26th March 2009 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

Hyundai readies Volt-style hybrid

'Leccy Tech Blue ~~Whale~~ Will in-bound

Due to be unveiled at next month's Seoul Motor Show, the Hyundai Blue-Will is the Korean take on the plug-in parallel hybrid. Hyundai's Blue-Will... must resist the temptation to add a 'y' Odd name – what's the likelihood someone will scrawl a 'y' at the end of it? – and challenging styling aside, the basic underpinnings …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 00:02
Hey, Red Hat - Open-source help still lousy?

OSBC "Zealots" wanted

It's been exactly a year since former Delta Airlines vice president turned Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst criticized open-source vendors for doing a lousy job of getting customers involved in the community and projects. Twelve months on, how are things looking? Little has changed, judging by the general level of hand- …

Applications 26 Mar 03:39
Game designers deconstruct their 'art'

GDC 09 Bathroom inspiration

A lot of hard-core gamers like to argue over whether video games should be considered "art." If they're not, these three characters have brought the medium awfully close. Today, San Francisco's Game Developers Conference hosted a gaming design panel that included three of the industry's most respected developers: Fumito Ueda ( …

Music and Media 26 Mar 04:12
Pink slips at Big Blue

Five per cent job cuts in US

IBM is cutting 5,000 jobs today, mostly in the US and mostly from its services division. Big Blue's services division has been a steady source of profits for the firm. It seems that IBM will not be reducing capacity in its services business, but will shift the work to lower cost countries like India instead. The cuts are …

Hardware 26 Mar 09:06
EU: Our Members need 'increased wood'

Policy thrust to deliver more seed

A Brussels talking-shop operated by the EU has called for greater efforts by European countries to grow more trees, as this would remove carbon from the atmosphere and mitigate global warming. The call was made in a statement headed "European Union should increase the use of wood", issued by the 344-member European Economic …

Environment 26 Mar 09:58
Lite-on eSAU208-16

Review Very netbook friendly

If you buy a netbook, you have to be prepared to live without an optical drive. You can add an external drive for reading and writing DVDs and CDs, but to make it as convenient as the mini-laptop, it needs to be self-contained and compact. Lite-On has one with a good spec. Lite-on's eSAU208-16: slimline but angular Adding a …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 09:59
Discovery bids adios to ISS

Undocked and homeward bound

Space shuttle Discovery yesterday undocked from the International Space Station and its crew will today use the vehicle's robotic arm to do a final check on the "thermal protection system" prior to a sheduled Saturday touch-down at Kennedy Space Center. Shortly after departure, Discovery captured this snap of the ISS showing …

Space 26 Mar 09:59
More videogames for girls, demands psychologist

Male-centric gaming puts girls at 'visual-spatial disadvantage'

Videogames have long been associated with the development of visual-spatial skills in youngsters. But one researcher has warned that a lack of female-friendly titles could be putting girls at a disadvantage. In a recent study conducted by Michigan State University, Linda Jackson, a Professor of Psychology at MSU, confirmed the …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 10:17
Madoff data can be extradited back to US

High Court says legal interest trumps data protection

Data which is protected by the Data Protection Act can be transferred to the US to help in the investigation of companies run by Bernard Madoff, the High Court has said. The transfer would usually be barred but is justified in this case, the Court said. The Data Protection Act (DPA) forbids the export of personal data to …

Law 26 Mar 10:18
WD releases 2TB external HDDs

New volumes for MyBook line

Western Digital has bumped up versions of its chunky MyBook external hard drives to a whopping 2TB of raw storage capacity. The MyBook Studio Edition, Mac Edition, Home Edition and Essential Edition - the names may be slightly different, as are their port arrays and formatting, but they all now have 2TB models. WD's MyBook: …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 10:52
Samsung phone recognises people, calls them

Dial and text pals from your picture gallery

Scrolling through your phone’s address book to find someone to call or text can be a chore. So Samsung has launched a cameraphone that lets you text or call by tapping on their photo. Samsung's Haptic 8M: lets you call friends from pictures Called "Face Tagging", the feature allows you to call or text someone by clicking on …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 10:59
Dell plays left hand, right hand on smartphone plans

With services to match?

