25th September 2007 Archive

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Venezuela to shift clocks half an hour

Yankee imperialist time zone go home

Venezuelan prez Hugo Chavez today postponed a scheme to secure his place in the pantheon of classic comedy Latin American despots by shifting back his country's clocks half an hour, Reuters reports. Chavez rather gamely admitted that his cunning plan, slated for activation today and which "would allow children to wake up for …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 00:29
Jack Thompson sets about Halo 3

Anti-gaming gadfly back in action

Everyone’s favorite anti-gaming gadfly Jack Thompson is back in action, GamePolitics reports, with yet another lawsuit against the purported public nuisances created by violent video games. Apparently neither dissuaded nor cured by past court orders for psychological testing, the obsessive anti-gaming lawyer made famous ( …

Law 25 Sep 00:40
NY probes Facebook over pedophile controls

Questions social networker's commitment to protecting underage users

Facebook officials have been subpoenaed by New York's top law enforcement official after a preliminary review revealed "significant defects in the site's safety controls" designed to shield underage users from sexual predators. "The [office of the attorney general] is concerned that in Facebook's efforts to grow, the company …

Security 25 Sep 00:57
Unisys blamed for DHS data breaches

FBI investigating contractor negligence

Unisys, the IT computer services biz, is in hot water with the US government for allegedly twiddling its thumbs while foreign hackers had their way with Department of Homeland Security computers. The FBI is investigating Unisys, which holds a $1.7bn DHS security contract, over failing to detect data breaches linked to a …

Enterprise Security 25 Sep 01:03
ICSTIS hits Opera for £250,000

GMTV early-winners debacle comes to a head

UK premium-rate regulator ICSTIS has hit Opera Telecom with a £250,000 fine and independent review of its operating practices for picking the winners of the GMTV phone-in competition early. Competition lines opened at 06.00 and closed at 09.00, with the winning name being drawn live on air from a hat containing 20 names. The …

Networks 25 Sep 07:02
Young hearts roam free on UK cellco network

But what happens when you turn 25?

Blyk, a new mobile phone service for teenagers and young adults, went live in the UK yesterday. Customers aged between 16 and 24 get free mobile phone calls and texts, in exchange for receiving up to six adverts a day on their mobiles. The mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is carried on Orange's network, and potential …

Wireless 25 Sep 07:02
Scotland reviews forensic data rules

Examines laws on destruction of DNA and fingerprint records

A review will examine procedures for retaining the forensic data of those accused of sexual or violent offences in Scotland. Professor James Fraser, head of Strathclyde University's Centre for Forensic Science, will examine the way police use forensic science to fight crime. Under Scotland's current system police must destroy …

Law 25 Sep 09:01
OpSource signs MuleSource for SaaS integration

More integration as a service

Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery specialist OpSource has signed a technology partnership deal with data integration company MuleSource. Following a similar deal with Boomi earlier this month, OpSource says MuleSource's technology will provide a deeper level of data integration for its on-demand applications. "We have a …

Software 25 Sep 09:02
MySpace launches free mobile service

Another string to social networking bow

MySpace has fired another salvo in the battle for social network supremacy with a free mobile version of its website. MySpace will provide free access to the service to US-based users with advertising being used to cover the costs. The new site will load one banner ad and one text based ad for each visitor. The move is part of …

Mobile 25 Sep 09:11
C&W inks deal with online games firm

€400,000 hosting contract

Cable & Wireless has signed a €400,000 deal to provide managed hosting for online gaming firm Gala Networks Europe (GNE) at its Dublin data centre. The initial two-year contract covers building, hosting, management, and network connectivity for GNE's European online gaming platform. GNE is part of the Gala Group, which has …

Business 25 Sep 09:28
EchoStar to buy Slingbox maker for $380m

Eyes Sling's clip sharing tech

US satellite-transmitted pay-TV company EchoStar is to buy Sling Media, developer of the Slingbox family of TV-over-the-net gadgets. The deal's worth $380m, to be paid in a mix of cash and EchoStar stock. EchoStar has invested in Sling Media in the past, so it's had a solid insight into the privately held company's evolution …

Financial News 25 Sep 09:33
NASA postpones Dawn

Eat that, King Canute

The launch of NASA's Dawn mission has been delayed by 24 hours because the weather gods are not playing ball. Ready to launch, just waiting for the weather. The spacecraft is all bundled up on the launch pad and ready to go, NASA says. All it needs is a window of decent clear skies so NASA's techs can get out to the launch …

