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14th January 2009 Archive

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  • Robotic exoskeleton gets gardening job

    Dig up sprouts with ease

    Honda has already paraded several robotic exoskeletons designs. But now the concept’s been adapted to aid gardeners digging up spuds and pulling radishes. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has designed what’s been dubbed a wearable agriculture …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 00:02

  • Sling Media now chiefly chiefless

    Slingboxing sibs depart

    Sling Media, maker of the Slingbox family of TV-on-your-notebook devices, has lost its top, with five executives departing from the company. Sling's sibling co-founders CEO Blake Krikorian and executive veep Jason Krikorian have left along with Sling's chief creative officer Ben White, entertainment group president Jason …

    Financial News 14 Jan 2009, 01:05

  • Apple prices MacBook Pro battery surgery

    You know it's not cheap

    Apple has released details and prices of its battery-replacement program for the recently released 17-inch MacBook Pro. When the top-of-the-line Apple notebook was announced last Tuesday, eyebrows were raised when Macworld Expo keynote presenter Phil Schiller revealed that the battery of the 17-incher was, as he put it, " …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 01:22

  • Brit porn filter censors 13 years of net history

    Updated Demon blacklist muzzles Wayback Machine

    A further update to this story an be found here Four weeks after birthing a nationwide Wikipedia edit ban, Britain's child porn blacklist has led at least one ISP to muzzle the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine - an 85 billion page web history dating back to 1996. According to multiple customers of Demon Internet - now owned …

    Broadband 14 Jan 2009, 06:24

  • NetApp extends savings guarantee to Citrix and Hyper-V

    50% off? It's storage sale madness!

    Hey virtual server storage buyers: save 50 per cent of the storage you would have bought or we'll make up the difference! NetApp has extended its 50 per cent storage savings guarantee from VMware to Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Customers who fail to save 50 per cent of the storage they would have bought …

    The Channel 14 Jan 2009, 09:46

  • Violet Mir:ror DIY RFID kit

    Review Attach the internet to objects. Apparently

    Whether you notice it or not, radio-frequency identification (RFID) is upon us in our daily lives. For Londoners, the most obvious incarnation is the Oyster card. Sit it on a pad when you start and finish a tube journey and the fare is deducted from your account automatically. The people at Violet want to make RFID a rather …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 09:48

  • Hello Tosh, wanna a disk business?

    Fujitsu may sell part of HDD business to Toshiba

    Having failed to sell of its hard disk drive business to Western Digital Fujitsu is now trying to sell part of it to Toshiba. The result would be the world's largest supplier of 2.5-inch drives. Toshiba has admitted it is talking to Fujitsu, whilst Fujitsu would only say it is talking to a number of suppliers. The price is …

    The Channel 14 Jan 2009, 10:01

  • London Underground gets emergency phone network

    Airwave finally gets moving

    The emergency services phone network, Airwave, was activated at 125 underground stations in London this morning, providing seamless coverage for service personnel working the tube. Airwave is based on Tetra technology, providing cellular services for special handsets and (in theory) allowing emergency services to talk to each …

    Mobile 14 Jan 2009, 10:21

  • EU privacy watchdog laments weakened privacy proposals

    Council of ministers 'watering down' protection

    The European Union's Council of Ministers has weakened proposals to overhaul EU privacy laws and left people with fewer protections for their personal information, the privacy watchdog for EU institutions has warned. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has said that the Council's revisions to European Parliament and …

    Government 14 Jan 2009, 10:29

  • MoD: 27 per cent of our computers are secure

    Well, of the ones we've checked

    The Ministry of Defence has admitted that only 27 per cent of its computers (of those so far checked) are fully compliant with the government's security standards. Minister for the Armed Forces Bob Ainsworth, in answer to a parliamentary question, laid out the Ministry of Defence's IT security position: 58 per cent of systems …

    Government 14 Jan 2009, 10:57

  • Pillar towers over rivals in best value storage

    The man from the SPC, he say yes

    To get the most bang for your storage buck, you should buy a Pillar Data Axiom 600 - according to the Storage Performance Council (SPC). The SPC-1 benchmark measures the IOPS performance of storage arrays and the cost per IOPS, both in a standard way so that different vendors' storage products can be compared. Pillar Data has …

