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8th October 2010 Archive

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  • Apple patent pic revives touchscreen Mac buzz

    To touch or not to touch

    Just days after rumors of an impending touchscreen iMac were put to rest, a US patent application has been published that revives them once again — but with a twist. The patent filing in question, "Integrated Touch Sensitive Display Gate Driver", describes a display system that can be switched between touchscreen and …

    Media 8 Oct 2010, 00:11

  • Google UK on mission to brainwash news media

    The Mountain View Candidate

    Google UK has a certain knack for borging members of the mainstream news media. And when it's not swallowing these poor souls whole, it's at least working to control their minds. For the past two years, Google's British PR team has been run by Peter Barron, the former editor of BBC Newsnight, and according to The Guardian, …

    Business 8 Oct 2010, 00:24

  • Robot teddy bears attack Alzheimer's

    ROTM 'Granny, meet your new best friend'

    If your granny has gone 'round the bend, Fujitsu has just the item to bring her back to the here and now: a robotic, theraputic teddy bear. This new high-tech teddy — labeled in Google-translatese as a "badger type Sosharurobotto child" — was designed by Fujitsu to treat geriatric dementia, and was revealed at the digital …

    Bootnotes 8 Oct 2010, 00:25

  • Mozilla answers WebKit with first mobile Firefox 4 beta

    'We saved you from IE. And we will save you again'

    Mozilla has released its first mobile Firefox 4 beta, offering test versions of the open source browser for both Google Android and Nokia Maemo. Codenamed Fennec 2.0, the mobile beta is based on the same Gecko layout engine as the desktop Firefox 4 beta, and it uses the latest Firefox Javascript engine – including the new …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 05:42

  • Humax HDR-Fox T2 Freeview HD DVR

    Review The telly addicts' new best friend?

    From a fairly slow start, the number of Freeview HD recorders is growing quite quickly; but the Humax has been one that many people have been waiting for. The company has a pretty good pedigree with DVRs for other services, and expectations have been quite high for the HDR Fox T2. Humax's HDR-Fox T2: a week's worth of telly …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 07:00

  • Microsoft plans biggest ever Patch Tuesday

    Four critical updates due in monster 16-strong batch

    Microsoft plans to push out a bumper crop of 16 bulletins - four critical - as part of the October edition of Patch Tuesday next week. The updates represent Microsoft's largest ever Patch Tuesday. The patches will collectively grapple with 49 vulnerabilities. The four critical bulletins impact all supported versions of Windows …

    Security 8 Oct 2010, 08:35

  • Everything Everywhere consummates merger

    Morning after surprisingly amicable

    Orange and T-Mobile have have gone from "it's complicated" to "in a relationship" as their customers roam freely between the two networks. The roaming agreement went live on Wednesday, with customers who had preregistered switching automatically to the alternative when their home network was unavailable. Some customers were …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 08:38

  • Dixons touts tablets

    Android-tastic 7in and 10in slates incoming

    First Next, now Dixons. The retaill group's PC World and Currys stores will next month begin selling - yes, you've guessed it - an own-brand 7in Android tablet for the low, low price of £130. Not as cheap as the £85 job Morgan Computers is offering, but less than the £180 Next wants for its 10in tablet. Dixons' Advent Vega: …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 08:58

  • Vodafone buys 2 billing companies

    Billing for big customers

    Vodafone has bought two mobile billing companies - Quickcomm and TnT Expense Management. Both offer billing management services for big companies running large fleets of mobile devices. Quickcomm, headquartered in Sydney, Australia, will continue to support and develop its own products at the same time as becoming part of …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 09:16

  • UAE unbans BlackBerrys

    And why might that be, pray?

    The United Arab Emirates has cancelled the planned ban on RIM's BlackBerry service, saying that it no longer represents a threat to national security, but not explaining why. The ban had been scheduled to start on Monday, but the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has now decided against implementing the ban as " …

    Government 8 Oct 2010, 09:25

  • HTC design cleans Nokia's clock

    Comment And Apple's too

    A stone's throw from El Reg's West End Office is Nokia's London design office. If the windows on Great Pulteney Street appear to be steamed up, here's a clue why. Nokia owes much of its success to design, and employs some of the world's best designers. In the 1990s Nokia put design at the heart of its product development …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 09:31

