17th July 2008 Archive

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EMC adds Mozy lifesaver to Iomega drives

Armageddon foiled by back-up back-up

EMC is rolling together two of its recent acquisitions into a storage bundle that combines both local and remote data backup. Iomega external hard drive customers can today download a software package that combines EMC Retrospect Express backup with the Mozy online backup service. Customers who purchase an Iomega external …

Storage 17 Jul 2008, 00:41
eBay revenues defy worldwide army of bitter users

The Upside of Anger (DVD) - $3.99

Despite a flagging economy - and some serious vitriol from longtime users across the globe - eBay is raking in serious dough. During the financial quarter ending June 30, the world's most popular online auction house nabbed $568m in profits, a 20 per cent increase from the same quarter last year, and net revenues grew from $1. …

Financial News 17 Jul 2008, 01:24
Review site furious over McAfee SiteAdvisor 'false alert'

From red alert to red faces

A UK business had to fight for two weeks to clear its name after falsely being accused of harbouring malware by McAfee's SiteAdvisor service. SiteAdvisor issued a red alert against software review site tech-pro.net at the start of July. It wrongly claimed the site contained a dangerous download. SiteAdvisor uses a mixture of …

Security 17 Jul 2008, 06:02
Police seek two for C&W network robbery

Routers and software taken

Hertfordshire Police are searching for two men suspected of involvement in last week's robbery from a network centre in Watford. Thieves took equipment from a Cable & Wireless network site in Watford forcing FT.com, the Ordnance Survey and Sainsburys.com offline for most of the day. Herts Police sent us the following: "POLICE …

Telecoms 17 Jul 2008, 06:02
Logitech taps into Wii keyboard desire

A traditional take on typing

Logic 3 only unveiled its Wii keyboard earlier this month, but the firm’s offering has already been superseded by a laptop keyboard design from rival manufacturer Logitech. Logitech's Wii keyboard Logitech’s model sports a more conventional keyboard design than Logic 3’s attempt, meaning Logitech’s board should sit more …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 07:02
Dell hit by class action over unpaid overtime

US call centre workers can team up

Dell is facing a class action case from 5,000 call centre staff in the US who claim the computer giant has underpaid them since 2004. An Oregon judge - the delightfully-named Thomas Coffin - has certified the case for class action status, which means that most of Dell's US call centre staff from 8 February 2004 to the present …

IT Director 17 Jul 2008, 08:22
Snapper unveiled for the uni-dexter

Concept camera requires just one hand

When you’re out with the kids, you’ll usually have to offload their accessories before you’ve got enough hands free to take a picture. But one intrepid designer’s single-handedly changing all that. Designer Mikhail Stawsky's concept one-hand camera Mikhail Stawsky's concept design is called Index and it enables single- …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 09:09
Clay minerals point to vast Martian lakes

Water, water, everywhere

A study published today in Nature indicates that large swathes of the ancient Martian highlands, comprising about half the planet, contain clay-like minerals which can only form in the presence of water, demonstrating that the Red Planet once hosted "vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the …

Space 17 Jul 2008, 09:10
How can I free 'hidden' hard drive capacity?

I'm in the market for a new notebook hard drive. Replacing the old one is easy enough, but here's a thought: I've seen drives that offer 120GB and others that offer 160GB, yet both have one platter and two read/write heads. So, are they identical? If they effectively are, can I buy the (cheaper) 120GB drive and access the ' …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 09:28
Toshiba readies 400GB monster laptop HDD

Eco-friendly too

Toshiba has spun out six new laptop-friendly hard drives, including a 400GB whopper that sports the world's highest data density to date, the company claimed. The 400GB MK4058GSX contains two platters spinning at 5400rpm and which cram 477Mb into every square millimetre. It connects to the host over a 3Gb/s SATA link. The 2. …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 09:38
Voicemail and email make beast with two ~~call~~backs

Free service sticks messaging in blender

UK start-up Inniu is offering to deliver mobile voicemail messages to your email account for free, arguing that voicemail is still an unwelcome monopoly for most mobile operators. Inniu's system is interesting in that voice messages are delivered direct to your email account; if you retrieve them using their telephone system …

