7th October 2008 Archive

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Lehman Brothers' India ops saved from economic meltdown

As 300 Accenture jobs die in the UK

A Japanese financial services outfit has agreed to purchase Lehman Brothers' India-based operational support businesses, rescuing roughly 3,000 people - including 1,200 IT professionals - from the worldwide economic meltdown. The Tokyo-headquartered Nomura Holdings will acquire Lehman Brothers Services India Private Limited, …

Financial News 7 Oct 2008, 04:57
iPhone secure enough for Japanese enterprise

Makes you wonder what they know

While the iPhone might be not secure enough for American and European enterprises, BrearingPoint has decided to equip 1,000 of its Japanese employees with Apple's uberphone. Softbank Mobile is providing the handsets to BearingPoint, a technical consultancy that currently issues its consultants in Japan with both a phone and a …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 06:02
Win a Palm Treo Pro smartphone

Competition One £399 handset could be yours

To celebrate the launch of its latest Windows Mobile smartphone, Palm wants to give one of the gadgets away to one lucky Register Hardware reader. Palm has commandeered London's Truman Brewery in Brick Lane for the whole of next week as a showcase for the new handset. With food from Michelin starred chef Brett Graham, the …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 06:02
Visa finds a home inside a Nokia

Handset vendor or bank?

Visa and Nokia have signed a deal to embed Visa functionality in the NFC-touting Nokia 6212 Classic, enabling US owners to upload their Visa accounts onto the handset as well as transferring money between handsets over the wireless network. Visa and Nokia have worked together before, on NFC deployments and trials, but the 6212 …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 06:02
AMD spins off manufacturing biz

Fabless future for x86 number two

AMD is splitting into two companies - one to design chips and one to carry out the debt-dependent business of actually making them. Two Abu Dhabi investment firms will hand over at least $6bn to the two new firms and to build a new chip fab near Albany, New York and to refurbish one in Germany. The chip-making business will …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 08:20
SAP shares tumble after sales warning

Loose lips sink ships

SAP saw its shares fall 16 per cent on Nasdaq yesterday, in a market which fell five per cent, after it warned it had seen sales fall off a cliff in the last two weeks of September. The company said it was likely to increase revenues by 13 to 14 per cent in the third quarter of 2008 - software and software-related revenues …

Financial News 7 Oct 2008, 09:12
Reading privacy policies takes 10 minutes on average

Too long to read: Researchers

Website privacy policies take on average 10 minutes to read and sometimes run into thousands of words, researchers have found. While some are short, others would take over half an hour to read. Researchers Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor of Carnegie Mellon University looked at online privacy policies and how long it …

Law 7 Oct 2008, 09:28
New NASA nuclear Mars rover hits budget, time problems

Laser rock-crushing droid tank attack for '11?

NASA's plans for a huge, nuclear powered laser-toting robot tank to succeed the present rovers on the surface of Mars have hit budget problems, according to reports. The Mars Science Laboratory mission is currently planned by the space agency to lift off late next year and reach the Red Planet in the autumn of 2010, there to …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 09:32
Videos cast light on BlackBerry Storm

Launch date still unknown

The BlackBerry Storm handset is as good as confirmed now, following the airing of a Storm advert on US TV and the leak online of a promotional Storm video. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The TV advert is quite basic and blurred, but it appears to show the Storm being picked up off of a table. Just …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 09:54
Xyratex speeds up arrays and doubles protection

End-to-end 8gig SANS coming?

Disk array sub-system supplier Xyratex has introduced its fastest-ever array by adding an 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel (FC) product along with new RAID 6 capabilities. Xyratex supplies hard disk drives in drive array enclosures to storage array product suppliers such as Compellent, Data Domain, Dell (EqualLogic) and IBM (XIV). Its …

Storage 7 Oct 2008, 10:01
iPhone squares up to Android

Have at you with your Google Street View

Apple is aiming to get off the back foot when it comes to phone features with the forthcoming release of iPhone firmware - hopefully before the Googlephone gets into circulation. Google, along with T-Mobile, made great play of the ability of the G1 - the first handset based on Google's Android platform - to display Street View …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 10:02
Mosley asks Europe to change UK privacy laws

'I should have been told first!'

