16th April 2009 Archive

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Microsoft supplies Interpol with DIY forensics tool

Cofee to the rescue

Interpol plans to distribute a Microsoft DIY computer forensics tool to its 187 member countries under an agreement announced Wednesday. Cofee, short for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a thumb drive containing more than 150 investigative applications police can use to collect digital evidence at crime scenes. …

Crime 16 Apr 00:06
Microsoft's online Office variant preps for business

There goes the desktop

You'll get a taste of what a web-based version of Microsoft's Office for Firefox, Safari, the iPhone and Internet Explorer can do later this year. Microsoft confirmed Wednesday that Office Web applications - announced last October - will be ready for testing along with the next edition of its Office suite, Office 2010, in the …

Applications 16 Apr 01:20
Public rejects Time Warner metered-bandwidth tests

All-you-can eat protest

Time Warner Cable is reportedly having trouble finding submissive test subjects for its proposed scheme of charging US customers by the gigabyte for their internet service. Additional trials for the company's new "consumption based billing" regime were slated to begin in several markets this summer, but public outcry has made …

Networks 16 Apr 01:24
Rebuffed by western cellcos, Dell turns to China and retailers

Eastern promise for smartphones

Although it failed to impress US and European operators with its smartphone prototypes, Dell is certainly not giving up, and is reported to be pursuing deals with retailers and with China Mobile. Chinese news sources report that the giant operator is likely to launch two Dell handsets later this year. Analyst Zhang Jun of …

Mobile 16 Apr 05:02
MPs call for inquiry into Tory terror arrest

Security risks over-egged for effect

The Home Affairs Select Committee wants a fuller inquiry into the arrest of MP Damian Green, and believes politicians should be kept out of police investigations in future. Damian Green and a junior Home Office official were arrested in November last year. Green's Parliamentary office and home were searched after Home Office …

Policing 16 Apr 08:52
Nowak astronaut romanta-scuffle affair: New evidence

'There was no molehill' insists lawyer

The case of ex-spacewoman and US Navy captain Lisa Nowak grinds on. It was reported this week that her lawyers have asked that charges against her be dismissed, on the grounds that she may not in fact have done a good job of pepper-spraying a romantic adversary for the affections of a space shuttle pilot. Here on the Reg astro …

Bootnotes 16 Apr 09:00
Fasthosts' market leadership claims banned

'Number one' was talking number two

Fasthosts has been banned from claiming it is the "UK's Number one web host" in adverts, after a rival complained it was used flawed data and exaggerated graphs to mislead potential customers. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld three complaints against the Gloucester-based firm last week, because it found its …

Telecoms 16 Apr 09:34
Carry On producer Peter Rogers dead at 95

Carried off

The man behind the Carry On franchise died yesterday at the age of 95. Peter Rogers was the producer for every one of the 31 movies, which kept Brits in stitches and foreigners baffled from the 50s through to the 70s. Or even the 90s if you include Carry On Columbus. Rogers died after a short illness at his home in …

Entertainment 16 Apr 09:44
Rorke's drift towards RAID ASIC replacement

Rorke Data's Nehalem video post-production storage box

Rorke Data's new Galaxy Aurora LS video post-production storage box accelerates RAID performance by running software RAID on a Nehalem multi-core processor, instead of the classic, performance-boosting, RAID ASIC. When RAID algorithms run in software on a host server, the RAID processing, particularly rebuilding after a drive …

Channel Register 16 Apr 09:46
Govt powers up electric cars with £5k subsidy

'Leccy Tech Sweetener available from 2011

Anyone looking to buy an electric car in the UK could soon be eligible for a £5000 ($7500/€5600) rebate, thanks to a new government eco motoring incentive. Cars like Vauxhall's Ampera (above) could become £5K cheaper come 2011 The subsidy, grant, rebate or whatever you care to call it will be available from 2011 and will …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 09:47
Which zoo animals like artificial sweeteners: Facts at last

Experts baffled by aspartame-guzzling Swiss pandas

Almost everybody has, no doubt, at one time or another asked themselves one of the most urgent questions facing the human race today. That is, of course: Just which kinds of Swiss zoo animals like the taste of artificial sweeteners? Wonder no more, because an international team of scientists has at last carried out a thorough …

Biology 16 Apr 10:01
Samsung planning three Android phones for '09?

