The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

1st November 2007 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Reg lexicographical Shock Army liberates mobe

    ICT confirmed dead amid ruins of linguistic conservatism

    A Vulture Central lexicographical Shock Army spokesman this morning confirmed combined forces of inevitability and good sense had liberated mobe and lappy from the axis of linguistic conservatism which had only too recently threatened English with hideous fossilisation. Standing in the burning ruins of grammatical common decency …

    Bootnotes 1 Nov 2007, 00:23

  • Music in China: The Inside Story

    Special Report Behind the Great Wall of sound

    Want to break into China? Ed Peto reports from the nation where goths adore boy bands, where the major labels created the black market, and where digital looks poised to leapfrog analogue. How To Do Business In China, China CEO, The New Chinese Consumer... my shelves here in Beijing are stacked full of such books, all trying …

    Music and Media 1 Nov 2007, 08:02

  • Is the Xbox 360 Elite a multi-region DVD player?

    Do you know if the Xbox 360 Elite console is multi-regional or not? Can it play all DVDs from region 1, region 2 etc?

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 09:02

  • Whois reform: ICANN says let's run more tests

    ICANN 2007 Los Angeles You know, we shouldn't rush into anything

    Quick, people: what takes seven years? Biblical plagues? Itches? If you guessed an ICANN policy development process - that's a PDP to you, luddite - you are correct. ICANN today officially cut off the oxygen to its Whois reform PDP after seven years in favor of... well, no one's quite sure, yet. Something must have happened - …

    Telecoms 1 Nov 2007, 09:56

  • Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

    Video 'Sometimes I just turn it off then on again'

    The Royal Navy has a long history of backfiring recruiting tactics. Back in the days of the press gang, apparently, there were sometimes expensive lawsuits - the impress law only permitted trained sailors to be pressed, not landsmen, and there were other grounds for dispute. On occasion, too, eighteenth-century naval recruiting …

    Servers 1 Nov 2007, 10:00

  • Learning Ruby

    Book review Hot on syntax

    To some, Ruby is going to take over the world. With prominent Java developers and propagandists jumping ship, there has seemed to be no stopping its momentum, particularly in web development. Part of the reason for the popularity with hackers (in the programming sense of the word), is that it's easy for a programmer in an …

    Software 1 Nov 2007, 10:02

  • LG fills its DVD rewriter gap

    20X writer now available

    It may seem unbelievable, but until this week LG didn’t have an external 20x DVD rewriter in its product portfolio. So it’s created one to fill the gap. LG's GSA-E60N/L: 20x writing speeds LG’s GSA-E60N/L Super Multi Drive is USB 2.0 powered and writes to DVD±R discs at 20x speed. Other formats are catered for too, such as …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 10:16

  • iPhone rubber fingers not a hoax, inventor insists

    Exclusive Latex slip-ons to protect your display

    Register Hardware can confirm that it's possible to prevent smudging your iPhone’s display by rolling what looks like a black latex condom onto your finger - aka the weirdest iPhone accessory ever seen: the Phone Finger. The product’s maker claims the Phone Finger will “prevent smudges and fingerprints” on your iPhone or iPod …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 10:29

  • Police fight to retain 30 year old petty crime records

    Appeal information commissioner's ruling

    Police will appeal against a ruling from the information commissioner to remove records, including on covering the theft of a 99p piece of meat. Four police forces are to appeal against an order from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to delete old criminal convictions from the Police National Computer (PNC). The ICO …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 10:31

  • USPTO shake-up derailed by injunction

    No fair changing the rules during the game

    New rules proposed by the US Patent Office have been blocked after pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline won a preliminary injunction against the proposed changes. The firm said it did not believe the US Patent and Trademark Office had the legal authority to redefine procedures like this. The changes would have limited both the …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 10:32

  • Developer keeps software rights as implied term argument fails in court

    Ownership claim not stated in contract

    A company's claim for ownership of the copyright in a piece of software has failed because it was not explicitly stated in a contract. Meridian International Services had said that its ownership was an implied term of an agreement. The High Court said the company failed to prove that its ownership of the material was a term of …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 10:51

  • Computerland predicts 'satisfactory' year

    Sailing by

    Computerland UK sounded steady as she goes in an interim trading statement this morning. The reseller and services group said its managed services, project services and product supply businesses had seen strong trading, and revenues and profits should be up on last year. Pre-tax profits for the six months to October 31 should …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 2007, 10:52

