19th February 2008 Archive

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BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

As Comcast ignores reality

Unhappy that Comcast is busting BitTorrents, BitTorrent has decided to bust this BitTorrent busting. On Friday, as reported by TorrentFreak, a quartet of BitTorrent developers - including three staffers at BitTorrent Inc. - proposed a new extension to the popular P2P protocol that would circumvent Comcast's self-described " …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2008, 00:00
Google absolved of 'crimes against humanity'

$5bn lawsuit meets its maker

Shuka-shuka-shuka-shuka-shuka. Black helicopters were spotted over Scranton, Pennsylvania last week, as Dylan Stephen Jayne saw his civil rights lawsuit against Google flushed once and for all down the proverbial toilet. As some may recall, Jayne had an epiphany back on September 16th, 2007, after he discovered that his …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2008, 00:05
US judge arranges summary execution of Wikileaks.org

Many-headed whistleblower site still standing

The US arm of Wikileaks, a website that makes it easy for whistleblowers to leak documents, has been cut off after hosting evidence that claimed a bank located in the Cayman Islands engaged in money laundering and tax evasion. Dynadot, the US-based company that hosted Wikileaks' main site, not only severed wikileaks.org from …

Law 19 Feb 2008, 02:31
Counterfeit vans: A little-known online grocery scam

Careful - they want to get into your fridge

Upscale online supermarket Ocado has alerted its customers to the hitherto unknown threat of fake delivery vans and drivers. Its "security-conscious customers", says the company in an email, can now arrange to be sent the registration number of the van and the name of the driver a few hours before the deliver is due. Fake or …

Enterprise Security 19 Feb 2008, 06:02
BT business customer contracts to change Thursday

Updated: Two days left to opt out of new 12-month agreement

BT customers with Business PSTN lines will find their contract upgraded to include BT Business Line Divert come Thursday - but will find that upgrade locks them into a 12-month repeating contract unless they opt out before it kicks in. Customers should have received a letter about the change, but several telecommunications …

Networks 19 Feb 2008, 06:02
NASA, UK boffins plan tunnelling Moon mole robot

Beagle 3 to seek Martian fossils in lunar caverns

A joint working group set up by the British government and US space agency NASA has recommended that the two countries cooperate on a "UK-led" unmanned moon mission. Under the so-called "MoonLITE" (Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment) plan, a satellite would be placed in orbit round the Moon. The spacecraft would …

Space 19 Feb 2008, 08:02
Blu-ray versus upscaled DVD?

Q&A

I have a large collection of DVDs. If I was to buy a Blu-ray Disc player, will they be upgraded to HD? I also have a Panasonic up-scaler to 1080p. Is there a difference between this unit's output and Blu-ray? Lastly, what's the recommendation on the best Blu-ray to buy regards price?

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 08:02
It's official: Toshiba surrenders to Blu-ray

Henceforth, today shall be remembered as Victory Format day

Toshiba has officially abandoned its HD DVD technology, surrendering to Sony's Blu-ray in the entertainment industry's biggest format war since VHS beat Betamax in the 1980s. The news follows yesterday's rise in the value of Toshiba shares as investors voiced their approval of the company's alleged decision to abandon the HD …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 09:17
Official: Toshiba discontinues HD DVD

No We surrender

Toshiba has abandoned HD DVD "following recent major changes in the market", it announced this morning. The company spun the failure of its favourite format as a move made to strengthen the industry. The consumer electronics giant said it will "no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders". It will …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 09:21
Heathrow 777 crash: 'No anomalies in the major aircraft systems'

AAIB probe continues

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has issued an update (pdf) on its investigation into the 17 January crash-landing of a Boeing 777 at Heathrow, indicating that there "were no anomalies in the major aircraft systems" and that the "autopilot and the autothrottle systems behaved correctly and the engine control systems were …

Science 19 Feb 2008, 09:55
US declares 1400-mile Pacific sat-shoot exclusion zone

Airspace bar from surface to 'unlimited' altitude

The US military has issued a warning notice barring flights above a large area of the northern Pacific for two and a half hours early on Thursday morning. The stricken spy satellite marked for destruction by US warships will pass over the taped-off area just at this time, indicating that the first shot will take place then. …

Space 19 Feb 2008, 09:59
Microsoft poised to unveil WorldWide Telescope?

Google Sky beware Redmond's all-seeing galactic eye

On 27 February, Microsoft will use the TED Conference in Monterey, California, to launch its "WorldWide Telescope" - a downloadable Google Sky-busting app allowing users to "pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow". That's according to TechCrunch, which cites a "source close to …

Applications 19 Feb 2008, 10:01
Gates! says! Yahoo! offer! fair!