Space 25 Sep 09:34
Slingbox snapped up by satellite TV company

US satellite-transmitted pay-TV company EchoStar is to buy Sling Media, developer of the Slingbox family of TV-over-the-net gadgets. The deal's worth $380m, to be paid in a mix of cash and EchoStar stock. EchoStar has invested in Sling Media in the past, so it's had a solid insight into the privately held company's evolution …

Reg Hardware 25 Sep 09:38
UK patent office ponders fast-tracking patents and trade marks

Considers Gowers Review recommendations

The UK Intellectual Property Office has launched a public consultation (pdf) on proposals to introduce a fast-track system for patent and trade mark applications. The plan builds on a suggestion made in the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. HM Treasury commissioned former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers to review …

Law 25 Sep 09:43
China jails four over Panda worm

Fujacks stole gamers' IDs

China has jailed four men convicted of involvement in a malware-fuelled scam that led to the infection of hundreds of thousands of Windows PCs across the country. The Fujacks worm converted icons of infected programs into a picture of a panda burning joss sticks, while surreptitiously stealing the user names and passwords of …

Crime 25 Sep 09:54
Privacy chief condemns weakening of EU data protection

'Agreement should not dilute protection'

Europe's top privacy official says the European Union is weakening a planned privacy protection in order to secure agreement for the proposal. He says the agreement threatens to reduce privacy protection in Europe. Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervison (EDPS), has made his warnings in relation to the Data …

Law 25 Sep 10:05
Microsoft eyes stake in Facebook

Like watching your dad dance at the prom

The Wall Street Journal says Microsoft is looking to acquire a stake in famed Web 2.0 social networking operation Facebook. Referencing unnamed sources "familiar with the matter", the finance writers suggested Redmond might take five per cent of Facebook for "roughly $300m to $500m". The actual market value of Facebook has been …

Financial News 25 Sep 10:28
Boffins offer explanation for meteorite sickness

Space rock syndrome is ruled out

Relax: the aliens aren't using poisonous space rocks to soften us up in advance of an invasion, after all. Last week, you may recall, a meteorite fell in Peru. Locals who were first on the scene reported feeling ill immediately after contact with the space rock, with symptoms including headaches and nausea. Speculation began …

Space 25 Sep 10:30
Apple reminds customers who's boss

All your iPhone are belong to us

Apple has issued a notice that unlocked iPhones could suffer permanent damage when they update the firmware, and reminded customers that such damage is not covered by the warranty. The process of unlocking an iPhone is complicated, and involves code running at a pretty low level in the OS. Users may feel confident that they …

Mobile 25 Sep 10:32
Conservatives cock-up over pound again

NSFW Upstanding Blue blog promises hard line

A Tory blog has been penetrated by an act of classic web waggery after it leeched bandwidth via a picture used to illustrate a posting about party fees. There was something of an uprising among members last year, with some claiming they were being shafted by the new pricing structure. The Blaby Conservative Future site, run by …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 11:10
Pipex announces plan to disembowel itself

Intel WiMAX joint venture to be spun out

Pipex revealed the final stages of its corporate seppuku operation today with news that the remainder of the group intends to demerge its WiMAX business then flog itself. The sale of the 570,000-strong broadband and voice base to Tiscali for £210m cleared regulatory hurdles earlier this month. Executives told investors today it …

Networks 25 Sep 12:09
Space makes germs more deadly

Major Domestos rocket required

Salmonella likes it in orbit, and not just for the view. According to research conducted on the International Space Station (ISS), the effects of microgravity trip a switch in the bacterium that makes it much more virulent. The findings, which are to be published in PNAS Online Early Edition suggest astronauts could be at …

Science 25 Sep 12:15
Sony poo-poos £299 PS3 claims

Cheap model to ditch USB, PS2 compatibility, it's said

Sony has played down claims that it's about to announce a cut-price PS3 for the UK. Of late, the net's been alive with rumours that a USB-less PS3 would be offered to UK consumers in time for Christmas. The price? £299, rather less than the £425 the existing 60GB model retails for. But in addition to the loss of USB ports - …

Reg Hardware 25 Sep 12:35
Nvidia GeForce 7150/nForce 630i integrated chipset

Review Biostar's TF7150U-M7 mobo for Intel CPUs arrives

The vast majority of PCs use integrated graphics instead of an add-in graphics card and therein lies a problem. If you want the wow factor of the Aero interface in Windows Vista then you need a reasonable level of graphics performance, even if you have no desire to play games on your PC. Nvidia claims that the stickers that …