Michael Dell has confirmed that Dell is working on small-screen devices, while analysts reckon the company has shelved existing plans in order to provide services with its new devices. Dell was speaking at Computerworld in Tokyo on Tuesday, and stated explicitly that his firm is "exploring smaller-screen devices". The firm is …

Mobile 26 Mar 11:06
Budvar beats Anheuser-Busch in latest Budweiser battle

Euro court defenestrates globo grog firm's case

US brewer Anheuser-Busch has lost its attempt to register the word 'budweiser' as a trade mark for beer in the European Union. Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar has won the right to market its beers under the name. The Court of First Instance (CFI) of the EU has ruled in Budvar's favour after a number of decisions and appeals. …

Law 26 Mar 11:16
Atlantis finally go for Hubble mission

Roll-out to launch pad next week

Space shuttle Atlantis will trundle its way to Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A next Tuesday, in preparation for its much-delayed STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The vehicle, complete with external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters, will travel atop a crawler-transporter for the 3.4 mile journey from …

Space 26 Mar 11:40
Pink Floyd's Gilmour backs McKinnon protest gig

Updated UFO hacker gets support from Dark Side of the Moon

Legendary Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has agreed to participate in a musical protest against attempts to extradite UFO enthusiast turned hacker Gary McKinnon to the US. Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mum, is organising a sing-in protest to coincide with President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to London for the G20 conference …

Crime 26 Mar 11:49
Top e-crime cop to plead for more cash

Home Office unmoved

The woman in charge of policing online fraud in the UK plans to use the first operational year of the new Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU) to make the case for more funding. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Janet Williams, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead on e-crime, said this week the PCeU wanted more than the £3 …

Crime 26 Mar 12:05
Vuzix redesigns pop-up books

3D animated characters, but no tea parties on the ceiling

Vuzix has updated its VR920 virtual reality goggles with an add-on supposedly capable of bringing books alive with pop-out 3D characters. Vuzix's Augmented Reality kit: clips onto the VR920 goggles The Augmented Reality (AR) Accessory Kit is currently being shown off at the on-going Game Developers Conference in San …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 12:06
Wii becomes world's fastest selling console

Nintendo jumps for joy

Nintendo’s Wii has become the world’s fastest selling console, with more than 50m units sold since its 2006 launch. Speaking at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s President, described the sales achievement as “even beyond what we possibly hoped for”. The Wii sales figure is quite …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 12:08
German police boot down doors of Wikileaks offices

Analysis Authorities advance boundaries of internet censorship

Government's tendency to moprh from blocking "child porn" to censoring discussion of all government censorship was illustrated this week when German Police raided the offices of Wikileaks Germany. The German plods hit the whistle-blowing and anti-censorship group with the officially stated aims of "discovery of evidence" for " …

Law 26 Mar 12:19
Sony-backed next-gen TV tech maker to close

Had trouble finding funding

A Field Emission Display (FED) TV business partly owned by Sony is to be liquidated, Japanese media report. Field Emission Technologies planned to have 26in FED TVs out this year Difficulty in raising funds for “the acquisition of plant and equipment investment” was the main reason behind the decision to shut Field Emission …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 12:21
Lenovo splits to cover domestic, emerging markets

Pins hopes on China

Lenovo has divided its business into new units to allow China’s largest computer vendor to slice and dice its products for developed countries and emerging markets. The firm said in a statement yesterday that it made the internal rejig to replace its current regional breakdown to allow Lenovo’s two new divisions to pitch …

Channel Register 26 Mar 12:25
Revolting French workers bite 3M's balles

Barricaded boss protest secures extra cash

French 3M workers, who on Tuesday barricaded their boss in an office in protest at jobs cuts, have released their prisoner following successful negotiations to secure more cash for redundancy packages. 3M decided to shed 110 jobs at the pharmaceutical products plant at Pithiviers, near Orleans, due to falling demand. The plan …

Bootnotes 26 Mar 12:39
Knee X-ray biometrics plan to fight spoofing

Accuracy is 'much better than random', apparently

US federal eggheads have proposed a novel method of preventing biometric ID systems being spoofed by the use of such things as contact lenses, fake fingerprints etc. Instead of easily-fooled systems of this sort, people should instead be identified using X-ray photographs of their knees. Lior Shamir of the US National …

Biology 26 Mar 12:43
Wallet-stretching li-ion G-Wiz e-car goes on sale

'Leccy Tech How much is that quadbike in the window?

