14th March 2008 Archive

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Three questions for the Jesus SDK

eComm What? No IM?

Christopher Allen has some questions for Steve Jobs. Speaking this afternoon at eComm in Mountain View, the man behind iPhoneWebDev.com, billed as the largest iPhone developer support community, raised three issues that Apple's chief executive failed to address when unveiling the Official Jesus Phone SDK last week. And you …

Mobile 14 Mar 2008, 01:37
EMC upgrades Centera software

In brief Disks hold more objects and stuff...

EMC today is pushing a new version of its Centera operating software, CentraStar 4.0 — but be still, your beating heart. For a digit upgrade, there doesn't appear to be much to it. The software bump will double the amount of objects that each individual disk drive can contain. Yesterday, 500GB or 700GB disks in a Centera …

Storage 14 Mar 2008, 02:45
Time for genuine 'write-once, run-anywhere' Java

Oracle and BEA: a new hope?

One of the big selling points of Java has been its "write once, run anywhere" capabilities. Of course, in practice, this has always been "write once, test everywhere" you intend to deploy your chosen application. With the planned purchase of BEA Systems by Oracle, I got to thinking about what this meant for the "write once, run …

Applications 14 Mar 2008, 06:02
Next Eclipse platform could slip IBM's grip

Blood letting is good

The next big release of Eclipse could see IBM's overwhelming dominance of the open source tools platform reduced, according to the foundation's chief. Mike Milinkovich hopes e4, as it's being called, will introduce a simple code base that's accessible to a wide pool of developers and reduces reliance on IBMers with an intimate …

Applications 14 Mar 2008, 07:02
Bag tax recycled into eco-PR slush

Your taxes at work

These days, the interests of big business and big government are so perfectly "aligned", you can't shine a light through the resulting hairball. Whether it's public works, defense or IT contractors; or huge advertising agencies, PR firms, and the media who benefit from them - corporate interests and bureaucrats are now as snug …

Science 14 Mar 2008, 07:44
Eurosecurocrat plans EU-wide stop'n'scan plodnet

Analysis Frattini: 'Compliance will come with time'

Euro security uberboss Franco Frattini, seeking to justify planned EU border-control measures including a stringent biometrics regime, has made a series of interesting (that is, entertaining/weird/worrying) statements. Speaking to a ministerial conference in Slovenia this week, Frattini said that certain people including …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 08:02
Times pledges allegiance to Web 2.0

Virtual fridge magnet exercise in democracy

The Times has exercised its democratic right to come over all Web 2.0 and launched a rather silly British pledge of allegiance fridge magnet challenge. It's pretty simple: you're provided with a range of vocab and some decidedly dodgy pics and invited to knock together your own pledge which swan-roasting immigrants will be …

Bootnotes 14 Mar 2008, 09:35
Ofcom maps out next spectrum auction

Where the rest of the world puts its DAB

UK regulator Ofcom has mapped out the details of the upcoming "L Band" auctions, deciding against holding onto any spectrum for Brussels despite the commission's continuing enthusiasm for Europe-wide allocations. L Band runs from 1452 to 1492MHz, putting it between the two most popular GSM frequencies - 900 and 1800MHz - with …

Networks 14 Mar 2008, 09:47
Beauty is in the eye of the CGI-holder

Site offer A portrait of high quality digital art

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) has become an art and much of what can be produced today is stunningly beautiful. Ballistic finds the best digital artists in the world and puts their work in fantastic art books. From the techniques of Kevin Lanning, part of the team that developed and designed the characters in Gears of War, …

Site News 14 Mar 2008, 10:02
Small biz groups give Darling Budget a wary sniff

Chancellor takes 'credible first step'

Business leaders have broadly welcomed Alistair Darling’s first Budget, but said the government still has a way to go to rebuild trust after last year's CGT debacle. Employers’ organisation the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which earlier this week called for an overhaul to the tax system, described Chancellor Darling …

Small Biz 14 Mar 2008, 10:03
Yahoo! leaves! London!

But talks to Microsoft!

