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10th September 2008 Archive

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  • Glasgow tube gets phone coverage

    As if commuting wasn't hell enough, already

    Glasgow’s underground railway isn’t as well connected as London’s, but the Scottish city’s network will soon boast something that the UK capital’s tube network doesn’t: subterranean mobile phone coverage. Carrier O2 has hatched a deal to bring mobile phone coverage to the city’s subway, allowing the network operator’s …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 00:02

  • Amazon flash mob mauls Spore DRM

    EA's big title gets 1-star rating

    For software that appeals to a wide audience like EA's latest sim game Spore, it's sometimes the first time the average person gets a good taste of how digital rights management (DRM) puts the screw on legitimate users. Spore's DRM limits customers to only three activations after the game is installed. That number isn't …

    Applications 10 Sep 2008, 00:21

  • Google News farce triggers Wall Street sell-off

    Updated Six-year-old story pummels United Airlines

    United Airlines' stock price plummeted more than 75 per cent yesterday, after a six-year-old bankruptcy story somehow surfaced on Google News. As reported by The Washington Post, this labyrinthine tale began on Saturday, when Google News indexed a United bankruptcy piece published by the Chicago Tribune way back in 2002. …

    Financial News 10 Sep 2008, 01:22

  • Apple code of secrecy imperils Aunt Mildred

    Critical patches released (sort of)

    Those who use Apple's iTunes or QuickTime on either a Mac or Windows machine, or who own an iPod touch, will want to install newly released updates that fix a raft of serious security bugs. Not that Apple is going out of its way to warn of the risks, mind you. The most serious of the batch seem to be updates for QuickTime, …

    Security 10 Sep 2008, 04:52

  • Dell goes for gold at the virtualization Olympics

    What the Dell?

    Dell is giving its servers sex appeal - six-core processor, better switches and three times more storage as it pushes really, really, really hard, and goes for gold in the server virtualization Olympics. In a tight announcement, it revealed all-new storage, blade and rack servers, Ethernet and Fibre Channel switches, …

    Servers 10 Sep 2008, 06:31

  • Bury council carries can over spycam binmen

    RIPA-drunk authorities recruiting child informers

    It's one step forward, one step back for local government snooping, as new figures reveal the extent of Council spying on residents, and Bury comes a cropper to the tune of (allegedly) £100,000 for its secret filming activities. However, those who believe they have a divine right to intrude into everyone else’s lives seem …

    Law 10 Sep 2008, 08:52

  • Sony can sue distributor for sales value of stolen goods, not just cost

    The price of memory-card loss

    A distributor which lost a consignment of PlayStation memory cards must compensate Sony at the sale price of the cards and not their cost to manufacture, the Court of Appeal has ruled. Sony Computer Entertainment UK used Cinram Logistics for the storage and distribution of some of its goods. Seventeen thousand memory cards for …

    Channel Register 10 Sep 2008, 09:06

  • Today is not Hadron Collider Day

    Hadrons yes, collisions no. End of world to follow

    All the world's media is going bananas over "first beam" day at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world's most stupendous particle-punisher, which switched on this morning (following an initial hiccup which appeared to be fixed by the traditional expedient of turning it off then on again). Today, it is being strongly implied …

    Physics 10 Sep 2008, 09:11

  • DR Congo minister liberates imprisoned goats

    Caged on 'being sold illegally by the roadside' rap

    The Democratic Republic of Congo's deputy justice minister Claude Nyamugabo has ordered police to release a dozen goats being held in a Kinshasa jail on a "being sold illegally by the roadside" rap. An "astonished" Nyamugabo discovered the caprine perps during a routine visit. According to the BBC, they were due to stand trial …

    Bootnotes 10 Sep 2008, 09:15

  • RIM flicks open first clamshell BlackBerry

    Pearl 8220 unveiled

    Research In Motion (RIM) has introduced the eagerly awaited BlackBerry Pearl 8220 - its first clamshell handset. Opening the 8220 reveals is 240 x 320 display - there's a smaller, colour screen on the lid, along with a video-capable, flash- and zoom-fitted two-megapixel camera. RIM's BlackBerry Pearl 8220: you'll... er... …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 09:42

  • Microsoft moves to improve mouse movement

    BlueTrack tech for boy racer mice

    If you must use your PC mouse on a granite kitchen work surface or around a bath’s edge, then Microsoft’s new mouse tracking technology lets you do just that. Its BlueTrack is designed to let mouse lovers work on pretty much any surface they come across, including living rooms carpets. Although tarmac may be out of the …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 09:47

  • Intel X-25M solid-state drive

    Review Stunningly Special SSD?

