19th June 2007 Archive

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Google launches self-protection blog

Calls it a 'public policy dialogue'

A week after Privacy International ranked the privacy practices of 23 major web companies and put Google at the very bottom of the list, the Mountain View-based search giant has launched a brand new blog where it will regularly address matters of Internet privacy and other public policy issues, including copyright and trademark …

Law 19 Jun 2007, 01:04
HP's Hurd can't dance, but he can preach BT

Technology Forum That's Business Technology to you

To see HP CEO Mark Hurd speak in Las Vegas is to witness a contradiction. Hurd, after all, attended a deeply Texan college in Baylor University that had an unofficial ban on dancing until 1996. Sure, you could ogle the blonde, Baptist cheerleaders with the sweet Southern accents. You just couldn't lock hands with them and …

Servers 19 Jun 2007, 01:55
South Korean robot officiates at marriage

Industry shift from spying and killing?

Korean roboticists announced over the weekend that their industry had achieved yet another world first, as a droid officiated at a wedding south of Seoul. "Tiro" the robot priest/master-of-ceremonies joins an illustrious list of Korean machine pioneers, including the SGR-A1 sacrificial DMZ-guarding gun-bot and the new droid …

Science 19 Jun 2007, 09:02
MPs under fire for £3bn IT consultancy bill

PAC decries government 'profligacy'

MPs and unions have lambasted the government for spending £3bn on external advice in areas such as IT. Parliament's all-party Public Accounts Committee has hit out at the government's "profligacy" for spending nearly £3bn on consultants, without a clear idea of the benefits. Spending on consultants has risen by a third to …

Government 19 Jun 2007, 09:19
ThirdForce acquisition gets green light

Firm casts eyes over the Atlantic

E-learning provider ThirdForce has received approval from shareholders to make a $18m acquisition of US firm MindLeaders. ThirdForce aims to use the purchase of the Ohio-based firm to grow its business in the US. The Dublin-based company expects annual revenues to grow to over €30m following the acquisition. ThirdForce …

Channel Register 19 Jun 2007, 09:22
TalkTalk slams slamming charges

Even if we did it wasn't deliberate

TalkTalk has denied ISP industry allegations it is stealing thousands of customers from competitors every month. BT-owned outfit PlusNet has led other ISPs in accusing TalkTalk of "slamming" - migrating broadband lines to its network without permission from the subscriber. PlusNet estimated 2,500 broadband customers were being …

Telecoms 19 Jun 2007, 09:37
'Alu-mac' iMacs due next month?

Next-gen boxes to be pitched at back-to-school buyers

We've got around a month to wait before Apple unveils the anticipated next-gen iMac design, it has been claimed. Expect to see the 20in and 24in machines on shop shelves between the middle of July and mid-August, moles maintain. Apple's Al iMac - artist's impression Earlier this month, it was claimed the new models, which …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 09:39
APS aims at 'Windows' of SaaS

Giving SaaS providers some common ground

In much the same way that applications have, in the past, been developed to run on a known operating system – with Microsoft’s Windows being the not the least significant target example – so it is time for the same approach to start appearing at the next level of abstraction. This is the service provider level, which is going …

Developer 19 Jun 2007, 09:50
Nokia turns on to Bluetooth cans

Nokia has launched a trio of Bluetooth headsets: a pair of standard mobile phone extensions and a full-size pair of wireless cans for music fans. Nokia's BH-803 and BH-602: sleek and stylish The BH-602 and BH-803 are both very similar in size and style, mixing sleek and sexy surfaces with traditional earhook designs. The …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 10:07
Supremes back Wall Street on dot com era ladder deals

Take it to the SEC

Disappointed US investors cannot use anti-trust laws to sue banks they accuse of fixing the price of initial public offerings (IPO) of some 900 companies in the late 1990s. The Supreme Court voted seven to one that such allegations should be ruled on by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The suit alleged that big …

Financial News 19 Jun 2007, 10:36
AT&T not planning to buy Vodafone

Or any of the other biggies, for that matter

AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson has told the Financial Times that despite speculation it's not planning to buy Vodafone. He said the firm will instead focus on smaller companies supplying big corporate customers with telephony services. AT&T certainly has international aspirations, and made an abortive bid for Telecom …