Yes, says mole

News that Samsung’s developing a handset based on Google’s Android mobile OS is nothing new. But a mole on the inside claims to know that the firm’s Android phone plans are actually much more ambitious than a single device for 2009. According to a “reliable source” that spoke to website Android Arena, Samsung will launch a …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 10:11
Tiscali titsup fears grow

Auditors say no

Tiscali's struggle for survival has been dealt a blow by auditors, who refused to sign off its accounts, citing "fundamental uncertainties" about the firm's future. The Italian broadband group, which has about 1.8 million UK subscribers, said on Wednesday that it disagreed with Ernst And Young's conclusion. It said it had …

Telecoms 16 Apr 10:16
Microsoft gets second extension in IE EU antitrust brouhaha

Deadline to respond pushed back again

EU antitrust regulators have granted Microsoft yet another extension to respond to charges that the software giant abused its dominant market position by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. A European Commission spokeswoman confirmed to The Register this morning that Microsoft has been given a one-week extension. The …

Operating Systems 16 Apr 10:36
Oracle releases whole security blanket of patches

43 updates, 15 remotely exploitable

Oracle has released its latest quarterly patch batches with the publication of 43 updates, covering security flaws across its product range. The update covers 16 bulletins for Oracle Database Server, a dozen for Oracle Application Server and three updates for Oracle Applications. There's also a quartet of bulletins apiece for …

Developer 16 Apr 10:38
Symbian show struggles for identity

Just needs name, theme and branding

This year's Symbian show has a date; October 27th, and a venue; Earls Court, but is looking for suggestions from the crowd when it comes to a name, theme, branding and content. The news comes in a blog posting from David Wood, who delights in the job title of "Catalyst & Futurist" but explains that the new Foundation has no …

Mobile 16 Apr 10:47
Family-friendly gaming site launches

Guides and reviews for mum, dad and the kids

The web’s already bursting with tales of GTA-loving teens running amuck and of contrasting reports about the impact of videogames on kids. But now a website’s launched that aims to help inform families about videogames. FamilyGamer promises to help mum, dad and the kids “play videogames together in healthy, entertaining, …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 10:49
Jamaica cracks down on 'daggering' after broken todger upswing

Dance craze or sexual practice? Who knows

Jamaican doctors have warned of the dangers of daggering, after being presented with a forest of fractured penises over the last year. According to reports, daggering appears to be either a bizarre sexual practice or a music and dance craze. Or possibly both at the same time, if these videos are any thing to go by. Either way …

Bootnotes 16 Apr 10:59
Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4850 vapour-cooled graphics card

Review The cooler that turns a Vindaloo into a Korma

The Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4850 is a reference Radeon HD 4850 with an after-market cooler. That might not sound like a big deal, but Sapphire has come up with something special. Most graphics card manufacturers try to differentiate their products from the competition and they often use the trick of changing the reference cooler …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 11:02
Silicon Valley's biggest winners and losers in 2008

HP biggest $ riser, Symantec biggest $ loss

The MercuryNews.com 2008 Silicon Valley 150 rankings show Data Domain making the biggest annual percentage sales gain out of all the IT companies in the list at 122 per cent to $274.1m. Symantec made the biggest loss of all at -$6.6bn. The SV150 rankings compare companies on their 2008 versus 2007 performance. Looking just at …

Financial News 16 Apr 11:19
eBay buys Korean rival

Sold... to the primary-coloured magpie at the back

eBay is paying $1.2bn for South Korea's leading online auction house Gmarket, which will be combined with eBay's existing Korean auction site - Internet Auction Company. The two sites will continue to operate separately, but presumably back office operations will be merged and headcount reduced to cut costs. eBay has already …

Financial News 16 Apr 11:22
Can the iPhone save NFC?

