14th August 2008 Archive
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US Air Force halts plans to establish a Cyber Command
Botnet superpower delayed
The US Air Force has suspended plans to build a provisional unit designed to make it the dominant service in cyberspace. According to NextGov, top Air Force officials put an immediate halt to the establishment of a Cyber Command, which had been scheduled to be operational by October. Development will now be delayed until new …
Government 14 Aug 2008, 00:20
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Intel releases USB 3.0 controller interface spec
Speeding next-gen bus' oll-out?
Intel has provided chipset makers with a draft specification for a USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller Interface (XHCI), making good a promise it made a couple of months ago. According to the chip giant, the XCHI will allow chipset makers to develop hardware that can communicate with USB 3.0 system software in a standardised, …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 08:00
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EDS knits bigger net for voluntary redundancies
Updated Blighty staff worry if they'll ever meet HP
EDS has more than doubled the pool of workers pinpointed for possible voluntary redundancies in the UK, The Register has learned. The firm's UK-based permanent and contracted employees are increasingly anxious about Hewlett-Packard’s imminent takeover and whether they will still have a job with the firm once the merger …
Financial News 14 Aug 2008, 08:17
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Sony plans 2009 Euro OLED TV debut
Bigger sets than its 11in screen, hopefully
Sony will bring its skinny OLED TV family to Europe next year, so says Japanese newspaper Nikkei, though it's unclear if the move will see the arrival of the 11in XEL-1 OLED TV or a follow-up model. Certainly, by the time Sony OLED TVs appear in Europe the XEL-1, which was launched in Japan in October 2007 and in the US in …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 08:18
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Logica profits plunge
Restructure hits bottom line
Restructuring charges battered Logica's first half profits despite first half revenues growing by six per cent, figures released today show. But the services vendor has shrugged off the bottom line slump and raised its prediction for full year revenues. For the six months ended 30 June 2008 revenues were £1.8bn compared to £1 …
Financial News 14 Aug 2008, 08:19
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US judge says University can ignore Christian course credits
Yes, the Bible is fallible
A federal judge has told the University of California that when considering applicants, it has the constitutional right to ignore high school course work grounded in the notion that the Bible is infallible. On Friday, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Judge James Otero denied claims from a group of Christian high …
Science 14 Aug 2008, 08:37
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Phoenix IT revs up in Q1
Q1 revenues were up 48 per cent for Phoenix IT, which posted an interim management statement today on the three months ended 30 June. The UK IT outsourcing group is not revealing hard figuers, but it says that organic revs were up 13.8 per cent, with the rest of the gain reflecting the fact that new-ish acquisition, the disaster …
Channel Register 14 Aug 2008, 09:33
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NetBeans 6.5 beta promises PHP simplicity
Open source traveller
Sun Microsystems has taken another step in its long journey towards greater support of open source by delivering the first beta of its next crop of NetBeans. The NetBeans 6.5 beta builds on the open source integrated development environment's earlier support for dynamic languages with support for PHP. Among the staples, PHP …
Developer 14 Aug 2008, 09:46
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Russian push into Georgia could knock Nasa off ISS
Astronauts could be benched till 2015
Russia’s invasion of Georgia is sending ripples right out into space, with NASA facing the possibility of no longer being able to hitch a ride to the International Space Station on Soyuz flights. With the space shuttle due to retire in 2010, and the US not likely to have a replacement manned space flight option ready till 2015 …
Space 14 Aug 2008, 09:46
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Asus goes official on extended Eee PC line-up
Competition engenders confused array of options
Undoubtedly feeling the pressure of competition, Asus has come clean on its ever expanding range of Eee PCs. And it's starting to get a little silly. The range, according to Asus UK, now stretches to 12 models. In addition to the original 2G Surf, 4G Surf and 4G; spring's 900; and the more recent 901, 1000 and 1000H, we now …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 09:51
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Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 release date named
Firm's first Windows Mobile smartphone
Sony Ericsson's eagerly anticipated Xperia X1 Windows Mobile-based smartphone looks set to be released early October. Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1: set to debut in October In a recent promotional email, retailer Expansys said that the phone’s “release date is set for week 41 (Oct 6-12)”. Expansys also said the "arc slider" …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 10:14
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EDS hits TfL with restraining order
Oyster row gets legal
EDS has filed a restraining order against Transport Trading Limited, a Transport for London subsidiary, to stop it handing the £100m-a-year Oyster contract to Cubic. Cubic and EDS were majority partners in TranSys, which ran London's Oyster scheme. TfL, keen to get better value for money, was renegotiating the contract with …
Government 14 Aug 2008, 10:37
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Ofcom: 'Well done Ofcom!'
