17th February 2009 Archive

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Ballmer demos LG wristphone

MWC 'Ballmer to base. Come in, LG!'

LG helped Microsoft launch Windows Mobile 6.5 at Mobile World Congress in Spain yesterday, so in return one of the software giant’s executives helped the Korean firm demonstrate its 3G wristphone. Steve Ballmer makes an appearance - on LG's wristphone The watch-cum-phone, known as the GD910, was first seen at CES in Les …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 00:02
Feuding iPhone fart-makers raise legal stink

This whole court is out of odor!

The developer behind the iPhone's top digital fart generator wants the American legal system to declare that using the phrase "pull my finger" does not run afoul of a rival's trademark. Infomedia, maker the immensely popular iFart Mobile app, is taking Pull My Finger developer Air-O-Matic to Colorado court seeking a …

Law 17 Feb 00:30
MySQL daddy juices Finnish security firm

Wot? A SQL injection of cash?

MySQL creator Michael "Monty" Widenius is injecting some venture capital and executive experience into a Finnish firm that makes a community-driven security add-on for browsers. A native of Finland, Widenius invested an undisclosed sum into the coffers of Web of Trust, which makes the titular add-on WOT for Firefox and …

Security 17 Feb 03:55
Satellite-hacking boffin sees the unseeable

Lady Di gossip plucked from sky

White-hat hacker Adam Laurie knows better than to think email, video-on-demand, and other content from Sky Broadcasting and other satellite TV providers is a private matter between him and the company. That's because he's spent the past decade monitoring satellite feeds and the vast amount of private information they leak to …

Security 17 Feb 05:02
Kensington Universal Notebook Dock

Review Ports, replicated

Laptops invariably lack a port you’ve been used to on a desktop. You have to buy a suitable adaptor or work around the missing connection. Kensington, maker of peripherals you never thought you’d need, has come up with a solution: a universal dock, needing just one USB connection to your portable. Kensington's Universal Dock …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 09:02
Scots and pilots brace against ID cards

'We will resist'

The Home Office is seeking parliamentary approval to extend the scope of identity cards for non-European nationals, while opposition to the scheme increases. The UK Border Agency said on 13 February 2009 that Parliament will vote on secondary legislation which would mean that many foreign nationals who seek temporary leave to …

Government 17 Feb 09:15
Inventors given £1.5m by High Court

Patents win prizes

Two researchers have been awarded £1.5m under a little-used section of patent law which allows employees extra compensation for inventions which are of "outstanding benefit" to employers. Companies which hire employees to invent things for them generally retain the patents and other intellectual property for those inventions. …

IT Director 17 Feb 09:17
Sony Ericsson 12Mp cameraphone comes into focus

MWC Only 12 million pixels? Sigh...

Sony Ericsson has continued its megapixel ramp-up with the launch of a 12.1Mp cameraphone called Idou. Sony Ericsson's Idou: 12Mp sensor The super snapper phone is the first of what SE’s dubbed its “Entertainment Unlimited” handset range. Phones in this category – and yes, more are planned – aim to offer most of the best …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 10:24
Who's going to turn base Ethernet into gold?

Tackling drops and delays

Data Centre Ethernet (DCE) is the great white hope of convergence, the single über-network across which all other protocols will flow, simplifying network component acquisition and operating costs - but it's not that simple. Ethernet is a fragile, unreliable base for such a role; it drops packets and message transfer time …

Data Networking 17 Feb 10:28
Spy boss damns government's culture of fear

Cheers Stella!