Retro-fitted sensor still pointless

The continuing push to get the general public interested in Near Field Communications sees an RFID tag strapped to the back of an iPhone, and used to trigger various videos for reasons that remain obscure. The demonstration offers nothing we've not seen before, as exemplified by the Mir:ror, but it bundles it into an iPhone - …

Mobile 16 Apr 11:30
Nokia's profits dive 90 per cent

Retail clear out hoses bottom line

The world's largest maker of mobile phones, not to mention cameras, saw net profits down by 90 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to last year, though the company blamed de-stocking for some of drop. Net profit for the first three months of 2009 came in at €122m, compared to €1.22bn during the same period last year …

Mobile 16 Apr 11:37
Nokia shifts ~~13m~~ 2.6m 5800 phones

Model numbers cause sales confusion for Nokia exec

A Nokia executive recently claimed that the firm had sold a whopping 13m 5800 Xpress Music handsets. But, after checking its warehouses, Nokia’s since realised that it hasn’t even sold half that amount. According to various reports, Rob Taylor, Director of Forum Nokia North America, announced at the CTIA Wireless event in Las …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 11:41
DHS offers glimpse into life of its top snot'n'slobber expert

Points up disease-doom disaster 'drivel' threat

The widely-feared US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in a praiseworthy attempt to reach out to the American people, has offered up a glimpse into the exciting life of its top spittle expert. According to the DHS: Mark Nicas has given some of his best years to spittle. He builds models – the mathematical kind – of how …

Biology 16 Apr 11:45
Nirvanix nabs $5m for cloud expansion

Start-up fattens self up for enterprise customers

Cloud storage start-up Nirvanx has gained $5m in B-round funding to strengthen its offering for enterprise customers. The original A-round investors dipped into their wallets again, taking total funding north of $23m. The company is building out a global set of clustered data centres called the Storage Delivery Network. There …

Storage 16 Apr 11:47
Pizza-polluting YouTube plonkers soil Domino's

Internet bogey bandits wreak corporate havoc

Two US Domino's pizza employees who filmed themselves performing a gross-out food prank have been fired, but not before the clammy hand of Web 2.0 ensured their larks would live in infamy. The salami-slaves' handiwork, uploaded to YouTube and viewed a million times before its removal, was quickly spluttered all over the …

Bootnotes 16 Apr 11:48
No charges for terror arrest Tory

Nor for civil servant

The Crown Prosecution Service has decided that Damian Green, the MP arrested by anti-terror police, should not be prosecuted and nor should the civil servant suspected of leaking Home Office information. Coupled with a critical report from the Home Affairs Committee, the decision adds to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's …

Government 16 Apr 12:01
Microsoft cut 'n' shuts search engine with bribery machine

Live Search receives Cashback

Microsoft has stitched together its product search engine with the company’s Live Search Cashback service ahead of the relaunch of its clunky, Google-wannabe brand. The company confirmed the move in a blog post yesterday. It said bringing the two services under one roof would “make it easier for you to research, compare …

Applications 16 Apr 12:03
Mac and Linux Bastilles assaulted by new attacks

No one here gets out alive

A set of recently discovered security holes in Mac and Linux platforms reminds those over-confident in their superior protection that no one is immune to vulnerabilities. H Security reports on a series of actively exploited vulnerabilities in Apple's Mac OS X operating system that remain unpatched. A vulnerability in mounting …

Enterprise Security 16 Apr 12:19
UK dons dunce hat on copyright law

F-grade on user protection - gov stalls reform

Copyright reform in the UK has 'stalled' as the Government has caved in to the 'vested interests' of the content industry, the head of a digital rights activist group has said. The view comes as the UK 'abjectly fails' a test of its copyright laws. The international umbrella body for consumer rights organisations, Consumers …

Law 16 Apr 12:45
Sun begs IBM to come back and talk

Updated Why can't you commit?

