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19th May 2008 Archive

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  • Five misunderstood Vista features

    Microsoft's 'stupid, stupid, stupid' document goes missing

    Microsoft has posted a nine-page document on Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista [unavailable for download since Tim wrote this, but touched on in the Windows Vista team blog here - Reg Dev ed]. Apparently these "cause confusion and slow Windows Vista adoption for many folks." Here they are: User Account Control …

    Operating Systems 19 May 2008, 05:02

  • Can Microsoft 'do' open source by 2015?

    Consistency and commitment needed

    The recently appointed head of Microsoft's global Linux and open source team hopes the company will have a clear and comprehensible open source strategy by 2015. Sam Ramji wants people to clearly understand what projects the company is contributing to, and what code Microsoft is making available - along with the terms - on a …

    Applications 19 May 2008, 06:02

  • Microsoft! offers! Yahoo! less!

    New deal on the table

    Microsoft said yesterday that a deal with Yahoo!, but not a full-blown acquisition, is still very much on the table. Although it refused to rule out a possible buyout, Microsoft issued a statement saying it was discussing alternative deals with Yahoo!. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that …

    Financial News 19 May 2008, 08:55

  • BAE chief exec, director detained at US airports

    Subpoenas issued - laptop drives copied?

    The CEO of BAE Systems plc, the controversial UK-headquartered arms giant, was detained by the US authorities after landing at Houston airport last week. A fellow company boardmember was also taken aside on arrival at Newark. The Financial Times reports that Mike Turner and non-executive director Sir Nigel Rudd had their …

    Financial News 19 May 2008, 08:58

  • Auditor gets diminishing returns from data matching

    36% less fraud detected

    Audit Scotland's second major comparison of public sector databases has identified 36 per cent less fraud than its first attempt. The 2006-07 National Fraud Initiative, which started in October 2006 and involved 74 organisations, found £9.7m of fraud, compared with £15.1m identified by the same exercise in 2004-05, according …

    Government 19 May 2008, 09:54

  • Asus throttles back Eee PC WiMax drive

    Upcoming Atom-based sub-notebook to get Bluetooth instead?

    Asus' Atom-based Eee PC 901 will come bundled with Bluetooth in addition to the new case design that emerged last week. But it won't have WiMax as standard. Taiwanese website DigiTimes claimed that moles had told it Asus is aiming the Eee-oriented WiMax module at contract customers - essentially, service providers who will …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 09:59

  • Vendor pitches handheld phone-data extractor

    Snooping made easy

    If you’ve got a hunch that your partner is doing the dirty behind your back, then thank your suspicious stars that a gadget’s now available for instantly copying the entire contents of his or her mobile phone. The Cell Seizure Investigator (CSI) stick is claimed to quickly extract all sorts of information from handsets, …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 10:10

  • AMD turns to exclamation mark to rally gamers to cause

    Game! launched!

    AMD has begun pitching its processors, graphics engines and chipsets as the ideal foundation for gaming PCs. The AMD Game! initiative takes in two specs: the regular Game! PC and the Game! Ultra PC. The latter requires a four-core Phenom X4 9500 processor and ATI Radeon HD graphics in CrossFire configuration, all sitting on a …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 10:42

  • Sony talks up blue OLED breakthrough

    Larger and less power hungry OLEDs en route?

    Sony is on its way to manufacturing larger yet less power-hungry OLED displays, thanks to a breakthrough in the screen technology's colour properties, it said today. The electronics giant claimed that, as a result of an agreement struck with Japanese firm Idemitsu Kosan in 2005, the two firms have been able increase the “ …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 10:58

  • Vye mini-v S37B sub-notebook

    Review The people carrier of the sub-notebook world

    The Vye mini-v S37B is another player in the increasing number of sub-notebooks appearing on shop shelves, spurred on by the runaway success of the Asus Eee PC. However, where the Eee is a little compact runaround, the mini-v aspires to be the seven-seater people carrier with the collapsible seats and all the bells and …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 11:02

  • Spanish police cuff web defacement crew

    Five teens are net's 'most prolific hackers'

    Spanish police have arrested five hackers said to be among the most prolific on the internet. The suspects - all under 20, with two being just 16 - allegedly took down the website of Spanish political coalition Izquierda Unida (United Left) soon after the March general election. The five, alleged members of a defacement crew …

    Enterprise Security 19 May 2008, 11:08

  • Motorola strategy chief is latest exec to go

    Woah... they had a strategy chief?

