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10th October 2007 Archive

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  • 100Gbps Internet2 is ready

    ...for boring research. C'mon!

    New improvements to the high speed Internet2 network infrastructure are completed and primed with 100Gbps capacity for US research and education communities. The updated network's wrap-party was at Internet2's annual Fall Member Meeting today in San Diego. The company showed off its new Dynamic Circuit Network (DCN), which, …

    Data Networking 10 Oct 2007, 00:35

  • Apple sued over i-Bricks

    'Unlawful tying agreement'

    Apple's breaking of iPhones that had been hacked is now the subject of a lawsuit, which claims the controversial tactic violates California laws governing antitrust and fair business practices. The complaint (PDF), which seeks class-action status, was filed Friday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, just a short drive from …

    Mobile 10 Oct 2007, 00:36

  • Only Sky can save digital TV

    Comment If you're a public broadcaster, every lunch is free

    Even at the second time of asking, digital TV has been a commercial flop. That's not surprising when taxpayer-subsidised broadcasters are given valuable spectrum. It's time Ofcom admitted this and gave Sky the chance to revitalise the market. Here's why. The UK, probably more than any other country in Europe, has a very …

    Telecoms 10 Oct 2007, 07:02

  • Service Design - ITIL v3

    Book review Integrating IT with the business

    We recently reviewed Service Strategy, the first book in the latest refresh of ITIL – the IT Infrastructure Library. This time, we are looking at Service Design, the next book, which starts to look at the practicalities of integrating IT into the business. Note: not "aligning IT with the business" any more. The world has moved …

    Software 10 Oct 2007, 08:02

  • Word vuln stars in Patch Tuesday litter

    Four out of six updates rated critical

    Microsoft delivered six patches on Tuesday - four critical - as part of its regular Patch Tuesday update cycle. High on the critical list are patches for Outlook Express and Windows Mail, which cover flaws in the handling of malformed NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) responses, and a cumulative update for Internet Explorer …

    Security 10 Oct 2007, 08:04

  • Google nabs patent for Sun's Project Blackbox?

    'I own mobile data centers'

    Google now owns a patent for data centers stuffed into shipping containers. You know, data centers like Sun's Project Blackbox. The Mountain View outfit first filed for this "Modular Data Center" patent in December 2003, and today it was rubber stamped by the US Patent Office. The patent describes a data center based on an " …

    Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 08:12

  • Burmese cops in UN hard drive snatch kerfuffle

    UN: It never happened. And we don't know any monks either

    Reports suggest that the Burmese military government has attempted to seize computer hard drives from UN offices in an attempt to root out pro-democracy activists. According to the Times, Burmese police and diplomats entered UN agency premises at the Traders Hotel in Rangoon on Friday and demanded the hard drives from computers …

    Law 10 Oct 2007, 08:51

  • MPs praise e-passport roll out

    But there are challenges ahead

    MPs say project management of the first electronic passport has been an outstanding success. The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has been praised for its management of the introduction of the first type of e-passport, which contains an electronic chip storing biographical data and a digital facial image of the holder. MPs …

    Public Sector 10 Oct 2007, 09:13

  • Google's 'Gphone' said to be mobile OS

    No 'iPhone killer' handset

    New reports suggest search giant Google is believed to be working on a mobile operating system and not a handset device as previously speculated. Engineers at the company have been working on a secret mobile project for two years and observers had until now believed the project involved a mobile handset, which some had dubbed …

    Mobile 10 Oct 2007, 09:16

  • IT spending to top $3 trillion in 2007

    But don't pop the champagne corks yet

    Global spending on IT is set to reach $3.1 trillion this year, according to the latest research from analysts at Gartner. The figure represents an eight per cent increase from the previous year, while spending for 2008 is forecast to grow 5.5 per cent, reaching a total of $3.3 trillion. The figures were revealed at the …

    Channel Register 10 Oct 2007, 09:23

  • Nvidia brings forward G92 launch?

