1st May 2007 Archive

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Study: Idiots may cause data-center apocalypse

Ill-conceived moves to blade servers cause outage 'crisis'

A new study warns that ignorant data center managers switching to high-density devices are facing a "capacity crisis" that may increase the number of costly server outages. The Aperture Research Institute, a division of software company Aperture Technologies, surveyed over 100 enterprise data managers, representing over 600 …

Data Networking 1 May 2007, 00:23
Owners of E-Gold indicted for money laundering

Updated Service allegedly popular among child pornographers and other low-lifes

[This story was updated on May 1 to include comments from E-Gold strenuously denying the charges.] Three owners of online payment processor E-Gold and an affiliated company have been indicted for money laundering and related crimes for allegedly allowing sellers of child pornography, operators of investment scams and other …

Law 1 May 2007, 01:44
Hotmail's antispam measures snuff out legit emails, too

No warning, little recourse

Hotmail users and email server admins, beware: you may be unknowingly caught in the crossfire of Microsoft's war on spam. Unintended casualties include legitimate emails from domains with well-established reputations, which are systematically blocked with absolutely no notice and little recourse. The chief culprit is the …

Telecoms 1 May 2007, 01:50
Observers forced to 'negotiate' for evote access

Electrical electoral injustice

Independent observers are being blocked from properly observing the trials of electronic voting at the UK's forthcoming local elections. Jason Kitcat, e-voting coordinator for the Open Rights Group (ORG), says that one of the councils involved in the pilots of electronic and remote voting technologies has refused to allow the …

Public Sector 1 May 2007, 06:02
Orange becomes more like bank: launches overdraft facility

Pay £1 to get £2.50 into debt

Mobile phone customers signing up to Orange's new Speakeasy pre-pay tariff can get themselves £2.50 worth of overdraft facility to keep them connected when their credit runs out, though they'll have to pay £1 to sign up for it. The overdraft facility, branded "Reserve Tank", is part of the new tariff which also includes three " …

Mobile 1 May 2007, 07:02
DoubleClick redefines the rainbow paradigm

LogoWatch Invents new colour for 'exciting' rebrand

Google's recently-acquired adserving tentacle DoubleClick has pulled off a bit of a rebranding coup in completely redefining the rainbow paradigm for its reworked logo. According to GoogleClick's president (international) Ben Regensburger, the company is pretty excited about its new corporate identity "which features a new …

Bootnotes 1 May 2007, 09:02
Why Last.fm isn't sweating the RIAA's royalty hike

The day the music survived

Last.fm, the popular custom radio and music network, will press on with expansion plans, despite the threat to internet radio from the record industry lobbyists in the US. A battle is currently being fought Stateside over how much royalty should be paid for streaming radio. Until the tail end of last week, the future of online …

Music and Media 1 May 2007, 09:05
Ann Summers love egg fails to crack Cyprus

Island deprived of 'serious clitoral lovin'

Cypriot readers in search of some "serious clitoral lovin" in the form of a remote-controlled "deceptively powerful matt silver love egg" featuring "three speeds and four pulse settings", are advised not to bother looking for tablecloth-clenching ecstasy down at Ann Summers: Quite what Cyprus has done to be deprived of the …

Bootnotes 1 May 2007, 09:08
MoD encourages SMEs

Easier bidding for defence contracts

Small IT suppliers could have a better chance of winning defence business under new advertising rules. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced an initiative aimed at encouraging more small and medium sized companies to bid for defence contracts. On 30 April 2007 the threshold for combat related equipment - above which it …

Small Biz 1 May 2007, 09:28
Silverlight glow dimmed by cross-platform concerns

MIX07 Bad for web health

Microsoft has been taken to task for harming the web by going solo on technology and standards and not adopting a more open development approach. Open source advocates from BMC Software, Mozilla, project Mono, and Zend Technologies voiced their continued support for AJAX while probing Microsoft over plans to open source …

Software 1 May 2007, 09:35
Corsair deploys Bond-friendly Flash drive

On the off-chance you want to take a USB Flash drive up Everest or down the Amazon, memory specialist Corsair has launched Survivor, an "ultra-rugged" storage tool that's drop-proof and water resistant to a depth of 200m. Which is more than you can say for most of the kit it'll be connected to. The Survivor is encased in …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 09:43
MPs criticise combat ID systems

Troops can't tell who's friend or foe

MPs have said poor progress in developing combat identification technology is compromising the safety of military personnel. A report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says British soldiers are at risk of death and injury from "friendly fire" because the Ministry of Defence has failed to develop a technological …

Government 1 May 2007, 09:46
Sony eyes add-on camera for PSP

Picture perfect?

