15th January 2007 Archive

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SMBs offered virtually cheap disaster recovery

DataCore repackages storage for invisible data replication

DataCore has introduced two sub-£5000 disaster recovery and business continuity software packages for small and mid-sized businesses. They're based on the company's existing storage virtualisation software, and let you mirror data between two sets of storage via an IP network, even over long distances. "The reason people like …

Storage 15 Jan 2007, 07:02
Open Phones with Open Moko

Can an open Linux phone platform change the mobile application game?

While all eyes may have been on San Francisco and the launch of the developer-unfriendly Apple iPhone, the real game changers were demonstrating their strategy at CES 2007, in Las Vegas. While the hardware may be similar, the strategy is a complete reversal of Apple's closed platform and proprietary hardware. OpenMoko is an …

Mobile 15 Jan 2007, 07:02
We are all Agilists now

Software agility is a tricky beast to pin down, due largely to its 'fluffy' nature

Agile methods tend not to describe concrete, tangible practices, but rather principles, attitudes, and so forth. So, heated discussions about the rights/wrongs of agility can rage on for months, until both sides collapse in an exhausted heap with no sign of agreement. The discussions heat up still further when they border …

Developer 15 Jan 2007, 07:02
Disclosure of government data mining could become US law

Snooping bill revived

The newly Democrat controlled US Senate and Congress will soon vote on a law that would force the government to disclose all data mining programmes on US citizens. The bill requires all federal agencies to disclose their data analysis activities. If passed into law the bill would represent a policy change from the more …

Government 15 Jan 2007, 10:12
O2 delays XDA Zinc roll-out

Release slips

O2 has pushed back the release of its XDA Zinc 3G PDA phone, dropping the previously announced January 2007 debut in favour of a March 2007 introduction, the UK carrier's website reveals. O2 compares Zinc to the existing XDA Mini S but "with added 3G power for high speed Internet and video calling". The company doesn't say …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 10:28
US wants all your fingerprints

Digital crackdown

Brits planning a trip to the US will now have to surrender all 10 of their digits to the authorities for fingerprinting. The prints will then be added to the same FBI database which stores the prints of convicted criminals. Trials are set to start at 10 airports in the UK this summer, according to a report in yesterday's …

Government 15 Jan 2007, 10:30
Woman dies after Wii competition

Radio station water drinking wheeze goes awry

A mother of three died from water intoxication after a radio station drinking competition, a California coroner said on Saturday. Jennifer Strange, 28, competed in Sacramento station KDND 107.9's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest to try to win Nintendo's console for her children. Contestants were handed half-pint bottles of …

Music and Media 15 Jan 2007, 10:50
EU goes mad for Bulgarian breast-boosting beer

Alcohol-enhanced airbag frenzy

Bulgaria looks set to become a mecca for EU citizens looking to pump up their airbags without surgery following the lifting of customs duty on Boza beer - reputed to have magical breast-boosting properties. According to Ananova, men are "flocking" over the Bulgarian border to pick up a few cases of the fermented wheat flour …

Bootnotes 15 Jan 2007, 10:52
Spammers get bullish on stocks

Pump-and-dump pumped

A week before Christmas, Diamant Art seemingly got a holiday bonus: On 18 December, the small Canadian maker of plastic food wrap saw its sub-penny stock price triple from 0.08 cents to a peak of 0.25 cents while trading in shares of the firm skyrocketed. Yet, the price boost was not driven by good news issued by the company …

Spam 15 Jan 2007, 10:57
Xbox 360 dominates US next-gen console December sales

Advantage of good supply?

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft sold, respectively, 604,200, 490,700 and 1.1m next-gen games consoles in the US in December 2006, retail market watcher NPD said last week. The company's figures show the Xbox 360 as the clear winner. December marks the first month during which all three consoles were on sale for the full 31-day …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 11:07
Ovum and BT in war of words

VoIP figures disputed

BT has hit back at cricticism of how it adds up the numbers using, or registering, for its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service. Last week BT made much of having a million customers signed up to its VoIP service, claiming it had hit its target six months early. But Ovum analyst Mark Main described the release as " …