Networks 19 Jun 2007, 10:37
ESA greenlights Sentinel-1 deal, inks agreements with NASA

Official pens seeing plenty of action

It's all go this week for the European Space Agency, ESA. The agency has ordered the first satellites for its Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme, and finalised details of how it will work with NASA on two massive projects: the James Webb Space Telescope and the LISA Pathfinder mission. Sentinel-1, expected …

Space 19 Jun 2007, 10:57
Samsung parades designer sliders

Samsung today unveiled a trio of designer slider-phones, one of which - for the first time - slaps a Yahoo! key right on the front, part of a smart backlit touch-sensitive control panel, for all to see. That's the SGH-E950, a 1.5cm-thick tri-band GSM/GPRS/Edge handset with a 2in, 262,144-colour LCD screen on the front and a 3 …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 11:04
Text bug blights Trillian

Rather Dented

Users of the popular Trillian instant messaging client need to update their software following the discovery of a serious security bug. The multi-protocol chat application from Cerulean Studios is subject to a heap overflow vulnerability because of programming errors involving the word-wrapping of UTF-8 text. As a result, …

Security 19 Jun 2007, 11:09
Toshiba laptop goes up in smoke

Sony-made battery was covered by last year's recall

Toshiba has no doubt left Sony feeling a little hot under the collar after announcing that yet another of the laptop battery packs made by its Japanese rival has burst into flames, nuking the notebook good and proper. Although Toshiba kept specific details of the blaze close to its chest, the company confirmed that the …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 11:21
German teen unplugs pensioner's 'noisy' life support machine

Can I have the machine that goes ZZZZ

Police in Southern Germany are quizzing a 17-year-old car crash victim who turned off a fellow hospital patient's life-support machine because it was keeping him awake. Frederik Moelner wound up in intensive care recovering from the accident, reports Ananova, but his attempts to have a bit of recuperative kip were stymied by …

Biology 19 Jun 2007, 11:32
Investigators find secret White House email accounts

88 senior officials implicated

The Committee of Oversight and Government Reform has released its initial findings after investigating the use of parallel email accounts by officials in Bush's White House. According to the Presidential Records Act, White House officials are obliged to keep and preserve all communications which they send on official government …

Government 19 Jun 2007, 12:12
Apple GPS System rumoured to debut in Mercedes cars

From Mac to tarmac

Apple is secretly working on a GPS unit for cars with Mercedes owners likely to get hold the technology long before lesser drivers, a German magazine has claimed. The car navigation system for Mercedes-Benz, which would deliver "maintenance, communication and navigation", is set to debut in early 2009, according to Focus, a …

Applications 19 Jun 2007, 12:27
US Army funds hydrogen-fuelled drone aircraft

To join DARPA airship-bot flotilla 12 miles up

Fuelled by a seemingly inexhaustible stream of federal military/security research cash, the US flying-robot industry seems to produce fresh wonders every day. We've seen Terminator-esque Flying HKs, droid gunships, and self-piloting special-forces whisper-copters. Today's robot-related news reveals yet another new twist: the …

Science 19 Jun 2007, 12:34
Vyke moves VoIP battle to SMS

Operators charging more than NASA for messaging

VoIP provider Vyke has added text messaging to its mobile phone client, enabling its customers to text each other for free and charging just over a penny to text anyone else. The UK based company reckons it's 10 times cheaper for NASA to get messages back from the Hubble space telescope than for you to text your mate - byte for …

Mobile 19 Jun 2007, 12:50
Goodbye ICSTIS, hello PhonePayPlus

Rebrand to beat off premium rate rip-off merchants

The watchdog formerly known as ICSTIS has rebranded itself PhonePayPlus and promised to come down harder on TV shows, after a series of rip-off scandals in the last year garnered it widespread criticism. Bravely joining the crusade against spaces, and in favour of mid-word capitalisation, PhonePayPlus aims to be a bit more …

Telecoms 19 Jun 2007, 12:51
Manhunt 2 banned

Censor acts to prevent game's sale

Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2 has been to all intents and purposes banned in the UK after the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) refused to certify the PS2 and Wii title. Without a BBFC certificate, the game can't legally be sold here. The BBFC's verdict of the game is damning: "Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 13:28
Ubuntu chief mua muas Microsoft