Sony is to offer a clip-on camera for PlayStation Portable punters this month, allowing them to get snapping months ahead of PS3 owners, whose Eye cam, announced last week, doesn't debut until the summer. The PSP version's called the Go!Cam has a 180° rotatable lens, a 1.3-megapixel image sensor and an on-board microphone …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 10:04
Second Life: the campaign for real life

Comment Sense and Sadville don't mix

I received an email yesterday from the IBM analyst relations which read: We are evaluating various forms of communication that would be effective, but also enjoyable and a change of pace. Could you please take a few moments to tell me: are you presently a member of Second Life, the 3D virtual world? if so, do you have an …

Bootnotes 1 May 2007, 10:13
'Rally my inflated ego', declares Nicolas Sarkozy

Sack for TV subtitle prankster

A French TV subtitler has been given the boot for translating presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's call to arms as an appeal to voters to "rally my inflated ego", news agencies report. The alternative English version of Sarkozy's declaration was enjoyed by US cable TV viewers of France 2 last week, and resulted in a rapid …

Government 1 May 2007, 10:19
Reuters snaps up search company

Findable financial info

News provider Reuters is buying privately owned search company ClearForest to make its content more usable. ClearForest works with companies with large quantities of text. It includes a tagging system to give categories to pieces of text and also claims to add context to search results. Reuters was already a customer of …

Applications 1 May 2007, 10:19
eBayer unleashes defecating dog to punt kayak

Crap selling technique?

Regular readers will know that there are few holds barred down at eBay when it comes to attracting attention to some must-have item. Indeed, we have in the past celebrated the gearbox sex doll shocker, the ashtray cleavage thriller, and the legendary 19 inch monitor flash. All good, clean fun; unlike one of the snaps …

Bootnotes 1 May 2007, 10:20
Living optical fibres found in the eye

Moving light past all those synapses

It is an old question: how does light make its way through all the retinal layers to finally strike the light sensitive cells at the back of the eye? A group of researchers at the Paul-Flechsig-Institute of Brain Research, Universität Leipzig in Germany, thinks it has the answer. They have demonstrated that light is collected …

Biology 1 May 2007, 10:47
Scots stump up £3.5m for Highland broadband

Can you connect the unconnected?

The Scottish Executive is to meet with companies interested in providing connectivity to the last remaining spots of the Highlands, and has £3.5m burning a hole in its sporran to pay for it. Every community in Scotland now has ADSL available, and every exchange is ADSL-enabled, but problems including distance from the exchange …

Telecoms 1 May 2007, 10:53
Bug brace menaces Adobe Photoshop

Unpatched graphics flaws menace mankind

Security researchers are warning of a brace of unpatched flaws in Adobe Photoshop that allow hackers to gain control of vulnerable PCs. The first vulnerability – which affects Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.x – leaves users open to attack if they open malformed PNG graphics files. …

Enterprise Security 1 May 2007, 11:02
Fifa's 'wranking cock' shown red card

Suspect file name trips net filters

We're very much obliged to Jonathan Horner for alerting us to some suspect file naming down at footie governing body Fifa's homepage, which "keeps tripping our internet filter alerts", as he puts it: Hmmmm. We're pretty certain that in this case (and Reg regulars will remember the Worcestershire Health Authority minge outrage …

Bootnotes 1 May 2007, 11:05
Dell Linux is go

Ubuntu named as distro for desktops and laptops

Dell has finally chosen a Linux distribution to offer on its desktop and laptop machines. Following news that Michael Dell was running Ubuntu on his personal laptop, the company has followed suit and from late May Dell machines will ship with Ubuntu 7.04 as an option. There's no official word from Dell, but several sources …

Operating Systems 1 May 2007, 11:08
Vote for sale on eBay

No ginger politicians need apply

We can't imagine this will be up for long, but for anyone who is disenchanted with this thing we call democracy, point your browse over here for a giggle. Yes, that's right. Someone is selling their vote in the Thatcham West Ward of West Berkshire (local elections this Thursday, 3 May, for those non-Brit readers). The seller …

Government 1 May 2007, 11:12
Sling throws in Mac-friendly SlingPlayer

Apple TV... not on your TV

Sling Media has released the Mac version of its SlingPlayer viewing application. It's only nine months or so behind schedule, but better late than never we say. More to the point, the UK version is available from day one. SlingPlayer displays whatever video source the Slingbox TV-via-the-net box is tuned to: its own, …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 11:13
Institutional investors push Google on China