Dame Stella Rimington, the ex-boss of MI5, said the UK government risks creating a police state with its relentless attacks on people's privacy and creation of a culture of fear. She told Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia: “It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in …

Law 17 Feb 10:29
Taking note of notebooks

Get a handle on remote assets

Few organisations today have exempted themselves from the rapid increase in the use of mobile computing tools, be they laptops, netbooks or handheld devices. There is no doubt that their use can deliver tangible business benefits. Equally, they can help employees better tailor their work-life balance, which is to their benefit …

Notebooks 17 Feb 11:02
Info chief slaps Met on CCTV in pubs

Coppers try to hardwire surveillance in Islington

The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London. The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently …

Policing 17 Feb 11:02
Hydrogen motoring too heavy for pundit

'Leccy Tech Plug-in tech is the way to go, apparently

As a way of getting yourself crossed off Honda President Takeo Fukui's Christmas card list, a recent LA Times story about the Honda FX Clarity hydrogen EV is going to take some beating. Writer Dan Neil's bottom line is that “hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars”, a view based on two main criteria. Honda's FX Clarity: fuelled …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 11:04
Boffin: Earthlike worlds within 30 lightyears of here

Welcome for alien microbe overlords in some quarters

A heavyweight American boffin says that Earthlike worlds will soon be discovered within 30 light-years of our Solar System, and that such worlds' abundance across the universe means that the existence of alien life is a racing cert. Speaking in advance of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, …

Space 17 Feb 11:18
Nokia to preinstall Skype on handsets

Updated Operators not sufficiently pissed off yet

Nokia is pre-installing a Skype client on the flagship N97 handset, being launched in June, allowing users to make VoIP calls without paying a penny to the network operator who is still expected to subsidise the cost of the phone. It seems like only yesterday Nokia was removing SIP functionality from operator-variant handsets …

Mobile 17 Feb 11:18
UK childcare voucher site offline after security snafu

Busy Bees stung by breach

A UK childcare voucher scheme has admitted that confidential customer data was briefly left exposed to other users during an upgrade last week, but denied suggestions that any sensitive information leaked as a result. Busy Bees' childcare voucher site has been taken offline following an upgrade that went awry, according to a …

Enterprise Security 17 Feb 11:31
HTC waves wand, pulls second Android phone out of hat

MWC It's a kind of Magic

HTC has shown off its second Android-based smartphone. The Magic will be offered over here by Vodafone on an exclusive basis. HTC's Magic: coming soon to Vodafone Unlike the T-Mobile G1 - which HTC sells under its own brand as the Dream - the Magic hasn't got a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, just a 3.2in, 320 x 480 touchscreen …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 11:39
Operators and handset vendors plug standard charger

MWC Micro USB chargers should save some green

An alliance of operators and handset manufacturers has blown a substantial hole in the mobile accessories market by agreeing on a standard power charger for mobile phones. Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, 3, AT&T, mobilkom Austria, T-Mobile, Telenor Telstra, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson have agreed a micro USB …

Mobile 17 Feb 12:01
Fancy writing a 'Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxies'?

Galaxy Zoo 2 needs armchair astronomers

Armchairs astronomers are being invited to contribute to an online "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxies" - an in-depth examination of 250,000 galaxies in search of "the strange and unusual". That's the aim of the Galaxy Zoo 2 project, a follow-up to Galaxy Zoo which saw over 150,000 people worldwide submit 80m basic galactic …

Space 17 Feb 12:16
Acer strikes up new Tempo

MWC But are its smartphones out of tune with the moment?

Acer introduced a quartet of smartphones at Mobile World Congress this week, all members of the Tempo band, though it's clear rival manufacturer HTC is calling the tune when it comes to hardware and UI design inspiration. Acer's Tempo M900: better camera than the rest All four Tempos - the M900, F900, DX900 and X960 - …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 12:27
BCS accuses UK.gov of grabbing 'draconian' data powers

BCS, BMA line up to slam data giveaway law

The British Computing Society has joined the chorus of criticism of the way the government has hidden major changes to data protection law in unrelated legislation - the Coroners and Justice Bill. The BCS said the bill "runs counter to the intentions and provisions of the Data Protection Act (DPA)" and "severely curtails the …

Law 17 Feb 12:34
Tosh will buy Fujitsu disk biz

MOU means it's a pretty near guaranteed deal

It's as good as a done deal - Toshiba is set to take over Fujitsu's hard disk drive operations after the two firms thrashed out a memorandum of understanding. The deal will happen in stages. First Fujitsu will group its HDD operations into a separate comopany. Toshiba will then buy about 80 per cent of this and run it as a …

