this quarter

    Hitachi has announced what it claims is the world's first 1TB desktop hard drive, pledging to ship the beast later this quarter, with enterprise- and consumer electronics-oriented versions to follow in Q2. The 3.5in Desktar 7K1000 will cost $399 at retail, but Hitachi will also offer a cheaper, 750GB model too. The drive …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 10:09

  • Analyst: Google to hit $630 a share in 07

    Crazy times. Again.

    A year after people wondered whether Wall St had taken leave of its senses by over-valuing Google, the analysts are back with more fantastic predictions. Piper Jaffray's Safa Rashtchy has again pumped up his target price for Google stock, to $630 from $600 for 2007, while projecting earnings coming in at $16.59 a share. …

    Financial News 5 Jan 2007, 10:15

  • MP3 player maker sues Apple, demands $100m

    Taiwanese court sides with Luxpro

    Apple has failed to convince the Taiwanese court that local manufacturer Luxpro's white digital music player is a rip off of its own first-generation iPod Shuffle. The Shihlin District Court instead ruled that the two products are clearly different. You can see Apple's point: Luxpro's Tanger player, like the first Shuffle, is …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 10:29

  • AMD readies ATI Radeon X1950 GT?

    Cut-down X1950 Pro in the works, moles claim

    AMD will extend its ATI Radeon X1950 product line this quarter with the X1950 GT, Far Eastern graphics card maker moles have alleged. They point to an early February release for the part, which will sit just below the current X1950 Pro. The sources, cited by Chinese-language site HKEPC, claim the GT is essentially an …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 10:41

  • Working in the COBOL mine

    Developing with Legacy Systems – Part 2

    The most common applications sector where the integration of long-standing legacy applications is a still vital requirement is, of course, the broad reaches of the financial services community. When such an application has established itself and proved not just its capabilities but its reliability and overall efficiency to the …

    Developer 5 Jan 2007, 10:42

  • Intel adds 'Wolfdale', 'Yorkfield' to desktop roadmap

    45nm 'Penryn'-based parts due late 2007/early 2008

    Intel's 45nm desktop dual-core processor will be codenamed 'Wolfdale' and appear in Q4, the latest roadmap slide to leak out of the chip giant has revealed. The part is based on 'Penryn', the 45nm incarnation of the Core 2 Duo architecture and the first platform to support SSE 4. Alas, the slide, published by Chinese-language …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 11:00

  • French critics roast Crowe

    Ridley Scott's A Good Year fails to impress

    The French have rather taken exception to Ridley Scott's A Good Year - a major movie flop recently listed by Variety as one of 2006's notable turkeys. Indeed, according to the BBC, the critics came close to a bit of port-blockading and lorry-burning after enjoying the loose adapation of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, which …

    Entertainment 5 Jan 2007, 11:20

  • Game Boy child electrocuted in Thai hotel

    Tragic accident, local police report

    A seven-year-old British boy has been killed in Thailand after being electrocuted during an attempt to plug the mains-charger for his Nintendo Game Boy into a hotel power socket. The incident took place on Saturday, but details have only now been released following an investigation carried out by local police. The victim was …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 11:24

  • 16-year-old Norwegian filesharer charged

    Parents may have to pay too

    A 16-year-old from Stavanger in Norway who shared thousands of movies and songs through the P2P program Direct Connect, has been charged with illegal file-sharing, Norwegian Aftenposten reports. The boy allegedly ran the Stavanger Dragon Hub, from where at least 7,000 movies, 150,000 songs and 20,000 video clips were shared …

    Law 5 Jan 2007, 11:25

  • Hacked Chip and PIN terminal plays Tetris

    Game over

    UK researchers have hacked a supposedly tamper-proof Chip and PIN terminal to allow it to play Tetris. Steven Murdoch and Saar Drimer of the University of Cambridge managed to get a playable version of the classic game working on the tiny screen. The proof-of-concept hack highlights wider security concerns about the …

    Security 5 Jan 2007, 11:35

  • Toshiba unveils PC-friendly HD DVD drive

    Shipping soon?

