7th > October > 2008 Archive
9
Lehman Brothers' India ops saved from economic meltdown
A Japanese financial services outfit has agreed to purchase Lehman Brothers' India-based operational support businesses, rescuing roughly 3,000 people - including 1,200 IT professionals - from the worldwide economic meltdown.
iPhone secure enough for Japanese enterprise
While the iPhone might be not secure enough for American and European enterprises, BrearingPoint has decided to equip 1,000 of its Japanese employees with Apple's uberphone.
Win a Palm Treo Pro smartphone
Competition
To celebrate the launch of its latest Windows Mobile smartphone, Palm wants to give one of the gadgets away to one lucky Register Hardware reader.
Visa finds a home inside a Nokia
Visa and Nokia have signed a deal to embed Visa functionality in the NFC-touting Nokia 6212 Classic, enabling US owners to upload their Visa accounts onto the handset as well as transferring money between handsets over the wireless network.
AMD spins off manufacturing biz
AMD is splitting into two companies - one to design chips and one to carry out the debt-dependent business of actually making them.
SAP shares tumble after sales warning
SAP saw its shares fall 16 per cent on Nasdaq yesterday, in a market which fell five per cent, after it warned it had seen sales fall off a cliff in the last two weeks of September.
Reading privacy policies takes 10 minutes on average
Website privacy policies take on average 10 minutes to read and sometimes run into thousands of words, researchers have found. While some are short, others would take over half an hour to read.
New NASA nuclear Mars rover hits budget, time problems
NASA's plans for a huge, nuclear powered laser-toting robot tank to succeed the present rovers on the surface of Mars have hit budget problems, according to reports.
Videos cast light on BlackBerry Storm
The BlackBerry Storm handset is as good as confirmed now, following the airing of a Storm advert on US TV and the leak online of a promotional Storm video.
Xyratex speeds up arrays and doubles protection
Disk array sub-system supplier Xyratex has introduced its fastest-ever array by adding an 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel (FC) product along with new RAID 6 capabilities.
iPhone squares up to Android
Apple is aiming to get off the back foot when it comes to phone features with the forthcoming release of iPhone firmware - hopefully before the Googlephone gets into circulation.
Mosley asks Europe to change UK privacy laws
Motor racing chief Max Mosley has applied to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to reform the UK's privacy laws. He wants editors to be forced to tell people when they are about to publish stories about them.
NASA's IBEX to sniff interstellar boundary
NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, aka IBEX, will on 19 October lift off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on a mission to probe the interstellar boundary beyond our heliosphere's termination shock1 - a region where "the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space", as NASA nicely puts it.
Spy chiefs plot £12bn IT spree for comms überdatabase
Billions of pounds of public money will soon be up for grabs for private IT contractors ready to serve the Interception Modernisation Programme - UK spy chiefs' plan to store details of every call, email, text and web browsing session.
Analyst: Nvidia will quit chipset biz in 2009
Nvidia is again facing a claim that it's going to get out of the chipset business, this time from US investment house Pacific Crest Securities.
Nintendo to limit DSi games with DVD-style region locks
The upcoming DSi handheld games console will be region locked, Nintendo has confirmed.
Lords to attack UK.gov failings on internet security
Members of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee will this Friday call on ministers to do more to battle security threats online.
No mile-high pr0n for Delta passengers
The skies are looking bleaker for those who like to enliven dull plane trips with a bit of internet porn - Delta Airlines has announced it intends to filter "inappropriate" websites on its planned airborne Wi-Fi service.
LG HFB-500 solar-powered Bluetooth car kit
Review
If your job involves making a lot of phone calls in cars, or you just like to be available when you're on the move, a Bluetooth headset or an easy-fit car kit is the best option.
Cold War comfort on software engineering’s birthday
Forty years ago today, at the height of the Cold War, around 50 computing experts gathered in the southern German market town of Garmisch to change history.
Wireless-data LED lamps to replace lightbulbs - US profs
The US government is funding research into using LED lighting as data network access points. Room or street lamps would link with devices using visible light, carrying data beyond over existing power lines.
Sharp shows first 'zero-emission' telly
If your electricity bills are getting you down, then perhaps it’s time you started living off grid? And, thanks to Sharp, you’ll still be able to watch TV while cuddling up to Mother Nature.
Oxbridge lectures now on iTunes
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are to make lectures by well-known academics available through Apple's iTunes.
Asus claims quad-core gaming laptop 'world first'
Asus has introduced what it claims is the world's first gaming notebook with a quad-core processor, beating the likes of Alienware and VoodooPC to the punch.
NetApp faces Sun lawsuit loss
Sun is crowing that a judicial ruling in the NetApp_Sun IP lawsuit has effectively invalidated another NetApp patent. The US Patent Office also appears to be rejecting NetApp's key patents in the law suit. NetApp's position looks like it's crumbling.
German methanol unit wins Pentagon portable-power prize
The US defence department has announced the winner of its "Wearable Power Prize", a contest to develop a portable powerpack which could lessen the crippling load of batteries carried by modern soldiers. The $1m purse has been taken by US firm DuPont, partnered with Germany's SFC (Smart Fuel Cell).
Fraud victims urged to use DPA to rebuild credit ratings
UK victims of identity fraud are being urged to use the Data Protection Act as a tool to restore their credit rating.
