3rd September 2008 Archive

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ICANN cast as online scam enabler

And now a word for our ~~illegal online pharmacy~~ sponsor

Note: Officials at LogicBoxes and Directi take strong exception to the reports discussed in this story. Their objections are detailed in this follow-up story. Two recently issued reports portray the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as a bureaucracy that enables cyber criminals. In one report (PDF), …

Security 3 Sep 2008, 01:17
Big demand for pay by phone tech, claims Nokia

The sole manufacturer of NFC handsets

Nokia is championing the success of its UK NFC trial, claiming that almost 80 per cent of users want contactless payment systems on their mobile phone - a happy coincidence for Nokia, since no one else is making NFC handsets as yet. The trial - the largest in Europe - saw 500 punters equipped with NFC-capable handsets loaded …

Mobile 3 Sep 2008, 07:02
Reding tells Euro MPs to back telecoms reforms

Lady's not for turning

Telcoms commissioner Viviane Reding has told the European Parliament to back proposed changes to telecoms regulation across Europe. The speech called for quicker data portability, compulsory data breach laws if private information is lost, more transparent pricing structures to make life easier for consumers, and more wireless …

Law 3 Sep 2008, 07:02
McKinnon a 'scapegoat for Pentagon insecurity'

US mil still wide open to attack, says reformed hacker

As accused Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon hopes against hope to avoid being extradited to the US, another reformed military systems meddler considers his own case - and how different the outcome was. McKinnon is probably days away from extradition. Only a last minute plea to the Home Secretary "Wacky" Jacqui Smith - based on …

Security 3 Sep 2008, 08:02
Dixons Group still suffering

Firm has much to be cautious about

Dixons Store Group International shares fell another five per cent this morning after the company reported poor results for the three months ended 23 August 2008. DSGI shares were trading at 50.5p, down from a year high of 160p. The interim report revealed like-for-like sales were down seven per cent and gross margins down 0. …

The Channel 3 Sep 2008, 08:22
Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 to land next month

Firm's first Windows Mobile phone release announced

Sony Ericsson has overcome most of the problems it encountered attempting to run Windows Mobile 6.1 on its upcoming Xperia X1 handset and has set a firm release date for the phone. Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1: coming to the UK next month At a London press conference yesterday, an SE spokesman told Register Hardware that the …

Phones 3 Sep 2008, 09:00
Sony e-book reader to debut in UK tomorrow

To begin at the beginning...

Sony's PRS-505 Reader goes on sale in the UK tomorrow and will "revolutionise reading", the company ebulliently claimed today. "What the Walkman did for music on the move, the Reader is about to do for books," the firm's spokesfolks enthused. Maybe. Sony reckons the 260g gadget based on E Ink screen technology will prove a …

Hardware 3 Sep 2008, 09:45
Lenovo offers online backup deal

Save it to the cloud...

Lenovo is making EMC’s Mozy backup-to-the-cloud service available to ThinkPad SL buyers with a trial offer of unlimited online backup for $49. The deal is only available in a few countries: Ireland, UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, USA and Canada. But the service will soon be offered on a …

Storage 3 Sep 2008, 10:00
Buffalo touts 'first' external SSD

Not cheap

Buffalo has released what it claims is the country's first external solid-state drive. Buffalo's MicroStation: compact The MicroStation line has a maximum 100GB raw storage capacity - 32GB and 64GB versions are also available - that connects using a USB 2.0 which wraps round the drive. Wrap-around USB cable The drive's …

Storage 3 Sep 2008, 10:05
Northrop in electric blaster cannon milestone

Weapons grade fry-ray to debut 'this year'

US war-tech behemoth Northrop Grumman announced yesterday that it had achieved another milestone in its battlefield raygun programme - ahead of schedule. Company blaster cannon execs believe that the first tests at combat power - 100 kilowatts - will take place as planned by the end of this year. Eight of these, and it's time …

Science 3 Sep 2008, 10:14
NebuAd CEO quits

Captain declines to go down with ship

The founder of NebuAd, the company best described as the US version of Phorm, has quit as its CEO. With a Valley background at stalwarts such as Juniper Networks and Symantec, Bob Dykes was seen as lending the firm industry credibility. Public resistance and regulatory scrutiny in the US and UK have now put the future of the …

Financial News 3 Sep 2008, 10:18
Is there a networkable Freeview box?

