27th January 2009 Archive
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14-year-old charged with impersonating Chicago PD
Cop and 1/2 come true
A 14-year-old boy from Chicago has been charged with impersonating a police officer after dressing up in a copper's regulation uniform and reporting for duty at the city's Grand Crossing District station. The boy identified himself as an officer from another district, and despite not having a badge, he was assigned traffic …
Odds and Sods 27 Jan 01:11
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Obama reverses Dubya's tailpipe emissions
Preemption preempted
Unlike the W that preceded him, President Barack Obama believes that US states should have the right to set their own limits on the greenhouse gases spewed from cars and trucks. This morning, The New York Times reports, the new prez asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revisit a waiver application from California …
Environment 27 Jan 01:12
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TI profits sink 95 per cent in 2008
3,400 join out-of-workforce
Texas Instruments has added to the crowd of tech workers clogging their local unemployment offices, announcing that 3,400 of its employees would soon become part of the growing US out-of-workforce. Today, with a statement that should have been published in The Daily Euphemism, the suffering company's chairman, president, and …
Financial News 27 Jan 01:17
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Kiwi finds US military secrets on 'MP3 player'
Will return, if asked
A New Zealand man has been declared the latest winner of find-the-USB-device-containing-classified-government-data hide-and-seek. For this round, the US government cleverly stowed 60 files containing personal details about American soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq on an MP3 player sold at an Oklahoma secondhand …
Security 27 Jan 04:36
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Microsoft's IE 8 beta adds 'special' list
Tells you what works
Microsoft has issued a third Internet Explorer 8 beta that includes a list of compatible websites for users less than "web savvy". The IE 8 Release Candidate is the third pre-release version of Microsoft's browser but the first to include a list of web sites that Microsoft says actually work with its browser. The …
Applications 27 Jan 04:42
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User-generated reviews - blessing or bull?
Analysis Crowd wisdom v mob stupidity
Last week, connectivity-hardware maker Belkin admitted that one of its employees had been using Amazon's Mechanical Turk hiring service to pay for positive - and false - reviews of Belkin products. While we congratulate Belkin for quickly admitting its employee's unethical behavior, and while we can only assume that said …
Applications 27 Jan 05:00
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Deutsche Telekom births cloud broker
Middleman in the sky
The cloud computing market is not even really a market yet, but a startup spun out of Deutsche Telekom wants to set itself up as cloud buy/sell broker of cloudy resources. The German telecom giant and its T-Systems subsidiary - which does systems integration and IT hosting and support - have had more than a passing interest in …
Developer 27 Jan 06:13
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Dell posts user guide for unseen tablet
Whoops
Dell has published the service manual for an upcoming tablet PC on its website. Dell's Latitude XT2 tablet PC Presumably designed as the latest update to its existing Latitude XT tablet range, a whole host of specifications for the previously unseen XT2 have been published alongside drawings and photos of the machine itself …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 08:59
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Edifier Luna 5 iPod speaker
Review The balloon beats the Zeppelin?
