20th November 2008 Archive

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Medic-oriented 'Swiss Army knife' phone uncovered

It could just save your life

A handset described as the Swiss Army knife of mobiles will go on sale next year, able to handle everything from telephone calls to medical emergencies. TMPL's Icephone: multiplex Manufactured by The Medical Phone Ltd (MPL), Icephone folds out into three sections: a 3in touch-sensitive display, a full Qwerty keyboard and a …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 00:02
Inside Microsoft's 'New Xbox Experience'

Look familiar?

Microsoft released the anticipated face-lift for its Xbox 360 game console and online service today, dubbed the New Xbox Experience (or NXE). Along with a complete graphical revision, the update adds new features like customizable avatars, the ability to install games to the console's hard drive, and puts a much greater focus …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2008, 00:18
Employees sue for unpaid Windows Vista overtime

What price systems integration?

Windows Vista is in more legal hot water and this time the ones getting wet are the companies who've rolled out the operating system, not Microsoft. A series of lawsuits have been brought against major US companies by staff claiming unpaid overtime based on the time it takes Windows Vista to start up and shut down. Mark …

Operating Systems 20 Nov 2008, 01:07
Congratulations, Barack — Now fix your websites

Change? Start with security

President elect Barack Obama’s embrace of online video and social networking may have propelled him to victory, but unless he’s careful, his administration could be brought down by the same sloppy security problems that have plagued MySpace, Facebook, and dozens of other Web 2.0 properties. A cursory look at Change.gov and …

Security 20 Nov 2008, 01:24
NASA readies remodeled ISS ENose

Smells like Endeavour team spirit

NASA astronauts aboard Endeavour's STS-126 mission will soon be testing the space agency's latest generation of "electronic nose," designed to monitor the International Space Station's crew cabin for harmful chemicals. As a humanitarian - or rather, robotarian gesture - we hope they'll install the experimental "ENose" away …

Space 20 Nov 2008, 01:26
Firefox millions - only 12 per cent Google free

Mozilla faces IRS audit over search sugar daddy

In 2007, the Mozilla Foundation received 88 per cent of its revenue from a certain Mountain View sugar daddy. And thanks to its longstanding Google dependence, the organization is facing an IRS audit and questions over its tax exempt status. Today, the non-profit behind the open-source Firefox browser released its long-delayed …

Financial News 20 Nov 2008, 05:44
The madness of 'king cores

Opinion 80-core servers will add-up to nothing without hypervisors

Intel is pumping up its virility through proxies like Michael Dell reminding us of an 80-core chip future. It's impressive, but Intel is a company obsessed to distraction with Moore's Law. It's like watching a crack addict do anything to get the next hit, a doubling of processor performance every 18 months, whatever it takes, in …

Virtualization 20 Nov 2008, 07:02
BlackBerry Javelin to spear RIM's Bold and Curve?

The 'sharpest' BlackBerry yet?

BlackBerry Bold and Curve owners had better watch out, because Research in Motion has thrown a sharp new rival into the mix. RIM's BlackBerry Javelin: sharp looks, but is it smart? The BlackBerry Javelin looks very similar to the Bold, but Javelin’s exclusive UK retailer – Carphone Warehouse – told Register Hardware that it …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 08:02
Asus Eee PC S101 luxury netbook

Review An Eee to truly challenge thin'n'light laptops

Asus pretty much started the whole Small, Cheap Computer ball rolling with its first Eee PC just over a year ago. But now there are hundreds of the darn things, from every manufacturer imaginable, so how does Asus ensure it stays at the forefront of the market? By going high end, it seems - which is what it has done with its …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 09:02
Nuke boffins plan Penguin petaflop cluster

Linux A-bomb sim rig could go commercial

America's Lawrence Livermore nuclear bomb lab has teamed up with open-source computing heavyweights to build the next generation of Linux superclusters, ultimately scaling into the petaflop range. The project has been dubbed "Hyperion". "Hyperion represents a new way of doing business. Collectively we are building a system …

Servers 20 Nov 2008, 10:02
Ballmer: We're so over Yahoo!