It's with a certain amount of trepidation what we bring you news of the asking prices for the latest e-cars you can actually buy here in the UK. First up, London-based EV Stores is now stocking the 2008 Electric Car of the Year, the MyCar. The price? It starts at an eye-watering £9995 on the road. MyCar: expensive The …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 12:51
LibDems uncover over 10,000 RIPA yarns

Demand controls on council snooping

Local councils are using snooping powers too readily and without proper oversight. A survey of 180 councils by the Lib Dems has found snooping laws have been used 10,288 times in the last five years. Some 1,615 council workers can now authorise such investigations and 21 per cent of those staff are below senior management …

Government 26 Mar 12:53
A Geeks Guide₂ ...iPhone Development

Reg Bookshop 40% off

Geeks Guide2 With more than 25,000 apps available and over 800 million downloads, the iPhone’s App Store has become a battlefield for programmers. aS well as providing a playground for challenge-seeking developers, it offers an avenue to make money for small scale projects. This week's GG2 focuses on Beginning iPhone …

Site News 26 Mar 12:59
Thus finds a home for mobile division

Vodafone pulls the strings

The mobile division of C&W-owned Thus has been palmed off to Genisis Communications, to prevent the customers falling into the hands of Cable & Wireless or being subsumed into Vodafone. Thus' mobile division incorporated a Vodafone reseller called Intercell, but when Thus got bought by Cable & Wireless last year Vodafone …

Mobile 26 Mar 13:22
BackWeb sues Microsoft over 'push' technology

Claims Redmond infringed four patents

BackWeb Technologies is suing Microsoft for infringement of four of the company’s patents. The firm filed a lawsuit against the software giant on 20 March with the US District Court in San Francisco. BackWeb has accused Microsoft’s Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), Windows Update and other products of infringing …

Mobile 26 Mar 13:40
Final countdown to Conficker 'activation' begins

T-minus six

Security watchers are counting down to a change in how the infamous Conficker (Downadup) worm updates malicious code, due to kick in on Wednesday 1 April. Starting on 1 April, Windows PCs infected by the latest variant of the Conficker worm (Conficker-C) will start attempting to contact a sample of 50,000 pre-programmed …

Malware 26 Mar 13:46
Elgato Turbo.264 HD hi-def H.264 encoder

Review 120f/s iPod video encoding, anyone?

We love Elgato's original Turbo.264 dongle for its ability to speed up the conversion of video from a variety of sources into the H.264 format favoured by the iPhone we use as a PMP. Elgato's Turbo.264 HD: now with a red LED for visual feedback The first Turbo.264 was focused entirely on standard-definition content. It …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 13:59
Aussie classification site hacked in censorship protest

Conroy speaks out on 'technical errors'

Hackers broke into the Australian government's film and videogame classification website yesterday and posted a message opposing comms minister Stephen Conroy's trial of internet filtering. At the time of writing the site is still unavailable - but here is a screengrab of the front page kindly sent in by an Antipodean Reg …

Law 26 Mar 14:05
Otellini: 'I'd rather have Sun be independent'

Join the club, Intel

Another IT head honcho has put his two cents out there about the rumored acquisition of Sun Microsystems by rival IBM. This time, it is Paul Otellini, president and chief executive officer at Intel, who was speaking to company employees earlier this week about freezing the salaries of its highest paid workers and repricing the …

Servers 26 Mar 14:52
T-Mobile pulls out of 2.6GHz challenge

O2 left to fight on alone

T-Mobile has given up the fight against Ofcom's sale of 2.6GHz spectrum, leaving O2 as the only operator still challenging the regulator and delaying the auction. T-Mobile launched the action back in May last year, contending that it was unreasonable to sell off 2.6GHz while the fate of 900MHz was unknown. O2 supported that …