Quango fails economics A-level
Ofcom paid tribute to its own munificence today by releasing its annual report on how its stewardship of the UK communications sector has made everyone love their ISP, telco and media. We're all consuming digital junk more than ever before, with an average of 7 hours and 9 minutes per day spent watching TV, txting m8s, on the …
Networks 14 Aug 2008, 10:52
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HBOS culls 5% of IT workforce
Halifax doesn't need a little extra help after all
Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) is slashing around 100 IT jobs as part of a cost-cutting exercise aimed at reducing duplication between mortgage brands. The bank plans to axe up to five per cent of its 2,000-strong UK-based IT workforce in what it has described as a “phased approach” that HBOS hopes to complete by the end of …
Financial News 14 Aug 2008, 10:58
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Massive expansion planned for 'no-work' database
Employers moot snitching on workplace bullies
The operator of a new private database that allows big shops to share information on suspected dodgy staff is holding talks with major corporations to expand into other industries. Early adopters in the retail sector are also trialling the system with a view to collecting data about other alleged transgressions such as …
Law 14 Aug 2008, 11:02
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AOL phisher jailed for 7 years
Greeting card scam man gets maximum sentence
A Connecticut man was sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday for masterminding a phishing scam targeting AOL members. Michael Dolan, 24 and of West Haven, Connecticut, was also ordered to serve three years' probation after his release. Dolan pleaded guilty to fraud and aggravated identity theft offences last year as …
Crime 14 Aug 2008, 11:31
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VIA Nano ultra-low power processor
Preview Atom smasher?
The mobo in our pics may look like a VIA SN18000G, which sells for about £150 with a 1.8GHz C7 processor, but it’s more exciting: it's a reference board for VIA's would be Atom-smasher: Nano. It's designed to demonstrate the new 1.8GHz VIA Nano L2100, to be precise. The CPU's fabbed at 65nm and is set to consume no more than …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 11:51
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Twitter falls silent in the UK
Free service cuts off SMS delivery
Twitter has stopped sending SMS updates to UK customers, thus leaving them unaware of the latest important updates on what their friends had for breakfast. Twitter is a service for bloggers who can't string a sentence together and who want to appeal to readers who can't focus beyond a headline. Updates can be sent in over SMS …
Mobile 14 Aug 2008, 11:54
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Samsung builds phone from corn
A-maize-ing
A mobile phone with a case made entirely from an eco-friendly material has been unveiled by Samsung. The case wrapping Samsung’s E200 is constructed entirely from what the manufacturer calls “bio-plastic,” which it's previously claimed is more environmentally friendly because it's naturally extracted from corn rather than …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 11:57
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Tired of RRoD taunts? Turn your Xbox 360 into a PC
Enterprising vendor offers case mod
The solution to a hot and noisy Xbox 360 is to put the console inside a big, black PC case - according to one manufacturer, that is. Lian-Li's PC-esque Xbox 360 case improves airflow and reduces noise Lian-Li Industrial, a self-styled “executive upper-class aluminium PC chassis manufacturer”, has designed a PC-like chassis …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 12:05
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Integralis shrugs off credit crunch in H1
Integralis, the German-owned, IT security services firm, pumped out a H1 statement today, showing sales up 18.4 per cent to €80.4m (H107: €68m). As it's quoted in Germany, the firm is a little spare with the profit details. But it says operating profit was up 51.1 per cent and it notes a big uplift in cash flow from operating …
Channel Register 14 Aug 2008, 12:12
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Midwife's lost diary sparks mums and baby alert
Details thrown out with bath water?
UK public sector workers have performed a sterling job of losing sensitive digital data stored on CDs, stolen laptops and wot-not over the past year. But it’s important to note that sometimes, good old fashioned paper-based documents go missing too. The Beeb reports today that a midwife’s diary storing hundreds of names and …
Public Sector 14 Aug 2008, 12:12
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Yahoo! knows! where! you! are!
