7th April 2008 Archive

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Sun fixes Java SE for a fee

Java SE 1.4 to graft until 2017

Sun Microsystems is extending the working life of Java Standard Edition 1.4, through a support program to carry the software beyond this summer's official retirement and onto 2017. This is for paying customers only. Others must upgrade to the latest edition of Java SE, with free support slashed from six to three years - or fend …

Applications 7 Apr 04:02
HMRC tax credit database takes the week off

'We always do maintenance at the end of the tax year'

UK taxpayers hoping to talk to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) about tax credit payments were left fuming last week because of a “routine upgrade” to its database. An HMRC spokeswoman told The Register that the tax credit system had been taken offline - just before the end of the tax year - so the latest rates from …

Government 7 Apr 06:02
French won Waterloo, says Italian telecoms chief

Shock YouTube revelation rewrites history

Those of you looking for insights into the key events which shaped modern Europe are advised not to ring Telecom Italia Mobile exec Luca Luciani, whose grasp of history is clearly a Wellington short of a Waterloo. The proof? Try this pumped-up motivational speech (in Italian, but available here with English subtitles): …

Bootnotes 7 Apr 08:16
Influential tech pundit says iPhone 'will be 3G in 60 days'

Mossberg claim

Industry-favoured tech journalist Walt Mossberg - well, he does write for the Wall Street Journal - has claimed the 3G iPhone will be here "in 60 days". That timeframe, if correct, takes us into early June. That's almost a year on from 2007's announcement of iPhone availability, which took place on 11 June. The Apple handset …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 08:42
US census ditches handhelds for clipboards

Back to pen and paper

The US is giving up plans to issue researchers with handheld computers for their 2010 census, as changing specifications have driven the cost of each one beyond $8,500. The next census is scheduled for 2010, and the US Census Bureau hired Harris Corp to create handsets suitable for the half-million researchers who have to …

Government 7 Apr 08:57
AMD makes big gains in graphics

Q4 2007 numbers in

AMD did a rather better job of selling graphics chips in Q4 2007 than it did in the previous quarter. But then so did its arch rival, Intel, market watcher Jon Peddie Research said last week. According to JPR's latest figures, AMD took 22.8 per cent of GPU sales in Q4 2007, up 3.7 percentage points from 19.1 per cent in Q3. …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 09:19
LG slides out Shine-successor specs

LG has let slip some sketchy details about its latest Black Label handset, which the company will release into Europe later this month. LG's third Black Label Series handset The handset hasn’t been publicly named yet, but LG said the phone follows in the footsteps of other Black Label devices: the Chocolate and the Shine …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 09:25
Australia to restrict laser-pointers - Minister

Pry my presentational aid from my cold dead fingers

Australia will move to restrict imports of powerful laser pointers which have recently been used in dazzling attacks against airline pilots coming in to land. The Aussie government may also regulate ownership of such lasers more heavily, in a manner similar to the way it treats firearms. "There are legitimate uses for devices …

Government 7 Apr 09:39
Global-warming scientist: It's worse than I thought

Only Peak Oil can prevent 'guaranteed disaster'

A renowned global-warming scientist says the problem of global warming is much more serious than previously estimated. However, he also hints that there may be no need to fear catastrophic carbon-driven climate upheaval, as mankind will run out fossil fuels much sooner than presently estimated. James Hansen, chief of NASA's …

Government 7 Apr 10:05
Wanted: Gordon Brown's fingerprints, £1,000 reward

No2ID and PI get after the Smith & ~~Jones~~ Brown ID heist team

A £1,000 reward has been posted for the fingerprints of Prime Minster Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, both of whom, claim perpetrators No2ID and Privacy International, are "wanted identity felons". In a campaign Wanted Poster the campaign groups claim that their plan to "steal the fingerprints of the entire British …

Government 7 Apr 10:07
NZ man uses hedgehog as ninja star

Teen punctured in flying spine ball assault

A 27-year-old New Zealand man has been charged with assault after using a hedgehog as an improvised ninja star against a 15-year-old, NZ's Sunday Herald reports. Cops allege that Whakatane resident William Singalargh scooped up the unfortunate creature and threw it about five metres at his unnamed target on 9 February. Senior …

Bootnotes 7 Apr 10:39
Rethink code cohesion

Book extract, part two Emergent Design: time to relate

Scott Bain's book Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development published by Addison Wesley looks at how to deliver and maintain robust, reliable, and cost-effective systems. In this, the second of five Reg Dev extracts, Scott tackles the complex subject of cohesion as a step to building simple …

Software 7 Apr 11:02
IBM's EnterpriseDB stake: not what you think

Look out Oracle

Ever since Sun anteed up a billion in cold cash for MySQL a couple months back, we wondered when the next shoe would drop. Recently, EnterpriseDB announced that IBM was one of several venture backers to fund its third $10m round of financing. At first glance, this appears to be IBM's response to Sun. But it isn't. Let's drill …

Applications 7 Apr 11:02
HSBC pops thousands of customer details in the post

Guess what happened next?

