8th January 2010 Archive

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FCC seeks delay to US broadband plan

Obama on hold

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is asking lawmakers to give it more time to draw up a national broadband plan. In a letter (PDF) to Congress on Wednesday, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski requested an extension of the report's February 17 deadline by one month. The plan is to be funded by Congress under …

Telecoms 8 Jan 00:09
Intel reinvents software sales with AppUp Center

CES 2010 First netbooks, then the world

Intel has announced the launch of a new way to validate and sell apps targeted to specific portions of the Intel-architecture market. The plan is to start with netbooks, then take over the world. The success of netbooks surprised everybody. Some vendors caught the wave and rode it to success, and some were swamped by it. But …

Software 8 Jan 05:08
Iocell NetDisk NDAS box

Review Fast, secure and versatile, apparently

Offered either as a shell or in capacities up to 2TB and designed with small businesses in mind, Iocell Networks utilises Network Direct Attached Storage (NDAS) to pitch its drives above and beyond other comparable single-disk Nas solutions. With claims of ultra-tight security, Raid configurability with multiple drives and …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 08:02
EDS man joins BT Services

Industry veteran replaces industry veteran

Jeff Kelly, formerly of EDS, is taking on the challenge of sorting out BT's Global Services division. Kelly most recently ran EDS's services businesses in North America, he's a US citizen and has had a 25-year career with the firm. Kelly replaces Hanif Lalani a 26-year BT veteran. Lalani, an OBE, is a former CEO of BT …

Channel Register 8 Jan 09:25
Orange rolls into the banking business

Not quite pay-by-phone, not yet

Orange is the latest mobile operator to get into the banking business, launching a co-branded Barclaycard with a wireless slant. The two companies announced they would be working on a wireless payment system back in March last year, and it seemed that payments by mobile phone would be the obvious result. But apparently the …

Mobile 8 Jan 10:07
Enormous raygun-on-a-lorry project acquires lorry

Now we just need a raygun

Plans by the US military-industrial complex to mount a laser cannon on an enormous lorry are moving forward. The enormous lorry in question has now been received by the firm providing the laser cannon, famed arms'n'aerospace globocorp Boeing. Boeing says it received a mighty Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) …

Science 8 Jan 10:14
Casio goes superfast with compact megazoom

CES 2010 Pocket rocket

Casio is shipping the EX-FH100 – the world’s first “high-speed, high-zoom” compact camera. Casio's EX-FH100 Exilim: fast shooting Supporting Casio's claim is a 10.1Mp compact with high-speed burst still shooting of 40fps, 1280 x 720 resolution video capture at up to 1000fps and a wide-angle, 10x optical zoom lens. But to …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 10:46
Mainstream flash making eyes at 3Xnm tech

Higher capacity and lower costs? Yummy

The NAND foundries and SSD suppliers are moving to sub-40nm process technology in its pursuit of higher capacity and lower cost. Toshiba and OCZ are both revving their product range to offer better flash to customers. Micron and Intel, like Toshiba, have already introduced sub-40nm product. The smaller the process technology …

Storage 8 Jan 10:47
Why Nominet disconnected 1,000 sites with no court oversight

Cherchez les cops

The body responsible for the .uk internet addresses disconnected over 1,200 websites without any oversight from a court. The much-publicised action last month was based only on police assertions about criminal activity on the sites. Two Nominet executives have told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that it severed the …

Law 8 Jan 10:59
TalkTalk kills Tiscali

Alright, yeah, bye, OK, bye

In the end, it went quietly. As of yesterday, Tiscali is no more in the UK. Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk boss Charles Dunstone wielded the axe on his corporate blog. He said: "From today the Tiscali brand is no more and we're committed to giving all of our customers absolute clarity about who we are, the services we …

