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17th December 2007 Archive

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  • The year's biggest big thing? You be the judge!

    Festive hustings

    Who's that gut lord marching... you should cut down on your mince pies mate... bah, Humbug! Having asked you to shortlist the biggest events of 2007, it's now time to determine what you think is the defining moment of the year from that list. You can register your vote below, or by clicking in the Humbug! Reg Dev's seasonal …

    Software 17 Dec 2007, 00:02

  • Security fears stymy online sales

    Nothing to fear but fear itself

    One in five UK surfers are "too scared" to shop online, according to a new survey. UK Christmas shoppers will spend an estimated £13bn online during this festive season, a 42 per cent increase on last year. But despite all this economic activity 20 per cent of web users still avoid e-shopping because of fears about their …

    Security 17 Dec 2007, 08:02

  • London PR outfit in sex-on-desk email shocker

    NSFW Security penetrated, knickers downed

    We're absolutely delighted to announce this morning that the traditional drunken spirit of Xmas is most certainly not dead down at 41-44 Great Windmill Street, London W1, as the following email proves: From: Mark XXXX Sent: 14 December 2007 11:43 To: . All RED All Users Subject: Extra Curricular Activities Good Morning …

    Bootnotes 17 Dec 2007, 09:42

  • Technical problems mar Barclays' PINSentry roll-out

    The tricky business of thwarting online fraud

    Logistic and technical issues have hampered the rollout of a system designed to thwart phishing scams by UK bank Barclays. The bank is issuing calculator-sized chip-and-PIN 'PINsentry' card readers to its online banking customers in a bid to combat online fraud. Barclays' online customers (both consumers and small business) …

    Small Biz 17 Dec 2007, 10:02

  • Sun spikes Java IDEs

    NetBeans or bust

    Sun Microsystems is finally giving up building its own Java integrated tools suites after a long and painful slog. Development of Sun Java Studio Creator, launched amid much hype three years ago as the new force in visual-drag-and-drop, interface development, and the stately Studio Enterprise are to be discontinued, the …

    Developer 17 Dec 2007, 10:08

  • Cambs cops podcast 999 timewasters

    'I can't find Homebase and I'm very distressed'

    Cambridgeshire police have come over all Web 2.0 and decided to podcast a selection of entertaining "non" 999 calls in an effort to "curb the number of nuisance calls the police receive". You can find the offending pleas for asistance right here. Among the winning line-up is someone asking "What's today's date?" and the …

    Bootnotes 17 Dec 2007, 10:42

  • Intel pushes back X48 release?

    Mobo makers want to sell a few more X38-based boards first

    Intel has reportedly put back the release of its upcoming X48 gaming chipset to allow motherboard makers to clear the decks of boards based on the X48's predecessor, the X38. Originally due to appear next month, the X48 - reviewed here - will apparently now surface in February or March, motherboard-maker moles cited by …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 10:44

  • Talking to themselves - how uk.gov 'consults' on IT exports

    Comment Transformational hamster wheels...

    The story so far - on Friday 7th December, Lord Digby Jones announced a joint venture industry and government strategy to market the UK Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector to the world. On closer inspection, this turned out to be an outline marketing strategy open to consultation = allegedly. Contributing to the …

    Government 17 Dec 2007, 11:01

  • Orange France says 'testicules' to unlocked-iPhone-not-unlocked claim

    Of course you can use an unlocked iPhone anywhere, carrier states

    Orange France has denied a claim that the unlocked iPhones it is offering are not actually unlocked but were simply set to work with any French carrier SIM card rather than, say, a SIM purchased in the UK. The claim was made by website iPhone Atlas late last week. Without stating how it knew this to be the case, the site said …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 11:08

  • Dutch gov blows open standards raspberry at Microsoft

    Sweeps software monopoly off the board

    The Dutch government has pushed through a new open source and open standards policy which will leave Redmond with smoke coming out of its ears. The Netherlands economic affairs ministry said last week that parliament had approved a plan that will mandate the use of open standards and open source software government-wide. It …

