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20th December 2008 Archive

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  • RIAA won't sue, but will throttle

    Abandons lawsuit campaign

    The Recording Industry Association of America has signaled a major strategy shift in its war against the downloading of copyrighted music, saying it would largely abandon its practice of suing violators. Instead, the RIAA will work with internet service providers to sever abusers' net connections. Friday's announcement caps a …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 00:09

  • NASA finds Mars slightly less inhospitable

    There was life, maybe. In one bit. A really long time ago

    NASA boffins believe they have found evidence suggesting that Mars may not have been barren and lifeless for its entire history. "We have found evidence that not all of Mars experienced an intense, acidic weathering environment 3.5 billion years ago, as has been proposed," said Bethany Ehlmann of Brown University. "We've found …

    Space 20 Dec 00:35

  • American Express bitten by XSS bugs (again)

    Card accounts still naked

    The website for American Express has once again been bitten by security bugs that could expose its considerable base of customers to attacks that steal their login credentials. The notice comes days after The Register reported Amex unnecessarily put its users at risk by failing to fix a glaring vulnerability more than two …

    Security 20 Dec 04:07

  • US sues to break up military and space kit acquisition

    Price of diodes are a bitch these days

    The US Department of Justice wants to bust an alleged monopoly by Microsemi, a California-based firm that sells high-reliability electronic kit to the government for military applications, satellites, and spacecraft. On Thursday, the DoJ filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against the company in the Eastern District of Virginia, …

    Law 20 Dec 04:33

  • Chinese automaker launches 'leccy lizzie

    'Leccy Tech PRC punts plug-in

    If you've been waiting for the Chevy Volt or Toyota's as-yet unnamed offering before you buy a plug-in hybrid automobile, you'll need to sit tight until their planned 2010 releases. If you must have a plug-in right now, however, you'll need to move to China. That'd be the PRC, not Taiwan. Chinese carmaker BYD Auto began …

    Hardware 20 Dec 04:43

  • Coffers Coffee Republic gets own cashless system

    Credits could add up to a couple of grande

    Coffee Republic is the latest entity to launch an NFC-based pre-paid system for those who like to pony up in advance for their caffeine fix and have their usage tracked in exchange for a ten per cent rebate. Not content with accepting cash, credit cards, and contactless payments using bank cards, Coffee Republic has launched …

    Hardware 20 Dec 04:50

  • Orange sticks nose into e-books

    Anything you Kindle, I Kindle better

    Orange is pondering a foray into Kindle territory. Innovative network application is all very well, but the company wants to go further and make innovative devices to allow its customers to run up their bills in new and interesting ways. Orange has been practising the delivery of daily newspapers over its 3G network for a …

    Music and Media 20 Dec 04:54

  • Orange totes Technocentre to London

    No no there's no convergence limit

    Orange is bringing the Technocentre concept to London, citing the success of the existing centres as proof that the company can take the best of the internet and make it work for a telco. Orange runs a number of Technocentres, each of which creates a small team for each specific product being examined. The team comprises …

    Telecoms 20 Dec 04:57

  • Corrupt cop abused police database to blackmail child abusers

    Gets six years for ill-advised operation

    A London policeman who attempted to blackmail sex offenders and drug dealers has been jailed for six years. PC Amerdeep Singh Johal, 29, was arrested by anti-corruption cops from Scotland Yard in July 2007. Johal was employed in checking names and address on the police database, called Crimint, on behalf of beat cops. He …

    Crime 20 Dec 05:00

  • Florist kicks up a stink about false phish alarm

    Bloomin' MessageLabs

    A florist is complaining that MessageLabs wrongly identified emails it was sending as infected with a computer virus. The November edition of the monthly newsletter email sent out by Arena Flowers was wrongly identified as a phishing email. That in itself would be bad enough, but MessageLabs compounded the problem by attaching …

    Security 20 Dec 05:03

  • IBM reneges on Solaris GPFS promise

    'A decommitment of intent'

    IBM has a love, hate, love, hate, hate, hate relationship with Solaris, Sun Microsystems' Unix variant. And becoming an OEM partner of Sun's to distribute Solaris has apparently changed none of that. Back in August 2007, IBM and Sun inked an OEM deal that would see IBM distribute Solaris 10 on selected models of the company's …

    Servers 20 Dec 05:50

  • American IT staffing will not tank in Q1

    Outlook only semi-dour

    There is a lot of bad economic news out there, and sometimes, it is easy to wallow in despair. But there is some good news if you are on the IT staff here in the United States. According to Robert Half Technology's latest survey, which asks CIOs and IT managers about their staffing plans for the first quarter of 2009, the vast …

    IT Director 20 Dec 06:09

  • TVonics DTR-Z500 500GB Freeview+ DVR

    Review Doddle-to-use recorder that can store 11 days' telly

    We rather like TVonics here at Vulture Central because its kit is British designed and made, and rather stylish. More to the point, for the large number of people who don't understand all this digital switchover malarkey, its devices work right out of the box. TVonics' DTR-500: foolproof The DTR-Z500 is essentially an …

    Reg Hardware 20 Dec 08:30