UK stockings bereft of Nokia Tube
Nokia's first push into touch-control, the 5800 XpressMusic, won't be available in major markets until next year, including both the USA and UK.
UK.gov and UK.biz pour £60m into IT skills gap
The government today announced that it will spend £30m to create a National Skills Academy for IT, in an attempt to train more of the workers employers are demanding.
Net-stock fraudster Moller offers flying saucer on eBay
Famous flying-car inventor Paul Moller, who was fined in 2003 by the US authorities for selling "fraudulent unregistered stock" on the internet, is now selling his personal flying saucer prototype on eBay. Our advice: buyer beware.
Indian Moon mission is go for 22 October
India is all set to launch its first unmanned Moon mission on 22 October - the Chandrayaan-1 probe, which will over two years survey our satellite's surface with a rack of hi-res kit.
Renault looks to wee-hued windows to cut car power draw
'Leccy Tech
Say 'bonjour' to Renault's electric city car concept, the imaginately monikered ZE - for 'Zero Emission', if you have to ask - which it expects to put into full-scale production three years down the 'pike.
Xbox gamers treated to Tomb Raider treat
You don’t have to be a gamer to recognise her svelte curves and thigh-strapped weaponry. But the tomb raiding temptress, Lara Croft, is to make a comeback in two new chapters, exclusive to the Xbox 360.
How Wikipedia Works
Geeks Guide2
It’s all new at The Register right now, and today Reg Books is launching its brand new feature - Geeks Guide2.
Get snapping for Freedom
If you have a camera, are ever so slightly worried about the burgeoning surveillance society in the UK, and are prepared to brave the hostility of police and passers-by, then you too could take part in "Freedom Not Fear Day" this weekend.
Dell's disk-to-disk backup box
Dell is introducing a DL2000 disk-to-disk (D2D) backup appliance that comes with integrated Symantec or CommVault backup software and is meant as an alternative to tape backup, which is relegated to offsite backup.
Hi-tech keys make for safer Fords
Ford has developed a smart key that, it claims, will help remind teenage tearaways to buckle up behind the wheel and stop them from speeding.
AMD shares jump at birth of The Foundry Company
AMD shares rose more than 18 per cent on Wall Street this morning, following confirmation from the struggling chip maker that it will spin off its manufacturing operations and build a wafer fab in conjunction with its money-spinning bedfellow, the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC).
Fish snapped snacking at 4,200 fathoms
An international team of marine scientists has obtained "absolutely amazing footage" of fish feeding at a hadal 7,700 metres down in the Pacific Ocean's Japan Trench.
Yahoo! engineer arrested in Indian terror swoop
A group of 15 alleged Islamist terrorists arrested in India yesterday included a trio of techies - one a principal engineer at Yahoo!
Lithium-ion battery beater to debut in 'major' laptop release
Left-field battery developer ZPower has signed up a "major notebook computer" manufacturer, which will release a laptop fitted with its silver-zinc power packs next year.
EU battery rule may zap iPhone, blow away MacBook Air
The EU is readying a new set of directives that could spell trouble for Apple's iPhone and any other gadget that lacks an easily removable power pack.
World's first auto carbon calculator
Calculating your daily environmental impact isn’t easy. So, a former student’s designed what he claims is the world’s first automated carbon calculator.
Spectrum Bridge solves the white space problem
Last month saw the launch of SpecEx, allowing companies to sell on spectrum licences - but SpecEx backers Spectrum Bridge want to see us all competing for a few MHz in the brave new world of secondary markets.
EverGrid reinvents self as Windows-loving Librato
EverGrid has changed its name to Librato, expanding the scope of its products to include Windows servers as well as Linux and to the broader workload management job.
'Overplayed' privacy concerns rile Symantec boss
Interview
Consumers ought to accept that loss of privacy is the price they pay for using internet service, according to Symantec chief exec John Thompson.
Net game turns PC into undercover surveillance zombie
Underscoring the severity of a new class of vulnerability known as clickjacking, a blogger has created a proof-of-concept game that uses a PC's video cam and microphone to secretly spy on the player.
CA buys IDFocus for identity management boost
In brief
Enterprise software omnicorp CA has acquired Palo Alto, CA-based IDFocus to blend the firm's identity management software with its own CA Identity Manager.
Apathy comes easy to OpenAjax Alliance
The OpenAjax Alliance is once again finding it tough to enlist support for its projects, despite representing some of the biggest players - with the most resources - in software biz and on online.
US brain trust: Beware of trawling-for-terrorist apps
Surveillance programs that try to identify terrorists by trawling the internet and electronic databases for tell-tale signs are of limited success and should be carefully evaluated for privacy concerns, a group of technologists and policy makers that advises the US government said.
US Army gets eco-conscious, preps mega solar plant
You know the "go green" push is reaching a zenith when the fuel-slurping US Army wants to get serious about having a daintier environmental footprint.
IBM doubles Power cores
Well, the rumor going around that IBM is doubling up the processor core counts on its Power Systems servers turns out to be true.
Linux distros lead jumps from Sun
Sun Microsystems has lost a key individual responsible for getting its aspiring open-source software included in leading Linux distributions.
IT contractor caught stealing Shell Oil employee info
Shell Oil has warned its employees to be on the lookout for identity theft after an on-site IT contractor was caught stealing worker information out of a company database.
