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13th March 2007 Archive

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  • Free Stob tome for every reader ...

    Site offer When you buy an Apress, Apress Academic, or Friends of ED title

    Our good friends at Apress have very kindly offered us another batch of Verity Stob's best selling collection of amusing stories and anecdotes to give away free with every book bought. As you all know, Verity has been filling our lives with her musings and opinions since joining Vulture Central at the end of 2005, and her …

    Site News 13 Mar 2007, 07:02

  • Even wee companies must adhere to WEEE regulations

    Size doesn't matter

    Even small companies must provide free, environmentally-sound disposal of the electronic equipment they sell, according to new government guidelines (PDF) intended to clarify the WEEE Regulations. The government has published guidelines for the sellers and users of electrical and electronic goods on how to stay on the right …

    Small Biz 13 Mar 2007, 09:51

  • Atari can appeal because law may change before hearing

    Case pending two landmark verdicts

    A claim in a court case over payment discrepancies to the author of Atari computer games can proceed because the law may have changed by the time the case gets heard. The Court of Appeal has allowed a part of Atari's argument to remain in its case, even though it has no prospect of success under current law. The Court said that …

    Law 13 Mar 2007, 10:10

  • Buddhist video game aims to teach morals

    Outbreak of kindness expected in Thailand

    We hear a lot about violence in video games being to blame for all the ills besetting the youth of today. Now, a Thai games developer has decided it is time to right the balance and has developed a snappily titled Ethics Game to teach youngsters about being good, decent and teetotal. The game is based around the five precepts …

    Bootnotes 13 Mar 2007, 10:13

  • UK's biometric passports go jumbo

    Super size me

    The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has produced a larger version of the biometric passport. The eJumbo, launched yesterday, has 48 pages compared with the 32 on the original ePassport. It will cost £77, while the regular ePassport costs £66. A spokesperson said it has been developed largely for people who travel regularly …

    Government 13 Mar 2007, 10:18

  • Oracle buys another database

    Comment Trying to snatch IBM's crown?

    Oracle and IBM are both competitors and partners. In the case of databases they are certainly rivals, with Oracle 10g and DB2 going head-to-head at many sites. However, it has occurred to me to wonder if Oracle is seeking to rival IBM's crown as the owner of the most different databases. IBM, of course, owns not only IMS and …

    Financial News 13 Mar 2007, 10:25

  • IBM produces smaller Cells

    Destined for servers not PS3, at least not at the start...

    IBM has beguin punching out a 65nm version of the Cell processor used in Sony's PlayStation 3. Gamers should not get too excited: Big Blue's Broadband Engine - to give Cell its full name - is aimed not at consoles but slimline servers. IBM co-developed Cell with Sony and Toshiba, and has been producing 90nm chips for its …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 10:40

  • Apple slip exposes eight-core Mac Pro

    Quad-core Xeon machine imminent?

    Apple may be about to equip its Mac Pro desktop with Intel four-core Xeon processors, if an inadvertent posting on the company's UK online store is to be believed. The Mac maker's taken the offending entry down now, but not before a number of websites spotted it overnight. A search for 'Mac' yielded a number of entries, one …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 10:47

  • Non-glamorous gambling ads to hit UK from September

    Sally Army up in Arms

    Ads for online and traditional gambling will hit the UK's airwaves from September, the government has confirmed. But don't worry, the betting industry will be forbidden from producing ads thatl make betting seem glamorous, or exploit the vulnerable. Restrictions on ads by gambling outfits – whether online or on the high street …

    Law 13 Mar 2007, 10:48

  • Ten reasons why you should buy a PlayStation 3

    Tech Digest £450 well spent?

    Is that the wind of changed opinions blowing? Since last week's Games Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, the buzz about Sony's PlayStation 3 has taken a turn for the better. The keynote presentation from Sony's Phil Harrison had a lot to do with it: he announced two separate PS3 virtual worlds - Home and …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 11:16

  • IBM chief puzzles over payslip

    Does that say $18.8m or is it $24.46m?

