26th June 2009 Archive

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Apple sued for ~~30¢~~ $5m

Gift card gamble gone awry?

Now that all the world's injustices have been resolved, peace and harmony reign throughout the land, and the lion has lain down with the lamb, a US court has been asked to resolve the last remaining inequity still disturbing our perfected existence: Whether Apple's iTunes gift cards misrepresent the cost of an iTunes tune. …

Media 26 Jun 2009, 00:17
Great Australian Firewall to censor online games

Must suit the 15-year-old mind

The Great Australian Firewall will try blocking websites that host or sell video games not suitable for children under the age of 15. A spokesman for Senator for Victoria Stephen Conroy told The Age on Thursday that the government's internet censorship regime will extend to downloadable and web-based games that don't meet …

Media 26 Jun 2009, 00:22
Cash-strapped LucidEra 'exploring options'

Reality of SaaS and Salesforce.com

One-time software-as-a-service poster child LucidEra seems to have shut its doors for want of cash from its venture-capital backers. Co-founder and chief marketing officer Ken Rudin told The Reg that LucidEra is "exploring its options," saying it's "just really, really bad timing to have to be raising your next round of …

Financial News 26 Jun 2009, 00:58
Sun CTO douses own cloud in cold water

Structure 09 Amazon appears with hair dryer

Despite his employer Sun Microsystems fashioning an Amazon-like public cloud, chief technology officer Greg Papadopoulos doubts enterprises will move their existing applications onto this or any other data center in the sky. But Amazon cloud prophet Werner Vogels disagrees. "I'll pour a little bit of cloud water on this," …

Software 26 Jun 2009, 01:36
Firms must go to court to stop all counterfeit hauls

HMRC policy change could cost IP rights holders

Companies will have to go to court every time they want counterfeit goods to be stopped at the UK's borders following a policy change that could send costs soaring for intellectual property rights holders. The change means that a rights holders will need to take court action within 10 days every time it wants suspected …

The Channel 26 Jun 2009, 07:02
LG XD4 500GB

Review Not enough capacity by half?

There's plenty to commend LG's XD4 external hard drive for: it looks good, it's reasonably quiet and it comes with some handy extras. It's not without its quirks, mind. LG's XD4: behind the curve? The 500GB XD4 we tested comes in a 185 x 122 x 36mm matte black shell with glossy rims - red and white versions are also …

Hardware 26 Jun 2009, 08:02
ISPs vs BBC iPlayer: Missing the point?

Industry opinion BT Wholesale is villain of the piece, Entanet argues

The last month has seen substantial media coverage of the latest row that has erupted between BT Retail and a number of content providers including the BBC. However, we think a fundamental issue is being missed. Instead of BT Retail focusing attention on the BBC et al to contribute to its increasing costs, it should instead be …

Broadband 26 Jun 2009, 08:02
BT axes 20 jobs at Dabs.com

Warehouse staff despatched

BT has laid off 20 Dabs.com staff at the e-tailer's Bolton warehouse. The online electrical retailer told employees about the latest round of job cuts yesterday morning. A Dabs.com spokesman confirmed it had axed jobs to The Register "We regularly review our organisation to ensure we are efficiently organised to deliver the …

The Channel 26 Jun 2009, 08:50
Garmin wrestles with failing satnavs

Fix posted, but problems persist for some

Garmin has landed itself in a sticky situation following a spate of complaints claiming the the firm's satnavs are faulty. Over the past few days, rather a lot of Garmin Nüvi 7x5 satnav owners have written in online forums that their devices suddenly started having difficulties finding satellites or updating their firmware. …

Science 26 Jun 2009, 09:06
Is Ocarina missing a trick?

Opinion Joining the external drive gold rush

Ocarina dedupes/compresses image files like no other product, and is selling into image-rich businesses like media companies - but that's not where the most images are. Is Ocarina missing a trick? Most image files are sitting on people's PCs, notebooks, external drives and phones. In an average family set-up there could be …

The Channel 26 Jun 2009, 09:14
Web swoons as Jackson dies

Shock death trips up news sites, concert venue

The death of Michael Jackson yesterday brought US websites low as fans old and instant sought to confirm they were indeed experiencing their own JFK moment. Gossip site TMZ is credited with being the first to report that the 50 year old Jackson had been found unconscious at his LA home and had been taken to hospital after …

Media 26 Jun 2009, 09:23
US kids busy bullying, sexy texting

Mobile is weapon of choice for mean/horny teens

A survey of 655 US teenagers aged 13 to 18 has revealed disturbing amounts of bullying going on via the mobile phone networks, despite the fact that most of them seem to understand the risks of sharing too much data online. The Teen Online and Wireless Safety survey was carried out by Cox communications in conjunction with the …

