25th November 2008 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

HP rides EDS buy through Meltdown

Q4 revenues up, profits debatable

It is beginning to look like Mark Hurd, chairman and chief executive officer of IT giant Hewlett-Packard, has one of the easiest jobs in the market. Maybe second only to Sam Palmisano, IBM's chairman and CEO and Hurd's chief rival in the IT space. For the fiscal fourth quarter ending October 31, HP reported sales of $33.6bn, …

Financial News 25 Nov 2008, 00:15
Yahoo! offloads Kelkoo for a song

Euro shopping service = €375m loss

Yahoo! has sold Kelkoo, the European comparison-shopping service, to a hereto unknown English private equity firm called Jamplant. While Yahoo! won't reveal how much it received in the deal, ex-Kelkoo CEO and founder Pierre Chappaz claims on his (French) blog that the company was sold for under €100m. That's quite a dip from …

Music and Media 25 Nov 2008, 00:46
(Real estate) developer sues Apple over Jesus Phone browser

XML and the Beverly Hills Hotel

Apple is facing yet another Jesus Phone patent infringement suit. This time, an opportunistic patent holder wants some cash for "the way the iPhone navigates the Internet." After suits over the iPhone's touch screen, virtual keyboard, visual voicemail, and caller ID feature, Jobs and cult have now been hit with a browser- …

Mobile 25 Nov 2008, 01:33
Fedora 10 debuts with nips, tucks

17,000 contributors strong

The Fedora Project today will take the wraps off the open development Fedora 10 release, six months and twelve days since Fedora 9 came on the scene and more or less in sync with the six month development cycle that the project has established for the code base that eventually becomes Red Hat Enterprise Linux. According to …

Operating Systems 25 Nov 2008, 05:02
Heavyweight games pirate jailed for three years

Spent ill-gotten gains on belly reduction op

A UK man who had plastic surgery after growing fat through his pirate film, music and videogame empire, has been jailed for three years. Steven Raymond Adams, 38, of Loweswater Drive, Lower Gornal, Dudley pleaded guilty to over 40 offences related to the 1994 Trademarks Act. Adams sold much of the illegally copied content at …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 06:02
Ofcom: Where's the broadband beef?

Mobile grumbles down, silent call complaints up

UK regulator Ofcom has been looking into what customers dislike in their communications, culminating in the publication of the third annual report on what's been riling users most over the last 12 months. The report covers every aspect of the communications industry, and runs to 167 pages (pdf). Mobile phone users seem …

Networks 25 Nov 2008, 07:02
Offshore hosting firm HavenCo lost at sea

Principality data sanctuary sinkage

Controversial hosting provider HavenCo - which operated from the 'nation' of Sealand, an old naval fort off the coast of Suffolk which was declared a 'sovereign principality' by its quirky owner Roy Bates - has finally gone offline. As of last week, the HavenCo website is gone and the domain is now hosted outside the Sealand …

Telecoms 25 Nov 2008, 07:02
HP HDX16-1000 16in multimedia laptop

Review Music and movie heavyweight

With laptop prices plunging, you'd expect a lot from a multimedia media machine that costs a grand, right? Well, HP has certainly jemmied a lot of tech into its new HDX, including a Blu-ray drive, a TV tuner and a 16in, 1080p full HD screen. HP's HDX16-1000: Big spec, big price tag The HDX16-1000 follows in the footsteps of …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 09:02
Boffins crack secret of dolphins' aquatic prowess

Matter of simply being extremely strong, apparently

American boffins believe they have cracked the scientific riddle known as "Gray's Paradox" - the mystery of how dolphins can manage their amazing physical feats. Famed zoologist Sir James Gray clocked the speedy cetaceans doing better than 20mph in 1936, leading him to theorise that they must have super-slippery hides or some …

Biology 25 Nov 2008, 09:49
Straw grants ICO half its wish list

Some new powers but not enough

More than a year after the government lost the discs containing the UK's entire child benefit database Jack Straw is offering to increase the funding and powers of the Information Commissioner's Office. The ICO wanted powers to investigate any organisation it suspected of failing to follow data protection principles. Straw is …

Government 25 Nov 2008, 09:53
What the hell is an optimum working environment?