    Public Sector 17 Dec 2007, 11:19

  • Turkish s'kiddies deface security forum

    F-Secure scalped

    Turkish hackers last week succeeded in defacing a security discussion forum established by web security firm F-Secure. The digital graffiti attack was of little importance, but no less embarrassing for F-Secure despite its triviality. "The server itself is quite well hardened, but the web forum software had an unannounced …

    Enterprise Security 17 Dec 2007, 11:25

  • Old Sony console outsold PS3 in US last month

    While demand for DS Lite, Wii soars

    Sony's PlayStation 3 proved less popular than its predecessor in the US last month. According to market watcher NPD, the PS3 fell way behind the market leaders: Nintendo's DS Lite and Wii. NPD's numbers for November retail sales put the PS3 down at 466,000 units, around 30,000 fewer than the 496,000 PS2s that crossed counters …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 11:42

  • US woman launches 'Taserware' parties

    We've protected our food, now let's protect our lives

    An enterprising Arizona woman has redefined the Tupperware party paradigm for the 21st century, and is hosting girlie get-togethers where security-conscious women can get to grips with the US's fave non-lethal lethal weapon - the Taser. According to the Arizona Republic, Dana Shafman, founder of Shieldher Inc, has already …

    Bootnotes 17 Dec 2007, 11:45

  • Hauppauge XFones PC-2400 wireless headphones

    First Review Dolby technology built in bundled

    You have to admire Hauppauge's brass. The company known for its TV tuners is marketing its XFones as wireless headphones with Dolby Headphone technology. That's all true: they are headphones, they are wireless and, yes, they do feature Dolby. But this smart sound system comes not from the hardware, but the bundled DVD playback …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 12:02

  • Cisco to get API-happy

    Putting the family jewels on display

    Cisco has confirmed plans to open up its holy of holies: it'll let third parties develop applications for the Internetwork Operating System (IOS), the software leg of its cash cow router business. According to Network World, the move is being driven by Cisco's desire to see more applications run over the network, and be …

    Data Networking 17 Dec 2007, 12:08

  • Gollum to play Haddock in Tintin

    Andy Serkis reteams with Peter Jackson

    Andy Serkis, who brought Tolkien's Gollum to life in the Lord of the Rings movies, has hooked back up with Peter Jackson to play Captain Haddock in a forthcoming adaptation of Tintin, the Hollywood Reporter has announced. DreamWorks' Tintin project is a three part series. Steven Spielberg and Jackson will each take the helm …

    Entertainment 17 Dec 2007, 12:21

  • Intel plays down Viiv entertainment PC brand

    Now that all PCs are media PCs

    Intel appears to be de-emphasising its much-scorned Viiv brand, reducing the label from a tag designed to represent all-singing, all-dancing multimedia PCs, to a sub-brand of its Core 2 processor label. Late last week, it emerged that peripheral maker Buffalo had warned its customers that its kit would no longer off Intel's …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 12:47

  • Space brains resign over efforts to attract ET attention

    Yoo-hoo! Primitive race here, ripe for conquest/harvest!

    A pair of noted space thinkers have resigned from an international body in protest at plans to send out powerful radio signals to alien civilisations. The two men feel that the risks of contact with extraterrestrials - who would need to be much more technologically advanced than humanity in order to visit us - have not been …

    Space 17 Dec 2007, 12:56

  • HMRC manual on data protection was protected data

    Juniors kept in dark, then hung out to dry? Yes Minister

    HMRC restricted details of its security procedures to senior officials, it has emerged, just weeks after the department pilloried a junior official for loading the UK’s child benefit database onto CDs which were then lost. The department had a detailed manual covering procedures for handling the benefits database and other …

    Public Sector 17 Dec 2007, 12:59

  • NASA's Deep Impact mislays comet

    Boethin goes awol

    NASA has cancelled a scheduled liaison between its Deep Impact spacecraft and Comet 85P/Boethin because the latter has disappeared without trace, New Scientist reports. Deep Impact completed its principal mission back in 2005, when it fired a 360kg probe into Comet Tempel-1 in an attempt to deduce the body's composition. It …

    Space 17 Dec 2007, 13:07

  • O2 to join IPTV fray next year

    'I want a piece of that non-action!'