    Troubled mobile maker Motorola has said goodbye to Richard Nottenburg, its chief strategy and technology officer. Nottenburg had been with Motorola since 2004, first as an advisor then as chief strategy officer. The company has lost a string of senior figures of late. Motorola lost its mobile head Stu Read and its marketing …

    Mobile 19 May 2008, 11:10

  • Yorkshire police head off pillow fight anarchy

    Coppers spit feathers over flashmob plan

    Police in Leeds narrowly averted a major outbreak of public disorder and non-specific rhinitis this weekend when they convinced the organisers of a mass pillow fight to pull the plug on the Facebook-advertised event. The West Yorkshire city had been almost drowned just a few weeks ago when a flashmob staged a 350-person water …

    Bootnotes 19 May 2008, 11:30

  • MI5 spy wife was Formula One chief's Teutonic thrash tart

    Mosley suspects spook spank stitch-up

    The case of Formula One boss Max Mosley and his uniformed prostitute flagellation orgy took a new twist over the weekend, as it emerged that one of the ladies of negotiable affection involved was married to an MI5 operative. The Sunday Times reports that the Security Service (MI5) officer in question was forced to resign last …

    Government 19 May 2008, 11:46

  • Mozilla phancies doing a Phorm

    Firefox - your friendly data snooper

    The Phorm bug is spreading. The idea of collecting a user's browsing history and flogging that data doesn't just appeal to ISPs. The Mozilla Foundation, the people behind the Firefox browser, want some of that action too. The Foundation is officially a tax exempt non-profit - but still manages to pay its chairperson $500,000 a …

    Applications 19 May 2008, 11:48

  • Brits more fearful of ID fraud

    Ofcom aims to bridge knowledge gap

    Identity fraud concerns have increased 15 per cent over the last two years, according to an Ofcom survey. More than two-thirds (69 per cent) of the 3,000 British adults surveyed said they were concerned about the volume of personal data that businesses hold about them. The findings are part of Ofcom’s latest Media Literacy …

    Crime 19 May 2008, 12:19

  • BSA dubs Manchester second worst for piracy

    'So much to answer for...'

    The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has claimed that Manchester is the second worst city in England for software piracy. It said thousands of firms in the city will be targeted in the group’s latest campaign to clamp down on counterfeit software in Blighty, which it claims costs the economy nearly £1bn a year. The anti- …

    Channel Register 19 May 2008, 12:26

  • Stungun shootout in Colorado leaves slowest man standing

    Tasers for two, coffee for one

    The Taser electric stun-gun's image as a possibly deadly incapacitating weapon took something of a knock this weekend, as it emerged that a man in Colorado - having himself been Tased - was then able to respond using his own Taser to deliver a retaliatory zapping. News reports indicate that the kilovolt shootout took place in …

    Bootnotes 19 May 2008, 13:09

  • Aliens, astronauts and Pope partition PC World

    Comments Shareholders welcome their new overlords

    It's been a while since astronauts were last in the public eye, but recently a bunch of them have been quoted as saying that aliens exist. Well, they should know, having undoubtedly exchanged glances with little green men through the windows of their space station. The government suppressed news of these encounters, naturally. …

    Letters 19 May 2008, 13:21

  • Zango dismisses Storm Worm conspiracy theory

    Ah did not have relations with that Trojan

    Authors of the Storm Worm Trojan are targeting machines running adware packages from Zango, and the developer is anxious to point out that it wouldn't touch said botmasters with yours. The circulation of an 'AdPack' exploit toolkit on the botnet maintained by the Storm Trojan initially provoked speculation that the botmasters …

    Malware 19 May 2008, 13:29

  • Mobile phones cause bad behaviour in kids - report

    Hyperactivity and emotional problems linked to phones

    If the kids are misbehaving then don’t blame their E number intake, because it could be your fault - or your missus' - for chatting too long on mobile phones during pregnancy. That's the finding of a study into the behaviour of children up to age seven, born of 13,159 mums in Denmark in the late 1990s. A number academics were …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 13:39

