25th September 2008 Archive

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Ellison flogs Oracle server appliance alliance with HP

OpenWorld 08 (Not) a hardware provider

Men pushing a dream need to know when to let go. Otherwise like Captain Ahab you go to your destruction, or like Bill Gates, obsessed by the Tablet PC, become a comedic sideshow. And so to chief executive Larry Ellison, who Wednesday afternoon announced Oracle's third effort in 10 years bundling his company's software with …

The Channel 25 Sep 2008, 01:34
Bluetooth watches show their feminine side

Something for the ladies

Sony Ericsson today showed off its latest Bluetooth watches, three of which are aimed at the lady in your life, though those with more svelte companions might have to look elsewhere for Christmas gifts. The watches are an improvement on previous Bluetooth efforts, but still showing considerable bulk in diameter and thickness …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 03:25
IT, creators unite to slay Googlebeast

Will this lobby fly?

There's a new lobby group in town - but unusually, this one unites traditional adversaries from tech, telecoms, and media companies. Backers include the American Songwriters Guild representing creators, Microsoft, Cisco, and AT&T, and media companies including Viacom and NBC. Everyone but Google, it seems. The launch in New …

Media 25 Sep 2008, 05:49
Royal Navy won't fight pirates 'in case they claim asylum'

Comment 'Tis ~~Execution Dock~~ a council flat for ye, matey

Following a recent spate of pirate attacks* off the Horn of Africa, reportedly Her Majesty's Royal Navy has been powerless to act following official concern over possible violations of the buccaneers' human rights - and worries that they might seek asylum in the UK after being captured. The shipping paper Lloyds List first …

Government 25 Sep 2008, 07:02
Gay sheep romp turns Tyneside blue

Farmer unaware of ovine boy-on-boy

A North Tyneside farmer is evidently unaware of the extensive research which has been dedicated to probing the delicate matter of ovine homosexuality, and has dismissed clear evidence of his flock indulging in boy-on-boy as a simple bit of rough and tumble The rams in question, in Dudley, near Cramlington, had been marked with …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 2008, 08:02
Godfather dons 'best ever film' mantle

Where did all the foreign films go?

Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather has emerged as the best film ever in a poll of the top 500 films compiled by Empire magazine. Crowd-pleasing favourites - such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, The Shawshank Redemption and Jaws are the other choices to make Empire's top five, which is best on a survey of …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 2008, 08:49
Cisco's dirty dozen fight IOS flaws

Patches for the masses

Cisco has posted a bumper crop of 12 security advisories covering flaws in its IOS software and related networking kit. The vulnerabilities create a route for skilled hackers to crash vulnerable systems or obtain sensitive information, among other exploits. Login credentials are not needed to carry out the majority of the …

Data Networking 25 Sep 2008, 08:52
Dell confirms 12in netbook? MID? Tablet?

Tesco leak legit, sort of

Dell has confirmed it is indeed working on a 12in netbook-style laptop, as UK grocer Tesco recently let slip on its website. Dell's European marketing chief for consumer products, David Clifton, admitted today that, yes, the PC giant's recently released Inspiron Mini 9 9in Small, Cheap Computer will soon be joined by a 12in …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 08:55
EPO staff strike over patent quality

Accuse office directors of profiteering

The European Patent Office (EPO) was hit last week by a strike by staff who were demanding not better pay and conditions but the freedom to help create better quality patents. Around 250 staff took part in the strike and a march through Brussels demanding better governance of the EPO, according to the EPO staff union, SUEPO. A …

Law 25 Sep 2008, 09:08
EC to drag fibre from incumbents' greedy paws

If 'Steelie' Neelie gets her way

European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes is proposing a radical shake up of telco competition in Europe which she hopes will stimulate aggressive deployment of fibre to the home across Europe - what the Commission calls Next Generation Access (NGA). What she is trying to do right now is get agreement on a Europe-wide …

Data Networking 25 Sep 2008, 10:08
US financial meltdown hits canine thesps hard

Crisis bites Broadway Chihuahua

The far-reaching effects of the US financial crisis are starkly demonstrated by the impending ejection onto New York's mean streets of a Chihuahua named Chico - canine star of the theatrical adaptation of Legally Blonde. The show will close on 19 October after its 595th performance, Bloomberg reports. It's one of three to …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 2008, 10:10
Chrysler intros electric trio