Mobile 17 Jul 2008, 09:40
MoD in £1.75m rush order for SAS backpack radars

Farnborough Blighty buys 'Blighter' porta-scanners

Here at the Farnborough Air Show, the emphasis is mostly on flying machines and associated sky-tech. But there are a few exhibitors who don't have their heads in the clouds. One such company is Plextek, an electronic engineering consultancy outfit based in Cambridge, which is here this week showing off its portable battery- …

Science 17 Jul 2008, 09:44
Microsoft eyes AOL takeover

Microhoo But is it for real?

Time Warner is still trying to flog AOL to either Yahoo! or Microsoft in the event that their on-off merger talks ending completely. Microsoft met Time Warner yesterday to discuss a possible merger of the two companies' online business, the WSJ reports. The paper suggest the talks are getting serious before Yahoo!'s general …

Financial News 17 Jul 2008, 09:45
Shuttle intros Phenom-friendly media centre barebone

Time for a new look, guys

Isn't it about time small form-factor specialist Shuttle came up with a new case design? This week, it touted its "new" H7 housing, but plenty of punters will have a job spotting how it differs from the rest. Shuttle's XPC SN78SH7: 'new' enclosure Aimed at AMD's Socket AM2+ CPUs, the barebone chassis incorporates a …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 10:05
Sony names date for Euro 80GB PS3

More capacity, less cash

Sony may have disappointed European PlayStation 3 fans by failing to announce a European launch date for the new 80GB PS3 earlier this week, but it's realised its mistake and confirmed that the model will arrive here next month. David Reeves, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), said that the new 80GB PS3 …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 10:13
Tech woes threaten NASA's Moon plan

Leaked report indicates trouble ahead

A leaked internal report shows that NASA's ambitions to get its new moonshot spacecraft off the ground in five years may be thwarted by technical and financial issues. The agency's publicly-announced deadline to conduct a first test launch of a manned Orion capsule is 2015, although internally it hoped to fast-track this to …

Space 17 Jul 2008, 10:20
Firefox sweeps away carpet bombing bug

Updates fix several vulns

Mozilla has plugged two critical security holes in versions 2 and 3 of Firefox. Version 2.0.0.16 fixes a code injection risk involving vulnerabilities in its CSS reference counter, and a flaw in handling command-line URLs that means multiple tabs can be launched when Firefox is not running. The first flaw also affects the …

Enterprise Security 17 Jul 2008, 10:28
Nike pulls Air Stab trainers

Outraged knife charities put their foot down

Nike has decided to withdraw its "Air Stab" range of trainers in the UK in response to "horrified reactions" from consumers and anti-knife charities, the Times reports. So far this year, 53 people have been stabbed to death in London alone, the Times notes, and last year "over 5,000 people across Britain were admitted to A&E …

Bootnotes 17 Jul 2008, 10:59
Pope apologises for Apple's MobileMe sins

An LA Times picture exclusive

Thus it is recorded in the Book of The Times of Los Angeles: "And the Lord said: 'Let there be MobileMe. And there was not MobileMe. And the Lord looked down upon Apple's botched transition and saw that it was not good. And he then told Benny 16 to apologise...'" Yeah verily, unbelievers look on in awe and wonder: Yup, …

Bootnotes 17 Jul 2008, 11:02
Intel Classmate PC lands in UK for £239

Eee bandwagon rolls on

Intel's kid-friendly cut-price computer concept has come to the UK courtesy of local supplier Actronix. Dubbed the JumPC, the Small, Cheap Computer is based on a 900MHz Intel Celeron Mobile processor and the chip giant's 915GMS chipset. It has 512MB of DDR 2 memory on board and 2GB of Flash storage - though you can select a …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 11:15
Samsung gauges TL9 snapper success

Camera features display gauges for quick reference

Samsung’s camera designers obviously had a flash of inspiration while they were out for a drive, because the firm’s launched a camera with miniature analogue gauges that display the snapper’s remaining memory and battery life. Samsung's TL9: gagues showing memory and battery levels The TL9 compact camera’s twin gauges are …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 11:16
Economic downturn pushes up Q2 PC shipments