We don't even want to talk about it

Steve Ballmer has said again that Microsoft has got over its infatuation with Yahoo! and has moved on. Talking to shareholders yesterday Ballmer said any acquisition talks with Yahoo! were over. Ballmer said he was still open to some kind of deal around search but that nothing was going on right now. Ballmer has made similar …

Applications 20 Nov 2008, 10:25
Scientists ponder mysterious source of cosmic rays

Exotic object or dark matter?

Scientists are pondering the possible source of an "unexpected surplus of cosmic ray electrons at very high energy", and suggest they're either pouring out of an exotic object relatively close to Earth or represent the fall-out from the annihilation of theoretical particles comprising dark matter. The observation was made by …

Space 20 Nov 2008, 10:45
Trademark owner loses domain name claim against unauthorised reseller

Court rules against ITT

Dealers and resellers can use a manufacturer's trademark as a domain name even when their sales are not authorised by the manufacturer, an arbitration panel has ruled. Pressure gauge maker ITT failed in its claim for the domain name ITTbarton.com and 12 other domain names owned by a seller of ITT pressure gauges, Douglas …

Small Biz 20 Nov 2008, 11:12
Google torches own brand Sadville

'Lively' wasn't

Could it be there isn't a pot of gold at the end of the Sadville rainbow? Google doesn't think there is, and will shutter its "virtual world" Lively after less than six months. Lively was opened in July under the Google Labs banner, the clearing house for unfinished or pointless products. Its closure merited two and a bit …

Applications 20 Nov 2008, 11:18
MacBook buyers bite Apple over copy protection cock-up

Analysis DisplayPort-only direction yields iTunes playback woes

Apple's decision to adopt the DisplayPort digital monitor connector is pissing off punters, all thanks to the technology's incorporation of a copyright protection mechanism. DisplayPort, like HDMI, mandates copy prevention technology. DisplayPort's system is called DisplayPort Content Protection (DPCP), but it's essentially …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 11:23
Beeb reprieves Xmas Top of the Pops

'Oh I wish it could be Christmas..' etc, etc

The BBC has quite righty done a U-turn on its shock decision to can the Top of the Pops Xmas special, and viewers will now be able to enjoy Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates presenting the traditional count-down to the Yule number one. Auntie has further confirmed the pair will also front a TOTP New Year's Eve Special, featuring …

Entertainment 20 Nov 2008, 11:25
Lords debate Climate Bill, carbon racket

'We don't know what we're talking about'

The government's climate minister in the House of Lords dropped a clanger on Monday evening, when he claimed that the polar ice caps were melting at a record rate. "It is indisputable that polar ice caps are melting - we can see that with our own eyes," Lord Hunt, Minister of State of the Department of Energy, told the house. …

Environment 20 Nov 2008, 11:31
GTA IV extra game download details emerge

To be posted on 17 February 2009?

Juicy snippets regarding the upcoming downloadable content (DLC) for Grand Theft Auto: IV have emerged online, including the add-on’s basic storyline, a profile of the central character and the title’s potential release date. Dan Houser, VP of Creative Development at Rockstar, told newspaper USA Today that Johnny Klebitz is …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 11:34
Cybercrooks making easy money from virtual worlds

EU agency launches campaign

Online gamers have become a soft target for cybercrime, with three in 10 users reporting the loss of items of virtual property through fraud. ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, launched a campaign to clamp down on scams in virtual worlds, which it warns are having a measurable effect on the real …

ID 20 Nov 2008, 12:05
Packard Bell readies latest EasyNote

Sexy, stylish and slim, it's claimed

Packard Bell has launched another EasyNote notebook, which this time around is targeted at users with a weakness for phrases like “limited edition,” “slim” and “stylish”. The 12in EasyNote BG48 has a stylish “glossy white and aluminium” colour scheme, topped off with a “chocolate edge trim”. PB claimed it has paid attention to …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 12:23
Carbon Cult: Ban flushing toilets

Pay per dump, and think of Gaia

Australians could face 'pay as you dump' charges as part of a Toilet Tax. It's all in the name of "sustainability" - and part of a growing eco-movement to replace flushing conveniences with smelly and unhealthy inconvenience. Water use experts Mike Young and Jim McColl, of Adelaide University and the Commonwealth Scientific …

Environment 20 Nov 2008, 12:31
The Pope predicted economic Armageddon back in 1985

Italian pol says sub prime collapse all in the ~~good~~ loan book...