'Leccy Tech The MPV, the Jeep and the sportscar

Other motor makers announce one electric car. Not Chrysler - this week it announced three of them at once. And an interesting selection they make: a roadster, a van and an off-roader. Chrysler's ENVI EV line-up: the Jeep... The latter's the Jeep EV. Like the Chevy Volt, it has a lithium-ion battery to power its electric …

Science 25 Sep 2008, 10:13
Obama weighs into Shuttle-v-Soyuz ISS brouhaha

'Pay extra for more shuttle flights or go with Russia'

US Presidential contender Barack Obama has outlined his views on the near-term direction to be taken by the US space programme, according to reports. The Democratic senator believes that NASA must be given extra money if it is to extend the operational life of the space shuttle. However he seems to accept that many Democrats …

Science 25 Sep 2008, 10:16
The ultimate mobile phone?

Does everything... and makes calls

Mobile phones let us surf the web, send emails and, of course, make calls. But a spoof video shows how your talker could wash the dishes and inflate bicycle tires - even jump start your heart. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The Sumsing Turbo 3000 Xi Multitask was dreamed up by comedians The Groen …

Phones 25 Sep 2008, 10:23
Toshiba touts quarter-terabyte 1.8in HDD for netbooks

Overkill for an Eee, but good for an Air

Toshiba has introduced a 1.8in hard drive that packs in a whopping - for the form-factor - raw storage capacity of 250GB. The two-platter unit spins its disks at 5400rpm and weighs a mere 62g. Too much? Then how about a single-platter, 120GB model that's just 60g? Toshiba said it will also offer a two-platter 160GB drive for …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 10:43
Sony Ericsson eyes up Android

Google-friendly Walkman en route?

Sony Ericsson has revealed that it's got its eyes on Google's Android platform, which now only powers T-Mobile’s G1 handset. According to a report by Reuters, Dick Komiyama, President of Sony Ericsson, said at a media event in Sweden yesterday that the company is “certainly interested” in the Google-developed platform and that …

Mobile 25 Sep 2008, 10:47
Transmeta calls it a day and looks for a buyer

Power down

Coulda shoulda chip vendor Transmeta has thrown in the towel and put itself on the auction block. The low-power chip vendor, which launched in 2000 and IPO’d later that year, said yesterday that it had “initiated a process to seek a potential sale of the Company”. The decision came after it had actively explored “a full range …

The Channel 25 Sep 2008, 10:51
Developers to get Windows 7 pre beta next month

Vista in full frontal shocker

Microsoft will be showboating Windows Vista, mark two 7 at its forthcoming Professional Developer Conference (PDC) event next month, where developers will be able to get their mitts on a pre-beta build of the operating system. Meanwhile, the yawnfest surrounding speculation about what the OS will (or won’t) come loaded with …

Operating Systems 25 Sep 2008, 10:57
Casio massively maximises LCD resolution to 546ppi

More pixels per inch

A large HD telly is the norm these days, but Casio has created a tiny screen that, it claims, crams in the highest ever number of pixels per inch. Casio's 2in display has a 960 x 540 resolution The 2in, 960 x 540 x RGD "quarter HD" LCD panel is capable of rendering 16.7m colours. It uses a Casio-developed technology called …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 11:17
RIAA filesharing target Jammie Thomas wins retrial

Judge slams 'oppressive' $220,000 damages award

The judge in Jammie Thomas' challenge to her landmark $220,000 fine for sharing music over KaZaa has declared a mistrial, forcing yet another court case. Thomas' case was the only federal filesharing trial the RIAA had won. Minnesota Federal beak Michael Davis said he had given an incorrect instruction to the jury on the …

Media 25 Sep 2008, 11:26
David Blaine tw*tdangle ends in controversy

'I am totally unimpressed', huffs duped New Yorker

David Blaine's much-hyped "twatdangle"* over New York's Wollmann ice rink has ended in controversy amid accusations that the whole thing was sham, the BBC reports. Blaine had stated he would remain suspended upside-down for 60 hours, sustained by nothing more than sipping drinks through a straw while urinating through a …

Bootnotes 25 Sep 2008, 11:27
UK.gov 'to drop' überdatabase from snoop Bill

Exclusive Central snoop silo carries on regardless, sources say

The government will drop plans for a massive central database to track private communications from the forthcoming Communications Data Bill, but officials will proceed with the multi-billion project in the background instead. Senior civil servants will discreetly run the project to swerve potential political opposition to a …

Government 25 Sep 2008, 11:30
SCCs, MIDs to achieve laptop-matching sales by 2013

Explosive growth forecast

Computer buyers will together acquire some 10m Small, Cheap Computers and handheld net browsers this year, but five years from now the total will have rocketed to 200m. So claims market watcher ABI Research, which reckons that volume of demand will value the market for these devices at $27bn come 2013. Interestingly, while …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 11:32
Airline industry refuses to be ID card guinea pig

Unions and management unite against gov biometrics

News emerged today that government plans for a compulsory UK national ID card pilot scheme in the airline industry are deadlocked by industrial and union opposition, casting a blight over the unveiling of the cards' design. The Financial Times reports this morning that the government's intended rollout of the biometric ID …

Government 25 Sep 2008, 11:47
Toshiba tools up for movie download future

Why it never went Blu?

