11th December 2009 Archive

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Mozilla man sends Firefoxers to Microsoft Bing

Schmidt privacy rant sparks Google snub

Mozilla director of community development Asa Dotzler - co-founder of the original Firefox project - has encouraged Firefox users to switch their search engine from Google to Microsoft Bing in the wake of Eric Schmidt's now infamous words on net privacy. In an interview aired by CNBC on Sunday, the Google boss insisted that …

Applications 11 Dec 01:48
Rambus soothes EC ire with lower prices

Antitrust charges dropped

The European Commission is letting Rambus off the hook now that the US firm has offered to cap licensing rates for some of its industry-standard chip technology. Europe's top antitrust regulator said Wednesday it has dropped charges against Rambus, makes no finding of liability, and will levy no fine against the company. …

PCs & Chips 11 Dec 06:02
Florida judges banned from 'friending' lawyers on Facebook

What would people think?!

Florida judges are barred from becoming Facebook friends with local lawyers because the online relation implies they're BFFs in RL, the Sunshine State's legal ethics board has decided. In November, the Florida Supreme Court's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee determined that judges cannot include lawyers as friends on certain …

Music and Media 11 Dec 06:02
Parcelforce to drop Windows 7 compatibility through letterbox in New Year

Should old Vista, Linux acquaintance be forgot?

Parcelforce plans to overhaul its website early next year to allow Windows 7 users to access its service. As we reported yesterday, The Royal Mail's parcel delivery website has been upsetting some Windows 7 fans, because the service doesn't support Microsoft's latest operating system. Customers have been struggling to access …

Operating Systems 11 Dec 07:02
Apple preps adaptable gadget adapter

Behold the iSquishDock

Apple has filed a patent application for a gadget dock that conforms to the shape and size of whatever you plop upon it. The filing, self-confidently entitled "Aesthetically pleasing universal dock," describes a desktop charging and connectivity adapter that's constructed in such a way as to modify its grip to accommodate …

Music and Media 11 Dec 07:02
IBM punts Linux-only mainframes

Big MIPS, deep discounts

It's nearly a year before the next generation of mainframes is expected from IBM, and that means the marketing and sales people are going to have to get clever about packaging and pricing to peddle more MIPS. That is what the new Linux-only, mainframe-based Enterprise Linux Server is mostly about. IBM has been selling Linux on …

Servers 11 Dec 07:02
Linux devs exterminate security bugs from kernel

Ping of death killed again

Developers have exterminated two bugs from the Linux kernel that threatened the security of people using the open-source operating system. The most serious of the two is remote denial-of-service vulnerability that made it possible for attackers to crash systems by sending them oversized packets. The underlying null pointer …

Security 11 Dec 08:02
HTC HD2 'pink blob' patch produced

Camera glitch fixed

HTC has released a software patch designed to fix the Touch HD2 smartphone’s infamous ‘pink blob’ camera glitch. HTC's HD2 camera puts a pink-ish blob onto some images Source: GSM Arena The high-end handset only hit Blighty a few weeks ago, but users quickly began filling forums with complains that pictures taken using the …

reghardware 11 Dec 09:02
Steel-woven wallet pledges to keep RFID credit cards safe

Blocks wireless snoopers

Worried someone may try to wirelessly nab your personal details from those RFID cards in your wallet? Get some peace of mind with the “identity theft preventing privacy wallet”, its seller claims. We kid you not. According to its online retailer, the wallet is woven from over 20,000 super-fine strands of stainless steel which …

reghardware 11 Dec 09:06
Oracle plays hardball with Euro regulators

'Pretty damn confident' of approval for deal

Oracle remains confident that the European Union will cave in and abandon objections to its proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems. The firm gave evidence in Brussels yesterday, including support from several customers who believe that MySQL is not a serious competitor to Oracle's core database products. Thomas Vinje, one of …

Software 11 Dec 09:50
2009's Top E-book Readers

Kit of the Year For your reading enjoyment...

