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15th September 2008 Archive

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  • Dixons stores offer own-brand HSDPA mini-laptop

    3G for £350

    DSGi, the retailer formerly known as Dixons, has extended is netbook line-up with a new model the integrates HSDPA connectivity. The Advent 4213 is based on Intel's 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, packs in 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive. It has a 10.2in widescreen display, presumably with a 1024 x 600 resolution, though DSGi …

    Hardware 15 Sep 2008, 08:45

  • Revealed: How the Beano de-menaced Dennis

    Lay off Walter the Softie, young man

    The former editor of the Beano has revealed that during the late 1980s, publishers D. C. Thomson & Co decided it would be best if Dennis the Menace laid off Walter the Softie lest he be accused of “gay-bashing” his apparently less than robustly heterosexual enemy. Euan Kerr was at the comic's helm between 1984 and 2006, and …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2008, 09:02

  • The EU is out to get you, after all

    Watch your liberties, Statewatch warns

    Apologies - from The Register, no less - for appearing to give the impression that the latest piece of Euro-surveillance was not actually part of an ongoing dastardly plot to have each and every one of us "pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and, er, numbered". Half an apology, perhaps. We reported recently …

    Government 15 Sep 2008, 09:10

  • VoIP order to allow 999 calls and give caller location

    Google, Microsoft, Skype miffed

    Providers of internet telephony must now allow emergency 999 calls over their networks or face the risk of enforcement action, regulator Ofcom has said. Caller location information must also be provided where technically feasible. The new rule for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers came into force on Monday. It …

    VoIP 15 Sep 2008, 09:28

  • AMD employee charged with stealing Intel secrets

    While he worked at the chip giant

    A man who once worked for Intel and then jumped ship to join AMD has been accused of stealing his erstwhile employer's chip secrets. Last week, the FBI alleged that Biswahoman Pani of Worcester, Massachusetts copied a stack of sensitive Intel documents which detailed future chip designs, the Boston Globe reports. The FBI laid …

    The Channel 15 Sep 2008, 09:29

  • Isilon wakes up sleeping nodes with Princely upgrade

    Doubles speed, increases capacity

    Isilon's IQ 12000 clustered files have doubled their speed and increased capacity through an operating system upgrade and quad-core processing nodes. An Isilon file-storing cluster links storage and accelerator (I/O and processing) nodes across an InfiniBand fabric with application server access to the cluster over gigabit …

    The Channel 15 Sep 2008, 09:34

  • Asus develops Samsung Omnia rival for O2

    XDA Zest nears completion

    Pictures of a handset thought to be in development by Asus have been leaked online, showing a talker that looks strikingly similar to Samsung’s Omnia. Asus' handset: to be released as the O2 XDA Zest A Chinese website has published pictures of the Asus phone which clearly show it runs Windows Mobile. Since there’s no keypad …

    Mobile 15 Sep 2008, 09:37

  • Robot airliner anti-missile escorts proposed

    Droid guardians would take bullet for fleshy masters

    US tech and aerospace firm Honeywell has submitted a patent proposal which would see airliners protected from shoulder-fired terrorist missiles by drone escorts. Flight International reports that Honeywell lawyers filed the proposals last month. The idea would be that as an aircraft took off, the unmanned escort would fly …

    Science 15 Sep 2008, 09:38

  • Linux on the WinXP MSI Wind netbook?

    Q&A

    I have the MSI Wind - aka Advent 4211, Medion Akoya Mini E1210 - and I want to put Linux on it. The problem is that I'm travelling all the time with no optical drive and limit access to extra resources. I know I need to repartition the HDD before I can install Linux - which can cause XP issues - but other than that, and the …

    Hardware 15 Sep 2008, 10:02

  • UK launches major road signage review

    Warning: Traffic signs policy review steering group ahead

    Transport minister Rosie Winterton has announced a major review of the UK's road signs, and is inviting the unwashed masses to chip in their two bits' worth as to how Blighty's signage might be improved. As the Department for Transport press release explains, the review will "will ensure that traffic signs keep pace with the …

    Government 15 Sep 2008, 10:09

  • HP measuring up necks of global EDS staff?

