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26th February 2008 Archive

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  • Judge accuses hacks of hacking cannibal ruling

    Self-titillation blamed

    A state judge in Oklahoma has publicly accused reporters covering a high-profile murder trial of hacking into her computer and stealing a secret ruling she issued in the case. Cleveland County District Judge Candace Blalock made the allegations after a local TV station reported that portions of a confession police obtained …

    Crime 26 Feb 2008, 00:21

  • Google Microsoft

    Chattering class

    Once more unto the void... Copyright © Gapingvoid. Originally published at www.gapingvoid.com.

    Software 26 Feb 2008, 02:30

  • Network Solutions sued for price fixing

    ICANN named too

    Network Solutions is being sued for front-running internet domains. In early January, the well-known domain registrar started self-registering domains that customers search for but don't immediately buy. The company insists it's merely trying to crackdown on so-called "domain front running," but at least one customer is clever …

    Small Biz 26 Feb 2008, 03:49

  • Want to snoop on your neighbors? Come and work in Wisconsin

    'Politicians, community leaders, board members, officers, family, friends. All over the place'

    A legal case against Wisconsin's largest utility has provided a candid glimpse into a world where employees use detailed company records to snoop on celebrities and ex-lovers. According to this recently published article by the Associated Press, a massive database maintained by Milwaukee-based WE Energies has been routinely …

    Enterprise Security 26 Feb 2008, 03:56

  • Florida cops taser naked old timer

    Shock result of birthday suit walkabout

    Florida cops last Saturday administered a solid tasering to a 65-year-old man who decided to go for a naked wander through a Sarasota neighbourhood. According to Tampa Bay Online, Duncan Kirk (right), of Bradenton, was spotted in his birthday suit about 7.30pm making his way through locals' back gardens. When deputies duly …

    Bootnotes 26 Feb 2008, 09:55

  • Coastguard, plods swoop on fake Facebook yachtmaster

    Eight month manhunt, DNA sampling for internet pirate

    A 29-year-old yachtswoman used an image of a sailing qualification found on Facebook to charter a yacht last summer, according to the UK government. No harm was done and she paid the charter company in full but, nonetheless, crack Coastguard operatives and nautical plods swung into action. A mere eight months later the maritime …

    Law 26 Feb 2008, 10:01

  • Toshiba unveils sub-notebook HDD pair

    UMPC-friendly too

    Toshiba's post-HD DVD re-habilitation continues - today it announced two new 1.8in hard drives, a family of products it highlighted as a cornerstone of its future product strategy. Enter, then, the 80GB MK8016GSG and the 120GB MK1216GSG, a pair of small HDDs aimed less at portable media players like the iPod - a key …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 10:02

  • HMRC pays criminal for 'tax dodger' discs

    CDs lost in the post? Buy some stolen ones...

    Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is paying a German crook a reward for allegedly stolen information about bank accounts in Liechtenstein. The information is believed to relate to 100 people who between them owe the UK tax authorities more than £100m. The tiny princedom is much loved by tax dodgers for its refusal to …

    Law 26 Feb 2008, 10:15

  • Second Life comes to the third screen

    LinkedIn also goes mobile

    Residents of Sadville will soon be able to get out more, thanks to a mobile version of their virtual utopia currently being beta-tested by mobile software house Vollee. Meanwhile, grown-up social networkers using LinkedIn can already access those vital business contacts while on the move. Mobile social networking is supposed …

    Mobile 26 Feb 2008, 10:18

  • Sony updates advanced digicam range

    Features up, price down

    Sony has expanded its H series of advanced digicam shooters with the H50, which ushers in an increased number of megapixels alongside a welcome price drop from its H9 predecessor model. Sony's Cyber-shot H50 digicam, with smile detection and a 15x optical zoom The Cyber-shot H50 has 9.1 megapixel, compared to the H9’s 8.1 …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 10:32

  • Nintendo to introduce online play charges

    Wii Points inflation

    Nintendo has announced plans to rake in even more cash out of the Wii. It will begin charging gamers to play some video games online over the console's Wi-Fi link. Dubbed Wi-Fi Connection Pay and Play, the service will see virtual red stickers added to certain titles to highlight to users that they must pay to play them online …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 10:40

  • Microsoft measures up

    Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 A meter is a meter is a meter. Not

