10th June 2009 Archive

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Webhost denies poor passwords led to catastrophic hack

VAServ contradicts purported attackers

The director of an internet service provider has denied public allegations that poor password management and server configurations were responsible for an attack that wiped out data for more than 100,000 websites. Rus Foster, director of VAServ.com, also says he was shocked when he learned the head of an Indian software firm …

Security 10 Jun 2009, 00:14
Microsoft patches record number of security bugs

Adobe crashes monster patch batch

Microsoft on Tuesday patched a record number of security vulnerabilities, plugging 31 holes in its Windows operating systems, Internet Explorer browser, and other products. The updates were packaged into 10 bulletins, five of which were rated "critical," Microsoft's top severity rating. What's more, Microsoft warned that 15 of …

Malware 10 Jun 2009, 01:21
Palm Pre's inner iPhone revealed

Photos Comparisons are inevitable. And (mostly) favorable

The Palm Pre has been available for only a few short days, but that's been long enough for the good folks at the online repair-and-parts-shop iFixIt to get their hands on one and perform a loving vivisection. The iFixIters have good things to say about the Pre's WebOS operating system, 3-megapixel camera, and replaceable …

Mobile 10 Jun 2009, 02:34
Facebook to offer vanity URLs

Who wants facebook.com/imceobitch?

Facebook is letting users customize their profile URLs starting this weekend. Vanity web addresses will be dispensed on a first-come-first-served basis, replacing the random string of digits used by the social networking site now. Starting Saturday, June 13 at 12:01 a.m. EDT (4:01 a.m. GMT), Facebook users may procure a custom …

Media 10 Jun 2009, 02:53
Government hints at gaming tax breaks

Labour admits it's looking into it

Newly appointed Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has hinted that UK videogame developers may be granted direct tax breaks. The revelation was made during a recent House of Commons debate. Bradshaw said that the government is “looking at introducing further tax breaks” for the games industry. Bradshaw’s comment was made in …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 07:02
Philips GoGear Opus personal media player

Review Some small screen shortcomings, but sounds sweet

When we reviewed the diminutive Philips GoGear Spark MP3 player back in March, we were quietly impressed. Now that Philips has introduced the larger Opus, it’s time to see if the Spark was just a flash in the pan. Philips GoGear SA5295 Opus Philips has clearly followed the old axiom of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 08:02
Error time counts towards FOI rejections

Information Tribunal finds fubars favourable

An organisation is allowed to count time spent on errors in calculating when it can refuse a Freedom Of Information (FOI) Act request, the Information Tribunal has ruled. FOI legislation says that public bodies must give people the information they ask for in an official request. They are allowed, though, to refuse the request …

Law 10 Jun 2009, 08:34
DoJ steps up Google Books probe

Book monopoly hits buffers

The US Department of Justice is deepening its investigation into Google's Book deal. The search giant has scanned some seven million books since 2004 and last year made a $125m settlement with the Association of American Publishers and the Author's Guild over copyright concerns. The agreement allows authors to either claim a …

Law 10 Jun 2009, 09:16
Beeb invites net comments from unconnected

No internet? Tell us online!

The BBC is currently probing the shocking news that 17 million Britons, or 30 per cent of the population, are currently without an internet connection - and that 43 per cent of those wouldn't poke the interwebs with a sharp stick even if they were given a free PC and broadband. Fair enough, but what raises this particular …

Bootnotes 10 Jun 2009, 09:16
Phorm gets £15m lifeline

Phew!

Phorm has today raised a £15m war chest by selling almost a fifth of itself to institutional investors at less than a quarter of its price last year. It'll use the cash to cover its operating costs while ISPs continue to mull its web monitoring and profiling system. The firm sold 3.3 million shares at £4.50 each. It has been …

Financial News 10 Jun 2009, 09:18
People without broadband in 'I don't want broadband' shock

Bleeding ~~edge~~ obvious research

Hats off to Ofcom, which today reveals the main reasons why 30 per cent of the country aren't connected to the internet at home - they either don't want it or can't afford it. The amazing finding is part of the communications regulator's research ahead of the government's final Digital Britain report, due later this month. One …

Bootnotes 10 Jun 2009, 09:39
Snow Leopard kisses ZFS bye-bye

Forever?

