30th November 2007 Archive

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Dell hammered over record Q3

Vendor eyes sales as turnaround key

Some candy ass $63bn companies out there might find nine per cent revenue growth satisfactory. But not Dell. The 2.0-ified hardware maker today rolled out third quarter financial figures, showing a near double-digit rise in revenue to $15.6bn. Buoyed by improved gross margins and cost cutting measures, Dell turned around a 13 …

Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 00:07
Trade Commission probes HP-Acer patent spat again

This time the other way around

A US commission, heeding Acer's petition, will investigate cries of foul play The Taiwanese firm, was moved to discern, HPs gear borrows their patent cachet "US Internal Trade Commission, won't you set prohibition, on its merchandise reaching the States? We cannot abide, to stand idly aside, and let our attorneys …

Channel Register 30 Nov 2007, 00:24
Google fitted with (temporary) Digg implant

Stops making sense

Google wants to know what it feels like to be Digg. Google Labs is testing a new-fangled search page where users can "vote" on all those links that pop up after a keyword query. If you like a link, you hit the "like it" button. If you don't like it, you hit the "don't like it" button. And in Digg-like fashion, these clicks …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2007, 00:56
Electrical supe charged with damaging California canal system

Facing 10 years

A former employee for a federally-owned canal system in California was charged with installing software that damaged a computer used to divert water out of a local river. Michael Keehn, of Willows, California, faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Federal court documents claim the former electrical …

Enterprise Security 30 Nov 2007, 01:10
You've got OpenSolaris in my System z

No, you've got System z in my...

Bitter adversaries IBM and Sun Microsystems have been adding a little sugar to their parley. Their corporate fisticuffs have even recently given way to hand-holding. In August, the two companies revealed that IBM will offer Solaris x86 as an option to some Xeon- and Opteron-based servers. IBM's systems chief Bill Zeitler also …

Servers 30 Nov 2007, 02:05
Dell moves 40,000 Ubuntu PCs

Frugal faithful

Dell agreed to ship PCs and laptops with the Ubuntu operating system after more than 130,000 people promoted the notion on the company's IdeaStorm web site. It would seem, however, that only a fraction of these zealots were willing to back their votes with cash. Dell has shipped close to 40,000 systems pre-installed with the …

Channel Register 30 Nov 2007, 02:11
Going green is good, but is it secure?

Quocirca's changing channels Zero carbon doesn't have to mean vulnerable

The environmental impact of IT is an issue under much scrutiny recently, but not much thought seems to have been given to the security consequences of "going green". Having thought it over, Quocirca has come up with an answer. There are two broad themes that affect the job of chief information security officers (CISOs) if …

Channel Register 30 Nov 2007, 07:02
HP sets sights on more - and bigger - buys

Hungry eyes

HP might have bought a bunch of software firms in the last year, but it's got no intention of stopping. Speaking in Barcelona at HP's software jamboree "Software Universe", vice president Tom Hogan said organic growth was not enough for the company and purchases were likely to be big rather than small. "If we are looking for …

Applications 30 Nov 2007, 09:47
DHS building handheld lobster spy-beam scanners

'A crustacean with an amazingly minuscule brain'

The world-famous US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is working on astounding handheld lobster technology which could let operatives "see through walls, wood, concrete, earth, and steel". Just like lobsters can. (Hold on ...) An article in the latest DHS Science & Technology Snapshots newsletter entitled "Eye of the …

Science 30 Nov 2007, 09:50
Samsung secures 2007 most inappropriate ad title

Need an exploding mobe? Click here

A round of applause this morning for Samsung and CNN for jointly securing the web's most inappropriate ad title of 2007: Good show. Silver medal goes, of course, to the UK's Motorcycle News for this fine effort back in August: For the record, MCN apologised for the gaffe, and quickly pulled the ad. ® Bootnote Thanks to …

Bootnotes 30 Nov 2007, 09:52
Mobile phone cleared in S Korean quarry death

'Accidental vehicular homicide'

The 33-year-old South Korean quarry worker believed to have succumbed to a fatal mobile phone battery blast was actually crushed to death in an "accidental vehicular homicide", Reuters reports. The body of the man was discovered earlier this week with "his mobile phone battery... melted in his shirt pocket", leading a police …

Mobile 30 Nov 2007, 09:52
Ofcom sets new deadline for mobile number porting

From five days to two hours

Mobile phone networks must allow consumers moving to a rival network to take their mobile number with them and consumers must be able to receive calls on that number within two hours of moving to the new network, under new rules coming into force in 2009. Consumers can currently wait for up to five days for number porting …