    O2 says its IPTV efforts have been such a roaring success in the Czech Republic that it'll roll out a similar offering in the UK 2008. The bubbly comms outfit, which has entered the UK broadband market this year, has attracted 70,000 Czech telly subscribers since September 2006, which isn't bad considering a population of just …

    Telecoms 17 Dec 2007, 13:10

  • Credit crunch cranks up pain for SMBs

    CBI, Bank of Scotland play the grinch

    The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has been forced to scale back its economic expectations for 2008 amid growing concerns about the impact of the credit crisis on UK firms. In a report out today, the CBI said that for the third consecutive quarter it has downgraded its initial forecast in the face of continuing …

    Small Biz 17 Dec 2007, 13:32

  • Parliament's security staff lose parliament security data

    Laptop goes MIA from Westminster

    A laptop containing information about Parliament's security systems disappeared from, er, the department responsible for Parliament's security last week, claims the Daily Telegraph. According to the paper, the machine belonged to an official working for the Serjeant at Arms, and disappeared from inside the parliamentary estate …

    Government 17 Dec 2007, 13:40

  • UK censor to appeal against Manhunt 2 verdict

    Wants High Court to enforce original ban

    The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is to ask the English High Court to uphold its decision that controversial videogame Manhunt 2 should not be sold in the UK. The BBFC today said it is seeking a judicial review of the Video Appeals Committee's decision, announced last week, that the game should be released over …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 14:05

  • Amazon SimpleDB: a database server for the internet

    Disorganized for a chaotic world

    Amazon has announced SimpleDB, the latest addition to what is becoming an extensive suite of web services aimed at developers. It is now in beta. Why bother with SimpleDB, when seemingly every web server on the planet already has access to a free instance of MySQL? Perhaps the main reason is scalability. If demand spikes, …

    Software 17 Dec 2007, 14:21

  • Toshiba unwraps 'world's first' HD DVD-RW laptop

    Toshiba demo'd its laptop-friendly HD DVD-RW drive in June this year and, six months on, the unit is at long last going to be built into a laptop. The machine in question is Toshiba's own monster Qosmio G40, which goes on sale in Japan this Friday. The 17in notebook also contains a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, 2GB of …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 15:05

  • IT chiefs demand centralised e-crime unit

    Cybercrime reporting confusion

    The HMRC child benefit data loss debacle has reinvigorated calls to establish a central police unit to tackle cybercrime. Business leaders are expressing concern that not enough is being done to help victims of computer crime, who are unsure of who to turn to in the event of being subjected to computer-related fraud or attack …

    CIO 17 Dec 2007, 15:17

  • Microsoft to eBay name for $1m

    That's Microsoft Lda, we hasten to add

    Portuguese outfit Microsoft Lda aims to cash in on its name by eBaying the brand and business for a starting price of $1m, Reuters reports. The company registered its title locally in back in 1981, long before Microsoft Corp penetrated the Portuguese market. Since the Beast of Redmond is accordingly not allowed to call itself …

    Financial News 17 Dec 2007, 15:19

  • Nvidia 'nveils nForce 7 chipsets

    Tri-SLI time

    Nvidia has rolled out its first nForce 7-series chipset, this one targeting Intel processors and supporting the GPU maker's new three-way SLI technology. Nvidia's nForce 780i SLI The nForce 780i SLI supports Intel's one-, two- and four-core desktop processors on a frontside bus (FSB) clocked at between 533MHz and 1333MHz. …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 15:37

  • Norwich Union Life fined £1.26m for security holes

    Bullet proof policies - if you're a director

    The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined Norwich Union £1.26m for failing to safeguard customers against fraud. The City regulator said it had slapped the firm's UK life insurance biz, Norwich Union Life, with a record-breaking financial penalty because of a number of glaring system weaknesses which exposed confidential …