Pope Benedict predicted the current economic apocolypse back in 1985, an Italian politician has declared, suggesting that the Vatican may be the one global institution likely to make a killing out of Mammon's downfall. The claim that His Holiness foresaw the sub-prime crisis, the collapse of the investment banks and the …

Bootnotes 20 Nov 2008, 12:42
Capita takeover faces monopoly investigation

Office of Fair Trading not convinced

Capita's £78m takeover of IBS Opensystems Software has been referred to the Competition Commission. The Office of Fair Trading said it was concerned the deal would be anti-competitive for local authorities. It said there were strong customer concerns around the deal because it would leave local councils and housing …

Applications 20 Nov 2008, 12:45
Formula One kinetic energy recovery rigs debut

Off-the-shelf sets prepped for use next season

Formula One Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) are becoming like London buses – nothing for weeks then two come along together. Almost simultaneously, Bosch and Magneti Marelli have announced they will be supplying “off-the-shelf” KERS for the 2009 F1 Grand Prix season. The Magneti Marelli system was initially shown to …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 12:46
MPs declare their ignorance on the web

Comment If they're not ranting, they're bumbling

The times, they may be changing on the internet, but if our Parliament has anything to do with it, that change is unlikely to be for the better. The problem is that far too many MPs not only don’t get it when it comes to the net, they actively bask in their ignorance of new technology. Two outwardly unconnected stories show …

Government 20 Nov 2008, 12:58
Enter the ~~Dragon~~ N96: Bruce Lee phone spied online

Hong Kong Fooey version in pipeline?

Toughened mobiles for building site workers are nothing new, but most lack any juicy features like a camera or 3G. So Nokia’s created what’s possibly the 'ardest fully-featured mobile yet: the Bruce Lee edition N96. Nokia's Bruce Lee N96 The former martial arts god’s face now stares ominously at you from the back of the …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 13:00
Logitech Squeezebox Boom wireless music player

Review Small box, very big sound

Logitech's Squeezebox Duet network music player doesn't really have any faults but if you absolutely had to come up with an Achilles' Heel it would be the need for an amplified stereo system for it to play through. Not an issue if you only want music in one room, but more of a problem if you want tunes all around the house. …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 13:02
Ofcom claims UK leads on digital communications

Irish are the talkiest and Yanks watch most TV

Ofcom has published the third of their annual reports comparing the UK digital communications industry to those found in nearby countries, and concludes that we're the most advanced - though the Irish make more mobile calls and the Americans watch more TV. The International Communications Market Report covers every aspect of …

Networks 20 Nov 2008, 13:07
How are you future proofing your IT?

Mini Poll Avoiding legacy status

Following on from the discussion of legacy systems and platforms occurring as part of our platform optimisation workshop here, we're trying to work out the best way to avoid having your expensive IT systems degrading to legacy status. So, if you have a couple of spare minutes, let's have your views on this in our mini-poll below …

Systems 20 Nov 2008, 13:13
BNP list hunters bring down Wikileaks

70 hits a second

The Wikileaks website struggled to stay online yesterday because of thousands of people looking for the leaked BNP membership list. As revealed by the Register the list of more than 10,000 BNP members was leaked early on Monday morning and although it was removed from the original blog it quickly appeared elsewhere on the net …

Law 20 Nov 2008, 13:33
US Army bans USB devices to contain worm

Unfriendly fire

The US Army has reportedly suspended the use of USB and removable media devices after a worm began spreading across its network. Use of USB drives, floppy discs, CDs, external drives, flash media cards and all other removable media devices has been placed on hold in order to contain the spread of Agent-BTZ, a variant of the …

Malware 20 Nov 2008, 13:41
US, UK deploy manned unmanned aircraft to save bandwidth

Backseaters still tolerating pilots for now

Bandwidth-starved military spyplane chiefs are resorting to the use of humans as airborne data-processing nodes, according to reports. Difficulties in deployment of unmanned robot surveillance craft have led to the purchase of basic civilian planes for use in intelligence work above Iraq and Afghanistan. For years now, ground …

