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1st February 2008 Archive

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  • Gosling gets closure on Java

    Dream realized

    James Gosling, the Father of Java, today gave his blessing to the latest attempt to simplify the programming language. In his blog today, the Sun Microsystems vice president said he "absolutely" backs the proposal for putting closures into Java Developer Kit 7.0, the next version of Java. Closures are the brainchild of Neal …

    Developer 1 Feb 2008, 00:41

  • Dell's tightened belt garottes Canada

    'Dell Day' canceled this year

    Dell is closing its call center in Edmonton, Canada this spring, after less than four years of operation. The move is expected to put more than 900 people out of work. The closure follows news of an unspecified number of job cuts at Dell's Ottawa call center. Dell also scrapped plans to open a second facility in Ottawa, which …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2008, 01:53

  • Et tu, Gmail? Simple hack defeats last barrier to decades-old attack

    Only Salesforce standing

    In the morass of Web 2.0 insecurity, Gmail and other Google-hosted services stood out as a beacon of hope. That's because they were believed to be the only free destination that offered protection against a decade-old vulnerability that enabled hackers to steal sensitive authentication details as they pass over Wi-Fi hotspots …

    Security 1 Feb 2008, 02:13

  • Google approaching world domination

    Wall Street wants more

    Google wants you to know it's well on its way to taking over the world. This afternoon, during a quarterly earnings call with industry analysts and journalists, CEO Eric Schmidt focused on the company's "strong international growth" in 2007. "More than half of our search traffic is now outside the United States," he said. " …

    Financial News 1 Feb 2008, 02:44

  • Boffin shortage will blight Blighty's prosperity

    Report: Soft PhDs no way to earn hard currency

    The UK's top scientific body has warned that the swarms of new PhDs being churned out by British universities include a falling proportion from scientific or technological disciplines. It is feared that this lack of knowhow may render Blighty uncompetitive in the hi-tech, value-added sectors which alone can support Western …

    Science 1 Feb 2008, 05:02

  • Banks need to learn to keep their own data safe

    Quocirca's changing channels Vaulting ambitions

    Every so often the mainstream press gets its teeth into a story and can’t let go. In the second half of 2007 and continuing into 2008 the UK press started to uncover a series of stories about data losses. There is always a degree of opportunism and scaremongering with news runs; a chance to bash a new government, an appeal to a …

    Crime 1 Feb 2008, 07:02

  • Japanese geek trio blow up mice

    The inflatable input device

    For the traveller, a mouse's bulk makes it a difficult peripheral to pack. Now some Japanese designers have come up with a flat-pack design. The Jellyclick mouse: just a load of hot air? The trio’s Jellyclick mouse is inflatable and... er... that’s about it. It can be rolled or folded to sit inside your shirt pocket or …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 09:02

  • Shell IT staff disgusted at mega profits

    Union demands talks over job cut plans

    Union representatives for Royal Dutch Shell's IT workers demanded talks with the firm's top management yesterday over the outsourcing of up to 3,000 jobs at the oil giant. The call came as Shell reported full-year earnings of £13.9bn – the biggest ever profit for a British company. The numbers prompted outrage amongst workers …

    Financial News 1 Feb 2008, 10:14

  • Euro privacy chief predicts Google policy flip

    EU-Google negotiations going swimmingly

    The head of Europe's privacy watchdogs said that he is still in negotiations with Google about a major data retention dispute and is confident that the search giant will change its policies. Google has claimed its data retention policy is forced on it by an EU law, but that it would keep identifiable customer data for 18 …

    Law 1 Feb 2008, 10:22

  • BT gets cool with Fresca

    Not just frothy man

    BT has bought Fresca - a specialist provider of ecommerce services based in High Wycombe. Fresca specialises in setting up ecommerce websites for fashion brands. Clients include Oasis, Karen Millen, Thomas Pink, Principles, Harvey Nichols and Warehouse. Fresca was set up in 2000 and was 85 per cent owned by directors and …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2008, 10:27

  • US navy electro-cannon test successful

    Video Hypersonic railgun slug breaks Mach 7

    The US Navy's electromagnetic railgun project notched up a successful test yesterday. The radical new protoype weapon, operated by the the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, fired* shot a hypersonic aluminium slug at approximately Mach 7.5 to generate muzzle energy of 10.6 megajoules. Here's a vid of the test: The …