Apple's Snow Leopard padded across the Mac World for the first time in public this week, accompanied by its silent twin, Snow Leopard Server - leaving little trace of ZFS. ZFS is Sun's 128-bit Zettabyte File System with advanced data protection and storage virtualisation features. Sun had said Apple would adopt it. The …

Storage 10 Jun 2009, 10:12
Indian outsourcers prepare for US trade war

You don't want our software? We don't want your guns

India’s outsourcers are girding their loins for a trade war with the US over Barack Obama’s attack on US companies who export jobs and hide profits overseas. President Obama outlined a plan last month to encourage US firms – especially tech outfits – to stop spinning jobs overseas. The idea of “US jobs” being done by cheaper …

Channel Register 10 Jun 2009, 10:15
Wirelessly-powered phones on sale within four years, says Nokia

Handsets will convert radiation into usable power

Nokia has claimed that by 2013 it could become possible to recharge your phone from the ambient electromagnetic radiation (AER) emitted by Wi-Fi transmitters, mobile phone antennae and TV masts. The Finnish phone firm has developed a prototype AER phone able to suck up 3-5mW of power, but said it’s working towards a prototype …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 10:37
Zaphod Beeblebrox home sun 'shrinking', may have blown up

Improbable events in vicinity of Betelgeuse

The red giant star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion - famed as the home sun of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect - is shrinking rapidly. Astronomers say that it has shrunk by 15 per cent since 1993, by which they mean that it actually did so in the mid 16th century. It may, in …

Space 10 Jun 2009, 10:38
MPs slap HMRC for lack of joined-up IT

Gotta spend to save

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has said it cannot afford the £250m required to join up its disparate IT systems so it could create a single tax record for every taxpayer. The Public Accounts Committee investigated how the Revenue could do a better job of dealing with tax debt. The Revenue was owed £17.3bn on 31 March 2008, …

Government 10 Jun 2009, 10:39
Insurance giant rapped on knuckles over DPA breach

Amicus in doghouse over stolen, unencrypted laptop

Insurance firm Amicus Legal has been put on notice for breaches of the Data Protection Act, after it failed to protect sensitive customer data on a laptop that was subsequently stolen. The laptop, privately owned by a contracted consultant, contained an estimated 100,000 unencrypted customer records. The sensitive data held on …

CIO 10 Jun 2009, 10:39
One fifth of humanity deprived of Milky Way

None more ~~black~~ light

One-fifth of the world's population is deprived of the pleasure of viewing the Milky Way in all its splendour - thanks, you guessed it, to light pollution. However, this for once is not a case of developing world citizens yet again being sold short, because the light-out specifically affects "two thirds of the US population …

Space 10 Jun 2009, 10:44
Next-gen Atom to launch in October, say moles

'Pine Trail' coming sooner than thought?

Intel has said that its next-generation Atom processor for netbooks - codenamed 'Pine Trail' - will debut in Q4, but it now appears we can narrow that down to 'early Q4'. Asian moles say the CPU - to come to market as the Atom N450 - will launch in October. The 64-bit capable part will run at the same speed as today's N280, 1. …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 10:52
Google boss claims no sting from Bing - yet

No strip search required

Google CEO Eric Schmidt insisted yesterday that Mountain View wasn’t concerned about the arrival of Bing, even as stats for Microsoft’s revamped search engine made a healthy upward swing following its launch last week. "It's not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year," said Schmidt in an interview with …

Applications 10 Jun 2009, 10:55
Software to turn iPhones, Pres into virtual pens grabs award

Halting State style air-writing 'within months'

An undergraduate engineering student in America has won an award for developmental software which allows accelerometer-equipped smartphones - for instance the renowned Jesus Mobe and new kid the Palm Pre - to be used as "pens" for writing or drawing on the air in front of a user. Text or images are generated within the phone and …

Mobile 10 Jun 2009, 11:37
Thrustmaster gets into the tennis racket

Serves up Wii peripheral pair

Tennis elbow is no longer the preserve of Murray and Federer, because a Wii peripheral has been served up that’s... well... a tennis racket with integrated Remote. Thrustmaster's Tennis Duo Pack NW The concept behind the Tennis Duo Pack NW is simple: just slot your Remote into either racket’s handle and you’re ready to …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 11:45
Japanese pop pineapple recovers from Swede mashing

Full of beans, music vid shows

We're delighted to report that Japanese pop pineapple Hideki Kaji evidently recovered from the mashing he received at the hands of thieves in April, and was able to complete the video for his musical meisterwork Passion Fruits. To recap, Kaji was shooting in Malmö, and "when the film team took a break and the cameramen left …

