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21st August 2008 Archive

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  • Mobile devices hit the stage, execs at IDF

    IDF 'Oh shit' shouts VP

    Intel wheeled out a slew of partners who have bought into its mobile internet device vision today, and announced that it has turned out first silicon of the next generation of the platform. But the presentation was almost over before it began, when a Panasonic rep decided the best way to demonstrate its CFU1 ruggedised …

    PCs & Chips 21 Aug 2008, 00:08

  • Investors introduce Salesforce to sell-off as a service

    50 per cent Q2 growth won't cut it

    Software as a service poster-child Salesforce.com today dished out second quarter results that showed a massive rise in revenue, which did absolutely nothing to impress investors. The CRM code shifter reported $263m in revenue, which marks a 49 per cent year-over-year rise. Net income came in at just $10m, but that's still …

    Financial News 21 Aug 2008, 00:36

  • Fringe box office system provider goes titsup

    Tragedy of errors

    The software outfit behind the chaotic implementation of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s box office system has gone titsup. A spokeswoman at Glasgow-based Pivotal Integration Ltd confirmed to The Register that the firm has gone into administration. However, she said the company was unlikely to be issuing any further statement …

    IT Director 21 Aug 2008, 07:02

  • Japan runs out of Xbox 360s

    Local sales miscalculated

    Japan has sold out of Xbox 360s, Microsoft has confirmed. It released a statement which, according to a translation, blames the shortage on sales projections being exceeded by actual sales numbers. Microsoft hasn’t said how many sales pushed stocks into the red, but the shortage does affect all thee models of Xbox 360. The …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 07:46

  • BSF programme boosts schools' IT spending

    5.3% annual growth predicted

    Education spending on ICT will be accelerated by the Building Schools for the Future programme, according to research by Kable. Investment in new technology for secondary schools has grown faster than any other part of the state education sector over the past three years and this is set to continue, the research says. Overall …

    Public Sector 21 Aug 2008, 08:02

  • Intel Classmate PC turns tablet

    IDF Pen mightier than the keyboard

    Intel has demo'd the third incarnation of its kid-friendly Classmate PC, a new model that incorporates not only a touchscreen but also one that swivels into a tablet mode. Intel's Classmate PC: now third-gen, now works in tablet mode The new machine will also gain the Atom processor, an upgrade on the Celeron M used in the …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 09:21

  • Nokia admits major Series 40 security problems

    Mobile remote control

    Nokia has admitted that the security flaws exposed by Adam Gowdiak of Security Explorations are genuine, and that a miscreant exploiting them could do whatever they like to a Series 40 phone just by knowing the phone number. Gowdiak posted some details earlier this month, with claims that by exploiting the flaws he could …

    Mobile 21 Aug 2008, 09:42

  • DARPA seeks 'perch and stare' spy-fly robot

    Blasted robot bats on the washing line again

    Pentagon war-boffins have shelled out $4.6m to a noted aerial crazytech firm to develop a spy drone which can "perch" near a target, "stare" at it, then take off again and fly home. Aerovironment Inc, already famous for such projects as the Helios solar-powered crewless wingship, the three-inch bugbot-thopter and the hydrogen …

    Government 21 Aug 2008, 09:50

  • What’s going on in your data centre?

    Mini-Survey Babycham alert

    With data centres in a state of flux, we thought it would be a great time to get away from vendor hype and find out what's really going on. Have you virtualised everything you can? Have you consolidated to a fraction of your former self? Or are you somewhere between sorting out the rats' nest legacy and planning a coherent …

    Servers 21 Aug 2008, 09:56

  • UK fraudster gang go PIN sniffing

    Analysis Portsmouth Asda links to credit card hack

    The organised tampering of PIN entry devices to commit credit card fraud, which led to arrests in Birmingham last week, has been linked to a breach in an Asda store on the outskirts of Portsmouth. Cash was withdrawn from ATMs in China and Canada after the cards were used in the Gosport branch of Asda, Register sources …

    Crime 21 Aug 2008, 09:57

  • Sony pumps up PSP screen

    Updated PSP-3000 coming in October

    Sony has broken its silence over recent rumours that's it's readying a redesigned PlayStation Portable and unveiled the sexy new PSP-3000 at the ongoing Leipzig games developers convention. The new model features an “advanced” 4.3in, 480 x 272, 16:9 ratio LCD screen that now allows gamers to see brighter colours and a better- …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 09:59

  • Fujitsu intros 5.6in bonsai laptop... with Vista

    Updated Even more wee than the Eee

    Fujitsu's Japanese customers will soon be able to get their mitts on one of the most stylish - and tiniest - Atom-based mini-laptops we've seen: the LifeBook FMV Biblo U/B50. Fujitsu FMV Biblio U/B50: Atom powered The compact machine sports a 5.6in display that's nonetheless capable of a 1280 x 800 resolution. The screen …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 10:12

  • Sony confirms 160GB PS3 imminent

    Updated 1TB model next?