  • Google under fire again for handing user info to police

    This time in India

    Google is under fire again today for cooperating with Indian police trying to track down an Orkut user who had been rude about a politician. Police asked Google for user information for the person behind a post called "I hate Sonia Gandhi" - Gandhi being a Congress party politician. Google provided an IP number and email …

    Law 19 May 2008, 13:41

  • Samsung pitches 82in "ultra-definition" telly

    More pixels than you can shake a stick at

    HD TV isn’t good enough any more, it seems. Samsung has paraded an 82in LCD TV that boasts a resolution several times higher than rubbish old hi-def. Samsung's ultra-definition TV: 3840 x 2160 pixels The technology’s been dubbed "ultra-definition", and while HD resolution tops out at 1920 x 1080, Samsung’s super-sized …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 13:46

  • BBC's Today Programme shutters message board

    Flagship radio news organ enrages pants-wearing web commentariat

    BBC Radio 4 news flagship The Today Programme said today it will axe its online message boards at the end of this month, prompting anger and charges of censorship from users. Editorial changes to the board's rules in 2006 blocked listeners from creating threads on topics of their choice, which one commenter on the closure …

    Music and Media 19 May 2008, 13:50

  • Whatever happened to... Three Strikes?

    BPI hasn't started shooting. Yet.

    Sharp-witted readers may be wondering what happened to the great stand-off between the British recording business and the nation's biggest ISPs. You'll recall that back in March, the BPI set ISPs a 14-day deadline to "take action" - or face court injunctions over copyright infringement. Then, nothing. Last week, rumours …

    Music and Media 19 May 2008, 13:59

  • Brown goes YouTube

    There goes the neighbourhood

    Two cheers for Gordon Brown! In the interests of putting some sparkle back into his dour premiership – sorry, “engage the wider public” – the Prime Minister is launching an online version of Prime Minister’s Questions. On Youtube. If you want to “Ask Gordon”, just upload your question on videoclip to the Downing Street YouTube …

    Government 19 May 2008, 14:34

  • Vodafone shells out big bucks in buying spree

    Milk, eggs, social networking site, German telephone company...

    Vodafone is having itself a bit of a shopping blowout. It's just spent €474m getting full control of German fixed-line provider Arcor, having splurged €31.5m on Friday getting itself a bit of Web 2.0 action by buying ZYB. Vodafone already owned most of Arcor, but Deutsche Bahn AG and Deutsche Bank AG were hanging on to 26.4 …

    Mobile 19 May 2008, 14:53

  • First public Firefox 3 candidate shoots out the door

    It's tinkering time

    Mozilla has pushed out the initial release candidate of Firefox 3 for download. The new Firefox code of the firm’s increasingly popular web browser is available in 45 languages as a public preview for developers, as well as anyone else who fancies tinkering around with Internet Explorer’s closest rival. Firefox 3 is based on …

    Applications 19 May 2008, 15:06

  • Boeing raygunship fires first blasts in ground testing

    Laser-cannon plane set for inflight fryings 'this year'

    US airliners'n'armaments colossus Boeing announced today that one of its prototype aerial laser cannon planes has fired its first energy bolts in ground testing. "First firing of the high-energy laser aboard the ATL aircraft shows that the program continues to make good progress," said Boeing blast-cannon biz boss Scott …

    Science 19 May 2008, 15:10

  • Samsung Glyde touches down in US

    U940 finally annouced, debuts on Verizon

    The Samsung U940 slider smartphone was initially leaked by the FCC’s website back in February, but the phone has at long last been officially launched, as the Glyde. Samsung's Glyde: aka the U940 Although very little was known about the device when Samsung first filed its U940 documents with the FCC, Register Hardware can …

    Reg Hardware 19 May 2008, 16:02

  • How Free Press breaks the citizens' network

    Inside the mind of Ben Scott

    In 2003 the journalist Ron Suskind captured one of the quotes of the decade when he cited an unnamed Bush administration official as saying: "When we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities." On the web today, "political activism" has become a …

    Telecoms 19 May 2008, 16:15

  • Microsoft slides out second HPC Windows 2008 beta

    Tweak tweak, hush hush

    Microsoft quietly snuck out a second beta of its high performance computing (HPC) Windows 2008 server product on Saturday. Beta 2 of its high-end cluster operating system follows the release of the software giant’s first beta for Windows HPC Server 2008 last November. Microsoft said it has tested over 1000 nodes on a cluster …