Yahoo! is moving its European headquarters from London to Switzerland and is telling senior staff to pack their bags or leave the company. Yahoo! is moving to Rolle, near Geneva, Switzerland, the Financial Times reports. The main reason is to reduce its corporate tax bill. Yahoo!'s operational and product managers got an …

Financial News 14 Mar 2008, 10:03
Watchdog gets new powers for public sector data mining

Fraud 'fishing expeditions'

The Audit Commission has published a revised code of practice which will govern its extended powers to obtain and search data from public sector bodies. The commission has been given new rights to compel public bodies to provide it with data which it can then compare to other data sets for the detection of fraud. Civil …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 10:19
N3 dominates NHS IT savings

Broadband network contributes £192m of £208m cost cuts

The N3 broadband network produced nearly all the savings generated by the NHS National Programme for IT to March 2007, according to the government The Department of Health said that of savings totalling £208m, N3 generated £192m, with digital imaging and scanning saving a further £14m, and software licensing and hardware …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 10:49
Indian gov says no plan to squeeze out BlackBerrys

'At this point'

Indian telecoms secretary Siddhartha Behura has confirmed the country is not seeking a ban on the use of BlackBerrys, as the government continues talks with operators about lawful interception. The suggestion that RIM's emailing handheld might be banned from the subcontinent surfaced last Friday when Tata Teleservices was …

Mobile 14 Mar 2008, 10:57
Intel's first quad-core mobile aimed at gamers

Core 2 Extreme QX9300 due Q3

Intel has been known to have roadmapped its first quad-core mobile processor for a Q3 release - it demo'd the beast back in October 2007 - but now precise product details have emerged. The gaming-oriented Core 2 Extreme QX9300 is - surprise, surprise - a 45nm 'Penryn' processor, so it contains plenty of L2 cache: 12MB to be …

Hardware 14 Mar 2008, 11:02
Gates calls on Feds to plug tech investment gap

With more H-1Bs if neccessary

Bill Gates has once again warned Washington that it must do more to fill the gap in US technology investment ahead of the "second digital decade". The Microsoft chairman and co-founder also returned to familiar ground during a keynote address yesterday to some 1,000 members of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, talking …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 11:04
Google Sky brings the heavens to a browser near you

Unshackled from Google Earthly bounds

Google has unshackled its heavenly Google Sky from Google Earth and made it available to the hoi-polloi through any web browser: The material on offer includes some nice Hubble snaps, Chandra X-ray, GALEX Ultraviolet and Spitzer infrared showcases, and a historical layer showing how past generations viewed the vast majesty of …

Science 14 Mar 2008, 11:13
Syria orders cybercafe owners to ID customers

'Iron censorship' extended

Syria has ordered cybercafe owners to take down details of customers in an extension of its "iron censorship" of the web, according to monitoring group the Syrian Media Centre. Proprietors are now obliged to record clients' names, ID card numbers and the time they spend online, and present the resulting data "regularly to the …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 11:21
BOFH: On the brink

Episode 9 Every time a bell rings an SCO disk gets its wings

“You don’t have to do this,” I say calmly to the PFY as the wind and rain washes and whistles around us on the roof of the building. “I do!” the PFY says. “I have to!” “You don’t – it’s not... necessary” I say. “It IS!” the PFY counters urgently. “I must!” “Let's just think about this clearly,” I say, speaking quietly so …

BOFH 14 Mar 2008, 11:58
Convicted cybercrook stands for election in the Ukraine

At last a politician you can trust

A convicted cybercriminal has started a political party in the Ukraine. Dmitri Ivanovich Golubov, 24, formed the Internet Party of the Ukraine shortly after the country's elections last September. The party is running on a platform of modernisation and free market economics, campaigning on issues such as rooting out public …

Security 14 Mar 2008, 12:22
Cassini survives 'in your face' Enceladus flypast

Returns pics from close encounter

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has survived an "in your face" flyby of Saturnian moon Enceladus designed to collect data on geysers spewing water vapour and other matter from giant fractures at the body's south pole. Cassini on Wednesday skirted the geysers' plumes at a tad over 51,000km/h (32,000mph) at a height of 200km (120 …