!!!!! Well, he would say that wouldn't he?

Microsoft's offer for Yahoo! is fair, it's not going up and the company should take a long, hard look at it, Bill Gates reckons. Although many observers expect Microsoft to raise its offer for Yahoo!, Bill Gates said yesterday the company was happy with the price on the table. Gates told AP: "We sent them a letter and said we …

Financial News 19 Feb 2008, 10:09
BBC commercial tentacle confirms iTunes store push

Now see here

BBC shows including Life on Mars, Spooks and The Mighty Boosh have today been made available to buy on the iTunes video store, as first revealed by The Register on Friday last week. The move is part of a drive to increase the revenues brought in by the public broadcaster's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. The BBC charter allows …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2008, 10:55
Piscine killer menaces UK rivers

Angler lands 2ft snakehead amid invasion fears

A UK angler has provoked a piscine killer invasion alert by landing a 2ft snakehead in a Lincolnshire river - the first recorded example in British waterways of the highly-invasive southeast Asian species which will reportedly eat anything which crosses its path. Andy Alder, of Lincoln, hooked the beast while using a sprat as …

Biology 19 Feb 2008, 10:59
Get some respect in data management

Leave the model behind

Having worked in the data-management field for more than ten years, the most common complaint I've heard voiced by data architects is: "Why don't we get more visibility, respect, and funding?" Data managers and architects often feel like second-class citizens compared to their counterparts programming new applications, using new …

Software 19 Feb 2008, 11:02
Elonex punts £99 Linux laptop

Eee by gum

UK PC maker Elonex will next week launch an offensive against Asus' elfin Eee PC by offering a compact Linux laptop for just £99 ($193/€132). Elonex's One: for schools and colleges That's less than half the price of a 4GB Eee PC - if you can lay your hands on one. Asus' machine is still tricky to obtain, stock watching …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 11:19
Orange to shift the Shift

Orange has confirmed that it will exclusively offer HTC's Shift Windows Vista-running UMPC to Brits from the end of this month. HTC's Shift: comes to Orange later this month Rumours appeared earlier this month that Orange would be the first UK network operator to offer that Shift. However, the network operator's …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 11:25
Claimed ignorance foils Economist domain case

'I'd never heard of The Economist,' says economist

Financial magazine The Economist has failed in its attempt to gain control of the internet address theeconomist.com. The address was not transferred to it because the owner claimed that he had never heard of the magazine when he registered the name. The site simply carries a picture of Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of …

Small Biz 19 Feb 2008, 11:53
Cowon iAudio A3 personal media player

Review Watch out, Archos

There's something almost bespoke about the Cowon A3 media player, a device that seems unapologetically to have had time and money lavished on its technical ability rather than its packaging. Out of the box, the rather bluff and chunky A3 looks and feels exactly like the Cowon A2, weighing a not inconsiderable 280g for the 30GB …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 12:02
Häagen-Dazs battles honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder

Funds research into apiarian apocalypse

Ice cream manufacturer Häagen-Dazs is stumping up a $250,000 research grant to university researchers in California and Pennsylvania to probe the cause of "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) - the unexplained sudden disappearance of millions of honeybees which has affected hives around the world since 2006. As we reported last …

Biology 19 Feb 2008, 12:02
Nvidia to unveil GeForce 9600 this week?

But top-of-the-line monster card delayed, moles claim

Nvidia's first GeForce 9-series GPU will be launched in two days' time, it has been claimed. But the anticipated 9800 GX2 will not be joining it. The 65nm GeForce 9600 GT will debut on 21 February, card maker moles have claimed by way of DigiTimes. The current GT part, the 8600, contains 32 unified shader processing engines, …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 12:03
Researchers probe Southern Ocean's icy depths

Here be monsters, me biodiverse buckaroos

Researchers from Australia, France and Japan have returned to port from the Southern Ocean following a two-month jaunt to probe the icy depths, which yielded some impressive footage of the abyss as well as a range of hitherto-unknown Antarctic sea monsters. Oz's Aurora Australis joined France's L'Astrolabe and Japan's Umitaka …

Biology 19 Feb 2008, 12:39
Porsche to challenge London CO₂ penalty in court

Better to drive a Land Rover or a Jeep, under ~~Red~~ Green Ken

Prestige/performance car maker Porsche is to challenge London Mayor Ken Livingstone's punitive £25-a-day "gas guzzler" traffic-charge, to be levied on cars with high CO2 emissions. The car firm will seek a judicial review of the mayor's policy. "A massive congestion charge increase is quite simply unjust," Porsche's UK boss …