    After leaks galore about Intel’s foray into solid-state drives, we’ve finally got our hands on an 80GB X25-M - dial 'M' for 'mainstream'. Intel's X-25M and X-18M: dial 'm' for 'mainstream' The X25 and X18 family of SSDs will both be initially available in 80GB versions. There's a 160GB X25 due in Q4. The X25 and X18 differ …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 09:48

  • El Reg drops in on Bletchley Park

    Tin-rattling continues at Station X

    The campaign to raise funds to preserve Bletchley Park’s heritage got into full swing yesterday with a cash injection from tech giants PGP Corporation and IBM. But the site, which also houses the National Museum of Computing, needs millions of pounds more to keep it alive. El Reg went along to the historic World War II site …

    Science 10 Sep 2008, 10:17

  • NYC invites 911 crime-busting snaps

    Emergency 2.0

    Callers to New York's 911 and non-emergency 311 lines can now send photo and video footage from PCs or mobile phones - the better to finger ne'er-do-wells and report "quality-of-life problems like uncollected garbage", as AP puts it. The city yesterday rolled out its $250,000 image software, developed over 18 months, as part …

    Policing 10 Sep 2008, 11:02

  • AMD intros mid-range Radeon HD 4-series GPUs

    DirectX 10.1 gaming on the cheap

    AMD has rolled out its ATI Radeon HD 4600 graphics card line, the mid-range stablemates of the high-end 4800 series it launched a couple of months back. The initial line-up comprises the 4650 and 4670, each packing in 320 unified shader cores. Their 514m transistors are fabbed at 55nm. That, plus clever power conservation tech …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 11:03

  • American Airlines typo dispatches corpse to Guatemala

    Can't tell its GUAs from its GYElbow

    A Brooklyn widower is rattling the sabre of litigation at American Airlines after it sent the body of his deceased wife to Guatemala, rather than her native Ecuador. Miguel Olaya's wife Teresa died in March at the age of 57, and he accordingly asked DeRiso Funeral Home in Bay Ridge to make arrangements for her body to touch …

    Bootnotes 10 Sep 2008, 11:07

  • Parents plant spyware to snare sex predator

    Court sin-bins ice hockey coach

    A 38-year-old Briton has been jailed for an underage sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl after her father uncovered evidence by planting monitoring software on her PC. Nicholas Lovell, from Guildford, Surrey, coached the teenager while working as an ice hockey teacher in 2006. The relationship between the two raised …

    Malware 10 Sep 2008, 11:14

  • Mills and Boon thrusts into pr0n market

    Paperback peddler makes lewd shrewd decision

    Legendary bored-housewife-pleasing publisher Mills and Boon is planning to up the romantic ante with its first porn books. The usual mildly risqué euphemisms of the famed throwaway lady-paperbacks, known for their ripping of bodices and tousling of hair and rumpling of sheets and such, will helplessly submit to a crashing wave …

    Bootnotes 10 Sep 2008, 11:32

  • Motorola gets down with the kids

    Discovers yoofs like to watch TV

    Motorola has published the results of its study into what today's 16 to 27-year-olds want from technology, which discovered that - surprise, surprise - most demand more telly. The study questioned 1200 'millennials' - as it repeatedly put it - in Europe and the Middle East and who mostly want to watch more TV: 81 per cent …

    Mobile 10 Sep 2008, 11:37

  • Toshiba to ship 240GB 1.8in HDD this month

    Tiny whopper

    Apple may have chosen to limit its latest iPod Classic to 120GB, but Toshiba's already announced a mini hard drive with twice that capacity. The 240GB 1.8in MK2431GAH drive will go into mass production by the end of the month, Toshiba promised - plenty of time to get into the new iPods had Apple so wished. Toshiba's HDD: …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 11:45

  • Notebook battery famine set to continue

    Simplo says supply can't keep up with demand

    The world’s largest laptop battery manufacturer has warned that a global shortage of power cells will last three months longer than expected. Simplo Technology Co said makers are failing to increase output fast enough to meet demand. The Taiwan-based firm’s chief financial wonk, Jackie Ding, told Bloomberg yesterday that …