Mobile 30 Nov 2007, 09:58
Watchdog criticises UK gov websites

Directgov more a case of 'Not Me Gov'

The Directgov supersite has been labelled "Not Me Gov" at a hearing of the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC). PAC chair Edward Leigh MP made the accusation at a hearing on the National Audit Office report, Government on the Internet. He questioned the government's plan to reduce the number of websites with an increased …

Government 30 Nov 2007, 10:07
NZ police cuff teenage botnet mastermind suspect

Updated Bot Roast bust

New Zealand police have arrested an 18-year-old suspected of masterminding the compromise of a huge network of one million compromised PCs. The unnamed teenager, who police have identified only by his online moniker of AKILL, was arrested as part of a larger FBI-led operation aimed at cracking down on the trade in compromised …

Crime 30 Nov 2007, 10:14
New Ebola strain kills 16 Ugandans

'Unusually mild', say health officials

Scientists have confirmed that a new strain of Ebola is responsible for killing 16 Ugandans close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Reuters reports. The virus, which has infected 51, is described as "unusually mild" by Ugandan health officials. Symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever range from fever, vomiting, …

Biology 30 Nov 2007, 10:16
EU tunes in to DVB-H

Europe gets a single mobile TV standard

Mobile TV has moved one step nearer to widespread roll-out as the European Commission officially selects DVB-H as the standard for Europe. Despite opposition from some countries, DVB-H is to be added to the official list of standards whose use all 27 EU Member States have to actively support and encourage. The move gives …

Networks 30 Nov 2007, 10:21
PS3 demand booms in Japan

Sales surpass Wii's monthly tally

Sony sold more PlayStation 3s in the last four weeks in its home territory of Japan than rival Nintendo sold Wiis, local games publisher Enterbrain said today. But another market watcher revealed Wii won out in the week to 25 November. According to Enterbrain, some 183,217 PS3s crossed counters in the four weeks to 25 November …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 10:22
'Beer Hunter' lifts 40,000 pints of Guinness

Audacious brewery raid

Guinness's St James's Gate brewery in Dublin has been hit by an audacious raid in which an evidently thirsty man dubbed "the Beer Hunter" made off with 40,000 pints of the famous stout. According to the Times, the perp simply drove into the brewery yard in his own HGV, hitched it to a "well-provisioned" trailer and drove out …

Bootnotes 30 Nov 2007, 10:30
Nvidia GeForce 9s due Feb '08?

And AMD prunes prices

It's no surprise to learn that Nvidia's working on its GeForce 9 family of graphics chips, but until today we didn't know when the first of them will appear. Expect to see high-end GeForce 9s out next February, card-maker moles claimed today by way of DigiTimes. The first is codenamed 'D9E', they say, it's fabbed at 65nm - …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 10:38
Mother of God seen on USB Flash drive

Pray you don't lose your data

If you lose a file from this USB drive then you’d better pick your expletives carefully or you’ll have the Good Lord, vengeful wrath and all, snapping at your heels. Thou shalt not carve graven USBs The Maria Memory Stick is USB 2.0 compatible and can be used to store all your essential files. However, unlike any other Flash …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 10:51
Sidcup massive threatens Reg hack

FoTW 'My sisters got boxing tattoos'

Veteran Reg readers may recall a couple of websites called sheppeyscum.com and Chatham Girls - both now defunct but in their day providing essential guides to the UK's fight capital and bow-legged Medway chavettes, respectively. Then, of course, came the online Sidcup resource, which we described as an illuminating stroll …

Bootnotes 30 Nov 2007, 11:06
Fasthosts customers blindsided by emergency password reset

Webhost confirms hackers have raided servers

Fasthosts has announced that "a number" of its customers'* FTP spaces were raided as a result of the major hack that triggered a police investigation last month. It has applied a system-wide reset of thousands of passwords as a result. The Gloucester-based webhosting firm yesterday performed the emergency reset of control …

Telecoms 30 Nov 2007, 11:08
Boffins in live-monkey-brain robot weblink arms race

Mainly useful for banana-related tasks thus far

Battling scientists around the world are racing to be first to develop practical robots remotely controlled by harvested monkey brains over the internet. The Times of India reports scarcely 48 hours ago that a living "monkey head" in North Carolina was able to "control a pair of robot legs in Japan via a web link". "The …

Science 30 Nov 2007, 11:17
HP delivers PC Q3 smackdown

Acer makes tasty gain, Dell ambles along

Hewlett-Packard remained leader of the pack in global PC sales for the third quarter while Dell continued to lag behind. According to iSuppli, which tracks computer sale trends, total PC shipments for the quarter were said to be up to 68.1 million, a 13.8 per cent year-on-year jump and 11.1 per cent from the previous quarter …