Motor racing chief Max Mosley has applied to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to reform the UK's privacy laws. He wants editors to be forced to tell people when they are about to publish stories about them. Mosley won the highest-ever UK privacy payout when the News of the World was ordered to pay £60,000 in …

Law 7 Oct 2008, 10:05
NASA's IBEX to sniff interstellar boundary

Looking beyond the termination shock

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, aka IBEX, will on 19 October lift off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on a mission to probe the interstellar boundary beyond our heliosphere's termination shock1 - a region where "the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space", as NASA nicely puts it. From an …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 10:07
Spy chiefs plot £12bn IT spree for comms überdatabase

Black boxes to keep Black's firm in the black

Billions of pounds of public money will soon be up for grabs for private IT contractors ready to serve the Interception Modernisation Programme - UK spy chiefs' plan to store details of every call, email, text and web browsing session. And The Register has learned that one plugged-in firm is better poised than most to profit …

Government 7 Oct 2008, 10:15
Analyst: Nvidia will quit chipset biz in 2009

Rumours restoked

Nvidia is again facing a claim that it's going to get out of the chipset business, this time from US investment house Pacific Crest Securities. PCS analyst this week told investors that "our checks confirm that Nvidia has decided to exit the chipset market next year", despite the fact that the product line will account for …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 10:16
Nintendo to limit DSi games with DVD-style region locks

Bid to stop halt 'underage gamers', apparently

The upcoming DSi handheld games console will be region locked, Nintendo has confirmed. Despite software on the previous DS console being region-free, Nintendo told website Eurogamer that it decided to tie the DSi’s software to specific geographical regions because the console “embeds net communication functionality within …

Games 7 Oct 2008, 10:25
Lords to attack UK.gov failings on internet security

Fraud reporting recommendations ignored

Members of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee will this Friday call on ministers to do more to battle security threats online. The House will debate the government's response to the well-regarded personal internet security recommendations produced by the Committee last year. Lords and security experts have …

Security 7 Oct 2008, 10:27
No mile-high pr0n for Delta passengers

Seatbelt signs off, smut filters on...

The skies are looking bleaker for those who like to enliven dull plane trips with a bit of internet porn - Delta Airlines has announced it intends to filter "inappropriate" websites on its planned airborne Wi-Fi service. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Delta had said it "planned to rely on flight attendants to …

Bootnotes 7 Oct 2008, 10:46
LG HFB-500 solar-powered Bluetooth car kit

Review Here comes the sun... at last

If your job involves making a lot of phone calls in cars, or you just like to be available when you're on the move, a Bluetooth headset or an easy-fit car kit is the best option. The main problems with these, however, are that the battery tends to run down at crucial moments, and you need to plug it into your cigarette lighter …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 11:02
Cold War comfort on software engineering’s birthday

Yesterday's issues at 40

Forty years ago today, at the height of the Cold War, around 50 computing experts gathered in the southern German market town of Garmisch to change history. With the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact glowering at the west, the participants - drawn both from academia and industry - met under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty …

Developer 7 Oct 2008, 11:02
Wireless-data LED lamps to replace lightbulbs - US profs

'The era of hyperconnectivity is upon us'

The US government is funding research into using LED lighting as data network access points. Room or street lamps would link with devices using visible light, carrying data beyond over existing power lines. "This is a unique opportunity to create a transcendent technology that not only enables energy-efficient lighting, but …

Broadband 7 Oct 2008, 11:02
Sharp shows first 'zero-emission' telly

Solar power to the people

If your electricity bills are getting you down, then perhaps it’s time you started living off grid? And, thanks to Sharp, you’ll still be able to watch TV while cuddling up to Mother Nature. Sharp's 52in solar powered LCD TV Photo courtesy AVing The electronics giant has shown off what it claims to be “Earth’s first off- …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 11:03
Oxbridge lectures now on iTunes