Dirty uncle not welcome

Leader of the Ubuntu tribe Mark Shuttleworth has no plans to invite dirty uncle Microsoft over for patent protection talks. Canonical's CEO this weekend spanked rumor mongers for suggesting that his company may go the way of Linspire, Xandros and Novell. All of these software makers have formed recent deals with Microsoft …

Developer 19 Jun 2007, 13:44
Minister: ID cards 'another Great British Institution'

What like the Cones Hotline? Or the East India Company?

Sometimes the Reg likes to think it casts a satirical eye over the day's news. And sometimes government ministers are so out of touch with reality that they do our job for us. Thank you then to Liam Byrne, the Home Office minister who is a dead ringer for Otto Flick from 'Allo 'Allo, for today's offering. Speaking at Chatham …

Government 19 Jun 2007, 13:56
Samsung grows stick-phone line

Samsung today extended its family of stick-like music phone, the F series, with a pair of lower cost models designed to broaden the range's appeal as an alternative to cheap Flash-based MP3 players. Samsung's SGH-F210 First, the SGH-F210, a skinny, 8.8 x 3.1 x 2cm handset with a 1.5in, 128 x 220, 262,144-colour screen and …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 14:07
Business getting clever about IP?

PwC report tells a tale of two economies

In the West, litigation is so last century. These days, intellectual property is all about the value and the strategy. So says a new report from consultants at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). But in the emerging economies, protecting intellectual property is a battle on the most basic levels: warehouses are being raided to …

Small Biz 19 Jun 2007, 14:34
Too busy to read this?

Reg Reader Studies IT management? We're listening

It won't have escaped your attention that the IT management space is quite a hot topic right now - or at least it is if you listen to IT vendors. Given that we don't like just taking their word for it, we'd like to find out from you guys some down to earth stuff about the current state of play when it comes to managing IT. Are …

Reg Technology Panel 19 Jun 2007, 14:44
TVonics DVR-250 Freeview Playback DVR

Review Sky+ functionality... on Freeview

The biggest obstacle on the path to mass-market adoption of digital video recorders (DVRs), or personal video recorders (PVRs) - is that many don't know what they actually are. Sure, some know they are a bit like Sky+, but many Sky+ owners don't know what that box does either. To the PC-literate, the notion of the hard drive- …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 15:02
F-22 superjets could act as flying Wi-Fi hotspots

Pricey stealth fighter finally useful?

US defence contractors have carried out the first flight tests in which America's latest cutting-edge fighter targeting radars have been put to novel use - as high-capacity wireless datalinks. This crafty use of existing hardware has the potential to ease military bandwidth bottlenecks, and could offer a chance for expensive …

Wireless 19 Jun 2007, 15:20
Toshiba names new HD DVD laptops

Toshiba has re-iterated its plan to build HD DVD drives into a range of laptops - well, three at least. And you'll have to wait a while to get your hands on one: they're not due to go on sale until the back-to-school sales period in Q3 - think August. Toshiba's Satellite P205: HD DVD coming soon The machines getting HD DVD …

Reg Hardware 19 Jun 2007, 16:07
DATAllegro: an update on Version 3

What the Dell and EMC partnerships really mean

When DATAllegro announced earlier this year that it had partnered with Dell to provide node processing capabilities and EMC to be its disk provider I was not particularly impressed. In particular, I heard the words about EMC salespeople earning commission on the disks sold within DATAllegro systems but didn't understand the …

Channel Register 19 Jun 2007, 16:10
Blade PC start-up manages to nail IBM, ClearCube and Verari

Terawhatchi?