  • Singapore Airlines bans A380 rumpy-pumpy

    Mile-high passion killers

    Singapore Airlines has asked cash-flush customers to refrain from making the beast with two backs while enjoying its A380 private suites between Singapore and Sydney, Reuters reports. The airline's shiny new aircraft boasts 12 such suites with double beds, but the company has slapped a ban on couples joining the mile-high club …

    Science 1 Nov 2007, 10:57

  • Qimonda samples GDDR 5

    Hold up, we're only just adopting version 4

    Memory maker Qimonda has begun sampling GDDR 5 video-memory chips, producing what it claimed today was the world's first 512Mb part. Like past GDDR revisions, GDDR 5 ups the maximum available data transfer rate between video memory and GPU - to 20GB/s, in this case. Error compensation, adaptive interface timing and the ability …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 11:04

  • US ban on internet access tax gets seven year extension

    But the option's still open

    A ban on taxing internet access and email will almost certainly become law in the US. Both houses of Congress have approved an extension to the existing law, and President George Bush is expected to sign the bill within days. A ban on taxing internet and email provision was first passed in the US in 1998 and has been extended …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 11:06

  • 'Seat of your pants' gaming chair comes to UK

    Gamers seeking what could be the ultimate accessory - at least that's how it's branded - can now save themselves hefty transatlantic shipping costs: US company Ultimate Game Chair's Renegade seat is now available from a UK supplier. The Renegade is designed to be connected to any of the major gaming platforms, from PCs to …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 11:33

  • Pirate Bay aims to sink BitTorrent

    File-sharing arms race

    The buccaneers of Pirate Bay are working on a replacement for the BitTorrent protocol in fear their access to free music, video and software could be blocked by commercial interests. The Swedish anti-copyright collective is building a new P2P system aimed at reducing the influence of BitTorrent's inventor Bram Cohen and the …

    Applications 1 Nov 2007, 11:33

  • Fujitsu Siemens says bye-bye to VXA

    SNW While Infortrend says hello to 2.5-inch RAID

    The storage side of Fujitsu Siemens Computers has given VXA tape the heave-ho, dumping it in favour of LTO. The company has brought out two new models in its FibreCAT range of storage systems, aimed at SMEs. While the FibreCAT SX88 disk box is mostly a faster version of its predecessor, the TX08 backup system represents a …

    Hardware 1 Nov 2007, 11:37

  • Speed-cam fines topped out in 2005

    Strangely, UK.gov eased off in 2006

    New falling motor-crime figures for 2005 published by the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ? MinJ?) could be interpreted in a number of ways. The Times and the RAC Foundation are pretty sure what they think. "Public outrage leads to first fall in number of speed camera fines" runs the Thunderer headline. “This shows the outcry by …

    Government 1 Nov 2007, 11:41

  • Biofuels make poor people even poorer

    Oxfam warning

    European targets for use of biofuels will make life worse for some of the poorest people on the planet, according to a report from charity Oxfam. In January, the European Commission issued guidelines suggesting that member states should use biofuels for 10 per cent of their transport fuel "budget" by 2020. Oxfam argues that if …

    Science 1 Nov 2007, 11:54

  • Nokia and Vodafone music services go live

    iPhone: attack best form of defence

    Nokia is today launching its Music Store service on two handsets - the N81 and N95. You can access the store using one of those handsets or your desktop computer providing you are running Windows XP or Vista and Internet Explorer 6 or above. Tracks cost 80p each or £8 for an album. You can also get streamed music for £8 a …

    Mobile 1 Nov 2007, 11:56

  • Tycoon to offer $760m for affordable orbital launch

    Bubble-baron Bigelow buys ballistic-balloon boost

    Vegas property tycoon Robert Bigelow has always been aware of the main problem besetting his plan to sell cheap inflatable space habitats in orbit - he can build them, but no one can afford to come. The problem isn't so much with the blow-up space stations. Compared to massive rigid jobs like the International Space Station, …

    Space 1 Nov 2007, 12:01

  • Microsoft to search browsers for JavaScript compatibility

    Online irony

    Microsoft's Internet Explorer unit has started the Herculean - and ironic - task of identifying which leading browsers work properly with JavaScript. The company's JScript development team has promised to crawl through the guts of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0.0.5, Opera 9.02 and Safari 3.0 running on the 32-bit edition of …

    Software 1 Nov 2007, 12:02

  • Samsung glass breakthrough to slash LCD TV prices?