Science 14 Mar 2008, 12:24
Acer unwraps 'hologram'-clad Blu-ray laptops

Aspire rational

Acer has given its "gemstone-design" Aspire laptop line-up a polish and chiseled out two more machines. They're coloured blue, so it's no surprise perhaps that both offer optional Blu-ray Disc drives. Acer's Aspire 6920G: iridescent, apparently Acer touted the machines' "holographic 3D" covering that apparently "radiates …

Hardware 14 Mar 2008, 12:30
Richard Gere not obscene, rules Indian court

Shilpa Shetty kiss outrage case shown the door

India's Supreme Court has thrown out an obscenity charge against the Dalai Lama's thesp chum Richard Gere, provoked by the campaigning actor's "repeated kisses on [Shilpa] Shetty's cheeks at an event to promote AIDS awareness in New Delhi" in April last year. The uninhibited Gere-on-Bollywood-Babe action was declared by some …

Bootnotes 14 Mar 2008, 12:46
Microsoft denies Xbox 360 is Blu-ray bound

We're not talking to Sony

Microsoft's Xbox division and Sony aren’t chatting about incorporating Blu-ray into the Microsoft console, despite a Sony executive stating that the two companies are discussing the HD technology. Sony US' President, Stan Glasgow, confirmed last week that talks between the two companies had taken place, though he didn’t say …

Games 14 Mar 2008, 12:53
UK gov unveils 'Innovation Nation' plans

Innovationation™? Innov(ation)²™?

Today the new Brownite gov Departments of Innovation, Universities, Skills, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform have announced sweeping new plans to make the UK rich and powerful. The UK needs to be rich and powerful, not just for fun, but so that it can "tackle major challenges like climate change". We will be made …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 12:57
MPs get £2k home cinema on taxpayers

All back to Prezza's

MPs are allowed to splurge up to £1,770 of taxpayers' money on home cinema equipment for their London pied à terre, it's been revealed, as part of the so-called "John Lewis* list". The document has been released as part of the ongoing scrutiny of the seemingly generous expenses or elected representatives grant themselves. It …

Bootnotes 14 Mar 2008, 13:04
French Googleslayer gets the green light

No longer Chirac's pet project

The European Commission this week approved the aid of €99m to France with the aim to build a Google killer called QUAERO. The project leaders promise an advanced multimedia search engine and tools for translating, identifying and indexing images, sound and text. QUAERO - Latin for "I search" - was launched as part of the work …

Applications 14 Mar 2008, 13:06
O2 signs up with Napster

iTunes is not our only option

O2 UK has signed a deal to give its customers access to the Napster (Light) music download service, though punters will have to pay an additional 20 pence to use the service from their mobiles. The service will be available on 30 handsets though the O2 Active portal, with tracks costing 99p each and being delivered in two …

Mobile 14 Mar 2008, 13:14
MPs and Lords turn on government over data protection

'Insufficient respect'

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, made up of MPs and Lords, today criticised "the Government's persistent failure to take data protection safeguards sufficiently seriously". The Committee accepted that data sharing could be useful and can even enhance human rights protection, but called for a fundamental change in the way …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 13:23
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33

Review Not a camera for control-freaks

If you're one of those types who enjoys adjusting this and tweaking that to take the pefect picture, the DMC-FX33 from Panasonic will not appeal to you. This camera does just about everything automatically. You have to admit it, the DMC-FX33 is something of a looker. It’s a compact, light, sleek and stylish camera measuring 94 …

Hardware 14 Mar 2008, 13:26
BBC's download iPlayer goes titsup

Updated Kontiki FAIL

Official BBC iPlayer downloads are out of action today because of a failure in one of the system's back end databases. Reg readers who use the Windows-only desktop application noticed performace problems earlier this week. Now the whole system, which is based on Verisign's Kontiki peer-to-peer distribution platform, has been …

Media 14 Mar 2008, 13:27
Al-Qaeda seeks geek fanatics for Jihoo!