Mobile 26 Jun 2009, 09:28
Apple MacBook Pro firmware fritzes third-party HDDs

Fast Sata drives fail post patch

Apple's firmware upgrade, which restores the 3Gb/s Sata link speed to MacBook Pros, has also caused some 'unauthorised' hard drives to fail. An Apple Discussion board thread has 65 comments about the issue, which may occur when the Apple-shipped drive in the MacBook Pro is replaced with a third-party drive and the fast Sata …

Hardware 26 Jun 2009, 09:30
HP shows off Simple home backup

Let me taste your ware

HP has extended its home external storage offering with SimpleSave portable and desktop products using WD drives. The USB-connected products come with software which provides "simple and automatic backup for photos, video, music and data". The idea is that the software scans a desktop or notebook PC's hard drive looking for …

Storage 26 Jun 2009, 09:40
Spammers swift to exploit Jackson death to punt malware

Updated Who's bad?

Miscreants have wasted no time exploiting the shock death of Michael Jackson to run email harvesting and banking Trojan campaigns. Security watchers warn that more malware-laced emails themed around the death of the King of Pop and Charlie's Angels star Farrah Fawcett, who also died on Thursday, are likely to follow. Just …

Security 26 Jun 2009, 09:47
Boffins 'cage the demon' of white phosphorus

Moleculo-prison could neutralise hellfire weapon

Cambridge boffins have discovered a crafty molecular "cage" which can be used to imprison the "demon" chemical, white phosphorus, famous for burning inextinguishably and for its sometimes questionable military uses. Cleanup and transport of white phosphorus should now become much simpler and safer. Phosphorus, as the Cambridge …

Science 26 Jun 2009, 10:48
Rogue knob could ground space shuttle Atlantis

Wedged between dashboard and window, and refusing to budge

NASA is pondering how to remove a rogue knob which has firmly wedged itself between a window and the dashboard of space shuttle Atlantis - an apparently minor affair which could actually result in a six-month delay in the venerable vehicle's STS-129 mission to the International Space Station, or even see the shuttle grounded for …

Science 26 Jun 2009, 10:51
iPhone 3G S unlock path discovered

Liberation from O2, AT&T etc coming soon?

Hardware hackers the iPhone Dev Team claim to have discovered a way to both unlock and jailbreak the new iPhone 3G S. The group said that the so-called '24Kpwn' exploit – originally identified on the iPhone 2G – “is still applicable to the boot Rom of the iPhone 3G S”. The team thinks the exploit is the result of Apple …

Phones 26 Jun 2009, 10:56
In-building coverage: What’s the problem?

Signal suckers

Most mobile calls, voice and data, are made inside a building – at home, at work, in the shops. Although the issue of adequate coverage in business premises has not been critical up to now, this is increasingly more than just a nagging concern for many organisations. In some cases, such as emergency services, good in-building …

Mobile 26 Jun 2009, 11:13
Qantas cancels $3bn Dreamliner order

Cites 'worsening economic environment'

Oz airline Qantas has cancelled its $3bn order for 15 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, the BBC reports. Qantas said the decision was due to "the worsening economic environment" and not the repeated delays in the 787 programme which was earlier this week knocked back for a fifth time due to "a need to reinforce an area within the side- …

Science 26 Jun 2009, 11:17
Firefox 3.5 gets third release candidate

Final countdown?

Mozilla Corporation spun out a third release candidate for Firefox 3.5 yesterday. The latest near-ready version of the open source browser contains minor fixes and tweaks to the new features loaded into Firefox 3.5. The latest RC build is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 70 different languages, said Mozilla …

Applications 26 Jun 2009, 11:18
Why would anyone run their own base station?