    Channel Register 10 Sep 2008, 12:07

  • US Senate wants answers on soaring text rates

    us nets caLd 2 acownt

    The chair of the Antitrust Subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee has written to the four largest US network operators demanding they explain why the cost of texting has doubled since 2005. Text messages have been a nice little earner for European operators since cross-network connectivity became available, but txt is …

    Mobile 10 Sep 2008, 12:08

  • Pump and dump scam hacker banged up

    US stock market manipulated by Asian crackers

    An Indian man convicted of hacking into internet brokerage accounts to manipulate stock prices has been jailed in the US for two years. Thirugnanam Ramanathan, 35, originally of Chennai, India, broke into customer investment accounts held with brokerages including TD Ameritrade, Fidelity and E*Trade. He dumped existing …

    Crime 10 Sep 2008, 12:38

  • Saatchi to promote foreigners' ID cards

    Ad bigwigs get busy bigging up biometrics

    The Home Office will use advertising agency M&C Saatchi to tell employers about the introduction of identity cards for foreign nationals. The UK Border Agency will start issuing cards from 25 November 2008 to those from outside the European Economic Area applying to stay in the country as students or through marriage. About 50 …

    Government 10 Sep 2008, 12:47

  • AMD to target Atom with... Athlon

    Old brand, new market

    The first thrust of AMD's two-pronged attack on Intel's Atom processor will be launched in November, leaked roadmap slides have revealed. Last week, we noted after one such bean spillage that November will see the introduction of "AMD Ultra-Value Client (UVC)" processors. Now, we assumed this was a reference to Geode parts, …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 12:49

  • Freelancers might be taxed as employees after High Court ruling

    IT contractor hit with £99,000 bill

    An IT contractor has been hit with a £99,000 tax bill after the High Court ruled that he should be taxed as an employee of the company he undertook work for. Jon Bessell, 50 per cent owner and sole director of Dragonfly Consulting, carried out work for motoring organisation AA for three years until 2003. Bessell is an IT …

    Small Biz 10 Sep 2008, 12:51

  • BPM unravelled - a live, interactive event

    Reserve your place here

    Come join us, live and online at 3pm on the 24th September, as together with your fellow Reg readers, analysts Freeform Dynamics & IBM we take a look into one of the IT industry's rapidly evolving solution areas, Business Process Management. That's right, IT's next "big thing" is going under the Reg spotlight in an hour-long …

    Tech Panel 10 Sep 2008, 13:02

  • Home Office screws prison data bunglers

    PA Consulting feels Jacqui's wrath

    The Home Office has today terminated a £1.5m contract with PA Consulting after it lost the personal details of the entire UK prison population. In August the firm admitted to officials that it had downloaded the prisons database to an unencrypted memory stick, against the security terms of its contract to manage the JTrack …

    Government 10 Sep 2008, 13:08

  • Yes, there was a viable liquid bomb plot

    Jury gives bomb makers benefit of doubt on target

    So the verdicts are in - or not in. The "liquid bomb" plot trial is at least on hold, possibly finished altogether. A British jury has decided that three men are guilty of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions, but refused to convict them of conspiring to blow up airliners in flight. A further four men have pled guilty to …

    Law 10 Sep 2008, 13:18

  • Sony Ericsson confirms Xperia X1 UK launch

    Definitely the real date this time. Promise.

    Numerous dates have been sloshed about for the UK release of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 Windows Mobile smartphone. But the firm’s finally given panting punters an official arrival date - and it’s soon. Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1: coming this month The phone will hit UK shops on 30 September. An official UK price hasn’t been …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 14:13

  • HP designs handbag laptop

    Clutch-sized and pretty

    Catwalks aren’t somewhere you’d usually expect a laptop launch. But Hewlett-Packard’s paired itself with a clothes designer and stitched together a range of femme-friendly laptops. HP's designer clutch laptop: will it go with your dress? The “digital clutch notebook” is about the size of a clutch handbag – they’re those …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 14:31

  • Caterpillar plans 600 tonne godzilla-lorry robots

    Truckasauro-droids to crumple tanks like paper cups

    Those who follow the robot news will be pleased to hear that recent US military-funded driverless car contest technologies are finding their first real world applications. To be precise, American droid chiefs plan soon to unleash titanic, 600-tonne automated trucks capable of squashing flimsy human vehicles like bugs. Engine …

