31st October 2005 Archive

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3G licensing complaints 'inaccurate, meritless' - Qualcomm

Claims dismissed

Qualcomm has dismissed allegations made about its WCDMA licensing policy by six mobile phone and component manufacturers as "factually inaccurate and legally meritless". On Friday, Nokia, NEC, Panasonic, Broadcom, Texas Instruments and Ericsson said they had reported Qualcomm to European Commission competition regulators. They …

Mobile 31 Oct 2005, 09:30
Nvidia readies GeForce 7800GS

Top-end line extends into mainstream

Nvidia's latest ForceWare driver beta release has added weight to speculation that the company is preparing to release a mainstream desktop GeForce 7 series part. A peek within the driver package, version 81.87, reveals a reference to a chip called the GeForce 7800GS, according to an Anandtech report. The 7800GS is expected to …

System Builder 31 Oct 2005, 09:33
BBC raps six in 'obscene' email kerfuffle

Watchdog staff hauled over coals

The BBC has rapped the knuckles of six staff working on consumer prog Watchdog for disseminating "obscene" emails, some of which "referred to [the show's] presenter Julia Bradbury", UK tabloid the Sun reports. Other topics of conversation included "secretaries, work experience girls and production staff". The "backroom" boys …

IT Director 31 Oct 2005, 09:36
Samsung preps digital music download service

Allows it to compete with Apple's iPod, apparently

Samsung is to follow Apple and Sony and launch its own online content download service to promote its digital music players. The revelation was made on Friday by Choi Ji-Sung, the head of the company’s digital media division, South Korean newspaper the Chosun Ilbo reports. Choi said the service will be launched domestically …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 09:39
UK IT chief calls for downscaling of ID card plans

'Scoutmasters' targeted for phased introduction

Whitehall IT chiefs may be poised to pull the rug from under the UK's ID card scheme on the basis that the technology isn't ready for prime time, and the project too unfocussed to pass Whitehall risk assessments. According to a report in the Independent on Sunday, Government CIO Ian Watmore has told ministers that the complexity …

Music and Media 31 Oct 2005, 09:45
Southampton Uni research centre blaze

World class facility partially destoyed

A serious fire has partially destroyed a computer research centre at the University of Southampton. The fire, which began at 6.30am Sunday morning, has now been put out and emergency services have begun investigations into what started the blaze. A spokeswoman for the University told the Reg: "Fortunately the centre was empty, …

Science 31 Oct 2005, 09:57
Spain's Telefonica to buy O2

Costa Packet

O2 has agreed to be bought by Telefonica for £18bn as the Spanish telco looks to expand its operations into UK and Germany. Mobile outfit O2 - which split from BT in 2001 - will retain its bubbly brand and keep its HQ in the UK. If all goes to plan and the deal get the thumbs up from regulators, it should be all wrapped up …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 10:21
Rising demand powers TSMC's Q3 recovery

Sales, income up as utilisation rate nears 100 per cent

TSMC's revenue and income continued to return to last year's strong levels during its third fiscal quarter, the world's largest chip foundry said last week. Like its arch-rival, UMC, which reported its Q3 figures last week, TSMC experienced sequential gains, but the figures did not not quite match Q3 FY2004. For the three …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 10:43
Woman wins $1m with stolen credit card

Oregon lottery ticket perp busted

Police have busted an Oregon woman who bought a State Lottery ticket with a credit card belonging to her deceased mother-in-law and promptly won $1m, AP reports. Christina Goodenow of White City bought the winning ticket on 9 October and three days later presented herself at Oregon Lottery HQ in Salem to collect the $33,500 …

Bootnotes 31 Oct 2005, 10:48
Get yer barometer survey results 'ere

Reg Reader Studies Read all about IT

The great thing about working in the IT industry is its unpredictability and the speed of change – isn’t it? Well not according to readers of the Register who turn out to be a remarkably conservative bunch. The Register and Quocirca have recently rerun their IT industry barometer 10 months after it was first run in December 2004 …

Reg Technology Panel 31 Oct 2005, 11:08
Bill Gates donates $258m to fight bugs

Mastering malaria not malware

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has pledged $258.3m (£145m) to the fight against malaria, describing the disease which claims the lives of an estimated 2,000 African children each day as a "forgotten epidemic". A trio of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support research and development on a malaria vaccines …