Q&A

I’m trying to find a Freeview box with a hard drive so that I can record TV, but I also want to connect it to my home network so that I can view recorded TV on a PC. Any suggestions? I’ve been looking at the Evesham iPlayer reviews and that looks pretty close to what I want, only they don’t appear to make it any more. Is there …

Hardware 3 Sep 2008, 10:21
Google's Austro-Hungarian ambitions laid bare

Chrome recruits Maximilian von Hapsburg

Our shock revelation yesterday that Google had redrawn the map of Europe to apparently cede several European nations to a Greater Germany provoked a flurry of comments suggesting what on God's Green Earth the search monolith was up to: The consensus was that Google had in fact created a Danish superstate, described by Jolyon …

Bootnotes 3 Sep 2008, 10:22
Clever, clever Adaptec

A RAID controller can do power management as well

Wrapping a green cloak around its shoulders Adaptec has impressively extended its RAID controllers' capabilities by making them spin down disk drives as well. It's also joined the Green Grid, the IT industry's data centre greening group. All Adaptec Series 2 and 5 RAID controllers can now send messages to disk drives telling …

Storage 3 Sep 2008, 10:33
Carpetbomb bug tarnishes Google Chrome

Shiny new vulnerabilities winkled out already

Google Chrome isn't officially out yet, but security researchers have already picked the browser apart to discover a security vulnerability. The WebKit engine used inside Chrome leaves it vulnerable to the infamous Safari carpetbombing flaw, security researcher Aviv Raff warns. The flaw stems from a combination of a …

Security 3 Sep 2008, 10:34
Government kids database under fire, again

It'll be over by Christmas

The Government’s ContactPoint database - designed to keep tabs on children at risk of social exclusion - is in trouble again, coming under fire on two separate fronts. First is the vexed issue of “shielding”, identified as a source of concern by a recent article in the Guardian. More directly, the chairman of the Foundation …

Government 3 Sep 2008, 10:48
Getac B300 rugged laptop

Review No mucking about with this hard-boiled hardware

This laptop is squarely aimed at those who find themselves biding their time waiting for a Sahara sandstorm to pass, or need to check email while hanging upside down from an offshore oil rig. The first impression is that this thing looks like it should come with handcuffs, like one of those top secret briefcases only seen in …

Hardware 3 Sep 2008, 11:00
eMusic rattles ISPs over legal downloads

Pakman eats dots, avoids ghosts

The boss of Apple’s iTunes nearest rival eMusic has warned that recent deals struck between the music industry and UK internet providers could threaten the existence of legal sites. eMusic CEO David Pakman told the Financial Times that ISPs could lure customers away from well-known digital music sites by offering their own …

Broadband 3 Sep 2008, 11:08
Dell Inspiron 910 mini-laptop to be a hardware hacker's dream?

Set to launch tomorrow, says mole

Is Dell going to launch its Small, Cheap Computer, the Inspiron 910, tomorrow? That's certainly what one newspaper is claiming today, and there's evidence to back up that claim. According to the Wall Street Journal, someone who knows what the PC giant's planning claimed the mini Inspiron will be announced on Thursday. Inside …

Hardware 3 Sep 2008, 11:42
Chinese boffins crack invisible-shed window problem

Unscrewing the inscrutable

Everyone, one hopes, is well aware by now of metamaterial - remarkable conceptual stuff which might be used in coming years to make invisibility cloaks; or more realistically, invisible sheds. Few, however, have spotted the critical flaw in a metamaterial cloak, shed or cladding - people so concealed would no more be able to see …

Science 3 Sep 2008, 11:58
Medion launches mini laptop in UK

Medion has formally launched its entry into the Small, Cheap Computer arena: the MSI Wind-based Akoya Mini E1210. The Akoya sports a 10in, 1024 x 600 display driven by the mini laptop's chipset-integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics core. Intel supplies the CPU too: the standard 1.6GHz Atom N270. It's backed up by 1GB of DDR 2 …

Hardware 3 Sep 2008, 12:18
Nokia starts to ship N96

In the shops shortly

Nokia may have said in the past that its N96 flagship multimedia phone would arrive here in October, but it announced today that the N95 follow-up has begun shipping. Nokia's N96: N95 successor leaving the factory as we speak There's no contradiction. Shipping from Nokia's assembly plants and arriving on shop shelves isn't …

Phones 3 Sep 2008, 12:43
Sainsbury's and HP buddy up on recycling jamboree

Drop off unwanted gear, buy loaf of bread

HP and supermarket giant Sainsbury’s are asking Londoners to recycle IT kit they no longer use. Both firms want people to bring neglected desktops, laptops, fax machines, scanners and printers to Sainsbury’s Nine Elms store in Vauxhall, London this Saturday (6 September) between 11am and 4pm for recycling purposes. HP said it …

The Channel 3 Sep 2008, 13:18
UN email hacker jailed

Blackmail backfire

A worker who hacked into his UN diplomat boss's email account has been jailed for three months. The 24-year-old Egyptian was jailed in Abu Dhabi after he was convicted of breaking into a personal email account set up by a UN worker from the UAE and threatening to expose her sensitive private information, ArabianBusiness.com …

Security 3 Sep 2008, 13:24
Updated PNY calls Ghostbusters to boost 2GB Flash drive sales

In a bid to sell more cheap USB Flash drives, Memory maker PNY is to flog a special edition 2GB stick with a copy of Ghostbusters on it. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! The movie will be 25 years old next year, leaving PNY's release mis-timed to the tune of nine months if you work on from …

Hardware 3 Sep 2008, 13:29
Burned by Chrome - Fire put out

Your copyright does not now go up in smoke

Update - Google amends Chrome EULA (Updated 4 Sep '08 0830 GMT) Google has amended section 11.1 of the Chrome EULA so that it now reads: 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. There are now no other sub-sections in section 11 …