Telecoms 8 Jan 11:00
French court says 'oui' on workplace smut

Dirty downloader comes out clean

In a surprise ruling last month, France’s highest court – la Cour de Cassation – ruled that an employee was wrongly dismissed for downloading smut to their work PC. The employee, known only as "Monsieur X", was fired by Peugeot Citroën Automobiles in June 2002, after an internal investigation found that he had saved to hard …

Law 8 Jan 11:06
WD accused of encryption IP filch

Enova Technology slaps Initio too

Western Digital is being sued by Taiwan's Enova Technology for alleged unauthorised use of its encryption technology in My Book and My Passport external drive products. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware, also cites Initio Technology which makes an encryption/decryption controller device. It refers to two US patents; 7,136,995, …

Storage 8 Jan 11:19
Endeavour stays toasty in Florida chill

Warm air purges prevent shuttle catching cold

NASA technicians are keeping space shuttle Endeavour nice and toasty ahead of its forthcoming STS-130 mission to the International Space Station, as Florida enjoys "unusually cold weather". The shuttle is sitting on Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A (see pic), protected from catching cold with "heaters and warm air …

Space 8 Jan 11:34
Microsoft readies singular fix for first Patch Tuesday of 2010

No update for frosty Windows 7 bug, mind

Microsoft's first Patch Tuesday of the year looks set to be more famine than feast. Redmond plans to instead fix just one critical vuln that affects Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. It will also patch the same bug in Windows Server 2003, Server 2008 and 2008 R2, although the security flaw in those products is marked as …

Enterprise Security 8 Jan 11:51
Top Tory strategist arrested in Brum

How do we counter-massage?

David Cameron's top strategy adviser Steve Hilton was arrested last October after a row over a train ticket. Hilton, married to Google's supremo of spin Rachel Whetstone, is the man behind Cameron's shifting image from glacier-visiting green through hug-a-hoodie luvvie to the supposed saviour of the NHS. He was arrested and …

Government 8 Jan 11:56
Palm re-models Pre and Pixi phones

CES 2010 At what cost?

Palm is launching two Web OS phones, the latest rev of the Pre and Pixi handsets. Palm's Pre Plus: no button and more memory The Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus launch in North America on 25 January, with Verizon chosen as the exclusive network operator. No UK launch date has been announced. Palm teamed up with Verizon to …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 12:01
Guinness to hit three quid a pint

Black day for black stuff lovers

The RRP of a pint of Guinness will rise by 10p to £3.03 on 1 February, producer Diageo has announced. In further grim tidings for drinkers, brewer AB InBev - which counts Beck's, Budweiser, Staropramen and Stella Artois on its roster of brews - "will increase the wholesale price of all its drinks products by an average of 4p a …

Bootnotes 8 Jan 12:02
Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’

Winners and losers from the great Nexus shafting

"It’s Google’s autistic approach to relationships," one senior phone exec told me this week. "They don’t know what hurt they’re doing, and they don’t care." It’s nothing personal, guys. Today, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, who thought they were Google’s closest partners, will begin to understand how, say, …

Mobile 8 Jan 12:05
IPS in cunning 'get an ID card, get crucified' scheme

Nail down your identity for keeps...

The Identity and Passport Service's hilariously triste efforts to make ID cards cuddly has passed another millstone (shurely 'milestone?' - Ed). As a follow-up to plastering its propaganda with happy fingerprints, IPS now has a flash animation of them as well - derived, weirdly, from a movie you might be familiar with. With a …

Government 8 Jan 12:28
T-Mobile prescribes hub tablet for UK families

Like a Joggler, but bigger

More concrete details about the Android-based Vega touchscreen tablet have emerged, with T-Mobile set to sell the gadget into Blighty later this year. ICD's Vega: an Android droid to organise family life First seen in November last year, Vega will probably go head-to-head with O2’s web-connected Joggler – reviewed here - as …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 12:47
Slovakian police chief quits over Dublin explosives run

Security cock-up 'beggars belief', says Irish minister

The Slovakian chief of border police, Tibor Mako, has quit following a major security cock-up which saw an unwitting electrician fly from the country's Poprad-Tatry airport to Dublin with 90 grams of RDX plastic explosive in his luggage. Security services planted eight pieces of contraband in passengers' baggage at Bratislava …

Government 8 Jan 12:55
Nikon Coolpix S1000pj projector camera

Review Shining example?

