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18th June 2008 Archive

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  • Zuckerberg's Google boycott reaches 32 days (and counting)

    Supernova 'Talk to our lawyers... bitch'

    On the stage, there were three chairs. And just off stage, there were three men deeply obsessed with online social networking: Dave Morin of Facebook, Kevin Marks of Google, and Joseph Smarr of Plaxo. As they waited for their afternoon panel discussion on the ins and outs of their respective social gizmos, Mr. Plaxo turned to …

    Music and Media 18 Jun 2008, 00:33

  • T-Mobile doubles 0870 call costs

    'Ofcom told us to'

    In a remarkable reading of Ofcom's new rules on 0870 numbers, T-Mobile has decided to double the price of such calls for most of its customers, rather than cutting them as Ofcom intended. Ofcom decided that 0870, 0871, 0844 and 0845 numbers should be considered "normal" calls, and charged at the "normal" rate, but the …

    Mobile 18 Jun 2008, 06:02

  • Toshiba touts hi-def laptop trio

    One for gaming, two for movies

    Toshiba has dipped its toes into the mobile HD market, with the launch of three Qosmio laptops equipped with the manufacturer’s dedicated HD content processor. Toshiba's Qosmio X300: comes with a 17in screen and 'all the latest technology' Although the manufacturer’s not yet willing to release the full specifications of …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 07:33

  • VeriSign builds out DNS security defences

    Give me DNSSec but not just yet

    VeriSign is pushing ahead with plans to make the internet's Domain Name System (DNS) more resilient to internet attacks. But although it will make its upgraded server infrastructure IPv6 and DNSSec ready, the net infrastructure giant reckons the touted performance improvements promised by the protocols have been delivered by …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 09:00

  • US woman sues over exploding thong

    Flying v-string provokes corneal trauma

    A 52-year-old US woman has filed suit against Victoria's Secret claiming that an attempt to spice up her underwear drawer ended in corneal trauma after a "decorative metallic piece" flew off an example of the lingerie giant's "Sexy Little Thing" low-rise v-string as she was slipping into the come-hither apparel and gave her an …

    Bootnotes 18 Jun 2008, 09:03

  • Al-Qaeda targets net-connected coffee machine

    Aussie issues chilling buffer overflow menace alert

    An Aussie risk advisory services manager has issued a chilling security alert concerning the Jura F90 net-connected coffee machine, warning caffeine-heads that the hi-tech brewing device could open their Windows PC to exploitation by internet paedophiles and al-Qaeda*, CNET reports. Craig Wright, who works for "professional …

    Enterprise Security 18 Jun 2008, 09:11

  • Roomba robot maker to build DARPA squidge-droids

    Flexible bot-probes to penetrate tight backdoors

    Famous robotics company iRobot - maker of the noted Roomba autonomous floor-cleaner and supplier of war-bots to the US military - has announced a radical new development contract. The company is to create a "soft" robot able to wriggle its way through "openings smaller than its actual structural dimensions". It almost goes …

    Science 18 Jun 2008, 09:19

  • AMD readies rival for Intel's Atom

    More 'Bobcat' details emerge

    More details have emerged about 'Bobcat', the processor AMD has in development that's set to take on Intel's Atom processor family. As Register Hardware reported last year, AMD let slip that it was working on a UMPC chip, Bobcat, at the Computex 2007 show. AMD didn't say much else, but a company presentation slide that …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 09:35

  • Stressed? Over-worked? Buy a satnav

    Satnavs have positive driving impacts, claims TomTom

    Looking for ways to reduce stress and heighten your awareness? Then the answer’s simple: buy a satnav. "Research" has found the GPS devices have several positive impacts on the modern driver. According to independent research conducted on behalf of… er… satnav maker TomTom, 74 per cent of UK drivers said they felt more in …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 10:07

  • AMD Radeon HD 4850 details spied ahead of launch

    Over-eager retailer spills beans

    AMD's anticipated Radeon HD 4850, the follow-up to its 3850 GPU and rival to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 200 series, appears to have made an unscheduled early appearance on Amazon.com courtesy of board seller Diamond Multimedia. Amazon quickly took the page down, but not before a number of sites scribbled down the details. The basic …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 10:07

  • Fortinet goes shopping for database security

    IPLocks deal adds application defences

    Security appliance firm Fortinet is pushing into the database security market via the acquisition of technology from IPLocks. Fortinet has licensed IPLocks’ database monitoring and auditing tools as well as acquiring its vulnerability assessment tool, source code and related assets. The deal was announced on Tuesday, but its …

    Channel Register 18 Jun 2008, 10:20

  • 3G iPhone not ready for the enterprise?