    The better to compete with AMD's latest, apparently

    Nvidia's G92 graphics chip, originally scheduled for a 12 November launch, will now appear on 29 October, Far Eastern moles have claimed. The allegation comes by way of DigiTimes, which notes the G92 will go on sale as the GeForce 8800 GT. Past reports had the G92 coming in as the GeForce 8950, but perhaps that sounds too …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 09:33

  • New web accessibility guidelines will be ignored, says critic

    'All the cool kids already know about it'

    New guidelines on web accessibility are nearing completion after years of delay, according to the body behind them. But outspoken critic Joe Clark says the guidelines will be ignored when they are published. The first version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) were published first in 1999 by the World Wide …

    IT Director 10 Oct 2007, 09:42

  • Orange puts plum back in mouth

    Customer tone to be less informal

    Less than a month since changing its voice menus to something more "matey", Orange has called Ruth back into the recording studio to up the tone a little, and give customers a better class of voice menu. Our report on the last change promoted a deluge of comments which could be divided into two distinct camps: those who felt …

    Mobile 10 Oct 2007, 09:54

  • Sony off-shoot unveils 'cheaper' Blu-ray drive for laptops

    Updated BD burner for desktops too

    Optiarc, the optical drive joint venture between Sony and NEC, has taken the wraps off its first Blu-ray Disc playback drive for laptops, claiming the machine will allow notebook makers to equip mid-range models with the next-gen disc format. Optiarc's BC-5500A: Blu-ray playback for laptops Optiarc's BC-5500A doubles up as …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 10:02

  • AMD updates Phenom timetable

    Gathering steam

    How is AMD's Phenom processor roll-out shaping up? According to the latest roadmap leak, expect three of the CPUs to appear this year, all of them in the 9000 series. Gamer-oriented FX parts won't debut until next year. According to data compiled by VR-Zone, the 2.2GHz Phenom 9500 and the 2.4GHz Phenom 9600 will be launched …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 10:22

  • ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds

    Ofcom Consumer Panel wades in

    Ofcom's independent consumer quango has called on ISP bosses to ensure people feel less cheated by the broadband packages they advertise. Dissent has been mounting over "up to" advertising of broadband speeds. For most consumers, an "up to 8Mbit/s" line will crawl to about half that speed because of contention, poor quality …

    Telecoms 10 Oct 2007, 10:24

  • Security researchers plot revamped anti-virus tests

    Behaviour-based testing

    Security researchers are close to formulating plans to overhaul anti-virus testing amid growing concerns that current tests can be misleading. Anti-virus packages are traditionally tested for their effectiveness in detecting a sample of malware packages known to be in circulation. Products that fail to detect a sample get a …

    Malware 10 Oct 2007, 10:47

  • Nintendo limbers up for Wii Fit

    The first weight-loss will be from your wallet

    Nintendo is on a mission to get Wii owners working up even more of sweat. The company's announced plans to launch its anticipated Wii Fit home fitness game in Japan later this year. Nintendo's Wii Fit and Balance Board: better than the gym? The game, which is based around Nintendo's Balance Board peripheral, initially goes …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 10:48

  • Email evidence jacks up litigation costs

    Head-scratching all round

    Confusion over the handling of emails and other electronic documents for use as critical evidence in big litigation cases is costing the legal profession millions of pounds, a new survey has found. Ambiguity in deciding what forms of electronic communication should be used in so-called "e-disclosure" cases has led to a hike …

    Law 10 Oct 2007, 11:22

  • Jihadi-sniffers blame White House for leaking secrets

    Backdoor fingered in DC leaky brief rumpus

    An American company dedicated to monitoring al-Qaeda internet activities says that leaks from the US government have destroyed web-snooping capabilities painstakingly built up over years. SITE, the "Search for International Terrorist Entities", is a small Washington-based outfit which trawls the web for jihadist messages and …