    Toshiba today unveiled an internal HD DVD drive for PCs. The SD-H903A is a SATA-connected unit compatible not only with single- and dual-layer HD DVD media but also all the major recordable and rewriteable DVD formats, CDs too. What the company didn't say was when the drive will go on sale - it's sampling later this month - or …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 11:37

  • Reseller readies custom-made tablet Mac

    ModBook successor to last year's iTabs

    US Mac supplier Other World Computing (OWC) has had enough of waiting for Apple to ship a tablet form-factor Mac and plans to launch one of its own next week. Dubbed the ModBook, the unit's appears to be a standard MacBook disassembled and put back together again as a pen-computing platform. The ModBook is a joint project …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 12:02

  • 90 Degree looks to corner BI with Radius

    Opinion Sure to be attractive to potential users

    Back in April, I reported on 90 Degree Software which was at that time developing its product (called Radius), which has now been released. This is an update to that previous article. 90 Degree Software is a privately owned, self-funded company that was established last year in Vancouver. Now, anyone who knows anything about …

    Developer 5 Jan 2007, 12:03

  • Northgate wins lucrative public sector contract

    Hosting Hillingdon's financial systems

    Northgate Information Solutions has won a £4m contract with the London Borough of Hillingdon to provide hosting arrangements for its financial systems. The company, which supplies software and outsourcing services to the public sector, human resources and corporate markets, has an Irish subsidiary, Northgate HR, which was …

    Public Sector 5 Jan 2007, 12:13

  • Moto earnings shockr

    Volumes up, profits down

    Motorola revised its earnings forecast downwards yesterday, sending ripples of concern washing over rivals. The handset giant now expects Q4 2006 revenue to come in between $11.6bn to $11.8bn, down from earlier estimate of $11.8bn to $12.1bn. Profit estimates were also revised down, and earnings per share are now expected to be …

    Financial News 5 Jan 2007, 12:21

  • E-vote systems certifier de-certified

    We can't prove anything, so neither can the Feds

    The leading certifier of US electronic voting systems, Colorado outfit Ciber, Inc., is no longer permitted to issue certifications, after federal investigators discovered appallingly haphazard testing regimes, the New York Times reports. Ciber, which certifies the majority of US election devices, was unable to document how it …

    Public Sector 5 Jan 2007, 12:40

  • Cisco, Darwin, Saddam and giant Bosnian pyramids

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

    Cisco gets into spam Christmas came late for Cisco this year which announced this week it’s fifth largest ever acquisition. The networking giant has noticed the amount of spam its routers are sending on and is paying $830m for anti-spam firm IronPort Systems. The seven year old company made sales of $25m for the quarter so …

    Business 5 Jan 2007, 13:30

  • New fraud concerns over Dutch ballot computers

    Good enough for local elections

    A Dutch plan to use e-voting computers by manufacturer Sdu for the coming provincial elections in March has met with fierce criticism. In October Dutch intelligence service AIVD tested over 1200 e-voting machine by Sdu and found them unreliable. An investigation by the intelligence service revealed that the radio signals used …

    Public Sector 5 Jan 2007, 13:41

  • Taiwan quakes cost Chinese 10,000 domain names

    Missing, believed expired

    The 26 December earthquakes off Taiwan - which cut undersea telecoms cables and severely disrupted internet connections across Asia - also cost the Chinese 10,000 domain names, Reuters reports. The addresses went AWOL because users "were unable to update them or failed to re-register them on their expiry", according to the …

    Networks 5 Jan 2007, 13:44

  • Google space weapon obliterates 50m insect

    Rampaging earwig blown from Google Earth

    Those among you who think that Google is nothing more than a force for international evil masquerading as an internet ad-punting outfit will have to think again. We have just received news that messrs Brin and Page are using their vast wealth not to enslave millions to the Google brand, but rather to protect mankind from …

    Music and Media 5 Jan 2007, 13:49

  • IE 'unsafe' for 284 days last year

    Nine months gestation for 0-day exploits

    Using IE6 was "unsafe" 284 days last year even for users who patched their systems as soon as Microsoft released fixes. An analysis by the Washington Post's Brian Krebs revealed that exploit code for critical unpatched flaws in IE6 was available for three-quarters of the time last year. Even worse, for at least 98 days last …

    Enterprise Security 5 Jan 2007, 14:03

  • Green satnav finds eco-friendly routes

    Swedes look to save planet

    Swedish researchers have come up with a cunning way of using a satnav system to cut vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, The Guardian reports. Instead of looking for the quickest or most direct route between two points, a prototype developed by the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden "plots the most fuel-efficient route by …

    Science 5 Jan 2007, 15:19

  • Tales from the Google interview room

    Letters 'Do not remove the batteries from your interviewer..'