Wireless 26 Mar 15:21
Michigan man jailed for humping car wash vacuum

90 days on indecent exposure rap

A Michigan man who was caught red-handed having sex with a car wash vacuum hose has been jailed for 90 days, the Saginaw News reports. Jason L Savage, 29, was spotted on 16 October last year at 6.45 am having it away in Thomas Township, Saginaw. A resident saw "someone acting suspicious", and alerted the cops. An officer " …

Bootnotes 26 Mar 15:23
Resprayed Arena unveiled

A T-Mobile exclusive

LG’s Arena was only recently unveiled, but T-Mobile’s already scored itself an exclusive upgrade to the hyped-up handset. LG's Arena: in "Titan Black" Until now the phone has only been seen in silver, but T-Mobile has today announced that it will also offer the handset in a high-gloss “Titan Black”. The new shade of Arena …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 15:34
City IT workers brace for anarchist attack

G20 protest threatens critical systems

IT workers at City institutions have been told they must come to work on April 1 and 2, when thousands of protestors are expected in the Square Mile to mark the G20 meeting of leaders in London. Authorities fear the protests will turn violent, and many City workers have been ordered to stay at home. But staff maintaining the …

IT Director 26 Mar 15:35
'Nanodiamond' asteroid tracked from space to desert impact

Rare meteor from mystery ureilite mother-planetoid

An international alliance of astronomers are exceedingly chuffed to announce the first occasion of an asteroid being tracked from space, through impact with the Earth's atmosphere and thence to recovery of fragments on the ground. "Any number of meteorites have been observed as fireballs and smoking meteor trails as they come …

Space 26 Mar 15:40
Why no Lego Doctor Who? fans demand

Show's makers face the unwashed masses

Fans of Doctor Who last night quizzed exec producer Julie Gardner and designer Edward Thomas, who had perhaps unwisely agreed to appear before the unwashed masses at the opening night of the Celtic Media Festival in Caernarfon. Among the pressing questions fired at the panel were why wasn't the Time Lord available in Lego and …

Entertainment 26 Mar 15:48
Asus pulps Apple in hardware reliability survey

But the real success was Lenovo

Asus has stolen the top spot from Apple in a report that assesses the reliability of top PC manufacturer’s machines. Put together by US PC repair and support firm Rescuecom, the league table was topped by Asus with a whopping 972 reliability points. Apple, now in second place, scored just 324 points. Rescuecom’s scores are …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 15:57
Sony Ericsson serves up tennis star's handset

Maria Sharapova used to flog clamshell

Nothing shifts gadgets better than a sexy sport star’s endorsement. So Sony Ericsson’s doubled up with tennis superstar Maria Sharapova to serve up its latest handset – the T707. Sony Ericsson's T707 clamshell: pink for the ladies Apparently SE chose Sharapova because she “perfectly epitomises the phone’s sleek and elegant …

Reg Hardware 26 Mar 16:01
Melissa anniversary marks birth of email-aware malware

Supermodel of computer virus world turns 10, still spreading

Thursday (26 March) marks the 10th anniversary of the notorious Melissa virus, the first successful email-aware virus. The Word macro virus, allegedly named after a lap dancer that creator David L. Smith met in Florida, spread via infected Word documents. Windows users who opened the Word document on unprotected systems became …

Malware 26 Mar 16:37
Microsoft loudly disses secret 'Cloud Manifesto'

Updated Bemoans lack of openness while keeping straight face

Microsoft’s Azure boss has leaked details of a “Cloud Manifesto” some big tech firms have been secretly working on and revealed that Redmond has no intention of playing ball. Steven Martin bitched about the latest tech industry group hug on his blog today in which he complained, without even so much as a hint of irony, that …

Servers 26 Mar 17:05
Windows 7 RC download page reveals May ship date

Accidents will happen. So do miracles...