Ricin mashup 2.0 in a cyberjihad stylee

It's official: the days of Ozzie bin Laden promotional vids featuring the fun-loving al-Qaeda big cheese holding forth at length to some antiquated VHS camcorder while lovingly fingering his AK-47 are well and truly over. Yup, the terror organisation has now, according to this chilling report, upped its game to the point where …

Bootnotes 14 Mar 2008, 13:39
Gibson and Activision duel over Guitar Hero

Wah-wah

Publisher Activision has asked a US court to reject a claim made by legendary guitar manufacturer Gibson that the hugely popular Guitar Hero game - even Bill Gates likes it - spanks a software patent owned by the plank producer. Gibson has yet to file a formal complaint of its own, but it says it contacted Activision in …

Games 14 Mar 2008, 13:47
Telehouse plans £80m London data centre expansion

Bigging it up

Telehouse Europe is to invest £80m ($162m) in a facility that will almost double the size of its London Docklands data centre. The development will see the construction of a new eight-storey, 12,000m2 data centre, dubbed Telehouse South, adjacent to its two existing data centres in Docklands. Construction will begin later …

Servers 14 Mar 2008, 14:12
Google-Doubleclick clicks as Phorm loses form

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Do the job shuffle In an unexpected move - and that's putting it lightly - Intel hired former Transmeta CEO David Ditzel and put him in its Digital Enterprise Group. Wannabe head of mobile at Motorola Stu Reed has become the latest exec to jump ship. It seems he took being passed over for the top spot to heart. Mobile …

Business 14 Mar 2008, 14:40
US Army funds $10m bat-droid

Make it up you could not

The University of Michigan (UM) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded $10m by the US Army to carry out research leading to a "six-inch robotic spy plane modelled after a bat", which would "gather data from sights, sounds and" - worryingly - "smells". 'The bat' robo-gargo-thopter concept. The university has used …

Government 14 Mar 2008, 15:16
Lonely Paris Hilton seeks new best friend

Web trawl dredges up candidates for MTV reality show

Q: What do you give to the girl who has everything? A: A new best friend or, if you're highly-talented former jailbird "One Night in" Paris Hilton, a new best friend chosen online for an MTV reality show. Yup, we kid you not. Here's the background: Do you long to strut into the world's most elite hotspots without a care in …

Bootnotes 14 Mar 2008, 15:20
Manhunt 2 gets green light for UK release

~~Axes~~ controllers at the ready

Manhunt 2 has finally won a UK rating, allowing the violent videogame to be sold in Britain legally. Manhunt 2: We can almost taste its UK arrival. The Video Appeals Committee (VAC) this week ruled that the slasher game must be granted an 18 rating, clearing the way for the title to be sold to buyers of that age or above. …

Games 14 Mar 2008, 16:02
Security firms split over Phorm classification

Pushing onto the borderline

Security firms are split about whether they will classify Phorm's targeting cookies as adware. Kaspersky Lab, whose anti-virus engine is licensed to many other security vendors, said it would detect the cookie as adware. However, AVG, developer of the most widely used free of charge anti-virus scanner, said it would not detect …

Security 14 Mar 2008, 16:04
Toshiba lost $1bn ditching HD DVD, paper claims

Would have lost $500m on it otherwise

How much money has Toshiba lost driving failed high-def disc format HD DVD over the last 12 months? According to one report, a whopping ¥100bn ($998m). Toshiba, not surprisingly, isn't commenting one way or the other on the scale of the loss its HD DVD business was this week alleged by Japanese newspaper Nikkei to be facing. …

Hardware 14 Mar 2008, 16:17
Japanese boffin designs glasses for the absent minded

Find forgotten items

Finding your misplaced possessions may soon become a problem of the past. Boffins at a Japanese university have invented a pair of smart specs that recognise objects and record their locations to help you find them later. Prof. Kuniyoshi's glasses remind you where you left things Image courtesy of The Times The prototype …

Science 14 Mar 2008, 16:24
Astronauts in seven-hour ISS construction session

Canadian robot grappled by spacegoing veterinarian

Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) astronauts have completed a seven-hour spacewalk and robot-arm session, in which a number of construction and assembly tasks were completed. Part of Japan's "Kibo" ISS module was plugged in, a malfunctioning 12-foot tall 1.5-tonne Canadian robot was hopefully whipped into shape …

Science 14 Mar 2008, 16:52
'Freetard ? more like advert programmed PAYTARDS!'

