6th March 2009 Archive

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Google expands ad empire with expandable ads

Click trigger

Google is now serving expandable display ads onto partner websites in its AdSense content network. But it's taking the tasteful route. Unlike so many others, these expandable ads won't consume your browser unless you ask them to. With a blog post late yesterday afternoon, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory introduced …

Music and Media 6 Mar 01:21
Cold-water treatment for Ballmer on Windows Mobile

Coming down's a bitch

If Steve Ballmer loves one group of people more than developers, it's Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) - except when he's gently threatening them, of course. No wonder Microsoft's chief executive was willing to play the fool, slapping a Windows Home Server sticker on his forehead on stage during this week's MVP conference, …

Mobile 6 Mar 01:24
Suit seeks close of Craigslist's red-light district

Chicago sheriff's resources stretched thin

Chicago's sheriff on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Craigslist, saying the site may be the No. 1 source of prostitution in the United States and is straining his department's ability to enforce the law. The suit claims that changes Craigslist enacted in November to its erotic services section have done little to curb …

Crime 6 Mar 01:48
Skype to give away wideband audio codec

King of VoIP eschews royalties

Skype this week said it will soon be offering royalty-free licenses to its new SILK wideband speech codec to interested third-party developers and hardware makers. The wideband codec recently debuted as part of Skype 4.0 for Windows (with a Mac version coming in April.) With a claimed 400 million Skype users registered …

Developer 6 Mar 04:42
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Mini UI 3520 netbook

Review Customisable covers, hurrah!

Fujitsu Siemens is no stranger to small laptops, but the Amilo Mini pushes it into the Small, Cheap Computer category along with the likes of the Asus Eee PC and that machine's many, many competitors. Fujitsu Siemens' Amilo Mini: 1980s styling? While most manufactures are opting for soft edges and smooth transitions, …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 09:02
ICO raids and shuts builder blacklist firm

No more snoop for you

The Information Commissioner's Office has made its first use of an Enforcement Notice with a seven day deadline to shut down a Droitwich firm which ran an illegal database of building staff. The company, the Consulting Association, owned by Ian Kerr, ran the database for over 15 years. It contained entries on 3,213 building …

IT Director 6 Mar 10:08
'World's Worst Banker' joins Lads from Lagos

Sir Fred Goodwin flashes his 419 credentials

Spare if you will this morning a thought for Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin, aka "Fred the Shred", and former big swinging dick down at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Since Fred's fall from grace, precipitated by the collapse of RBS, the UK media has expended billions of column inches insisting he be stripped of his knighthood …

Bootnotes 6 Mar 10:11
March patch Tuesday omits Excel fix

Zero-day, nada relief

Microsoft forthcoming patch Tuesday will bring no relief from an unpatched Excel flaw that's the target of active malware attacks. The March edition of Black Tuesday promises three updates, one of which Redmond classifies as critical because it poses a code execution risk. The other two flaws involve spoofing risks and are …

Enterprise Security 6 Mar 10:21
Forced retirement due to age can be justified, rules ECJ

65 all out

A UK law which allows companies to force people to retire at 65 or at that company's specified retirement age does not necessarily breach European Union laws, the EU's highest court said today. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected claims by Heyday, a part of ageing charity Age Concern, that the UK's law breached EU …

Small Biz 6 Mar 10:36
Camcorder-cum-compact piloted by JVC

Allows for simultaneous snapping and shooting

JVC has unveiled a hybrid HD camcorder suitable for budding Spielbergs or anyone still bothered about snapping stills. JVC's Everio GZ-X900: ready to take video and stills That’s because the Everio GZ-X900 can shoot 1920 x 1080 video in AVCHD format in one mode, but can also capture 9Mp stills in another. It’s worth noting …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 10:37
3D car dashboard displayed

Up yours, Navman

The same boffins that brought you gesture-controlled 3D TV have another depth-defying treat in store: a 3D car dashboard. The 3D dashboard would add a new dimension to driving Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Germany showed off a prototype dashboard at CeBit this week that’s able to …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 11:07
NAO calls for better crown court IT

You are accused of providing useless IT. How do you plead?

The National Audit Office has called for improvements to two crucial crown court computer systems In a review of the administration of crown courts, published on 6 March 2009, the NAO says the 20 year-old Crest case management system is no longer supported by its manufacturer and is subsequently vulnerable. In addition, the …

Government 6 Mar 11:24
Sexy Namir sportster to rewrite fuel economy rulebook?

