12th April 2007 Archive

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Sony US yanks 20GB PlayStation 3

Demand for 'budget' console too small

It's official: Sony has canned the 20GB PlayStation 3, a version of the console never seen in the UK, Europe and PAL territories, but released in the US and Japan. The 20GB model's status in Sony's home nation remains uncertain, but in North America, we can say it's history. "Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 07:32
Shuttle debuts firey hued, liquid cooled gaming PC

Dual-core CPU, twin GPUs

Small form-factor PC specialist Shuttle has introduced its first liquid-cooled system, launching the flame-coloured performance box in Japan as the limited edition SDXi 1337 series. Beyond the custom paint job, the SDXi look like Shuttle's XPC small form-factor machines - it's the SD37P2, to be precise. Inside, it's got a 2 …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 08:00
Ebuyer caught pinching content again

Once is a misfortune but twice looks like carelessness

Ebuyer has again been caught stealing content from rival websites. Once again, the site didn't even bother with a traditional cut and paste but left content to be hosted by the website it was stealing from. We were contacted by a couple of Reg readers who noticed spooky similarities between several Ebuyer pages and those on …

Channel Register 12 Apr 2007, 08:02
Orange unpeels Samsung BlackBerry-esque i600

Coming this month?

Orange will be bringing Samsung's Windows Mobile-based BlackBerry-like i600 smart phone to the UK and France, the carrier's website has revealed. It'll arrive toward the end of this month, others have claimed. Orange UK hasn't formally announced the i600, and the handset's not yet listed on the network's Coming Soon page, …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 08:32
Intel Core 2 Celerons benchmarked

As-yet-unannounced CPUs take on AMD Athlon 64

Intel's upcoming Core 2-derived single-core 65nm Celeron 400 series looks set to give comparably clocked AMD Athlon 64 processors a run for their money, if pre-release benchmarks posted on the net are to be believed. Chinese-language website HKPEC lined up the 1.8GHz Celeron 430 and 2GHz Celeron 440 against the 2.2GHz Athlon …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 09:00
Hitachi Consulting acquires Impact Plus

Plans for growth in European market

Hitachi Consulting has expanded its reach into the European services and solutions market with the acquisition of UK-based IT consulting firm Impact Plus. The consulting arm of electrical manufacturing giant Hitachi announced yesterday that it had closed the deal with Impact Plus on 2 April after nine months of discussions. …

Channel Register 12 Apr 2007, 09:02
Finisar unwraps cure for SAN fabric blindness

I can see! I can see!

Network test and measurement specialist Finisar has introduced a protocol analyser for 8Gig Fibre Channel, aimed both at SAN equipment developers and integrators, and large enterprise users. Based on Finisar's existing $50,000 (£25,000) Xgig platform, which can also test 10Gig FC and Ethernet, plus 6Gig SAS and SATA, the 8Gig …

Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 09:14
Government predicts one third of people will resist ID checks

But Home Office says 'pah, the figures are out of date'

One in three people will resist identity checks according to Government figures. The just-released statistics predict a widespread revolt over identity cards, but the Home Office has dismissed the figures as irrelevant and out of date. In 2004 Mark Oaten, the then Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, asked for figures to …

ID 12 Apr 2007, 09:16
Overlooking tradeoffs could kill your project

Tradeoffs are good

One of our readers, Bill Nicholls, has just written in with a comment on my "Housebuilding as a metaphor for software development" blog. He says: "Deadline, quality, functions - pick any two." In short, every project is a tradeoff. The above assumes that cost is fixed, but if that is a variable, the above line becomes: "Cost, …

Developer 12 Apr 2007, 09:19
Trading Standards officers become copyright enforcers

Search and seize

Trading Standards officers are now empowered to enter premises and seize goods and documents they believe to be involved in copyright infringement, now that changes to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act have come into force. The officers' existing powers of search and seizure are being extended to copyright offences in …

Law 12 Apr 2007, 09:33
Nintendo upgrades Wii web browser

Nintendo has rolled out a smarter version of its Wii games console's Internet Channel, offering the application - based on the Opera web browser - to Net-connected Wii owners free of charge until 30 June. Nintendo and Opera claimed the new browser is faster and contains more features than its predecessor. It's easier to use …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 09:37
Samsung 10.9mm skinny phone slips into Europe