Environment 19 Feb 2008, 12:44
Please don't leave me... bitch

Breaking up with Facebook is (less) hard to do

It was a long time coming but the web's favourite has-been-in-the-making, Facebook, has finally agreed to let users who are bored with it wrest their personal information from its advertising salesmens' clutches. Facebook made a botched attempt at unlocking the prison gates last week, after the New York Times deigned to notice …

ID 19 Feb 2008, 12:47
Ofcom cracks down on London pirates

Air traffic and fire brigade breathe sigh of relief

Ofcom has shut down 22 pirate radio stations in a combined operation with Hackney, Haringey, Tower Hamlets, and Islington boroughs, arresting three people, raiding one studio, and writing angry letters to 20 night clubs whose advertising was funding the broadcasts. The regulator's last crackdown was in 2005, when it closed the …

Music and Media 19 Feb 2008, 12:58
Symantec heads for the cloud with storage and back-up service

Panic button included

Symantec had been winding this pitch for a while now, but the data security giant just lobbed a web-hosted storage and backup service of its very own into play. Once again Symantec faces off with EMC in a storage rivalry. This time it's the latest storage industry craze of charging customers monthly to have their data backed …

Storage 19 Feb 2008, 13:02
Intel plays matchmaker with Sprint and Clearwire

$2bn bid to save WiMAX

It looks like Intel has saved American WiMAX from certain destruction. According to The Street, Clearwire and Sprint are on the verge of announcing a joint WiMAX venture backed by $2bn from the world's largest chip manufacturer. Both Sprint and Clearwire are doggedly building broadband wireless networks based on the fledgling …

Wireless 19 Feb 2008, 13:02
DVD Jon aims to smash digital Tower of Babel

doubleTwist rolls out media sharing utility

doubleTwist, the firm founded by scourge of DRM manufacturers Jon Lech Johansen (AKA DVD Jon) last March, has released software designed to allow users to share digital media files - including copy protected content - across devices. doubleTwist desktop allows users to "share and sync digital media without worrying about …

Applications 19 Feb 2008, 13:24
Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues

Embrace the standards, nicely, or get out of browsers

If there was a functioning market for web browsers and operating systems, the past few weeks would have seen two announcements from Microsoft. After a firestorm of criticism from the web design community about Internet Explorer 8's misguided mode switching proposal, Redmond would have publicly backed down. Second, Microsoft …

Applications 19 Feb 2008, 14:02
Obituary: HD DVD 2002-2008

(Almost) Forgotten Tech No flowers, please

Toshiba's decision to end its production of HD DVD players and recorders effectively marks the death of the optical disc format once touted as the natural successor to the phenomenally popular DVD. HD DVD was born in 2002 out of the apparent unwillingness of Toshiba and a number of other DVD Forum members to back a blue-laser …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 14:03
MS showcases Red Ring of Death Xbox 360 at expo

Whoops

Microsoft executives will be a little red-faced today after an Xbox 360 on display at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco contracted the infamous ‘Red Ring of Death’ disease. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The console was set-up as a demo unit in an area dedicated to …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 14:12
Sony to pump ¥22bn into OLED production

Fat cheque for skinny display tech

Sony will spend ¥22bn (£105m/€140m/$205m) on OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) panel production, part of its attempt to position the ultra-thin display technology as the successor to LCD. Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV: small screen, big price Sony plans to spread the cash across “middle and large size OLED panel production …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 14:24
RIM and Motorola square up over patents

Texas fisticuffs

RIM and Motorola are suing each other for patent infringement, with both companies refusing to pay the other for using their patented technologies. RIM is also complaining that Motorola is demanding "exorbitant" fees with the intention of damaging its business. The spat started with RIM filing a civil action, in Texas of …

Mobile 19 Feb 2008, 14:27
Japan brings down Godzilla of spam

Old skool spam suspect taken in

Japanese police have arrested a "prolific spammer" who allegedly bombarded inboxes with hundreds of millions of messages punting internet gambling and dating sites. Investigators reckon Yuki Shiina, 25, sent as many as 2.2 billion spam messages using what appears to be rudimentary spamming techniques. He allegedly purchased a …

Spam 19 Feb 2008, 15:23
Apple doubles iPod Shuffle song space

More storage for your clothes-clip player

Apple today refreshed its iPod Shuffle range and added a 2GB version of the miniature player. It also dropped the price of the 1GB Shuffle. Apple's iPod Shuffle: now with a 2GB capacity The company’s larger-capacity model doubles the amount of storage capacity previously available to Shuffle owners. However, don’t expect …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 15:28
Fire extinguisher resolves German smoking dispute

Anti-smoker powder coats puffing girlfriend

An anti-smoking German man earned himself a light cuffing last Sunday after his girlfriend declined a request to stop smoking in his flat, and he responded by emptying a fire extinguisher over her and the Bielefeld domicile. According to Spiegel, the 42-year-old reacted angrily to his missus lighting up, gave her a bit of a …

