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18th February 2008 Archive

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  • Reduce your exposure to AJAX threats

    Three-step guide

    Fundamentally, there's nothing terribly new about the problems posed by Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) when it comes to security, we just need to apply some good old security principles to this new technology. The problems occur because, unfortunately, there are an awful lot of devils hidden inside the details. One …

    Security 18 Feb 2008, 00:02

  • Build a directory service for web-based services

    Hands on OpenLDAP for the people

    A directory service is an application that lets you store, retrieve and modify information about network-attached resources such as users. If you want to keep a directory of company employees, for example, you would use a directory service instead of storing that information directly in a database. A directory service is …

    Software 18 Feb 2008, 06:02

  • Healthcare at your fingertips - a Choose & Book roadtest

    NHS IT - money, well, spent...

    The NHS's new Choose and Book system, it says here, is a "national electronic referral service which gives patients a choice of place, date, and time for their first outpatient appointment in a hospital or clinic." Ever wondered why they're called "patients"? Well, in recent weeks The Register's Mystery Croaker has had the …

    Public Sector 18 Feb 2008, 07:02

  • Intel's fifth-gen Centrino to launch as Centrino 2

    Chip giant to make darn sure buyers know it's different

    Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome Centrino... 2. Yes, despite numerous annual updates since the launch of Intel's laptop platform, the next version, codenamed 'Montevina', will apparently be released as its second generation. That's what laptop maker moles claim, at least. And, according to a DigiTimes report, they …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 09:52

  • Former contractor sues Google for $25m

    Claims it stole his idea for Google Sky

    A former Google contract worker is claiming $25m damages from the search monolith for allegedly stealing his idea for Google Sky - the heavenly Google Earth feature that allows users to navigate the universe. In the lawsuit filed last Wednesday in Atlanta's Northern District Court of Georgia, plaintiff Jonathan Cobb claims …

    Space 18 Feb 2008, 09:56

  • Panasonic preps Wiimote-proof TV

    Wii shall not be damaged

    Panasonic has designed a plasma TV which it reckons will withstand the force of a fiercely flung Wii Remote. Don't let go... The TV’s display surface can absorb a hit packing up to four Joules of kinetic energy, thanks to a special transparent coating sprayed on the screen. For those without a physics background, a Joule is …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 09:59

  • Steve Fossett dead: Official

    Court rules on disappeared adventurer

    A Chicago court last Friday declared Steve Fossett officially dead - five months after he and his aircraft went missing in Nevada. The 63-year-old adventurer disappeared on 3 September last year after taking off from Barron Hilton's Flying M Ranch, roughly 70 miles southeast of Reno, in his Bellanca Citabria Super Decathalon …

    Science 18 Feb 2008, 10:13

  • Orange gets first shout at Samsung GPS business phone

    i780 makes its first carrier appearance

    Samsung only launched its new i780 Qwerty handset a week ago at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but the phone's already appeared on Orange's website. Samsung's i780: business friendly The 3G HSDPA - up to 3.6Mb/s - phone runs Windows Mobile 6 and boasts a 2.6in, 320 x 240 touchscreen display above a Qwerty …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 10:26

  • Yahoo! and Microsoft's shared shareholders may swing deal

    !!!!! Fingers in both pies

    Some of Yahoo!'s institutional investors are keen for the proposed Microsoft takeover to go ahead, not because they're pleased with the offer price but because they own shares in both Microsoft and Yahoo!. Research from RiskMetrics Group found that 90 per cent of Yahoo!'s institutional investors are also Microsoft shareholders …

    Channel Register 18 Feb 2008, 11:10

  • Moroccan IT engineer arrested over fake Facebook account

    Authorities unamused by Prince impersonation

    A Moroccan IT worker faces jail for setting up a Facebook account in the name of Prince Moulay Rachid, the second in line to the country's throne. Fouad Mourtada, 26, from Goulmima in the south east of Morocco, appeared in court on Friday accused of imitating the Prince without consent, following his arrest on 5 February. He …

    Music and Media 18 Feb 2008, 11:11

  • HMRC blows £1.4m on two-word slogan

    Whalesong and joss-sticks spawn 'HMRC Ambition'

    Her Maj's Revenue and Customs apparently blew nearly £1.4m in 2006 while brainstorming its way to a new slogan which simply reads "HMRC Ambition". According to the Evening Standard, three rebranding meetings were required to come up with the inspirational rebrand, during which HMRC's top brains rejected a "pink and fluffy" …

    Public Sector 18 Feb 2008, 11:13

  • 'Suspicious comment' provokes LAX terminal evacuation

    FBI holds passenger over mystery verbals

    The FBI yesterday detained an unnamed passenger who provoked a two-hour closure of a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport by making a "suspicious comment". Details are sketchy, but the unnamed man was on Southwest Airlines flight 1182 from El Paso, Texas, when he apparently joked to another passenger that he had …