Erstwhile HD DVD heavyweight Toshiba has forecast the end of consumer optical media, and is to develop a series of set-top boxes and portable players all fed with digital content sold on SD card instead. The scheme follows the Japanese giant's decision to invest $20m in US digital content deliver specialist MOD Systems in …

Media 25 Sep 2008, 11:53
'You can't use Google' - EU Parliament

Euro legislation leaves crucial hole

A number of bullets were dodged as the European Parliament voted on the Harbour proposals for the European broadcast, telecoms and internet industries this week. A couple, sadly, struck home all the same. The banning of the use of encryption as a way of identifying those breaching intellectual property rights didn't even make …

Law 25 Sep 2008, 11:58
LG Xenon phone leaked

Take note...

A picture’s emerged online of an upcoming LG phone that's known only as Xenon. LG's Xenon has HSDPA 3G and a "proximity sensor" Image courtesy of BGR A source known only as “Daddy G” has told website Boy Genius Report that the phone’s currently undergoing a series of tests by US network operator AT&T and that it should be …

Phones 25 Sep 2008, 12:05
Cisco.com suffers lower case t breakdown

Consonantal drift?

The lower case letter 't' was briefly removed from the home page of Cisco's website on Thursday morning. The Sesame Street-style caper failed to affect capital letter Ts. Numerous Reg readers were quick to tell us of the curious case of the missing letter on Thursday morning. Several theories emerged, including the …

Data Networking 25 Sep 2008, 12:12
Samsung U800 3G mobile phone

Review Bringing a little Soul to the mid-range market?

It may have some elements of Samsung's Soul chic in its design, but the U800 is an altogether more straightforward affair than that touch-controlled sliderphone. There’s no touch-sensitive pretensions on the U800 - instead it’s a smart-looking though conventionally buttoned candybar with an attractive brushed-steel casing that …

Phones 25 Sep 2008, 12:35
T-Mobile joins 3 UK in prepaid mobile broadband race

Mobile data sector moves to new revenue streams

T-Mobile UK has announced a range of prepaid mobile broadband options that come with a USB dongle for a laptop, taking on the wildly successful similar offering from 3. This move also shows how the mobile data sector is changing quickly to support new revenue streams and new breeds of users for the hard pressed cellcos. As …

Mobile 25 Sep 2008, 13:02
A mini mouse that loves wrist action

Flick left to open iTunes

Motion-sensing firm Movea has launched a mouse that controls your PC with a flick of your wrist and doesn't need a desktop to work. The Air Mouse uses a technology called MotionSense, which acts a little like the Wii’s controllers to let users, say, launch an application or fast-forward through a film by flicking the mouse in …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 13:13
US Army unit deployed to home front

Nonlethal force for civil unrest

A US army brigade combat unit will be deployed at home for the first time, the Army Times reports. The 1st BCT (Brigade Combat Team), numbering about 650 personnel, has returned from Iraq. But rather than dealing with enemy combatants, it may be called to deal with unruly Americans. The Team "may be called upon to help with …

Government 25 Sep 2008, 13:34
China's Shenzhou VII is go

Third manned mission blasts off

China's Shenzhou VII spacecraft blasted off today at 13:10 GMT from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gansu Province atop a Long-March II-F rocket. The mission marks the communist state's third manned space jaunt, and the first to include a spacewalk - if all goes according to plan. The timing of the spacewalk …

Science 25 Sep 2008, 13:41
Atlantis launch knocked back four days

Hurricane Ike provokes Hubble mission delay

The provisional launch date of space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been postponed from 10 to 14 October due to the knock-on effects of Hurricane Ike. Ike forced the closure of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, resulting in a "lost week of training and mission …