    Storage 14 Jan 2009, 11:04

  • Fake plane death businessman cuffed in Florida

    Light aircraft bail-out masterplan ends in attempted suicide

    The US financial advisor who attempted to fake his own death in a light aircraft crash has been arrested at a Florida campsite following an apparent suicide attempt, CNN reports. Marcus Schrenker, 38, left Anderson, Indiana, on Sunday in a Piper PA-46 en route for Destin, Florida. Over Alabama, he sent a distress call saying …

    Bootnotes 14 Jan 2009, 11:06

  • Halo 3 murderer convicted

    Teen shot parents after they stopped him playing the game

    A US teen has been convicted of murdering his parents. He did so not because they made him go to bed early or cut off his pocket money, but because they stopped him from playing an Xbox 360 game. Daniel Petric, 17, now faces lifelong imprisonment without parole for killing his mother using his father’s 9mm handgun. The teen …

    Games 14 Jan 2009, 11:17

  • Next-gen mobile Atom clocked at 1.67GHz

    Focus on better netbook battery life?

    Some snippets have emerged concerning Intel's upcoming second-gen Atom processor, already known to be due for release mid-2009. The chip, codenamed 'Pineview', is the successor to today's 'Diamondville' part - aka the N270. The N280 will likewise be a single-core chip, but it will be clocked at 1.67GHz and connect across a …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 11:17

  • PS2 reaches sales milestone

    50m units sold in North America alone

    The PlayStation 2 is nine years old, but its sales remain strong. Sony has announced that it has now sold 50m units in North American alone. Predecessor to the PS3, the PS2 currently costs around $130 (£88/€98) and recent figures from market analyst NPD revealed that 206,000 units were shifted in the US during November 2008. …

    Games 14 Jan 2009, 11:19

  • Solitary MS update lances critical Windows risk

    Oracle patches own January Black Tuesday

    The solitary security update in the latest edition of Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday still poses a critical risk. The security patch addresses three severe vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol. All versions of Windows need patches, although the flaw poses a lesser risk to Vista and Windows 2008 …

    Security 14 Jan 2009, 11:22

  • Reding 'didn't go far enough' on data roaming

    Mobile cap amendments braced for resistance

    Viviane Reding's proposal to cap EU data roaming doesn't go far enough, according to Adina-Ioana Valean, a Romanian Liberal steering the bill through parliament who wants to ban charges for incoming voicemail and messaging. Valean has proposed various amendments to the proposal, as spotted by Reuters. These include banning …

    Mobile 14 Jan 2009, 11:28

  • Pioneer calls a halt to LaserDisc hardware production

    Still making players, 18 years on

    Pioneer is to stop making LaserDisc players. Yes - amazingly, perhaps - it's still punching them out, and will produce 3000 more before calling it quits. Despite the rise of DVD in the late 1990s, the emergence more recently of Blu-ray Disc and the fact that no new LaserDisc titles have been released in the US since 2000 and …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 12:08

  • Kids more likely to be bullied than pestered online

    Web dangers mirror real-life dangers? Whodathunkit?

    Research paid for by US state attorneys general has found the dangers of life online for US kids are pretty much the same as those they face in real life - and that the solutions are better parenting and education rather than technological silver bullets. The final report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, available …

    Law 14 Jan 2009, 12:13

  • Google opens heart, Apps to channel

    Hopes to woo biz world away from MS Office

    Google pulled another hair from Microsoft’s slightly balding scalp today by signing up IT resellers to sell the web kingpin’s online applications to biz customers. Authorised resellers will be able to flog, customise and support premium versions of Google Apps, from the end of March. Up to now Google has been selling its …

    The Channel 14 Jan 2009, 12:16

  • Curve/ball phone-cam tech 'to match professional kit'

    Puts a paparazzo snapper in every pocket

    American boffins say they have cracked one of the main problems of camera design - the limitations imposed by the use of flat film or photoreceptor arrays. They say that their new curved photoreceptors, modelled on the human retina, could offer mobile phones able to take pictures as good as those from today's bulky professional …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 12:21

  • ASA rules on 'USB Fornication Optimiser'