MP3 player speaker rigs aren't exactly rare these days, but they have an annoying habit of falling into two categories. On the one hand, you have the 'sounds great but blow me its expensive' devices such as B&W's Zeppelin. On the other, you have nasty little 80-quid plastic boxes that have all the audio fidelity of two empty …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 09:02
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Red Dwarf finally returns to Earth
Cast reunited for Easter special
It's taken them 21 years, but this Easter the crew of Red Dwarf will finally return to Earth in a two-part special which reunites many of the original cast. The homecoming is courtesy of digital channel Dave, which on Friday 10 April will broadcast the first installment of Red Dwarf: Back to Earth - penned by the show's co- …
Entertainment 27 Jan 09:49
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2TB drives arrive down under
Western Digital's Caviar Green model
Unable to prevent stocked Australian suppliers releasing details, Western Digital has effectively pre-announced its record-breaking 2TB Caviar Green drive. A Czech website listed the drive before Christmas. The WD20EADS is a 3.5-inch, 4-platter unit spinning at 7,200rpm with a 3Gbit/s SATA interface and a 32MB cache. It is …
Channel Register 27 Jan 09:56
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Phoenix remains on song despite flat Q3 sales
Partner biz goes weak at knees
Phoenix IT expects its Q3 to be in line with expectations despite posting flat sales for the quarter and seeing a three per cent drop in its orders. The British firm said customers were continuing to be cautious with their spending by procrastinating over orders for some services during the quarter ended 31 December 2008, when …
Channel Register 27 Jan 10:15
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NHS told to prepare to ditch care records
Time to ditch scheme that's four years late
The Public Accounts Committee says that if the NHS Care Records Service is not ready in six months, the government should consider funding alternatives In a critical report on the progress of the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) since 2006, the committee said that the Care Records Service, one of the programme's key …
Government 27 Jan 10:17
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ING cuts jobs as exhausted boss quits
Murdoch plots layoffs 2.0 at interactive unit
Dutch bank ING is cutting headcount and renegotiating IT contracts in a desperate effort to cut costs. ING is looking to slash 7,000 full-time jobs in order to save €1.1bn a year by 2010. Just over a third of this will come from paying less salaries, with the rest coming from lower costs for its head office, cutting the cost …
Financial News 27 Jan 10:34
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UK donates Leo Sayer to Oz
Surplus sexagenarian crooner becomes Aussie citizen
The United Kingdom has raised no objection to the release of Leo Sayer from the bonds of British citizenship, and the crooner yesterday celebrated Australia Day by becoming a full-fat Aussie, the Beeb reports. Sayer, 60, is best known for 1977 UK chart-topper When I Need You. His other career highlight came when he walked out …
Bootnotes 27 Jan 10:38
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PhonepayPlus gets stern on premium raters
Pricey providers need prior approval
Mobile phone content providers who charge more than £4.50 a week for their services must seek the permission of premium rate regulator PhonepayPlus to operate, under new rules which take immediate effect. PhonepayPlus has published new rules after a consultation on how to reduce the growing number of complaints about premium …
Mobile 27 Jan 11:05
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Developer denies malicious Android app allegation
'Simple' tool can't wipe memory as claimed
The developer of a controversial memory-boosting smartphone application has hit back at claims his software damages phones based on Google’s Android OS. MemoryUp Personal hit headlines this week when numerous G1 phone owners who’d downloaded the app from the Android App Market began leaving negative feedback. A report by Geek. …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 11:06
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VMware results virtually untouched by recession
Can see one quarter ahead
VMware turned in solid fourth quarter and full year results, growing in spite of the recession as server and desktop consolidation cost-saving projects remain popular with customers. The company reported fourth quarter calendar 2008 (Q4 08) revenues of $515m, up 25 per cent on Q4 07, and GAAP net income of $111m ($0.29/share) …
Channel Register 27 Jan 11:08
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Humvee with frikkin laser on it takes out killer robot
'When did we start beaming again? I nodded off'
US aerospace leviathan Boeing was delighted yesterday to announce that its Humvee-mounted "Laser Avenger" deathray weapon had shot down a small drone aircraft. Don't come in sight of me, robot. Well, not for too long. According to Boeing: Laser Avenger achieved its principal test objectives by using its advanced targeting …
Science 27 Jan 11:10
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UK cops' road accident reporting going paperless
New context for mobile data and blackspots
The British police road accident reporting and mapping system is to go paperless, it has been announced. Officials believe that replacing paper forms with electronic ones on mobile terminals will allow faster and more accurate identification of trouble spots. “Britain has one of the best road safety records in the world," said …