Samsung has launched its Ultra Edition II 10.9 - more prosiacally also known as the SGH-U600 - in Europe - for a second time. It first showed the 10.9mm-thick slider phone back in February at the 3GSM show. Still, it did reveal more about the phone's feature set this time round. Before, we know the U600 would be a quad-band …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 10:00
Dell and Adobe UK look for their calculators

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Dell makes the channel feel good Good news for the channel, Dell had another bad week. As if being ticked off by Nasdaq for not handing in regulatory filings for its past fiscal year wasn't bad enough, the direct vendor also had a bad fourth quarter in laptop sales. Shipments fell 1.5 per cent from the third quarter to 3.52 …

Channel Register 12 Apr 2007, 10:08
EU poised for vote on roaming cap

Could reduce charges by 70 per cent

The EU committee on Industry, Research and Energy is to vote this morning on a proposal to cap the amount network operators can charge for roaming within the EU, potentially reducing the cost of roaming by 70 per cent. The committee found that international roaming costs between 10 per cent and 20 per cent more than in-country …

Mobile 12 Apr 2007, 10:11
ATM blagger cuffed after artificial leg falls off

California ne'er-do-well caught on the hop

A would-be ATM blagger was cuffed after losing his artificial leg during a police pursuit - thereby depriving him of the full complement of limbs required to show officers a clean set of heels. According to AP, 48-year-old Gregory Daniels and an accomplice drove up to Pomona Ranch Market, California, last Tuesday at 3am, …

Bootnotes 12 Apr 2007, 10:12
NHS patient site set for summer launch

Free choice

A new patient choice website, including patient reviews of hospitals, has been announced by health secretary Patricia Hewitt. She announced that NHS Choices will go live during the summer. It is being developed by Dr Foster Intelligence, LBi and Sapient, following an invitation to tender in January. "Patients will soon be able …

Public Sector 12 Apr 2007, 10:18
Big Blue boffins build 3D chip stack tech

Look, ma, no wires

IBM is bidding to become the NCP of semiconductors with a multi-storey chip technology that it hopes will allow CPUs to be stacked with memory, specialised processing cores and other components one on top of the other. Mounting chip components vertically is nothing new, but the new IBM technique abandons the wires typically …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 10:30
Thai king pardons spray-painting Swiss man

Ten years' jail commuted to deportation

Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej has pardoned the Swiss man sentenced to 10 years' jail for defacing images of the revered monarch, the BBC reports. Oliver Jufer was recently sentenced to a lengthy spell in chokey for spray-painting over images of Adulyadej in the city of Chiang Mai last December. He'd apparently been refused …

Entertainment 12 Apr 2007, 10:39
Opera brings 'speed dial' to browsers

Brief An easy ride for surfers

Browser maker Opera has added a "speed dial" feature to the latest version of its browser, allowing surfers to gain ready access to their favourite sites more easily. Speed Dial allows surfers to nominate their top nine sites as visual favourites that are immediately available in any new tab. The feature, explained here, …

Applications 12 Apr 2007, 10:40
Update opens 'hidden' GPS on HTC P3600

HTC's P3600 PDA phone has a secret: it's got a built-in GPS receiver. And thanks to a newly posted system software update, this previously hidden facility been activated. You'll need a navigation application to make the most of it, of course. To that end, HTC has also made available a copy of TomTom Navigator 6 and a single …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 11:13
LeftHand takes iSCSI to 10Gig

Slapping SAN and the LAN together

LeftHand Networks has IP-based SANs running over 10Gig Ethernet and is touting these as proof that iSCSI is finally ready for large enterprises to use. According to LeftHand, the 10Gig generation will be where Fibre Channel finally loses its lead over iSCSI in areas such as performance and disaster recovery support. The …

Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 11:52
EU data protection chief slams police data sharing treaty

Questions 'democratic legitimacy'

The European Commission, pushed by the European Council, neglected its statutory obligation to ensure its initiatives are democratically accountable, transparent, and planned wisely, when considering plans for police data sharing the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said yesterday. The EDPS took the unusual step of …

Law 12 Apr 2007, 12:04
US border patrol tests 98-foot networked radar towers

Yearning to breathe free? Push off

American border guards will soon deploy 98-foot-tall radar surveillance masts with built-in wireless networking in a bid to prevent the Land of the Free being overrun by huddled masses of Mexicans (and perhaps Canadians) intent on entering the US illegally and working hard for very little money. Boeing, prime contractor for the …

Public Sector 12 Apr 2007, 12:42
NASA plans mission to sweep away cloud mysteries

Climate change indicators?