Channel Register 17 Feb 12:38
Connecticut cop forced to shoot chimp

Violently attacked woman, paramedics and officers

A pet chimpanzee which violently attacked a woman visiting his owner was shot dead by a police officer "cornered" in his vehicle by the 200lb ape, the BBC reports. Travis, 15, mauled the woman as she got out of her car in Stamford, Connecticut. His owner, Sandra Herold, first "wrestled" with the animal then returned to her …

Biology 17 Feb 12:41
Sub-prang panic: Calm down, it happens all the time

Analysis Love the oceans? Pick on fishermen, not submariners

There's widespread media panic at moment over the news that French and British nuclear-missile submarines collided beneath the Atlantic earlier this month. But in fact atomic-powered and -armed submarines have been bumping into each other - and sometimes sinking - for decades with no significant effects. No, seriously. They …

Public Sector 17 Feb 12:49
Pirate Bay prosecutor tosses infringement charges overboard

Updated Watered down to ‘assisting making available’

Half of the charges made against the four men behind the notorious file-sharing website The Pirate Bay have been sensationally dropped on day two of the trial. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall made the surprise move this morning, according to reports on The Local and TorrentFreak. He has amended the charges against Carl Lundström, …

Law 17 Feb 12:56
Boffins ponder Geordies' lack of winter clothing

Semi-nudity cultural or genetic?

Boffins are pondering one of Blighty's great unanswered scientific questions: Just why do Geordies insist on wearing the legal minimum of clothing even when a chill wind is whipping across the Tyne? For the benefit of those readers not au fait with Tyneside apparel habits, the good burghers of the fine city of Newcastle will …

Bootnotes 17 Feb 13:01
BT Granite slimline DECT cordless phone

Review Making a cordless more like a mobile

BT's new DECT handset, the Granite, introduced us to a genuinely new experience. Opening the box, it wasn't the phone that took pride of place under the lid, but its stand. The Granite itself was tucked away under a fold of card right at the back. Unbox the product too hastily and you might miss it. BT's Granite: slimline …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 13:02
Gigabyte touts 'world's first' phone with Flash UI

One small problem: the claim's boll*cks

A phone sporting what its maker has claimed is the first mobile equipped with an Adobe Flash-based UI is on its way to the UK. The GSmart S1200 has a Flash-based UI According to Gigabyte, the company behind the GSmart S1200, Flash provides a basis for creating fluid, dynamic new user interfaces. A Gigabyte spokesman told …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 13:08
Routing instability causes net traffic chaos

Interweb routing chart snarl-up

Surfers experienced problems accessing parts of the internet Monday, following the flare-up of router instability problems. Security watchers pinned the problem on "garbage" being thrown into global BGP (Border Gateway Routing) lookup tables, causing entries to become unnecessarily long. Some backbone routers with older …

Data Networking 17 Feb 13:13
TV jacket spied at MWC

MWC France 24 promos app with hi-tech clothing

French news service France 24 has discovered the true meaning of mobile TV: jackets with integrated TV screens. France 24's TV jacket Big-screen beauties were spotted wondering the halls of Mobile World Congress in Spain today, each wearing padded jackets with rear-mounted TV screens built in. Inside each jacket is a power …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 13:27
Hardware hack caught watching telly on the job

MWC All in the the name of a good story, honest

If watching telly on your iPhone’s getting tiresome, how about watching it using a funky pair of glasses that'll stream films to your eyeballs from your mobile phone? Reg Hardware hack tries out Mobintech's telly goggles The Personal Display Glasses (PDG) from maker Mobintech project a 30in screen in-front of the viewer’s …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 13:44
Sun wades into key management kerfuffle

Encryption standards soup thickens

Sun has thrown its open source key management ideas into the key management standards giant brandy glass, offering license-free management that it hopes will become an industry standard. The generic idea everyone is agreed upon is that encrypting devices using keys should be able to interoperate with any key management system …

Enterprise Security 17 Feb 14:00
Holy cow! The infrastructure has gone critical

Three papers for big organisations

And so to the Reg Library to unfurl some big IT blueprints for big organisations. Without further ado we kick off with Secure Computing, which knows how to get our attention - it cites a Reg article in its paper. Let's kick off with our contribution: Design Requirements to Protect Interconnected Critical Networks In …

IT Director 17 Feb 14:07
Truphone becomes Tru-network

Take one MNVO into the shower?