    The 80GB PlayStation 3 lands in Blighty tomorrow, but if you’re a storage-hungry gamer then hold your horses - Sony’s just announced a PS3 with double that capacity. Sony unveiled the 160GB PS3 to delighted gamers last night at the ongoing Leipzig games developers convention. The electronics giant said the monster-capacity …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 10:28

  • Acer Aspire 8920G 18.4in laptop

    Review Does a video-friendly 16:9 screen make any real difference?

    Acer is just one manufacturer vying for our attention amid the furore over the new netbooks, and it's hoping the Aspire 8920G will re-interest us in full-size laptops. Those of you lamenting the industry’s switch to a widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio from the old, squarer 4:3 should look away now, as the 8920G’s USP is the use of …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 11:02

  • Apple faces lawsuit over wobbly 3G claims

    Where there's blame there's a writ

    An Alabama woman is suing Apple for claiming its latest iPhone offers 3G connectivity when she can't get connected most of the time, despite AT&T having decent coverage where she lives. The complaint is aiming to become a class action suit, as just about everyone with the latest iPhone has been complaining about levels of …

    Mobile 21 Aug 2008, 11:13

  • BBC to 'reimagine' The Thirty-nine Steps

    Xmas fodder for the Jason Bourne generation

    The BBC will begin filming next month on a "reimagined" version of John Buchan's 1915 novel The Thirty-nine Steps - casting Spooks thesp Rupert Penry-Jones as Richard Hannay, the Guardian reports. Described as a centrepiece of Auntie's Xmas schedule, the feature-length adaptation will be "closer to the book" than Alfred …

    Entertainment 21 Aug 2008, 11:19

  • Asus said to be prepping Eee-free Atom mini laptop

    Rumoured Eee spin off hastened?

    Is Asus gearing up to spin off its Eee PC line, or has it lost the plot? Having extended the Eee range to a dozen laptops, it now plans to compete with itself by launching a 10.2in Atom-based mini-notebook. So claim distributors based in Taiwan and cited by DigiTimes. Crucially, the laptop, dubbed the N series, will be based …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 11:37

  • Sony taps out PS3 controller keyboard

    Console controller clip-on keyboard

    PlayStation 3 owners can finally get chatty because Sony has launched a clip-on keyboard for the console’s SixAxis and DualShock 3 controllers. Sony's PS3 Wireless Keypad The PS3 Wireless Keypad clips between the two thumb pads. It communicates with the console over Bluetooth and has a standard Qwerty key layout. Sony’s …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 11:45

  • That 'Elderly Persons' sign: Can you do better?

    Competition Yes? Click here to prove it

    The revelation yesterday that some old timers didn't much like being portrayed as hunchback cripples on the UK's "Please don't run over elderly persons" road sign prompted the rather intelligent suggestion from some commenters that we at El Reg should offer a suitably non-patronising alternative. Or rather, that we should run …

    Bootnotes 21 Aug 2008, 11:49

  • Fresh LG Prada II images surface

    Is it real this time?

    The first non-CGI picture of LG’s second Prada handset has appeared online, sparking fresh rumours that the Korean company is poised to relaunch the fashion phone. The first non-CGI Prada II image Although the image is blurry, it mirrors the design that was bounced around online back in April, when talk of a Prada II was …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 12:03

  • Gordo returns to website in crisis

    This blog storm could be what finishes him

    The Prime Minister has returned from his holiday to find his £100,000 blog, which launched last week is taking a bit of a shoeing in the press. Downing Street has learned that running a high tech, interactive, multimedia Nu Meeja operation* isn't as easy as El Reg makes it look. First, there's been a round of open sourcey …

    Government 21 Aug 2008, 12:04

  • FCC pelts Comcast with rotten veg

    Order, order

    Having put the company in the stocks two weeks ago, the FCC heaped a load of rotten vegetables over US cable giant Comcast yesterday. The regulator issued its order in a case raised by political activist group Free Press and P2P startup Vuze. The FCC ruled that Comcast's use of RST packets violated FCC policy. The decision …