IDC warns bubble will burst as global economy dips

Global PC shipments rose faster than expected in the second quarter, buoyed by strong demand in emerging markets and price drops in the US and Western Europe, according to analysts. Research firm Gartner, which had predicted 11.2 per cent growth for Q2, said worldwide computer shipments increased 16 per cent from the same …

Channel Register 17 Jul 2008, 11:21
Apple swipes £121 for 'free' MobileMe trial

What's yours is MobileMine

Europeans who signed up to a trial of MobileMe are finding mysterious charges on their payment cards of up to £121...for what they thought was a free look at Apple's answer to MS-Exchange. Anyone wanting to have a go on MobileMe must enter credit card details so they can pay for the service when their 60-days free trial …

Applications 17 Jul 2008, 11:31
French get pre-pay iPhone 3G

Updated Buy now sans contract - and unlocked

Apple's 3G iPhone has gone on sale in France - without the need to take out an airtime contract. The untethered handset doesn't come cheap. The 8GB version will set you back €509 ($808/£404) while the 16GB model costs €609 ($966/£483). That's through local supplier Darty, which specialises in selling handsets that are not …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 11:33
UK gov announces Road Pricing 2.0 - Managed Motorway

'A high level of monitoring and compliance is needed'

The UK government has announced its plans for the national road network in coming years, assigning funding for a variety of different projects. Transport Minister Ruth Kelly has also published plans for a future of "managed motorways", which will require "a high level of monitoring and compliance to make the package work". "I …

Government 17 Jul 2008, 12:06
Nokia E71 smartphone

Review It's a marvel how much geeky goodness is packed into a device this thin

The follow-up to the E61 is lighter and thinner, yet packs a 3.2-megapixel camera, push email, HSDPA 3G, a better keyboard, more memory and AGPS... and no Pop-Port. Nokia often likes to push the style boat out for a little tour round fashion victim harbour. But when it knuckles down and applies its design experience to …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 12:11
~~Icahn~~ Yahoo! writes! a! letter!

Urges shareholders to see sense

Yahoo! has written another letter to shareholders making clear exactly how and when it would sell to Microsoft and why shareholders should definitely not vote for Carl Icahn and his proposed slate of board directors. It also suggests Yahoo! could sell its Asian business and return money to shareholders. The letter does not …

Financial News 17 Jul 2008, 12:17
SAP forces customers onto premium support package

You'll all be over by Christmas

SAP is forcing users to migrate to its top level support program, and charging them an additional 5 per cent of their license maintenance fees a year for the privilege. SAP launched its Enterprise Support Offering in May, making it the default for new customers. The ESO scheme costs customers 22 per cent of their licence fees …

Applications 17 Jul 2008, 12:26
Romanian cops cuff 24 cybercrime suspects

Hammer falls after auction fraud

Romanian police have arrested 24 people, all thought to belong to a single cybercrime gang. The group is suspected of involvement in various identity theft, credit card and auction fraud scams said to have raked in an estimated €400,000 ($634,000) from foreign victims, according to Romanian news reports. Targets of the scams …

Crime 17 Jul 2008, 12:38
SCO ordered to pay Novell $2.5m Unix royalties

Cheque, mate

A US district court judge yesterday ordered SCO to pay Novell $2.5m for unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty and conversion. Judge Dale A Kimball’s ruling in the SCO vs Novell lawsuit came 10 weeks after a four-day trial to decide how much money SCO should cough up to Novell. Groklaw, which has a copy of the ruling …

Operating Systems 17 Jul 2008, 13:31
Sony signs up contactless data transfer partners

Wireless data transfers edge closer

Widespread adoption of ways to allow data to be transferred between gadgets without them touching each other has taken a step further. Some 15 manufacturers have agreed to push Sony’s TransferJet technology. Sony's TransferJet: move data between gadgets without wires A world without wires has long been the dream of gadget …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 13:42
Whitehall orders green paint for IT dept

