4th December 2007 Archive

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Bloody code!

Multiple exit points

It's amazing how some good practices limp on for decades beyond their expiration date. I still encounter people who insist that a method should have only one point of return - as if we're all still littering our code with GOTOs, and the concept of a "black-box" function was never invented. The way these same people go on about …

Software 4 Dec 00:32
Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia

Exclusive High School Musical 3

On the surface, all is well in Wikiland. Just last week, a headline from The San Francisco Chronicle told the world that "Wikipedia's Future Is Still Looking Up," as the paper happily announced that founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales plans to expand his operation with a high-profile move to the city by the bay. But underneath, there's …

Music and Media 4 Dec 00:48
Open source model impacts EnterpriseDB staff

Workers freedomed out the door

The open source model has taken its toll on a number of EnterpiseDB staff. The company recently laid off some sales workers and under performers, as it realigns its business. According to CEO Andy Astor, EnterpriseDB has enjoyed a strong recent run. “We are in the middle of our best quarter ever,” Astor said. “We are in …

Channel Register 4 Dec 01:39
Frontline Wireless matches Google with 700-MHz bid

'We are bidding to win'

As expected, uber-startup Frontline Wireless will bid for the 700-MHz band, that juicy slice of US wireless spectrum due to be auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January. "We are bidding to win and to build out a 4G network to meet the needs of public safety and other customers and to …

Wireless 4 Dec 01:46
Canadian loses $20K in phony eBay sale

Account hijacking continues

A Canadian man was scammed out of $20,000 when he tried to buy a car through eBay. Shaqir Duraj, a baker from Calgary, thought he was dealing with a reputable seller because the person had a 98-per cent customer satisfaction rating. The refugee from Kosovo had already made high-ticket purchases off eBay, buying a big oven for …

Security 4 Dec 01:50
IT pro admits stealing 8.4M consumer records

Netted $580,000

A senior database administrator for a consumer reporting agency in Florida has admitted stealing more than 8.4 million account records and selling them to a data broker. He netted $580,000 over five years from the scheme. William Gary Sullivan, a DBA for Fidelity National Information Services, faces up to 10 years in federal …

Channel Register 4 Dec 02:00
Sun itching to release its virtualization platform

xVM Ops Center gets a price tag

Have ready some clean towels and a cardboard box, Sun Microsystems is whelping the first in a litter of virtualization products next month. Sun is sneaking off to a nice quiet closet to birth xVM Ops Center, the physical and virtual resource management stack for the xVM product family. This puppy will be available January 8, …

Servers 4 Dec 05:02
Ofcom announces microwave spectrum auction details

Britannia sells the waves

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has announced details of its upcoming auctions of "high-frequency" spectrum. The preliminary deadline for applications to participate in the auctions has been set at 16 January 2008, to be confirmed before the Christmas break. The bands to be sold off are the 10 GHz, 28 GHz, 32 GHz and 40 GHz ones, …

Mobile 4 Dec 07:02
Geek gifts for Christmas

Site offer Part Two: Please your geek

And so we continue with the second installment of our Christmas offerings. With some of this year's expected bestsellers in the list below, it truly is a blockbuster production. To add our own bit of festive goodwill, we're offering up to 40 per cent off all titles. The Bumper Book of Government Waste 2008 Edition It's back …

Site News 4 Dec 10:02
Ex-HMRC boss gets shiny new civil service post

DWP adds to UK identity crisis?

Paul Gray, the civil service boss who resigned because of the loss of the child benefit database, has got himself a nice little Whitehall contract. Gray will work on special projects for the Cabinet Office after less than two weeks' gardening leave. Gray quit as chairman of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs on 20 November - he …

Government 4 Dec 10:14
Brits declare Paris most pointless celeb

Talented heiress fails to impress

A poll of 4,000 discerning Brits has unsurprisingly voted Rwandan mercy-dash heroine "One Night In" Paris Hilton the planet's most pointless celebrity - pipping former Big Brother contestants Chantelle "Bulgarian Airbags" Houghton and Jade "Juicy Kebab" Goody into second and third spots, respectively. The next highest-ranking …

Entertainment 4 Dec 10:19
Intel roadmaps P45, G45 chipsets for Q2 '08

Fully Vista-friendly integrated GPUs too

Intel's X48 chipset - reviewed by Register Hardware here - is due in Q1 2008, but we'll have to wait until the following quarter for the rest of the 4-series 'Eaglelake' chipset family to arrive. So indicates an Intel presentation slide posted by Chinese-language site HKEPC. Q2 2008 will see the arrival of the P45 discrete …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 10:36
World's oldest Roller goes for £3.5m