    Boffer offer clearly a spoof, watchdog declares

    The Advertising Standards Authority has taken time from ruling on matters of international import to pronounce judgement on boffer.co.uk's USB Fornication Optimiser - a freebie the site offered back in August last year designed to "reduce the time it takes to conceive your baby". For those of you not up to speed on boffer and …

    Bootnotes 14 Jan 2009, 12:30

  • Babelgum chews on Vodafone

    Updated Phone telly try-out

    Free net TV company Babelgum has signed a deal with Vodafone to bring their video content to Vodafone customers in the UK and Italy, at least for users of the Nokia N96, N95 and 6210. Babelgum is offering free content on the back of advertising embedded in its proprietary media browser - to watch Babelgum content one has to …

    Mobile 14 Jan 2009, 12:34

  • Archos 10 netbook specs leaked

    Pics too

    Pictures and specifications of Archos’ upcoming entry into the netbook arena have been leaked online. Archos' Archos 10: bog-standard spec The firm’s yet to make a formal announcement about the Archos 10 machine, although it was anticipated that it would do so at CES last week. But online sources have already claimed that …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 12:46

  • Sennheiser VMX Office multi-source Bluetooth headset

    Review Skype, mobile and landline all in one ear...

    There are two types of people in this world. There are those who walk around with a Bluetooth headset permanently grafted to the side of their heads, and those of us who absolutely refuse to be seen in public with a big lump of metal and plastic dangling out of a lughole. Sennheiser's VMX Office: handy for phones (mobile and …

    Hardware 14 Jan 2009, 13:02

  • ICO clamps down on pseudonymous information requests

    Mickey Mouse rules

    Government organisations are being encouraged to refuse public requests for information if they believe real names have not been supplied, under new guidelines from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO reminded public authorities yesterday that people using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) sometimes use …

    Government 14 Jan 2009, 13:05

  • Microsoft prods and probes Office 14

    Testing times

    Microsoft is testing some of the server products that will eventually be folded into the next version of the firm’s Office suite. The software vendor hasn’t revealed when a test version of the product, code-named Office 14, will be made generally available for developers to dabble with. "Today Microsoft provided a select …

    The Channel 14 Jan 2009, 13:12

  • Shane Ritchie poised to 'reinvent' Minder

    February TV debut for Arthur Archie Daley

    Shane Ritchie will in February hit TV screens as Archie Daley in Five's 'reinvented' Minder, with the actor admitting he was a bit hesitant about taking on the role. According to the BBC, Archie is the nephew of Arthur Daley - played in ten series between 1979 to 1994 by George Cole - who'll be accompanied by 29-year-old Lex …

    Bootnotes 14 Jan 2009, 13:13

  • Lords, MPs go down on to the Erotic Awards

    Comment Hob-knobbing with the hoi polloi, fighting for your freedom. With flying penises

    Three flying penises, two noble Lords, and an international model downing a few glasses of white before jetting off to do a show in Israel. Absolutely not – we promise – how our beloved editor spends his weekends. Nor an advance copy of the exclusive with which the News of the World hope, this year, to cap last year’s rather …

    Law 14 Jan 2009, 13:14

  • Tesla announces S, unwraps Sport

    'Leccy Tech Nippy but pricey

    It's been a busy few days for Tesla, a company which more than most will wish to shake the dust of 2008 off its shoes and get on with 2009. During his keynote speech to the Society of Automotive Analysts at the Detroit Motor Show, Tesla CEO Elon Musk let drop a few more titbits about the forthcoming Telsa S saloon. Tesla's …

    Science 14 Jan 2009, 13:29

  • NASA announces 'name the inflatable Moon tent' compo result

    New Jersey kids commemorate Brit exploration ship

    NASA has announced the results of a competition among American schoolchildren to name an inflatable habitat module intended for use as a lunar astronaut tent. The winning name is "Resolution", chosen by New Jersey nippers with Captain Cook's pre-USA exploration ship in mind. Inflatable tent, check. Moon pegs, check. Air …

    Science 14 Jan 2009, 13:39

  • Mom stole daughter's ID to shake pom-poms

    Enrolled in high school to pursue cheerleading dream

    A 34-year-old mother who stole her teenage daughter's identity and used it to enroll in high school to pursue her dream of becoming a cheerleader was yesterday committed to three years in a psychiatric unit, the Times reports. Wendy Brown (pictured), signed up at Ashwaubenon High School near Green Bay, Wisconsin, and …

    Bootnotes 14 Jan 2009, 13:43

  • Apple welcomes other web browsers to iPhone app store

    180° policy shift?