Policing 27 Jan 12:06
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Spammers target Twitter
Twammers will punish you for your inane burblings
After undermining the usefulness of email, turning newsgroups into a forum for promoting sex sites and filling blog comment sections with adverts for penis pill adverts and get rich quick schemes, spammers have set their sights on a new target - Twitter. Richard Stiennon of ThreatChaos.com has published an analysis explaining …
Spam 27 Jan 12:08
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Modular LG phone spied online
Images fuel plug-in accessory speculation
Leaked pictures of a previously unseen LG phone have led to rumours that the firm’s developed a modular device that supports a range of plug-in accessories. Could this be LG's VX9600? Originally posted on the Howard Forums message board, the pictures show a phone not unlike LG’s Shine. In the images, a docking port can be …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 12:18
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Geeks re-invent breakfast
Wii-style toaster fires slice onto wired plate
We all know breakfast’s the most important meal of the day. So ditch your cafe-bought Marmite toastie and cook yourself a slice in the Wii-inspired toaster. The Wii-like toaster launches slices towards your plate Designer Ivo Vos hopes to... ahem... “celebrate the mundane” with his toaster, which thanks to its 42° angle and …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 12:23
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Niche storage suppliers hold the line in recession
Comment The others... not so much
Niche storage suppliers are going great guns in the recession while broad product line suppliers, like IBM and EMC, are suffering. Looking inside IBM's overall good results, the recession-blighted fourth quarter of 2008 inflicted damage on its product revenues. Revenues from Systems and Technology, covering servers and storage …
Channel Register 27 Jan 12:32
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Microsoft's Equipt kill date remains MIA amid retail carnage
Disorderly retreat plan
Microsoft has yet to administer the coup de grace to its Equipt subscription software package two months after it confirmed it would dump the service. Redmond ditched its Office and security subscription service in November just a few months after the firm started flogging it through the now bankrupt US retail giant Circuit …
Channel Register 27 Jan 12:54
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Doner kebabs: Death wrapped in pitta bread
Shock findings of takeaway survey
Those of you with a penchant for the traditional post piss-up English delicacy of doner kebab might do well to keep a defibrillator to hand - if the results of a study by council food standards officers are anything to go by. The Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services (LACORS) coordinated a doner dragnet in …
Biology 27 Jan 12:57
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DAB growth turns negative
Flat lining
Sales of DAB radio have reached an unwelcome landmark, figures published this week reveal. Sales fell 10 per cent in the final quarter of 2008, compared to 2007, Ominously, this is the first ever quarter of year-on-year negative growth since DAB sales figures were first published six years ago. The brutal year-end retail …
Music and Media 27 Jan 13:15
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Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB hard drive
Review Very, very quiet - and very, very capacious
Western Digital will break new ground later this month when its 2TB Caviar Green WD20EADS hard drive goes on sale. Seagate packed 1.5TB into its Barracuda 7200.11 drive by using four platters and eight heads, but WD has gone a step better and squeezed 33 per cent more storage capacity into the same space. WD's Caviar Green …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 13:16
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PSP 2 rumours surface - again
'Trusted sources' talk of touchscreen PSP
Like an ageing relative sitting atop a multimillion-pound inheritance, rumours of a PlayStation Portable 2 just refuse to die. But allegedly “credible sources” have now confirmed in an online report that, yes, a new model is definitely coming. The supposedly trustworthy sources told gaming website IGN that a PSP 2 is on the …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 13:52
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iPhones will win the war in Afghanistan, says NATO chief
Childlike sense of wonder disarms Taliban
The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has said that progress is being made in the international community's battle against terror in Afghanistan - and that progress is being made by iPhones. Delivering a speech yesterday at the Brussels-based Security and Defence Agenda thinktank, …
Government 27 Jan 14:09
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O2 and Be customers suffer network congestion
Heavy investment promised to ease evening jams
O2 and Be broadband subscribers are reporting severe network slowdown in the evening and that some online games are unplayable, sparking rumours the pair have deployed bandwidth-throttling equipment. O2, which bought Be in 2006 before launching its own-branded packages on the same ADSL2+ network in late 2007, today blamed the …
Telecoms 27 Jan 14:25
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US mulls clicks for cameraphones
What about deaf chicks?