    Science 1 Feb 2008, 10:27

  • SanDisk prices up 32GB SDHC memory card

    Capacious but costly

    SanDisk yesterday dealt its most capacious SD memory card yet: a 32GB SDHC that it expects to see on store shelves in April priced at $350 (£176/€235). That's more than the cost of the Eee PC we thought we might put one of these cards into... SanDisk's 32GB Ultra II SDHC: capacious but costly SanDisk also showed off a 16GB …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 10:33

  • Rock reveals graphics benchmark beating monster laptop

    Scores almost 15,000 on 3DMark06, vendor claims

    UK gaming notebook specialist Rock has rolled out what it claims is its most powerful graphics offering yet: a quad-core machine with a pair of Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX GPUs on board. The Xtreme SL8 is a 17in machine - the screen resolution's 1920 x 1200 - and is offered with a choice of 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800 or 2. …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 10:57

  • Scientists create 'no-tears' onion

    No more crying while you're frying

    Scientists have created an onion that won't cause you to cry using Australian-developed biotechnology to switch off the gene behind the enzyme that brings on the waterworks. Using gene-silencing technology, the New Zealand-based research institute Crop and Food pioneered the breakthrough and hopes could lead to a prototype …

    Biology 1 Feb 2008, 11:01

  • Parent power pulls Woolworth's 'Lolita' kiddies' bed

    Online child temptress furniture outrage

    Woolworths has withdrawn a kids' bed from its online tenctacle after campaigning parents objected to the fact it was rather unfortunately called the "Lolita Midsleeper Combi". The outrage was spotted earlier this week by the editor of Raisingkids.co.uk, Catherine Hanly, who promptly asked in the site's forums: "Am I being …

    Bootnotes 1 Feb 2008, 11:04

  • Coda green lights Agresso bid

    Show me the way to the next SAASy bar

    Coda has recommended Unit 4 Agresso's 205 pence per share cash offer to shareholders after no other suitors stepped forward with a bid for the financial management software firm. Netherlands-based Unit 4 Agresso approached Coda in December last year, although the two firms didn't reveal a takeover bid could be in the pipeline …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2008, 11:12

  • AMD adjusts three-core Phenom roll-out plan, moles claim

    Quad-core roadmap revised too

    AMD's upcoming tri-core Phenom 8000-series desktop processors will appear next month, though only two of the anticipated three three-core CPUs will make it to market, it has been claimed. According to PC manufacturer sources cited by Chinese-language site HKEPC, only the 2.1GHz Phenom 8400 and the 2.3GHz Phenom 8600 will …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 11:21

  • NASA to beam Beatles song into deep space

    4 Feb marks 'Across The Universe Day'

    NASA will on 4 February beam Beatles' ditty Across the Universe into deep space to mark the 40th anniversary of the day the Fab Four recorded the song, as well as the launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1 and the 45th birthday of its Deep Space Network (DSN). According to the press release, the transmission is being …

    Space 1 Feb 2008, 11:27

  • Motorola poised to offload mobile biz

    Sell it or spin it off?

    Motorola is considering various options to sort out its mobile phone division which lost the company $1.2bn in 2007. The company has gone from decent performance in the handset field, most recently with its RAZR phones, to just over 12 per cent market share by the end of last year. In the fourth quarter of 2007 Motorola sold …

    Mobile 1 Feb 2008, 11:48

  • BOFH: Carbon neutrality

    Episode 4 This is what we think of carbon credits...

    "What're they for?" the PFY asks as the Boss rolls in a trolley load of brightly coloured plastic bins. "They're for our recycling initiative," the Boss responds. "Red for plastic, white for paper, yellow for cardboard and blue for polystyrene." "What about glass?" the PFY asks. "Glass is to be sorted by colour into bins …

    BOFH 1 Feb 2008, 12:02

  • Microsoft! bids! $44.6bn! for! Yahoo!

    Update 3 F*ck! me!

    Microsoft has made a $44.6bn takeover bid for Yahoo!. Microsoft is offering Yahoo! shareholders a mix of cash and stock under the unsolicited offer. The $31 per share offer represents a massive 62 per cent premium on Yahoo!'s closing price yesterday. Yahoo!'s board of directors promised to look at the offer "carefully and …

    Financial News 1 Feb 2008, 12:04

  • Nokia N82 smartphone

    Review Don't judge this book by its cover

    Nokia has boosted its N series with its most heavily-featured candybar yet. With a five-megapixel Carl Zeiss-lensed, xenon flash equipped camera and GPS, it’s comparable to the N95 and one of the best cameraphones around. Even if it’s not the prettiest. Working on the principle that you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 12:13