Channel Register 30 Nov 2007, 11:19
Ford offers natter-interface car software in Europe

Now Mondeo man can stay hands-on like the Hoff

Ford will offer voice-operated controls on its European models, using software provided by Nuance, it was announced yesterday. Nuance, which merged with ScanSoft in 2005, offers a range of voice-control and text-to-speech solutions. The company's VoCon® speech recognition and RealSpeak™ text-to-Speech platforms are being …

Applications 30 Nov 2007, 11:50
LG KU990 Viewty cameraphone

Review Give a phone a touchscreen and suddenly everyone's interested

Touchscreen mobiles are destined to be a hot ticket for the foreseeable future, but with the touch-controlled KU990 Viewty from LG there’s far more than screen-fingering novelty to tap your attention. The Viewty - daft name, it has to be said - adopts the stylish look and feel of LG's Prada phone released earlier this year but …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 12:00
BOFH: Friday madness

Episode 40 There's only one way to get you through the afternoon

It's a Friday afternoon and the clock has stopped. All the clocks have stopped. It's been 2:15pm for the past two hours, I'm sure of it. "COME OOOOONNN!" the PFY whines. "It's no use," I say. "The seconds hand is moving but the minutes hand has just stopped!" "I want the pub," the PFY gasps. "I NEED the pub!" "Me too," I …

BOFH 30 Nov 2007, 12:02
EU TV laws are coming

Parliament says yes, oui, si, sim, tak

The European Parliament yesterday passed the Audiovisual Directive, which aims to modernise and consolidate laws governing video content however it is transmitted. The "Audiovisual Media Services Without Frontiers Directive" covers all media services and grants citizens certain rights to "access extracts of important events …

Music and Media 30 Nov 2007, 12:20
British teens score a C in international science poll

Kids ask 'what's a C?'

British kids have plummeted down an international league of science tests, research from the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) shows. However, the nation's youth probably won't be too upset about their unboffinish performance – it's not like they'd be able to read about it after all. The OECD PISA test of 15-year- …

Science 30 Nov 2007, 12:22
New Zealander's Nokia explodes

Battery detonation probe launched

Nokia is investigating why a New Zealand man's phone blew up while it was being recharged. According to national broadcaster One News, Auckland resident Norman Sievewright's handset exploded during Wednesday night. It was by his bedside at the time, and the detonation caused him a "huge fright". It also left charred marks on …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 12:30
Hackers re-poison Google search results

Tainted results punt scareware

Hackers have responded to a purge of malicious links within search results by Google with a fresh effort to subvert the search giant's page rank system. As previously reported, miscreants recently set out to poison search results with links to malware infested sites. The tactic involved gaming search engines' ranking systems …

Crime 30 Nov 2007, 12:43
IBM sues seller over alleged fake ThinkPad batteries

Power packs claimed to be a fire-risk too

IBM has accused a New York-based spare computer parts company of trademark infringement in a bid to stop the firm selling what it alleges are dangerous fakes. It's demanding $1m for each claimed counterfeit use of its logos. In a lawsuit filed with the US District Court for Northern Ohio this month, IBM claims that Shentech. …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 13:09
Nintendo DS to get movie, TV download service

But not over Wi-Fi

Japanese gamers will soon be able to watch movies on a Nintendo DS, thanks to the creation of a movie download service for the handheld console. DSVision: download and watch films on your DS Lite It’s to be called DSVision and will, upon its launch next year, carry around 300 films, e-books, TV programmes and comics - …

Reg Hardware 30 Nov 2007, 13:18
Virgin downs 1and1 and Germany

Part of a lager problem?

Virgin subscribers spent yesterday without access to German websites. Popular web hosting site 1and1 was one of those hit - and its customers were not happy. But it is now clear that a routing problem at Virgin was the cause. Virgin broadband subscribers lost access to most German-based websites including gaming sites like …

Data Networking 30 Nov 2007, 13:45
Seagoing satellite launch stymied by La Nina

Pacific rocketeers swept away by chilly currents

Seagoing space-rocket company Sea Launch has given up on attempts to boost a communications satellite into orbit from the mid-Pacific, blaming unusual ocean currents possibly related to the "La Nina" phenomenon. Sea Launch uses a self-propelled ocean going platform to move its launch rockets into position on the Equator, thus …