Vote to be held at AGM

The man who advises five New York public pension funds is calling on Google to stop caving in to Chinese censorship demands. New York City Comptroller William C Thompson Jnr has submitted a shareholder proposal to be voted on at Google's Annual General Meeting on 10 May. Traditionally very few, if any, shareholders vote at …

Financial News 1 May 2007, 11:29
Estonian/Russian statue riots spill online

Uncivil unrest hits govt websites

Civil unrest in Estonia over the removal of Soviet era memorials has been accompanied by attacks against the Baltic nation’s internet infrastructure. Several Estonian government websites remain unavailable whilst others, such as that of the Estonian Police, remain available only in text-only forms as a result of sustained …

Enterprise Security 1 May 2007, 11:36
Brits pitch 'extreme conditions' video cam

Go shoot it on the mountain

Looking for something to store on your extreme-conditions USB Flash drive? British electronics company Persides has an answer: its VEEcam take-up-a-mountain, carry-under-water video player/camera combo. The VEEcam's kitted out in the traditional 'sports' colour scheme of yellow and black, but any resemblance to consumer …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 11:57
Kutaragi to pilot PlayStation development?

Vision too vague to be sure

Whether Ken 'Father of the PlayStation' Kutaragi will get to work on the PlayStation 4 remains to be seen, but he's certainly talking like he is. And the PS5. And the PS6. Speaking to electronics industry site EETimes, Kutaragi said: "As a matter of course, I have the vision of Playstation 4, 5 and 6, which will merge into …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 12:44
Home Office promises proactive powers for info commissioner

Surveillance to police the surveillance society

The Home Office has promised to give the Information Commissioner powers to make spot inspections on people's databases to determine if they have complied with the Data Protection Act. Reporting to the first hearing of the Home Office Select Committee into the surveillance society today, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas …

Law 1 May 2007, 13:02
Nokia N95 multimedia slider phone

2007's Top Products Yes, it does everything - but is it any good?

It's the Swiss Army Knife of mobile phones: a compact handset that does everything. Music, video, mobile and wireless broadand, photography, satnav, email, blogging, office work, web surfing, messaging - heck, it'll even help you talk to people over long distances. But is Nokia's top-of-the-range N95 trying too hard to be too …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 14:08
IT firms band together to shrink carbon footprint

How green is your bandwagon?

A group of UK IT firms has banded together to form The Green Initiative, a forum dedicated to helping companies learn more about how they can reduce their environmental impact. Headed by Dan Sutherland, CEO of IT services firm Carrenza, the initiative was launched today at Internet World in London. Sutherland says the …

IT Director 1 May 2007, 14:27
Orange doles out an IOU to Christian pareidolians

Letters While monitored by EU police

Iran, the US of A, and WMDs. If there are any subjects guaranteed to garner a response from you lot, they'd be up there. This time, it was the flame of the week that got you fired up: I really shouldn't respond to a FoTW, but: "As I watch England turn into a quivering pile of dung, like their marines and sailors are supposed to …

Letters 1 May 2007, 14:53
China's largest ecommerce site set to float

Record breaker

Alibaba.com, China's largest ecommerce site, is to float on the stock market in what is likely to be the largest ever initial public offering by a Chinese internet firm. Alibaba has two main strands of business: a consumer site for Chinese residents with 16 million registered users, and a business to business website - Alibaba …

Financial News 1 May 2007, 14:55
BEA issues profit warning

BEAten up in licensing market

Middleware developer BEA Systems revealed a Q1 misfire today, warning investors it would miss its targets because of falling license sales. "This quarter we saw a difficult selling environment, particularly in the Americas, and several large deals slipped out of the quarter," said chairman Alfred Chuang. Total revenues of …

Financial News 1 May 2007, 14:59
Sonnet add-in to tune UK MacBook Pros into to eSATA

Mac add-on specialist Sonnet has launched its Tempo Serial ATA ExpressCard in the UK. Aimed at Apple's MacBook Pro line, the card allows laptop users to hook up a pair of eSATA-enabled hard drives. The slimline card contains a 3Gbps SATA controller, though since the ExpressCard slots in MacBook Pros connect via the …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 15:02
RFID-tracking Segways unleashed on hoi polloi

'Mobility platforms' to menace mankind

Come the Rise of The Machines, our mechanised overlords are going to need ways to track their subjected population, and what better way than using RFID-reader-equipped Segways to roam city streets logging the chips embedded in every slave human. epcSolutions is demonstrating the RFID-tracking Segways at the RFID Journal Live …

Bootnotes 1 May 2007, 15:11
Malaysian astronauts told: Space is no bar to prayers