  • All blue-eyed people share one common ancestor

    Genetic mutation responsible for Sinatra

    A University of Copenhagen team has identified the gene which around 6-10,000 years ago underwent a genetic mutation in one individual who eventually gave rise to all blue-eyed people. Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine began his research in 1996, when he "first implicated the OCA2 gene as …

    Biology 1 Feb 2008, 12:42

  • Image uploader bug blights MySpace

    Nasty ActiveExploit

    Security flaws in an ActiveX control used in MySpace upload images onto the social networking sites leave users open to attack. Facebook users may also be at risk. A buffer overflow vulnerability in Aurigma's Image Uploader Control Library might be used to compromise a user's system. The affected control is used for uploading …

    Enterprise Security 1 Feb 2008, 13:02

  • ID cards target the young, MySpace targets MySpace

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

    Privacy back-and-forths The Halifax bank has issued unsuspecting customers with trial wave-and-pay RFID-enabled bank cards. As Reg reader Pete found out, it can be hard to extricate yourself from this unasked-for privilege. A US federal judge has banned company AccuSearch from selling customers' phone records without their …

    Business 1 Feb 2008, 14:08

  • Carphone Warehouse boss shuffles off the net

    Blog off Charlie

    Dough-faced Carphone Warehouse chief and Daily Mail director Charles Dunstone has decided to keep his thoughts to himself from now on - he's deleted his blog from the TalkTalk website. Blogging got marketing wonks very excited a couple of years ago, when the strategy boutique convinced them it heralded a new paradigm of " …

    Mobile 1 Feb 2008, 14:09

  • Hamster-in-rain emergency prompts 999 call

    Weary South Wales cops finger phone timewasters

    South Wales police force has published a list of top time-wasting 999 calls during the past year in an attempt to convince people not to pick up the phone unless it's really necessary. According to icWales, the highlight of 2007 came when one woman demanded officers come and cuff her boyfriend because he'd put her hamster out …

    Bootnotes 1 Feb 2008, 14:15

  • 419 scammers plead guilty in US

    20 years' prison time?

    Three West African defendants pleaded guilty to federal charges of running an advance-fee scheme that targeted U.S. victims with promises of millions of dollars, including money from an estate and a lottery. The guilty plea proceedings were held this week before US Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr. at the federal courthouse …

    Crime 1 Feb 2008, 14:54

  • Beeb iPlayer gets Firefox-friendly

    Auntie's IE hegemony broken for download client

    The BBC has finally made the download version of its iPlayer on-demand TV service compatible with Firefox, after six months as an Internet Explorer-only product. There's still no support for operating systems other than Windows, but it marks the first official break with the multi-million-pound application's Microsoft-only …

    Applications 1 Feb 2008, 14:55

  • Rocket train smashes world land-speed record

    Secret warhead tested in helium-filled polytunnel

    It's been a big 24 hours for the US weapons-tech establishment in terms of making stuff go really fast. American war-boffins shot a railgun slug with ten megajoules of muzzle energy (and speed of Mach 7+) yesterday; a different weapons lab has also broken the world land speed record. The new benchmark - with reference to …

    Science 1 Feb 2008, 15:04

  • Ballmer! explains! hostile! Yahoo! bid!

    !!!!! 'We've been engaged for months'

    Steve Ballmer all but confirmed that Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo! for scale, branding and audience rather than any technology or products the web media co owns. Ballmer claimed today that Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! would be a great deal for shareholders on both sides and will let the new company compete effectively in the …

    Financial News 1 Feb 2008, 15:20

  • Man buys MacBook Air, pulls it apart, takes pics

    Inside Apple's latest

    Worried about changing the battery in a MacBook Air? Don't - according to one tech site that's taken the skinny machine to bits, opening the laptop up is "a surprisingly pleasant task". Cynics will, of course, say the 13.3in notebook that's short on stature but big on hype should stay that way, but at least iFixIt's …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 15:20

  • Alcatel-Lucent confirms 400 job cuts in France

    All part of the same cull

    Alcatel-Lucent said today that it plans to slash 400 jobs in France as part of its brutal cost-cutting strategy to axe 4,000 employees worldwide. The announcement follows on from the networking group's run of dire quarterly results which has seen the firm lurch into the red. Alcatel-Lucent said in a statement that it had …