    Government 10 Oct 2007, 11:27

  • Carphone bets on iPhone peripherals and free laptops

    Numbers grow, but slower

    Carphone's Q3 07 results show a steady growth in both mobile and fixed-line customers, according to a trading statement issued by the firm. Carphone added 89,000 broadband customers, taking its total to 2.5 million, though less than 500,000 of those are unbundled. Over the last three months another 500 exchanges have been …

    Telecoms 10 Oct 2007, 11:33

  • Catholic dating sites exchange rings

    Do you take my assets? I do

    Catholics around the world and the next will be pleased to know that two of the US' top Catholic dating sites have come together in the unity of an acquisition. Yes, Catholic Match has thrown its loving arms around rival site CatholicDaters.com, meaning that single Catholics now have a single site through which to get to know …

    Financial News 10 Oct 2007, 12:15

  • Terminator will be back in 2009

    Cameo role for Arnie in Terminator Salvation?

    Shooting will begin in 2008 on Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which promises to "reinvent the cyborg saga with a storyline to be told over a three-pic span". Production company Halcyon is keen to stress that the movie will indeed be a "reinvention", as executive producer Moritz Borman told Variety: "The third film was …

    Entertainment 10 Oct 2007, 12:35

  • BT Tradespace drags small biz kicking and screaming onto Web 2.0

    eBay, Yellow Pages and Facebook walk into a bar...

    BT says 21,000 small businesses have signed up for its Tradespace website and ecommerce platform since it launched in April. Tradespace boss Ivan Croxford said members are finding that the sites were indexing well in Google, but would not give The Reg any traffic figures for entries in its Web 2.0 Phonebook. "It's early days," …

    Small Biz 10 Oct 2007, 13:16

  • Has-beens jump on free downloads bandwagon

    Oasis: still going, apparently

    Past-it pop stars are tripping over their Zimmer frames in the rush to give away their music for nowt. Oasis and Jamiroquai are considering making their next LPs available as a free internet download, according to reports. Proving they can be as derivative with their marketing as they are with their music, both the Mancunian …

    Music and Media 10 Oct 2007, 13:20

  • Foxconn readies its first Intel X38 mobo

    Foxconn has become one of the first mobo makers to formally announce a board based on Intel's high-end X38 chipset, complete with support for AMD's CrossFire multi-GPU technology. Foxconn's Digital Life X38A can take any LGA775-connected Intel processor that will run on an 800, 1066 or 1333MHz frontside bus. The board has six …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 13:22

  • Samsung specs up updated UMPC phone

    Big handset or small PC?

    Samsung has unfolded the specs of its second-generation fold-open UMPC-like phone - or should that be 'phone-like UMPC'? Samsung's SPH-P9200: phone and a PC all in one Like the earlier SPH-P9000, the as yet unlaunched SPH-P9200 has a 1GHz CPU, but its memory has been upped from 256MB to 512MB. The Windows XP-based model …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 13:47

  • MSI lets slip AMD 790FX mobo

    RD790 real-world moniker revealed

    Motherboard maker MSI has pipped its rivals to the post and unveiled its first chipset based on AMD's as yet unannounced 790FX chipset - better known as the RD790. MSI's K9A2 Platinum supports Socket AM2 and Socket AM2+ processors, including the upcoming four-core Phenom range of CPUs. Four DIMM slots allow up to 8GB of …

    Reg Hardware 10 Oct 2007, 13:50

  • World's dumbest file-sharer mulls appeal

    Not so Jammie

    Ironically-named P2P user Jammie Thomas, who was fined $220,000 for copyright infringement in a case brought by the RIAA last week, wants to appeal the Minnesota jury's verdict. The lady is certainly unlucky. But is she ill-advised by her attorney Brian Toder - or is she just incredibly stupid? You decide: Jammie Thomas had …