Guidelines issued

As Malaysia prepares to send its first astronaut to space, the country's space agency planners find themselves facing an unusual problem: when your religious observances are dictated in large part by the sun, how can you keep the faith while orbiting the Earth? The country has had Islamic scholars working on the problem for a …

Space 1 May 2007, 15:16
BlackBerry finds Outlook 2007 an upgrade too many

But RIM denies any problem

Some early adopters who've jumped to Outlook 2007 are finding that Research in Motion's (RIM) desktop software, for synchronisation with BlackBerry devices, won't support the latest version of Microsoft's PIM (Personal Information Manager). Not all users have encountered the problem, which seems to be due to Outlook 2007 …

Applications 1 May 2007, 15:35
Joost on brink of adding commercial breaks

Beta testers dole out invites as official launch nears

Joost, the telly-over-the-internet service set up by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is soon to launch commercially. From today, beta testers of the service will be able to invite other people to join. Later this month adverts from partners will start appearing. Ad partners include Coca-Cola, HP, Intel, Nike, …

Telecoms 1 May 2007, 15:41
Velocity Micro buys Overdrive PC

Overclocking in the USA

Velocity Micro, the US PC maker, has acquired Overdrive PC, a small Georgia-based rival which specialises in highly overclocked PCs for the gaming market. Terms are undisclosed. Velocity is moving all of Overdrive's staff into its the Richmond, VA headquarters. Numbers are undisclosed again, so we assume that there aren't …

Reg Hardware 1 May 2007, 18:20
Gateway ships quad-core desktop into US stores

Retail proposition

Gateway let slip a quad core desktop into some major US retail outlets today. It's called the Gateway FX, it costs from $2099.99 and - as you will guess from the price tag, it is aimed at the PC enthusiast and "digital creation" markets. The base spec includes Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processors, 512MB ATI Radeon X1950 …

PC Builder 1 May 2007, 19:00
'It'll be ugly when half the software industry goes away' - pundit

Analysis If by 'ugly,' you mean great

An imploding software industry could be just what customers need. You're going to end up with cheap, specialized software and all kinds of wonderful services to support the code. We're pretty sure that's what executives, researchers and developers told us yesterday, during a Carnegie Mellon West sponsored event at Microsoft's …

Applications 1 May 2007, 19:36
VeriSign will ship two-factor authentication for debit cards

What took so long?

VeriSign has announced plans to integrate two-factor authentication technology into ATM and credit cards, a move that would give customers significantly more protection against scammers without requiring them to go through the hassle or expense of using a stand-alone security token. The move will allow debit and credit cards …

ID 1 May 2007, 20:40
Disappointed Glastonbury fans spammed by rival festival

Muddy feet all round

Glastonbury festival organisers have a substantial amount of egg on their faces today after El Reg learned of a data protection cock-up with the live music firm's registration system. An email targeted at people who missed out on the iconic British music festival was sent out by Mean Fiddler suggesting they buy tickets for the …

Spam 1 May 2007, 21:25
Microsoft puts some iron into Ruby

MIX07 Scripts .NET open source support

Microsoft has released IronRuby, an implementation, an implementation of the fast-growing scripting language Ruby, on the .NET Framework. IronRuby follows Microsoft's implementation of Python, called IronPython, released last year on .NET. The languages run on .NET's Common Language Runtime (CLR) via Microsoft's new Dynamic …

Software 1 May 2007, 21:41
Microsoft polishes the Silverlight

MIX07 Still to prove itself against Flash

Despite the early batch of criticism that Microsoft’s Silverlight has already generated, there is still much to interest applications developers in its arrival as a beta product, as well as issues for them to ponder, not least being whether Flash is still the better option for now. The key interest, particularly in Microsoft’ …

Software 1 May 2007, 22:04
Microsoft super sizes multi-threaded tripe

Comment Pretty sure that we might be ready

Herb and pepper crusted Kobe steak medallions presented on a bed of arugula and baby spring greens tossed in a lemon fennel vinaigrette with baby red and yellow pear tomatoes; haricot verts; toasted sweet and spicy walnuts and crumbled Point Reyes blue cheese presented on the side; and a garnish of puff pastry triangles topped …

Software 1 May 2007, 22:37
'IE8 compatible' - the cure for web standards headache?

MIX07 A problem shared is ... a problem shared

It took Microsoft six years to move Internet Explorer versions from 6 to 7. IE8 should be along a little quicker - it is slated for release within two years, less than three years after IE7's October 2006 debut. But Microsoft has a big, big task on its hands: how to improve support for web standards in IE, without breaking …

Applications 1 May 2007, 23:39