Someone with butter fingers at Microsoft has prematurely let slip when the company plans to push out the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 by posting the download page early. Microsoft has refused to comment on when users can expect to see a near-ready version of Windows 7 arrive but many observers were expecting an April …

Operating Systems 26 Mar 17:10
Sprint preps 15-city WiMAX roll-out

Racing ahead of LTE (for now)

US telecom-services provider Sprint has announced that it will extend its WiMAX-based 4G wireless-broadband service to 10 American cities this year, with five more scheduled for 2010. Today, Sprint offers 4G service in only one test city: Baltimore, Maryland. Although that service is rated at a peak of 12Mbps, the company …

Wireless 26 Mar 17:30
Webmail bug puts 40m accounts in jeopardy

One attack pwns all

A web-borne vulnerability lurking in a popular email application seriously compromised the security of 40 million accounts until it was fixed early last month, independent researchers said. The flaw, in the Memova messaging application sold by a company known as Critical Path, is yet another testament to the awesome power of …

Security 26 Mar 19:01
Moonlight plans video-patent police beater for Linux

Decode this, MPEG LA

The open-source version of Microsoft's Silverlight is adopting hardware-based decoding for video, a move that will boost multimedia on Linux devices. Moonlight is adding support for Nvidia cards to offload the work of H.264 and VC1 decoding from the software player to the actual hardware. Nvidia features the Video Decode and …

Developer 26 Mar 20:02
Google juices in-photo ads biz

Will Street View pitch products?

Google has invested in a Silicon Valley startup that plants ads inside online photos. And The Reg can't help but wonder when the company will begin slipping virtual marketing into the very real cityscapes of Google Street View. On Wednesday, a company calling itself Pixazza unveiled a new online-ad extravaganza that serves up …

Music and Media 26 Mar 20:03
US mums sue anti-sexting crusader

Birds bite back

The mothers of three high-school girls threatened with child-pornography charges have fired back with a lawsuit that accuses their district attorney of retaliating against them for refusing to attend a "re-education program." The crime that George Skumanick, Jr., district attorney of Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, believes …

Mobile 26 Mar 20:17
Eastern game guru seeks Western know-how

GDC 09 Design meets software

Acclaimed game designer Hideo Kojima says he's recruiting Western developers to add their software specialization expertise to the next entry in the Metal Gear series. With his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Kojima told gathered gamers he wants to blend a Western "software-driven" …

Music and Media 26 Mar 20:39
Apple sets ~~Snow Leopard release~~ dev con dates

Jobsian return?

Apple announced on Thursday that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held on June 8 through 12, as expected. As it has been since 2003, WWDC will be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center and will feature educational opportunities covering Mac and iPhone development and IT-related integration and …

Developer 26 Mar 21:55
Oracle and HP proposed joint Sun dismemberment deal

Big-Blue blocker

Oracle and Hewlett-Packard are believed to have made a joint offer for Sun Microsystems in a deal totaling more than $2bn. Under the deal, database giant Oracle would have taken Sun's software portfolio for $2bn, leaving HP with Sun's vast Solaris, Sparc, and x86 server products, manufacturing and distribution, and user base …

Financial News 26 Mar 22:08
Blades and VMs - IT's peanut butter cup

VMware premium chocolate

It looks like blade servers and server virtualization are the new Reese's Peanut Butter cup of the data center. The Blade.org industry consortium that IBM and Intel set up to promote the use of the BladeCenter design has surveyed some blade server shops, hoping to get a feel for their plans for adopting virtualization on their …

Virtualization 26 Mar 22:24
Google clips 200 sales and marketing staff

Admits imperfection

Google has admitted it's not perfect. With a blog post this afternoon, the company confessed to cutting nearly 200 jobs from its global sales and marketing organization, acknowledging that in its mad dash to digitize all the world's information and plaster it with ads, it made some mistakes. "Google has grown very quickly in …

Business 26 Mar 22:28
Firefox exploit sends Mozilla into 'high-priority fire drill' mode

Two weeks, two exploits

Mozilla's security team is rushing out a fix for its flagship Mozilla browser following the public release of attack code that targets a previously unknown vulnerability. The exploit was released Wednesday online. It attacks a vulnerability present on Windows, Mac and Linux versions of the browser and could be used to …

Security 26 Mar 23:13
Parallels: Bare-metal hypervisor in the works

VMs and containers galore

Parallels, one of many peddlers of desktop and server virtualization products, says that it is still hard at work on a bare-metal hypervisor for the carving up of servers. While host-based desktop and server virtualization is acceptable for many workloads, in some cases - particularly mission-critical applications where …

Servers 26 Mar 23:39