FoTW F***tard of the Week opens fire

Readers aren't taking our use of the "Freetard" jibe lying down. The term was coined by Dan Lyons - (aka, Fake Steve Jobs - as a catch-all for F/OSS users. But it seems so much more apt for free content militants, who nobly refuse to pay creators for music, TV and film - as a point of principle. They're fighting back with an …

Letters 14 Mar 2008, 17:07
XP daddy: go incremental on design

QCon 2008 Safe steps for hectic times

Age mellows us all and the co-inventor of extreme programming (XP) and an early Smalltalk advocate, Kent Beck, is apparently no exception. During his presentations at QCon this week Beck advocated the principle of taking "safe steps" in the evolution of a software design to ensure that technical risk is properly managed. Beck …

Software 14 Mar 2008, 17:11
Korea's P2P pirate goes legal, targets Europe

Free bundled P2P: The shape of things to come?

Legalising P2P is a sea change for the music business: instead of trying to end or control file-sharing, executives realise they merely have to make a profit from it to stave off oblivion. Now Korea's biggest P2P operation Soribada has gone legal, finally obtaining government approval for its Orgel file-sharing service. Orgel, …

Media 14 Mar 2008, 17:37
Russian serfs paid $3 a day to break CAPTCHAs

Semi-automated attack or chain-mail gang

Why should miscreants bother to develop cutting edge programming techniques when they can pay $3 to somebody to set up spam-ready webmail accounts on their behalf? Evidence has emerged that people as well as malware are being used to defeat CAPTCHAs, challenge-response systems that are often used to stop the automatic creation …

Security 14 Mar 2008, 17:54
LSDigital drops federal botnet confession

Hacker admits to hosing Rubbermaid

A US-based hacker has admitted he reaped thousands of dollars by breaking into corporate computers in Europe and making them part of a botnet that automatically installed adware. Robert Matthew Bentley, 21, of Panama City, Florida, pleaded guilty to two felony charges related to his botnet activities, which took place over a …

Security 14 Mar 2008, 19:29
Other languages key to Java's future

QCon 2008 Platform play nice with others

It is not the Java language that's important - it is the platform that has grown around it. That's according to one veteran of architecture, design and distributed systems development now in the thick of training developers, who reckons the continued success of Java depends on its ability to adapt to modern development demands …

Software 14 Mar 2008, 19:41
Microsoft can pound sand with its IP - my grandma runs Ubuntu

Radio Reg Go on. Get your Coté

It took an pundit with his own code-name to return Open Season to respectability. Redmonk analyst Michael Coté joined the Open Season crew for Episode 13 of our glorious show. With Coté on board, we managed to discuss about things that might actually matter to open source companies rather than simply prattling on about our …

Open Season 14 Mar 2008, 21:28
Zend stacks PHP for work and play

SLAs for your fave Paris Hilton clip

Zend Technologies is introducing paid support along with APIs to help build and maintain business-critical applications using its integrated and certified PHP stack. The company is expected Monday to introduce Zend Framework 1.5, adding development- and production-environment support previously available on Zend's other PHP …

Applications 14 Mar 2008, 22:14
House of Reps passes FISA bill sans telecom immunity provision

Take that, Bushie

The US House of Representatives on Friday narrowly passed the latest version of a controversial terrorist surveillance bill that defied President Bush's demand that it grant telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for cooperating in past warrantless wiretapping. By a margin of 213-197, the House passed the measure, …

Law 14 Mar 2008, 23:43