    CIO 17 Dec 2007, 15:56

  • Sysadmin admits trying to axe California power grid

    Homer Simpson-style rage attack

    A sysadmin last week pleaded guilty to attempting to disrupt the power grid in California by shutting down a data center that managed the state's electricity supply. Lonnie Charles Denison, 33, of South Natomas in California confessed to breaking a glass cover and pushing an emergency power off button at the Independent System …

    Security 17 Dec 2007, 15:58

  • Facebook sues Canadian smut firm over hacking

    Nice N' Sleazy

    Facebook is suing a Canadian skin-flick firm for trying to hack into its website. The porno outfit, which trades online under the name SlickCash, along with a number of individuals in Toronto allegedly tried to access Facebook's servers at least 200,000 times over two weeks in June. Istra Holdings Inc., a firm affiliated with …

    Security 17 Dec 2007, 18:03

  • Sonnet readies ExpressCard 21-in-1 card reader, writer

    Mac accessory maker Sonnet Technologies will this week begin selling its ExpressCard adaptor capable of taking a staggering 21 different memory card types. Unlike previous ExpressCard 34-format card readers - such as Griffin Technology's ExpressCard 5:1 Reader, reviewed here - 21-in-1 Multimedia Memory Card Reader and Writer …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 19:05

  • Darling plays wait and see on HMRC disc loss

    No intelligence pointing to fraud - no intelligence at all

    The chancellor Alistair Darling today batted away MPs questions on how his department handled the loss of 25 million child benefit records by repeatedly deferring to a report not due for several months. In a statement to Parliament, he approved urgent measures designed to prevent more humiliating government data losses, which …

    Public Sector 17 Dec 2007, 19:09

  • UK driver details lost somewhere in America

    Transport secretary says data drive unparked

    Personal details of three million British driving test candidates are currently enjoying an extended fly drive holiday in the US, the transport secretary Ruth Kelly admitted this evening. Kelly told the House of Commons that a hard drive containing the information had disappeared from a “secure facility” in Iowa City, Iowa. …

    Public Sector 17 Dec 2007, 19:48

  • Surprise: Ohio's e-voting machines riddled with critical security flaws

    Vendors make plea for reality

    Electronic voting machines used in Ohio contain critical security failures that could jeopardize the integrity of state elections, according to a study commissioned by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The report found that the machines were susceptible to numerous hacks, many that required little sophistication on the part …

    Public Sector 17 Dec 2007, 19:55

  • Firewire to gain 3.2Gb/s bandwidth boost

    If it weren't for those pesky kids and their USB 3...

    Not to be outdone by rival peripheral interconnect technology USB, Firewire is likewise having its data throughput increased, the organisation behind the standard said today. But it's target speed of 3.2Gb/s falls some way below that of USB 3.0. Firewire currently supports two speeds: 400Mb/s and 800Mb/s. Both use different …

    reghardware 17 Dec 2007, 20:09

  • MIA in Iowa - personal data on 3m UK driving test candidates

    Prestige contract goes Pearson shaped

    A Hard drive containing personal details of three million candidates for the UK driving theory test has gone missing from a "secure facility" in, perplexingly, Iowa, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has told the House of Commons. The hard drive went missing in May, but 'only' includes name, address, phone number and email - no …

    Government 17 Dec 2007, 22:21

  • Rumors swirl in WiMAX world

    Sprint-Clearwire detente?

    There could be changes afoot in the world of WiMAX. One rumor-happy research firm is claiming that US WiMAX pioneer Clearwire may soon be purchased by Intel, while another is speculating that the company will soon resume its defunct WiMAX relationship with Sprint Nextel. As reported by RCR Wireless News, an analyst with …

    Wireless 17 Dec 2007, 22:33

  • New Trojan preys on commercial banking customers

    Feeding on fat cats

    A researcher has uncovered malware that targets commercial bank customers by logging into their online accounts and wiring large sums to accounts under the control of criminals. The Prg Bank Trojan is known to have cost victims at least $200,000, but the actual damage is suspected to be much higher, said Don Jackson, a …

    Enterprise Security 17 Dec 2007, 23:00