4th May 2007 Archive

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HP wings Pelikan with patent lawsuit

Stoppen ze inkin

HP has filed a lawsuit against Germany-based Pelikan Hardcopy Deutschland for patent infringement of HP printer cartridges. The lawsuit claims three patents involving ink cartridge design and three regarding ink formulation have been trodden on. The complaint was filed in Düsseldorf District Court. The cartridges are sold in …

Channel Register 4 May 2007, 00:26
Cash-for-grade probe may result in felony charges for 84 students

College admins receive crash-course in security

As many as 84 people could face felony charges for participating in a bribery scandal in which student employees of a community college in Northern California charged as much as $600 per grade to change their classmates' computer transcripts. There's no word yet if administrators who failed to police their networks will take a …

Enterprise Security 4 May 2007, 00:30
ClearSpeed finds PCIe floating point booster

Courts Windows crowd as well

Those of you desperate for a floating point speed up have another accelerator option thanks to a new product from ClearSpeed. The start-up this week announced the e620 card that plugs into PCI Express slots. The product complements an existing card for PCI X slots called the X620. ClearSpeed once hoped to ship the PCIe part …

Servers 4 May 2007, 01:15
Boffins to UK.gov: Don't muck around with science teaching

You cannae change the laws of physics

A group of prominent UK scientists is warning that changes to the way science is taught in schools are being made too fast, and without proper consultation. The Science Community Partnership Supporting Education (Score)* says the planned changes should be piloted before being rolled out on such a massive scale. Its report was …

Science 4 May 2007, 05:02
Chaos in Sussex as 'bat monitor' mistaken for bomb

al-Qaeda jugular strike against A23 feared

Twitchy coppers brought paralysis to the roads and evacuated villagers from their homes after a piece of bat-detecting equipment was mistaken for a deadly terrorist bomb. Presumably fearing that al-Qaeda had cunningly switched focus from central London to rural Sussex - perhaps in a bold attempt to lay Crawley under the heel of …

Public Sector 4 May 2007, 06:02
Tories plan open door for open source

Right place, right time

A Tory strategy to make more use of open source software in the public sector is likely to tackle the culture of secrecy in government procurement, according to early details released to The Register. Planned for publication next month and stemming from shadow chancellor George Osborne's adoption of a West Coast attitude, the …

Software 4 May 2007, 07:02
P2P start-up snags almost every film in Hollywood

Comment Web video services gold rush

Every news source that covers digital media this week followed the Wall Street Journal in heaping praise on start-up Vudu that has managed to get most of Hollywood, not counting Sony, to give it access to major motion pictures for downloading over the web, using a peer to peer architecture. But apart from the non-technical …

Music and Media 4 May 2007, 08:02
Oyster-Barclaycard hybrid passes first technical trials

One card to rule them all

Transport for London (TfL) and TranSys have said they have successfully completed the first technical trials of the combined Oyster and Barclaycard. It amounts to a significant step towards making the Oyster card, currently used to prepay for travel around London, a means of payment for other transactions. Since December, 60 …

Public Sector 4 May 2007, 08:52
Tribunal forces opening up of ID card 'gateway' docs

OGC tries in vain to avoid scrutiny

The Information Tribunal has forced the disclosure of strategic reviews of the identity cards system by the Office of Government Commerce, which opposed the disclosure of the information. Security consultant Mark Dziecielewski and LibDem MP for Winchester Mark Oaten had made Freedom of Information requests to see details of …

Government 4 May 2007, 08:59
British Library wants to archive your emails

Click to send from inbox to history

The first public project to record email messages is requesting examples of romance, humour, and complaints. The British Library is compiling a national record of British life by email, the first of its kind, to become a part of its permanent archives. The Email Britain website went live on Thursday and invites everyone in the …

Public Sector 4 May 2007, 09:04
Operations management for developers

Editors' Blog Spare a thought for the operators

Almost 30 years ago when I first did my IT training, part of it was spent in ops, mounting tapes and trying to keep important systems operating efficiently. At the same time, I met a programmer who took pleasure in "keeping the operators awake" by making them mount tapes pointlessly. Then I went into DBA, which (in those days) …

Developer 4 May 2007, 09:15
Voting the old way in the UK...on paper

Comment Mark X for transparency and democracy

There's an old saying that a true patriot, in receipt of a valid parking ticket, rejoices that the system works. And that's how I feel so far. I expected to have to fight uphill to be allowed to record part of the traditional paper ballot UK election/voting process in photos and video, but instead everyone has been helpful and …