    The next task in rolling out our 1TB SQL Server 2008 application using Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 is to import signed spatial data into the spatial data type. This is the code: UPDATE tblSpatialData SET SpatialLocation = geography::STGeomFromText('POINT …

    Software 26 Feb 2008, 11:02

  • EU throws €5.5bn at embedded chips and nanotech

    Anoints tech industry with fat wad of cash

    The European Union is to pump billions of euros into a number of key technology projects to bolster Europe's nanotech and embedded systems industries over the next decade. The European Commission (EC) is coughing up a staggering €2.5bn in industrial research in embedded microcomputers. The joint technology initiative, dubbed …

    Public Sector 26 Feb 2008, 11:02

  • MySociety tests FoI website

    Will UK.gov develop auto-deny software?

    A charity is testing a website which automates the submitting, tracking, and publishing requests made under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. MySociety, which runs sites including elected representative service TheyWorkForYou.com and mass pledge system PledgeBank.com, has built a list of FoI contacts at central government …

    Public Sector 26 Feb 2008, 11:08

  • Infra-red cameras to tackle congestion in Leeds

    Face two face

    Trials of technology to enforce use of a high occupancy vehicle route into Leeds will start next month. Leeds City Council has agreed to trials of the latest version of technology which will automatically count the number of people travelling in cars on a high occupancy vehicle lane into the city centre. The trials are expected …

    Policing 26 Feb 2008, 11:11

  • Lenovo intros skinny, low-weight ThinkPad

    X300 debuts

    Lenovo has introduced its latest sub-notebook, the 1.42kg ThinkPad X300, in Japan ahead of its Western debut. The X300 packs a 13in widescreen 1440 x 900 display lit with an LED backlight, but when closed is just 18.6mm thick. It still features an integrated dual-layer DVD writer. The machine's based on a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 11:23

  • eBay parachutes ecommerce veteran into Skype hotseat

    Now make some money

    eBay has dispatched one of its own to take the helm at Skype, in the hope he can go some way to justify its increasingly baffling multi-billion buck purchase of the profit-lite VoIP app. Josh Silverman, current CEO of eBay price comparison tentacle Shopping.com, will take over on 24 March. In his inaugural blog post, he writes …

    VoIP 26 Feb 2008, 11:27

  • Sony and Sharp to partner on tenth-gen LCD plant

    Super-size panel production

    Electronics giants Sony and Sharp have shaken hands on a deal that’ll see both companies invest in a factory designed to punch out cutting-edge LCD panels. The pair will form a jointly owned subsidiary which is set to be up and running by the end of the April 2009. The JV will use a Sharp LCD panel production factory, which is …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 11:42

  • Venturi Mini in-car FM music streamer

    Review Handy, helpful little hi-fi add-on

    This is one of those gadgets that doesn't really fit into any pre-existing category largely due to it actually being three things in one: a standalone hands-free phone device, an RDS FM music streamer and, by way of its USB port, a charger. Out of the box, the Venturi is about the size of an average candybar mobile phone, …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 12:02

  • Sony intros next-gen Blu-ray players

    Latest BD interactivity features added

    Sony last night introduced its latest standalone Blu-ray Disc players, both incorporating the latest Blu-ray interactivity features. Sony's BDP-S350: BD Live coming via firmware update The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 both support what Blu-ray calls Bonus View, but is perhaps better known as picture-in-picture. It'll allow disc …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 12:16

  • Iowa man sacked for demanding prostitute

    Not a legitimate perk, judge rules

    An employee of Riverside Casino and Golf Resort in Iowa was given his marching orders after getting legless in the casino's hotel and demanding a strumpet be sent to his room. Neil Jorgensen, 62, had been given a night's stay at the hotel as a reward to "mark a year's employment", Fox News reports. Having enjoyed a good nosh- …

    Bootnotes 26 Feb 2008, 12:17

  • Adobe throws weight behind SQLite

    Promises cash to bed down embedded database

    Adobe Systems has confirmed it will help sponsor the work of the SQLite database project, joining a new consortium alongside Mozilla and Symbian. SQLite, which is an embedded SQL database engine with core source code in the public domain, has been built into the firm's newly released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) software. …

    Applications 26 Feb 2008, 12:35

  • TangoX dances in to challenge Eee PC, CloudBook

    VIA's NanoBook UMPC design appears again

    Chip maker VIA's sub-notebook reference platform, the NanoBook, has made another appearance, this time as South Korean vendor Sungjut's TangoX. Does it look familiar? It should - it's virtually identical to Maxdata's Belinea s.book 1. Sungjut's TangoX: Belinea s.book 1 rival The resemblance runs right down to the Skype- …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 12:44