Fire Eagle takes off
Yahoo's punter-locating database officially launched yesterday and already has privacy advocates in a flap, despite offering users complete control as well as expecting them to lie every now and then. Fire Eagle is a free central service to which punters can subscribe and maintain their current location. Services then …
Mobile 14 Aug 2008, 12:44
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US says the next war will be all in our minds
Neuroscientists, anthropologists take to the trenches
The US needs to draft in psychopharmacologists, neuroscientists and even goateed cultural studies experts to fight 21 century wars that will be largely in the mind. A report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies predicts a freakish future of advances in …
Biology 14 Aug 2008, 13:14
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Intel to drop C word from Atom chip brand
Not Centrinos any more
Intel has scratched the 'Centrino' off its Atom product line labels, the chip maker has confessed. Intel launched Atom moniker back in April, initially as a line of CPUs - codenamed 'Silverthorne' - for handheld internet tablets, all of which were intended to be bundled with the 'Paulsbo' chipset and go out under the Centrino …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 13:28
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Onboarding with Westcon
Westcon Convergence, the UK part of networking distie Westcon Group, has introduced an "onboarding" tool to make life easier for resellers. This shoe-horns multiple vendor certification programs and offerings into one place online and a quick way of measuring revenue targets. At least that's what it sounds like: you can read the …
Channel Register 14 Aug 2008, 13:36
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Prof says fatties a bigger menace than bin Laden
Big-boned deserve 42 days without cake
Government health adviser Professor David Hunter believes obesity in the UK is now a greater threat than terrorism. The Durham University prof reckons the NHS needs to stop focusing exclusively on treatment of ill health and do more to promote good health. Hunter said: "The government was quick to move for things like ID …
Biology 14 Aug 2008, 13:37
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Intel's Hammer of Thor
Hammer has picked up Intel's storage and server distribution rights for the Nordic countries. Hammer will run the business through its Stockholm office. Hammer website.
Channel Register 14 Aug 2008, 13:37
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Sony downgrades PS3 PlayTV functionality
Live and recorded video transfer settings changed
We’re all excited about PlayTV’s launch next month, but would you be upset if we said that the PlayStation 3 telly tuner now won’t allow saved video to be copied to the PlayStation Portable, a PC or a Memory Stick? Well, get the tissues ready, because Sony’s confired to Register Hardware that PlayTV will now only be able to …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 13:38
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µTorrent silently fixes long-standing zero-day vuln
No fanfare here
Popular BitTorrent client µTorrent has quietly patched a vulnerability that created a means for hackers to load malware onto the PCs of file-sharers simply by persuading them to open a poisoned Torrent. The Hollywood-dream bug stemmed from a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability and offered far more potential for mischief …
Crime 14 Aug 2008, 13:54
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Brits offered first portable DAB+ tuner
Scottish DAB hand Revo has announced its first portable unit capable of pinking up not only FM, DAB and internet radio broadcasts but also next-gen DAB+ transmissions. The Pico RadioStation isn't going to replace your MP3 player. It's a compact 167 x 105 x 105mm, but it's designed to be easy to move around the house rather …
Reg Hardware 14 Aug 2008, 14:14
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Virgin Media ADSL punters suffer 2-day email meltdown
Tucows: Silly name, silly systems
Virgin Media says engineers are working to restore full email service to its ADSL subscribers after a hardware failure at partner Tucows downed the system. The outage occurred on Tuesday evening and is still not fully resolved. A Virgin Media spokesman said on Thursday afternoon that webmail access has been fixed for all the …
Telecoms 14 Aug 2008, 14:40
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Olympic Committee wins gold for foot shooting
Free publicity for protest video
YouTube has pulled a video of a Free Tibet protest after receiving a takedown notice from the International Olympics Committee. The video, of a protest action at the Chinese Consulate in New York, was removed from YouTube and promptly reappeared on Vimeo, BlipTVand dozens of other video sites. At the time of writing it is even …
Government 14 Aug 2008, 14:45
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COBOL thwarts California's Governator
The language that refused to die
Inspite - or perhaps because - of its "difficult" birth, Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) has become a survivor in the world of computing. That's caused problems when it comes to maintaining systems running the language. COBOL has now taken center stage in the rumbling controversy over the State of California's budget …
Developer 14 Aug 2008, 15:02
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Ofcom knocks back spectrum auction
T-Mobile and O2 still fighting their corner
Ofcom has admitted it will not start the auction of three chunks of 2GHz spectrum in October as promised, pushing the date back as litigation from T-Mobile and O2 drags on. The incumbent operators are not saying much in public, but the argument is over how Ofcom wants to sell three sections of spectrum around 2GHz (2010- …
Mobile 14 Aug 2008, 15:37
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Bear prints found on Georgian cyber-attacks
Shots by both sides