Dumb law of the day comes from the US where consideration is being given to making it illegal to sell cameraphones which do not make a click noise when a still picture is taken. The "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" would forbid selling of phones which have a means to disable or silence the tone. Should the law ever pass it …
Mobile 27 Jan 14:27
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Glasgow Cops pound Facebook to blunt knife crime
Der's not bin a murrrdherrrr
Strathclyde Police are confronting their trainee bobbies with the harsh realities of 21st century policing by making them trawl Facebook looking for ne'er-do-wells flashing knives and other offensive items. Once upon a time any crim thinking of tooling himself up would have lived in fear of Dixon of Dock Green looming out of a …
Policing 27 Jan 14:32
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Easy updates best for browser patching
Google and Swiss researchers prod insecure surfers
Easy update mechanisms have a far greater effect on browser patching than perceived threats or other factors, according to a new study by Google and Swiss academics. The in-depth comparative study into how browser security packages are updated discovered that Firefox's update mechanism is the most successful at getting users …
Enterprise Security 27 Jan 15:03
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Apple awarded iPhone patent
All the elements brought together
Apple has been granted a patent for touchscreens and related technologies, many of which have been combined to make up the iPhone. It sure looks like an iPhone Patent number 7,479,949 is very abstract and wordy, yet covers a “touchscreen device, method and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 15:43
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Tories put toes on Linux bandwagon
Free software's cheaper, right?
The Tory party will if elected end government over-spending on IT projects by simply choosing open source alternatives and splitting projects up, it believes. This cunning plan will save us £600m a year, we are told, mostly thanks to increased competition. According to figures from Mark Thompson of Judge Business School, 80 …
Government 27 Jan 15:46
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Fraunhofer boffins tout new 'diamondballs' mech tech
Germans dip ball[bearing]s in liquid bling hardness
German boffins at the famed Fraunhofer Institutes - developers of mp3 audio compression, among other things - are now working on another critical technology. To wit: bearings covered in ultrahard coatings of artificial diamond. Slick as ice. The remorselessly efficient brainboxes of the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of …
Science 27 Jan 15:51
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Microsoft IE8 rolls out the astroturf
How to lose friends and alienate people
Microsoft is hawking the near-ready version of its Internet Explorer 8 browser at its staff in a desperate attempt to snatch back some of Mozilla’s growing market share. The company is asking its UK employees to take part in its very own astroturfing campaign by getting MS wonks to send out an email to at least ten soon to be …
Applications 27 Jan 16:19
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GM to convert Volts to Amps in Europe
'Leccy Tech Geneva Motor Show beans spilled early
Unable to contain itself until 5 March, General Motors has announced that the European incarnation of its Chevrolet Volt five-door will be called the... drum roll, please... Ampera. GM's Volt Ampera: shades of the... GM also released a design sketch of the Ampera which shows pretty much what you'd expect: a Chevy Volt with …
Reg Hardware 27 Jan 16:24
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EMC profits down - but it is a profit
Early cost-cutting helps save the day
Looking at the final quarter and full year numbers, laid-off EMC workers could be thinking that they didn't need to be fired at all. The company made a full year profit (GAAP net income) of $1.35bn, $288m of that in the final quarter, when demand dropped like a stone. Final calendar quarter 2008 (Q4 08) revenues amounted to $4 …
Channel Register 27 Jan 16:25
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BNT blade switches track live VM migration
Flight of the hypervisors
Blade Network Technologies is breathing a sigh of relief. Today, the Nortel spin-off launched upgrades to its blade server switches designed to automatically cope with network settings as virtual machines are live migrated around physical servers inside a blade chassis. Created to cash in on the blade server market, BNT was …
Virtualization 27 Jan 17:49