VoIP 15 Jan 2007, 11:14
Intel's Flash cache module wins PCIe thumbs-up

Stage set for Robson's Centrino debut

Intel's 'Robson' Flash cache module for Windows Vista notebooks has won the approval of the PCI SIG, the organisation behind the PCI Express interconnect standard, it has emerged. PCI SIG approval usually comes as a product enters the last stretch before its release, in this case the anticipated Q2 debut of 'Santa Rosa', the …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 11:36
Devolo dLAN 200 AVdesk HomePlug AV network adaptor

Review HD-ready wired networking over your home's powerlines

Driving data over mains power cables is nothing new, but products based on the latest, fastest incarnation of the HomePlug Ethernet-over-powerline standard have only recently started to appear, over a year after the specification was finalised, in August 2005. The new version of the standard delivers a claimed bandwidth of …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 12:02
Toshiba touts 51GB HD DVD

Three-layer player

Toshiba has submitted a triple-layer, 51GB HD DVD-ROM disc to the standard's overseer in the hope the technology will be adopted as a standard by the end of the year. If approved, it allow the format to exceed the 50GB storage capacity of rival medium Blu-ray Disc. The HD DVD standard currently defines single- and dual- …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 12:20
Scientists probe space origin of rare black diamonds

'Carbonado' gems under scrutiny

Scientists have suggested that rare black "carbonado" diamonds - found only in Brazil and the Central African Republic - may have arrived on Earth aboard a kilometre-wide asteroid, New Scientist reports. The rare gems are, unlike other diamonds, "made of millions of diamond crystals that are stuck together", and are also porous …

Space 15 Jan 2007, 12:33
Siemens ex-CFO named in bribery probe

Telco contracts under microscope

Another senior figure at Siemens AG has been named as a suspect in the ongoing investigation into allegations of bribery at the industrial giant. Former chief finance officer Heinz-Joachim Neuburger was interviewed by investigators last week and is now considered a suspect. Neuburger has previously denied any involvement in the …

Financial News 15 Jan 2007, 12:36
HP bundles business desktop with free country

Remarkable Computacenter deal

Those readers who are on the lookout for a new business desktop should get themselves down to Computacenter where HP is making the most remarkable offer we've ever seen: Yup, you don't get a monitor with your Business Desktop dc5100, but they throw in Italy for nothing. A word of warning, though: buyers are advised to check …

Channel Register 15 Jan 2007, 12:51
FBI warns of assassin spam scam twist

Probe fairytale targets gullible

The FBI is warning of a new twist in the saga of scam emails that suggest a "hitman" is on the trail of the recipients. The original scam promised prospective marks that the killer would cancel the contract providing the recipient paid large sums of loot, typically $80,000. Unknown scammers (probably the same group, but that' …

Spam 15 Jan 2007, 12:53
Two years on, Huygens data still delivering

Titanic probe

Two years ago, a small spacecraft fell through a turbulent atmosphere to land on the surface of an alien world a billion or so kilometres from Earth. Since then, the data collected during its relatively short descent has continued to delight and amaze space scientists, amateur astronomers, and anyone with a passing interest in …

Space 15 Jan 2007, 13:04
N Korea puts giant rabbit on the menu

German überbunnies à la Kim Jong Il

Starving North Koreans could soon be enjoying steaming platters of giant rabbit - thanks to German pensioner Karl Szmolinsky who recently sold 12 of the überbunnies to the nosh-strapped Communist state. Szmolinsky was aproached by the North Korean embassy in Berlin after "attracting attention for breeding his country's largest …

Bootnotes 15 Jan 2007, 13:08
Asus revs second-gen Lamborghini laptop

Asus has announced the second generation of its Lamborghini-branded laptop, apparently adding little more than a metallic keyboard and a leather-bound palm rest below it - a "tactile way" to experienced "the Lamborghini luxury", the notebook maker claimed. Asus didn't say much about the machine's specifications: like its …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 13:19
Mac gets first RAID storage server

iPhone? Pah!

A small Minneapolis firm showed off what it claims is the first enterprise level RAID storage for Mac OS X systems at MacWorld last week. Amid the iPhone hyperbole, Storage Elements demonstrated its unified iSCSI/fibre channel Mythos storage server. CEO Brad Wenzel said: "We've been working in the field a long time and we've …

Storage 15 Jan 2007, 13:38
France and UK discussed 'merger'

Secret documents reveal 1950s talks

Be prepared to choke your beef and oyster pie of Olde England: previously-secret documents at the National Archive reveal how in 1956 the French Prime Minister travelled to London to propose a possible merger between the two countries. On 10 September, Anglophile Guy Mollet made the suggestion to his Brit counterpart Sir …

Government 15 Jan 2007, 13:41
The 'mob' to advise PM on gov data sharing

String 'em up!