Every now and again, you come across a product that makes you think: How on earth did they do that? Well, Nikon’s Coolpix S1000pj is such a beast, because it’s a compact digital camera with a built-in pico projector. The little picture show: Nikon's Coolpix S1000pj In fact, it would appear it’s the first digital camera with …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 13:02
Sony punts pair of trendoid cameras

CES 2010 Unfortunately, they're called 'Bloggies'

Brain-dead video capture has been embraced by a company whose high-end cameras capture much of the professional video you see on the tube: Sony. Bare-bones video was essentially invented by Pure Digital Technologies, makers of the Flip Video line. Cisco liked the idea so much - and, undoubtedly, the fact that the proliferation …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 13:02
Tech vendors turn to Brussels as copyright levy talks fold

Hidden agenda? Surely not

A group of consumer electronics giants have called time on efforts to bring some coordination to Europe's mosaic of national copyright levies and will target action from Brussels. The FT reports that Apple, HP, Sony and friends have been speaking to the organisations behind collection schemes in 22 European countries in an …

Government 8 Jan 13:02
Xbox 360 wins MW2 update shoot-out

Microsoft console to get DLC before PS3

The Xbox 360 has trumped the PlayStation 3 again, following Microsoft’s announcement that its console will be the first to secure a downloadable update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Microsoft – speaking on Major Nelson blog – stated that “the first Modern Warfare 2 content packs will be available exclusively first on …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 13:22
Tory questions identify government's best paid CIOs

Health and DWP CIOs in the £99,960 and £205,000 band

Two chief information officers are in the civil service's highest standard pay band: health's Christine Connelly and work and pensions' Joe Harley. Christine Connelly is employed on senior civil service pay band three, with a salary of between £99,960 and £205,000 for her permanent contract as the Department of Health's …

IT Director 8 Jan 13:30
Parrot flies in iPhone-controlled chopper

CES 2010 on Video Whirlybird game

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Reg Hardware 8 Jan 13:52
Pants bombs vs America: The infernal conflict

Comment Why the nether regions are not a good place to pack explosives

The underwear bomber almost perfectly illustrated the hard place the US has found itself in since 9/11. For all Washington's efforts to wall off the US, it is still unable to prevent the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs from walking in off the street, volunteering for service at the local al-Qaeda affiliate in the impoverished Muslim …

Policing 8 Jan 13:53
Google Nexus One caught on camera

CES 2010 on Video Googlephone demo'd

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Reg Hardware 8 Jan 14:03
Trouser-bomb clown attacks - how much should we laugh?

Comment Reg investigates case of the ~~under~~totally-pants bomber

As the smoke clears following the case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the failed Christmas Day "underpants bomber" of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 fame, there are just three simple points for us Westerners to take away. First: It is completely impossible to prevent terrorists from attacking airliners. Second: This does not …

Policing 8 Jan 14:37
Microsoft 'sorry' for volume licensing website cockup

Problems continue down on the VLSC ranch

Microsoft has apologised to its partners and customers who have struggled with the firm's volume licensing website, after the company overhauled its service. As we reported last month, Microsoft's volume licensing websites were yanked offline for over a week while the software giant tweaked its service in a move to "improve …

Channel Register 8 Jan 14:55
Brit ISP knocked offline by Latvian DDOS

Company switchboard nobbled too

About 30,000 customers of the Cheshire-based ISP Vispa were forced offline for almost 12 hours today by a DDOS attack traced to the Baltic state of Latvia. Broadband service has now been restored, a spokesman said, but customers are unable to call customer service because the firm's phone system was also crippled by the attack …

Enterprise Security 8 Jan 15:10
Nokia takes a walk down Sesame Street

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to profitability?