    We've heard quite a few anecdotes of bizarre interview practices from Google over the years, so when we asked if you had some of your own, you didn't disappoint. The company that turned down Bram Cohen, creator of Bittorrent, but managed to find a post for crazed neo-con headbanger Dan Senor, certainly moves in mysterious ways …

    Letters 5 Jan 2007, 16:30

  • Extreme Programmers! Meet up in Leeds

    Yes, Ermintrude, there is life up north...

    eXtreme Programmers are nothing if not clubbable, but the eXtreme Tuesday Club (XtC) is a City thing, as in the City of London, and I'd hate for Reg Dev to seem London-centric. So, as there are also plenty of eXtreme Programmers up North, I was interested to hear of one of them (with some sponsorship from Erudine) trying to get …

    Developer 5 Jan 2007, 16:34

  • Cellular network used as backhaul for in-car Wi-Fi hotspot

    Not for the budget-conscious

    Two 3G (sort of) cellular networks, provided by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, jointly cover most of continental USA. Now, find a way of using those networks to provide in-car internet. Normally, you'd be forced to get at least two data cards, and plug them into your PC, and switch from one network to the other as coverage …

    Mobile 5 Jan 2007, 16:38

  • Sony Vaio laptop to star in blue move

    Spring collection unveiled

    Hardware Widow Sony has taken the wraps off its spring laptop collection, darlings, touting not only the notebooks stylish looks but also the fact they'll all come bundled with Windows Vista. Desktop Vaios will ship with Microsoft's flash new operating system too, it said. In the case of the female-friendly C2 series, …

    Reg Hardware 5 Jan 2007, 17:00

  • Bandwidth bottlenecks are Flushed Away

    Aardman broadens its transatlantic links.

    Aardman Animation, the British studio which co-produced Flushed Away with US-based DreamWorks, has decided it needs more transatlantic bandwidth to support ever larger file tranfers. It has upgraded its Internet connection from 4Mbit/s to 10Mbit/s, and also upped the links between its sites in Bristol to 10Mbit/s. Best known …

    Storage 5 Jan 2007, 17:04

  • On-the-fly disk defragmenter claims a first

    Automatic clean-up tool uses only spare cycles, says Diskeeper

    Diskeeper claims the 2007 version of its disk defragmenter is the first to run automatically and in the background - most defragmenters, such as the one built into Windows, have to be manually activated or set up as a scheduled job, and run when the system is quiet. The innovation, according to Diskeeper engineer Ergun Kazali …

    Storage 5 Jan 2007, 17:47

  • Our Saddam picture - too shocking?

    Letters The case for the defence

    Some heads of state lie around dead for decades. But when we ran a picture of a very-recently-deceased Saddam Hussein, readers emailed - and even phoned in - to complain. You can read a sample of views here. But not everyone agreed. Having read the letters from your angry readers, I'd like to step up by your side to at …

    Letters 5 Jan 2007, 20:21

  • Google blacklist sheds light on phishing tactics

    Social engineering still the mainstay of scams

    An analysis of Google's blacklist of suspected phishing sites found that eBay, PayPal and Bank of America together account for almost two in three (63 per cent) of suspected scam sites. Security researcher Michael Sutton also discovered that Yahoo! hosts a significant number of bogus websites - as identified by Google's …

    Enterprise Security 5 Jan 2007, 22:14

  • Gigabit audio to run on Ethernet

    But who wants hundreds of simultaneous sound channels?

    Cirrus Logic is developing Gigabit Ethernet audio chips, with the aim of sending hundreds of uncompressed audio streams over the wire at the same time. The chips will supercharge the company's existing CobraNet audio networking technology, and enable heavyweight audio users to aggregate as many as 600 or 700 professional-grade …

    Data Networking 5 Jan 2007, 22:20