    Puzzling over your pension statements and worried about chomping your way through this year’s tax return? Spare a thought for poor old Sam Palmisano, chairman and CEO at IBM. AP reports that Palmisano picked up “compensation” of $18.8m this year, according to latest filings at the SEC. AP said it arrived at the final figure by …

    Financial News 13 Mar 2007, 11:30

  • BSA fires off writs against online resellers

    Watchdog cries foul over 'dodgy' software auctions

    The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has begun an international clampdown against people selling illegitimate software online. Firms offering allegedly pirated software to unsuspecting punters in the US, UK, Austria, and Germany have been sued as part of the BSA's wider fight against software piracy. The defendant in the US …

    Channel Register 13 Mar 2007, 11:35

  • Seagate ships free-fall detecting laptop hard drive

    Capacities run to 160GB

    Seagate has said you can now buy the world's first 7,200rpm notebook hard drive that uses perpendicular recording technology to boost storage capacity and can detect when it's being dropped. The drive, the Momentus 7200.2 is available in a range of capacities running from 80GB to 160GB. It's based on the 2.5in form-factor …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 11:49

  • Radio phone-ins might be dodgy too

    And David Gest shouldn't have left the jungle

    Another day, another flurry of stories about dodgy phone-ins. Premium rate regulator Icstis has warned radio stations to get their house in order or face investigations like those suffered by TV stations. The regulator has also written to broadcasters outlining its areas of concern. The letter (available as a pdf here) …

    Telecoms 13 Mar 2007, 11:57

  • ORG to enlighten music industry on DRM's limitations

    Readying a white paper

    The Open Rights Group (ORG) is developing a new paper to inform the music industry about the technical suitability of Digital Rights Management (DRM) as an aid to enforcing copyright. The paper is conceived as a way to inform the current debates about DRM, to break a very technical subject area down into terms that the average …

    Law 13 Mar 2007, 12:03

  • Beyoncé backs Samsing Ultra Music phone

    Beyoncé Knowles is the face of Samsung's F300 Ultra Music handset. The actress and Destiny's Child will appear in ads promoting the phone, and the South Korean giant will sponsor her latest world tour, which kicks off its European leg next month. Buy an F300 from April and you'll even get a pre-loaded copy of the spirited …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 12:34

  • Guards to stake out Milosevic grave

    Dracula-style come-back still possible

    Vampire hunters wishing to prevent Slobodan Milosevic rising from his grave will now have to deal with security guards posted to prevent them driving a stake through his heart and thereby thwarting any ambitions the Serbian dicatator may have for a Dracula-style political comeback. A group of Serbian Buffys recently attempted …

    Security 13 Mar 2007, 13:00

  • Disney launches interactive site for mums

    While Eisner invests in web content studio

    Disney is launching a new website, Disney Family, aimed specifically at mums. The media giant says the site will host user generated articles, and will eventually form a "Parent Pedia", with information on hundreds of subjects of interest to mums and dads. The move is seen as something of a departure for the firm, which has so …

    Entertainment 13 Mar 2007, 13:03

  • Sony set to shrink PSP

    No change to screen size, though

    Remember claims made in August 2006 that Sony is planning to redesign the PlayStation Portable? It turns out they were true. Sony Computer Entertainment UK chief Ray Maguire yesterday confirmed a "smaller, lighter" version is on its way. Maguire said the PSP's screen size will remain fixed, but indicated future versions of …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 13:10

  • If you must pirate, use counterfeit Windows

    MS exec gets pragmatic about piracy

    A senior Microsoft exec has admitted that some software piracy actually ends up benefiting the technology giant because it leads to purchases of other software packages. In this way, some software pirates who might otherwise never try Microsoft products become paying customers, according to Microsoft business group president …

    Security 13 Mar 2007, 13:14

  • Al Gore brings TV for Guardianistas to UK

    What do you know, you can marry your cousin

    Yesterday saw the UK launch of yet another TV-on-the-internet company - only this one is also TV-on-the-internet-on-TV. Alongside a website of user-generated content, the channel has slots on Sky and Virgin TV. Al Gore-backed current.tv aims to offer a rarified version of YouTube - less happy-slapping and more politics. Based …

    Music and Media 13 Mar 2007, 13:22

  • ECS to fly Flybook wannabe into CeBIT

    Firm's G200 looks strangely familiar...