NASA is planning a new mission to probe mysterious ice clouds that hover around our atmosphere at the edge of space. The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) spacecraft aims to help researchers understand how the clouds form and explain recent changes in their formation patterns. The craft, slated to launch on 25 April, will …

Science 12 Apr 2007, 12:46
Enormo remote ends lost-under-sofa misery

And now the ultimate remote control not only for folk fed up with having to use different ones for all their audio-visual kit, but also for anyone who's ever lost one. Enter the Jumbo Remote, a control that's takes up more space than a sheet of paper. Innovage Products' offering measures a whopping 27.5 x 12.5cm and is …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 13:01
Loose mouth and loose change - $5 tip leads to terror finance rap

Small scale danger to fleet indicted

In the terror case against Hassan Abujihaad, formerly known as Paul R. Hall - sailor on the destroyer Benfold, the US government has another mangy cat in the GWOT. "Material support of terrorism and disclosing previously classified information" are the beefs in the indictment against Abujihaad, according to a government press …

Law 12 Apr 2007, 13:15
Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

So it goes

Writer Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at 84 as a result of brain injuries suffered in a fall at his Manhattan home, news agencies report. Vonnegut was born in 1922 in Indianapolis, the son of third-generation German-Americans. His first forays into writing came at high schol and university. During a spell at Cornell during 1941-2 …

Entertainment 12 Apr 2007, 13:23
Peak perfects retractable USB Flash drive

Sick of losing the caps of the end of your USB Flash drives? Peripheral maker Peak has the answer: a drive with a slide-over cover. Available now in capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB - a 16GB model's on the way, Peak said - the Peak Slider cover just retracts back over the drive to reveal the USB connector. Done with the …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 13:25
Amazon pushes sex toys to random punters

Dildo email sent out willy-nilly

A pre-Easter email from marketing bods at Amazon.co.uk raised the hackles of one Reg reader with its subject line: "Bonking like a Spring Bunny? Rampant Rabbits from £17.50 at Amazon.co.uk." The Rampant Rabbit is not, we are reliably informed, an actual Easter Bunny. The email arrived complete with eye-watering pictures of " …

Bootnotes 12 Apr 2007, 13:57
Sage buys Swiss biz management firm

And trading on track

Geordie accounts specialist Sage is paying £7.5m in cash for a Swiss enterprise management company. Sage is buying Pro-Concept SA, which specialises in mid-market enterprise resource planning software. The company is the largest such vendor in French-speaking Switzerland - how many rivals it has for that crown is not clear. …

Financial News 12 Apr 2007, 14:15
Ofcom consults on unlicensed radio

Free spectrum for all

UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom has published a consultation document which suggests expanding the use of unlicensed spectrum in frequencies over 40GHz, and for low-power technologies including ultra-wideband, and is looking for feedback before 21 June. The UK already has the most unregulated radio market in Europe, and …

Networks 12 Apr 2007, 14:48
EFF takes up arms against Euro copyright move

Brandishes web petition

The European wing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has taken on the might of the European Commission by beginning its opposition to IPRED2, the proposed new directive that aims to harmonise European copyright laws. The organisation has launched a web-based petition here that it wants you to sign up to. The EFF is …

Law 12 Apr 2007, 14:49
Sony Walkman NW-A800 media player

Review The Walkman enters the digital video arena...

Sony used to be synonymous with portable entertainment: its Walkman range was the brand that all products aspired to. After losing ground with the digital generation Sony is out to mount a comeback with the NW-A800 - its first Walkman that can handle both audio and video playback on the go. The NW-A800 is more of a …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 14:50
Naomi Campbell MTV 'Minion' show canned

Search for armour-plated assistant called off

There is growing confusion surrounding a planned Naomi Campbell MTV show called The Minion in which the battling Streatham clotheshorse was to have sought out a new personal assistant. According to some news reports, it was MTV which bitchslapped the project because Ms Campbell wouldn't return its calls. A source said: " …

Entertainment 12 Apr 2007, 14:55
T-Mobile 'all white' with blanched BlackBerry Pearl

iPod-esque smart phone offered in UK

T-Mobile UK is about to add Research in Motion's white BlackBerry Pearl to its roster of smart phones, the carrier announced today. When we checked, T-Mobile's website wasn't yet listing the iPod-coloured handset, but T-Mobile said its appearance was imminent. Beyond the colour, the white model is identical to the existing …

Reg Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 15:07
HP claims latest printer a record-breaker

Faster than a speeding jet

Ink-based printers are now capable of matching the fast throughput speeds of colour laser printers as HP adds the Edgeline range to its portfolio. The new printers process printouts at a rate up to 50 colour prints per minute, which beats many of the company's LaserJets and is approximately 10 times the speed of current ink- …

Hardware 12 Apr 2007, 15:15
India tests intermediate-range missile

Looking to boost global status with nuclear muscle?