    Works out how to use window glass

    Samsung scientists have figured out how to make LCD panels from ordinary glass plates, the company announced yesterday. If the process is put into production, it could dramatically reduce the costs of LCD screens for laptops and TVs. Ironically, Samsung subsidiary Samsung Corning Precision Glass produces the kind of high- …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 12:07

  • Asus intros 'quietest' HD DVD drive

    Sssshhh...

    Asus has launched an add-in HD DVD drive for PCs, pitching the product as a quietest of its kind - handy for folk building living-room systems. Asus' HR-0205T: Ssshhh... The HR-0205T is a read-only unit that can handled single- and dual-layer HD DVD media, and single-layer HD DVD-R discs, all at 2.4x. It'll also read all the …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 12:41

  • How just thinking about terrorism became illegal

    What's on your hard drive could mean hard time

    "A proposal to scan suspect hard drives causes unease in [Germany]," read a recent frontpage story in the Los Angeles Times. Positioned boldly above the fold, the reporter and editors recognized the potential keen interest in anything having to do with the implementation of snooping in "My Documents". In the United Kingdom it's …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 13:15

  • Texan boffin fixin' to make cheaper fuel cells

    Joins Honda camp in opposition to Toyota, Google

    Just as it appears that hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars may be about to go mainstream, Texas-based researchers believe they have developed a way of producing automotive fuel cells more cheaply. Under most forms of fuel-cell car design, hydrogen from the car's tanks reacts with oxygen from the air. Rather than simply burning …

    Science 1 Nov 2007, 13:20

  • Police aim to stamp out virtual child abuse

    Focus on Sadville grooming fears

    UK authorities involved in the fight against child abuse are increasingly concerned about the depictions of child abuse in Second Life, the online virtual world. A spokeswoman for Ceop (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) told El Reg that part of its concerns stem from the possibility that someone with access …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 13:26

  • T-Mobile Sidekick Slide messaging phone

    Review Still doesn't quite cut it with kids

    Whenever the Sidekick is mentioned, the phrases “big in the States” and “Paris Hilton” inevitably follow. But, despite several attempts by T-Mobile to propel the Danger-designed device into the mainstream, it has so far failed to get Britain's youth ditching their Nokias and Walkman phones en masse. The Slide is the first of …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 13:47

  • X-Files movie sequel is go

    Few details forthcoming on 'supernatural thriller'

    The shoot of the second X-Files movie will kick off on 10 December in Vancouver, 20th Century Fox has announced. The company is remaining tight-lipped regarding details of the project, except to say it's a "supernatural thriller" which will "take the complicated relationship between FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in …

    Entertainment 1 Nov 2007, 13:57

  • Japanese officials in tables-turned GPS tracking rumpus

    Pork payola probe plans protested

    Normally, one expects any story about military-industrial-complex bureaucrats and hi-tech surveillance to involve the officials spying on someone else. Not today in Japan, though, as a plan seems to be afoot for defence ministry people to be tracked using GPS-enabled cellphones. Many parents are at least considering the use of …

    Mobile 1 Nov 2007, 13:58

  • Ofcom's 0870 rip-off reforms stumble at the final hurdle

    Burglar bungling delays consumer protection

    Ofcom has postponed long-scheduled new rules designed to clamp down on the non-geographic number rip-off, after it realised that its rules could scupper burglar alarms and monitoring systems for vulnerable people. Regulators have kept the news quiet. There's no announcement on its website. Ofcom told industry at a call routing …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 14:20

  • Privacy advos demand 'do not track list' for websites

    As web marketeers tune up for FTC privacy meeting

    A coalition of US privacy organisations has demanded the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set up a "do not track" list to allow consumers to surf the web without having their behaviour monitored, warehoused, and mined by marketeers. The groups' call for more internet privacy was part of the knuckle cracking by Washington's net …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 14:26

  • Germany rolls out ePassport II - it's fingerprinting good!

    Enhanced security is 'tamper proof'

    Germany is switching over to the second generation of ePassport passports, with the addition of fingerprint biometrics. Fingerprints become mandatory in June 2009*, and according to NXP, which supplies the chips for the passports, it will be the first country in the world "to introduce second-generation ePassports with enhanced …

    Government 1 Nov 2007, 14:45

  • Star formation? All a bit of a wind up

    Magnetically speaking, you understand

    UK astronomers have discovered that the material flowing out of newborn stars contains a coiled, spring-shaped magnetic field. The discovery, reported in the 1 November edition of Nature helps to explain why new stars are able to form as they condense from spinning clouds of interstellar gas. "Astronomers know that stars form …

    Space 1 Nov 2007, 15:21

  • Domino's pizza prices may rise

    Programmer salary demands rocket accordingly

    The staple diet of cook-phobic carboholics is about to become more expensive, as pizza-peddler Domino's has warned the cost of ingredients is rocketing. A combination of factors, chiefly nasty weather in Europe and Australia and big demand in China, has pushed up the cost of the dairy and wheat products vital in making the …

    CIO 1 Nov 2007, 15:27

  • Lenovo ditches IBM from ThinkPad early

    IB-who?