Grey matter shuffle

The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are to make lectures by well-known academics available through Apple's iTunes. Oxford will publish 150 hours of free video and audio podcasts of lectures and ideas from what it described as "world-leading thinkers". Academic types can now get their hands on education downloads that …

Media 7 Oct 2008, 11:22
Asus claims quad-core gaming laptop 'world first'

17in monster

Asus has introduced what it claims is the world's first gaming notebook with a quad-core processor, beating the likes of Alienware and VoodooPC to the punch. The G71 will incorporate Intel's four-core Core 2 Extreme QX9300, the same chip used in Dell's new Precision M6000 notebook, though that's aimed at serious usage rather …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 11:34
NetApp faces Sun lawsuit loss

Patents weakened - more could fall

Sun is crowing that a judicial ruling in the NetApp_Sun IP lawsuit has effectively invalidated another NetApp patent. The US Patent Office also appears to be rejecting NetApp's key patents in the law suit. NetApp's position looks like it's crumbling. The dispute began with NetApp claiming that Sun's free distribution of its …

Storage 7 Oct 2008, 11:42
German methanol unit wins Pentagon portable-power prize

Fuel-cell/battery combos sweep the rankings

The US defence department has announced the winner of its "Wearable Power Prize", a contest to develop a portable powerpack which could lessen the crippling load of batteries carried by modern soldiers. The $1m purse has been taken by US firm DuPont, partnered with Germany's SFC (Smart Fuel Cell). The prize, inaugurated last …

Government 7 Oct 2008, 11:45
Fraud victims urged to use DPA to rebuild credit ratings

You've got me all wrong

UK victims of identity fraud are being urged to use the Data Protection Act as a tool to restore their credit rating. E-Victims.Org, a former internet support group for those affected by cybercrime, said that even after victims are able to establish fraud and absolve themselves of liability to fraudulent debt they are still …

Security 7 Oct 2008, 12:20
UK stockings bereft of Nokia Tube

Next year? Bah

Nokia's first push into touch-control, the 5800 XpressMusic, won't be available in major markets until next year, including both the USA and UK. The handset, which is being described as Nokia's reply to the iPhone, will be launched in India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia and Spain in 2008. …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 12:22
UK.gov and UK.biz pour £60m into IT skills gap

Your timing is impeccable

The government today announced that it will spend £30m to create a National Skills Academy for IT, in an attempt to train more of the workers employers are demanding. The Academy will be run by e-Skills, an technology industry lobby that will match public spening on the Academy. e-Skills pushes the line that training should be …

Management 7 Oct 2008, 12:38
Net-stock fraudster Moller offers flying saucer on eBay

No bargepole long enough

Famous flying-car inventor Paul Moller, who was fined in 2003 by the US authorities for selling "fraudulent unregistered stock" on the internet, is now selling his personal flying saucer prototype on eBay. Our advice: buyer beware. According to Moller, the online auction is an opportunity to acquire "a piece of aviation …

Bootnotes 7 Oct 2008, 12:41
Indian Moon mission is go for 22 October

Hi-tech survey gig for Chandrayaan-1

India is all set to launch its first unmanned Moon mission on 22 October - the Chandrayaan-1 probe, which will over two years survey our satellite's surface with a rack of hi-res kit. According to the BBC, the launch had been planned for April, but was knocked back due to "technical problems". The $83m mission involves input …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 12:53
Renault looks to wee-hued windows to cut car power draw

'Leccy Tech Leverages Insulated bodywork and psychology too

Say 'bonjour' to Renault's electric city car concept, the imaginately monikered ZE - for 'Zero Emission', if you have to ask - which it expects to put into full-scale production three years down the 'pike. The ZE is a Renault Kangoo Be Bop, itself derived from a compact concept car Renault unveiled last year. Strip out the Be …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 12:54
Xbox gamers treated to Tomb Raider treat

Tomb Raider: Underworld cometh

You don’t have to be a gamer to recognise her svelte curves and thigh-strapped weaponry. But the tomb raiding temptress, Lara Croft, is to make a comeback in two new chapters, exclusive to the Xbox 360. Xbox 360 users will get two exclusive Tomb Raider: Underworld downloads Eidos, the publisher of Tomb Raider: Underworld, …