Science 31 Oct 2005, 11:11
MP3 toilet and other gadget essentials

Tech Digest Japanese manufacturer takes the p**s

Tech Digest for the Register Certified gadget obsessives Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny scour Gizmoville for the oddest digital goodies, Bayraider keeps tabs on the best and worst of eBay and Propellerhead answers your PC queries. MP3 playing toilet Personally, I prefer the company of a Gary Larson compendium or an aspirational …

Peripherals 31 Oct 2005, 11:18
Telefonica grabs O2 from under T-Mobile's nose

Swiped

It isn't exactly a secret to anybody who has watched the routine visits between O2 directors and Telefonica - the Spanish telecoms giant has been reluctantly courting the former BT subsidiary for a year or more, simply to keep the Spanish Government happy. But now, it has been forced to move by growing interest from Deutsche …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 11:32
Smutmonger fined for limp porn vid

Not hard enough, moaned female customer

A mail-order porn video outfit has been stung for £4,000 by Dorking magistrates for failing to measure up in the hard-core department, the Mirror reports. Pabo Ltd was fined the four grand plus £2,044 costs and ordered to pay £75 compensation to a female customer who moaned that explicit rumpy-pumpy on the covers of three videos …

Bootnotes 31 Oct 2005, 11:50
Sex.com thief appears in court

Details emerge of dramatic arrest

Following his dramatic arrest late last week Sex.com thief Stephen Cohen has appeared before a judge in San Diego and been ordered to face the $65m judgement lodged against him nearly five years ago. Cohen confirmed that he was the man named in an arrest warrant from May 2001. Dishevelled and dressed in a white jail-issue …

Music and Media 31 Oct 2005, 11:54
Blue Gene breaks supercomputing record, again

Wins stint monitoring decaying nukes

IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record, doubling the number of calculations it can do in a second to a massive 280.6 trillion. IBM announced the results of its latest test on the industry standard LINPACK benchmark at the same time as it officially dedicated the machine, along with its partner, Purple, to …

Science 31 Oct 2005, 12:00
eBay scam gang jailed

Husband and wife scammers

A trio who conspired together to fleece eBay users worldwide out of around £300,000 in a long-running scam were jailed for a combined total of eight-and-a-half years at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court on Friday. Nicolae Cretanu, 30, and his wife Adriana, 23, a Romanian couple based in east London, conned victims into handing …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 12:12
Carphone eyes Local Loop Unbundling

LLUOs still 'lack confidence'

Carphone Warehouse could become the latest outfit to provide telco services direct to end users by investing in local loop unbundling (LLU). An announcement about its plans could come as early as this week, reports The Sunday Times, hot on the heels of satellite TV broadcaster Sky, Wanadoo and Plusnet, which have all recently …

Telecoms 31 Oct 2005, 12:17
Amazon.co.uk falls off the web

In brief Nothing to see here...

Amazon's UK site is down at the moment and the company isn't saying what's gone wrong. A spokesman for Amazon.co.uk told the Reg: "Yes, dot co uk is down at the moment and we are working on a fix." He would not say what the problem is but said the company hoped it would be fixed "shortly". We'll bring you more on this story …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 12:19
Swiss cuff Islamic hate message duo

Geneva uni computer jihad

Swiss police last week arrested two African men who allegedly used the University of Geneva's computer system to disseminate Islamic fundamentalist hate messages and justifications for terrorist attacks, AFP reports. The two - a 27-year-old Moroccan and a 41-year-old Algerian, both staying illegally in Switzerland - were …

Bootnotes 31 Oct 2005, 12:21
Sprint set to unveil 'mobile music service'

Rokr knocker?

US mobile phone carrier Sprint is expected to announce today it will offer over-the-air music downloads when it launches its high-speed EV-DO 3G wireless network. Sprint's EV-DO upgrade to its CDMA network has been signalled for some time - the carrier began to implement the technology in July this year. EV-DO is part of the …

Mobile 31 Oct 2005, 12:49
i-mate K-Jam Windows Mobile PDA/phone

Review Treo beater?

Much as I like i-mate's Jasjar - aka HTC's Universal - its size makes it less practical for me as a phone rather than a PDA. I'm clearly not the only one who favours a smart-phone device that operates like a PDA but is small enough to hold up to my ear and use like any other handset. HTC's Magician, released earlier this year …

Reviews 31 Oct 2005, 13:25
Vodafone looks to Sky for mobile TV

The small screen...on an even smaller screen

Vodafone's 3G punters will be able to tune in to Sky TV on their mobile handsets from tomorrow following a deal between the two giant players. Sky Mobile TV - which includes news, sport and entertainment programmes - gives Vodafone's 250,000 3G punters access to TV on the move. The service is free until the end of January with …