    Servers 19 May 2008, 16:17

  • Google unveils Image Search image ads

    'A seamless experience'

    Google has added image ads to its Image Search engine. Earlier this month, in a radio interview with Bloomberg, Google indicated that image-happy ads were on the way, and they officially arrived this morning, during a press event at the company’s headquarters. "What we’re announcing today is a new suite of image-related …

    Music and Media 19 May 2008, 18:33

  • EMC builds up disk backup

    De- duplication, spin down, low-power drives and simpler software

    EMC has, as expected launched its Quantum software-based, de-duplicating, disk backup products. But it has also announced spin-down and low-power drives, simpler Networker backup software, and updated Avamar source-based deduplication products. Deduplication technology detects repeated patterns in bytes or blocks of files and …

    Storage 19 May 2008, 18:46

  • Open source zealots fill with venom

    Radio Reg While bumbling OLPC bumbles to Microsoft

    Some pundits out there think you can't get rich off open source software. Well, that's just not true. As evidence, we bring you Mike Olson, the former CEO of Sleepycat Software who milked Oracle for millions. You can see Mike here, although he doesn't actually work for Oracle anymore. These days he's eating burritos filled …

    Open Season 19 May 2008, 19:09

  • VMware pitches virtual office desktops 101

    Love-taps Sun's thin clients

    VMware is trying to sweeten its virtual office desktop play by selling some hands-on tutelage for the technology. The vendor figures more companies should be eager to roll out virtual desktops — but alas, that pioneering spirit is often trumped by concerns about the complexity and cost of implementation, what to do about OS …

    Virtualization 19 May 2008, 19:37

  • SEC charges eight ex-AOL TW execs with civil fraud

    Inflating ad revenues

    For two years, between 2000 and 2002, AOL execs cooked the books, bigtime. They inflated revenues by more than $1bn, through artificial barter deals, by booking one-time gains as advertising income, and by booking the entire gross amount of advertising contracts instead of just the commission element. The Washington Post …

    Financial News 19 May 2008, 20:01

  • 'Hacker Safe' leader defrauded investors, prosecutors say

    McAfee security researcher ordered to stand trial for fraud

    A Indiana state judge on Monday ordered a security researcher at McAfee to stand trial stemming from felony charges he and a brother defrauded nine people by selling $1.25m in fraudulent stock and then using some of the money for personal items. Brett M. Oliphant formally joined McAfee in February, at least three months after …

    Channel Register 19 May 2008, 20:02

  • BitTorrent tracker Mininova faces legal action

    Mostly warez?

    Dutch anti-piracy body BREIN says it will ask a judge to halt all activities of Dutch BitTorrent-tracker Mininova, which draws over 30 million unique visitors and five billion downloads a month. The site started in January 2005 as a successor to Suprnova.org, which went offline in 2004 due to legal issues. Mininova was already …

    Music and Media 19 May 2008, 21:30

  • Dell and Rackable's CFOs a-go-go

    As the revolving brass door turns...

    Dell-y Don Carty Dell's finance chief Don Carty will step down next month, ending his short stint of overseeing the books during the computer maker's internal accounting probe. He will be replaced June 13 by Brian Gladden, former CEO of SABIC Innovative Plastics Holdings — a spinoff of General Electric Plastics. Gladden …

    Servers 19 May 2008, 21:41

  • Ballmer eggs on Hungarian student

    Student retaliates

    Few things have made Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer duck for cover. Not the European Union, not the US Department of Justice, and not open source software. He's stood up to all three. Eggs are a different matter. Steve-O has been forced to take cover during a visit to a university in Hungary as a protester hurled a …

    Bootnotes 19 May 2008, 21:43

  • HP confesses love for Citrix with mobile thin client

    'Intends' to stream the heck out of graphics

    Like a good partner, HP has rolled out some thin client/virtual desktop bits and pieces this week to complement Citrix's Synergy conference taking place in Houston. HP issued a massive press release to back up what's a relatively short set of announcements. For one, the company is shipping a new mobile thin client device …

    Virtualization 19 May 2008, 23:36