    Business unsure, O2 punters unhappy

    Business users are complaining they have little idea of what the new iPhone will offer them, other than the fact that the low price is going to see every middle manager toting one while their IT departments fret about the lack of encryption and security on the phone. Analyst J.Gold reckons businesses should be nervous of a …

    Mobile 18 Jun 2008, 10:46

  • Kazakh TV off-air after satellite 'breathing troubles'

    Russian sat flop flap sees mass Borat stranglings

    Central Asian ex-Soviet republic Kazakhstan has reportedly lost all domestically controlled satellite TV services due to malfunctions in its sole communications spacecraft. Kazakh space chief and former cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev said on Monday that the KazSat-1 platform, launched in 2006, was "alive but not breathing well …

    Space 18 Jun 2008, 11:18

  • Instant trojan to worm toolkit sighted

    No skills required to create malware

    Miscreants have created a point-and-click toolkit designed to make it easier to both create and distribute Trojans. The Trojan2Worm (T2W) toolkit turns any executable file into a worm with auto-spreading capabilities. As such it provides the ability for Trojan infection agents to acquire worm-like spreading abilities. The …

    Malware 18 Jun 2008, 11:19

  • China in anti-monopoly investigation of Microsoft

    Updated Enter the dragon

    China has kicked off an anti-monopoly probe into Microsoft’s business practices and lawsuits from local firms could follow, according to state media reports today. Several companies are being scrutinised over suspected monopoly activities by China’s State Intellectual Property Office and some research institutions in the …

    Channel Register 18 Jun 2008, 11:20

  • Gov claims 'password protection' OK for sensitive docs

    Blears docs should never have been on stolen PC

    The government sent the security industry into gales of laughter today when it insisted that sensitive documents on Hazel Blears’ missing PC are quite safe, as the machine is “password protected”. The gov’s soothing words came amid speculation on what formal action, if any, communities and local government secretary Blears …

    Government 18 Jun 2008, 11:52

  • AMD CPU shoot-out: Phenom X3 and X4

    Review Intel killers?

    The birth of AMD’s quad-core Phenom processor was plagued with problems. After a gestation period more akin to an elephant than a CPU, the new silicon popped out puking and bawling but was clearly a bit of a runt. The problem was the now-infamous TLB error that crippled performance and reduced clock speed with the result that …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 11:55

  • Wii and Xbox 360 storage boost rumours hot-up

    Higher capacity consoles coming?

    Gamers may soon see some major storage capacity changes made to the Wii and Xbox 360, with Nintendo thought to be working on a storage option, and Microsoft poised to unveil a new capacity model. Laurent Fischer, Nintendo’s European MD, said in a report by Gamesindustry.biz that Nintendo has identified a storage-related “issue …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 11:59

  • Panasonic promises 6x BD-Rs next month

    Panasonic has developed what it claims is the world's first recordable Blu-ray Disc capable of laying down a track at 6x speed - 20 per cent faster than a 16x DVD-R. Of course, 6x BD-R burners have been available for a while - though Panasonic itself won't be introducing them until September. LG, on the other hand, released …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 12:38

  • Yahoo! execs! stick! it! to! the! man!

    Microsoft switches on the telly

    Jerry Yang celebrates his first year as CEO of Yahoo! today, but with so many execs choosing to exit stage left, it’s not exactly an anniversary he’ll want to shout about. Over the past week many of the beleaguered internet firm’s key players have upped sticks in what some observers see as an increasingly vocal protest against …

    Financial News 18 Jun 2008, 12:39

  • Phorm failed to mention 'illegal' trials at Home Office meeting in 2007

    Exclusive Just fancy that!

    The Home Office held a private meeting with Phorm in August last year, but BT's interception and profiling partner did not disclose that it had completed an allegedly illegal trial of its technology on tens of thousands of unwitting broadband subscribers just weeks earlier. Senior civil servant Andrew Knight revealed the …

    Telecoms 18 Jun 2008, 12:59

  • Garmin's satnav phone launch delayed?