    Taiwanese hardware maker Elitegroup ECS yesterday revealed it's going to be demo'ing at Germany's CeBIT show this week. One offering caught our eye: the G200 laptop, which sports an "ingenious... smart neck that allows the screen to be lifted, tilted or swiveled to a comfortable level for the user". Indeed, it is ingenious, …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 13:40

  • Computacenter product business stages comeback

    Flip-flop

    Computacenter has managed to tighten its belt a couple of notches and turn its infrastructure business into its headline feature - for the right reasons. The firm's preliminary results to the year ended 31 December 2006 boast a "strong performance" for its Technology Solutions division. These "compensated for slower growth" in …

    Channel Register 13 Mar 2007, 14:44

  • Intel 'Bearlake' chipsets to get CeBIT outing

    Mobo makers reveal all

    Intel may be preparing to launch its 'Bearlake' chipset series later this week. Well, motherboard makers are going to be showing off boards based on the upcoming silicon at CeBIT on Thursday. The first to tell us that's what they'll be doing is Elitegroup (ECS). Today, it said its will have boards based on the P35, G35 and …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 14:56

  • Viacom sues Google for $1bn

    The party's over

    Viacom's patience with Google has finally run out, and the entertainment giant has filed a $1bn copyright infringement suit against Google. Viacom says the ad giant's YouTube sevice is hosting 160,000 infringing works, which have been viewed 1.5bn times. It alleges that YouTube has "built a lucrative business out of exploiting …

    Law 13 Mar 2007, 15:18

  • Storage market spins out of control

    Well, it grew a bit, says IDC

    Research house IDC reckons the worldwide storage market reached $4.8bn last year - a six per cent growth on last year. The market for external disk storage systems was up $272m in the fourth quarter of 2006 to $4.8bn. In just the fourth quarter the total disk storage market grew by 4.9 per cent to $6.9bn from the same period …

    Storage 13 Mar 2007, 15:35

  • NEC warms up unlaunched storage grid

    No need for disaster recovery

    NEC has announced the imminent arrival of its grid storage system which it claims will remove the need for planned downtime, amongst other things. Called the HYDRAstor NEC's platform promises easier management, "near limitless scalabilty", no bottlenecks, simple data migration and no doubt the moon on a sharp, pointy stick. …

    Storage 13 Mar 2007, 15:52

  • The Holy Grail of services: SCA

    Service Component Architecture as a way to build SOA

    How many times lately have you come across a column on Service Oriented Architecture (or SOA)? Or an article telling you that SOA is the next big thing? Or that SOA is the way we should all be building systems? Personally, it seems to happen to me all the time. Recently, I was in a hotel in Frankfurt, and was waiting in the …

    Developer 13 Mar 2007, 16:03

  • Demonic car takes out TelecityRedbus

    Letters As it dodges WGA

    What? Keep the lights on? Forget global warming, it's all about budget allocation? Hello: That kind of reminds me of this one place I worked at where there were three guys working on a shift. One quit, leaving things seriously shorthanded. However, the administration refused to hire another person saying it "wasn't in the …

    Letters 13 Mar 2007, 16:05

  • VSTO For Mere Mortals

    Book review Assuming that Office Power Users think of themselves as mortals...