Comment Saying goodbye to home Wi-Fi

With Europe's first femtocell deployment due in two weeks, it's worth taking a moment to consider why you might want to spend your money on extending your operator's coverage, if not just from general goodwill. On Tuesday Vodafone announced that from 1 July UK punters will be able to buy their very own base station to extend …

Mobile 26 Jun 2009, 11:22
PC repair techs police dangerous picture law

Careful where you surf

A visit to your PC repair shop could be swiftly followed by a trip to court and a short stay in your local jail if it harbours any remotely questionable material - whether you knew about it or not. That, at least, is the fear as the latest confirmed outing for the Dangerous Pictures Act sees one individual prosecuted after a PC …

Law 26 Jun 2009, 11:57
ICANN appoints former cybersecurity chief as new boss

Provocative pick

Internet oversight agency ICANN has hired former US cybersecurity chief Rod Beckstrom as its next boss. Beckstrom, who resigned his post as Director of the National Cybersecurity Centre at the Department of Homeland Security back in March in a protest over increased meddling by the NSA and lack of funding, was voted in as the …

Security 26 Jun 2009, 12:05
HSBC online banking goes off the wall

Coughs to 'intermittent issues' as users vent spleen

Many HSBC customers are currently struggling to access the company's online banking system. In the past few hours a number of Register readers have complained that they were unable to log on to the service. Some were greeted with the bog standard web error message "We are unable to deal with your request. Please try again …

Management 26 Jun 2009, 12:08
Dell takes Reg readers to the Cloud

What's in it for them?

Last week Samy Aboel-Nil, Dell market dev director, popped into Vulture Central to discuss the company’s ambitious drive into Cloud-based software and security services. Those who missed the live webcast/ slideshow can now tune into the on-demand edition. Samy linked up with The Register’s event moderator Tim Phillips and Dan …

Management 26 Jun 2009, 12:16
Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain

Special report How web giants are stealing the future of knowledge

The public domain is the greatest resource in human history: eventually all knowledge will become part of it. Its riches serve all mankind, but it faces a new threat. Vast libraries of public domain works are being plundered by claims of "copyright". It's called copyfraud - and we'll discover how large corporations like Google, …

Law 26 Jun 2009, 12:21
Samsung to drop 1.8in HDDs, focus on SSD?

Will lead to thin'n'light laptop shortages, moles warn

Samsung has canned the development of 1.8in hard disks in favour of a focus on solid-state drives, it has been claimed. The allegation was made by Taiwanese notebook-maker moles who say the move will mean there are fewer 1.8in drives available for thin'n'light laptops, currently being keenly promoted by the likes of Intel as …

Hardware 26 Jun 2009, 12:37
Seagate shines under Luczo's law

Comment New CEO broom sweeps clean

Luczo's law seems to suit Seagate - it's just raised its quarterly revenue guidance. Since ousting Bill Watkins six months ago in January, and retaking the CEO reins, board chairman Stephen Luczo has reshaped Seagate, cut costs, and regained 2.5-inch drive parity with Western Digital, if not leadership, positioning the company …

Storage 26 Jun 2009, 12:40
Contactless payment tech in all phones next year, says Ericsson boss

Killer phone feature for 2010?

All mobile phones will feature Near Field Communications (NFC) technology within 12 months, a mobile industry executive has claimed. While speaking at a recent company event in Stockholm, Håkan Djuphammar, Ericsson's VP of systems architecture, said: “A year from now, basically every new phone that's sold will have [Near Field …

Phones 26 Jun 2009, 12:55
DARPA: Can we have a one-cabinet petaflop supercomputer?

With 'self-aware OS' so anyone can program it, please

Famous US military crazytech agency DARPA has issued a challenge to the IT community: do you think it's possible to build a petaflop supercomputer that fits in a single air-cooled 19 inch cabinet and requires no more than 57 kilowatts of power? One which requires no special programming skills to use? The challenge is laid out …

HPC 26 Jun 2009, 13:26
Electric plane takes to the skies

Leccy Tech But is yet to earn its sales wings

Chinese model aircraft maker Yuneec has unveiled what may soon become the world’s first commercially available electric aircraft. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The E430 has a 13.8m wingspan and is powered by a 40kw (54bhp) electric motor. Its maker stated that the plane has a flight time of …

Science 26 Jun 2009, 13:37
Ten of the best... iPhone beaters

Round-up The iconic Apple's hard to swallow? Try these tasty smartphone bites instead

The iPhone 3G S is now upon us, bringing with it incredible new things like MMS, video recording, laptop tethering, stereo Bluetooth and the marvel of cut and paste. Hang on. Haven't other smartphones been doing this sort of thing for ages? While iPhone mania shows no sign of dissipating among the faithful, another big …

Phones 26 Jun 2009, 13:58
Blue chip FTP logins found on cybercrime server

Monster breach exposes Amazon and BBC to compromise

Security researchers have found a treasure chest of FTP passwords, some from high profile sites, on an open cybercrime server. Jacques Erasmus, CTO at security tools firm Prevx, stumbled across a site where a Trojan is uploading FTP login credentials captured from compromised machines. So far, Erasmus has found logins for ftp. …