The Indian government claims it has significantly increased its nuclear delivery capability, with a successful test today of the uprated Agni-III ballistic missile. According to the India Daily, defence officials said today's launch was successful, and that Agni-III would offer a range of 3,000km. That would put the main cities …

Science 12 Apr 2007, 15:44
Phew! Tila Tequila isn't the future of music

Top of the Flops

Reg readers, like Reg writers, can rarely agree on anything. But one thing that probably unites us all is the future of the big record company. They're doomed...and good riddance is the consensus view. For the past 30 years, the major labels have served up mediocre manufactured fare, and screwed artists and consumers alike. …

Music and Media 12 Apr 2007, 16:05
Microsoft begins virtualization software delays

Don't! Panic!

Microsoft has delayed the beta release of its future server virtualization software. But fear not, intrepid server administrators, the final release of the software – code-named “Viridian” - remains on schedule for release in an update to Longhorn Server. Mike Neil, Microsoft's GM in charge of virtualization, has disclosed …

Servers 12 Apr 2007, 17:40
Technorati stung by ad-friendly vibe

Media deal

Technorati has announced its first acquisition in a deal giving publishers and advertisers fresh ways to make money from social networks and media. Technorati, which claims to track 72 million blogs, has purchased news and content aggregation and ranking start-up The Personal Bee. Berkeley, California-based Personal Bee will be …

Music and Media 12 Apr 2007, 17:48
Woman claims Geek Squader tried to film her in the shower

Not part of service plan

An engineer from Geek Squad apparently managed to leave his mobile phone in the bathroom while his customer took a shower, and would have got away with it if she hadn't spotted the handset blinking at her from the basin. Geek Squad - Best Buy's installation and repair arm - sent an engineer to the customer's house to fix her …

Channel Register 12 Apr 2007, 17:59
How much do security breaches cost anyway?

TJX case sheds light on 'inexact' science

Information security breaches cost anywhere between $90 to $305 per lost record, according to a new study by Forrester Research. Forrester bases its figures, which it has the good grace to say are difficult to be sure about, on a survey of 28 companies who had some sort of data breach. The estimate covers the cost of legal fees …

Enterprise Security 12 Apr 2007, 18:12
Red Hat fattens pork pie

Feds go open source

Red Hat has sealed a potentially lucrative marketing and technology deal that could see its open source and Linux software land in more government and defense locations. The company is partnering with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), an $8.3bn systems and solutions provider that lists NATO and the …

Servers 12 Apr 2007, 20:35
Demo neuters antiphishing measure

You can be sure that we're unsure

In the unlikely event readers needed another reason to doubt the efficacy of the sitekeys that Bank of America, Yahoo! and others claim make their sites more secure, a muck-raking hacker has demonstrated a simple means of thwarting the measure. The demo comes courtesy of Christopher Soghoian, the Indiana University graduate …

Enterprise Security 12 Apr 2007, 21:51
Apple delays Leopard for your own good

iPhone's magic to blame

Apple Computer has delayed the highly anticipated release of Leopard - aka Mac OS X 10.5 - by four months so it can devote developers and QA resources to its other labor of love, the iPhone. That slates the unleashing of Leopard for October instead of early June at Apple's developers conference. The announcement confirms …

Mac 12 Apr 2007, 22:06
Kepler telescope primed to search for earth-like planets

Wake me up when you find the space dames

Space: It's huge. It's a lot of other things, but mostly huge. If you lose your keys in it, you're pretty much screwed. NASA has a lot of ground to cover in its search for alien life. The agency made some progress recently by successfully demonstrating in the laboratory the technology behind its next space telescope designed …

Space 12 Apr 2007, 23:13
Wanna copy of Windows XP next year? Forget it

Microsoft still in withdrawal

Microsoft is sticking to its timetable for withdrawing Windows XP, despite mounting proof most users are postponing their Windows Vista upgrade. The company confirmed OEMs and retailers won't be able to purchase any more Windows XP licenses from the end of January 2008, based on guidelines issued last year. A company …

Operating Systems 12 Apr 2007, 23:35