Truphone has completed its transition into an MVNO*, actually a whole clutch of them, offering local numbers and calling rates across a range of countries including the UK and USA. Truphone is best known for being a well-integrated, SIP-based, VoIP service that works well enough, but last year the company bought SIM4Travel in …

Mobile 17 Feb 14:56
Kiwis go all black over copyright enforcement laws

Smash global capitalism - use Twitter

Filesharers have deployed the ultimate weapon on the Antipodean front in their global copyright battle with the music and film industries: Twitter*. New Zealand is on the verge of enacting laws to curb illegal filesharing. ISPs will be compelled to introduce policies that could lead to disconnection from the internet for …

Music and Media 17 Feb 15:25
Paris Hilton celebrates 28

Years, not amateur grumble flicks

It's with a great deal of pleasure that we today wish a very happy birthday to El Reg's fave celebutard Paris Hilton - she without whom Fridays would in the last couple of years have been a sorry affair indeed marked merely by wholly IT-related material and bereft of something for self-appointed commentard content guardians to …

Bootnotes 17 Feb 15:45
Hyundai motors in with handset trio

MWC Including Dolphin-shaped phone

Making good on its recent promise to launch phones into the UK, car firm Hyundai has unveiled two mid-range devices and a low-end one. Hyundai's 490i: flagship phone - Wi-Fi - 3G = fail? But the firm’s missed a trick with its flagship model – the MB-490i – by failing to include 3G or Wi-Fi. Tri-band GSM, GPRS and Edge are …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 15:52
Navy glovepuppets minister in carrier battle against RAF

'Flat-tops will only be safe when they decommission'

The UK's plan to build new aircraft carriers remains under threat, and ongoing attempts by the RAF to shut down the Harrier jumpjet force - eviscerating the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm - have yet to be resolved. However, the RN has managed to manoeuvre a Defence minister into endorsing the view that Britain has needed proper …

Government 17 Feb 16:10
More Modu jackets seen at MWC

MWC Five more coats to choose from

Modu is determined to make its modular phone concept fly, so it’s designed a range of new jackets for the device. Modu's music jacket's a phone on one side and a sound system on the other Despite only officially announcing the phone – also called Modu - last week, the device will soon have five additional coats to go with …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 16:14
Mobile World Congress 09: Complete Coverage

MWC All the stories, all the phones

Mobile World Congress - née 3GSM - once again saw vendors introduce a stack of new smartphones, cameraphones, musicphones - even the odd, regular voice-oriented handset. Here are all of Register Hardware's ongoing MWC 2009 stories, brought together for your reading pleasure... Smartphones Acer strikes up new Tempo HTC waves …

Reg Hardware 17 Feb 16:15
Mobes will save the world - just give us some spectrum!

MWC Captain Brightside to the rescue

Every World Congress - GSM World Congress, 3GSM World Congress and now Mobile World Congress - has seen rising attendances, but this year it's a little more echoey in there. GSMA CEO Rob Conway’s keynote tried to make the best of it by saying that only the elite of the mobile world had come this year. Big company attendances …

Mobile 17 Feb 16:21
Nokia prepares to fiddle with Symbian

MWC To boldly go where no smartphone, etc etc

Nokia boss Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo livened up an otherwise by the numbers Mobile World Congress Keynote today with a declaration that we’d see a wide range of Symbian devices which are not phones. “We plan to broaden the definition of the smartphone, to expand them into categories and form factors that have not yet been explored …

Mobile 17 Feb 16:43
Microsoft signs Telstra mobile services deal

Can you hear me now, mate?