Government 4 May 2007, 09:21
Virgin Airlines drops in-flight 9/11 conspiracy movie

Airline's mind already made up

Virgin Airlines has pulled a controversial internet documentary on 9/11 from its in-flight entertainment system after complaints from bloggers and radio shows. Virgin was going to show this month Loose Change, an 81 minute long documentary which alleges that the 9/11 attacks were not the result of terrorism, but a series of …

Music and Media 4 May 2007, 09:27
Super-fast RDF search engine developed

Semantic web breakthrough

The next generation of the internet is a step closer thanks to a major breakthrough in "semantic web" research in Ireland. The semantic web, or data web, is a machine readable version of the internet that makes it more efficient to conduct searches, using RDF (Resource Description Framework) statements, which are used to …

Applications 4 May 2007, 09:31
Spanish vultures in bovine bloodbath

Iberian infanticide

Huge flocks of starving vultures have begun attacking live farm animals in northern Spain. In one incident about 100 birds savaged a cow and her newborn calf, a farmer in the village Valle de Mena said. The area has seen four attacks in the past two months. Jose Manuel de las Heras, president of the local chapter of a farmers …

Biology 4 May 2007, 09:56
Wiretaps, no-fly lists, and suing AT&T

Computers, Freedom and Privacy Eavesdropping is an art form

"What are you doing these days?" "Suing AT&T." Ah, eavesdropping. Day three of the ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference. The above speaker is Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His lawsuit ("Hepting") is more complex than the others brought over the Terrorist Screening Program in that it …

Law 4 May 2007, 10:10
AMD Phenom X2, X4, FX processor specs leak

'Star' chip roll out runs through to Q1 2008

Details are beginning to come through about just how AMD will roll out its next-gen desktop 'star' processors - so called because of their astronomy inspired codenames. While Q3 appears to be the key launch point, the shift extends through Q4 into Q1 2008. According to roadmap details posted by website DailyTech, Q3 will see …

Reg Hardware 4 May 2007, 10:26
BEA, IBM get social too early

Buy your anarchy toolset now

Earlier this year, both BEA and IBM announced upcoming additions to their middleware offerings that would extend the ability to incorporate Web 2.0 functionality, such as creating mashups. Now both companies have made more extensive announcements, with each including a subtle but significant shift towards branding the additions …

Developer 4 May 2007, 10:41
Robbers superglue naked man to exercise bike

Sticky situation

South African robbers have shunned traditional gaffer tape and deployed a new weapon to subdue their victims: superglue. An unnamed man was grabbed in the street and driven to his home, where a gang stripped him and superglued him to the seat of an exercise bike. They also glued his feet to the pedals and hands to the …

Bootnotes 4 May 2007, 10:42
BOFH: Somebody know this body?

Episode 15 Accident or murder?

"Ah, Simon, Steven, there's a man here from security wants a word with you?" the head of IT asks nervously. "Really?" the PFY says. "What's he want?" "Found a body," security says, stepping into Mission Control from behind the head. "A body?" the PFY says, in his well-practised innocent manner. "A body," security repeats …

BOFH 4 May 2007, 10:56
O2, Vodafone first in UK with BlackBerry Curve

O2 ahead by two weeks

O2 and Vodafone today became the first UK carriers to take on Research in Motion's consumer-friendly BlackBerry Curve. The handset itself was launched yesterday. The Curve is RIM's smallest and lightest - just about - BlackBerry with a full QWERTY keyboard: it measures 10.7 x 6 x 1.6cm and weighs 111g. The handset has a two- …

Reg Hardware 4 May 2007, 11:06
Critical DNS fix stars in upcoming Patch Tuesday

Updated Seven fixes coming at ya

Microsoft plans to release seven patches next Tuesday as part of its regular Patch Tuesday update cycle. The update will feature two patches for Windows, at least one of which earns the dread rating of critical and three patches for Microsoft Office, at least one of which is critical. Critical updates for Microsoft Exchange …

Enterprise Security 4 May 2007, 11:13
Scottish elections scuppered by e-counting meltdown

Scotch mist descends on results

The Scottish elections have been marred by an electronic counting fiasco. The Electoral Commission has already stepped in and said that it will immediately launch an independent review into how thousands of vote counts for the Scottish Parliament and local elections had been delayed due to "technical difficulties". According …