  • Blunkett gets another job

    Five doc - Banged Up With Blunkett

    David Blunkett, the ex-Home Secretary, is to front a TV show called Banged Up With Blunkett. Sadly it seems the title is slightly misleading - Blunkett will not be sent to prison but will oversee a Big Brother type show where off-the-rails teenagers are scared back onto the straight and narrow by Blunkett and some ex-cons. …

    Public Sector 26 Feb 2008, 12:52

  • Apple updates laptop lines

    It's Tuesday afternoon. It's time for an Apple upgrade

    Keeping with its tradition of launching new products each Tuesday - including recently the larger capacity iPod Shuffle, and the iPod Touch and iPhone memory upgrades - Apple has updated both the MacBook and MacBook Pro line-up. Apple's MacBook Pro: now with 'Penryn' processors The 15in and 17in MacBook Pro models now …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 13:54

  • Gilligan's bomb: Is it time to panic yet?

    Comment Vicious thrashing fails to stir rotting equine corpse

    Noted ex-Beeb reporter Andrew Gilligan - perhaps most famous for coming out on the wrong end of the Kelly/Hutton/Iraq dossier fracas in 2004 - has been up to a different kind of journalism recently - building bombs for Channel 4. Operating on behalf of the Evening Standard and Channel 4, Gilligan recruited a top UK explosives …

    Law 26 Feb 2008, 14:14

  • iPhone SDK won't be here in February after all

    Luckily you never needed it anyway

    The venerable S. Jobs said it would be out in February, having declared it unnecessary - now it seems the Software Developer Kit will be even later to the party. Business Week - who were right about the SDK itself last time - report a delay of another couple of weeks, though rumours suggest an alpha-test version might be …

    Mobile 26 Feb 2008, 14:17

  • IBM gives mainframe another push

    z10, it's the future

    Big Blue has begun selling its new high-end mainframe computer, which it claims can dramatically cut power costs, although prices for the box do start at $1m. IBM claims its beefy new z10 System, which is equivalent to 1,500 x86 servers, will help government agencies and businesses push down energy costs by up to 85 per cent …

    Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 14:19

  • Odeon kicks Rambo in the 'nads

    Refuses to screen Stallone gorefest

    Sylvester Stallone's latest outing as trigger-happy action man Rambo has suffered a nasty hit in the wallet thanks to the Odeon cinema chain refusing to screen the movie, the BBC reports. The snub is reflected in the first-weekend box office chart for the UK and Ireland, which shows Rambo in third place on £1.24m, with Jumper …

    Entertainment 26 Feb 2008, 14:20

  • HTC to release handset video 'fix'

    But not hardware-accelerated video drivers

    HTC has pledged to release a "software optimisation" that will dramatically improve its handsets' performance. However, the news may not impress phone owners hoping for full video drivers. A number of users of HTC handsets have complained that some models don't provide the video performance they believe the hardware is capable …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 15:27

  • VMware rains hardware deals on Microsoft's parade

    Hypervisor deal leaves Viridian howling at the moon

    VMware today inked a quartet of software deals with server giants Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Fujitsu Siemens. The agreements will infuriate Microsoft which is struggling to get its own virtualisation offering onto the market. VMware said that, under the agreement – financial terms of which remain secret – its ESX 3i …

    Servers 26 Feb 2008, 15:42

  • Siemens to axe 6,000 telecoms jobs

    SENding work overseas

    Siemens is to cull 6,800 jobs at its troubled corporate telecommunications unit, after announcing last summer that a relatively small 600 would have to go. Siemens Enterprise Communications division (SEN) plans to cut 3,800 jobs directly, including up to 2,000 in Germany. SEN's headquarters and other administrative and support …

    Networks 26 Feb 2008, 15:47

  • UK data watchdogs drop Facebook probe

    'Thanks... bitches'

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is now satisfied that Facebook is letting people escape the bear hug of its data retention policy, it said today. The national data watchdog is to stand down its investigation of the site, a spokeswoman told El Reg today. Facebook attracted the ICO's attention last November after …

    Law 26 Feb 2008, 16:03

  • ICO tells Cabinet Office to release Iraq docs

    Cabinet Office: 'Meh'