Reg Hardware 25 Sep 13:02
Symantec accidentally warns of internet meltdown

Dr Strangelove, I presume

Symantec inadvertently warned enterprise customers of a full-scale internet meltdown on Friday. An erroneous alert from Symantec's DeepSight falsely warned that a devastating attack was underway. The message, which went out at 8:40pm Eastern time, contained a subject line that stated: "DeepSight Increased ThreatCon from 1 to 4 …

Security 25 Sep 13:10
Fotango to smother Zimki on Christmas Eve

Little donkey

Zimki, the floundering pay-as-you-use online application platform, is to be killed off by London-based developer Fotango on Christmas Eve, it was revealed today. A service announcement tells users that on 24 December their data will be deleted and the Zimki servers decommissioned. Fotango states: "We hope that Zimki has …

Software 25 Sep 13:22
Sun crams four sockets worth of Xeons into 2U box

How's about 32 DIMMs?

Sun Microsystems today announced a pair of new four-core Xeon-based boxes that give customers just about the most performance and choice out of any low-end servers from a Tier 1 vendor. The fresh X4450, for example, packs four of Intel's 7300 series Xeon chips into a 2U system. All of the other major vendors require at least 4U …

Servers 25 Sep 14:14
Freedom cuts Razr-like Bluetooth keyboard

If redesigns are the route to perfection, then by rights the Slim Bluetooth Keypad should be well on its way. Originally designed as a portable infrared keypad as part of an tie-up between manufacturer Freedom Technology and O2, Freedom has since updated the device to Bluetooth. Freedom's Slim: Razr inspired? Compatible …

Reg Hardware 25 Sep 15:01
Jabra shows 'world first' Bluteooth speaker-headphone combo

Gulls in flight may have stimulated sportscar door development, but they aren't renowned for inspiring consumer products. Until now. Jabra has taken note and developed a pair of Bluetooth headphones that also unfold into a pair of speakers. Jabra's BT8030: first, a pair of headphones... The BT8030 works with any Bluetooth- …

Reg Hardware 25 Sep 15:02
Downed blogger Murray vows to continue Usmanov attacks

Ex-ambassador defiant in libel row

Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has vowed to carry on making allegations against billionaire Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov, despite attempts to silence him and his supporters. Murray told The Reg: "If the man believes he was libelled then he should take me to court." Murray's blog was deleted by its host …

Law 25 Sep 15:46
D-Link unveils desktop and mobile Wi-Fi cards

Wireless for your desktop or laptop

D-Link has priced up its notebook-oriented ExpressCard-format 802.11n Wi-Fi adaptor. It's also rolled out a PCI Express version. D-Link's DWA-643 adaptor: high-speed wireless for the mobile user The DWA-643 Wireless N XpressCard Notebook Adapter sports an ExpressCard 34 design. In addition, to 802.11n, it supports 802.11b …

Reg Hardware 25 Sep 15:55
Programming message services in Java

Asynchronous interactions seem to be the way of the future

Lately I seem to be involved increasingly in systems relying on asynchronous interactions for efficient and effective integration. In these cases, the asynchronous behaviour has been implemented using JMS (or Java Message Service) queues, with message driven beans, and with the underlying message server provided by application …

Developer 25 Sep 17:40
When will VMware be bigger than EMC?

Comment Three months to apocalypse

Does anyone else get the feeling that the relationship between VMware and EMC has some very rocky times ahead of it? It took the brainiacs on Wall Street a couple of weeks to figure it out, but some analysts mustered recent research notes remarking on how cheap EMC looks. EMC's share price had been lodged at about $13.75 for as …

Virtualization 25 Sep 17:46
Amazon opens DRM-free music store

Almost music-free, too

Amazon.com has opened its DRM-free music store for business. Songs are available for $0.89 per song, or $6 to $10 for an album. Amazon applies "fingerprints" rather than "locks" to music, the idea being that music exchanges can be tracked at a later date, rather than prevented from the outset. Files are encoded in the (old) MP3 …

Music and Media 25 Sep 17:59
LAPD patrol cars to get sticky-GPS-tracker cannon?

