Top Twenty Stories

1. Firefox 3.5 patch coming soon as Mozilla cranks up downloads

   Pesky monkey still creating (some) havoc

   Mozilla Foundation notched up five million downloads in the first 24 hours after it released Firefox 3.5 earlier this week. The open source browser maker also confirmed it would be bringing out version 3.5.1 soon to squash bugs its development team hadn’t managed to eradicate ahead of the launch. Mozilla’s security patch is …

2. Who wants T-Mobile UK?

   Forget the customers, grab the spectrum and run

   T-Mobile UK will be sold in the next few months, and the markets are salivating at the synergies possible - but it could easily be T-Mobile's network that remains in place when the dust settles. Any doubts that Deutsche Telecom wants shot of its UK arm, T-Mobile, were firmly put to rest with Vodafone and then Telefonica in the …

3. iPhone apps - the 10 smartest and the 10 stupidest

   One man's meat is another man's poison

   The soon-to-be-released iPhone 3.0 software will offer a slew of new capabilities to iPhone developers. With that sea change in mind, we thought now would be a good time to take a look at the highs and lows of the current crop of apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. Not merely the best and worst, but rather two Reg-ratified Top …

4. iTunes minus the player: hack your Apple beats

   Mac Secrets Dodge the shareware sledgehammer

   QTMovie, the principal class inside the QTKit framework, isn't just for playing movies. A while back, I provided source code for a program that browsed your iTunes library, showing all available albums and songs. You may remember that this worked by using classes inside Apple's undocumented iLifeMediaBrowser framework. One …

5. NSA plans massive, 65MW, $2bn data center in Utah

   Yes, Utah

   The ultra-secretive National Security Agency plans to build a 1-million-square-foot data center in Utah as it seeks to decentralize its computing resources and tap regions with ample supplies of lower-cost electricity. When completed, the facility will require at least 65 megawatts of power and cost $1.93bn, according to news …

6. Police told to use Wikipedia for court preparation

   Not in your notebook? Get online then

   The Crown Prosecution Service is telling police officers to use Wikipedia to prepare for court cases. Mike Finn, an expert witness on martial arts and weapons, told the Police Review he was involved in a case in the Midlands and asked to prepare a report on a weapon. According to the Telegraph, Finn said: "The material they …

7. Lamson - email app coding without the palm sweat

   Doing what Java never did

   "Can you integrate this with my e-mail?" It's one of the more dreaded questions in software development. For any programmer who has been around the block a few times, it evokes a long repressed fear of Sendmail m4 macros or Outlook COM objects. When a non-technical managerial type asks this question in a group meeting, and your …

8. 'Get cameraphones out of nurseries' plea

   Summer of Banning Stuff continues apace

   A Plymouth-based group is campaigning for an end to mobile phone cameras in nurseries - or their "better control and management". It all depends on your point of view. The campaign was started by Devon mother Cheryl Higgs, whose children attended Little Ted’s, the nursery which is now the focus of a police investigation into …

9. 'Non-compulsory' ID cards poised for a makeover?

   Analysis Kinder, gentler, don't mention the database

   It's straight out of the New Labour Labs spin book. The Home Office executes a U-turn on compulsory ID cards, while the Home Secretary does the rounds of the media insisting that they were never compulsory in the first place, and that he is affirming his commitment to them by accelerating their rollout. But there's a …

10. Hackers crack ColdFusion

    Drive-by download attack hits multiple hosts

    Hackers are running a mass compromise against sites running vulnerable ColdFusion application server installations. Security watchers at the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Centre are warning that a "high number" of sites have been hit over the last 36 hours or so. Miscreants are exploiting sites running older installations of …

11. Swiss public sector allowed to buy Microsoft software

    Putting the Swiss army knife in

    A Swiss federal court has handed Microsoft a temporary reprieve that allows the firm to sell its products and services to public sector customers, even though it could face an annulment in the final judgment. The move follows software rival Red Hat launching a legal appeal in May this year against a Swiss government agency’s …

12. 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, …

13. Hackintosh maker rises from the dead

    'When life gives you apples, make applesauce'

    Psystar, the Florida-based Hackintosher that's been giving Apple fits for over a year, refuses to die. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (better known amongst fanbois as TUAW), published a copy of the upstart clonemaker's latest newsletter, which announces to its customers that not only is the company preparing to emerge from …

14. Firefox 3.5 - it's not a 'web upgrade'

    Review But it's a nice browser

    "This isn't just an upgrade of the browser. It's also an upgrade for the web", says Mike Beltzner, Firefox product director, in his What's New in 3.5 video. Hyperbole for sure, but it highlights the most interesting aspect of the browser wars, which is how each player is trying to influence the direction of web development. …

15. Hollywood prepares to battle Asteroids

    Plotless classic Atari game heads for the big screen

    Universal Studios is preparing to bring Atari video game Asteroids to the big screen, despite the fact that the classic offers "no story line or fancy world-building mythology", as the Hollywood Reporter puts it. The studio, lacking the kind of supplied narrative which made Lara Croft: Tomb Raider a major cinematic triumph, …

16. Gamer embezzles virtual cash to settle real debts

    Eve Online banker does a runner

    As if high-profile investment scandals and the economic downturn weren't bad enough here on Earth, now folks have to deal with it outside our galaxy. Virtually, at least. Impoverished from real-world debts, the CEO of the largest player-run financial institution in the sci-fi MMO Eve Online stole thousands of dollars worth of …

17. Oracle waves axe in faces of 1,000 European workers - report

    Arm holding Sword of Damocles getting tired

    Software giant Oracle is reportedly set to lay off up to 1,000 Europe-based employees. According to French news agency AFP, the world's second biggest software vendor revealed its plans to Oracle's European workforce earlier this week when it met trade unions. The Register asked Oracle to confirm that job cuts were underway …

18. Taxpayers pay for Silicon Valley bloggers' holiday

    They come over here, creating their social media...

    A group of wealthy Californian bloggers are taking a holiday in the UK this month - and the taxpayer will help foot the bill. Calling themselves The Traveling Geeks, the bloggers will spend a week here meeting other bloggers. Last year they were in Israel. In addition to corporate sponsorship, they're getting a helping hand …

19. A practical guide to disaster recovery planning

    Two papers for smaller businesses

    Typically, vendor white papers are written with the ITDM or senior ITDM at a large company, in mind. [ITDM is industry jargon for "IT decision maker", since you ask.] People working at smaller companies are rather less well served, in quantity and quality. So today we focus our Reg Library selection on a couple of good papers …

20. Is your cameraphone an oxymoron?

    Pic Review iPhone 3G v iPhone 3GS v Palm Pre

    All cell-phone cameras are not created equal - even the three-megapixel cameras in the recently released iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre. And I've got the photos to prove it. Our recent review of the iPhone 3GS went into some detail about the quality of the camera in Apple's new smartphone. But I also wanted to see how it stacked up …