Games 7 Oct 2008, 13:38
How Wikipedia Works

Geeks Guide₂ 40% off at Reg Books

It’s all new at The Register right now, and today Reg Books is launching its brand new feature - Geeks Guide2. Every issue we’ll place a book in the spotlight and provide you with a wealth of information that also includes full sample chapters. Best of all, the current GG2 featured title will be available at the Reg Books …

Site News 7 Oct 2008, 13:40
Get snapping for Freedom

Taking on the Surveillance Society is no picnic

If you have a camera, are ever so slightly worried about the burgeoning surveillance society in the UK, and are prepared to brave the hostility of police and passers-by, then you too could take part in "Freedom Not Fear Day" this weekend. FNF Day will be celebrated primarily across Europe, in a wave of actions ranging from …

Law 7 Oct 2008, 13:44
Dell's disk-to-disk backup box

Turn it on and go

Dell is introducing a DL2000 disk-to-disk (D2D) backup appliance that comes with integrated Symantec or CommVault backup software and is meant as an alternative to tape backup, which is relegated to offsite backup. Backup to disk both writes data faster than writing to tape and recovers it faster, as a sequential access tape …

Servers 7 Oct 2008, 13:47
Hi-tech keys make for safer Fords

'Won't somebody please think of the children'

Ford has developed a smart key that, it claims, will help remind teenage tearaways to buckle up behind the wheel and stop them from speeding. MyKey is a key that can be programmed by parents to control what their offspring can do in the family car. For example, the key could be set to limit the car’s top speed to 80, to …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 14:21
AMD shares jump at birth of The Foundry Company

Now AMD stands for Abu Dhabi

AMD shares rose more than 18 per cent on Wall Street this morning, following confirmation from the struggling chip maker that it will spin off its manufacturing operations and build a wafer fab in conjunction with its money-spinning bedfellow, the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC). As we reported earlier, ATIC will …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 14:28
Fish snapped snacking at 4,200 fathoms

'Absolutely amazing footage' from the hadal depths

An international team of marine scientists has obtained "absolutely amazing footage" of fish feeding at a hadal 7,700 metres down in the Pacific Ocean's Japan Trench. The group of snail fish, (Limparidae), were caught on camera (see pic) "attacking bait at 7703 metres" by a submersible platform launched from Japanese research …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 14:30
Yahoo! engineer arrested in Indian terror swoop

Authorities arrest 15, including three 'terror techies'

A group of 15 alleged Islamist terrorists arrested in India yesterday included a trio of techies - one a principal engineer at Yahoo! Indian police alleged that the 15 were linked to recent bombing attacks in Ahmedabad and Surat, The Hindu reports. The paper described most of the men as criminals linked to a Pakistan-based …

Law 7 Oct 2008, 14:52
Lithium-ion battery beater to debut in 'major' laptop release

ZPower's silver-zinc tech finally coming to market?

Left-field battery developer ZPower has signed up a "major notebook computer" manufacturer, which will release a laptop fitted with its silver-zinc power packs next year. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, ZPower isn't saying who it is. Still, it's a coup for ZPower, which has been trying to persuade the world for a few years now that …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 15:17
EU battery rule may zap iPhone, blow away MacBook Air

Replace this

The EU is readying a new set of directives that could spell trouble for Apple's iPhone and any other gadget that lacks an easily removable power pack. A new, draft batteries directive mandates that power cells inside electronic devices must be "readily removable" for replacement and safe disposal. This isn't the case with the …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 15:27
World's first auto carbon calculator

Feel guilty for every journey you make

Calculating your daily environmental impact isn’t easy. So, a former student’s designed what he claims is the world’s first automated carbon calculator. Carbon Diem works with GPS-enabled phones Carbon Diem only works with GPS-enabled phones because it requires the location technology to feed information about the user’s …

Hardware 7 Oct 2008, 15:37
Spectrum Bridge solves the white space problem

Parcel it up and sell it cheap

Last month saw the launch of SpecEx, allowing companies to sell on spectrum licences - but SpecEx backers Spectrum Bridge want to see us all competing for a few MHz in the brave new world of secondary markets. America's FCC is firmly committed to a liberalisation of spectrum ownership, including sub-letting and reselling of …

