The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

17th June 2008 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Microsoft’s UML roundtrip routed through Oslo

    A dual strategy with D?

    While initial reviews of Bill Gates’ final Microsoft keynote in his chief architect role were rather underwhelming, partner in crime Jack Vaughan caught one interesting detail that was latched onto by Michael Meehan this week: that Microsoft’s forthcoming Microsoft SOA strategy would indeed embrace Unified Modeling Language (UML …

    Developer 17 Jun 2008, 05:02

  • Nokia opens doors to Download Store

    Can't buy anything there though

    After 9 months of beta testing, and numerous software versions, Nokia has decided that what punters really want is a website where they can browse and buy software, though the latter part isn't possible as yet. The PC Download Store was supposed to be the desktop equivalent of the "Download" application pre-installed on every …

    Mobile 17 Jun 2008, 06:02

  • Dell guns for more European channel love

    'We're certjustified and we're ancient and we like to roam the land...'

    Dell yesterday launched its top tier Certified Partner program in the hope of picking up much-needed sales from the indirect SME, server and storage market. The computer giant’s EMEA channel veep Josh Claman said that 10,000 registered partners in Europe can help prop up flagging revs and profits at the firm by cosying up to …

    Channel Register 17 Jun 2008, 09:17

  • UK.gov could be left out of EU passenger data scheme

    Lords warn of drawback to Whitehall's grasping fingers

    The Government's hard line on the collection and use of information on travellers could isolate it within Europe and leave it with less information than other states, a parliamentary committee has warned. The House of Lords European Union Committee has said that the UK Government's desire to see passenger name record (PNR) …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 09:19

  • Asus announces 'first ever' overclocked GeForce GTX 280

    Asus has followed yesterday's Nvidia GTX announcement by unveiling what it claims is the world's first factory-overclocked graphics cards based on the new GPUs. Asus' ENGTX280 TOP: core overclocked 11.7 per cent The product's the ENGTX280 TOP, and it ups the core close from 600MHz to 670MHz and the memory speed from 1100MHz …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 09:20

  • NHS orders mass keyboard clean-up

    Germ-resistant covers ordered

    If you’ve read the reports about the average office keyboard being dirtier than a toilet seat, you may want to take a leaf out of the NHS’ book. The healthcare body has ordered thousands of specialist germ-resistant keyboards. According to a report by the Press Association, the keyboards are completely flat and covered with a …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 09:28

  • Bosch, Siemens: Vorsprung durch kinder und technik

    Blighty giggles, says 'I've always been hopeless at sums'

    Remorseless Teutonic engineering firms, already desperate for engineering talent and seeing worse times ahead, have now moved their recruitment efforts into the kindergarten. Companies such as Bosch and Siemens believe that the post-industrial rot has now gone so deep that children must be put on the hard and righteous path at …

    Small Biz 17 Jun 2008, 09:47

  • Deployment bug mars Patch Tuesday

    Mixed environment mix-up

    Microsoft has posted a workaround for a bug that left some enterprises unable to apply the latest patch Tuesday update. A snag involving System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007 - a product designed to make updates easier to apply - meant some users were unable to distribute last week's tranche of seven patches …

    Software 17 Jun 2008, 10:14

  • Asus Eee PC 901 Linux Edition

    Review With Atom, Asus gets it right

    It's ten quid cheaper but packs in more features. Hot on the heels of Asus Eee PC 900 comes the 901, sporting not only a smart new design but also Intel's Atom processor. So is it the machine the 900 should have been? No question: the answer's yes. With the 901, Asus has released a sub-notebook that isn't simply a version of …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 10:14

  • Nokia's E series duo mean business

    Never be disconnected from the office again

    Nokia could be seeking out BlackBerry fans with its latest E series phones, one of which is a dead ringer for the established email-oriented handset. Nokia's E71: strong BlackBerry resemblance Although it’s only the E71 that features the full BlackBerry-esque Qwerty keyboard and handset styling, the E66 slider also gives …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 10:21

  • Lesbians like straight men, researchers find

    Why? Asymmetric brain structure

    A study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has provided strong evidence that sexuality is a biologically fixed trait demonstrated in physical brain differences, New Scientist reports. Specifically, key brain structures in homosexuals which govern "mood, anxiety and aggressiveness" resemble those in heterosexuals of the …

    Biology 17 Jun 2008, 10:26

  • Adobe frightens Wall St with on-target results

    Are these guys nervous or what?