HSBC has admitted that it has misplaced 370,000 customer details, which were put in the post a month ago on an unencrypted disc. The envelope has not arrived at its intended destination - a reinsurance firm. A spokesman for HSBC told the Reg: "We have sent a disc to our reinsurers which they never received. The disc was not …

IT Director 7 Apr 11:06
Disaster recovery bug hangs up Cisco comms kit

Failover falls over

There's trouble with the Disaster Recovery Framework (DRF) Master component in a number of unified communications products from Cisco. The flaw, which the networking giant patched late last week, enables hackers to compromise vulnerable systems. Cisco Emergency Responder, Cisco Unified Communications Manager versions 5 and 6, …

Data Networking 7 Apr 11:08
Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset

Review Powerful but very pricey

The basic version of Nvidia’s new nForce 790i chipset is the 790i SLI, with the 790i Ultra SLI coming in at the top of the line. Both chipsets have nearly identical features lists and they both support the latest 45nm Intel Core 2 'Penryn' processors. Graphics support is a major part of the deal with any Nvidia chipset, and …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 11:08
Plugs pulled on satellite paedo tracking after pilot flops

Blunkett's 'prison without bars' plan finally fizzles

The Ministry of Justice has finally, officially, pulled the plugs on David Blunkett's 'prisons without bars' - plans to use satellite tracking to monitor sex offenders have been suspended pending improvements in the technology. Instead, the MoJ plans to use lie detector tests to deal with paedophiles. In reality, however, the …

Policing 7 Apr 11:31
Sony touts 'world’s first' digital noise cancellation cans

Sounds good...

Whether you’re hoping to envelop your ears in music, or just block out the sound of a screaming baby, Sony's latest cans could be the answer. The electronics giant claims to have released the world’s first pair of digital noise-cancelling headphones. Sony's digital noise cancelling headphones: a world first? Analogue noise- …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 11:44
FIPR: ICO gives BT 'green light for law breaking' with Phorm

Wikipedians smell a rat on Phorm-friendly edits

The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) has slammed the Information Commissioner Office's (ICO) for glossing over doubts over the legality of Phorm's advertising targeting in its public statement on the controversial company. The ICO released a long-awaited statement on Phorm (pdf) on Friday. It said: "[Phorm] …

Telecoms 7 Apr 11:46
Yes! It's the Playboy phone!

Dial S for Sexy

OT-V770 isn’t a very inspiring moniker for a handset. But rename it the Playboy Handset and you’ve got yourself a sure-fire sales hit for Hugh Hefner fans and bunny girl wannabes. The Playboy handset Images courtesy Aving Yes, the Hef and Alcatel have come together to rebrand the OT-V770, which was unveiled at Mobile World …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 11:48
So what could the MoD learn from the Stasi?

Book extract Headspace: Olfactional infighting

Headspace is Reg contributor Amber Marks's exploration of how the state and private sectors are trying to exploit the science of smell to watch and control citizens. Over the coming weeks, we will be publishing exclusive extracts from the book, which is published by Virgin Books and available here. Today we present Chapter 5 …

Policing 7 Apr 12:02
EU sets cellphone users loose in aircraft

Will you shut the f**k up

The European Commission did its bit for the battle against climate change today by backing mobile phone calls on aircraft, thereby stripping air travel of any residual glamour or appeal. But the Commission also warned operators that it would be watching closely to ensure they don’t try and scalp their air-bound customers to …

Mobile 7 Apr 12:34
Sony bullish on Blu-ray dominance

Sales to bloom?

Sony wants to own 50 per cent of the Blu-ray Disc hardware market by the end of the year, according to a company executive. Ryoji Chubachi, President and electronics CEO at Sony, made the bold statement during a recent press conference in Taipei, according to a DigiTimes report. Chubachi claimed that Sony already has 20 per …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 12:52
Move over Storm - there's a bigger, stealthier botnet in town

400,000 machines get Kraken

This story was updated to correct information about detection of Kraken. 20 percent of PCs using anti-virus products detect the malware, not 20 percent of anti-virus products, as erroneously reported earlier. Researches have unearthed what they say is the biggest botnet ever. It comprises over 400,000 infected machines, more …

Anti-Virus 7 Apr 13:02
Yahoo! to Microsoft: No surrender!