Government 20 Nov 2008, 14:11
How to destroy the music business

Analysis This will only take a second

Put yourself in these hypothetical shoes for a moment. My goal is to make as much money as possible by doing as little work as possible. I have no creative talent except for generating and recycling marketing buzzwords. I have no technical knowledge or ability - but I can get my head around a Twitter feed. It doesn't sound …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2008, 14:38
T-Mobile leaves 300,000 disconnected

Database corruption blamed

300,000 UK T-Mobile customers had a quiet morning as they were unable to make or receive calls thanks to a database snafu that forced the operator to restore from backups - a process which is still in progress. The problems started at around 10am this morning, and meant that 300,000 customers couldn't be verified by the …

Mobile 20 Nov 2008, 14:51
UK.gov tells domain industry to get its house in order

Oh no! Here comes the government...

A day after Nominet decided to sue one of its own directors, a senior civil servant warned that the domain industry must be better behaved to avoid government intervention. Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform official David Hendon was speaking on Wednesday at the not-for-profit's annual registrars' …

Government 20 Nov 2008, 14:52
Lewis Hamilton mulls riding Virgin

Galactic jaunt for F1 champ?

Formula 1 champ Lewis Hamilton is planning to stump a cool £625,000 for five seats on a Virgin Galactic flight, according to the Evening Standard. Hamilton will be joined on the space jaunt by girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, dad Anthony, stepmum Linda and half brother Nicholas. A source said: “He is on the way to becoming the …

Space 20 Nov 2008, 15:20
Mac-friendly external hard drives launched

Made from planes, sort of

Storage firm G-Technology has launched a four-strong range of Mac-friendly external hard drives, each cast from "aircraft grade" aluminium. G-Tech's Mini Combo: one of four models available Every HDD in the fanless G-Drive range comes pre-formatted in the Mac’s native file format - HFS Plus - and supports Mac OS X's Time …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 15:39
Kids blame technology for homework hand-in failures

The dog 8 it

‘My dog ate it’, ‘I left it on the bus’, and ‘someone stole it’ – they were the classic excuses in our day for not handing in homework. But modern youth are increasingly blaming absent homework on technology, a survey’s revealed. Online electronics retailer Pixmania surveyed 1000 teachers during the past 12 months and found …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 15:49
Scots vote out ID cards

MSPs say nae, but move means naething

The Scottish Parliament has voted against the government's proposed ID cards, in a gesture of Pythonian futility. Members of the Scottish Parliament decided the cards would not deter crime, would not add to security and would do very little for civil liberties as well. MSP Fergus Ewing told the Parliament that the government …

Government 20 Nov 2008, 16:31
Heidemarie 'Toolbag' Piper set for second spacewalk

While ISS crew hunt missing spider

Endeavour mission specialists Shane Kimbrough and Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper are getting ready for the second mission STS-126 spacewalk outside the International Space Station this afternoon, scheduled to get under way at 18:45 GMT. Their lisk of jobs includes "the relocation of two crew and equipment translation aid carts, the …

Space 20 Nov 2008, 16:32
Project Hyperion: A super testbed for HPC apps and hardware

SC08 Freebie teraflops for ISVs

When it comes to parallel supercomputing, and indeed any kind of parallel processing, the hardware is the easy part. The systems software, including a tuned software stack and middleware for managing data, visualization applications for turning datasets into something human beings can use to make decisions or understand some …

Storage 20 Nov 2008, 16:50
Gamers voice NXE woes

RRoD, frozen consoles and missing avatars mentioned

The New Xbox Experience (NXE) has barely been out for 24 hours, but gamers have already claimed that it’s messing with their consoles. Some have even said the update’s caused the dreaded Red Ring of Death (RRoD) to rear its ugly head once more. NXE was released to the masses yesterday, but we’ve read forum postings from …

Reg Hardware 20 Nov 2008, 18:02
Sun adds Query Analyzer to MySQL

In brief Subscription service customers only

Sun Microsystems has added a query analysis tool to MySQL, but for paying customers only. The Fall '08 upgrade for Sun's subscription-based MySQL Enterprise service includes Query Analyzer, a closed-source tool designed to improve the speed of mySQL database applications. Query Analyzer monitors query performance to help spot …