Bootnotes 10 Jun 2009, 12:05
US extradition could push McKinnon 'towards suicide'

'Fragile' UFO enthusiast fights on

Gary McKinnon is "too fragile" to extradite to the US to face trial over his admitted computer hacking offences, his lawyers argue. Barristers representing McKinnon presented expert testimony that the stress of a US extradition and trial could push the 43 year-old, who suffers from Aspberger's Syndrome, towards psychosis or …

Law 10 Jun 2009, 12:08
STEC answers the billion dollar question

Comment Market capitalisation hits ten figures

Solid state drive supplier STEC has joined the big boys, having attained a billion dollar market capitalisation. In the first quarter of the year its net revenue was $63.5m, 25 per cent higher than the year-ago quarter. Net profit was up a strong 61 per cent at $2.9m, driven by higher product shipments. It reckons its second …

Storage 10 Jun 2009, 12:09
Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II

Review Swift and accurate A3 inkjet

Medium format colour inkjet printers, which sit between standard A4 and wide format production machines, fill a fairly specialised niche. Capable of printing full-bleed A3+ pages, Canon’s Pixma Pro9000 Mark II is aimed at photo enthusiasts or semi-professional photographers. Semi-pros might prefer to use it for proofing than end …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 12:20
Dell turns Cloud into bite-sized chunks for enterprises

Live webcast Mix and match

The Register expert panel is quizzing Dell on its move into services with cloud-optimized SaaS offerings live and online. Readers can join the debate and fire their own questions from 11am PST, 2pm EST, 7pm BST on 16 June. Listen to Dell talk about its new Modular Services and check out the slide deck for the company's take on …

Site News 10 Jun 2009, 12:28
Bates accuses porn cops of misleading public

Day of reckoning in Ore cases draws nearer

Jim Bates, once recognised as one of the country’s leading computer forensic experts, has made the extraordinary claim that senior police officers in Avon & Somerset and in the Met’s Child Exploitation Online Protection Team (CEOP) have deliberately stirred up and misled public opinion, in an effort to distract attention from a …

Policing 10 Jun 2009, 12:38
London's e-van drivers club together

Leccy Tech Drive to encourage electric, discourage diesel

London’s leccy van users have locked arms in the hope of persuading the city’s petrol and diesel van drivers to support Mayor Boris Johnson's initiative to make London the world’s e-vehicle capital. Sainsbury's already uses e-vans and plans to support the project The plan is that all of the capital's leccy van users will …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 12:45
Apollo 11 - The Owners' Workshop Manual

Haynes celebrates 40th anniversary of Moon landing

DIY vehicle maintenance publisher par excellence Haynes has agreeably decided to mark the forthcoming 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing by releasing a commemorative Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual. Of course, the book doesn't actually invite you to wander down to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC …

Space 10 Jun 2009, 13:24
Cartoon lion urges Lancs kids to dob in terrorist classmates

Guy Fawkes left-footer extremists particularly feared

Primary schoolchildren in Lancashire are to be shown a police-produced film warning about the danger from terrorists, and urging them to report anyone with "extremist views" to the authorities. The message is illustrated using the story of Catholic extremist Guy Fawkes, whose views apparently "began forming" while he was at …

Policing 10 Jun 2009, 13:37
IT upturn? Not this year, say disties

Flat is the new growth

The world’s top distributors have said that the channel might be near the bottom of the slump, but strong growth may not be seen until 2011. A galaxy of disty CEOs landed in London yesterday for a meeting of the Global Technology Distribution Council. GTDC CEO Tim Curran’s presentation highlighted the industry’s resilience in …

Channel Register 10 Jun 2009, 13:38
Nursery worker faces child sex charges

Computer and mobile search leads to arrests

Devon police have charged a nursery worker with seven offences including sexual assault and making and distributing indecent images of children. Vanessa George, 39, from Efford in Plymouth, a member of staff at Little Ted’s Child Day Care Unit in Laira, was arrested at her home on Monday night. She was targeted after images …

Policing 10 Jun 2009, 14:16
Whizz for Atoms: inside Intel's next netbook generation

Picking up the 'Pine Trail'

Intel's Atom initiative may have proved successful so far, but the chip giant has done itself no favours by releasing two versions of the chip. Intel's Diamondville: Pineview will be bigger, thanks to the on-board GPU and memory controller Atom is currently available in two forms: 'Silverthorne' and 'Diamondville'. One's …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 14:39
Samsung dominates SSD market