E-book viewers prompted plenty of Register Hardware reader interest during 2009, a year in which market stalwarts Sony and Amazon finally saw some notable rivals, iRiver in particular. In response, perhaps, Amazon started offering the US-centric Kindle to overseas buyers - will ours arrive in time to change the selection here? …

reghardware 11 Dec 10:02
Gov slams critical database report as opaque, flawed, inaccurate

Not the diplomatic dept then

The Government has slammed as opaque, inadequate and riddled with factual errors a think tank report that claimed that a quarter of Government databases were operating illegally. The Government has said the report was methodologically flawed. In March independent political reform body the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust published …

Government 11 Dec 10:13
James Cameron poised to make Fantastic Voyage

Rehash promises Avatar-style CG trickery

20th Century Fox is moving forward with plans to remake 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage, with James Cameron on board as producer and pensmith Shane Salerno (Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem) tasked with adapting the original. Fox has yet to appoint a director for the project. According to Variety, Roland Emmerich was linked to …

Entertainment 11 Dec 10:32
Secondary pupils get free iPhones in edu-app trials

Handheld handouts

Pupils at a London secondary school have been given iPhones to test applications for education A group of 30 pupils in years seven to 11 at Gumley House Convent School in Hounslow have begun to use the phones in class for the next seven months. Brentford City Learning Centre (CLC) is to run the trial along with technology …

Mobile 11 Dec 10:33
Acer's first 'Pine Trail' netbook: details emerge

Vendor acknowledgement

Acer's first netbook based on Intel's next-gen Atom processor has peered out of the shadows. The manufacturer has yet to announce the Aspire One 532h, but the machine has been added to the company's support site, albeit with nothing more than a single Bios update, dated 8 December 2009, to show for itself. Googling the …

reghardware 11 Dec 10:33
Asus said to be making gadget inspired by gadget Apple is said to be making

Little rumours have lesser rumours upon their backs to bite 'em

You just can't argue with this kind of tittle-tattle (surely, 'insightful speculation' - Ed), can you? Asus is said to be preparing a handheld tablet with a 4in and/or 7in display and both mobile internet device and tablet PC functionality. It'll be dubbed the Eee Pad. So says a 'source' cited by DigiTimes - no need for a …

reghardware 11 Dec 10:53
BA.com titsup

Airline's website grounded

British Airways has lost its website and doesn't know when its coming back. The site crashed offline at about 6am UK time and technical staff are still working out what the problem is, according to a spokesman. The airline apologised to customers and suggested they hit the phone and use the call centre (0844 493 0 787) rather …

IT Director 11 Dec 10:59
We made the kit that makes Freeview HD possible, boasts NEC

Still no one able to watch, though

NEC piped up this week to reveal it supplied the DVB-T2 kit used to begin Freeview HD broadcasts earlier this month. The installation of the NEC equipment was overseen by the BBC and Arqiva, the company that owns the UK's terrestrial transmitter network. "DVB-T2 technology will deliver an increase in capacity of 67 per cent …

reghardware 11 Dec 10:59
Kidnap fears kybosh charity car rally

Exclusive Bonkers banger race is no more

The Plymouth to Dakar Challenge - a charity drive across the Sahara using highly unsuitable cars - has been forced into a last minute cancellation because of warnings of al-Qaeda snatch squads targeting drivers on the route. The cars, which should cost less than £100, cross Europe and Morocco before entering Mauritania and …

Bootnotes 11 Dec 11:07
Dell goes on 10GbE binge

Update Unveils table laden with EqualLogic gear

Dell has announced a slew of 10GbE products, including new EqualLogic arrays and firmware, server FCoE adapters, and switches. The idea behind it is to provide end-to-end 10GbE linkage across the data centre covering servers, storage and network switches. There is an Infrastructure Manager to provision and manage application …

Data Networking 11 Dec 11:31
Boffins build bendy Flash array

Organic floating-gate transistors employed

Japanese boffins have created a flexible sheet of Flash memory out of organic transistors. The team, led by Takao Someya of the University of Japan's Applied Physics, and Electrical and Electronic Engineering departments, built the transistors using a dielectric material composed of a 2nm-thick polymer layer and a 4nm-thick …

reghardware 11 Dec 11:54
National space agency for Blighty, says Drayson

Skylon spaceplane fleet to follow? Hmm...