Wanted: Asst.Perm.Sec for turning off computers at night

Whitehall has set out its plan for slashing the carbon footprint of its computer systems, and will send someone round to turn off all its PCs as early as this evening. A report released today, under the hideous title Greening Government IT, says that the UK gov’s computer systems pump out 460,000 tonnes of carbon a year, a …

Government 17 Jul 2008, 13:58
Capita wins NHS website contract

Three years, £60m

The Department of Health has named Capita as its preferred supplier for the NHS website - NHS Choices. The site was set up in June 2007 by Dr Foster Intelligence but the contract is up for renewal in August. It is expected that Capita will take over in Autumn this year. The site, nhs.uk, offers general health advice, advice …

Channel Register 17 Jul 2008, 14:00
Sony builds wireless data gang

TransferJet Consortium is go

Sony has signed up some friends to support its short-range radio protocol, TransferJet, as members of the new TransferJet Consortium, but has stopped short of calling the proprietary protocol a standard. The company has been demonstrating TransferJet for a few months now, pushing video between cameras and TVs as well as …

Data Networking 17 Jul 2008, 14:04
Volcanoes fingered in oceanic mass extinction

Dramatic late Cretaceous anoxic event

Scientists reckon they've confirmed what caused an oceanic mass extinction during the late Cretaceous period, 93 million years ago, provoked by a sudden, and previously unexplained "anoxic event" which deprived bottom-dwelling species of oxygen. According to a report in Nature, the cataclysm was provoked by massive undersea …

Biology 17 Jul 2008, 14:18
Swedes call on Human Rights Court to review snoop law

Angry boffins attempt to bork legislation

A Swedish organisation headed by lawyers and university professors has lodged a complaint this week with the European Court of Human Rights over Sweden’s controversial new snoop law. Last month, the Swedish parliament approved a law that will grant Sweden's intelligence agency National Defence Radio Establishment sweeping …

Law 17 Jul 2008, 14:26
Elgato revamps USB tuner line-up

Mac TV tuner specialist Elgato has revamped its entire line of USB sticks, kitting them out with new looks and new features. Elgato's EyeTV Hybrid: last fling for analogue TV? The EyeTV Hybrid, Elgato's analogue and digital product, will pick up FM radio and DVB-C signals if you're in an area that uses them. As per the …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 14:32
Brits won't get PS3 movie, TV downloads until 2009

Local content causing problems?

If you’re a European resident itching to download video content through the PlayStation Network, then Sony’s not your PAL – literally. The President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, David Reeves, has confirmed that the PS3 video store – which was launched in North America earlier this week – won’t be available to …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 14:38
Nintendo hints at MotionPlus Remote integration

Dongle to be built into controller?

Nintendo’s hinted that it may integrate MotionPlus into future incarnations of the Wii’s Remote rather than offer it separately. MotionPlus could soon be built into the Remote MotionPlus is a small unit that plugs onto the end of the Remote in the same port usually used by the Nunchuk. The add-on contains sensors that …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 14:41
Weird WEP bug strikes Centrino 2 Wi-Fi

Zero in on the source

The Wi-Fi Link 5000 chip that's part of Intel's newly launched Centrino 2 platform doesn't appear to like security keys that comprise a stack of zeros. That's the conclusion drawn by writer Frank Ohlhorst, who's been testing a pair of Centrino laptops and found they wouldn't talk to access points from different vendors …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 15:34
US sees first airliner flight with laser defences

BAE promises 'no live fire testing'

US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) trials of laser missile-dazzler defences on airliners have passed another milestone, with armaments maker BAE Systems announcing that its "JetEye" gear has made its first scheduled passenger flight. The JetEye-equipped plane, a Boeing 767 operated by American Airlines, made a routine trip …

Government 17 Jul 2008, 15:50
Consume .NET services without Silverlight

Web bling tone Adobe Flex comes through

Can Adobe Systems' Flex access Microsoft .NET web services? Adobe tends to promote its own ColdFusion or LiveCycle Data Services for use with Flex, but it also has support for SOAP 1.1. When Microsoft released Silverlight 2 second beta last month, I tested it by building a simple Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete (CRUD) …