Public Sector 4 May 2007, 12:14
Was Gerry Adams in the IRA? Don't ask Wikipedia

Online encyclo jumble-shop put beyond use

The wisdom of reliance on Wikipedia as an information source has been further questioned. The latest round of bitter, heavily-politicised infighting among the wiki-fanciers centres around the involvement or non-involvement of Northern Irish politico Gerry Adams in armed violence during the recent/present Ulster troubles. Adams …

Bootnotes 4 May 2007, 12:31
Computacenter execs give cautious Q1 assessment

Things not as bad as they could be, says reseller

Computacenter, the UK's biggest IT reseller, has announced mixed results for the first quarter of 2007. At the firm's AGM held today, management reported differing performance across Europe. The loss-making French operation was described as having made "good progress" with run rate losses much reduced. This improvement was …

Channel Register 4 May 2007, 12:35
Intel web tablet SoC to cut power consumption by 20x

After 'Menlow', 'Moorestown'

Come 2010, UMPCs will consume only a twentieth of the power last year's models did and a fifth of the company's next-generation UMPC platform, Intel forecast last night. The chip maker only announced the latest version and the next incarnation of its Ultra Mobile Platform (UMP) in April, but at its spring financial conference …

Reg Hardware 4 May 2007, 12:44
Google gaffes, Tories love Linux, no one loves road pricing

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Google gaffes Google's reputation for flawless delivery of new products has always been helped by launching beta services on the quiet. But this week's move to an improved personal homepage, or iGoogle, left the search giant with a lot of angry users. Data and personal settings were lost when the updated service was introduced …

Business 4 May 2007, 12:59
Core to command all of Intel chip output by 2008

Core blimey

Intel's Core architecture will be the foundation of all Intel's x86 processors by the beginning of 2008, CEO Paul Otellini said last night at the chip giant's spring financial conference. Actually, the chart he presented showing the rise of the Core architecture and the decline to zero of "non-Core" processors the company …

Reg Hardware 4 May 2007, 13:05
Nominet board vote passes off without cockups

The election that really matters

Nominet, the top level registrar for .uk addresses, which administers the system for dealing with disputes over domains, has elected two new non-executive directors to its influential board. At the not-for-profit's AGM in Manchester this week, Sebastian Lahtinen, who founded adslguide.org.uk (now thinkbroadband.com), and Angus …

Networks 4 May 2007, 13:18
iSoft CTO quits

Mutual agreement and pay-off

Troubled healthcare provider iSoft is saying goodbye to Ravi Kumar, its chief technology officer. Kumar leaves by mutual consent and trousers a £250,000 payoff plus benefits, according to The Times. A statement on iSoft's website says Kumar will not be replaced because the company is focusing on "product delivery for the …

Channel Register 4 May 2007, 13:32
British Gas security scare as payments page springs a leak

House.co.uk leaves padlocks off Windows

A British Gas website that allows homeowners to pay bills leaves consumers exposed by inviting them to submit credit card information across an unencrypted link. Consumers logging on to pay their bills through house.co.uk initially go through a secure server. But once they create an account and login they may be transferred …

Enterprise Security 4 May 2007, 13:53
Takeover rumour orgy hits Reuters, EMI and Yahoo!

Name your suitors...

Three major takeover rumours are sending stock markets into a tizzy this afternoon. Reuters shares jumped more than 25 per cent after the news provider confirmed a takeover approach. While the company confirmed it had received an approach, reportedly from Canadian news provider Thomson, it stressed talks were at an early stage …

Financial News 4 May 2007, 13:55
YouTube starts paying 'select' uploaders

Google as film critic

Google clip dump YouTube is to trial revenue sharing with normal users by adding some of its favourite uploaders to its partnership programme. YouTube already shares advertising dollars with big commercial content firms who threaten it with lawsuits. Users who provide the site with their own home videos and film projects, such …

Music and Media 4 May 2007, 14:54
Vonage denied retrial in patent case

Supreme Court ruling provides new basis for appeal

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone company Vonage has been refused permission to have its patent case re-heard, but can introduce a new Supreme Court ruling in its appeal. Vonage lost a patent infringement case brought against it by mobile phone company Verizon earlier this year. Its phone service was found to be …

Law 4 May 2007, 14:58
MIT eggheads plan Israeli airstrike on Iran nuke factories

Frustrated Risk players, no doubt

A pair of postgraduate students at MIT have produced a detailed assessment of the Israeli Air Force's ability to destroy Iran's potential nuclear weapon manufacturing plants. Whitney Raas and Austin Long, PhD candidates in Nuclear Engineering and Political Science respectively, published (pdf) Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli …

Science 4 May 2007, 14:59
RIM can work with Outlook '07

But only the Canadians know how

RIM's engineers have fixed an incompatibility flagged up by BlackBerry-toting Reg readers - allowing them to demonstrate their indispensability and show off their early-adopter credentials, both at the same time. After we reported users were having problems connecting Outlook 2007 to RIMs Blackberry devices we were contacted by …

Mobile 4 May 2007, 15:33
Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P1610

Review The Good Book overfloweth with features

Laptops come in all shapes and sizes, from super-big, hernia-inducing desktop replacements to mega-dinky ultra-portables. The Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P1610 sits firmly at the smaller end of the scale, with a footprint barely larger than an A5 sheet of paper. It's built to be lightweight and portable, and though it may be …

Reg Hardware 4 May 2007, 15:37
American inventor builds jet-propelled crapper

Truly a chariot of fire

An American inventor has gained belated media recognition for a truly stunning achievement - building and operating a jet-propelled portaloo. Paul Stender, a 43-year-old former pit mechanic, had been drifting along in the way that one does: designing jet-propelled motorcycles, pickup trucks, a school bus - basically not …

Bootnotes 4 May 2007, 15:37
Tesco Telecoms faces mis-selling probe

BT: Quite right too

Ofcom has launched an investigation into practices at Tesco's Telecoms unit. The probe will examine complaints claiming Tesco broke the Ofcom Code of Practice and mis-sold its home phone service. Complaints say Tesco did not act on cancellation requests made during the 10-day period when new customers' lines were being …

VoIP 4 May 2007, 15:41
Solaris served on the Rocks

While Sun exports its network

Sun Microsystems has put more pressure on itself to make two rather large bets pay off. The company this week bragged about booting Solaris on its Rock processor for the first time. It also hyped up the overseas expansion of network.com - Sun's pay-per-use computing and storage service. On the Rock front, WYSIWYG. The …

Servers 4 May 2007, 17:11
Bull delivers 16 cores in pizza box

Windows or Linux pie

Bull continues to flirt with the high performance computing crowd via thin, 1U systems. The French computer maker this week rolled out the NovaScale R422. Customers can pack a pair of these crafty systems into just 1U of rack space. HPC types looking to cram as much computing power in as little space as possible will enjoy the …

Servers 4 May 2007, 18:53
Irate New Mexican workers ward off alien attack

Letters A bunch of hot air

So, we're safe from Alien attack, thanks to some engineers in the US. Oddly, few of you felt very reasssured by the plans. Can't imagine why. Oh, wait: you've explained why in great detail: Let me see here... if it's true that they call Carl Sagan 'a jerk' that would tell me a great deal about these people. To call a …

Letters 4 May 2007, 18:57
Latest AACS crack 'beyond revocation'

That's torn it

Hackers have found a way of circumventing the AACS copy prevention technology used by next-generation DVD disks. Unlike earlier breaks, the latest crack can't be papered over simply by pushing key revocation updates. Advanced Access Content System (AACS) encryption forms the cornerstone of the content protection technology on …

Crime 4 May 2007, 19:33
Sun's chip gurus theorize about obliterating IBM and Intel

Nearing proximity

When you have companies such as IBM and Intel looking to destroy your business, it's nice to have a fella like Ivan Sutherland stored away in a back room. Sutherland, considered the father of computer graphics, developed a method of linking processors together called face-to-face computing, as part of his work at Sun …

Servers 4 May 2007, 19:47
NetGear adopts an Infrant

While IronMountain feeds on ArchivesOne

Put on your best bib and tucker, hombre, it's time for an end-of-week storage M&A roundup. Netgear's flush deal Netgear will fork over $60m in cash to acquire privately held NAS supplier, Infrant Technologies. If specific revenue targets are reached, Infrant shareholders may receive an additional payout of $20m over the next …

Storage 4 May 2007, 20:00
Army tells soldiers they can blog after all

Pay no attention to Reg stating otherwise

The Army is downplaying its own regulations requiring soldiers to get their commander's approval before blogging or sending email after the restrictions raised concerns about free speech on the net. While the regulation hasn't been rescinded, a fact sheet released yesterday effectively says 'never mind.' "In no way will every …

Government 4 May 2007, 21:07
Lax security led to TJX breach

Security pros left windows open

A wireless network that employed less protection than many people use on their home systems appears to be the weak link that led TJX Companies, the US-based retailing empire, to preside over the world's biggest known theft of credit-card numbers. Despite a market capitalization of almost $13bn, it appears the company couldn't …

Enterprise Security 4 May 2007, 22:06