    Data Networking 1 Feb 2008, 16:17

  • Sony shows off new shooters

    Photographers have never had so much choice

    Sony has taken the wraps off a trio of new snappers, two DSLRs extend Sony's Alpha range: the 10.2 megapixel 300 and the 14.2 megapixel 350, plus the Cyber-shot DSC-H10 - an 8-megapixel high-zoom compact. Both sport a 2.7in tilting LCD screen; anti-shake technology; nine-point autofocus; internal anti-dust mechanism; spot, …

    Reg Hardware 1 Feb 2008, 17:02

  • SkypeFinds another security snafu

    More VoIP security woes

    Skype has patched a flaw involving its SkypeFind feature. But the security researcher who discovered the flaw said the VoIP platform remains exposed to cross-zone scripting vulnerabilities, like the latest SkypeFind bug and an earlier flaw involving movie files. SkypeFind lets users recommend businesses, or post reviews, to …

    Security 1 Feb 2008, 17:11

  • Euro lawyers see tortuous road ahead for Microsoft's Yahoo! bid

    !!!!! Antitrust-ageddon

    Microsoft is likely to face a torrid time from European regulators before it can even think of closing its proposed takeover of Yahoo!. A leading UK competition lawyer told the Reg today: "Any big Microsoft acquisition is likely to be looked at very carefully, especially if it is in an area where they have been complaining …

    Law 1 Feb 2008, 17:36

  • VCs navigate cash vs. carnage scenario with green tech

    Swarming to the next new thing

    Over the past four years, venture capitalists have tossed huge amounts of cash at "green-tech" startups. The green, er, field has become saturated with speculative funding, rivaling even the two mainstays of Valley vulture capitalists: IT and life sciences. What was once the domain of well meaning, but ultimately dirt poor …

    Environment 1 Feb 2008, 18:55

  • Gurus answer MapReduce young turks

    Database blues and grays

    The two database gurus whose blog produced a storm of protest over their criticism of Google's MapReduce technology last month have hit back with a robust defense. In their latest joint posting Michael Stonebraker and David DeWitt have respond to four specific issues raised by their critics: that MapReduce is not a database …

    Software 1 Feb 2008, 21:15

  • Lessig gives up on Free Culture

    Aims Ivory Tower at 'Corruption'

    Well, that's it. You'll never have to listen to Stanford professor Larry Lessig talk about Free Culture again. Lessig is moving on - to fight the good fight against "Corruption". The technology-leaning lawyer announced this last year, but has continued to discuss Wikipedia, the Creative Commons and the like. That is until …

    Law 1 Feb 2008, 21:38

  • Microsoft! needs! Yahoo! developers! developers! developers!

    Analysis Lose the tie, SteveO!

    The rhetoric surrounding Steve Ballmer's unsolicited $44.6bn offer for Yahoo! will focus on the obvious - the potential market share growth that a Microsoft and Yahoo! tie-up would have against Google. For all the talk of saving Yahoo! shareholders, Google is uppermost in the Microsoft chief executive's mind, and Microsoft is …

    Developer 1 Feb 2008, 21:43

  • Angry investor offers to buy Transmeta

    We can whip it into shape

    Cash-starved chip designer Transmeta has received an unsolicited buyout offer from its largest, and very irate, shareholder. Banking firm Riley Investments wants to pay $15.50 a share in cash to transform the troubled company into a full-fledged patent squatting joint. The firm aims to kill most of the company's predicted …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2008, 21:48

  • Pipex Business calls in the strategy boutique

    Joss-stick session produces Latinate rebranding

    News of another nail in the coffin of one of UK broadband's most venerable names reaches Vulture Central. Pipex Business, one of the remnants spun out of the Pipex group as part of its voluntary self-dismemberment, has dimmed the lights, cranked up the whalesong, and is changing its name to Vialtus (pronounced vee-altus). It …

    Telecoms 1 Feb 2008, 21:52

  • Gov. war gamers hack servers to stay ahead

    Mock cyberwar turns devious

    Participants in US government-run cyberwar games tried to cheat - by hacking into the games. The shenanigans prompted organisers to send an urgent email telling the players to back off. The Cyber Storm games took place over five days in February 2006 and involved the mock execution of attacks by anti-globalisation hackers …

    Applications 1 Feb 2008, 22:13

  • Blue-eyed schoolgirls headshot vegetarians

    Comments Save the world from the likes of Alicia Silverstone

    Ryanair has come under fire from the Advertising Standards Agency for an ad featuring a "saucy schoolgirl". Despite being ordered to, Ryanair refused to withdraw the ad. You were disbelieving and appreciative: So, let me get this straight... they placed an advert in a few newspapers, which a couple of people complained about. …

    Letters 1 Feb 2008, 23:07