Science 25 Sep 2008, 14:06
Another London BT exchange hit by thieves

Nine 21CN network cards down East End broadband

Thieves bagged new networking gear worth tens of thousands of pounds in the early hours of this morning in a raid on BT's Stepney Green exchange - just two weeks after its Mayfair facility was burgled. BT told customers that nine 21CN network cards were lifted at about 3.45am took down three ISPs in the area and left customers …

Broadband 25 Sep 2008, 14:10
Debian all business with Lenny and Squeeze

From Toy Story to tough times

Steve McIntyre knew he faced a huge task when he took on the job of Debian project leader nearly six months ago. But he didn't reckon on the scandal of a major security bug, followed by a massive clear-up operation within a few days of taking over. As if this wasn't enough McIntyre also faced a backlog of approvals for new …

Software 25 Sep 2008, 15:02
Enterasys CEO dies suddenly

Chairman takes over

The chairman of networking equipment vendor Enterasys has stepped in as caretaker boss following the unexpected death of its chief exec, Michael Fabiaschi, on Monday. Fabiaschi, 53, "died suddenly overnight" on 22 September at his home in Rye, New Hampshire, according to a statement by Enterasys. The cause of death was not …

Financial News 25 Sep 2008, 15:34
ICO orders LibDems to stop bothering voters

Nick Clegg violates privacy rules

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has warned the Liberal Democrats to stop using automated phone calls or face possible prosecution. Last week the party made around 250,000 calls that featured a recorded message from LibDems leader Nick Clegg to UK households across the country. The UK's data watchdog found (pdf) …

Government 25 Sep 2008, 15:45
Red Hat: Go support yourselves, Fedora users

That's what development release means, people

One of the most frustrating aspects of open source but commercially supported software is that it takes many orders of magnitude of freebie customers to attain a base of core customers who will pay for a glorified product with commercial-grade installation and ongoing tech support. There is always a temptation to try to monetize …

Operating Systems 25 Sep 2008, 15:54
Take a Windows HPC test drive

Crashing in on IBM's supercomputers

With Windows HPC Server 2008, the parallel supercomputing variant of Microsoft's Windows operating system, being released this week, there are probably a lot more people who want to see how it works than are willing to shell out a lot of cash to give it a whirl. And that is one reason why IBM has set up a test drive of Windows …

Servers 25 Sep 2008, 16:00
Star Wars watch-maker calls time on R2-D2

The watch with a mini R2-D2 robot

The Star Wars R2-D2 gadget craze shows no signs of slowing, because the latest... ahem... technical wonder inspired by the somewhat camp robot is a watch-cum-robotic toy. The R2-D2 Whizzwatch tells the time and kills it Attached to the R2-D2 Whizzwatch is a miniature R2-D2 that’s controlled remotely by the watch. The …

Hardware 25 Sep 2008, 16:02
VMware renders multitasking OSes redundant

Paravirtual activities

Lionel Cavalliere, VMware's senior product manager in EMEA, says that ESX exerts a shrinking effect on operating systems. The thinking goes like this: An operating system arbitrates access to physical resources between multiple applications and has lots and lots of driver code in its disk image. Typically, a virtualized server …

Virtualization 25 Sep 2008, 17:28
World's electrical grids open to attack

Scads of SCADA bugs

A serious vulnerability has been found in yet another computerized control system that runs some of the world's most critical infrastructure, this time in a product sold by a vendor known as the ABB Group. According to researchers from C4 - a firm specializing in the security of so-called SCADA, or Supervisory Control And Data …

Security 25 Sep 2008, 18:03
UN urged to prep for non-fiction Deep Impact

One day, the asteroids will come

Asteroid impacts on Earth are an unfortunate inevitability. And while devastating impacts are extremely rare in terms of a human lifespan, the destruction they can potentially cause is far greater than more familiar natural disasters. International efforts have rallied to address threats such as global warming, earthquakes, …

Science 25 Sep 2008, 21:08
Microsoft threatened on antitrust non-compliance

Settlement at sixes and sevens

As surely as night follows day, so Microsoft is regularly upbraided for not complying with the US government's landmark 2002 settlement for breach of antitrust laws. Now, six years into a seven-year settlement monitoring process, presiding settlement judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has told Microsoft's she doesn't think it's …

Law 25 Sep 2008, 21:52
American ISP giants: If we Phorm, we'll get consent

'No need to legislate'

After months of controversy over ISP-level ad targeting systems from the likes of Phorm and NebuAd, three of America's four largest ISPs have told Congress that such behavior tracking shouldn't exist unless web surfers give their explicit approval. But the trio don't want legislation that ensures this actually happens. AT&T, …

Networks 25 Sep 2008, 23:00