STEC takes second place

Samsung is the lead supplier in the half billion dollar SSD market, according to a Gartner research note reported by DigiTimes. It had $185.88m revenues, constituting a 31.7 per cent share of the $585m market in 2008, and up 14.8 per cent from its 2007 share. Storage array SSD supplier STEC was second with $92.06m, 15.7 per …

Channel Register 10 Jun 2009, 14:43
Texas cop tasers gobby granny

Speeding ticket spat ends with a shock

A gobby 72-year-old Texas great-grandmother who got a bit physically "non-compliant" after being pulled for speeding copped a light tasering for her trouble, ABC reports. Officer Chris Bieze collared Kathryn Winkfein en route to Austin doing 60mph in a 45mph zone. The Travis County "dashcam" vid - shot in May but released this …

Bootnotes 10 Jun 2009, 14:44
Samsung shows off video-capable colour e-paper

For reading books or watching films?

Samsung has demoed a small panel that functions as both colour e-paper and as a video display. Samsung's screen works like e-paper and displays video Image courtesy of Tech On The 10.2in active-matrix LCD was shown off at a recent display exhibition in Texas, where Samsung told website Tech On that the panel uses a form of …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 14:49
One millionth English 'word' is... Web 2.0

Jai Ho! as n00b celebrates Landmark 0.2

It's official: The one millionth English "word" is "Web 2.0", which secured the the crown earlier today, beating "Jai Ho!"*, "n00b" and "Slumdog" in the race to linguistic glory in the process. That's according to the Global Language Monitor, which was uncannily able to predict back in May the exact moment this milestone would …

Bootnotes 10 Jun 2009, 15:02
StrongWebmail holds up hands to hack, plots further challenge

Er... best of three, chaps?

StrongWebmail has conceded that a group of ethical hackers beat its systems to claim a $10,000 prize, while reiterating its commitment to callback verification technology and plotting a further "hacker challenge". The US start-up was so confident of its claims to provide a secure webmail and calendar service that it challenged …

Enterprise Security 10 Jun 2009, 15:30
HP serves up cookie sheet servers

The lighter way to enjoy data

Hewlett-Packard has launched its own variant on the "cookie sheet" minimalist server design championed by Google and imitated by commercial server makers. Taking out weight and cost in servers among hyperscale data center operators is as important as power conservation and performance, which is one of the things that makes …

Servers 10 Jun 2009, 15:30
iPhone 'photo lawyer' app to take the stand

'You sold a clone Mac, and we've got proof'

Register Hardware has seen some bizarre iPhone applications in the past, but this one may take the cake? We’ve come across one that, the developer claims, puts a lawyer in your iPhone. Shoot & Proof turns your iPhone into a legal eagle. Allegedly. Shoot & Proof, developed by French firm Codasystems, works with your iPhone’s …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 15:38
Amazon, Apple dish up $300,000 to 'musical crims'

Better than busking for a living

A gang of cyber fraudsters were arrested this morning after allegedly making tens of thousands of pounds by buying their own records from Apple iTunes and Amazon using stolen credit cards. Nine people are currently being held in custody following arrests at addresses in London and the West Midlands earlier today. The …

Crime 10 Jun 2009, 16:04
Acer Android smartphone pencilled for November launch

Mole reveals all...

Acer will unveil its first Android-based smartphone in November, according to reports coming out of Taiwan The firm has already announced plans to launch an Android smart phone this year, but has so far only confirmed that the mystery device will appear at some point in Q4. “Industry sources”, who revealed the November launch …

reghardware 10 Jun 2009, 16:35
France suspends Three Strikes

World Copyright Summit Libretard hunting declared unconstitutional

France's constitutional court today deemed the Hadopi law illegal. Judges deemed that two parts of the legislation also nicknamed "Three Strikes" - the backers prefer "graduated response" - contravened two major areas of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, articles 5, 9 and 11. Hadopi (the acronym of the …

Media 10 Jun 2009, 17:14
AMD claws cash back from Intel

Squeeze to continue

AMD may have flubbed the launch of its first quad-core processors but it managed to claw back a few points of revenue share against Intel in the first quarter of 2009. Worldwide microprocessor chip revenues across all architectures and vendors, meanwhile, dropped off a cliff to hit $6.9bn, down 20.6 per cent from the $8.6bn in …