Nokia has enlisted Sesame Street to endorse its latest Calling All Innovators competition, hoping that Muppets can inspire innovative applications where the offer of prize money might not suffice. The competition, which runs every six months, includes application categories Eco, Productivity, Life Improvement and Entertainment …

Mobile 8 Jan 15:18
Times calls time on NewsNow links

Now now not so much, now

Times Online has taken action to prevent headline aggregation site NewsNow from linking to its stories. Rupert Murdoch has long insisted he will end free access to any News International content, and this could be the first step. Executives at the firm are desperately trying to find a way to charge for content which readers …

Music and Media 8 Jan 15:33
Swedish cops liberate jealous wife from treehouse

Gets stuck while checking hubby's SMS messages

A Swedish wife who reckoned her son's treehouse was the best place to check hubby's mobe for evidence he'd been playing away had to be freed by police from the elevated bolt-hole, The Local reports. The unnamed woman from Skåne, southern Sweden, apparently got a visit from the green-eyed monster early this morning, and snuck …

Bootnotes 8 Jan 15:43
Qualcomm talks up Snapdragon roadmap

CES 2010 1.3GHz and 1.5GHz versions planned

Qualcomm will launch more advanced Snapdragon processors will this year to give phones and smartbooks better resolution and number crunching capabilities. Luis Pineda, a senior veep at the chip designer, ran through the Snapdragon roadmap at CES yesterday with the UK website Hexus. He said that a 45nm Snapdragon clocked at 1. …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 16:02
Casio turns photos into watercolours

CES 2010 Digital photo frame thinks it's Van Gogh

Casio has brushed up its artwork to design a digital photo frame that transforms your holiday snaps into “works of art” – literally. The Digital Art Frame looks just like any ten-a-penny digital photo frame, except it can automatically convert still images into one of eight types of painting, including watercolour, oil, pastel …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 16:16
US employers slash 85,000 jobs in December

IT, healthcare, and temps buck the trend

Hopes that US job losses would shrink to almost four figure levels in December were dashed today when the US Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that 85,000 employees were shed last month. While the number of jobs shed by employers in the United States was nearly an order of magnitude lower in December 2009 that it was twelve …

Financial News 8 Jan 16:21
Controversy rages over robot vasectomy reversal in Florida

Inventor has 'rare combo' of robotics + goolie expertise

Medical boffins in Florida have announced a breakthrough of buttock-clenching importance: Surgical robots have apparently broken the world speed record for reversing vasectomies. “This is state-of-the-art stuff, it’s cutting-edge,” says Dr Wayne Kuang, director of Male Reproductive Health at the University of New Mexico, …

Biology 8 Jan 16:21
Dell chalks up tablet PC

CES 2010 Kinda small

For many years tablet PCs have been the Next Big Thing. Few consumers have noticed. Will this change in 2010? Microsoft has already unveiled three co-developed prototype slates this week, and world+dog expects Apple to announce a tablet at the end of the month. Now it’s Dell’s turn. Dell's slate runs the Android OS and is …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 16:41
Plastic Logic unveils executive e-book reader

CES 2010 Swish but pricey

We first encountered UK-based Plastic Logic when it demo'd its prototype e-book reader at CES 2009 - you can watch a video demo here. Now the company has launched the product. Dubbed the Que, it's being pitched as the executive's e-book reader, thanks to a big, clear, "shatterproof" display. At 10.7in, it's bigger than the one …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 16:57
Samsung revamps external HDDs

CES 2010 Green, kind of

Samsung may be pitching its new G series of 2.5in and 3.5in external hard drives - 1.8in units will follow - as eco-friendly, but when pushed, the company admitted its the Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) rules that make them so - just like every other external HDD out there. Still, not many more - if any - have a case …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 17:06
Pico projectors go large in 2010