    Telecoms 21 Aug 2008, 12:05

  • MS redesigns Xbox 360 controller key

    Limited edition controller

    Not to be outdone by Sony’s PS3 controller enhancements, Microsoft has unveiled a redesigned Xbox 360 controller sporting an improved four-way control. Microsoft's Xbox 360 controller: old look, new nav button Image courtesy Eurogamer Although technical details are still scarce, a report by Eurogamer said that the limited- …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 12:13

  • eBay changes anger smaller sellers

    Goodbye Mom and Pop

    Online tat bazaar eBay is changing how it charges to encourage more fixed price sales instead of auctions. Changes to the fee structure announced yesterday seem to make "Buy it Now" offers more attractive, at least to sellers of higher value items. Smaller sellers seem alienated by the changes. eBay wants to make itself an …

    Small Biz 21 Aug 2008, 12:15

  • Nokia's Tube touchphone to be out in time for Xmas?

    Exec talks up touchscreen handset

    Nokia’s eagerly anticipated Tube phone could appear before Christmas. One of the Finnish firm’s executives has certainly confirmed that the company plans to launch a touchscreen mobile by the end of 2008. Could Tube arrive in time for Christmas? Devinder Kishore, Nokia India's marketing director, this week said: "We have …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 12:38

  • Hacker unearths young Chinese gymnast scam

    Underage and under the radar

    A search engine hacker has uncovered fresh evidence that the Chinese women's gymnastic team cheated by fielding underage competitors. Doubts surfaced even before the competition that as many as half the members of the six-strong team - who won China's first ever team gold medal at the Beijing Olympics last week - are far …

    Entertainment 21 Aug 2008, 12:51

  • Royal Navy plans world's first running-jump jet

    Carrier flyboys to descend on a wing and a prayer nozzle

    British boffins and test pilots are continuing to work on a new deck-landing technique, to be employed by Blighty's upcoming generation of supersonic stealth jumpjet drivers when coming aboard the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers. It seems possible that the "Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landing" (SRVL) may become a routine …

    Government 21 Aug 2008, 12:54

  • Scientists unravel galactic spaghetti monster

    Magnetism maintains his noodly appendages

    Scientists believe they have deduced what sustains the noodly appendages of a galactic "spaghetti monster" - actually Galaxy NGC 1275 in Perseus - which displays "a mammoth network of spaghetti-like gas filaments around a black hole", as New Scientist puts it. NS explains: "As the black hole sucks in gas from its surroundings …

    Space 21 Aug 2008, 13:10

  • Opera update draws the curtain on seven security vulns

    Keeping schtum on XSS bug details, though

    Opera users should upgrade their browser software following the discovery of multiple security bugs. Version 9.5.2 of the Windows version of the software fixes seven vulnerabilities, including a startup crash that creates a means for hackers to inject hostile code on certain systems (details here). There's also a fix for a …

    Malware 21 Aug 2008, 13:57

  • Ericsson ST move helps consolidate wireless chip makers

    Mobile platforms merge with wireless

    The announcement this week that Ericsson would merge its Mobile Platforms division into the ST-NXP Wireless business sent shock waves around the industry. The first words on everyone’s lips - especially those of US financial analysts - were: "What does this mean for Texas Instruments?" which of late has suffered blow after …

    Mobile 21 Aug 2008, 14:03

  • Microsoft's Photosynth falls out of cloud

    Updated 'A little overwhelmed'

    Microsoft today released a free photo-stitching tool that runs in the cloud – sadly for Redmond, at time of writing Photosynth is having a little lie-down. At a demo of the software at the London Eye this morning, Microsoft enthusiast evangelist Paul Foster told El Reg that the firm was keeping its fingers crossed that the …

    Applications 21 Aug 2008, 14:08

  • NASA's Ares V may crush Kennedy crawlerway

    Heavy lifter too heavy for road to the stars?

    The budget for NASA's Constellation programme - comprising the Orion and Ares vehicles - looks like it may have run to a few billion cubic metres of road surfacing after the agency admitted the Kennedy Space Center crawlerway over which spacecraft are trundled to their launchpads could collapse under the weight of the Ares V …

    Space 21 Aug 2008, 14:15

  • Nintendo facing lawsuit over Wii - again

    Controller points to trouble

    A lawsuit has been filed against Nintendo by a US-based firm, which claims that the Wii tramples over four patents for on-screen navigation and control technology. Hillcrest Labs owns three patents relating to a “handheld three-dimensional pointing device” and another for a “navigation interface display system that graphically …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 14:29

  • Reg server and chip hack molested by Gray Lady

    'They'll never take away my typos!'