Business 10 Jun 2009, 17:52
Yahoo! exposes very own stuffed elephant code

Hadoop Summit Distributed data-crunching distro

Yahoo! has released its own Hadoop distro, an internet-scale distributed data-crunching platform based on the Apache open-source project that underpins several of the web’s highest profile sites, including Yahoo!, Facebook, and - amusingly - Microsoft’s Bing. Inspired by Google-published research papers describing Mountain …

Software 10 Jun 2009, 18:09
AMD fab spin-off to break super-skinny ground

Globalfoundries' NY wafer baker

Globalfoundries, AMD's fab spin-off, has officially pledged to start construction of New-York-state plant targeting bleeding-edge 32nm and smaller-process silicon. The company said Tuesday it sent a formal commitment letter to the state of New York for the construction of Fab 2 facilities at the Luther Forest Technology Campus …

PCs & Chips 10 Jun 2009, 18:27
OpenSolaris ported to ARM chips

ZFS for netbooks?

Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris project has quietly announced the operating system that just added support for Sparc has now been ported to ARM - commonly used in embedded devices, handhelds and, increasingly, netbooks. It is perhaps an indication of how just stressful things are at Sun these days, with the $5.6bn acquisition by …

Operating Systems 10 Jun 2009, 19:23
iPhone reigns at Apple design awards

WWDC So much for widgets

The iPhone's ascent as a full-fledged development environment was in evidence Tuesday night when the 2009 Apple Design Awards were announced at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Since they were instituted in 1997 as the Human Interface Design Excellence Awards - and nicknamed the Heidi's - the Apple Design …

Mobile 10 Jun 2009, 19:49
Network giants reject 'buy American' Obama mandate

Parts are cheap, labor is not

Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent want "buy American" provisions stricken from Barack Obama's $7.2bn US stimulus program to expand broadband internet access. Bloomberg has reported the networking giants have filed complaints with the federal agency overseeing broadband funds, saying a mandate for US parts would be "grossly …

Data Networking 10 Jun 2009, 21:07
T-Mobile downplays hacking fears

'No evidence customer data compromised'

T-Mobile USA is fighting suggestions its systems were breached by hackers with a new statement clarifying that although the limited data posted on an underground forum was genuine its ongoing investigation has uncovered no evidence of a wider compromise. Hackers published system config files from T-Mobile's US network on …

Security 10 Jun 2009, 21:56
America's radio lobby 'fighting dirty'

World Copyright Summit 'Snot fair, says RIAA

Who's the most powerful entertainment lobby in the United States? Your answer must be someone who makes Congressmen and Senators quake - irrespective of their party, for generation after generation. And furthermore, that passes legislation that puts the US outside international norms, as a sort of outlaw. Hollywood? That's …

Media 10 Jun 2009, 22:18
'Tens of thousands' of US students sign up for legal P2P

World Copyright Summit Paying to be guinea pigs, apparently

Tens of thousands of students have signed up to pay for a legal P2P music program in US universities, set to start later this year in experimental form. It's Choruss, the incubator hatched by Jim Griffin - a long-time advocate of licensing P2P sharing on networks. Choruss won't ultimately be in the retail or service business, …

Media 10 Jun 2009, 22:43
Crypto attack puts digital sig hash on collision course

SHA-1, your time is near

Cryptographers have found new chinks in a widely-used digital-signature algorithm that have serious consequences for applications that sign email, validate websites, and carry out dozens of other online authentication functions. The researchers, from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, found a way to break the SHA-1 …

Security 10 Jun 2009, 22:55
Yahoo! defies Facebook with Hadoop SQL dupe

Hadoop Summit Open-source disharmony in stuffed elephant land

Much to the chagrin of Facebook, Yahoo! is developing its own SQL-like language for Hadoop, the open-source distributed data-crunching platform that's well on its way to conquering the planet. Facebook has already developed and open-sourced its own Hadoop SQL, known as Hive. But Yahoo! says it needs a Hive alternative that's …

Developer 10 Jun 2009, 23:00
Bing 'better' than Google for advertisers

The eyes have it

We've had the $100m ad campaign, a porn scandal, denials, and an initial surge. Increasingly, though, it's looking like a search engine really is just a search engine and that there's very little to differentiate Microsoft's Bing from Google - other than one's personal taste. One user research specialist, though, reckons Bing …

Media 10 Jun 2009, 23:06