'Leccy Tech It's Grrrrreat

Frazer-Nash is a name usually associated with British sports cars of the 1950s, so it came as something of a surprise to find the moniker sitting on something that looks like... well... this: Frazer-Nash/Gigiaro's Namir: striking The Namir – meaning 'tiger' - is a joint development between Frazer-Nash Research and Giugiaro …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 11:25
Infortrend to launch enterprise Fibre Channel arrays

Virtualisation and replication ago-go

Taiwan-based SME storage supplier Infortrend wants to move up to the enterprise by adding a VSA (Virtual Scaleout Architecture) disk drive array product to its range. This is a departure for Infortend, which sells a wide range of RAID storage arrays to small and medium enterprises. It has built a presence in the media …

Channel Register 6 Mar 11:29
HTC Magic to materialise next month

Vodafone keeping mum about prices, though

Vodafone will pull HTC’s Magic handset out of its hat next month, the UK network operator’s website has revealed. Vodafone broke the magical news online HTC’s second Android-based phone was officially unveiled last month alongside confirmation that Vodafone – rather than T-Mobile, UK carrier for the G1, HTC's first …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 11:29
Samsung launches not-2TB drive

Playing it safe with 1.5TB green drive

Samsung, stepping up to the 500GB per platter level, has chosen not to follow Western Digital and Seagate's 2TB hard drive lead and restricted itself to a 1.5TB capacity. Seagate has tweaked its perpendicular magnetic recording technology to attain the 500GB/3.5-inch hard drive platter level. But by using three platters, …

Channel Register 6 Mar 11:39
Vulcan appeal in emergency tin-rattling

Pledge cash today or historic aircraft grounded - forever

The Vulcan to the Sky trust - which after years of restoration and around £7m succeeded in getting Vulcan XH558 back into the air - is looking for an emergency injection of cash to keep the aircraft flying: Pledges as of this morning stood at £951,163 - a tad short of the £1m required. However, today is pretty well the …

Science 6 Mar 12:02
US killer robo-plane makes strike without remote pilot

Automated killware now handled by sergeants

A US killer drone has carried out a lethal strike from the skies above Iraq, for the first time remotely controlled entirely by non-aircrew-rated, enlisted soldiers. The milestone would seem to foreshadow redundancy for large communities of military pilots in coming years. We don't need no stinkin' pilots. According to a …

Science 6 Mar 12:18
Bletchley's Colossus makes beautiful music

Code-cracking kit sings for 'Electronica' composition

Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) has hooked up with "chip artist" Pixelh8, aka Matthew Applegate (pictured below), for a most unusual project - a musical composition in which the "instruments" are the museum's collection of vintage hardware. The work, entitled Obsolete?, features samples of over 20 …

Science 6 Mar 12:20
'Lex Nokia' company snoop law passes in Finland

Employee-monitoring law waved through

A new law that will allow increased monitoring of employees’ electronic communications by their employers was passed by Finland’s parliament on Tuesday. Despite splits on the government side – most notably within the Green party – the Bill had a healthy majority: 96 in favour, 56 against, with 47 absent from the vote. The …

Law 6 Mar 12:27
NES emulation phone unfolds online

Features split gaming keypad, 16:9 display

An unfolding mobile phone able to play games from the NES console has been spied for sale online. The Cool8800C plays NES games Register Hardware has seen the phone – known as the Cool8800C - for sale on several websites. Pictures show how the candybar phone’s top surface hinges open between the main 2.2in screen and keypad …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 12:28
Metallica's Lars Ulrich illegally downloads own album

'It was kind of bizarre'

Metallica drummer and notorious Napster naysayer Lars Ulrich has admitted he illegally downloaded his band’s latest album from a file-sharing website. The heavy metal rocker told US music channel VH1 he wanted to test how the process worked. “I sat there myself and downloaded ‘Death Magnetic’ from the internet just to try it …

Music and Media 6 Mar 12:32
Philips launches GoGear PMP - again

The smallest one yet?

Philips has launched a compact portable media player with an OLED display. Philips' GoGear Spark: The Spark extends Philips’ existing GoGear PMP line – to which two larger models were added just last month. However, this more compact model has a 1.4in OLED display sat inside a stylish 41 x 41 x 15mm shell. Spark supports …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 12:58
ESX 4.0 to hit the dancefloor in May

Tracking footprints in cyberspace

El Reg's ever-twitching cyberspace antennae have detected that Compellent is certifying its storage product with a coming major release of ESX which appears to be slated for May. It was expected by many people that ESX 4.0 would have been announced at VMworld in Cannes last week. Instead there was much talk about VMWare and …

Storage 6 Mar 13:13
Italians boffins prove plausibility of spam-javelin spam

Todger-stretch device actually works

Italian scientists appear to have taken an important step in proving that you really can "drive her wild with nine-inch length" and "make girls gasp when unzip flies" by proving that the Andropenis todger-stretch apparatus actually works. According to the Telegraph, volunteers who tried out the penis-extending kit at the …