    Lenovo, the desktop maker formerly known as IBM, is celebrating a solid set of quarterly results by announcing it will drop IBM's logo from its Think brand two years early. Revenue for the quarter ended 30 September was up 20 per cent to $4.4bn and profit before tax and restructuring costs was $125m, up from $45m last year. …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 2007, 15:31

  • Acer and HP patent rumble rumbles on

    Lawsuits aplenty

    A patent dispute between two of the world's top computer vendors continued apace yesterday, with Acer confirming that it planned to once again counter sue Hewlett-Packard (HP). Taiwan-based Acer, which looks set to be ranked third in the world among PC vendors following its imminent takeover of Gateway, said it had filed patent …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 2007, 15:40

  • Half-petaflop IBM BlueGene supercomputer plan announced

    Open source supercomp OS next year

    IBM will provide extra processing power to the US Department of Energy (DOE)'s Argonne National Lab, quintupling Argonne's power to 556 trillion floating point operations per second (teraflops)by using Blue Gene/P supercomputer tech. “[Argonne Lab] has been a valuable contributor in the development of Blue Gene/P,” said Leo …

    Servers 1 Nov 2007, 15:51

  • Docklands train runs off without operator

    Stop the train, I want to get on

    The Docklands Light Railway is designed to work without a driver, but it does have a "Passenger Service Agent" on board to operate the doors, check tickets, and sort out possible problems. The usual procedure is that after a dinging noise the agent closes the doors and the train pulls away. But on Tuesday, a train bound for …

    Bootnotes 1 Nov 2007, 16:02

  • Virgin Media downed by Manchester arsonists

    Halloween spooks cable operator

    A suspected arson at a Manchester electricity substation left thousands of Virgin Media customers in the North West without TV and broadband for several hours overnight. The Halloween attack in the Miles Platting area left 60,000 homes in the centre of the city without power at about 7.30pm. They were all back on the grid by …

    Telecoms 1 Nov 2007, 16:06

  • IBM launches $1.5bn IT security push

    Compliance and control

    IBM has launched a major push to grow its presence in the information security market. The initiative is centered around two particular areas - compliance and content control - and weaves together technologies from recent IBM acquisitions Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Watchfire with technologies developed inhouse, many …

    Enterprise Security 1 Nov 2007, 16:16

  • Web 2.0 - carry on, don't lose your job

    Been there, seen that

    The IT industry is masterful at recycling old concepts under new names. Web 2.0's transition from the mass market to the enterprise is a case in point. Every aspect of Web 2.0 has its historic parallel. Software as a service (SaaS) providers used to be called time-sharing bureaus. Wikis were content management systems and …

    Applications 1 Nov 2007, 16:20

  • Met Police guilty in de Menezes case

    Large fine plus costs

    The Metropolitan Police was today found guilty of breaching Health and Safety legislation in the incident which led to the death by shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005. The jury said the operation commander Cressida Dick bore "no personal culpability", and the Met's Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said he would not …

    Law 1 Nov 2007, 16:35

  • IEEE powerline networking group selects HomePlug AV

    Will choice be confirmed at second ballot?

    The IEEE has moved a step closer to establishing the HomePlug AV brand of powerline Ethernet networking as the basis for a future mains networking standard. But its adoption is not yet a certainty. The latest round of balloting on the IEEE P1901 specification took place last month. Two options were put to the vote: a proposal …

    reghardware 1 Nov 2007, 17:19

  • Irish man rescued after falling for 419 scam

    After being swindled, man traveled to Ghana to recover funds

    An Irish man who was kidnapped after falling for an email fraud scam was rescued when police raided a hotel in the capital of Ghana where he was being held captive. James Lafferty, 49, from Ennis, Co Clare, had been held hostage for about five days while kidnappers demanded money for his safe return. He was freed after police …