Mobile 7 Oct 2008, 16:09
EverGrid reinvents self as Windows-loving Librato

More than supercomputing

EverGrid has changed its name to Librato, expanding the scope of its products to include Windows servers as well as Linux and to the broader workload management job. The company was founded in August 2005 to create a set of tools to manage workloads on parallel supercomputers and the grids of machines that sometimes attach to …

Servers 7 Oct 2008, 17:18
'Overplayed' privacy concerns rile Symantec boss

Interview 'IP addresses are so not private'

Consumers ought to accept that loss of privacy is the price they pay for using internet service, according to Symantec chief exec John Thompson. Echoing Scott McNealy's opinion that "you have no privacy, get over it," the Symantec boss expressed surprise that information such as IP addresses is regarded as sensitive. "Some …

Security 7 Oct 2008, 17:25
Net game turns PC into undercover surveillance zombie

Smile, your webcam has been clickjacked

Underscoring the severity of a new class of vulnerability known as clickjacking, a blogger has created a proof-of-concept game that uses a PC's video cam and microphone to secretly spy on the player. The demo, which is available here, appears to be a simple game that tests how quickly a user can click on a series of moving …

Security 7 Oct 2008, 17:37
CA buys IDFocus for identity management boost

In brief More reliance on compliance

Enterprise software omnicorp CA has acquired Palo Alto, CA-based IDFocus to blend the firm's identity management software with its own CA Identity Manager. The purchase is intended to bolster CA Identity Manager's regulatory compliance. Users set up segregation of duties (SoD) policies on IDFocus software, which then runs a …

Software 7 Oct 2008, 18:11
Apathy comes easy to OpenAjax Alliance

Struggles on AJAX interop project

The OpenAjax Alliance is once again finding it tough to enlist support for its projects, despite representing some of the biggest players - with the most resources - in software biz and on online. The 2008 Open Ajax Alliance InteropFest a project set up in June to promote compatibility demonstrations for AJAX tools, libraries …

Developer 7 Oct 2008, 19:16
US brain trust: Beware of trawling-for-terrorist apps

Are your rights intruded?

Surveillance programs that try to identify terrorists by trawling the internet and electronic databases for tell-tale signs are of limited success and should be carefully evaluated for privacy concerns, a group of technologists and policy makers that advises the US government said. A 352-page report issued Tuesday by the …

Security 7 Oct 2008, 21:21
US Army gets eco-conscious, preps mega solar plant

Get in da choppah, Mother Nature!!

You know the "go green" push is reaching a zenith when the fuel-slurping US Army wants to get serious about having a daintier environmental footprint. The Army said it's enlisting several big new energy projects to promote less energy waste in local and overseas bases. Among its ambitions are rolling out a fleet of electric …

Science 7 Oct 2008, 21:34
IBM doubles Power cores

Keeping up with the Dunningtons

Well, the rumor going around that IBM is doubling up the processor core counts on its Power Systems servers turns out to be true. Today, IBM announced that it has doubled up the cores in the Power 570 to a maximum of 32, and it's now offering a 16-core box called the Power 560 that slides in underneath it in the product line. …

Servers 7 Oct 2008, 22:14
Linux distros lead jumps from Sun

Incomplete strategy

Sun Microsystems has lost a key individual responsible for getting its aspiring open-source software included in leading Linux distributions. Barton George has quit Sun after 13 years, hard on the heels of having helped secure the inclusion of an open-source friendly version of Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK) - OpenJDK - with …

Operating Systems 7 Oct 2008, 23:38
IT contractor caught stealing Shell Oil employee info

Database for 'majority' of US workers breached

Shell Oil has warned its employees to be on the lookout for identity theft after an on-site IT contractor was caught stealing worker information out of a company database. In a security notice posted Friday, Shell said the contractor had already used social security numbers belonging to four employees to file fraudulent …

Security 7 Oct 2008, 23:42