Biznovation minister Lord Drayson has announced that the UK is to get a proper space agency along the same lines as the USA's NASA, French CNES and German DLR. Until now, British government space business has been handled by a loose alliance of departments and research councils - though the UK commercial space sector has become …

Space 11 Dec 12:02
Hackers root Motorola Droid

Updated These are not the Droids you are hacking for

Hackers have successfully rooted Motorola's Droid smartphone, allowing users to install applications or services of their choice outside the set menu offered by operators. A hardware modder, rejoicing in the name Zinx Verituse, has developed and published a Droid rooting exploit. Instructions on how to break open Droid …

Mobile 11 Dec 12:04
Pig plague alert: Our safe sex guide

NSFW How to get it on in these high-risk times

Cosmopolitan's recent advice on how to avoid copping a dose of pig plague while getting your rocks off - specifically by avoiding the missionary position - prompted the Vulture Central Public Health Bureau to compile an equally nifty cut-out-and-keep guide. Yes indeed, you can't be too careful in these high-risk times, and …

Bootnotes 11 Dec 12:15
Headteachers slam 'disproportionate' vetting database

Cynical ISA makes claims they cannot support

Yet more bad news for the government’s vetting and barring scheme, which went live in October of this year. Head teachers today condemned it as bureaucratic and unlikely to guarantee the safety of those it is meant to protect. Meanwhile, claims that the scheme is the best solution on offer due to extensive and carefully …

Law 11 Dec 12:38
Microsoft urges Flash makers to pay fat dollar for exFAT format

Linux? Who they?

The brouhaha between Microsoft and Linux software vendor TomTom at the start of 2009 now seems - to Redmond at least - like a distant thunderclap. So much so that the firm spun out a program to licence the Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) format yesterday. Microsoft said it had created a “flexible licensing program” for …

Software 11 Dec 12:40
Liverpool declares itself an ID-free zone

Labour members back non-cooperation vote

Liverpool City Council passed a motion last night vowing not to co-operate with Home Office plans to extend its ID card trial to the city early next year. Liverpool and Blackburn have been apparently been chosen for the next stage of the trial - the cards are currently being piloted in Manchester. The Lib Dem council said it …

Government 11 Dec 12:54
Police snapper silliness reaches new heights

City of London employ new ironic policing tactics

After lagging well behind other forces for most of the year, City of London Police are now making a late surge to take the coveted El Reg prize for most absurd photographic intervention of 2009. We were not especially impressed by their sending of seven officers in three cars and a riot van to deal with architectural …

Policing 11 Dec 13:08
Nokia intros updated Comes With Music touchphone

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the 5235

Nokia has introduced its latest Comes With Music phone, the 5235, though the handset's not set to go on sale until Q1 2010. You can look up tracks on the handset's 3.2in, 640 x 360 touchscreen - or use it to look at pics you've snapped on the phone's 2Mp camera. The 5235 has a 3.5mm headphone socket, so you can listen to your …

reghardware 11 Dec 13:24
Last splash for Flash support on elderly PowerPC G3s

Vintage Mac gets version 10.1 swansong

Adobe will end Flash Player support for Apple’s aged PowerPC-based G3 machines after the release of version 10.1 of the software, which isn’t expected to land until early next year. Beyond Flash Player 10.1, Mac G3 fans will no longer be able to run the software on their computers. "The Adobe Flash Player 10.1 release, …

Applications 11 Dec 13:41
Canon Powershot S90

Review DSLR price and pretensions

The S90 marks the re-introduction of Canon’s acclaimed PowerShot S series. Aimed at the serious amateur or professional photographer, it combines full manual capability with the simple design of a point-and-shoot, all in a pocket size camera with near-DSLR performance. Unsurprisingly, it comes with the hefty price tag of £449 …

reghardware 11 Dec 13:45
Privacy furore forces partial climb-down from Facebook

Social network faces up to criticism

Facebook's revised privacy settings have been almost universally panned by users and security watchers, but at least one group is happy - internet marketers. A blog used by Facebook developers and marketers shows the group relishing the prospect that a lot more information is about to be shared. The only problem, for this …

ID 11 Dec 13:55
Sunday night is Geminid night

Cue cloud, rain and despair for annual meteor show

The Geminid meteors will this year peak at 05:10 GMT on Monday morning, guaranteeing that for 90 per cent of Reg readers, the hour will be marked by cloud, driving rain and the annual sense of despair which follows the vain hope that we might for once cop an eyeful of a decent lightshow. In the unlikely event that the skies …