Okay, okay. You've heard this before. The world is ready for a blade PC revolution. This time, however, the revolution may well be computerized thanks to a Canadian start-up called Teradici. The small firm emerged this week with some big customers, namely IBM, ClearCube, Devon IT and Verari. These companies will use Teradici's …

PC Builder 19 Jun 2007, 19:38
HP buys web security firm SPI

Crosses swords with IBM's Watchfire

Two weeks ago, Hewlett-Packard stared jealously across the street as IBM pulled into the driveway with a brand new web application security specialist company. Not to be outclassed by a neighbor, HP has bought one too. Hewlett-Packard inked an agreement to acquire security firm SPI Dynamics to match Big Blue's Watchfire …

Enterprise Security 19 Jun 2007, 19:41
YouTube acknowledges foreign countries

Updated How very un-American

Last week, it was Flickr. This week, it’s YouTube. Following in the footsteps of Yahoo!’s Web 2.0 poster-child, which just announced versions of its photo-sharing service in seven new languages, Google’s video-sharing outfit has unveiled localized versions in nine new countries, including Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, …

Music and Media 19 Jun 2007, 19:46
Google gets into green transport policy

Prince Charles style move by ad colossus

Noted bot-vs-bot information nexus Google has joined Prince Charles in swerving away from core business to offer environment strategies. The internet ad-men have had a scratch of their heads, and reckon they've got the answers to green transportation and energy use. To be specific, the Google flavour of green involves plug-in …

Science 19 Jun 2007, 19:52
Feds told they need warrants for webmail

Fourth Protocol

A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court's ruling against warrantless seizures of email. Law enforcement agents need to obtain a warrant before looking at a user's email even if it is stored online, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled on Wednesday. For 20 years, long before the introduction of knee-jerk law …

Crime 19 Jun 2007, 19:55
Opera tries to out-do the iPhone

All it takes is a decent browser

Opera has launched a beta of its mobile browser, Opera Mini: version 4 supports smooth zooming around web pages and server-based page optimisation, giving Opera claim to deliver the whole internet ahead of Apple's much-anticipated iPhone. Version 4 of the Java-based browser also makes greater use of the keypad for navigation, …

Mobile 19 Jun 2007, 20:27
Video games, TV ruin Best Buy's profits

Exercise would make it worse though

Best Buy, the largest US consumer-electronics chain ,reported a net income drop of 18 per cent to $192m (39 cents per share), despite strong sales in the first quarter. "Our first-quarter results fell short of our expectations." Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson said. "Strong revenue results from lower-margin products significantly …

Channel Register 19 Jun 2007, 20:30
Start-up forced to admit that Sun invented Java

Settling in with Azul

Sun Microsystems and start-up Azul Systems have settled their patent spat. Neither company will say squat about the settlement, leaving you wondering who came out the victor in this exercise. As a recap, Azul, the maker of a Java server appliance, blasted Sun with a lawsuit in March 2006. It claimed that Sun sought to bully …

Servers 19 Jun 2007, 21:39
Say goodbye to Office 2003, Microsoft tells PC builders

Office 2007 or bust

Microsoft is making Office 2007 its default productivity suite for system builders, less than five months after the suite's full-scale launch. Microsoft will stop supplying OEM Microsoft Office 2003 from June 30, Microsoft exec Eric Ligman wrote yesterday on the company's blog for small businesses. The declaration means that …

Channel Register 19 Jun 2007, 22:09
FCC chairman says ‘broadband for all!’

Meaning everyone in America

Appearing via satellite at the annual NXTcomm conference in Chicago, U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin urged telecom leaders to provide the entire country with broadband access. In an effort to promote investment in broadband infrastructure, the FCC has worked to deregulate both cable and DSL services …

Telecoms 19 Jun 2007, 22:22
Google cookie cuts $600m data center in Iowa

Powered by ethanol, colored balls and love

Google will build yet another backwoods data center for $600m – this time in Iowa. Iowa's Governor Chet Culver – you can't make a name like that up – bragged today about his state's good fortune. Google will set up shop in Council Bluffs, Iowa on a 55-acre site. The data center announcement follows similar recent deals in North …

Servers 19 Jun 2007, 22:32
Microsoft 'tweaks Vista' for Google desktop search goodness

All is fair in love and litigation

Microsoft is changing Vista to level the desktop search playing field for Google and other third parties, Reuters is reporting. The rivals are to file a joint report on the proposed changes in federal court today, according to an anonymous source cited by the newswire. In December last year, Google filed an anti-trust …

Channel Register 19 Jun 2007, 23:24