CES 2010 Playthings for phones and cameras

Last year Nikon released the world's first projector camera, the S1000pj (reviewed here). Competitors have been thin or non-existent on the ground, but this will soon change, with mini, or "pico" projectors in cameras, mobile phones, as notebook accessories and as standalone units, set to go mainstream in 2010. LG will fit a …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 18:02
Google seeks to become energy trader

Renewable power for own private internet

As it continues to expand its own private internet, Google has asked US energy regulators for the right to buy and sell power on the wholesale market - just as a utility would. Last month, the search giant cum world power created a subsidiary dubbed Google Energy, and the outfit has now applied (PDF) with the US Federal Energy …

Networks 8 Jan 19:35
Serious IE and Windows flaws left to fester

No Microsoft fix in sight

Microsoft won't fix vulnerabilities in the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Windows during its regularly scheduled patch release on Tuesday, meaning users will have to wait at least another month to get updates that correct the security risks. The software maker on Thursday said January's Patch Tuesday will include a …

Security 8 Jan 20:12
Intel's Wind River tweaks embedded OS for Core i7

SMP and AMP goodies for VxWorks

When Intel shelled out $884m to buy embedded software supplier Wind River Systems last year, the company did so because it had big plans to expand into the embedded computing market with its own processors. But the embedded space has a number of compete architectures, and Intel is in the uncomfortable position of having to …

Operating Systems 8 Jan 20:19
Greenpeace: Apple ain't so brown anymore

Microsoft, Dell, Nintendo get toxic grade

Nature lovers at Greenpeace have made their - ahem - peace with the folks at Apple after some three odd years of lambasting the firm for using toxic chemicals in its products and not stitching Steve Jobs turtlenecks out of pure organic hemp1. Greenpeace has released its latest hit-list of environmentally friendly and fiend- …

Environment 8 Jan 20:45
Lenovo predicts three-year boost from Windows 7

CES 2010 Split-personality PC

Lenovo says that Windows 7 will boost demand for its PC products over the next three years. President Rory Read told Bloomberg at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that Microsoft's operating system has already lifted Lenovo's business in the two months since it was released. Read was speaking as Lenovo used CES to unveil …

PCs & Chips 8 Jan 21:05
Tip'n'tilt control portable internet radio launches

CES 2010 Move to grove

UK audio company Armour Home showed off its "tip and tilt" internet radio at CES this week. The name says it all: the cube-shaped device - formally called the Q2 - is controlled by motion: tip it forward to increase the volume and back to make it quieter. Rotate it sideways a face at a time and you step through the four …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 21:44
B&W ships cut-down Zeppelin iPod speaker

CES 2010 Preps audiophile desktop units too

Speaker specialist Bowers & Wilkins this week announced a smaller, less room-dominating version of its iconic Zeppelin iPod speaker. Lacking the older product's over-inflated rugby ball looks, the Zeppelin Mini still manages to deliver sound with some welly. And, thanks to its ability to pull music data off of the iPod in …

Reg Hardware 8 Jan 22:20
Fix finalized for SSL protocol hole

Now comes the hard part

Engineers have signed off on a fix for a potentially serious vulnerability in the SSL, or secure sockets layer, protocol that secures email, web transactions and other types of sensitive internet traffic. The final draft updates the industry-wide specifications for SSL, which is also referred to as TLS, or transport layer …

Security 8 Jan 23:35
Microsoft petitions for second look at Word XML decision

Take some time, grab a coffee

Microsoft has asked US judges to take a second look at their ruling that confirmed the software giant would be fined $240m for patent infringements in Word. The company has filed a petition with the US Court of Appeals for both a rehearing by both a panel and the full set of judges presiding over the case. The US appeals …

Applications 8 Jan 23:44
Google gets all Minority Report with Street View

As if you expected anything less

Yes, Google is exploring the possibility of slipping ads into Street View, its virtual reality project that seeks to photograph the world and recreate it online. According to Cnet, a Google presentation recently delivered to European marketing and ad agencies at least hints at a future where Street View does ads, virtually …

Music and Media 8 Jan 23:46