    Policing 18 Feb 2008, 11:15

  • How to downgrade your Apple TV software

    Take 2? No thanks

    I upgraded my Apple TV to the newly released version 2.0 software - dubbed 'Take Two' by Apple - this morning and almost immediately regretted it. The new system software is designed to make the Apple TV even useful as a box for grabbing content online and displaying on an HD TV. If you're looking forward to Apple's movie …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 11:16

  • Investors cheer Toshiba plan to drop HD DVD

    Shares surge on claim it'll ditch format

    Toshiba shares jumped more than six per cent today as investors voiced their approval of the company's alleged decision to abandon the HD DVD optical disc format. There's still no word from the company on claims made this weekend that its board will meet this week to formally accept defeat in the HD format war, but when the …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 11:45

  • Eavesdrop plod: Nobody's listening to me (any more)

    Bugged police bugger bugged by silent telephone

    The former Thames Valley detective at the centre of allegations that police bugged MPs' and lawyers' visits to prison inmates says he still hasn't heard from the official enquiry. This has reportedly led "a friend" of his to brand the enquiry "meaningless". This morning's Telegraph quotes an unnamed chum of Mark Kearney, the …

    Policing 18 Feb 2008, 11:52

  • Griffin Evolve wireless iPod speakers

    Review Sound investment

    Griffin makes some pretty cool bits and bobs for the iPod and iPhone, but its crowning achievement to date has to be the new Evolve iPod dock and speaker set. At first glance, the Evolve is nothing much more than an iPod dock - a fairly trendy looking iPod dock, but an iPod dock nonetheless. Then you pick up the speakers and …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 12:02

  • Samsung R60plus budget laptop

    Unwired Video Review A marvel for less than 400 quid?

    Unlike most of Samsung’s other offerings, the R60plus is a budget notebook. As such, it lacks a few features - a digital video output port and decent graphics capabilities, to name just a couple. But the core power - a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD - make this an absolute steal for the price. Unlike most budget …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 12:09

  • Prince and Village People dive into Pirate Bay

    Young man, there's no need to download

    The Village People have joined forces with pint-sized popster Prince in an effort to slap The Pirate Bay with yet another copyright infringement lawsuit. According to a report on Swedish news website E24.se, Web Sheriff’s John Giacobbi has been talking up plans to sue the BitTorrent tracker site in both US and Swedish courts …

    Music and Media 18 Feb 2008, 12:16

  • OFT sends out scam texts

    And a 'hey look, that was fake' follow-up

    The Office of Fair Trading has sent out thousands of fake scam text messages to 18-24 year-old mobile phone users to raise awareness about scams. The text message, sent out on 15 February 2008 as part of Scams Awareness Month, reads: "Urgent! U may have won £1k cash with '2 Good 2 B True.'" It is followed shortly afterwards by …

    Government 18 Feb 2008, 12:22

  • Nanny agency hacker fined

    Told to sit on the naughty stool

    A woman who admitted rifling through emails in AOL accounts maintained by her former employer, Nannies Inc, while working for a competitor agency, has been fined £500 plus £60 costs. Susan Holmes, 36, of Beckenham in Kent, pleaded guilty to unauthorised access to a computer (contrary to section one of the Computer Misuse Act …

    Enterprise Security 18 Feb 2008, 12:28

  • Ron Sandler leaves Computacenter

    Takes the Rocky Road North

    Ron Sandler has quit his non-executive chairmanship at Computacenter with immediate effect following his decision to run Northern Rock while it is under public ownership. Sandler has been named chairman of the newly nationalised bank. He had previously been overseeing government efforts to find a white knight bidder after it …

    Channel Register 18 Feb 2008, 12:43

  • Most useless gadget ever?

    Q&A

    I just wanted to know the most useless gadget that you have ever owned. To get the list going, my number one is the black and decker Autotape. Take a simple device (measuring tape) that works perfectly, over engineer it (tripled in weight and size) and produce a product that does not work is infuriating and a total waste of …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 13:19

  • Samsung beams down portable projector

    Your travel-friendly projection unit

    If you feel the need to beam your holiday photos onto a wall but are held back by power cables and heavy projectors, then Samsung may have the answer. It’s developed a portable projector that plugs directly into a mobile phone. Samsung's MBP-100 projector works with mobile phones. Image courtesy of Wired Dubbed the MBP-100 …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 13:39