Biology 6 Mar 13:14
Eurocrats declare war on e-commerce cross barrier red tape

'Complex, interdependent, mutually reinforcing'

A new European Commission report has blamed persistent barriers to cross border trade for hindering the nascent e-commerce industry. The ‘Barriers to E-commerce in the EU’ report found that online shopping was increasingly popular among consumers in the 27-bloc member states, but it warned that barriers to cross border trade …

Channel Register 6 Mar 13:25
Gang jailed over failed Sumitomo cyberheist

Commercial software used in multi-million scam

The gang behind the failed multi-million pound cyberheist at Sumitomo bank were each sentenced to a lengthy spell behind bars on Thursday. The plot, which brought together two hackers and a corrupt insider with other fraudsters, conspired to steal £229m ($423m) from the London offices of the Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui, was …

Crime 6 Mar 13:33
Slash your way inside Apple's Mac Mini

Photos Putty knife adventure

You can break into Apple's new Mac mini, but it's nerve-wracking. However, if you do, you can up its storage capacity to one terabyte. On Wednesday, the folks at Mac repair-shop and parts-supplier iFixit tore a new 20-inch iMac into pieces. Today, they did the same with the new Mac mini. Popping open a Mac mini for the first …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 13:52
DARPA, US Army seek 'social computing' tech

Not Deathbook/Facekill; more Asimov 'Psychohistory'

The social computing phenomenon continues to spread, with news now emerging that Pentagon warboffins are commencing work on a military project entitled "Technologies for the Applications of Social Computing (TASC)" - meant to "support leadership decision making at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels". But this is …

Government 6 Mar 14:14
Satyam gets greenlight for sale

Big Blue? Really?

Indian outsourcer Satyam has won government approval to save itself from bankruptcy by selling itself off. In December Satyam all but imploded - the World Bank banned it from future bids because of bribery allegations, and then company chairman B Raju Ramalinga admitted falsifying accounts for several years by adding $1bn to …

Channel Register 6 Mar 14:23
David Blaine tw*tdangles into Urban Dictionary

Linguistic fame for US gitwizard

David Blaine has secured his place in lexicographical history by twatdangling his way into the Urban Dictionary. As regular readers will recall, we previously believed the term was coined by a Reg commenter outraged by the gitwizard's's NYC Benito Mussolini impression. However, the word's full etymology has now been revealed …

Bootnotes 6 Mar 14:31
Microsoft to force New Xbox Experience upgrade?

Games may soon come with mandatory NXE installation

Microsoft has refused to confirm or deny rumours that it could soon force Xbox 360 gamers to upgrade their consoles onto the New Xbox Experience (NXE) interface. The NXE interface could soon become mandatory The firm told Register Hardware that it doesn’t comment on rumour or speculation, following various online reports …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 14:52
Iomega Home Media Network

Review Promises more than it delivers?

The Home Media Network Hard Drive sounds like an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza, along the same lines as Iomega’s recently-released ScreenPlay Pro HD. However, it’s actually a much more modest proposition than that. Iomega's Home Media Network Hard Drive: just a basic NAS? The HMNHD is really just a …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 15:02
Nokia transforms text messages into art

'CU L8r in pub' yields Hogarth's Gin Lane?

Some say that sentence construction is like a work of art, and Nokia certainly seems to agree. It’s crafted a mobile phone application that turns text messages into “mind-bending” masterpieces. Nokia's Text Art app: turns SMS text into artwork. Apparently Text Art - the brainchild of artist Marius Watz – only requires a …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 15:20
UK.gov ditches multi-million spooknet project

MPs up in arms after Scope gets scrapped

Multi-million pound plans to upgrade the UK intelligence community’s secure communications system have been shelved in a move heavily criticised by a parliamentary oversight committee. The project to give key government officials speedy access to intelligence on terrorism - dubbed Scope - was abandoned when only partially …

Government 6 Mar 15:36
iPhone monopoly-kicker starts charging for jailbreak apps

Application competition brewing

A site devoted to providing iPhone software for those who object to the Apple monopoly has announced plans to start charging for applications, presenting the possibility of real competition in app provisioning. The Cydia website has been providing tools for unlocking, or "jailbreaking" iPhones, as well as non-Apple-approved …

Mobile 6 Mar 16:04
Enormous pain-ray patio heater towers erected in California

Military excrucio-beam tech guards fruits

US weaponry globocorp Raytheon tried a small change of pace this week, announcing successful field trials of enormous microwave patio heaters intended to prevent frost damage in crops. Raytheon refer to their mighty oven-tower machines as Tempwave™. "Our expertise in radio frequency has enabled a disruptive product that frees …