    Apple has suddenly approved a healthy selection of third-party iPhone web browsers for sale in its App Store - even though they deliver a feature already found on the phone. Apple's Safari browser (left) and WebMate: Tabbed Browser The firm’s previously banned browsers from other developers, such as Opera Mini, because they …

    Mobile 14 Jan 2009, 13:43

  • RIM squashes BlackBerry PDF peril

    Purple alert over high-impact bugs

    Research in Motion (RIM) has published a patch that fixes a pair of critical flaws in the way BlackBerry servers handle malformed PDF files. The two related security updates address vulnerabilities in the PDF Distiller of the BlackBerry Attachment Service for BlackBerry Unite and BlackBerry Enterprise Server, respectively. As …

    Mobile 14 Jan 2009, 13:46

  • Seat sets out 'leccy Leon EV plan

    'Leccy Tech Auto emoción eléctrico

    Here's some 'Leccy Tech news from the Old World at last. Seat has been doing a corporate show and tell in Spain with the new plug-in Leon concept snappily called the Twin Drive Ecomotive. Seat's Twin Drive Ecomotive: 'connected ingeniously', apparently Actually, we are not 100 per cent sure what this is. After having read …

    Science 14 Jan 2009, 14:07

  • Satyam rushes into arms of new auditors

    Blimey, where do we start?

    Troubled outsourcer Satyam has chosen two new auditors to help management find out just how bad its financial situation is after founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju admitted he had overstated profits and cash by $1bn. KPMG and Deloitte were named in several reports as the new auditors, although a spokeswoman for Deloitte …

    The Channel 14 Jan 2009, 15:04

  • UK schools chief begs for Home Access scheme cash

    Show me the money - please

    The UK government has pleaded with the IT industry to help breathe some life into its Home Access programme. It wants key players in the tech world to cough up cash towards ensuring all school children in England aged five to 19 have a computer and internet access in their homes. Schools minister Jim Knight, who was speaking …

    Government 14 Jan 2009, 15:12

  • Nortel begs for bankruptcy protection

    Operation a success, patient dead

    Nortel, plagued for months by rumours of serious financial problems, has filed for bankruptcy protection or Chapter 11. The hundred year old Canadian giant only just escaped the same fate in the last downturn in 2001. It posted a loss of $3.4bn for its third quarter, which is bad, but not nearly as bad as the sodding huge $19. …

    Data Networking 14 Jan 2009, 15:27

  • Cows can't detect earthquakes: Official

    Swedish bovine earth-moving experiment ends in disappointment

    Swedish scientists have disappointingly discovered that cows do not have "an innate ability to detect natural disasters", thereby thwarting any possibility of deploying bovine imminent earthquake detectors in seismic hotspots. According to The Local, researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) fitted …

    Science 14 Jan 2009, 15:37

  • Nokia adopts LGPL for Qt popularity

    The way to a developer's heart

    Nokia will release the next major version of Qt under a fourth license - LGLP - in its mission to drive uptake of the cross-platform interface framework. The mobile phone giant is expected today to announce that Qt 4.5, due in March, will be released under Lesser GNU Public License 2.1 in addition to the General Public License …

    Developer 14 Jan 2009, 17:19

  • Big Blue tops US patent grubber list

    16th year running

    For the 16th year in a row, IBM has topped the annual list of patent-happy American tech companies. The list tanks high-tech vendors by the number of patents they were awarded in the United States over the previous year. We can debate about the significance of this feat in a moment. First, the numbers, which ironically have …

    Law 14 Jan 2009, 18:12

  • NY policeman plunders US terror watchlist

    Cops to illegal access

    A New York City Police Department sergeant has admitted he illegally obtained a name contained in an FBI terrorist watchlist and gave it to an acquaintance to use in a child custody case. Haytham Khalil, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge stemming from the unauthorized access and dissemination of information from the FBI …

    Security 14 Jan 2009, 18:23

  • Microsoft expands languages with ESP

    Is anybody there?