'Bitch of a survey' transformed into second glorious webcast

Last week we heralded a beautiful webcast arising from a "bitch of a survey" we ran at the start of the month and which many of you completed. Thanks for that. Now it's time to bang the drum for the second and final webcast inspired by that monstrous survey. This one is called Delivering information across the Enterprise. So …

Tech Panel 25 Nov 2008, 10:02
Queen’s Uni nets £25m funds for cybersecurity research

Kick-start for Northern Ireland

Queen’s University Belfast has become the envy of cash-starved UK start-ups, to say nothing of specialist e-crime policemen and rival unis, after securing £25m in funding to help it become the UK's leading centre in developing technology to thwart internet attacks. The new Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) will …

Security 25 Nov 2008, 10:05
Lords told to listen to science on cannabis

Wacky Jacqui weasels on weed

A group of scientists has urged the House of Lords to listen to scientific advice rather than the ranting of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and reject her proposal to change the classification of cannabis from C to B. In a letter to the Guardian, eight leading scientists call on the Lords to back an amendment tabled by Baroness …

Law 25 Nov 2008, 10:31
Hynix ramps GDDR 5 clock speed to 7GHz

Increase of 36 per cent

Hynix has introduced GDDR 5 memory capable of running at a whopping 7GHz, though you're going to have to wait until next year to get hold of it. The memory company yesterday unveiled the high-speed video Ram in the form of a 54nm 1Gb chip. At 7GHz, the new part is 35.7 per cent faster than current top-of-the-line GDDR 5, which …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 10:39
Sony said to be planning Spring PS3 price cut

Releases PlayStation credit card

A substantial cut to the price of the PlayStation 3 could be announced by Sony next Spring, a company insider has claimed. An anonymous source going by the name of 'Legends' has told gaming magazine D+Pad that David Reeves, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), hinted at a recent staff briefing that the PS3’s …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 11:02
Tax break phishing scam aims to harvest details

Xmas scam season kicks off

Fraudsters with their finger on the financial pulse have launched a scam designed to exploit interest in UK government tax breaks. Scam emails doing the rounds pose as offers for "family maintenance". The messages appear to come from the non-existent "UK Government & Ministry of Finance" and offer a tax refund of between £450 …

Crime 25 Nov 2008, 11:15
DVLA under scrutiny over penalty notice dating game

'Slipshod' SORN procedure may prove purgative

The Department of Transport is to look at allegations that the DVLA has been breaking the law in its treatment of off-road penalty notices, and that it is hiding behind "client privilege" to refuse to answer questions about its conduct. The allegations surfaced a few months back when motorbike courier James Collins noticed …

Government 25 Nov 2008, 11:15
US utilities moot massive EV order to boost car biz

'Leccy Tech Don't want the Big Three's electric car plans kyboshed by credit crunch

The idea of somebody picking up the phone and ordering 10,000 Chevy Volts should be more than enough to improve any General Motors executive's day - and it may not prove to be that hopelessly optimistic. Senior folk at several US electricity generators and suppliers are worried that the current financial turmoil engulfing the …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 11:19
NASA's Juno set for Jupiter jaunt

2011 mission to probe giant's 'formation, evolution and structure'

NASA has confirmed a 2011 launch date for its Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft, equipped to probe the planet's "formation, evolution and structure". Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, explained: "Jupiter is the archetype of giant planets in our solar system and formed very early, …

Space 25 Nov 2008, 11:33
Nokia introduces second 6260

New phone, old model number

Nokia could be running out of useable model numbers, because it’s been forced to borrow one from a discontinued handset in order to launch its latest slick slider. Nokia's 6260, not to be confused with the former 6260 The new 6260 supposedly lets you quickly access applications on the main menu thanks, in part, to the phone …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 11:34
Home Office team continue work on net snooping masterplan

Legislation? Who needs it

A group of Home Office officials are continuing to work on plans for a giant central database of email, web browsing, phone and mobile location data, even though the laws the government had planned to legitimise it won't be put to parliament until 2010 at the earliest, and possibly not at all. A Home Office spokeswoman …