Bootnotes 19 Feb 2008, 15:48
Consumer group slams 'unfair' software licenses

EULAugh, I cry

Some of the world's biggest software companies are facing possible investigation by the UK's Office of Fair Trading because their licensing agreements are unfair. The UK's National Consumer Council (NCC) checked 25 products, including Microsoft Office for Mac 2004, Corel WordPerfect Office X3, Apple iLife, Adobe Photoshop, …

Small Biz 19 Feb 2008, 16:01
HP's Linux sub-notebook spied on web

Compaq two-one-three-three to challenge Eee

HP's going after the Eee PC with a compact laptop that sports an 8.9in display and more connectivity options than the elfin Asus machine currently offers. So says Engadget, which has posted some pics and a very basic spec. HP's Compaq 2133: like the Eee, only more shiny Image courtesy Engadget The Compaq 2133 looks like a …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 16:44
Vodafone, Orange to share UK mast sites

3,000 masts gone = better access for all. Eh?

UK mobile operators Vodafone and Orange have announced a plan to share mast sites while continuing to compete with each other. The two telcos said today that joint sites would begin operating later this year. "This deal will see our two companies work together to ensure our customers benefit from better, deeper and faster …

Mobile 19 Feb 2008, 17:11
Sun decides TI's not so ab fab

Bring us TSMC

Sun Microsystems' long, wafer-wrapped embrace with TI will start coming to a close. Earlier today, Sun announced that TSMC will manufacture future versions of its UltraSPARC processors. TI will hang on as Sun's foundry through the 65nm generation of processors, which includes Sun's upcoming Rock server chip. TSMC will then …

Servers 19 Feb 2008, 18:21
Samsung U940 spied online

FCC documents uncover CDMA handset

Pictures and details of Samsung's US-oriented Qwerty keyboard-equipped slider handset have been revealed in documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Samsung's U940: CDMA Dubbed the U940, and supposedly codenamed 'Q-ball', the CDMA handset is strikingly similar to Samsung’s existing F700 handset …

Reg Hardware 19 Feb 2008, 21:02
Mosso's utility hosting turns Impressionistic

3 cents for 1,000 hits

As web-based, on-demand computing continues to grow in popularity, there will be plenty of twisting and turning as companies feel the market out. Pricing, of course, is at the top of the service provider's minds — and we're bound to see a fair share of alternative cost models. Take for instance Mosso, a startup backed by …

Servers 19 Feb 2008, 21:04
Hacker holds onto ill-gotten gains thanks to US courts

The Dorozhko Defense

This story was updated to correct an error in an earlier version. Dorozhko was never accused of breaking into networks belonging to IMS Health. Oleksandr Dorozhko made almost $300,000 in stock-option trading by using insider information that was obtained after someone hacked into a financial network and stole confidential …

Crime 19 Feb 2008, 21:19
Giant PC outsourcer throws in the towel

Sanmina-SCI sells business to Foxconn and Lenovo

Sanmina-SCI, the US electronics contract manufacturing company, has sold its PC business to Foxconn, a major Taiwanese competitor, for between $80m-$90m. It is also selling its Mexican PC plant to Lenovo, for an undisclosed sum. Foxconn will get its mitts on factories in the US, Mexico and Hungary, but we must wait for Sanmina …

Channel Register 19 Feb 2008, 21:26
ICANN grills domain-hogging Network Solutions

Who's the front runner here?

Is Network Solutions attempting to reinvent reality? ICANN's looking into it. Last week, at its meeting in New Delhi, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers grilled the popular domain registrar about its recent efforts to protect/bilk loyal customers. Network Solutions is now self-registering domains its …

Small Biz 19 Feb 2008, 23:45
Fat cat HP cashes in on PCs, servers and printers in Q1

Super Hurd laughs in the face of imploding economy

Go ahead, Mark Hurd. Rip off those studious glasses and unbutton that blue Oxford shirt. We know there's a Superman costume lurking under the Clark Kent facade. Mark "the Cutter" Hurd's HP may well have injected a fresh helping of optimism into the US financial markets. HP today reported a 13 per cent first quarter rise in …

Channel Register 19 Feb 2008, 23:49
Apple gives Xsan file system a sequel

In a world without Apple RAID hardware, one man stands agai...

Apple is offering the first major upgrade to its Storage Area Network (SAN) file system today, while kicking its RAID storage hardware out into the cold. Xsan2 is a Leopard Server-tailored file system that ties into several of the operating system's features. For example, iCal Server, Mail Server and Podcast Producer can use …

Storage 19 Feb 2008, 23:58