    White body colour option touted though

    Release of the first mobile phone from satnav manufacturer Garmin could be delayed from the third quarter to Q4, it’s been claimed. Garmin's Nüvifone: put back until Q4? According to a report by Digitimes, a source has said that the much-hyped Nüvifone is now slated for a release into the US during the fourth quarter. …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 12:59

  • Europe's first mobile WiMAX goes online

    Amsterdam gets 3.5GHz connectivity

    WorldMax has launched Europe's first mobile WiMax deployment, covering the centre of Amsterdam so that coffee-shop dwellers can surf the web without puzzling over plugs and wires, once they've got their PC-card connected. The deployment, which is being run by Alcatel-Lucent and part-financed by Intel, is operating in 80MHz of …

    Mobile 18 Jun 2008, 13:00

  • Swedish parliament rejects snoop everyone law

    Surveillance bill back to the drawing board

    A controversial law in Sweden which would have allowed Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) to monitor all outgoing and incoming communications crossing Sweden's borders didn't get enough votes in parliament today. FRA would have been allowed to read emails and SMS messages and tap phone conversations without a …

    Government 18 Jun 2008, 13:03

  • Sony Ericsson shows budget-phone pair

    Tucked away in the corner at Sony Ericsson's Q4 handset showcase, held in London last night, were two phones that may be the ideal Light, Cheap Mobiles to go with your Small, Cheap, Computer. Neither the K330 nor the J132 candybar handsets are currently guaranteed to appear in the UK. That will be down to any service providers …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 13:38

  • Sainsbury's customers starve as servers melt down

    Try something unstable today

    Sainsbury's on-line ordering system thought it would try something new today, and opted for disappearing completely and taking the day's orders with it. Customers trying to log on to the supermarket's online ordering service today were greeted with a couple of lemons and an apology. No, really, lemons. The supermarket told us …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 14:53

  • London hospital loses 20,000 unencrypted patient files

    'Nobody expects thieves to break into locked drawers'

    Providing proof, if it were needed, that every single piece of personal data in the UK has now been lost - probably several times over, by multiple corporations and government offices - news has just broken of another theft of laptops crammed with easily accessed info. This time the there-but-for-the-grace-of-god bonehead users …

    IT Director 18 Jun 2008, 15:02

  • Firefox 3 downloads hit 7m despite server FAIL

    Mozilla pats self on back regardless

    The Mozilla Foundation’s servers yesterday buckled under the strain of its own PR stunt to convince World+Dog to download Firefox 3 and set a new record over a 24-hour period. So far, at the time of writing, the open source organisation is claiming just over 7m downloads of its latest browser - despite the fact that at launch …

    Applications 18 Jun 2008, 15:23

  • UK developer trio accused of game plagiarism

    US distributor yanks Limbo of the Lost

    A former pub landlord and two chums who together created a computer game and signed a big distribution deal with a major US games supplier have been accused of ripping off other titles' content. Back in May, local newspaper the Kent Messenger interviewed Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis, all from Maidstone, Kent …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 15:24

  • OpenSUSE 11 a redemptive OS with a Mactastic shine

    Review For newbies and Linux dark-lords

    2008 is proving to be a banner year for Linux distributions; so far we've seen Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9, both of which go a long way toward making Linux painless for newbies. You can now add OpenSUSE, the community-driven sequel to Novell's SUSE Linux distribution, to the list of significant releases. Version 11.0 of OpenSUSE …

    Operating Systems 18 Jun 2008, 15:31

  • Teens use technology to party in strangers' pools

    Google Earth and Facebook spawn pool-crashing craze

    Tech savvy teens are using Google Earth’s splendidly clear aerial shots of the UK to launch a summertime craze – pool crashing. <Google Earth’s used to identify pool-equipped victims and then Facebook helps organise the crash Teens begin by surfing Google Earth’s satellite images to find houses with swimming pools — or at …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 15:36

  • Photobucket tipped over by Turkish hacker

    DNS hijack hijinks

    Photobucket, the popular photo sharing website, became the target of a DNS hack on Tuesday. As a result of the attack some (but not all) surfers hoping to check out pictures were involuntarily redirected to a greeting from hacker NetDeliz and a message in Turkish. A post to Photobucket's user forum blamed the problem on "an …

    Security 18 Jun 2008, 15:37

  • Fuji touts world's fastest CompactFlash

    Super-speedy snapping

    Get your finger on the shutter button, because Fuji claims its latest CompactFlash memory card boasts the world’s fastest write speed. The 310x version of Fuji’s CompactFlash card uses a “specially designed controller” and the “latest SLC flash memory chips” to provide a write speed of up to 46.5MB/s. Fuji’s next step down …

    Reg Hardware 18 Jun 2008, 15:48

  • Is it safe to download al Qaeda manuals yet?

    Despite Court of Appeal ruling, not entirely...