If IBM would only commit a little more to the deal, Sun is keen to resume takeover talks again, according to Bloomberg. It is citing two people close to the talks, which ended on April 5th. At that point IBM withdrew an offer for Sun valued at around $6.85bn or aproximately $9.40 per Sun share, after Sun terminated exclusive …

Financial News 16 Apr 13:20
Google nabs purse snatcher

Sister-tracking app used for good, not evil

Google's Latitude service proved an unwitting aid to police tracing a stolen purse in San Francisco, guiding the boys in blue to the miscreants in moments. The story comes from local-TV channel CBS-5, and relates the story of one Janina Valiente, who had her bag snatched while waiting for a bus. The woman realised that Google' …

Mobile 16 Apr 13:30
US parkies in 'burrow-buster' marmot detonation campaign

Explosives forestall squirrel population explosion

Senior parkies in the American city of Spokane are facing a barrage of criticism over their decision to exterminate troublesome tree-noshing squirrels by blowing up their burrows using fuel-air "bunker buster" type explosives. It seems that Spokane's Finch Arboretum, well thought of among park aficionados, faces an escalating …

Bootnotes 16 Apr 13:44
Patent application uncovers PSP RC car

Play driving games and spy on friends

The PlayStation Portable (PSP) may one day support 3D driving games, of sorts. At least according to a patent application filed by Sony for a PSP-controlled RC car. The PSP would control the RC car and roof-mounted camera The firm’s applied to patent its idea for an RC car with a small camcorder fitted on top, both of which …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 14:01
HP goes sweet sixteen with HP-UX 11i update

Serviceguard but no leather boots

The established Unix operating systems change at a glacial pace these days, but they do get tweaked from time to time. In the case of Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX 11i v3 operating system for the company's current Itanium and legacy PA-RISC servers, HP-UX gets an update every six months or so, with Update 4 debuting tomorrow. The …

Servers 16 Apr 14:29
Q1 PC sales: Bad, but not quite awful

And HP whups Dell in US

Worldwide PC sales fell 7.1 per cent to 63.1 million in the first quarter of 2009, not as far as expected. The figures, from IDC, show worldwide desktop and laptop shipments were down 7.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period of 2008. Which ain't good - but it's better than the 8.2 per cent …

Channel Register 16 Apr 14:49
NetApp snuggles up to Cisco in data centre love-in

Partner up with strap on storage

NetApp and Cisco are jointly marketing NetApp's storage arrays, validated to work with Cisco's UCS virtualised blade and networking computer system. The idea is to give customers an easier job when choosing which storage to add to Cisco's Unified Computing System, announced earlier this month. This employs VMware server …

Storage 16 Apr 14:57
Touchscreen phones to take 20% market share

Top panel maker predicts big sales for '09

Global touchscreen penetration on mobile phones will surpass 20 per cent this year, a Taiwan-based touch panel maker has claimed. TJ Lin, Chairman of Young Fast Optoelectronics, added that his 2009 forecast is supposedly double the figure double recorded for 2008, according to a report by Digitimes. He also claimed that this …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 15:29
Iomega opens sub-$2k box of storage tricks

Rackmount NAS and iSCSI for the SMB masses

Iomega has bounded into the SME NAS and iSCSI storage market with a sub-$1,800 box, taking on all other low-end NAS suppliers at their own game, and signifying that unified file and block storage is the way to go. The StorCenter Pro ix4-200r is a 1U rackmount, 4-bay, 4TB (hot-swap SATA drives), gigabit Ethernet product, …

Storage 16 Apr 15:40
Pirate Bay server becomes museum artefact

Marvel at the flashing lights!

A server used by notorious BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay that was seized by police has been added to Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology’s collection. The museum said today it has bought the server from The Pirate Bay for 2,000 kronor ($243). It’s understood the artefact has been added to the Stockholm- …

Bootnotes 16 Apr 15:50
Antitrust-shy IBM closed to fresh Sun talks

Good thing, gone

So much for playing hardball: IBM is apparently not interested in resuming talks to purchase Sun Microsystems, following their recent break down. IBM is believed to be concerned about the level of scrutiny a potential acquisition of its smaller hardware and software rival might would draw from regulators. CNBC has reported …

Business 16 Apr 18:18
Researchers dissect world's first Mac botnet

When zombie Macs attack

Fresh research has shed new light on the world's first Mac OS X botnet, which causes infected machines to mount denial of service attacks. Symantec researchers Mario Ballano Barcena and Alfredo Pesoli said the infections are the same ones described in this blog post from January. In it, the blogger - a self-described designer …