Security researchers claim to have uncovered evidence pointing to a link between Russian state-run businesses and cyber-attacks against Georgia. Denial of service attacks against Georgian web-sites started a day before Georgian and Russian military units began fighting over the disputed region of South Ossetia. SecureWorks …
Security 14 Aug 2008, 16:08
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US judge decrees open source licenses valid
Free software lovers' train pulls into station
Openistas are celebrating a major court victory over a legal spat involving model railroad hobbyists that will have big implications for the Creative Commons license. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that just because a software programmer freely gave his work away, it didn’t follow that it …
Software 14 Aug 2008, 16:21
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Hasbro kills Colonel Mustard in the corporate office with the marketing ploy
A facelift for Clue(do)
American toy and game giant Hasbro has given Clue(do) an overhaul, murdering Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and the rest of the 60-year-old board game's famous cast of characters. As reported by The BBC in Britain and National Public Radio in the States, designers have updated the classic murder mystery game for a "modern …
Bootnotes 14 Aug 2008, 18:30
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Microsoft running on at least 220,000 servers
Screengrabs air metallic laundry
Exactly how many servers does Microsoft own? Well, we still don't for sure, but it looks as if Redmond is running at least 148,357 boxes. A crafty web site called iStartedSomething caught Microsoft revealing its metal haul in a promotional video. The question and answer session with Chief Environmental Strategist Rob Bernard …
Servers 14 Aug 2008, 19:12
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Rackable puts RapidScale storage biz up for adoption
Wants visitation rights
After suffering a disappointing second quarter, Rackable Systems wants to dump its RapidScale storage appliance business which the company purchased for nearly $40m only two years ago. The data center vendor said today it plans to sell RapidScale along with its development team, patent portfolio and hardware assets. Rackable …
Storage 14 Aug 2008, 19:55
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Former Apple lawyer to pay $2.2m for cooking books
Settles Jobs backdating case
The former top lawyer at Apple has agreed to pay $2.2m to settle federal charges she illegally cooked the company's financial books to conceal backdated stock options issued to CEO Steve Jobs and other top executives. Nancy Heinen, Apple's former general counsel, also agreed to be barred for five years from serving as an …
Financial News 14 Aug 2008, 20:16
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Next Visual Studio going multi-screen?
Program like a city trader
Microsoft has again hinted at changes in the next major release of Visual Studio allowing developers to spread out across different monitors. Noah Coad, Microsoft program manager for the Visual Studio platform, has confirmed changes are in the works that will help developers build applications in some kind of split-screen mode …
Developer 14 Aug 2008, 21:15
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Judge spikes 'dumbest literary agent' Wikipedia suit
Cult defends free speech
An American judge has dismissed a flimsy defamation suit against the cult of Wikipedia. With a recent ruling (PDF), New Jersey Superior Court Judge James Perri chucked the famous Wikipedia class action brought by New York literary agent Barbara Bauer. Bauer sued Wikipedia's parent operation - the Wikimedia Foundation - at the …
Law 14 Aug 2008, 22:09
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Sun opens Java tools in mobile fight back
Eclipsed, again?
Sun Microsystems has open sourced its Java toolkit for building mobile applications just as the role Java plays on handsets comes into question. The company has released the Light-Weight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) under a GPLv2 license with a classpath exception - for binary linking with an application - as an incubator project to …
Developer 14 Aug 2008, 22:36
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Microsoft may lift VM licensing restrictions next week
Don't tie me up with those ties, Ty
It may have finally dawned on Microsoft that its current software licensing restrictions kill one of the major benefits of virtualization — the ability to move a virtual machine freely about physical servers. According to InfoWorld,, Microsoft may change its licensing policy from one where virtual machines are tied to hardware …
Virtualization 14 Aug 2008, 22:55
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Yahoo! board! adds! Icahn! allies!
Bazillionaire waves 55 million shares
Following through on its pact with Wall Street kingpin Carl Icahn, Yahoo! said today that two Icahn pals have been added to its board of directors. In late July, Icahn called off his Yahoo! proxy battle in exchange for three board seats: one for himself and two more to be filled with two other names from his list of nominees. …
Financial News 14 Aug 2008, 23:13
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Judge refuses to lift order squelching students' subway card hack
Can't get no relief
A federal judge has refused to strike down an order gagging three Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates from discussing gaping security holes in electronic payment systems used by Boston's transit agency. US District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. let a previous order stand, despite arguments from Electronic …
Security 14 Aug 2008, 23:39
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Sun spreads more VirtualBox love
1) Cut a deal for the box. 2) Put your OS in that box...
As Sun Microsystems gets closer to the release of its xVM server virtualization platform, it's aiming to ease developers into the fold by spreading its lightweight desktop hypervisor around to hardware vendors. Sun earlier this week said that inked new multi-year OEM agreements for VirtualBox with three new businesses. …
Virtualization 14 Aug 2008, 23:43