    Is the "al-Qaeda manual" still an easy get into jail card? The UK Court of Appeal yesterday quashed the conviction of Samina Malik, aka the "Lyrical Terrorist", for possession of information useful for terrorist purposes under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, but the Crown Prosecution Service still views this and other …

    Law 18 Jun 2008, 16:02

  • Red Hat chief calls for open source missionary work

    Summit Time for customers to swap code

    Customers who remain only halfhearted open source converts aren't doing enough for Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst. At his opening keynote at the Red Hat Summit in Boston, Whitehurst said the company needs to start preaching to its customers to share their internally developed code with others. "The vast majority of software …

    Applications 18 Jun 2008, 16:38

  • XtremeData gives Xeon chips another math lesson with FPGAs

    Front-side bus snuggling included

    XtremeData is shipping its newest set of FPGAs made for giving Intel's Xeon chips a helping hand with math work. The XD200i lineup uses Altera's Stratix III FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) that plug into Xeon sockets, providing a massive speed boost to certain high performance computing applications. Their typical …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 16:42

  • 1,076 developers, 15 years, one open-source Wine

    Windows masterwork completed, finally

    After 15 years of development, a running battle with Microsoft and persistent doubts about its viability, the first proper version of Wine - a middleware tool to run Windows applications on Unix-like operating systems - has finally arrived. Wine 1.0, the work of a staggering 1,076 programmers, has been released under the GNU …

    Applications 18 Jun 2008, 17:02

  • ClearSpeed's silicon freshness results in 41 Teraflop rack

    Cited for floating point abuse

    Cheaper and faster - check. ClearSpeed has hit the two major keys to winning in the silicon game with the release of its latest floating point accelerators. The fresh CSX700 family of products offer more than double the raw performance of the previous CSX600 gear. At 192 cores, you get twice as many engines for handling …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 18:22

  • IBM's Roadrunner is top of the supercomputer pops

    Going faster miles an hour

    So IBM beat IBM in the new supercomputer TOP500 hit parade published today. No surprise there, with Roadrunner, the new no.1, built by IBM for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, earning plenty of airtime last week for being the first petaflop computer. Reduced to no.2 is IBM's BlueGene/L (478.2 teraflop/s) at the US …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 20:55

  • Red Hat meanders into hypervisor market

    Summit Don't be so aggressive, guys

    Red Hat is extremely late to the virtualization hypervisor party, but the company is confident that its reputation as a prominent Linux licenser will push the technology to even greater heights. Open source style. The company announced its own embedded hypervisor and accompanying management console today at the Red Hat Summit …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 21:04

  • Sweden ushers in bugging for all

    Amended bill voted through

    Sweden this evening voted in favour of its controversial snoop law, after the proposal was amended earlier today. Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America's National Security Agency. A total of 143 …

    Policing 18 Jun 2008, 21:22

  • FCC tests 'vindicate' white space lobby

    Supernova Not so fast, says FCC

    Microsoft wants you to know that when its white space prototypes malfunctioned during lab tests at the US Federal Communications Commission, the lab did not burn down. Last week, the FCC completed tests of devices from several white space-obsessed outfits, and despite the repeated failure of its own engineering prototypes, …

    Wireless 18 Jun 2008, 22:14

  • Parallels slices and dices OS X with Server for Mac

    VMware in the rear

    Parallels has stolen a march on VMware with the release of virtualization software for Intel-based servers running Apple's OS X Leopard operating system. Claiming to have the world's first server virtualization solution for Intel-powered Apple systems, Parallels boasts that Server for Mac supports any Intel-based Apple …

    Virtualization 18 Jun 2008, 22:25

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 get another year of TLC

    Summit Lifecycles updated, possibly more complicated than fluid dynamics

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 4 and 5 are going to stick around in full support mode a full year longer. Red Hat outlined its complex release roadmap during the Red Hat Summit in Boston. It plans to extend the initial "intensive enablement" release phase of both RHEL versions 4 and 5 from three years of earnest …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 22:43

  • Start-up outfoxes Apple, Dell and HP by offering stock options with PCs

    Community for hire

    God bless Silicon Valley. Where else will you find a PC start-up offering stock options to create faux communities? Earlier this week, we brought word of CherryPal, an intriguing Mountain View-based company that wants to do nothing less than rewire the PC market. It's got a 10 ounce "desktop," which runs on a low-power …

    PCs & Chips 18 Jun 2008, 23:42

  • Sun shrinks Constellation for HPC run

    Hopes to outdo Bull

    Sun Microsystems has suffered from a hate-hate relationship with the supercomputing world over the past few years. The shift to Linux clusters caught the company totally off guard, and resulted in Sun vanishing from the Top500 supercomputers list. That's hardly the "right" position for a company that prides itself on selling …

    Servers 18 Jun 2008, 23:56