  • US satellite-shoot effort seeds conspiracy theory storm

    Whatever's going on, China and Russia condemn it

    Russia and China have expressed concern over US plans to fire interceptors at a malfunctioning American spy satellite in coming weeks before it plunges fully into the Earth's atmosphere. Meanwhile, it has emerged that Washington launched a crash effort to destroy the spacecraft early in the New Year, less than a fortnight after …

    Space 18 Feb 2008, 13:43

  • Virgin Media taps Microsoft in lengthy email outage

    Urgent Exchange upgrade

    Virgin Media customers have been suffering email outages for several days, prompting the firm to call in Microsoft engineers to help with an urgent upgrade. A mysterious configuration problem was identified on one of VM's eight email server clusters last Wednesday. Microsft engineers have struggled to identify the cause, …

    Data Networking 18 Feb 2008, 13:54

  • Physicists fire up strontium atomic clock

    +/- one second per 200 million years

    US physicists are rather pleased with themselves having perfected a clock "so accurate it will neither gain nor lose even a second in more than 200 million years", Reuters reports. The atomic timepiece, developed in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) - a collaboration between US Commerce Department's …

    Physics 18 Feb 2008, 14:02

  • Total lunar eclipse: look skywards Wednesday

    Last blood-red Moon until 2010

    Aficionados of blood-red Moons will, weather permitting, on Wednesday/Thursday be able to enjoy the last total lunar eclipse until 2010. According to NASA, the event should be visible "from South America and most of North America (on 20 February) as well as Western Europe, Africa, and western Asia (21 February). Partial …

    Space 18 Feb 2008, 14:32

  • Sapphire ups Radeon HD 3850 memory to 1GB

    Core clock upped too

    Graphics card supplier Sapphire has introduced a special version of its AMD ATI Radeon HD 3850 card with double the memory of the regular model. Sapphire's 3850 1GB: double the Ram The 3850 1GB packs in that amount of GDDR 3 memory clocked at an effective 1.66GHz. But while the memory runs at standard speed, the board's GPU …

    Reg Hardware 18 Feb 2008, 15:31

  • Home Office opens sex offender files in pilot scheme

    Limited access under Violent Crime Action Plan

    The British government is to pilot the limited opening up of sex offender information to parents worried about specific individuals who have access to their children. The pilot is part of the Home Office Violent Crime Action Plan, released today. From June this year parents in Cambridgeshire, Cleveland, Hampshire and …

    Government 18 Feb 2008, 15:48

  • Forth Bridge painters to down brushes in 2012

    Finally off to the pub after 100 years

    Painting on the Forth Rail Bridge is scheduled to end in 2012, concluding over 100 years of relentless brushwork which inspired the phrase "like painting the Forth Bridge", the BBC reports. Network Rail is set to end the century of endless slog by stumping £74m for a three-coat paint job similar to that used on oil rigs and …

    Bootnotes 18 Feb 2008, 15:52

  • Opera screeches at Mozilla over security disclosure

    Spilling the beans

    Opera has taken exception to the manner in which Mozilla handled the disclosure of a security bug that affects both firm's browsers. The moderate severity flaw involving file input controls creates a means to upload arbitrary files, assuming hackers know the full path and name of the file. Mozilla fixed the flaw, along with …

    Enterprise Security 18 Feb 2008, 16:55

  • FBI screwed up, spied on entire email network

    One warrant for one address not quite good enough

    The FBI on Friday revealed that human error led to surveillance of an entire email network back in 2006, rather than the single email address approved by the secretive court which approves domestic wiretaps and other forms of e-surveillance. Although the alleged mistake came to light in an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) …

    Policing 18 Feb 2008, 17:17

  • Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

    Abandon SQL

    Database management systems (DBMS) are 20 years out of date and should be completely rewritten to reflect modern use of computers. That's according to a group of academics including DBMS pioneer Mike Stonebraker, Ingres founder and a Postgres architect taking his second controversial outing so far this year. Stonebraker upset …

    Software 18 Feb 2008, 20:07

  • Finland censors anti-censorship site

    Calls it child porn

    Finnish police are blocking more than 1,000 legal websites, including one belonging to a well-known internet activist, under a secretive system designed to prevent access to foreign sites that contain child pornography, according to a group that advocates for individual rights online. Among the estimated 1,700 destinations on …

    Policing 18 Feb 2008, 22:43

  • Spain cuffs Wi-Fi leeching lottery scammers

    El Gordo ladrones

    Spanish police have arrested ten Nigerians suspected of running a spam-fuelled lottery scam that raked in €19,000 ($28,000) in illicit earnings over three months. Investigators say the gang, based in Malaga in southern Spain, piggybacked the wireless internet access of a neighbour to pump out false claims that recipients had …

    Enterprise Security 18 Feb 2008, 23:44