    Microsoft has its own language: 230 acronyms to describe everything from its myriad of licenses and products to different business units and target markets. They have evolved during the company's thirty odd years with a clear purpose: to help speed up meetings and streamline discussions by ensuring everybody's on the same page …

    Software 14 Jan 2009, 19:00

  • Rackable admits Q4 sales plummet

    Slashes payroll 15 per cent

    Going public has not been as much fun for boutique server maker Rackable Systems as the idea must have sounded like a few years back. Today, the company announced that it had slashed 15 per cent of its 350-strong workforce to get costs back in line with falling sales. Those Sales that are falling thanks in large part to the …

    Financial News 14 Jan 2009, 19:35

  • Backup firm sues Intel, Microsoft, HP, Dell, Acer...

    'One button restore is mine'

    A computer backup recovery firm claims Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, and others have aped its patent for quickly restoring a PC after data corruption. Xpoint Technologies is headed by David Wang, credited for the allegedly infringed upon US patents and claimed member of the original team that developed the …

    Storage 14 Jan 2009, 19:48

  • Wikimedia taps mystery sugardaddy for advisory board

    Bono VC elevated

    The Wikimedia Foundation has named its conspicuously controversial sugardaddy to its board of advisors. This morning, the non-for-profit behind Wikipedia announced the appointment of Roger McNamee, the man who runs Elevation Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm whose partners include U2 frontman Bono. …

    Software 14 Jan 2009, 21:05

  • IWF confirms Wayback Machine porn blacklisting

    Update Be and Virgin mimic Demon censorship

    Following complaints that its child-porn blacklist has led multiple British ISPs to censor innocuous content on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the Internet Watch Foundation has confirmed the blacklist contains images housed by the 85-billion-page web history database. But this fails to explain why Demon Internet and …

    Broadband 14 Jan 2009, 21:13

  • Steve Jobs takes medical leave from Apple to focus on health

    Updated Issues 'more complex' than originally thought

    Steve Jobs has taken a leave of absence from his position as Apple CEO so he can focus on health issues that are "more complex" than he originally thought. In a statement released this afternoon immediately following the suspension of after-hours trading of Apple stock, Jobs said that because "the curiosity over my personal …

    Financial News 14 Jan 2009, 21:55

  • Apple patents map mobile future

    Location, location, location

    The US Patent & Trademark Office recently published a flurry of Apple patents related to location-based services. Some describe unique innovations, while others seem to stretch the USPTO's definition of a utility patent: the invention or discovery of a "new, useful, and nonobvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or …

    Mobile 14 Jan 2009, 22:33

  • Blockbuster partners with Sonic Solutions for movie downloads

    Join forces to beat Netflix

    Blockbuster is taking a bolder step into the movie download business by striking a deal to partner with Sonic Solution's CinemaNow service. Under the agreement, Blockbuster will emblazon its namesake on CinemaNow and work the service's promotion. Sonic Systems, in return, will continue to power the content delivery. The pact …

    Media 14 Jan 2009, 22:54

  • Next-gen botnet armies fill spam void

    Out with the old, in with the new

    The demise late last year of four of the world's biggest spam botnets was good news for anyone with an email inbox, as spam levels were cut in half - almost overnight. But the vacuum has created opportunities for a new breed of bots, some of which could be much tougher to bring down, several security experts are warning. New …

    Security 14 Jan 2009, 22:55

  • Pop-up phishing risk points to web fraud evolution

    Taking the spam out of e-banking scams

    Fraudsters have the potential to develop techniques for mounting phishing attacks using pop-up dialogue boxes instead of spoofed emails, security start up Trusteer warns. Although the firm isn't able to cite example of the possible next-generation attack, which it describes as in-session phishing, that attack scenario is …

    Security 14 Jan 2009, 23:05

  • Seagate cuts go deep

    3,000 axed - not 800

    Going further than its previous 10 per cent US workforce cut targeted by a recent SEC filing, Seagate has made another filing saying 6 per cent of its worldwide workforce will go and executives and other professionals will take pay cuts. This comes two days after the replacement of its CEO, Bill Watkins, and COO, David …

    Financial News 14 Jan 2009, 23:22