    Adobe injected a note of nervousness into the tech investment community yesterday as it set third quarter financial targets at the lower end of some analysts’ estimates and its CEO said a naughty word. The software vendor said it expects third quarter revenues to come in at $855m to $885m, generating earnings per share of $0. …

    Financial News 17 Jun 2008, 10:32

  • Crazy coders enable full-screen Crysis play on Eee PC

    Wirelessly, too

    Think Asus' elfin Eee PC isn't up to a quick Crysis or Quake 4 session? Its meagre Intel integrated graphic chip could never deliver anything but sub-zero frame rates? Think again - it can. So claims website StreamMyGame, which uses web technology to deliver PC-hosted gameplay of these very high-end PC-oriented titles onto …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 10:52

  • Mother pleads not guilty in cyber-bullying suicide test case

    Can giving dodgy details online be hacking?

    A Missouri woman alleged to have set up a fake MySpace account to taunt a teenage girl, who later committed suicide, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and accessing a protected computer to obtain information used to inflict emotional distress. The landmark Federal case against 47-year-old Lori Drew began yesterday, AP …

    Law 17 Jun 2008, 11:01

  • YouTube admits ad impasse

    Supernova 'Coke doesn't get us'

    Many have argued that online video will satisfy the world's advertisers in ways that traditional television never could. With online video, the pundits proclaim, channels are infinite, and you can choose whatever you like whenever you want it. That means advertisers know exactly what you're interested in - and they can serve you …

    Music and Media 17 Jun 2008, 11:02

  • NHS chief explains NPfIT delays

    Complexity and customisation demands fingered

    The chief executive of the National Health Service has told MPs that complexity and customisation have been the main causes in delaying England's National Programme for IT. David Nicholson was speaking to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee at its hearings on the programme on 16 June 2008. Committee chair Edward Leigh MP …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 11:06

  • Sony Ericsson flashes 8.1Mp snapper phone

    A phone for the paparazzi?

    Sony Ericsson has blurred the line between handsets and compact cameras even further, with the unveiling of an 8.1-megapixel phone-camera... no... camera-phone... er... Sony Ericsson's C905: an 8.1-megapixel snapper The C905 Cyber-shot is labelled by Sony Ericsson as one of its “most advanced camera phone yet” and, aside …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 11:08

  • Microsoft chases satnav market

    Just look out the Windows for heaven's sake

    Microsoft has announced a new iteration of Windows Embedded, this time targeted at satellite navigation hardware, although it sneaks in a sideshow capability to keep the Windows Vista connection alive. Windows Embedded NavReady is apparently aimed at Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs) and includes Windows Live Search and MSN …

    Software 17 Jun 2008, 11:10

  • Henry Nicholas III pleads not guilty to options, drugs charges

    Wanna hear the indictment again? Nah

    Henry Nicholas III pleaded not guilty yesterday to a stack of charges ranging from stock options backdating to distributing illegal drugs. Nicholas, 48, entered his pleas at the Federal Court in Santa Ana, California yesterday. He will return to face trial on July 29, and in the meantime is free on bail. According to reports …

    Law 17 Jun 2008, 11:14

  • Sony launches understated telly line

    TV to match your furniture

    Sony has opted for a less intrusive design in its latest Bravia range, which the electronics giant claims blends understated lines and gently-rounded curves to create a telly that, well, sits comfortably in your living room. Sony's S4000 Bravia range: rubbish at Hide and Seek The 26in, 32in, 37in and 40in screens each …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 11:35

  • DARPA working on T-ray spyeye spectacle tech

    Offers Vatican Jesus conspiracy and nudity bonanza

    Pentagon boffinry chiefs have sprung aboard the terahertz technology bandwagon which has been gathering speed in recent times. Funding is now on offer for those who can have a credible stab at making the slippery T-ray easier to generate and detect, potentially unlocking a huge techno treasure vault stuffed with goodies such …

    Policing 17 Jun 2008, 11:42

  • Microsoft's searches for European ad clicks

    Plans tent city research centre

    Microsoft today unveiled plans to speed up investments in Live Search just days after Google and Yahoo! agreed to an online ads love-in that left Redmond spitting feathers. The software giant, in a cheap bid to grab a few web clicks, rushed out a press release to tell the world about a new search technology centre (STC) coming …