Developer 17 Jul 2008, 16:11
Red Hat scores empty patent pledge

Caught with legal briefs down

America, it's said, is a litigious land with a patent system ripe for exploitation and in desperate need of reform. Red Hat's run-in with Firestar Software seems to prove that. The Linux vendor has been receiving plaudits and its legal team patting themselves on the back for defusing a ticking time bomb of claims against its …

Applications 17 Jul 2008, 16:15
T-Mobile leak reveals latest Sidekick

Interchangeable covers are back

The Sidekick handset's been released in so many versions that we’re starting to get confused. Now it’s come to light that another model’s set to slide onto the market within two weeks. According to a report by BGR, the latest model is called, ingeniously, the Sidekick 2008. The website’s managed to lay its hands on, what looks …

Reg Hardware 17 Jul 2008, 17:02
Leopard pimpin' method madness

Mac secrets Surf the information super hierarchy

Having dipped into the undocumented frame class used by NSWindow to handle the parts of a window not directly under the control of the application program, its time to go further. Let's dig into the methods exposed by the frame class hierarchy. The hierarchy of undocumented classes will become obvious if you checked out the …

Developer 17 Jul 2008, 18:02
Microsoft's Live Mesh doesn't want you

We'll get back to you

When Microsoft's top brass tell people the company's still working on getting its online services right, they ain't kidding. A day after the Live Mesh data sharing service became "publicly available," neither Live Mesh nor the Live Mesh support forums can be accessed. Microsoft got lots of splashy coverage Wednesday for …

Applications 17 Jul 2008, 18:25
Congress accuses American Phorm of 'beating consumers'

NebuAd and J. Edgar Google

When US Congressman Ed Markey asked NebuAd CEO Bob Dykes whether his Phorm-like ad targeting system should require an opt-in, Dykes refused to answer. "Do you support a policy where the consumer must say 'yes' before you roam through all their personal data and then turn it into an information product that is then sold to …

Telecoms 17 Jul 2008, 18:40
EU thumps Intel with more anti-AMD charges

Abusive conduct threesome

It's true. The European Union has thrown a new set of anti-trust allegations at Intel. Earlier this week, rumors swirled that the EU would spring into action, adding charges to a European Commission investigation against Intel that's been going since 2001. Now the extra charges have arrived, with EU regulators accusing Intel …

PCs & Chips 17 Jul 2008, 19:07
Amazon opens video on demand shop

Boxing Unbox

After failing to change the world with its Unbox video download service, Amazon has unveiled a new online storefront that serves up videos on demand. As The New York Times reports, Amazon Video on Demand offers instant access to roughly 40,000 movies and TV shows. And vice president for digital media Bill Carrs thinks this is …

Music and Media 17 Jul 2008, 21:16
Samsung and Sun make 'ultra-endurance' flash chips

Beget Methuselah SSDs

Samsung and Sun Microsystems say they've found a veritable fountain of youth for data center solid-state drives. They claim to have jointly developed a single-layer cell (SLC) NAND flash device that provides a "five-fold increase" in data write/erase cycles over standard SLC flash. Numbers aren't provided — but given current …

Servers 17 Jul 2008, 21:20
AMD loses $1.19bn and CEO Ruiz

Thanks for the, er, nightmares

AMD today hit Wall Street with a one-two punch. It lost a stunning $1.19bn during the second quarter. And it nudged Hector Ruiz out of the CEO role, replacing him with longtime planned successor Dirk Meyer, who has been President and COO. Already very depressed, AMD's shares dropped close to 10 per cent in after-hours trading …

Financial News 17 Jul 2008, 21:42
Wall Street frowns on ginormous Google profits

Sergey grabs the knob

Google's ginormous second quarter profits didn't quite match Wall Street expectations, driving share prices down as much as 7 per cent in after hours trading. But it sounds like Sergey Brin will soon crank that big dial on the company's secret money machine, making everything A-OK in Q3. In Q2, the world's largest ad broker …

Financial News 17 Jul 2008, 23:57