Servers 25 Nov 2008, 11:43
Samsung pitches '15,000rpm HDD speed' SSD

Sequential, yes; random, no

Samsung has begun churning out 256GB solid-state drives, and it claimed the new models are more that twice as fast as their predecessors. According to Samsung, the 256GB SSD has a sequential read speed of 220MB/s and a sequential write speed of 200MB/s. Samsung's 256GB SSD: as fast as a 15,000rpm HDD? The company claimed …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 11:54
Apple quietly releases Safari 3.2.1

'Stability improvements'

Apple has pumped Safari with yet another update less than two weeks after version 3.2 of the browser was released. The Cupertino-based company has been scurrying to fix a host of bugs in Safari that left many Mac fanboys in a spin, with the revamped browser consistently crashing on launch. Safari 3.2.1 was shoved out the door …

Applications 25 Nov 2008, 11:57
Blockbuster launches set-top film-download box

Can't deliver pizza though

Blockbuster has finally realised what we’ve all known for years: traipsing back and forth to its stores with discs is a pain in the bum. So the rental firm’s launched a set-top box to deliver films directly to your living room. Blockbuster's MediaPoint set-top film box The MediaPoint box will sit beside, underneath or on …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 12:07
German national library rocks blogosphere

Submit material or cop €10,000 fine

The German blogosphere has got itself into a bit of a tizz over the Nationalbibliothek's alleged plan to catalogue the entire local internet - in the process obliging every website owner and blogger to submit material or face a €10,000 fine. According to the Financial Times, the shock strategy to bend the web to the national …

Government 25 Nov 2008, 12:10
iPhone developer stoops to straight bribery

Best application ever, five stars, taverymuch

One iPhone developer has found a novel way to increase rankings in the iTunes store: pay people $5 a time to post positive reviews, thus ensuring the general public gets an unbiased view of application quality. The application concerned, SantaLive, shows animations of Santa Claus going about his daily business in the run-up to …

Mobile 25 Nov 2008, 12:22
A sex show of truly Olympian proportions?

NSFW El Reg does Erotica 2008

Dayglo and faintly squidgy – or looking as though it might turn up as weaponry in the hands of a hostile alien: the future of stimulation is techno-sexual, and it was on display this weekend at Erotica 2008. This was the third such event to be hosted at Kensington Olympia, opening its doors to punters with the plea that they " …

Bootnotes 25 Nov 2008, 12:37
Facebook wins record $873m fine against smut spammer

Junk mailer poked but unlikely to pay

Facebook has won a $873m judgment against a Canadian sued for spamming users of the social networking site with "sexually explicit" messages after hacking into the profiles of its members. Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, who runs Atlantis Blue Capital and Ballervision.com, was ordered to pay exemplary damages by US District Judge …

Spam 25 Nov 2008, 12:46
Endeavour ISS gig extended one day

New Water Recovery System still not taking the p*ss

Endeavour's STS-126 mission to the ISS has been extended by one day so crew can "continue troubleshooting" the orbiting outpost's new Water Recovery System, which has proved somewhat bothersome. Steve Bowen (see pic, below) and Shane Kimbrough successfully ended the mission's fourth and final spacewalk at 00:31 GMT this …

Space 25 Nov 2008, 12:47
Samsung Q1 music and video player

Review Sleek, svelte and very nicely priced

Silly names notwithstanding, Samsung's recent MP3 players have been a decent enough bunch. Both the YP-P2 and YP-T10left us reasonably impressed. The new kid on the block is the YP-Q1, a player that fits in between the two previous models and is the standard bearer for Samsung's latest sound technology. Samsung's YP-Q1: …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 13:02
Reviewers, spin crews tussle over Tomb Raider: Underworld write-ups

Underworld = underpants?