    Applications 17 Jun 2008, 11:55

  • Stray left foot washes up on Vancouver beach

    One of five podiatric landfalls since 2007

    Canadian police are probing a possible link between a left foot which washed up yesterday on a beach near Vancouver and four right feet which have since last year similarly made landfall on the coast of British Columbia, the BBC reports. The mysterious spate of seaborne foot landings began last August when two right feet came …

    Bootnotes 17 Jun 2008, 13:21

  • UN calls for single child helpline

    One number to help them all

    UN telco branch the International Telecommunications Union has called on member nations to standardise their child helpline numbers, to help jet-setting ankle-biters remember who to call. The proposal to use 116 111 as the standard number around the world comes from Child Helpline International, an organisation that works to …

    Telecoms 17 Jun 2008, 13:22

  • MySpace wins $6m judgment against Spam King

    Junk mail menace canned

    Self-styled former spam king Scott Richter has been ordered to pay MySpace $6m over allegations he blitzed users of the social networking website with junk mail messages sent from hijacked accounts. An arbitrator decided that Richter and his Colarado-based Web marketing outfit, Media Breakaway, must turn over a $4.8m fine and …

    Spam 17 Jun 2008, 13:52

  • MoD proposes Salisbury Plain spy-plane droid playground

    Skies have eyes as 'bugger off' replaced by Watchkeeper

    The UK Ministry of Defence wants to expand the airspace it uses for training flying-robot surveillance operators from the British Army. Drone aircraft formerly flew mainly above traditional army exercise areas on Salisbury Plain, but next-gen kit will need to be higher up and further away from the ground action if training is to …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 14:09

  • Brown pledges annual commons debate on surveillance

    And says freedom auditors will protect our liberties

    Gordon Brown today accepted MP’s recommendations for an annual report and debate on the state of UK surveillance in a speech which rejected charges that the government’s increasing use of high-tech surveillance compromises British citizens' liberties. He also said the government was considering subjecting all new UK …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 14:21

  • Gamers love in-game ads, ad industry-sponsored survey reveals

    Sell it to me

    Sony has only just given the green light on advertisements in videogames, but a study’s already found that the vast majority of gamers really don’t mind being barraged by sales slogans during gameplay. Over 80 per cent of gamers feel videogames are still just as enjoyable with ads as without, according to a study conducted on …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 14:27

  • CherryPal out sweetens Apple with 2W, ultra-cheap PC

    A tiny Cld Cmptr

    Here’s how you to get to CherryPal. Gather up all of the hot technology buzzwords – cloud computing, going green, communities – and mush them together into something about the size of sandwich. CherryPal has unveiled a device that’s billed as a cloud computer. Don’t be intimidated by the name. We’re just talking about a PC …

    PCs & Chips 17 Jun 2008, 14:31

  • Sub-£100 Eee rival ship date slips

    Arriving in time 'for new school year'

    Elonex's eagerly anticipated sub-£100 laptop will appear later than expected. Originally touted to turn up this month, the would-be Eee PC beater may now not appear until September. Elonex's One: orginally due this month Register Hardware readers who coughed up the £10 "reservation deposit" required to place an advance …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 14:36

  • Tory trash talk fails to halt bin bugging plans

    What do you think of it so far?

    The UK government has green-lighted microchip wheelie bin pilot schemes despite one council calling for the technology to be scrapped because it “failed to work” under test conditions. In 2002 Tory-controlled South Norfolk Council was the first in England to use the microchipped bins, which have been designed to allow …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 14:49

  • The Reg tackles the security landscape, LIVE

    RegCast Like live TV, but even scarier

    LIVE ONLINE SEMINAR FROM THE REGISTER The Evolving Security Landscape WHEN? Wednesday 9 July, 1.30pm BST WHO ARE THE PRESENTERS? The Register’s very own Tim Phillips will host the proceedings. Joining him throughout will be: Jon Collins – analyst, Freeform Dynamics Mark Sunner – chief security analyst, MessageLabs IS …

    Site News 17 Jun 2008, 15:10

  • Cell-based GPU zaps laptop batteries, admits Toshiba

    Exclusive Yet GPU launches in... er... laptops

    Toshiba has announced a pair of laptops that use its Cell-based SpursEngine graphics chip. But don't expect the chip to work when the notebook's on the road - SpursEngine consumes too much power, Register Hardware can reveal. The Japanese giant has rebranded SpursEngine for UK audiences. Due to be incorporated into two laptops …