Developer 20 Nov 2008, 18:06
SGI preps supers for future Intel chips

SC08 To Itanium or not to Itanium

Architectures can change quickly in the supercomputing space, and slow-moving vendors can get left behind or at least find themselves out of step with the next big wave of sales in the HPC area. This has happened in the past with Silicon Graphics, and the company is determined to not let it happen again. At the SC08 …

Servers 20 Nov 2008, 18:40
Google - the world's first firewalled monopoly

Antitrust 2.0 Pricing power goes virtual

Why did Google leave outgoing Yahoo! chief executive Jerry Yang heartbroken at the search engine altar? If you believe the words chief ad broker and CEO Eric Schmidt funneled through The New York Times, Google chafed at the prospect of winning a Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust suit. "We canceled the deal with about one …

Financial News 20 Nov 2008, 18:42
Hitachi GST spots oyster, seeks HDD pearls

Comment Storage doesn't have to spin

When you are recovering from a long period of hard times and light appears at the end of the tunnel and gets closer and closer until you emerge into glorious daylight, you get a spring in your step and start making plans. Now you're back on your feet, the world becomes an oyster again, and you go off in different directions …

Storage 20 Nov 2008, 18:58
Agilistas are to architects as Neo is to...

QCon 2009 This is not The Matrix. But it is

Agile development practices may be growing in popularity among developers, but agilistas aren't getting much love from software architects. The irony? Without the architects, agile will never be fully accepted in the enterprise. That's according to ThoughtWorks chief technology officer Rebecca Parsons, opening this year's …

Developer 20 Nov 2008, 19:13
eHarmony settles over same-sex dating

All's fair in love and court

Online dating service eHarmony.com has agreed to create a new website for matching same-sex couples, as part of discrimination settlement with New Jersey's Civil Rights Division. The agreement comes more than three years after New Jersey resident Eric McKinley filed a formal complaint against the matchmaking company over its …

Bootnotes 20 Nov 2008, 20:12
Phisher-besieged PayPal sends users faux log-in page

Error.com's missed opportunity

PayPal, the online payment service that is a major target of phishers, has been caught sending customer emails that confuse its own login page with a third-party landing site that offers spyware protection and a bevy of other products. The faux hyperlink to secure.uninitialized.real.error.com was included in official emails …

Security 20 Nov 2008, 20:37
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 planned for 2009

Third beta, then release

The "standards-compatible" next edition of Internet Explorer has been bumped into 2009 by Microsoft. A third Internet Explorer 8 beta will now be released in the first quarter of next year and be followed by a final release, IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch has blogged. Hachamovitch did not give a date for that final …

Applications 20 Nov 2008, 21:34
SGI shows off Molecule concept machine

SC08 A dense cluster of Intel Atoms

While supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics was showing off its existing Altix lines of Xeon and Itanium servers at the SC08 supercomputing show in Austin, Texas, this week, the most interesting thing the company touted was not yet a real computer, but a concept system, called Molecule. The Molecule machine takes a few pages …

Servers 20 Nov 2008, 22:05
Regulators back Bell Canada choking indie ISP traffic

Rented tubes should still be clear tubes

Canada's telecom regulators gave Bell Canada the OK to throttle peer-to-peer Internet traffic on pipes it leases to third-party ISPs. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced today that the country's largest Internet provider won't have to stop its P2P "traffic-shaping" practices on …

Telecoms 20 Nov 2008, 22:15
Dell profits take (small) hit in Q3

Cost cutting saves the day

If you were looking for some good news out of Dell today as it reported its fiscal 2009 third quarter financial results, you will probably be disappointed. But not as much as you might think. That's good news of a sort considering the miserable week the global economy is having. Dell's sales for the third quarter ending …

Financial News 20 Nov 2008, 23:41
Company sues Facebook over somethingorother

Unified, horizontal system for communications...bitch!

An Ohio-based technology company is suing Facebook for patent infringement, claiming it invented the platform the insanely popular social networking site uses to store and manage information. Leader Technology claims Facebook infringes on its patent for "dynamic association of electronically stored information with iterative …

Law 20 Nov 2008, 23:44