Space 11 Dec 13:56
Moffat denies SEC's insider trading charges

Claims he never said anything 'material'

Former IBM hardware boss Robert Moffat asked a US court this week to dismiss the insider trading civil charges brought against him by the SEC. Reuters reports that in filings delivered by his lawyers, Moffat admitted speaking to Danielle Chiesi, of hedge fund New Castle. Moffat and Chiesi are amongst those facing charges …

Financial News 11 Dec 14:10
Congressmen steam over Wikileaks TSA breach

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll achieve very little

Three US Congressmen, outraged that parts of US government airport security manuals were inadvertently published and then posted on Wikileaks and Cryptome, are demanding to know what legal weapons are available against whistleblowing websites. Republicans Peter King, Charles Dent and Gus Bilirakis wrote to the Department of …

Government 11 Dec 14:24
RAF's new military airlifter finally lumbers into the air

Comment Crap, many years late - but at least it's expensive

Another doleful milestone for British taxpayers and servicemen today, as the A400M military transport plane takes to the air for its first test flight. The A400M - a decade late and massively overbudget - continues to drain the UK's defence coffers though better alternatives are readily available: meanwhile our fighting troops …

Government 11 Dec 14:35
Zuckerberg pictures exposed by Facebook privacy roll-back

CEO shown 'plastered', possibly while devising new policy

Illuminating pictures of Facebook chief exec Mark Zuckerberg have been exposed by Facebook's privacy roll back. Back in October, the world at large could see only one photo of the Facebook co-founder via the social networking site. Facebook's controversial privacy shake up this week means that world+dog can now obtain access …

ID 11 Dec 15:15
Vodafone drops top-of-the-range HTC

What with the iPhone coming and all...

Vodafone has stopped selling HTC's flagship, the HD2, citing problems with reliability and stock. Plus the forthcoming iPhone makes the HD2 redundant. The HD2 is a Windows Phone, with an enormous screen and price to match, but has been well reviewed and was selling well. At the start of December Vodafone said it was selling so …

Mobile 11 Dec 15:20
Radio Society tries to beat back powerline networks

Appeals for £75K to challenge Ofcom

The Radio Society of Great Britain has set up a Spectrum Defence Fund to challenge Ofcom's view of powerline networking. The RSGB reckons it's going to cost £75,000 to fund a Judicial Review, which is what's needed to kick Ofcom into reconsidering powerline devices. Donations are invited though the RSGB site, with any excess …

Entertainment 11 Dec 15:27
Red Hat opens up Spice desktop virtualisation protocol

Starts plotting Fedora 13 features

In keeping with its practice of eventually open sourcing the software technologies it acquires or creates, commercial Linux distributor Red Hat has said that it has let go of the code behind the Spice protocol. This was a key ingredient of the Solid ICE desktop virtualisation platform that it got its hands on when it bought KVM …

Virtualization 11 Dec 15:46
Unused phone lines to be taxed for rural broadband

Skypers won't get away with it either

Unused landlines will be taxed under government plans to subsidise rural broadband, and VAT will be charged on the new 50p per month tax. "The duty will be payable on all local loops that are made available for use by an owner whether or not the lines are actually used," the Treasury said today. "It will also be payable on …

Telecoms 11 Dec 15:52
WebGL draft spec brings 3D interweb future one step closer

Beer goggles at the ready, fun times ahead!

The Apple, Google, Mozilla and Opera-backed WebGL project took a significant step forward yesterday, after the Khronos group pushed out a public draft specification of the WebKit-derived code. Publication of the rough-round-the-edges specification means more web developers can now tinker with, and enhance, the code. Of course …

Developer 11 Dec 16:26
HP strike off - for now

Ex-EDS staff up tools. Talks ahoy

The Public and Commercial Services Union called off yesterday's strike by 1,000 of its members employed by HP, ahead of talks next week. HP confirmed the postponement and said it would be meeting the PCS next Wednesday 16 December. The workers are mostly ex-EDS staff unhappy at changes to their terms and conditions since HP …