    Union appalled over lack of consultation

    Hewlett-Packard is readying the axe to make job cuts in the UK and worldwide following the tech giant’s takeover of services firm EDS last month, according to the UK’s largest union. The company is set to make announcements later today about its restructuring plans for EDS staff. A “substantial” job cull in Blighty and across …

    The Channel 15 Sep 2008, 10:30

  • S'kiddies light-up LHC website

    Slip in through wormhole

    Web defacers hacked into the computer network at CERN to spray digital graffiti on a website connected with the Large Hadron Collider project last week. A previously unknown crew calling themselves "GST" or "Greek Security Team" broke into a site involved with the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, damaging files and leaving a …

    Security 15 Sep 2008, 10:47

  • Apple 4G iPod Nano

    Review Getting it right on the fourth attempt?

    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That's why most of the iPod range has received only relatively minor changes in the run-up to this year’s Christmas spending spree. Apple has almost 75 per cent of the market for portable music players, so minor tweaks to the iPod Classic and Shuffle were all that were needed to update those …

    Hardware 15 Sep 2008, 11:18

  • Pub toilet todger tiff ends in bloodbath

    Three shot dead in penis size row

    Three men were last week shot dead in a south Durban tavern after a "remark about a patron's penis size" turned seriously nasty, South Africa's Independent Online reports. Police inspector Michael Read explained that two groups of men were in the Merseyside Pub and Tavern in Umbilo enjoying the football clash between England …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2008, 11:51

  • Berners-Lee backs web truthiness labelling scheme

    The internet is full of cults

    The rumours, disinformation and hoaxes that prosper online should be ghettoised by a new website credibility labelling scheme, according to Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The director of the World Wide Web Consortium told an audience at the launch of his new foundation yesterday he had been in discussions on "how the web can help us …

    Networks 15 Sep 2008, 12:02

  • TJX hacker breaks ranks with guilty plea

    Witness for the prosecution

    One of the 11 alleged cybercrooks charged with the infamous TJX hack has admitted his involvement in the attack. Damon Patrick Toey, 23 and from Miami, pleaded guilty to credit card fraud, aggravated identity theft and several other offences, the Boston Globe reports. Toey was released on bail following his plea, though he was …

    Security 15 Sep 2008, 12:04

  • EU wants to add another notch to ITA belt

    Appeasing American, Japanese middle spread

    The European Union will today call on members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to consider its proposal to update and expand the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) which governs tech-related trade. The European Commission - the executive arm of the EU - wants a prompt response to its plans to update the ITA, which was …

    The Channel 15 Sep 2008, 12:08

  • Vehicle spy-cam data to be held for five years

    'Spose it might come in handy eh?

    Authorities will store details of car journeys surveilled by the new national Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system for five years, the Home Office has revealed. Senior police officer had said the data on millions of vehicles would only be kept for two years, the Guardian reports. The Information Commissioner's …

    Law 15 Sep 2008, 12:59

  • Hurricane Ike snuffs out Galveston webcam

    Dramatic last image of invading sea

    A dramatic image from galveston.com appears to show the moment at which Hurricane Ike did for the island's webcam sited in the Strand Historic District: In fact, the timestamp shows this particular camera held out for a few hours longer than those facing the full wrath of Ike. Examination of the last "Wave Cam" still, taken …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2008, 13:00

  • Demand drops for games consoles Stateside

    Credit crunch confounding sales?

    PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 console sales were almost neck-and-neck in the US last month, according to local market watcher NPD. But consoles sales are still declining across the board. During August, Microsoft outsold Sony with sales of 195,200 Xbox 360s, compared to 185,400 PS3. But August’s US sales figures for both …

    Games 15 Sep 2008, 13:26

  • 3M sticks it to super-sized projectors

    Handy fun-size projector

    Is that a projector in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? Oh, it is a projector, 3M’s micro sized MPro 110, to be precise. 3M's MPro 110 projector Image courtesy of Popsci The unit’s size dictates its sub full-HD quality, as it’s only able to display images and video at a resolution of up to 640 x 480 pixels …