Mobile 31 Oct 2005, 13:39
AOL IM worm roots around Windows PCs

Under the radar

A worm propagating through AOL's Instant Messenger network comes with rootkit technology designed to slip under anti-virus defences. The Sdbot-ADD worm is being passed through instant messages from members on a user’s Buddy List and within AOL chat rooms. Sdbot-ADD, the latest variant of a family of worms that is continuously …

Anti-Virus 31 Oct 2005, 13:55
Ofcom cracks down on menacing 'silent calls'

No Hallowe'en caper

Companies that breach new "silent calls" guidelines could be fined up to £50,000 for each offence, under tougher new measures introduced by Ofcom today. The communications regulator has called on firms that use automated calling systems to generate sales or marketing calls to smarten up their act. BT, for example, receives …

IT Director 31 Oct 2005, 14:31
BT buys up TNS

Not the footy club, the LAN outfit

BT has snapped up LAN outfit Total Network Solutions Limited (TNS) for an undisclosed sum, the monster telco announced today. The UK's dominant telco said the move was part of its plans to gain more ground as a networked services provider and to expand into areas such as LAN, IP telephony, wireless networking and security. …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 15:27
Google requires user to enter 'minge'

Word verification shocker

Silly it may be, but this piece of Google account word verification amused one Reg reader and brightened up our Monday: Good Lord. There is a serious point to be made here, though. What, our correspondent asks, if some cybergranny were confronted by an unexpected sight of minge while logging onto Gmail over a nice cup of …

Bootnotes 31 Oct 2005, 15:38
Apple sells 1m videos in 19 days

iTMS = PVR for the 21st Century?

Apple has sold more than 1m video downloads since it began offering the service on 12 October, the Mac maker said today. Passing that milestone so quickly has certainly impressed CEO Steve Jobs. "Selling one million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads," quoth he. "Our next …

Mac Channel 31 Oct 2005, 16:12
World chip sales jumped in September

'Very strong' buying activity, says trade body

The world's electronics and other hardware manufacturers spent $19.6m on semiconductors in September, the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said today - a total the organisation characterised as "very strong". The figure is 5.2 per cent higher than August's total, and 5.6 per cent up on the number reported for …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 16:14
Docs sew skull fragment in patient's belly

Deliberately, of course

Surgeons obliged to remove a fragment of skull from a man with head injuries inserted it into his belly for safekeeping and three months later successfully reattached the missing piece of cranium, the Telegraph and others report. Lorry driver Michael Donnelly, 42, was left unconcious after an attack outside a pub in Havant, …

Science 31 Oct 2005, 16:19
NASA has a plan for asteroid deflection

Good to know, sort of

NASA has outlined plans for dealing with an asteroid a quarter of a mile wide that astronomers believe is on a near-collision course with Earth. The agency says there is no need at present to dispatch a radio transponder to the asteroid, but adds that it will be keeping a close eye on the rock's progress through the solar system …

Science 31 Oct 2005, 16:47
Telewest victim of XXX call scam

Feelin' horny?

Telewest is still trying to hunt down a mucky phone thief who gained access to a number of the cableco's street cabinets in London to make calls to XXX chat lines. The calls were made to two adult chat services - one featuring "older housewives" and the other described as "Live Asian 1-2-1" - during August. Details of the calls …

Telecoms 31 Oct 2005, 17:13
Much of UK biometric passport data for archive, police use only?

Minister maybe blurts truth - but it won't fit anyway

Passports and ID cards are unlikely to actually use most the "13 biometrics" the Government proposes to collect on all citizens, which is probably just as well, because they won't fit. But much of the biometric data that will be collected on registration will hardly ever be used. In a parliamentary answer to questioning by Lynne …

Music and Media 31 Oct 2005, 18:10
Supremes shun Microsoft's Eolas appeal

Case continues

The Supreme Court has declined a request by Microsoft to examine its legal dispute with Eolas Technologies. The one-man company won over $500m from Microsoft in 2003 when a court ruled that the software giant had infringed an Eolas patent on embedding executables in web pages. Microsoft wanted the Court to clarify the damages …

Music and Media 31 Oct 2005, 19:28
Dell stuns investors with rare revenue miss

Desktop dive

A pair of computer glitches have eaten into Dell's third quarter with the company today lowering revenue guidance for the period. Dell now expects third quarter revenue to come in at $13.9bn - well below a previous revenue range of between $14.1b and $14.5bn. Weak sales of consumer goods in the US and business products in the …

Financial News 31 Oct 2005, 23:34