    The Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has told the Cabinet Office that it must release documents relating to Cabinet debates over the invasion of Iraq. The order refers to discussions between 7 and 17 March 2003 when the Attorney General's advice on the legality of any invasion was discussed. This decision potentially …

    Government 26 Feb 2008, 16:18

  • Pentagon: Bullseyed turkey-sat pieces will all burn up

    You ain't gittin' none of our nuggets

    The US military says it is corporately very pleased with the results of last Thursday's missile intercept of a malfunctioning spy satellite above the Pacific. According to American space radar, only small fragments of the bus-sized spacecraft remain in orbit, and they will all burn up as they re-enter. America's number-two …

    Space 26 Feb 2008, 16:24

  • HP, Dell and Fujitsu answer VMware's USB stick plea

    The 32MB shot heard round the world

    In the much-hyped world of server virtualization, even slapping a hypervisor on a USB stick counts as cause for mass celebration. As evidence, we bring you the joyous shouts of HP, Dell, IBM and Fujitsu Siemens - all of which have firmed their plans to support VMware's trimmed down hypervisor known as ESX Server 3i. Over the …

    Servers 26 Feb 2008, 16:44

  • Vodafone shows off Samsung i640

    The i620's younger brother

    Vodafone has updated its website with news of a successor to the Samsung i620, cunningly called the i640. Samsung's i640 is available through Vodafone's UK wesbite The phone, which is now available to buy in the UK, retains the i620's slider design. Specifications provided by Vodafone are annoyingly vague, though the …

    Reg Hardware 26 Feb 2008, 17:17

  • Hotmail dies on both sides of the Atlantic

    Update 3 Two countries united by a common outage

    According to Reg readers on both sides of the Atlantic, Microsoft Hotmail and other parts of MSN are on the fritz. Two readers in the UK and one in the US shot us emails early in the California am, complaining that Steve Ballmer and company have lost control of their servers. "Has the rest of the world world noticed that …

    Telecoms 26 Feb 2008, 18:14

  • Stallman steps back from Emacs

    Hears call of other projects

    Richard Stallman, industry activist and founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has - once again - relinquished his role as maintainer of the phenomenally successful GNU Extensible, Customizable, Display Editor (Emacs). The news was slipped out on the Emacs developers' forum and Stallman explained his reasons in a later …

    Software 26 Feb 2008, 18:17

  • HP pumps wee EVA box at big businesses

    Blefuscu Corp. rejoices

    Hewlett-Packard is revamping the bottom end of its StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family with a new system the company says will better address that cherished lower-upper-midsized business market. Or was that upper-lower-midsized...? Anyway, it's for enterprise customers that are too big for HPs entry-level …

    Storage 26 Feb 2008, 19:39

  • The Register Green Computing Debate is Go

    Live & Online - February 27 - check out the running order

    The Register Green Computing Debate Live & Online - Now! It's free, it's easy, it's The Register Debate on Green Computing, and it's live right now, right here! Cast your eyes onwards and downwards for the running order: Opening Remarks by Ashlee Vance Presenter: Ashlee Vance, US editor, The Register Time: 10am PST / 1pm …

    Environment 26 Feb 2008, 20:28

  • That Wi-Fi network you thought was secure? It ain't

    'Pwnage Edition' on the prowl

    Businesses using some of the more advanced methods for securing connections to Wi-Fi access points need to take a hard look at the configuration settings of client computers. So say researchers who have documented a simple way to impersonate trusted networks. The attack works on access points that use the Wi-Fi Protected …

    Channel Register 26 Feb 2008, 21:19

  • US senator accuses FCC of rigging 700MHz auction

    Kevin Martin's ménage à trois

    Wireless watchers are still waiting for the final results of the The Great American Wireless Auction, but that hasn't stopped at least one US Senator from dubbing the FCC's $20bn bid-off "a disaster". Yesterday, as bids continued to trickle in for the so-called 700-MHz band - a juicy portion of the US airwaves - Senator Mark …

    Wireless 26 Feb 2008, 22:00

  • VMware at the four front of management

    Manager Manager up next

    VMware continues to barrage customers with more and more management products. The software maker has used its European user conference this week to start early discussions around VMware Lifecycle Manager and Site Recovery Manager. These packages will join the Manager family that already includes Lab Manager and Stage Manager. …

    Servers 26 Feb 2008, 23:08