    Hardware 15 Sep 2008, 13:37

  • Seagate tries again with external drives

    New look FreeAgents

    Seagate has updated its FreeAgent line of consumer external hard drives with new, fetchingly encased and higher capacity models. The current line gets FreeAgent Classic branding. Last year's FreeAgent desktop and portable external drives came in somewhat garish dark brown cases with sodium lighting orange highlights. They also …

    Data Center 15 Sep 2008, 13:39

  • Best Buy snaffles Napster

    Retailer fancies 'platform'

    Napster's board has unanimously accepted a takeover bid from US retail behemoth Best Buy, worth $120m. Thus ends a bumpy four-year ride as an independent company. Like Frankenstein's monster, the reanimated Napster was constructed from the parts of formerly deceased music companies. Software vendor Roxio acquired the assets of …

    The Channel 15 Sep 2008, 14:01

  • Reg readers rage at comment icon outrage

    Unwashed masses fire up the Tw*t-O-Tron

    Shaken staff at Vulture Central are today locked en masse* in the traditional darkened room sipping sweet tea following the rather adverse reaction to our redesigned comments icons. While a few people favoured us with thoughtful analysis of the new-look El Reg, most were venting steam from both ears while foaming at the mouth …

    Site News 15 Sep 2008, 14:04

  • Climate change blows out eco-boss's record bid

    Wind farm firm's spin-inflated rep

    An attempt to set a new wind-powered land speed record, backed by a self-described "hippie" businessman and wind energy promoter, has failed. Dale Vince OBE, founder of energy-trading and windfarm firm Ecotricity, blamed carbon-induced climate change for the setback. Ecotricity is backing the "Greenbird" high-speed land yacht …

    Science 15 Sep 2008, 14:10

  • Sainsbury's punts 'Innocent kids juices' for £2.99

    Tw*t-O-Tron discharge in 10, 9, 8...

    As I write this, I can hear a distant droning which indicates the Twat-O-Tron has just been fired up at its secret location somewhere in Middle England and is about to discharge an unholy turdspurt at supermarket monolith Sainsbury's. Here's why: Yup, we're thinking the same as you: How on God's Green Earth can an …

    Bootnotes 15 Sep 2008, 14:19

  • US runs warzone man-tracking 'Manhattan Project'

    Mystery snoop-tech used in wave of assassinations

    A long-running background mutter has now become a loud buzz of speculation, following cryptic comments by a famous US journalist regarding a top secret new surveillance-tech "Manhattan Project" targeting terrorist and insurgent leaders in Iraq. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post - famous for his reporting of leaks by a senior …

    Government 15 Sep 2008, 14:20

  • Citrix heads for clouds, HA with XenServer 5

    Supports more disk arrays and their software

    When Citrix Systems shelled out $500m a little more than a year ago to buy XenSource, the commercial operation behind the open source Xen hypervisor, the company made it clear that it was going to put Xen at the heart of its systems software, mixing and matching it in interesting ways with other products. Today, Citrix is going …

    The Channel 15 Sep 2008, 14:37

  • Vertu's back...

    Credit cards at the ready

    Sod growing fears of a global recession, because expensive handset manufacturer Vertu is back with its latest wallet-weakening talker. Vertu's S Design Documents unearthed on the US Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) website have revealed Vertu is developing a handset that'll form part of its established Signature …

    Phones 15 Sep 2008, 14:58

  • NEC and Unisys Tag Team on Monster Xeon Server

    Two heads, 96 Xeon cores are better than Itanium

    After nearly three years of engineering work, Japanese server maker NEC and its partner, American server maker Unisys, will today take the wraps off a co-developed big iron box nicknamed "Monster Xeon" server and sold under their respective brands globally. The Monster Xeon server is a cell-based symmetric multiprocessor that …

    Servers 15 Sep 2008, 15:17

  • Ubuntu lovers slap Canonical over Firefox EULA

    'WTF?'

    Ubuntu users are up in arms at Canonical after it added a Firefox 3.0.2 end user license agreement (EULA) to its upcoming release, Intrepid Ibex, without first seeking consent from openistas. Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, has admitted that it added the EULA following a request from Mozilla Corp, the firm behind the …

    Applications 15 Sep 2008, 15:27

  • LeftHand gets added VMware va-va-voom

    Less space, more speed, better connectivity

    LeftHand Networks has revved its SAN/iQ iSCSI storage area network (SAN) software, storing desktop images much more efficiently, and enabling hypervisor admin staff to manage storage directly through an API. On the first day of VMworld in Las Vegas LeftHand Networks has brought stronger software chips to the virtualization …

    Storage 15 Sep 2008, 15:31

  • Ad hoc malware police besiege net neutrality

    Analysis When does crime fighting become censorship?