84 Charing Cross Road without the affection

Yahoo! has replied promptly to an open letter sent to them by Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer on Saturday. Ballmer's letter set Yahoo! a three-week deadline to conclude an agreement or Microsoft would take its $44bn offer directly to shareholders. In response, Yahoo's chief exec Jerry Yang said the board of …

Financial News 7 Apr 13:44
BBC vs ISPs: Readers blame monkey, organ grinder escapes

Andrew's Mailbag Relief for Ofcom, Highfield

At last, something that will cheer up Ofcom chief Ed Richards and the BBC's Ashley Highfield. You'll recall that on Wednesday, Highfield posted out a "Screw You" to the ISP business - refusing to help pay the spiraling costs of distributing the Beeb's iPlayer content. Don't rely on us to build a content network, he suggested. …

Letters 7 Apr 14:24
Hackers target outsourced app development

Who's got your code?

Many firms fail to think about security when they outsource application development. Three in five (60 per cent) organisations overlook procedures to mandate security in software development outsourcing, according to a study by analysts Quocirca. One in five (20 per cent) fail to consider security even when building …

Enterprise Security 7 Apr 14:46
Right idea, wrong time: Snocap's corpse washes up at Imeem

Coulda been a contender

Timing is everything in business, and having a visionary idea too early can prove fatal. So it is with Shawn Fanning's Snocap, which has formally announced today that it's being acquired by Imeem. Or what's left of it - most Snocap employees were laid off last year, with Fanning long gone. Snocap was created to provide the …

Music and Media 7 Apr 15:07
Gamers punted performance-enhancing pills

Keep on going like a mad trucker

Marathon gaming sessions usually end only when all the pizza and pop has been devoured - or your opponent has fallen asleep. But a Japanese retailer thinks it can boost your videogame performance and staying power by offering you some pills to pop. The Blueberry pill: improve gaming performance? If long-lasting performance …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 15:32
Samsung G810 shipping next week

Carphone Warehouse only

Samsung’s ‘infotainment’ handset, also known as the G810, will be available next week – according to Carphone Warehouse. Samsung's G810: sports a 2.6in display The stainless steel slider phone made its debut at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona last February, but Samsung neglected to provide a release date for the …

Reg Hardware 7 Apr 15:36
Gates teases bankers with Windows 7 dates

There's something big over the horizon, boys

Bill Gates has dropped the biggest hint yet that Microsoft’s successor to its unloved operating system Windows Vista could arrive around the middle of 2009 – ahead of the firm’s original roadmap. According to reports, the Microsoft head honcho said at a meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank on Friday that Windows 7 …

Channel Register 7 Apr 15:42
HP Proliant USB key riddled with worms

Streuth

HP Australia has warned that optional USB keys shipped with some of its Proliant servers are infected by malware. A batch of 256MB and 1GB USB keys that ship with the servers are infected by the Fakerecy and SillyFDC viruses, it warns. The keys are involved in installing optional floppy-disc drives. It's unclear how many …

Enterprise Security 7 Apr 18:00
Stay focused on fuzzy tests, warn security experts

RSA Stop when you get that warm feeling

The idea of throwing random test data at a program to see if it cracks has been around in one form or another since the beginning of software development. A formalized approach called fuzzing, based on Professor Barton Miller's work at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1980s, is undergoing a revival as a means of testing …

Enterprise Security 7 Apr 18:56
Sun primes de-dupe for VTL lineup

VTL Prime: eliminate redundancies and roll out!

Sun Microsystems is today offering its first de-duplicating virtual tape library (VTL), and giving its existing VTL boxes a round of upgrades for good measure. The open source gospel barker now has three pillars to its StorageTek VTL lineup: the VTL Value, VTL Plus, and the new data de-duplicating VTL Prime. Sun's Value boxes …

Storage 7 Apr 19:32
Google to launch database service from Campfire

Eating S'mores on a cloud

If you believe TechCrunch - and that's a big IF - Google is on the verge of unveiling a web-based database service along the lines of Amazon's SimpleDB. On Friday, TechCrunch reported that the world's largest ad broker is about to publicly webify an internal database tool known as BigTable, citing "a source with knowledge of …

Storage 7 Apr 19:39
AMD will cut 10 per cent of global workforce

Decimation by Q3 or bust

AMD plans to cut 10 per cent of its workforce over the next two quarters, after suffering lower-than-expected sales across all business units, the company said today. The chipmaker revealed the flesh shedding, which will affect more than 1,600 people, in an update to its first quarter outlook, which AMD will detail on April 17 …

Financial News 7 Apr 21:30
MokaFive pumps virtual PCs through the cloud

All the buzzwords and Bible studies covered

It's the type of problem we've all faced. You're a Windows user desperate to reflect on your Christian faith. Sadly, the only good bible study software out there resides in the open source realm on the Ubuntu Christian Edition operating system. Is Bible study software worth ripping and replacing your entire Windows desktop? We …

Virtualization 7 Apr 23:34