Law 3 Sep 2008, 13:39
Opera boss: Imitation is flattering

But Chrome code isn't worth a look

Google's new Chrome browser borrows so much from Opera's browser, we had to ask Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's CEO, an obvious question today - had Google hired any of his staff? "No." He didn't sound too upset, though, that Google has half-inched so many features from Opera in a smash-and-grab raid. "Some things we recognise …

Software 3 Sep 2008, 14:53
Mozilla claims mass Ubiquity mobilisation

Retro geek hog heaven

Firefox developer Mozilla has claimed its decision to reinvent the command line to make mashups easier has received an overwhelming response from developers. Mozilla Labs last week released an experimental plug-in called Ubiquity, which lets users call up a command line entry box and type in commands to carry out additional …

Developer 3 Sep 2008, 14:57
Linux desktop freaks out Ubuntu man

Shuttleworth speaks

Not many things make the founder of the Ubuntu distro Mark Shuttleworth nervous, but recommending people replace Windows with Linux on their desktop, it seems, is one of them. This coming from someone who's been catapulted out of our atmosphere to spend time in the freezing vacuum of space. Shuttleworth, though, reckons …

Software 3 Sep 2008, 14:59
Grid computer recreates ancient Greek lute

Geeks go Greek

Researchers have harnessed the awesome power of grid computing to answer one of the great mysteries facing mankind: what exactly does an epigonion sound like? At the risk of stating the obvious, an epigonion is a stringed instrument plucked by the ancient Greeks, and there aren't many around these days. To recreate the sound, …

Data Networking 3 Sep 2008, 15:09
Thailand clamps down on rude websites

You'd think they have bigger problems

Thai authorities have reportedly moved to shut down hundreds of websites they view as a threat to national security, amid ongoing civil unrest in Bangkok. Court orders have been issued against 400 websites, 344 of which have been deemed insulting to the Thai royal family, The Bangkok Post reports. Two others displayed " …

Law 3 Sep 2008, 15:42
Sun splits DARPA photon-linkage cake with Kotura

Chip-to-chip fatness sought

Kotura Inc announced today it has been awarded a $14m contract by Sun Microsystems, to assist with photonic linking of processor cores in future supercomputers and power-limited multicore systems. Sun is carrying out the optical core-hookup work for the US military. The idea of linking processors optically rather than …

Data Center 3 Sep 2008, 15:56
Mythbusters RFID episode axed after 'pressure' from credit card firms

Bust this

Update: Since we published this story MythBusters host Adam Savage has backtracked on claims that Discovery Channel caved into commercial pressure in canceling a planned show on RFID technology. See new story here. Discovery Channel prevented the exploration of RFID security by Mythbusters, the popular science television show, …

Security 3 Sep 2008, 16:07
Reg launches Chrome-o-drome

Round-up It wasn't built in a day...

It's got to be the most exciting event in science since Thomas Edison electrocuted elephants in order to try and discredit Nikola Tesla! It's like finding a Cornish-speaking Flores Hobbit nurturing a Higgs boson particle behind an invisible garden shed! It's [get on with it - Ed]... Yes, it's Chrome, the browser by Google, and …

Software 3 Sep 2008, 16:16
Oracle buys ClearApp

See-through acquisition

Oracle has bought SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) business software maker ClearApp for an undisclosed sum. Redwood City, California-based Oracle announced the deal yesterday. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year. Oracle plans to fold ClearApp’s web-based software into its Enterprise Manager …

Applications 3 Sep 2008, 16:34
HP launches virtualization armada

Server, storage, desktops, research, ho!

Hewlett-Packard is launching a fleet of virtualization products today, including four new thin-client PCs, a StorageWorks virtualization blade, an enterprise storage package, updates to HP-UX, and plenty of service offerings. Plus, the hardware vendor is backing this virtualization push with some research. A recent survey …

Virtualization 3 Sep 2008, 19:24
Homeland Security backs deportation with Wikipedia

Immigration Judge approves

The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to justify the deportation of an asylum seeker using an entry to Wikipedia. This convinced a US Immigration Judge. But thankfully, there are clearer thinkers in other parts of the American government. Last week, a federal court of appeals finally ruled that using Wikipedia to …

Law 3 Sep 2008, 20:40
Emails allege ATI-Nvidia price fixing conspiracy

'A jury would like to see this'

New details have been released on the evidence backing a civil lawsuit against Nvidia and ATI (now owned by AMD) - evidence that allegedly indicates the two companies participated in a graphics card price fixing cartel. In June 2007, at least 51 separate complaints were lumped together and amended into a single class action …

The Channel 3 Sep 2008, 22:27
Anonymous domain registration nixed amid fraud complaints

Directi strikes back

A company that provides a controversial service to domain name registrars says it is severing ties with Estdomains amid complaints that the Eastern European company makes it too easy to register sites that are used by spammers and scammers. Directi, through a subsidiary called LogicBoxes, had been providing an array of …

Security 3 Sep 2008, 22:45