    Over the past couple of weeks, white hat netizens have scored two important victories in their tireless quest to clean up some of the internet's darkest recesses. While the events are encouraging, forgive us if we don't jump for joy. The first win came when Directi - a registrar criticized for making anonymous domain-name …

    Security 15 Sep 2008, 16:44

  • Judge safeguards anonymous web commenters

    Like a reporter's sources

    A court in Montana has ruled that a newspaper does not have to reveal the identity of those who posted comments on its website. A state law that protects journalists from revealing their sources also protects a news site's user comments, the court ruled. Montana newspaper The Billings Gazette convinced District Court Judge G …

    Law 15 Sep 2008, 18:10

  • VMware floats Cloud Edition

    Stone the Virtual Crows

    Little did I know when I wrote this - Should we quietly look out for EMC to announce VMware Cloud Edition? - that one week later it would do just that with VMWare's vCloud initiative. The vCloud initiative federates compute capacity on demand between virtual datacenters and cloud service providers. VMware is expanding its …

    Virtualization 15 Sep 2008, 18:33

  • Symantec embraces server virtualization with Backup Exec

    No more agents per VM

    With the latest 12.5 version of Backup Exec, Symantec is moving away from individual Backup Exec agents per virtual machine (VM), having an agent per hypervisor instead. This responds to consistent input from customers that backing up VMs was becoming far too costly. The company has moved its Backup Exec and Net Backup …

    Virtualization 15 Sep 2008, 18:39

  • Judge: Breath test firm must hand over source code

    Electronic kit told to walk the line

    An Arizona Judge has approved requests to allow the examination of the software in a new generation of machines that examine blood alcohol levels of motorists. Pima County Superior Court Judge Deborah Bernini ordered CMI, the manufacturer, to hand over the source code of the Intoxilyzer 8000 to representatives of defence …

    Law 15 Sep 2008, 18:41

  • Chipzilla unveils six-core 'Dunnington' Xeons

    Edges AMD on big X64 iron

    With virtualization and server consolidation bolstering sales of larger - and more profitable - servers, Intel wants to keep the competitive pressure on its rival in the X64 arena, Advanced Micro Devices, while also giving its server partners the chance to go after big RISC/Unix boxes in the same power class. With the " …

    Servers 15 Sep 2008, 19:11

  • Wall Street shudders under Lehman collapse

    5,000 laid off in the UK

    America's financial institutions were sent reeling Monday, after the country's fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers Holdings, filed for bankruptcy . When takeover talks by Barclays Plc and Bank of America were abandoned yesterday, the 158-year-old bank collapsed under the subprime mortgage crisis it helped to shape …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2008, 20:38

  • Goo-Hoo! faces EU anti-trust probe

    Advertisers are everywhere

    The European Union's Competition Commission is investigating the proposed search advertising tie-up between Google and Yahoo!. "In mid-July, we decided to open a preliminary investigation on our own initiative into potential effects of the Google-Yahoo agreement on competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) market," a …

    Applications 15 Sep 2008, 20:52

  • Mozilla security chief: Apple should open up

    Security through transparency

    Mozilla's security chief said Apple should disclose more information about the steps it takes to protect customers from malware and other computer-born threats. At a security conference on Monday, Window Snyder said open communication about recently reported vulnerabilities and ongoing processes for locking down products is a …

    Security 15 Sep 2008, 21:03

  • HP's EDS acquisition to kill 24,600 jobs

    This will Hurd a bit

    There was little doubt employee heads would roll when Hewlett-Packard, owner of a massive IT services organization, paid $13.9bn for EDS, a similarly sprawling IT services outfit. With Mark Hurd "the butcher" leading consolidation efforts at HP, employees could all but brace themselves for some substantial job culling. Well, …

    Financial News 15 Sep 2008, 22:58