  • Three new 'nauts head off to ISS

    Expedition 25 mating expected Saturday night

    Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri, along with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, blasted off last night from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome ahead of a five-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Their Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft lifted off at 23:10 GMT, and is expected to dock with the orbiting …

    Science 8 Oct 2010, 09:33

  • Doctor Who to hit Wii on 12 November

    Sonics at the ready

    Asylum Entertainment's two Nintendo Doctor Who games - one for the DS, the other for the Wii - will go on sale on 12 November. Both titles feature the eleventh Doctor and leggy companion Amy Pond. Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth - the DS offering - and Doctor Who: Return to Earth will enable ans to take on the role of the Doctor …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 09:40

  • Feds asked to probe Google's leaky search terms

    Sharing, but not caring

    The FTC is considering a complaint that Google conceals the fact that users' search terms are handed over to the websites they visit. Christopher Soghoian, a well-known privacy campaigner and former FTC employee, charges that the dominant search engine's privacy policy does not explain that referral headers - which include …

    Law 8 Oct 2010, 09:54

  • Castlevania: Lord of Shadows

    Review More God of War, less Van Helsing

    The challenge to create an entirely new Castlevania game must have been a daunting one for developer Mercury Steam. Plucked from the relative obscurity of developing American McGee's Scrapland and Clive Barker's Jericho, the Spanish developer found itself dice-in-hand for Konami's big-budget gamble of rebooting its vampire- …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 10:00

  • Microsoft, Adobe merger? Yeah, right

    Redmond rejects rumour as 'nonsense'

    A merger between software vendors Microsoft and Adobe has been reportedly dismissed as “nonsense” by sources inside Redmond. The New York Times reported yesterday that MS boss Steve Ballmer and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had been in talks recently, sparking speculation that a buyout could be imminent. As The Register and …

    Software 8 Oct 2010, 10:01

  • Duke Nukem Forever demo'd on video

    NSFW Contains Harsh Language. And weather.

    Shot at the FirstLook games convention in Amsterdam, here's how long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever is shaping up. The good stuff's four minutes in.

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 10:13

  • Kindle users get Zorked out

    Better than a bonkbuster

    Kindle users can now lose themselves in the worlds of Zork I, II & III, as long as the connectivity lasts, and not in the dark obviously. The capability isn't actually new, PortableQuest.com has been providing a minimal interface for those who fancy seeing spending some time in a maze of twisty little passages, via their …

    Applications 8 Oct 2010, 10:29

  • Tesla Motors: Our cars don't burst into flame, but our emails do

    FoTW 'Yellow journalism' 'hysterical' 'scandalous'. OMG

    Here at the Reg it's one of our editorial goals to live in peace and harmony with our fellow men and women, seeking merely to report the news with a minimum of stress and conflict and making the world a better and happier place thereby*. Thus it is with heavy heart once again that we find that our coverage has inadvertently …

    Bootnotes 8 Oct 2010, 10:36

  • Marantz intros 'world's first' AirPlay hi-fi

    Apple streaming tech will cost you extra

    The Marantz logo has been on Apple's AirPlay website ever since the Mac maker announced the new name for its media streaming tech at the start of September. It's no surprise, then, that the AV firm is releasing AirPlay-compatible kit, but now we know what and when. The Melody Media box goes on sale later this month. It has a …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 10:39

  • Operators demand smartphones sort signalling storm

    I can't do this with all that racket

    While operators spent 2009 fretting about data traffic overloading their fragile 3G networks, this year they have also been worrying about another stress on their systems, exploding signalling burdens from 'chatty' devices that constantly poll the network in applications like social networking updates. Nokia Siemens has thrown …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 10:52

  • BOFH: Lock shock

    Episode 12 I have never seen this man before in my life. Nor this one

    “No, I’m pretty sure you don’t work for the company,” the PFY says, tapping away furiously on his keyboard. “What’s up?” I ask, as the PFY mutes the phone while the bloke on the other end has some form of protracted verbal seizure. “That idiot from accounts who wanted us to pick up the bill for his home broadband has got a …

    BOFH 8 Oct 2010, 11:00

  • Android rebellion: How to tame your stupid smartphone

    99 problems but... oh wait, 103 problems

    Many Android users are finding their shiny new handsets almost impossible to use due to a plethora of issues needing ridiculous workarounds, from creating and deleting multiple cloud accounts to repeatedly hard resetting. The problems aren't with Android itself, though the platform still suffers glaring omissions such as its …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 11:03

  • May the SandForce be with you

    MLC flash pushes harder at the storage array door

    Flash is knocking harder at the storage array performance disk door, and is poised to burst through. A new controller from SandForce will help push the door wide open. The company launched its SF-1500 controller last year. It featured symmetrical read and write operations of 30,000 IOPS and sustained read and write bandwidth …

    Storage 8 Oct 2010, 11:06

  • Microsoft pays licence fees for 74 smartphone patents

    When will the madness end?