The UK PR firm working with gaming giant Edios has denied that it asked a writer to delay the publication of a Tomb Raider: Underworld review if he’d given it less than 80 per cent. The latest in the Lara Croft line was released on 21 November in the UK, but on 19 November journalist Guy Cocker told the world that he’d been …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 13:03
Sky mulls PVR software rollback

Updated Blames problems on hardware modders

Sky is considering reversing an update to the software on its PVR boxes after it froze customers out of the programme guide and left them unable to record TV. The update to Sky+ boxes, described as minor by the firm, was pushed last week over the air. Customers noticed the OS version number had changed when they were locked …

PCs & Chips 25 Nov 2008, 13:11
Beatles stay off iTunes cos of 'heavy negotiations', man

Macca can't seal deal with EMI

Paul McCartney has pooh-poohed the suggestion that Beatles tracks could finally appear on iTunes because negotiations with EMI have once again stalled. The long and winding road to get the Beatles’ back catalogue onto iTunes has proved a huge headache for Apple, which continues to be in talks with the band’s label. McCartney …

Music and Media 25 Nov 2008, 13:13
Did Parallels ship pre-release version 4 code?

Boxed software pre-dated final build by 22 days

Parallels has admitted shipping two versions of its Parallels Desktop v4.0 (PD4) software with a 22-day difference between them, leading to accusations it has shipped pre-release software into the channel. On the launch day, November 11, boxed software buyers received PD4 build 3047, dated October 16 2008, whereas customers …

Virtualization 25 Nov 2008, 13:20
Texan prof sees big future for graphene storage

Flash just a flash in the pan, seemingly

A Texan boffin says he has seen the future of storage - and it's graphite based. Professor James Tour of Rice Uni in Houston believes that his proposed graphene arrays could be many times denser and faster than existing storage tech, and they'd be more reliable too. Tour's system works using strips of graphite ten atoms thick …

Servers 25 Nov 2008, 14:00
InterDigital and Samsung bury hatchet

First payment due next year

Samsung and InterDigital have settled their patent spat, with the former agreeing to pay the latter an undisclosed sum for both 2G and 3G products until the year 2012. There has been a trend, recently, for those involved in the mobile phone business to start settling their disputes by giving money to each other rather then …

Mobile 25 Nov 2008, 14:22
Mobile web access skyrockets

Walk-and-web beats sit-and-surf

UK mobile internet use grew by 25 per cent between Q2 and Q3 this year, thanks in part to unlimited mobile data tariffs, market watcher Nielsen Online has discovered. Nielsen said that 7.3m of us accessed the web using a phone during Q3, up from 5.8m during the previous quarter. By comparison, PC-based web use grew by just …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 14:51
China slams Guns N' Roses album

Chinese Democracy a 'venomous attack'

China has unsurprisingly taken exception to Guns N' Roses' new album Chinese Democracy, slamming it as a "venomous attack" which "turns its spear point on China". That's according to the BBC, which quotes an article in the Global Times (published by the ruling communist party, natch) which roundly condemns Axl Rose and co. The …

Music and Media 25 Nov 2008, 14:53
Rock-solid Fedora 10 brings salvation to Ubuntu weary

Review Next RHEL looking good

Fedora might not be getting a complete makeover or flashy new features in version 10, out today, but some welcome enhancements under-the-hood make this a worthwhile upgrade. If you've never given Fedora a try, now is a great time. The tenth revision slick and stable and it has a rock solid feel to it that, for our money, …

Operating Systems 25 Nov 2008, 15:02
IBM's Transitive buy presents interesting server options

Emulation is the sincerest form of fattening

Here's a story you've heard a bunch of times: IBM liked the software so much, it bought the company. And so the story ran again last week, when Big Blue bought software emulation specialist Transitive for an undisclosed sum. Transitive makes a bit of software called QuickTransit, which allows applications created for one chip to …

Servers 25 Nov 2008, 15:22
China's richest man disappears

Gome shares suspended

The chairman of China’s largest electronics retailer, Gome, has disappeared, although some reports suggest he's been detained by the police over alleged financial misconduct at the firm. Huang Guangyu, who founded Gome Electrical Appliance Holdings in 1987, could not be located today, according to several reports. Shares in …

Policing 25 Nov 2008, 15:28
More Tasers for cops: not in London

Capital sticks with traditional methods

The Home Office's recently announced plan to issue Taser electric stunguns more widely to police has been endorsed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). However the extra Tasers have been turned down for now by the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the governing body of London coppers. The Met already has …