    Law 10 Oct 2007, 14:47

  • Beijing's Olympian censorship machine laid bare

    Hot favourite for gold in net oppression

    A democracy activist working undercover at a Chinese internet company has exposed how the Beijing government is strangling online dissent ahead of next year's Olympics. In an investigation released today by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, "Mr Tao", a technician at an undisclosed firm, reveals details of recently- …

    Government 10 Oct 2007, 15:09

  • Apple prepares iPhone WebApp catalogue

    While secretly developing real applications

    Apple is about to launch a consolidation portal hosting WebApps for its glorified slates, the iPhone and iTouch, whilst developing proper applications with Electronic Arts and others. WebApps are web pages using AJAX as an application environment: for the moment they have to be re-downloaded each time you want to use them, but …

    Software 10 Oct 2007, 15:16

  • Fairly realistic flying car offered for 2009 delivery

    It's a car. It can fly. That's it.

    One of our favourite notions here at Vulture Central is that of the flying car. Ideally this would be a true sci-fi-style job, backed up by an equally puissant automated air-traffic infrastructure. In such a machine you could simply jump into your car outside your house, quietly lift off vertically, fly somewhere even in bad …

    Physics 10 Oct 2007, 15:45

  • BT puckers up for Frenchie IT outfit

    Another tango in Paris

    BT's French love affair continued apace today with the announcement that it is in talks to acquire a majority stake in Paris-based IT consulting firm Net2S SA. The British telecoms giant formerly known as, er, British Telecom said that it was hoping to buy a 68.6 per cent chunk of the business from four founding shareholders …

    Channel Register 10 Oct 2007, 16:24

  • Plods-turned-gumshoes jailed for hacking operation

    Snoop ring cracked

    Two ex-policemen were jailed today for running a private detective agency that tapped phonelines and hacked computers during its investigations. Former Met officers Jeremy Young, 40, from Ilford in Essex, and Scott Gelsthorpe, 33, from Kettering, got 27 months and 24 months respectively at Southwark Crown Court today. Their …

    Crime 10 Oct 2007, 16:41

  • Hey car thief! Gonna shut you down

    GM heralds post-theft switch-off

    General Motors is prepping a carjack buster that gradually slows stolen cars to a halt by turning down engine power. The technology, dubbed Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, can allow General Motors' OnStar advisors, working with law enforcement officers, to send a signal to a stolen vehicle that reduces engine power. When police reach …

    Crime 10 Oct 2007, 19:15

  • Future of computing safe, thanks to Excel patch

    Bug gave wrong results when calculating frequently occuring number

    Microsoft has released a fix for a curious flaw that threatened to confound engineers who use the latest version of Excel. The patch fixes a bug that caused Excel 2007 and Excel Services 2007 to spit out incorrect results when calculating numbers around 65,535 and 65,536. The former number is the highest that can be …

    Software 10 Oct 2007, 19:34

  • Blinkx targets money-hungry video sharers

    Embed video, insert ad, satisfy greed

    Blinkx wants your help as it works to generate some cold hard cash from the worldwide obsession with online video. And it's willing to slip you a cut. Today, the Anglo-American video search engine unveiled a widget that lets you slap text ads on videos embedded into your website or blog, and when you do so, you get 50 per cent …

    Music and Media 10 Oct 2007, 19:44

  • The truth about virtualization

    Reg Tech Panel Hot or Not?

    Virtualization is one of the hottest buzzwords in the industry. To many, it is a word that is synonymous with the use of VMware for server partitioning. While this is understandable given that it’s where most newcomers have got their feet wet, there is a lot more to virtualization than this, and as many old-timers will tell you …

    Virtualization 10 Oct 2007, 19:45

  • Mandriva Linux 2008 is out and about

    No longer not available

    Mandriva has released the latest version of its desktop Linux operating system, which can be downloaded free on its website and public mirror servers. Mandriva Linux 2008 has a new base system built on version 2.6.22.9 of the Linux kernel, which adds some features such as fair scheduling support (distributes CPU usage amongst …