1904 10hp two-seater

The world's oldest known surviving Rolls-Royce - a 1904 10hp two-seater bearing the licence plate U 44 - sold yesterday at auction in London to a private British collector for a cool £3.5m. The vehicle, described by auctioneers Bonhams as the "1904 Paris Salon and 1905 Olympia Motor Exhibition Display Car", was designed as …

Bootnotes 4 Dec 10:54
Oz video rental giants go Blu-ray only

HD DVD camp 'missing the boat' Down Under

Major Australian rental chains Video Ezy and Blockbuster - both of which are owned by the same company, Franchise Entertainment Group - have gone all-out for Blu-ray Disc, they said today. Neither chain - comprising 870 stores in total - will now offer HD DVD rentals. According to FEG Managing Director Paul Uniacke, quoted by …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 10:58
Nokia unveils eco phone and planet-friendly charger

NokiaWorld The mobile Evolves

No sooner had Nokia’s executives leapt onto the stage at today's opening of the giant's annual NokiaWorld shindig than assembled hacks were presented with a new, eco-friendly handset. Nokia's Evolve: half the front can be recycled The 3110 Evolve is a dual-band GSM/GPRS handset which Nokia claimed has fascias made from 50 …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 11:15
Poor take-up of e-tax system

Biz won't fill in returns electronically, say MPs

A committee of MPs has found that take up of online services for filing company tax returns remains low, despite the incentive of cost savings to users and the government. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is planning to invest £340m in its online services between 2006 and 2015. As levels of online filing increase, it expects to …

Small Biz 4 Dec 11:15
Less cash for more chips

Consumers gorge on silicon

Sales of PCs and other silicon-heavy goodies helped chip sales climb in October, but vendors are seeing less revenue per part due to continuing price attrition. The Semiconductor Industry Association says worldwide chip sales were up 5 per cent year on year to $23.1bn. This was a two per cent advance on the previous month. …

Channel Register 4 Dec 11:36
Creative ups Zen mem to 32GB

Creative has extended its Zen line of Flash-based compact handheld media players with a 32GB model. The 83 x 55 x 12mm Zen - reviewed here - sports a 2.5in, 320 x 240, 16.7m-colour display and the ability to play MP3, AAC and WMA music files, along with MPEG 4, WMV and DivX video, and JPEG pictures. There's an FM radio on …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 11:37
Beer makes people have sex with you

US trick-cyclists in shock booze-nookie linkage

American trick-cyclists have stunned the world with the revelation that young people who drink a lot tend to get more sex. Academics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis revealed their shock findings yesterday after extensive research. It seems that the shrinks were easily able to demonstrate a …

Biology 4 Dec 11:39
Appraisals are dishonest, waste of time

Staff put a cross in the box

Almost half of employees think that their boss is dishonest during appraisal processes, while a third think the whole process is a waste of time, according to research by productivity body Investors in People. The survey found that 44 per cent of workers had had appraisals in which they thought their superior had been …

Small Biz 4 Dec 11:49
Counterfeit Vista rate half that of XP

And not for the reasons you think

The piracy rate for Windows Vista is less than half that of Windows XP, according to Microsoft. The vendor made the claim as it revealed plans to further curtail piracy when it launches the first service pack for Vista. Redmond attributes tougher anti-piracy measures in Vista, which it intends to further improve, for its …

Operating Systems 4 Dec 12:13
Acute virus outbreak hits Tristan da Cunha

'World's most isolated settlement' awaits urgent medical supplies

The inhabitants of remote Tristan da Cunha are awaiting urgent medical supplies after succumbing to an unspecified acute virus outbreak which has caused "severe breathing problems" in many of the island's 275 citizens. According to the BBC, the UK's Falmouth Coastguard is coordinating an international operation to get the …

Biology 4 Dec 12:35
How to carve up the Digital Dividend?

Ofcom consults the public while the EU mulls mandates

Ofcom has discovered that the general public would like to see more TV channels, but not on their phones, when analogue TV is switched off. Meanwhile, Brussels suggests the regulator should handing over half the spectrum released to the EU Commission. The frequencies being released by the analogue switch-off are nicely placed …

Networks 4 Dec 12:47
Google slightly less open than Interpol

Do no evil, but keep very, very quiet about it...

Google is one of the world's least accountable and transparent organisations, only slightly less accountable than Interpol. Research from One World Trust ranks intergovernmental organisations, international non-governmental organisations and transnational corporations. It awards points towards accountability based on …

Law 4 Dec 12:55
Nokia N81 8GB smartphone

Review You wait ages for an 8GB Nokia then three come along at once

Nokia followed up its first 8GB mobile, the music-centric N91, with a second one, the N95 8GB. And now here's a third: the music and gaming geared N81 8GB. The N81 arrives at the same time as its more luxuriantly-equipped N95 stablemate, bringing a smidgen more choice at a lower price to the high-capacity music-mobile arena …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 13:02
Is Apple coding Leopard to run Windows apps natively?