La la land syndrome reaches plod Q branch

Los Angeles cops will be able to fire sticky GPS tracker devices at fleeing miscreants' cars as of next year, according to reports. The StarChase Pursuit Management System uses compressed-air laser-sighted launchers mounted at the front of a patrol car to fire "a miniature GPS receiver, battery and radio transmitter, embedded …

Science 25 Sep 18:04
TrafficMaster sells clients' location info to UK.gov

Pay for your own spy in the cab

Noted UK news brand the Daily Mail served up a somewhat error-speckled tech scoop last night, with news that a government "'spy in the sky' system" is involved in a "secret 'Big Brother' operation... allowing officials to pinpoint the exact location of thousands of vehicles". It emerged that the Mail scribes were talking …

Security 25 Sep 18:09
Guessing at compromised host numbers

The fine art of pulling numbers from your nether regions

After much waiting by end users, and a lot of hoping from interested Information Security watchers, Microsoft has finally added detection for the Storm Trojan (Nuwar, Zhelatin, etc) to its Malicious Software Removal Tool. The most recent update, released on September 11th, included detection for this malicious software, and the …

Anti-Virus 25 Sep 18:45
Google Maps rolls out the Mesopotamian nil-cubit

Yeah, but what's that in cubic furlongs?

Those among you who recently adopted the new Vulture Central standards of volume, length, area and, critically, the speed of sheep in a vacuum, might be interested to learn that Google Maps has decided to offer a few alternatives of its own. So, if you were ever wondering just how far it is from Dallas to New York in Babylonian …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 18:54
Don't get stuck with AJAX, Oracle warns

JSF is so much better

Oracle this week told developers to be wary of the hype surrounding AJAX frameworks and encouraged large organizations to back JavaServer Faces (JSF) to "Web 2.0-enable" applications. Ted Farrell, the exec setting technical and strategic direction of Oracle's own development tools, told The Register that most AJAX frameworks …

Developer 25 Sep 19:26
Ninja she-devils rob Pennsylvania gas station

Crouching tigress, hidden blagger

Pennsylvania's Richmond Township is indubitably bemoaning its lack of a mobile SWAT team of crimebusting vigilante Shaolin Temple kung fu monks after two women dressed as ninjas robbed a local gas station at swordpoint. According to thepittsburghchannel.com, the pair crouching tigered their way into the Sunoco station at 3am on …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 20:12
Cisco teams with Haier for home network gear

Hold hands and take the plunge

Cisco has inked a deal with one of China's largest appliance makers to develop networking gear for residential use. Through its partnership with the Haier Group, Cisco seeks to cash in on the ever-growing popularity of the internet as a critical component in home entertainment centers. Cisco swill begin their new relationship …

Telecoms 25 Sep 20:16
PHP victory over Ruby: was Gosling right?

Project failure 2.0

Remember when Java father James Gosling got flamed for uttering the ultimate Web 2.0 heresy: scripting languages aren't good enough for enterprises? The world's second favourite Canadian was taken down a notch or two for the thought crime of "not getting it". A year and a half later, and a user case study has popped up that …

Developer 25 Sep 22:00
eBay forum mysteriously leaks account details on 1,200 users

'Trust and safety' board in emergency shutdown

Hackers brazenly posted sensitive information including home addresses and phone numbers for 1,200 eBay users to an official online forum dedicated to fraud prevention on the auction site. The information - which also included user names and email, and possibly their credit card numbers and three-digit CVV2 numbers - was …

Security 25 Sep 22:09
Halo 3 packaging in disk-scratch rumpus

Limited edition scare shakes gamosphere

Microsoft's überhyped launch of the (keenly-anticipated, long-awaited, etc, etc) Halo 3 has suffered a bit of a wobble after fans quickly discovered the limited edition packing could scratch the game disks. According to AP, within hours of the game's debut, the blogosphere was abuzz with the shock news that both the game and " …

Music and Media 25 Sep 22:37
China spots 42 new glaciers

Fresh ice on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau

China has trumpeted the discovery of 42 "new" glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, possibly representing the largest group of such ice flows in the area. According to Reuters, experts used satellite images to pinpoint the glaciers in Bomi County, which boasts an average altitude of 4,200m (13,800ft) above sea level. Although …

Science 25 Sep 22:56
China plans spaceport number 4

Expanding space programmes need launch pads

China is planning to build a fourth spaceport, or rocket launch pad, in line with its ever-expanding space exploration ambitions. The construction will begin on the southern island of Hainan, in the town of Wenchang, roughly 40 miles south of the province's capital Haikou, according to state news agency Xinhua. The plans call …

Space 25 Sep 23:26