    In addition to the legions of professional Visual Basic programmers, there are still more developers who use VBA and Microsoft Office for automation, customisation or the development of tailored office applications. Many of these are super-users rather full-time developers, but they have depended on VBA to extend and expand what …

    Developer 13 Mar 2007, 16:38

  • 'World's first' transistor-printing plant opens

    Austrian manufacturer Nanoident Technologies today cut the ribbon on the world's first factory that literally prints opto-electronic sensor circuitry and components onto virtually any surface, including plastic, ceramic and silicon. The Linz plant operates like a giant inkjet printer. The semiconductor is made of up of …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 17:04

  • Breathe blows off Biscit deal

    No other suitors yet

    Breathe’s rescue of Biscit Internet is off, the would-be rescuer announced this afternoon. Breathe Networks stepped in last week with an offer to buy up the customer base of Biscit, just days after the London-based ISP slipped into administration. Last Friday Breathe said it hoped to ensure a “smooth migration with no downtime …

    Telecoms 13 Mar 2007, 17:38

  • Intel on sale for $20

    Bit by bits

    Fanboys everywhere can now buy Intel by the bit. Ex-Dell staffer and Austin resident David Weaver has started selling small containers full of the debris left over from the so-called "Intel Shell" – a never completed Intel facility destroyed last month. So, for the low-low price of $20, you can own Intel's ashes. For the …

    Bootnotes 13 Mar 2007, 19:20

  • Once again, 'Vladuz' impales eBay defenses

    Getting ridiculous

    For at least the third time in as many months, a malicious hacker has gained unauthorized access to parts of eBay's network despite the best efforts of the company's security team to fortify its system against the embarrassing breaches. A miscreant who went by a variation of the name Vladuz was able to secure credentials …

    Storage 13 Mar 2007, 19:25

  • Cisco Borgs NeoPath

    Storage management purchase

    Cisco is buying NeoPath, a small Silicon Vallley storage management software vendor. Terms for the privately-held company are undisclosed. Founded in 2002, NeoPath claims over 50 customer installations for its File Director products, which - says Cisco -simplify the management of network attached storage (NAS) and other file …

    Storage 13 Mar 2007, 19:53

  • Y2K7 bug causes isolated glitches

    Clockwatch Windows and Google AdWords among the temporally confused

    We may have been little premature yesterday in declaring that America survived Sunday's Daylight Saving Time (DST) switch unscathed. Reports from Reg readers and elsewhere reveal the so-called "Y2k7 bug" threw up a variety of problems, mostly transitory and largely on the scale of minor irritation. Among the systems …

    Data Networking 13 Mar 2007, 20:16

  • Dutch reject USB flash drive tax

    Heated debate

    Dutch justice minister Hirsch Ballin has rejected calls for a copyright tax on USB Flash drives. The tax was proposed by Dutch industry group SONT, which two years ago also wanted to levy a tax for iPods and other MP3 players to compensate music artists for revenue lost to private copying. That proposal was also shelved by …

    Reg Hardware 13 Mar 2007, 22:27

  • Last.fm puts video through the scrobbler

    Empire building

    Last.fm, the popular music website, is to apply its social recommendation technology to video, as it prepares to do battle with Pandora for the internet radio station market. Last.fm is working on a music video equivalent to its Audioscrobbler software, which registers music plays to users' profiles and Last.fm's database. The …

    Music and Media 13 Mar 2007, 22:28

  • Sun NetBeans phones home

    Census sensors

    Sun is taking advantage of a NetBeans feature that phones home twice each month to record numbers of active users. Jean Elliott, senior director for Java software product marketing, says Sun is not spying on users. The company merely wants an accurate measurement of the size of the NetBeans community and break the habit of …

    Developer 13 Mar 2007, 23:02

  • Blanket discovery for stolen laptops

    Comment Of John Doe and IP addresses

    Bad things happen online. Trade secrets are lost or stolen. Personal information is compromised. Copyrights and trademarks are infringed. Bloggers post confidential information, defamatory information, or just annoying information. Websites host stolen credit cards, hacking tools and techniques, or other things that you might …

    Crime 13 Mar 2007, 23:49