    Microsoft licensed 74 patents yesterday with Acacia Research Corp for an undisclosed sum. The Wall Street Journal reported the move, and Acacia also put a terse statement out confirming the licence agreement. It said the software giant paid licence fees for “a portfolio of patents related to smartphones owned by ACCESS Co, …

    Applications 8 Oct 2010, 11:15

  • Blogger stokes iPhone 4 shatter fears

    Antennagate 2?

    We're not sure how seriously to take claims that some third-party iPhone 4 cases can cause the handset's rear glass panel to shatter. To be fair, no one appears to have suggested that this has actually happened. But it is alleged by Gdgt.com that Apple engineers are busy investigating this potential problem, implying that the …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 11:24

  • Doctors' appointment system goes tits up

    'Chaos has ensued'

    EMIS PCS, the management system for doctors' surgeries, was unavailable for use to hundreds of doctors for much of Wednesday and at least some of Thursday. A practice manager from a south London surgery who requested anonymity told us: "Our system has been down all day. "All the surgery appointments are on the clinical system …

    Policy 8 Oct 2010, 11:34

  • Aggrieved boffins to march on Whitehall

    Demand beellions of $$$s: no evilscience threats, however

    Thousands of white-coated boffins and their supporters are expected at a rally in London this weekend to protest against expected cuts in science funding. In common with most areas of government activity, science and engineering research funds are expected to suffer in the Comprehensive Spending Review on Wednesday. The …

    Science 8 Oct 2010, 11:42

  • PARIS furnished with engorgement

    Assistant in tight dress fondles powerful squirter

    The Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) team nipped out yesterday to pick up a satisfyingly large bottle of helium: an 80kg steel beast packing a tad over 10 cubic metres of lifting gas. We'd like to offer a big ta very much to Air Liquide in Valladolid, for cheerfully providing PARIS with a big lift. Naturally, our …

    SPB 8 Oct 2010, 11:59

  • Apple 'puts the scares on Spotify'

    US launch delayed - indefinitely?

    Spotify was supposed to launch in the United States last year - but it may not now even launch this year. An intriguing explanation for the delay has been floated by Greg Sandoval at CNET - Apple is putting the scares on the music business by pointing to doubts about the viability of Spotify's business, he suggests, and playing …

    Media 8 Oct 2010, 12:10

  • Fannie Mae logic-bomb saboteur convicted

    Looking at wrong end of possible porridge ten-stretch

    A computer contractor has been convicted of planting a logic bomb on the servers of Fannie Mae, the financially troubled US housing and mortgage giant. Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, 36, responded to the termination of his two-year-long spell as a software development contractor at Fannie Mae in October 2008 by planting a …

    Security 8 Oct 2010, 12:30

  • Crucial intros 1.8in SSD series

    Netbook upgraders take note

    Memory specialist Crucial has released a set of 1.8in SSDs. Based on its C300 RealSSD line of notebook drives, the new, smaller versions are intended for folk looking to upgrade netbooks or sub-notebooks that are too slim to take 2.5in drives. The 1.8in drives use MLC (Multi-Level Cell) Flash and are available in capacities …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 13:16

  • MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle's wallet love

    Open...and Shut Time for Postgres?

    Oracle has repeatedly declared its intent to invest heavily in MySQL technology in its effort to up-end Microsoft's SQL Server business. What it didn't say, but which should have been clear, given Oracle's treatment of its own database customers, is that MySQL customers were going to have to pay for those investments. Through …

    Applications 8 Oct 2010, 14:00

  • Cisco Flip Mino HD 8GB video camera

    Review Image stabilisation, at last

    Appearing in its second-generation guise in March this year, the Flip Mino HD received a few refinements, the most obvious being the larger 2in screen and an 8GB version allowing for up to two hours of video recording. Yet this popular pocket video camera has always lacked image stabilisation, that is, until now. Cisco's Flip …

    reghardware 8 Oct 2010, 14:03

  • 'We Want Two' Navy carrier plan pondered by Cabinet

    Comment Flat-Earth frigateers v Fleet Air Arm Whitehall DEATHMATCH!