Policing 25 Nov 2008, 15:34
US prosthetic todger pair plead guilty to conspiracy

NSFW Drug test-busting Whizzinator seriously taking the p*ss

The two men responsible for the Whizzinator - a prosthetic todger designed to beat those pesky drugs tests - have each pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud in a federal court in Pittsburgh. Robert Catalano and George Wills punted their fake schlong through California-based internet outfit Puck Technology. The …

Bootnotes 25 Nov 2008, 15:56
YouTube on your telly

...and films, music, pictures

Watching YouTube funnies on a PC or a phone isn’t always ideal. So a set-top box has been launched to bring the web’s entire collection of... ahem... outstanding video content directly into your living room. VuNow: web video on your TV VuNow works by accessing web-based videos via an Ethernet or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connection …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 16:04
Jamming convicts' mobiles works

But might have been illegal

On Friday CellAntenna demonstrated it could jam mobile phones within a 1000 square meter area within a prison, without noticeably affecting those passing. This opens the door to widespread adoption of the technology. The test took places at the Lieber Correctional Institution, at the request of Jon Ozmint and in the presence …

Mobile 25 Nov 2008, 16:05
IBM updates power management for servers

Putting a cap on with a plug-in

It took a little bit longer than expected, perhaps, but IBM has finally delivered its Active Energy Manager plug-in for its Systems Director system management tool. The tool can be used to monitor power consumption and thermal conditions of IBM and non-IBM systems, as well as capping the power that can be used on selected server …

Servers 25 Nov 2008, 16:21
Apple claims MacBooks are world's greenest laptops

The 'greenest family of notebooks'?

Apple may not have scored too well in the latest Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics, but that hasn’t stopped it from claiming that its redesigned MacBooks are the "world’s greenest family of notebooks". Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com In a new advert, the voiceover guy states that a MacBook’s …

Reg Hardware 25 Nov 2008, 16:38
Unofficial fix issued for Vista networking flaw

Crash bang wallop

A system-crashing bug with potential malware implications has been uncovered in Vista. But a fix for the vulnerability, which revolves around flaws in the operating system's network stack, may have to wait until the next service pack. The TCP/IP stack buffer overflow was discovered by security researchers at Austrian firewall …

Enterprise Security 25 Nov 2008, 16:56
Opera Mini makes 4.2

Also found on Android Market

Opera Mini has found its way onto the Android Market with version 4.2, an incremental release that increases execution speed as well as linking to native media players and bringing back the skinning feature that vanished with version 4. Non-Android owners can download the browser in the old-fashioned way, but Android users can …

Mobile 25 Nov 2008, 18:14
One million Googlephones expected in '08

HTC (nearly) doubles forecast

Google's Android platform appears to be a much hotter seller than first anticipated by HTC, maker of the T-Mobile G1 phone. The Taiwanese handset manufacturer is almost doubling its G1 shipment expectations for the year. HTC believes it can ship about one million G1 phones by the end of 2008, upped from figures of around 600, …

Mobile 25 Nov 2008, 19:18
Sirius satellite radio squashes 6-year-old bug

No more free radio for you!

It may have taken six years, but a bug that allowed people to get satellite radio broadcasts for free has finally been squashed by Sirius XM Radio. According to a report published by IDG News, the flaw has apparently been present in the satellite radio system since 2002, when Sirius first rolled it out. It allowed former …

Security 25 Nov 2008, 19:29
Google to jettison 'second class citizens'

Contractor cuts

Google is to "significantly" reduce the number of contractors on its books. But it claims this has nothing to do with The Meltdown. And it insists there are no plans to layoff full-time employees. "We have been thinking for some time, before the acute phase of the economic crisis, about significantly reducing the number …

Financial News 25 Nov 2008, 21:57
Cisco shares dip after reports of holiday shutdown

Locking doors to pay the bills

Cisco Systems plans to shut down its US and Canadian operations for the last week of December as part of a larger plan to cut fiscal 2009 expenses. A Cisco spokeswoman confirmed the year-end office shuttering with El Reg, saying the networking omnicorp will close its doors December 29 through January 2. Certain exceptions will …

Financial News 25 Nov 2008, 22:22