Space 30 Nov 2007, 13:49
Net to be whupped by TV in attention battle

Rumours of TV's demise may have been greatly exaggerated

Growth in TV watching will outpace internet for years to come, according to figures released yesterday. It means the pot of gold lusted after by internet video disciples will remain out of reach, if it exists at all. It's estimated that telly watching will grow by two hours per week by 2012, while internet use outside work …

Telecoms 30 Nov 2007, 13:55
Ofcom starts planning for the London Olympics

Grab yourself a slice of free spectrum

UK regulator Ofcom has published a discussion document outlining how it intends to manage spectrum allocations during the London Olympics and Para Olympics in 2012, and on most cases it's business as usual. Ofcom admits there'll be an unprecedented demand for radio frequencies during the games, for everything from wireless …

Networks 30 Nov 2007, 15:06
Random number bug blights FreeBSD

The devil's in the detail

The FreeBSD project pushed out a brace of updates on Thursday to guard against a pair of potentially serious security vulnerabilities. First up is an update that patches a bug in the GNU tar archiving utility that created a mechanism for hackers to overwrite files on a vulnerable system. The bug, which stems from insufficient …

Enterprise Security 30 Nov 2007, 15:07
Nokia jumps on mobile ad-wagon

Comment But still 'experimenting'

In its bid to bring the full internet experience to the mobile device, Nokia will need to formulate a clear strategy for mobile advertising, an important internet revenue driver, but also an area fraught with risks. Nokia said last week it was devising a platform that would avoid the "unseemly" aspects of conventional internet …

Mobile 30 Nov 2007, 15:08
3 drags rivals into court over number porting

As O2, Voda say latest Ofcom statement is overkill

3 UK plans see its four UK rivals in court next week in the opener to what might turn into a £250m case, accusing them of making it difficult to customers to switch to the upstart network. The Times reports that 3, in a High Court action, claims Vodafone, T-mobile, Orange and O2 colluded in an effort to withhold the details …

Mobile 30 Nov 2007, 15:26
Moto says ~~hello~~ goodbye to Zander

Not RAZR sharp

Motorola boss Ed Zander has been ousted as CEO by the firm's board of directors. Greg Brown, the firm's current president and chief operating officer, will step into Zander's shoes on 1 January. Zander will retain his role as chairman until Motorola's annual stockholders' meeting in May 2008. Motorola director Samuel C. …

Mobile 30 Nov 2007, 15:37
HMRC still looking for those disks, UK.plc looking for scientists

To subscribe to The Register's weekly newsletter - seven days of IT in a single hit - click here

Don't lie to your PC Telling porkies to your PC can be a criminal offence. A gent this week was convicted of just this after making dubious discount claims to a computer running Renault's fleet scheme. HMRC still looking behind the coffee machine Her Majesty's Revenue is, we're told, still looking for the missing child …

Business 30 Nov 2007, 15:40
Google will chase chunk of US spectrum

Will they? Won't they? Yes they will

Google has confirmed it's going to bid for a chunk of the US radio spectrum when the auction starts in January, making the announcement slightly ahead of Monday's deadline for all bidders to register their interest with the FCC (Federal Communication Commission). The chunk concerned is part of the 700Mhz due to be released by …

Wireless 30 Nov 2007, 16:20
Zoho users logging into other accounts by accident

See and be seen

Zoho users beware. There appears to be a nasty bug whereby a user logs in with their own credentials, but finds themselves logged into another user's account. I have the last couple of weeks experienced that I get logged on into another account that I do not know! I can see the other account documents. Just a few minutes ago I …

Applications 30 Nov 2007, 16:56
Fayrewood in bid talks

Shares jump

IT distie Fayrewood PLC revealed today that it has been in secret talks with a third party company which could lead to an offer to buy all or part of the firm. The announcement follows a close to 14 per cent jump in Fayrewood shares today on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The firm said in a brief statement "a further …

Channel Register 30 Nov 2007, 17:14
Ugly view mars Windows Vista birthday

Reality bites

Like the queen, Windows Vista gets to celebrate two birthdays in close succession. November 30 marks the first, with the "business" launch a year ago at venues across the planet. Next January will mark the second birthday date. While the past 12 months have been dominated by headlines over sales and uptake - or lack thereof - …

Operating Systems 30 Nov 2007, 19:53
Code scavenging goes formal

Careful what you consume

Scott Hackett at SlickEdit has blogged its time to update the time-honored practice of code scavenging. According to Hackett, taking a more formal approach could help to improve developer productivity. He argues that, while software re-use has historically concentrated on higher level frameworks and larger objects, there are …

Software 30 Nov 2007, 21:03