    Reg Hardware 17 Jun 2008, 15:18

  • USAF ramps up kill-bot fleet following Gates sackings

    Fly my way not the high way, says purge surge SecDef

    US defence secretary Robert Gates has ordered further reinforcements for America's aerial killer robot flotillas patrolling the skies of Southwest Asia, according to reports. Gates' freedom to assign the extra drones is widely being seen as following on from his recent firing of top US Air Force chiefs, possibly inclined to drag …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 15:22

  • Thief swipes cabinet minister's laptop from Salford office

    Don't worry, nothing really top secret on it

    Gordon Brown’s government has lost another batch of sensitive information, this time courtesy of one of his own cabinet ministers. A laptop belonging to Hazel Blears, the Communities and Local Government secretary, was stolen from her constituency office in Salford over the weekend, it emerged this afternoon. The Press …

    Government 17 Jun 2008, 16:04

  • Firefox 3 Download Day falls flat on face

    Updated What a day to have an outage

    Firefox 3 Download Day began with a PR fiasco. For almost two hours after it was supposed to kick off servers were down and Mozilla Foundation websites either unavailable or publishing html error messages. The Mozilla Foundation had called on the world to start downloading the latest version of the browser at 10am PDT today - …

    Applications 17 Jun 2008, 16:13

  • Social networks may be imaginary

    Supernova Think of them as spherical cows

    Eric Bonabeau doesn't mince words. "A lot of this talk about the social graph," he says, "is crap." Speaking to a small army of business-minded folk this morning at the annual San Francisco tech conference dubbed Supernova, Bonabeau argued that the world may be exaggerating the influence of so-called social networks. For years …

    Applications 17 Jun 2008, 19:32

  • AMD's new Firestream chip tops 1 teraflop

    GPGPU smackdown week

    The latest round of graphics card dueling between AMD and Nvidia isn't just over high-end gamers. The vendors will also exchange blows for the hearts and wallets of your friendly neighborhood medical imagers, seismic modelers, and computational fluid dynamicists. AMD is refreshing the FireStream processor line with a new …

    Servers 17 Jun 2008, 19:42

  • AP may have to take on entire blogosphere

    Snippet spat

    A major news agency has claimed that a blog's quotation of its stories is copyright infringement and has demanded they be taken down in a case which could redraw the lines of acceptable blog behaviour. The writer behind the blog has told OUT-LAW.COM that if AP continues its case it will be taking on the entire blogosphere. " …

    Law 17 Jun 2008, 19:43

  • There's a lot of sizzle with this STEC

    Analysis The charmed life of a disruptive firm

    For HDD manufacturers the whirlwind, the silicon sandstorm, has literally come out of the desert, the Iranian desert as it happens. In the shape of STEC, a booming Californian company with greatness being thrust upon it, the hard disk drive (HDD) triumvirate of Hitachi GST, Seagate and Western Digital face the biggest disruption …

    Storage 17 Jun 2008, 19:45

  • Red Hat moves JBoss to Amazon's cloud

    EC2 adopts another app

    Red Hat is now brewing its JBoss Java application server on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), marking the company's second round of making code available as an online pay-as-you-go service. A beta version of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform is now available on EC2. (Note: EC2 itself is in beta.) Customers can either …

    Applications 17 Jun 2008, 22:00

  • Google keeps killing penguins for money

    Comment Can the Earth survive its secrecy?

    On the grand list of things that Google cares about killing penguins to save a few bucks ranks higher than making the world a greener place. Google, like so many other companies, has given Mother Earth the big squeeze in a variety of ways. Some of its buildings run on solar power. Employees ride company-provided buses to work …

    Servers 17 Jun 2008, 22:04

  • Acceleware creates beastly GPU-based cluster

    Crushing Gigacells 64 Tesla cards at a time

    Hot on the heels of Nvidia's latest Tesla hardware unveiling, high performance computing partner Acceleware is cramming stacks of the graphics cards into new kit. It's put together what it says is the first commercially available GPU-based cluster system. The C30-16 uses Acceleware's home-brewed computational algorithms, …

    Servers 17 Jun 2008, 23:23