    Spam 1 Nov 2007, 17:59

  • Ubuntu laptop clan trapped in hard drive hell

    OS 'not to blame' for maniacal disks

    The Ubuntu operating system has been charged with crimes against hard drives. A number of users have complained this week about the OS (7.04/7.10) forcing drives to spin up and down at an unnatural rate due to some very aggressive power management features. According to Ubuntu wizards, however, this is a firmware/BIOS issue and …

    PCs & Chips 1 Nov 2007, 18:10

  • Laggard Apple lets Leopard virtualize

    Tired of thinking different

    Apple has tweaked its Mac OS X Server software license for Leopard, allowing the operating system to run legally in a virtual environment for the first time. The change could be a telling relinquishment of control in Apple's traditional manic dominion of all its gear. Or it's a sign of the Apocalypse. Tough call. We'll know …

    Virtualization 1 Nov 2007, 18:33

  • Mandriva bigwig (nearly) accuses Ballmer of b-word

    17,000 Nigerian Linux boxes mysteriously switched to Windows

    Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon has asked Steve Ballmer what it feels like to look at himself in the mirror. In an open letter to the Microsoft head honcho, posted to the web late last night, Bancilhon claims that the Nigerian government has somehow decided to install Windows on 17,000 brand new PCs already equipped with …

    PCs & Chips 1 Nov 2007, 19:17

  • HP accelerates server accelerator effort

    Like code on a rocket ship

    Not content to rely on the computing muscle supplied by Intel and AMD, HP has upped its focus on server accelerators. The hardware maker today announced a new program aimed right at incorporating things such as floating point boosters into its machines. The fresh HP Accelerator program joins a Multi-Core Optimization Program …

    Servers 1 Nov 2007, 19:42

  • DARPA selects 11 robotic grunts to take driver's license test

    Shudder. Have you seen R2D2 parallel park?

    DARPA applied a firm hand when narrowing down the list of robot vehicles that can take place in the weekend's $3.5m Urban Challenge. The organization - an arm of the US Defense Department - has deemed only 11 out of 35 competing teams as worthy to take place in the final event. The teams have spent the past week showing off …

    Rise of the Machines 1 Nov 2007, 20:44

  • Irish jobs safe following HP plant closure

    One site fits all

    No jobs are expected to be lost as a result of Hewlett-Packard's decision to close its Clonskeagh facility in Ireland, the company said. Yesterday, HP announced plans to consolidate its Clonskeagh, Dublin 14 and Leixlip, Co Kildare facilities on a single site at Liffey Park Technology Campus in Leixlip, which will become the …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 2007, 22:06

  • NASA delays space station repair to ponder tear

    What do you mean nobody brought the glue?

    NASA is delaying a risky spacewalk to repair a torn solar wing panel on the International Space Station. The delay will give Mission Control at Johnson Space Center until Saturday to refine instructions for the unprecedented operation. Discovery crew members will also use the time to improvise repair devices from inside the …

    Space 1 Nov 2007, 22:30

  • Leap Wireless gives MetroPCS the cold shoulder

    No Solicitors

    MetroPCS, the cheapo US cell phone operator, doesn't want to buy Leap Wireless anymore - because it can't get its takeover target to talk turkey. In September, MetroPCS made an unsolicited bid for its smaller rival, saying the combo would become a new national wireless carrier, covering 200 local US markets. Backtracking today, …

    Mobile 1 Nov 2007, 22:34

  • Google succumbs to German cybersquatter's advances (maybe)

    'I would like to perform a lot and also be paid well'

    Google may have reached an agreement with the German network administrator who tried to strong-arm the company into giving him a job. Or maybe not. Earlier this week, the Mountain View-obsessed online rag Google Blogoscoped reported that 27-year-old Sebastian Klein was using some good old-fashioned cyber-squatting in his …

    Business 1 Nov 2007, 23:04

  • Cisco borgs Securent for $100m

    And sprays China with cash

    Cisco is dipping into loose change to buy Securent, a Silicon Valley data security startup, for $100m cash. Securent makes software for companies to restrict user access to data on a network, helping prevent sensitive information from falling into nefarious hands. The firm has 57 employees in Mountain View, California, with R …

    Data Networking 1 Nov 2007, 23:33

  • Avnet buys Aussie networking distie

    ChannelWorx

    Avnet today bought itself another distributor, this time a networking and security specialist in Australia called Channelworx. Terms are undisclosed for the company, which pulled in US$30m revenues for the year to June 30. Channelworx is to be integrated into Avnet Technology Solution's Australia business. It brings to the …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 2007, 23:54