The Prime Minister is to set up focus groups to ask the British public whether the government should be allowed to keep tabs on them with a 'super database'. The public consultation will be managed by Ipsos MORI and conclude in a public debate at Number 10 in March. This will all be over and done just before the publication in …

Government 15 Jan 2007, 14:07
Avaya agrees offer for Ubiquity Software

£74.3m for SIP developer

Networking firm Avaya has offered to buy UK developer Ubiquity Software for £74.3m. Ubiquity's core product is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software, which Avaya says will help it support network operators in the migration to all-IP communications. Avaya's offer breaks down to 37.3 pence per share, a premium of more than …

VoIP 15 Jan 2007, 15:30
Bebo poaches Google exec

Strategic partnerships ahoy!

Social networking site Bebo has appointed Google's ex-managing director of strategic partnerships Joanna Shields to head up its international expansion. Shields was responsible for Google partnerships in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including the search engine's deal with BSkyB. She joins Bebo as president, …

Financial News 15 Jan 2007, 15:33
Open source is good for the economy: report

Worth €2bn a year

Europe's lawmakers should "correct" policies that "implicitly or explicitly" favour the use of proprietary software, according to a newly published report from the European Commission (EC). The EC commissioned Netherlands based UNU-MERIT to investigate the "economic impact of "FLOSS"* in Europe". The researchers found open …

Software 15 Jan 2007, 15:36
MI5 security alert finally runs on secure server

Rush job patched up

MI5's terror status mailing list has been made a little more secure even though the service has still not been moved onto a fully secure UK government-run infrastructure. The service, launched by MI5 last Tuesday, is designed to allow subscribers to receive email notification of changing national security threat levels by email …

Public Sector 15 Jan 2007, 15:45
Could invisibility beat encryption?

Canadians add cloaking device to Windows files

PCMesh has unveiled software which it claims can hide any Windows file or directory, not only from other users - or thieves - of the same PC, but even from the operating system or a virus. "Data that's protected by PCMesh Hide Files and Folders is not visible, so it can't be attacked," the company claimed. "In fact, the …

Security 15 Jan 2007, 15:49
Doctors urge action on gambling addiction

Ten to one nothing happens

Treatment for gambling addiction must be made available on the NHS in the face of an industry buoyed by the internet, according to the British Medical Association (BMA). The gambling industry should tackle its responsibilities and contribute more to research into the links between online gaming and addiction, the doctors' group …

Law 15 Jan 2007, 16:48
Fact, fiction or bioterror drill? How to cook up a ricin scare

Take one reservoir, two tons ricin mash, stir vigorously

We Yanks love to be scared. The more scared we can be, the better. The Effect of Bioterrorism Messages on Anxiety Levels, a recent article in a peer-reviewed health quarterly, put a point to it. Those covering the science of terror beat in the United States have known for a bit that the mainstream media's uncritical transmission …

Security 15 Jan 2007, 17:48
PCI Express 2.0 released

Twice the bandwidth

The PCI SIG, overseer of the PCI Express add-in card standard, has finalised version 2.0 of the base specification. The new released doubles the signalling rate from 2.5Gbps to 5Gbps. The upshot: a x16 connector can transfer data at up to around 16GBps. PCIe 2.0 remains compatible with PCIe 1.1, until now, the latest version …

Reg Hardware 15 Jan 2007, 17:53
Ajax on Rails

Bringing together Ajax and Rails with Prototype

In an earlier tutorial we discussed Ruby on Rails. Ajax is an XMLHttpRequest-based web technique that you can use to transfer data between a client application and a web server, and which lets you update sections of the web page without reloading it. Rails supports Ajax functions where a XMLHttpRequest request may be sent to …

Developer 15 Jan 2007, 23:57
German fried in mole-electrocution experiment

380V garden mishap

A retired German construction foreman who tried to electrocute moles in the garden of his weekend house ended up frying himself, Reuters reports. The unnamed 63-year-old was found dead in said garden in Zingst. His body lay next to "a 380 volt cable and metal spikes rammed into the ground", according to police spokesman Uwe …

Biology 15 Jan 2007, 23:58