    Operating Systems 10 Oct 2007, 19:48

  • Dell boots disks and fires up streamed PCs

    Thin clients and blades are for the weak

    Forget thin clients and blade PCs. Dell will do the virtual desktop thing in its own, less than radical way. Dell today announced a streamed desktop package that will allow customers to manage up to 100 PCs from a single server. As you might expect, Dell will rely on Citrix's Provisioning Server for Desktops software to send …

    Virtualization 10 Oct 2007, 19:50

  • Reg Dev plunges into Gapingvoid

    Micro comment

    Anyone still working in app dev who was around before BritPop will remember the debate on how the likes of Object Orientation and Corba were going to revolutionize distributed computing and the way we interact with systems. If so, you should be heaving a "here-we-go-again" type sigh faced with today's wave of euphoria for …

    Software 10 Oct 2007, 21:02

  • Quantum sues Riverbed over de-dupe patent

    Trying to eliminate IP redundancy?

    Still fresh from acquiring a patent agreement from Data Domain by threatening legal action, Quantum is turning its eyes to another rival in the de-duplication market. Quantum said today it is suing Riverbed Technology on claims it is violating its intellectual property. Quantum's unmercifully technical 47-page complaint was …

    Storage 10 Oct 2007, 21:56

  • Curl mounts Silverlight and AIR challenge

    Open source RIA

    Curl, the rich programming language specialist back from obscurity, is turning to open source to gain a foothold in rich internet applications (RIA). The company, founded on MIT research and that burned through its cash during the last internet bubble leading to a $1.5m acquisition, has said it plans to open source the Curl …

    Software 10 Oct 2007, 22:13

  • Virgin Galactic: Flights 'still a few years away'

    Not going ballistic

    Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson's planned "space tourism" operation, has admitted that it is "still a few years away from operations". The company's COO has suggested that work is at a standstill pending the outcome of health-and-safety investigations into the fatal explosion earlier this year at the Mojave facilities of …

    Space 10 Oct 2007, 22:19

  • This emergency alert has been cancelled by Hotmail

    More friendly fire in the war on spam

    Yesterday's story showing evidence that Microsoft has placed Draconian caps on the number of Hotmail recipients who can receive an email prompted a message from reader Jeff Willis. He says Hotmail routinely blocks mass emails his company, MIS Sciences Corporation, sends on behalf of universities and government agencies. That' …

    Spam 10 Oct 2007, 22:31

  • History dictates future of virtualization

    A technology, not a market

    First, a bit of history. In the early 1970s, IBM had two separate operating system development teams competing for the future of the mainframe. The establishment - represented by MVS - offered continuity from the age of the 360. Another group of trendy virtual machine enthusiasts were quietly working on VM/370 - an exciting …

    Software 10 Oct 2007, 23:06

  • 3Com sues 3Com over 3Com buyout

    Cheapskateboard?

    The $2.2bn sale of networking gear vendor 3Com has already hit litigious waters, courtesy its own shareholders. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 3Com disclosed that several class action lawsuits have been filed since September to block the sale to private equity firm Bain capital Partners and Huawei …

    Channel Register 10 Oct 2007, 23:26

  • Ohio docks official one week's holiday for data breach

    Penalty time

    Ohio's Department of Administrative Services says it's learned its lesson following the pilfering of a tape that contained personal data belonging to more than 130,000 people. And to prove it the agency is docking a whole week's holiday time from the man who failed to ensure the security of the information. Jerry Miller, a …

    ID 10 Oct 2007, 23:28

  • Panasas decides to redefine RAID

    And why not?

    It's too much to demand that any vendor try and make RAID storage exciting. Our hats, however, go off to Panasas for trying. The company this week started hyping its Tiered Parity Architecture (TPA) – technology that serves as an extension to RAID. Panasas CTO Garth Gibson, one of the inventors of RAID back at Berkeley, is once …

    Storage 10 Oct 2007, 23:31