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Apple threatens Palm chomp
Patents drawn at 20 paces
Palm has demonstrated it can still create truly compelling devices, but Apple wields a significant patent portfolio in the area and has made it clear that it isn't afraid to use it. So will Palm's success simply fill the Cupertino coffers? The Palm Pre is everything Palm fans were hoping for, lacking only backwards …
Mobile 27 Jan 17:59
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Seven Japanese poisoned by blowfish 'nads
Gourmet fugu experience ends in hospital
Seven Japanese gourmets in the northern city of Tsuruoka required hospital treatment after ill-advisedly ordering grilled blowfish testicles at a restaurant not licensed to serve potentially-fatal fugu, as the piscine delicacy is known locally. Police official Yoshihito Iwase explained to AP that the men tucked into said 'nads …
Biology 27 Jan 18:10
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MyBarackObama profile hack punts malware
Inaugural Trojan
Virus authors are exploiting a website associated with President Barack Obama in order to distribute a Trojan. The new president's use of Web 2.0 technologies is being misused in a fake video codec scam centered around My.BarackObama.com, an online community for supporters of the new president. Web security firm Websense …
Security 27 Jan 18:56
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Verizon profits pumped 15 per cent
Data packages drown American sorrows
Profits at Verizon Communications jumped 15 per cent in the fourth quarter as folks continue to numb their sorrows about the troubled economy with television, the internet, and wireless communications. For the final three months of 2008, Verizon posted net income of $1.24bn compared to $1.07bn in the same period last year. …
Financial News 27 Jan 19:34
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Microsoft boasts 'out of box' IE8 clickjack protection
Analysis Imperfect solution to perfect storm
Microsoft has beefed up its latest Internet Explorer browser with an "out of the box" feature that it says will protect users against a serious class of attacks that allows maliciously controlled websites to manipulate the links visitors click on. The new measure, baked into Redmond's first release candidate for IE8, blocks so- …
Security 27 Jan 20:34
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Apple massages iPhone code
Tweaks Mail, Safari
Apple today released iPhone Software version 2.2.1, promising improvements in Safari and Mail. As is usual with Apple updates, fine-grained detail isn't provided, but Apple does say that the update improves the "general stability of Safari" and fixes an issue in which "some images saved from Mail do not display correctly in …
Mobile 27 Jan 21:52
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Google 'GDrive' revisits tech-pundit G-spot
Googasms all around
The GDrive rumors have resurfaced. Yet again. And true to form, at least one tech pundit is predicting that Google's alleged online storage extravaganza will murder the personal computer. Talk of the ever-elusive GDrive first appeared in March 2006, when Google dropped a mention into a PowerPoint presentation intended for a …
Applications 27 Jan 22:01
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IBM whittles x64 iron prices
Chips are down, and servers too
IBM's x64 server business took it on the chin pretty hard in Q4, and today, it formally price cuts for companies who buy direct from Big Blue. The price cuts are probably not an indication of the discounting levels that big enterprises get, but they do show that IBM understands it must compete on price as well as features if it …
Servers 27 Jan 22:02
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ISS astronauts lose 'alarming' amounts of hipbone strength
Help! I've fallen and I can't get geosynchronous!
Humanity's conquest of the stars may never arrive by the jaunty strides of a Flash Gordon or Dan Dare. Alas, Earth's future finest will likely hobble out the pod bay door on feeble old-lady hips. My dream of Mae West in space is ruined! Spending extended time in microgravity has long been known to cause a loss in bone …
Space 27 Jan 22:54
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Sun goes eco-friendly with data center compression
Finally, value from StorageTek
Sun Microsystems has been showing off it knows how to build an eco-friendly, efficient data center in the hope it can scare up a little business helping other companies cope with their own inefficient centers. The server and operating system company has done this as it moves and consolidates a center that it inherited through …
Hardware 27 Jan 23:20