Security 26 Jun 2009, 14:13
Google's real YouTube strategy

Telco 2.0 Meet the new boss

There is an ongoing debate about the size of the losses at YouTube and for how much longer the parent, Google, can afford to fund its errant child’s excessive lifestyle. Credit Suisse put a high price on it; Brough Turner criticised their analysis; RampRate decisively debunked it. The debate has focused upon YouTube as a …

Media 26 Jun 2009, 14:44
Apple races developer to censor smut

Nothing to see here, anymore

Yesterday's apparent opening of the iPhone to adult content has turned into a race between Apple and the developer about who decided to remove the application from iTunes and why. First the "Hottest Girls" application was available, then it disappeared and the finger was quickly pointed at Apple's moralistic stance on …

Mobile 26 Jun 2009, 15:01
Freeview HD to debut in December

New set-top box for Xmas...

The first BBC HD broadcasts on Freeview will start in December, it has been confirmed. Manchester and Liverpool will be the first cities to get Freeview HD, said Graham Plumb, Head of Distribution Technology at BBC Operations. This will happen on 2 December, when the free HD signal will be switched on at the Winter Hill …

Hardware 26 Jun 2009, 15:36
Man+dog plunged into 'faecal lagoon'

Totally crap Swedish sh*t pit ordeal

The powers that be are investigating just why Swedish bloke Thomas Sundberg and his mutt Rex weren't warned of an impending ducking in a "faecal lagoon" at Kramfors-Sollefteå airport - a merdurinous "pool of filth" into which they were without warning cast. According to the Tidningen Ångermanland newspaper, the pair's innocent …

Bootnotes 26 Jun 2009, 15:38
Faux Foreign Secretary dupes UK press with Jackson Tweet

David Miliband does not have Web2.0rhea

British MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband did not Tweet about the death of Michael Jackson yesterday. But this fact was lost on The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mirror, The Evening Standard, and the AFP news service. In their rush to turn Web2.0rhea into news, each was duped into believing that Miliband …

Media 26 Jun 2009, 17:27
Facebook knuckle-raps Intel, AMD

'The server vendors have failed us'

While social networking site Facebook doesn't seem inclined to pull a Google and build all of its own servers, the company's top techies are frustrated enough with the current crop of x64 boxes that they may be giving the idea some thought. Speaking at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco yesterday, Jonathan Heiliger, …

Servers 26 Jun 2009, 17:55
Apple ups stake in UK mobile chippery

Updated Still chasing Intel

Apple and Intel have seen the future, and it's mobile - and both companies are putting big money into a UK company whose chip designs are becoming increasingly attractive to companies battling in the mobile arena. In a brief statement today, mobile-graphics chip designer Imagination Technologies announced that Apple had …

Hardware 26 Jun 2009, 18:32
UK climate change funding cut by 25%

Weather soothsayers lose £4.3m

The Met Office, home of UK weather soothsaying, is getting its climate research budget chopped by a quarter after the Ministry of Defence ended financial support to focus on "current operations." A loss of £4.3m ($7m) funding will hit the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, according to the science journal Nature. The …

Government 26 Jun 2009, 20:19
Google Android code goes native

Dalvik VM hugs C, C++

Android developers can now slip native code into apps written for Android-based devices using Google's new native development kit (NDK). The Android 1.5 NDK, which was announced Thursday on the Android developers blog, doesn't actually allow developers to run completely native code on devices. Instead, it supports adding …

Developer 26 Jun 2009, 20:24
eBay scuffles with Skype founders

Dueling lawsuits threaten IPO

eBay's plan to spin off Skype with an initial public offering in 2010 is being threatened by a dispute with the VoIP service's co-founders, who still own a key part of the software. Bloomberg reports Skype's founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have accused eBay of breaching a licensing deal and are threatening to yank …

Media 26 Jun 2009, 21:50
Ecopocalypse causes giant fish ears

First Vulcans, then Obama, now les poissons

Under the sea, fish are growing abnormally large ear bones - and it's all our fault. According to a study published Friday in the prestigious journal Science, boffins at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at San Diego's University of California have discovered that rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the world's …

Science 26 Jun 2009, 22:06
Judge says IBM dude gets the Dell (job)

IBM says dude touched its stuff

IBM was dealt a legal setback on Friday in its effort to prevent an ex-exec from taking a position at rival Dell. David Johnson, the former senior executive in charge of IBM's merger, acquisition, and divestiture strategy, was offered a similar job at Dell back in May, but Big Blue sued to stop Johnson from taking the job. …

Business 26 Jun 2009, 22:49