Channel Register 11 Dec 16:31
Apple responds to Nokia lawsuit, in kind

My patents are bigger than your patents

Apple has filed a countersuit to Nokia's, alleging that Nokia is infringing its patents rather than the other way round. In the suit, as reported by All Things Digital, Apple claims Nokia is infringing 13 of Apple's patents. Nokia is only claiming the iPhone infringes 10 - but the number of patents isn't important here, what …

Mobile 11 Dec 16:39
Sage payment processor goes titsup - again

Groundhog day so close to Christmas. Bah, humbug

SagePay has been hit by what appears to be yet another spectacular outage, only three months on since the payment processor, which serves 25,000 firms in the UK and Ireland, collapsed for 24 hours on 8 September. Customers have contacted The Register to complain about SagePay's latest unscheduled lie-down. The service, which …

Channel Register 11 Dec 16:41
Sun brews up Java EE 6

GlassFish server, NetBeans IDE drink it

Sun Microsystems is still the steward of the Java programming language and its related virtual machine and runtime environment. Despite its PR blackout as the $7.4bn acquisition of Sun by Oracle is mulled by European regulators, Java Enterprise Edition version 6, or Java EE 6, has been released. Sun has also delivered versions …

Servers 11 Dec 16:59
Stolen bank data mixed into list of French tax dodgers

Swiss bank IT worker turned gov informant under protection

The legality of a French crackdown on suspected tax evaders earlier this year has been thrown into doubt after it emerged that stolen data was among the mix of information used by financial investigators. A list of 3,000 French nationals suspected of using Swiss banking secrecy to evade paying taxes included data handed over …

Crime 11 Dec 17:43
US bests UK in iTunes Xmas giftiness

Jobs bless us, every one!

Santa Jobs has opened his big bag of iTunes toys and come up with an album of Christmas goodies for good little US girls and fanbois. Last week iTunes (UK) announced that it would gift EuroTuners with a dozen tunes, music videos, apps, films, and TV episodes - one for each of the 12 days of Christmas - the catch being that you …

Music and Media 11 Dec 19:16
Remote execution flaw mars older Thunderbird versions

Mozilla's email add-on blues

Developers of the Thunderbird email client are in the process of patching a vulnerability that could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code on end users' machines, security researchers said. The flaw resides in the dtoa implementation of version 2.0.0.23 of Thunderbird, according to an advisory issued Friday by …

Security 11 Dec 19:22
US Congress seeks control over NASA moonshot

House passes bill barring changes

Members of the US Congress are preparing to battle Obama's White House over control of NASA's Constellation moon-rocket program. The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a major 2010 spending bill that would effectively tie Obama's hands if he attempts to make changes to the current Constellation program. The 2010 …

Space 11 Dec 20:03
Mozilla to open - gasp! - Firefox add-on store

Add-on-Con For-pay browserware mooted

Mozilla has said it will "probably" open a marketplace for Firefox add-ons sometime next year. Add-ons product manager Justin Scott (reluctantly) announced the news this morning at an add-on-happy conference in Mozilla's home town of Mountain View, California. "We'll probably be doing a marketplace pilot in 2010," he said. …

Applications 11 Dec 20:36
Video surfaces of alleged Apple tablet

Furniture shopping for the 21st century

The French website Nowhereelse.fr has obtained what it suggests may be a video of the long-rumored Apple tablet: Interestingly, the video shows the tablet - which is about the same size as countless rumors have suggested - being used not for reading a fancy sports mag or playing flicks, but instead shopping for furniture …

PCs & Chips 11 Dec 21:21
Testimony spills messy details in eBay-Craigslist squabble

Treachery and double-dealing all around

The founder of Craigslist has admitted that eBay was free to compete with his website under terms of a contract both parties signed, numerous news outlets reported Friday. Craig Newmark also said the online auction house was permitted to access Craigslist confidential data "with some limitations." The admissions, made during …

Music and Media 11 Dec 21:58
Opera on Google Chrome OS: what me worry?

Add-on-Con A browser can run a browser

Is Google's impending browser-based operating system a concern for other browser makers? Well, it's not a worry for Opera, according to its chief standards officer. "I don't think it's a particularly big deal," Charles McCathieNevile told The Reg this afternoon at the browser-obsessed Add-on-Con in Mountain View, California …

Applications 11 Dec 22:47