    Beleaguered admirals are fighting hard to save the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers and with them the service's status as a world top-three navy, according to reports. One plan thought to be on the table bears a close resemblance to that set out in the Register's recent "We Want Two [carriers] Or No Votes For You" campaign …

    Government 8 Oct 2010, 14:06

  • HMRC systems downed by upgrades

    Taxing work

    The benefits and tax systems are suffering lengthy downtime for upgrade work this week and over the weekend. Our tipster says some of the work hasn't gone very well, specifically in relation to changes to Cisco gear. Callers to HMRC offices are being advised to try again next week as a result. "HMRC have planned upgrades to …

    Government 8 Oct 2010, 14:18

  • ICO issues draft data-sharing code

    Compliance not mandatory

    The Information Commissioner's Office is to consult about a new code of practice for sharing personal data. The data protection watchdog is to invite views about the 40-page draft code, which aims to create a model of good practice for public, private and third sector organisations. Christopher Graham, the information …

    Law 8 Oct 2010, 14:21

  • Germans radio tag ID cards and phones

    Have they not seen Lives of Others?

    German telcos are planning to trial NFC payment stickers next year, though from next month every German ID card will contain a radio tag able to secure internet commerce. The Germans have gone ahead and radio-enabled their ID Cards, with every card issued after 1 November containing an RFID chip capable of providing a digital …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 14:33

  • Apple tinkering with subs-based iTunes service, says report

    Will Eddy Cue the music?

    Apple is reportedly talking with big name record labels to provide a subscription-based music service that will give unlimited access to songs for a monthly fee. According to the New York Post, which cites several unnamed sources, the company's iTunes boss Eddy Cue has already spoken with music labels about how such a service …

    Media 8 Oct 2010, 14:49

  • Danube sludge peril: Brown trouser time or not?

    Red gunge polluto-horror could mean chippy bonanza

    Millions of tonnes of “red sludge” flowing into the Danube: sounds like Hungary's got something of an environmental problem, doesn't it? And indeed they do, but it's a short-term one, not the long-term disaster that the likes of Greenpeace (hey, surprise!) are telling us all it is. It isn't actually “red sludge”, the technical …

    Science 8 Oct 2010, 15:28

  • Mozilla puts Firefox 4 Android beta on crash diet

    Dynamic linker obesity treatment

    The Firefox 4 Android beta is morbidly obese. But Mozilla has a diet plan. Over the past twelve hours, after Mozilla released its first Firefox 4 beta for Android, multiple Reg readers have said the browser takes up far too much space on their Googly phones. "Fooking HUGE!!!" said one. "Not even going to waste my time with the …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 18:03

  • Verizon: we like Microsoft, but not Windows Phone 7

    America's number one picks RIM, Google, Apple

    America's largest wireless provider has thrown a cold, wet blanket on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 event, scheduled for next week in New York. Verizon chief operating officer and president Lowell McAdam doesn't see Microsoft as a major player in mobile, saying the future lies with Android, Blackberry, and the iPhone. McAdam, …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 18:43

  • Grocery terminals slurped payment card data

    Two months undetected

    Grocery chain Aldi Inc. has warned customers in 11 states that their payment card data may have been slurped up by point-of-sale terminals that were illegally planted by identity thieves. The tampered terminals were in use from June 1 to August 31 in an undisclosed number of stores, the company disclosed in a press release ( …

    Security 8 Oct 2010, 18:46

  • Yahoo! preps (cellular) video chat for iPhone, Android

    In your face, FaceTime

    Yahoo! plans to one-up Apple's FaceTime video-calling capability with a new version of its Yahoo! Messenger mobile app that not only supports video calls, but — unlike Wi-Fi–only FaceTime — will also do so over carriers' wireless networks. According to Reuters, the app will not only let users of its iPhone and Android-phone …

    Mobile 8 Oct 2010, 20:49

  • Google TV transplants Android on Intel

    Anti-Apple ARM replacement

    Google TV is based on Android, the (kinda) open source Google operating system originally built for ARM-equipped cell phones. But the imminent television settop platform doesn't run on ARM. Google has ported Android to Intel's CE4100, an Atom-based system-on-a-chip designed specifically for consumer electronics devices. …

    Media 8 Oct 2010, 21:16