Or just making life easier for Parallels and VMWare?

Is Apple covertly working on a direct Windows application compatibility for Mac OS X? Some observers have suggested that it may well be after it was discovered that Leopard will attempt to load Portable Executable (PE) files when asked and even try to find relevant Windows Dynamic Linked Libraries (DLLs). Leopard's PE support …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 13:25
Acer gives Dell notebook business a kicking

Taiwanese firm buys way into second place

Dell was kicked into third place in the worldwide laptop market last quarter, as Acer and its associated brands took second slot behind HP. A grand total of 29 million laptops were shipped in the third quarter, according to researcher firm Displaysearch, up 42 per cent on the year. The firm expects full year shipments to hit …

Channel Register 4 Dec 13:49
DARPA seeks network firing ranges for cyber weaponry

Keep out, war-warez test in progress

DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency), the Pentagon battle-boffins who would rather bet on a long shot than eat their dinners, are looking for the computer-net equivalent of a firing range or exercise training area. The proposed "cyber network ranges" would be used to test revolutionary new cyber tactics and combat …

Security 4 Dec 13:50
NokiaWorld Nokia pumps up headphone pair

Resisting a face-to-face conversation’s now even easier, thanks to Nokia. It’s unveiled two headphone designs, the WH-600 over-ear ‘cups’ and WH-700 in-ear cans. Nokia's WH-600 Each model connects to your handset - or any other device - via a 3.5mm jack and has a track-skip and volume-control switch built into the cord. …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 13:58
Nokia to offer unlimited music downloads... for free

NokiaWorld If you buy a phone...

Most mobiles have a music player nowadays, but most don’t come with a year's free and unlimited music downloads. Step up Nokia, which has just outlined just such a scheme, dubbed 'Comes With Music'. The basic premise: buy a Nokia Music Store-compatible handset and you’ll be rewarded with access to an online library of tracks …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 14:20
MPAA's uni piracy-busting toolkit forced offline

Copyright violation surveillance suite in potential pot/kettle fiasco

The Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) has been forced to stop distributing its "University Toolkit" online after just one month because it may violate copyright laws. The attempt to quash movie piracy via BitTorrent was taken offline yesterday. A suite of open source applications was cobbled together to make colleges spy …

Law 4 Dec 14:37
Mum defends suspected Kiwi botmaster

Misunderstood youth

New Zealand reporters have unearthed the identity and background of a teenage hacker at the centre of an international cybercrime investigation. Owen Walker, 18, who police identified only by his online moniker of AKILL, was arrested last week as part of a larger FBI-led operation aimed at cracking down on the trade in …

Crime 4 Dec 14:46
Wernher Von Braun's 1934 PhD thesis auctioned

Declassified early work of Nazi/NASA rocket granddaddy

The original classified top-secret PhD thesis of famed Nazi and NASA rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun is to be auctioned in New York today. Von Braun, as most Reg readers will be aware, grew up in pre-war Germany. In 1934 he wrote a 166-page PhD dissertation on, erm, rocket science. The document won the young Von Braun his …

Science 4 Dec 14:54
Information Commissioner faces MP grilling

Committee hearing this afternoon

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas faces a grilling from MPs this afternoon when he gives evidence to the Justice Committee. The committee is looking at the protection of private data in the light of recent failures by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and other government departments. The timing could be better. Thomas …

Law 4 Dec 14:58
eBayers offload eBay Xmas prezzie on eBay

Unwanted gift, going cheap

You're got to admire the spirit of raw capitalism that drives the world's favourite tat bazaar, as exemplified by the case of the eBay promotional USB Xmas lights. eBay apparently recently handed out strings of illuminations, as seen here, to selected users, presumably as a way of thanking them for their sterling efforts in …

Bootnotes 4 Dec 15:03
T-Mobile wins right to end sale of unlocked iPhones

German Court rules against Vodafone

France is now the only country on the planet where you can buy - legally - an unlocked iPhone. A German court has cast aside a two-week-old order forcing T-Mobile to begin offering unlocked iPhones. The initial order was established after Vodafone argued before the Hamburg District Court that T-Mobile's exclusive deal with …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 15:39
Murdoch puts faith in online religion

LinkedIn damned to hell

Rupert Murdoch's global media omnibeast has bought itself a religious tentacle, according to reports. News Corp will announce today it has paid an undisclosed sum for Beliefnet.com, a faith portal whose mission "is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and …

Music and Media 4 Dec 16:01
iPhone tops mobile browsing charts

Interface driving usage?