Malware 16 Apr 18:21
Blizzard ditches long-time WoW operator

Dependency issues

Blizzard Entertainment is dumping its long-time China World of Warcraft distributor and operator, a company that relies heavily on the online adventure, for a rival operation. Online games operator NetEase.com said on Thursday it has won a three-year license to host Blizzard's massively popular role playing game in mainland …

Business 16 Apr 18:37
Hackers develop 'memory-scraping malware' to steal PINs

They are probably watching you now and laughing

More personal data records were breached last year than the previous four years combined, thanks to increased hacker activity rather than insider threats. Verizon's second annual Data Breach Investigations Report also found that the financial services sector accounted for 93 percent of all such record compromises during 2008. …

Enterprise Security 16 Apr 18:39
Flagship satnav paraded by Garmin

The 5in Nüvi 1490T

Garmin has launched a “premium” Nüvi satnav with a large 5in touchscreen, but which is also 25 per cent slimmer than most existing Nüvi’s. Garmin's 5in Nüvi 1490T satnav Described as ideal for anyone looking to take advantage of Garmin’s newest navigation features, the Nüvi 1490T comes with free traffic alerts – telling you …

Reg Hardware 16 Apr 19:02
NASA's Kepler dazzles with first pics in new-Earth hunt

One snapshot, millions of stars

NASA's Kepler space telescope has sent home the first images of the starry patch of sky where it will soon begin the hunt for Earth-like planets. The first snaps show Kepler's entire field of view, a 100-square-degree portion of the sky in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way, roughly equivalent to the size of two side-by- …

Physics 16 Apr 20:03
IBM and pals to start baking 28nm chips

Fast, efficient - just don't call it 'high-k/metal gate'

The march toward faster, more power-efficient microprocessors took another step Thursday when the IBM Technology Alliance announced the joint development of 28 nanometer process technology. Alliance members include IBM, Singapore's Chartered, the recently-spun-off-from-AMD Globalfoundries, Germany's Infineon, Samsung, and …

Hardware 16 Apr 20:27
Fake SMS snoop utility turns spies into zombies

Bite back

A new variant of the infamous Waledac botnet client doing the rounds poses as a utility that allows would-be snoops to view other other people's SMS messages online. The fake utility uses various filenames including sms.exe, freetrial.exe, and smstrap.exe but actually contain a variant of the Waledac malware. Anti-virus …

Malware 16 Apr 21:18
Hacking internet backbones - it's easier than you think

'Disastrous havoc' made easy

Network backbone technologies used to route traffic over large corporate networks are vulnerable to large-scale hijacking attacks, according to two researchers who released freely available software on Thursday to prove their point. The tools, demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference in Amsterdam, are intended to show …

Enterprise Security 16 Apr 21:31
Bush-era NSA wiretap violations exposed

US hawks not amused

The New York Times has broken the latest news in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping odyssey: that the NSA has been routinely scanning American communications at a rate far beyond what had been envisioned by Congress when the telecoms immunity and FISA wiretapping revisions passed last summer. Even more …

Government 16 Apr 21:32
Jaunty Jackalope release candidate unleashed

Claims of distro riches

Jaunty Jackalope has sprung a step closer, with the release of final pre-production code for Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop and Server, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix edition. The Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate was kicked out Thursday afternoon. The Ubuntu team behind it has reported that the release candidate is "complete, stable, and suitable …

Operating Systems 16 Apr 22:33
Microsoft v TomTom: a GPLv3 wake-up call

Free software's alarm bells ringing

Microsoft's brawl with TomTom over FAT patents has been seized on by software-freedom advocates as a wake-up call for people to adopt GPLv3. Open-source developers can protect themselves, their customers and the cause of software freedom in general by switching code currently under GPLv2 to the updated GPLv3, the Software …

Operating Systems 16 Apr 23:12
Google money machine records Q1 choking sound

Five-year revenue streak finished

The recession has finally gummed-up the dial on Google's top secret money machine even though the search firm is still doing better than most other advertising-dependent companies. Google's first-quarter earnings showed the slowest revenue growth year-over-year since the company went public in 2004 - but it was growth none-the …

Financial News 16 Apr 23:17