    Lady and gentlemen, My time at the blessed Register has come to an end. As of this Friday, I'm off to The New York Times to bring the wonders of AIX, the vi editor, transactional memory, RAID 6 and FPGAs to the washed masses. Go figure. I've hung around with Brits long enough to know that compliments are largely verboten. So …

    Bootnotes 21 Aug 2008, 14:49

  • JavaFX preview highlights critical weaknesses

    Review Potential riches uncertain

    Sun Microsystems recently released the JavaFX Preview SDK. I decided to revisit what is Sun's last, best hope to recapture both the desktop and the browser in the face of stiff competition. The big question with Java FX is why anyone would want to adopt it when they've already got Adobe Systems' Flex and Microsoft's …

    Developer 21 Aug 2008, 15:02

  • Logic-gate 'supermolecules' play noughts & crosses

    Chemical nanobrains 'clever as kids'

    The Royal Society of Chemistry has awarded a Belfast-based boffin a prize for developing "intelligent supermolecules" which are on an intellectual level with (some) human children - able to win games of noughts and crosses. The unfeasibly tiny nanobrain developments sprang from the normal-sized brain of Professor A Prasanna de …

    Physics 21 Aug 2008, 15:09

  • Dabs.com founder accused of attempted rape, drugs offences

    Remanded in custody

    The founder of Dabs.com, David Atherton, has been charged with attempted rape and possession of Class A drugs. Atherton, who sold his business to BT in April 2006 for £30m, is in custody after appearing in court in Bolton earlier this week. A spokesman for Manchester Police said: "A 50-year-old man has been charged after a …

    Channel Register 21 Aug 2008, 15:57

  • Bush makes last-minute grab for civil liberties

    'I'm still in the White House you know'

    US citizens could be investigated without just cause under a new plan from the Justice Department, while those who choose to leave the country will have their records kept for 15 years and available to any litigious attorney. The Justice Department plan won't be unveiled in detail until next month, but the New York Times is …

    Law 21 Aug 2008, 16:15

  • Phreakers seize government phone system

    Department of Homeland (in)Security

    Information technology workers at the US Department of Homeland Security are busy scraping egg off their collective faces after unknown hackers broke into their telephone system and racked up $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia. The hackers made more than 400 calls by accessing the voicemail system of the Federal …

    Government 21 Aug 2008, 18:41

  • Microsoft's .NET goes Web 2.0 with Sadville

    Open alternative prepares for programming

    Sadville is rolling out the open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET on its virtual infrastructure in a step towards enabling software development. Linden Labs is installing the Mono Project's virtual machine on its heavily trafficked Second Life servers - Sadville runs more than 2,500 clustered servers. The move means …

    Developer 21 Aug 2008, 19:23

  • Booze and breasts combined, finally

    Drink! Girls! Feck!

    Ladies, if you’re not happy with the size of your bust, but your boyfriend won’t let you see surgical redress, then retailer Firebox has a solution that’ll make you both grin with glee. The WineRack: pour the wine in and suck away The company's unveiled the WineRack bra. As the name suggests, and the pictures indicate, it's …

    Reg Hardware 21 Aug 2008, 19:37

  • Intel CTO demos building blocks of shapeshifting robots

    IDF When the end comes, it'll be wearing a bunny suit

    Intel sent sane journalists screaming for the exits this morning when it unveiled a nightmarish future vision where robots are more intelligent than humans, computers can change shape, electronic devices are recharged remotely, and humans are probably going to be ruled by an x86-based server farm. Wrapping up the Intel …

    Rise of the Machines 21 Aug 2008, 19:40

  • Amazon gives marching orders to cloudy storage

    Nomadic volumes

    Amazon.com continues to offer deeper penetration into its cloud. The company this week unfurled a storage service for hard-core users that will let you keep data and file systems in separate piles. The Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) builds on the existing Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) processing service and lower-level storage …

    Servers 21 Aug 2008, 20:21

  • Media companies urge judge to activate Intel's anti-redaction machine

    AMD vs Intel Free those docs!

    The Register has joined several other news organizations in a bid to make court records related to AMD's ongoing anti-trust lawsuit against Intel public. Earlier this week, Situation Publishing - The Register's publisher - and the New York Times, Washington Post and Dow Jones & Co. filed a motion telling a Delaware court that …

    Law 21 Aug 2008, 22:02

  • Sun attempts to whip BEA users out from under Oracle

    Low-price, limited-time offer

    Sun Microsystems is challenging database partner Oracle with a middleware offer to woo customers of its newly acquired BEA Systems business. Sun has capitalized on Oracle jacking up licensing of the BEA middleware products with an offer for its own open-source suite complete with a 12-month price lock in. The offer expires on …

    Software 21 Aug 2008, 22:30