Figures from Net Applications showing that since it was launched the iPhone has topped the charts amongst mobile browsers, with Symbian S60 trailing far behind. Desktop operating systems, unsurprisingly, occupy the top positions in the chart of web usage, but the iPhone still manages a respectable 0.09 per cent of all browsing …

Mobile 4 Dec 16:03
Xmas hangovers to cost UK biz £790m

Puking, shattered employees menace economy

Hangovers provoked by wild Xmas alcoholic excess will cost British business £790m* this festive season as workers stagger around their offices looking for a nice place to have a kip or puking up the previous night's intake. That's according to hotel outfit Travelodge, which claims 4,500 Brit workers "predicted that their …

Small Biz 4 Dec 16:13
Asus dropped hard disk from Eee PC at eleventh hour

Exclusive Manual reveals all

Did Asus originally plan to release its elfin Eee PC mini laptop with a magnetic hard disk drive? A snippet from the computer's manual suggests that the company did. "To prepare the Eee PC for transport, you should turn it off... The solid-state disk's head retracts when the power is turned off to prevent scratching of the …

Reg Hardware 4 Dec 16:26
Win 2000 anti-virus products fail independent tests

Polymorphic virus fools mediocre security packages

Many big-name anti-virus products failed to secure Windows 2000 in recent independent tests. Seventeen out of 32 products tested - including packages from Trend Micro, Kaspersky, Norman and Sophos - failed to reach the standard required for VB100 certification. A total of 13 products failed to spot threats known to be …

Anti-Virus 4 Dec 16:30
Stock market breaks out mistletoe for Microsoft-SAP

Old chestnuts, get your old chestnuts

Rumours that SAP might be in takeover talks with Microsoft have pushed up shares in the German software giant over the last couple of days. Reuters reports that large numbers of shares in SAP changed hands today, as traders reacted to the rumour which began circulating on Monday. We say Monday, but an SAP love match has been …

Channel Register 4 Dec 16:34
VMware parades virtualization for the SMB masses

Squirt the virt

VMware has announced three new VMware Infrastructure packages that are designed to help IT administrators at SMBs make the decision to deploy virtual infrastructure. The SMB bundles are based on the latest release of VMware Infrastructure, which will include the new VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5, and are focused …

Channel Register 4 Dec 18:09
LimeWire gets schooled in law by RIAA members

Antitrust? Fuhgeddaboudit!

A federal judge dismissed all claims yesterday by the P2P file-sharing network LimeWire that the record industry illegally blocked its attempts to build a legitimate digital music service. LimeWire's suit was a counter-claim to a copyright complaint bought by the labels last year. The 13 labels named in the complaint, …

Music and Media 4 Dec 18:14
Privacy breach nuked in Canadian passport site

Applicants' intimate details free for the taking

Red-faced Canadian passport officials say they've closed a privacy breach on their website that leaked the personal information of applicants, including their driver's license numbers, birth dates - even whether they owned a gun. The hole was discovered last week by an Ontario man who found a simple way to cause the Passport …

Government 4 Dec 18:18
Vista vs XP performance: Some informal tests

Who's the daddy?

After posting about the inadequacy of a recent test report I thought it would be interesting to conduct my own informal tests of Vista vs XP performance. I do not run a computer laboratory, but I guess my tests have the benefit of being real-world. I tested several conditions on three computers. On two of them I was able to …

Software 4 Dec 19:51
Microsoft kills Santa Claus

Christmas canceled due to salty tongue

Microsoft has killed Santa Claus today, after an unsatisfactory attempt to restrain the North Pole-based jolly old elf from instant messaging children about oral sex. Although Redmond has been challenged by compassion in the past, this appears to be the first time on record it has out-and-out killed the very manifestation of …

Bootnotes 4 Dec 19:58
iPhone's visual voicemail ain't so new

Patent holder sees Apple in court

Klausner Technologies has filed suit against Apple, and AT&T, for infringing its patent for providing a visual representation of incoming messages, a claim that has convinced AOL and Vonage to pay up in the past. Klausner Technologies has filed the case in the patent-holders' favourite, the Eastern District of Texas, and is …

Mobile 4 Dec 21:46
Verizon fondling Google Android?

Strange bedfellows

Verizon continues to embrace what it once despised. One week after the mega-telco announced that it would open its wireless network to non-Verizon devices and applications, chief executive officer Lowell McAdam has told Business Week that the company will "get behind" Android, the very open mobile phone operating system …

Mobile 4 Dec 23:29
Experts paint bleak picture of security in 2017

Cyberterrorists and software stalinism

In case there was any doubt, leaden clouds loom over the future of computer security. At least that's the picture sketched by experts Bruce Schneier and Marcus Ranum in a recent conversation as they envision the state of computing a decade from now. By 2017, computers will be even more central to our economies, infrastructure …

Channel Register 4 Dec 23:48