In lieu of a phone or touch-screen mobile Windows, Microsoft has returned to familiar territory, inking a software and services deal with one of Australia's largest carriers. Microsoft and Telstra announced plans for applications and services wrapped in an interface that will be customized for devices using Telstra's IP and 3G …

Mobile 17 Feb 17:37
Appro calls Cray ante with super blade cluster

Linux and Windows for HPC shops

Supercomputing cluster maker Appro is looking to midrange HPC shops for some new business in this tough economy. Just like rival Cray started doing last year. Today, Appro launched a blade-style cluster server called GreenBlade that the company hopes will steal some thunder - and some business - from Cray's new entry CX1 …

Servers 17 Feb 17:59
Microsoft freezes legacy support charges

Makes like it's 2008

Microsoft is freezing the price it charges customers that continue running legacy versions of its business software. Citing the global economic downturn Microsoft said the price for joining its custom support program would not be raised this year, and it will maintain the 2008 pricing. Custom support applies to products that …

Software 17 Feb 19:49
IP security shortcomings unpicked

UK infrastructure watchdog issues RFC

The UK's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure has completed a study on the TCP protocol that underpins intenet communications. The study is billed as the first comprehensive security assessment of the core protocol, but would actually better be described as a road map of where we are and a jumping-off point for …

Security 17 Feb 19:55
Fake server beats real server on Web test

Careful with that server consolidation pitch

Server virtualization juggernaut - well, at least on x64 iron - VMware is beside itself with glee that a virtualized Linux server running atop ESX Server hypervisor narrowly beat out real Linux boxes on a popular Web serving benchmark test. Yes, I know. This sounds like a perpetual motion machine, getting the hypervisor …

Servers 17 Feb 20:48
Surreal appeal of Sun's JavaFX for mobile

Review Java ME a safer bet?

It's somehow fitting that Sun Microsystems chose Barcelona, the home of modernist architect Gaudí and this week's Mobile World Congress, to announce JavaFX Mobile 1.0 - part of the JavaFX SDK 1.1 release. Just like Gaudí's work, there's something wavy, colorful and even surreal about Sun's shining new hope for Java. I've never …

Developer 17 Feb 21:35
Googlephone gets native MS Office viewers

Edits still impossible

Mobile-doc mavens Quickoffice have brought their handheld Microsoft Office viewers to the Googlephone. Quickoffice for Android will make its debut sometime this week when Google finally opens its Android (app) Market to mobile apps with price tags. Able to view Word and Excel files saved in Microsoft's Office 2003 format, the …

Mobile 17 Feb 21:36
Mobile phones to get universal charger

iPhone excepted

You'll be able to charge any new mobile phone from the same universal charger beginning on January 1, 2012. Except the iPhone. A new charging standard was announced by the GSMA Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and endorsed by 17 mobile handset manufacturers and service providers, including heavyweights such as …

Mobile 17 Feb 21:37
Facebook downplays eternal user data grab

You can trust us...bitch

Responding to a torrent of outrage and suspicion over changes to Facebook's terms of service, the site's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is asking users to trust the social networking company with eternal permission to use and license all content and information ever posted there - even after an account is deleted. Zuckerberg …

Applications 17 Feb 21:45
New attacks on IE7 go wild

Info-stealing software remotely installed

Cybercriminals have begun attacking a critical hole that Microsoft patched in its Internet Explorer 7 browser last week, corroborating the company's warning that the vulnerability would be easy to exploit. The exploit code is spread through a booby trapped Word document that ultimately installs information-stealing malware on …

Security 17 Feb 23:11
US gambling capital bans iPhone card counter

Tribal casino spots 'stealth' cheat app

You can now use your iPhone or iPod Touch to help you break the bank - and the law - at a casino's blackjack table. And gaming officials in Nevada are none too happy about it. Earlier this month, that US state's Gaming Control Board issued a warning (PDF) to casino operators of an application available from the iTunes App …

Mobile 17 Feb 23:45