    Science 10 Sep 2008, 14:31

  • Vodafone accused of talkingtoofastinradioad

    Justmakingbestuseoftheirtariff

    Vodafone jabbered its terms and conditions at an unreasonable clip in a radio ad, according to a complaint upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority. Many advertisers have trouble squeezing their verbalised small print into the end of a radio advert without boring customers, and Vodafone's latest promotion managed to …

    Mobile 10 Sep 2008, 14:53

  • Belkin delays wireless HD box, doubles price

    $500 -> $700 -> $1500

    Belkin's wireless HDMI box, the Flywire, has been delayed again, though the slippage is rather narrower than last time. It's price has ballooned though. Belkin's FlyWire transmitter: now out in November Demo'ing the six-port streamer at the CEDIA show in the States last week, Belkin said the unit will finally go on sale in …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 14:56

  • Microsoft mouse to bend but not break

    Not much use in a flood though

    Microsoft has unfolded a designer mouse that’s built to be bent in half and put in your pocket. Microsoft's Arc has a hidden feature... The sexy Arc is half-moon shaped, but can be folded to 60 per cent of its fully expanded size by pushing the back section underneath the top half. Microsoft said the Arc’s collapsible in …

    reghardware 10 Sep 2008, 15:00

  • Lawyers slap Nvidia with chip glitch lawsuit

    What did you know and when did you know it?

    A lawsuit alleging Nvidia violated US securities laws and kept secret a major defect in its graphics chip product line was filed in a Californian district court yesterday. Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and CFO Marvin Burkett are accused of concealing the defect for eight months, even though – according to the allegations (pdf …

    Channel Register 10 Sep 2008, 15:08

  • The Great Circular Award Ceremony

    When the music stops, please collect a gong

    What a strange world it is, the world of "digital rights" activism. Campaigners pause only to pat each other on the back. Last week, anti-copyright campaigners Public Knowledge revealed their annual award winners. The group's president Gigi B Sohn proudly announced the winners: fellow campaigner Carl Malamud of PublicResource. …

    Bootnotes 10 Sep 2008, 15:55

  • Eye-o-Sauron™ poked out by Great Wall of America

    Presumably to be built from southern side

    American plans to erect a chain of all-seeing eyes atop tall towers to guard the Mexican border have been put on hold in favour of a more conventional fence or wall, according to reports. "The highest priority is to put out a system of physical fences and barriers that will keep people and vehicles from illegally crossing the …

    Government 10 Sep 2008, 15:56

  • Rogue SF sysadmin may cost city over $1m

    Send in the consultants!

    The disgruntled sysadmin accused of locking San Francisco out of its IT network may cost the city more than $1m in upgrades, consultants and repairs to undo the damage, according to the City's Department of Technology. Terry Childs, a 43-year-old from the Bay Area city of Pittsburg, is accused of creating a super password for …

    Enterprise Security 10 Sep 2008, 18:39

  • United 'bankruptcy' points to new stock scam techniques

    Why use spam to pump and dump when a botnet will do?

    Market watchers are trying to unravel how a six-year old story suddenly rose to prominence, hammering the share price of United Airlines earlier this week. A 2002 story of a bankruptcy filling by UAL was pushed into the most viewed business story category on the South Florida Sun Sentinel's Web site on Sunday morning. The …

    Crime 10 Sep 2008, 19:20

  • Red Hat sprints past ESX on VM running

    Oh Qumranet all ye faithful

    Red Hat claims it can run five virtual machines (VMs) for every three that VMware's ESX runs in the same server hardware. Qumranet technology also enables it to run more Windows virtual desktops than VMware, too. At a journalists' roundtable in London this week, Benny Schnaider, Qumranet CEO, said his - now Red Hat's - company …

    Virtualization 10 Sep 2008, 19:23

  • Yahoo! punts! mobile! development! platform!

    CTIA Wireless 'We're talking to Apple'

    Yahoo! has unleashed a new incarnation of its Blueprint mobile development platform, providing a single environment for building standalone apps for Java, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices. Previously, the Blueprint platform was merely a means of developing widgets that run atop Yahoo! Go, an application suite available for …

    Mobile 10 Sep 2008, 20:16

  • 'Water bears' survive in outer space

    Look ma, no space suit

    A European Space Agency experiment shows that tiny eight-legged invertebrates known as "water bears" are the first known animal to survive the vacuum and radiation of space. The hardy critters, also called tardigrades, are between 0.1 to 1.5 millimeters long and thrive in moist conditions. They can commonly be found munching …

    Space 10 Sep 2008, 23:02