Biology 6 Mar 16:14
Illinois restores Pluto's planetary status

13 March is Pluto Day, senate declares

The State of Illinois has decided it's unhappy with Pluto's 2006 expulsion from the league of planets and has decreed that as it "passes overhead through Illinois' night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status". In case you're wondering why Illinois wants to mix it up with the International Astronomical …

Space 6 Mar 16:16
IT feels the pain as US loses 651,000 jobs in February

Previous months' figures revised, again

The monthly jolt of bad news coming out of the US Department of Labor hit this morning, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that employers cut 651,000 jobs in February. Those cuts, which do not include farm workers, pushed the unemployment rate in the United States up to 8.1 per cent from 7.6 per cent in January. …

Financial News 6 Mar 16:26
MS coughs to hokey-cokey IE8 option in Windows 7

Wishes it could turn off EU regulators too

Microsoft has finally acknowledged that Windows 7 will come with a toggle option to “turn off” Internet Explorer 8. The company published a new post on its ‘Engineering Windows 7’ blog today in which it confirmed the list of features users would be able to turn on and off in the control panel. Up to today the software giant …

Operating Systems 6 Mar 16:29
Twitter SMS spoofing still undead

Micro-blogging body-snatching risk

A fix against an SMS spoofing flaw involving micro-blogging service Twitter offers only partial protection. Tests by Heise Security found that providing a user knew the number of a phone associated with a Twitter account, it would be possible to use an SMS sender faking service to post fake status updates that appeared under a …

ID 6 Mar 16:56
One-eyed man creates prosthetic 'surveillance' eye

The aptly named Eyeborg Project

A one-eyed man has taken advantage of some of the world’s smallest imaging and data transmission technologies to help him create documentaries filmed from the first-person perspective. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com Rob Spence, a 36-year-old film maker from Canada, finally had his eye surgically …

Reg Hardware 6 Mar 17:02
Fanboi co. punts half-price Mac mini memory

More putty knife fun

Mac-centric parts supplier Other World Computing (OWC) has begun offering memory upgrades for Apple's new Mac mini at less than half of Apple's build-to-order price. Apple's memory-upgrade prices border on the extortionate. Apple charges $150 for the two 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAMs needed to bump the Mac mini up to 4GB. OWC …

PCs & Chips 6 Mar 19:20
Did TomTom test Microsoft's Linux patent lock-down?

No choice but to kill open source

Microsoft's prosecution of TomTom over alleged violation of patents is looking increasingly like a failure in its long-running policy of tying down Linux users through cross licensing of its IP. Computerworld has dredged up an email exchange with Microsoft's IP and licensing legal chief that explains Microsoft's got a long …

Operating Systems 6 Mar 20:03
Obama seeks econ advice from Web2.0rhea king

Solving the Meltdown in 140 characters or less

Facing the worst worldwide economic crisis since The Great Depression, US President Barack Obama has sought help from Twitter, the micro-bogging outfit that boasts 6 million navel-gazing users but no obvious source of revenue. Today, the White House will discuss the ongoing economic meltdown with twenty "young business leaders …

Music and Media 6 Mar 20:09
Fanbois will abandon iPhone for Palm, says Wikisugardaddy

Predicts July death for Jobsian status symbol

Once their current wireless contracts are up, each and every iPhone owner will switch to the Palm Pre. Or so says the ever-entertaining top-secret Wikicult sugar-daddy Roger McNamee. McNamee's U2-powered private equity firm, Elevation Partners, owns 39 per cent of a certain non-Apple handheld-device company. Bloomberg …

Mobile 6 Mar 21:11
NASA's Kepler ready (again) to snoop for Earth-like planets

The Gladys Kravitz of spacecraft

After delaying Kepler's eagerly-anticipated launch so NASA engineers could kick the tires on the spacecraft's Delta II rocket, the agency declared today a fine day for blastoff. The Kepler telescope, the first spacecraft capable of detecting Earth-sized planets outside of our solar system, is scheduled to lift off from Cape …

Space 6 Mar 21:28
AT&T wants to run your data center

Or at least your fake data center

In a bad economy, any job that can be turned into a service is at risk. That's why system administrators should be a little worried, with so many companies offering remote IT management services to IT shops. This week, telecom giant AT&T threw its hat into the ring with its own remote infrastructure management service. Thanks …

Servers 6 Mar 22:30
Apple's Snow Leopard set for June 8?

So say tea leaves, Amazon

The next version of Apple Mac OS X operating system, Snow Leopard, will be released on June 8 - if one Apple-watcher's prediction is correct. The Baltimore Sun's David Zeiler, writing in his "Apple a Day" blog, came to this conclusion by recounting recent history and examining the events schedule of San Francisco's Moscone …

Operating Systems 6 Mar 22:44