The Register

Local mag claims Aussie Eee PC buyers will pay extra for Linux

Fri, 09 May 2008 09:24:16 GMT

'Generous' Microsoft charging less for Windows XP?

In a move that's going leave local Linux buffs alleging Asus has been handsomely rewarded by Microsoft, the computer maker is to charge less for the Windows version of the Eee PC 900 in Australia than the version using the open source OS.…

Barclays Capital slashes contractor rates by 10%

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:55:18 GMT

IT workers get credit crunched

Barclays Capital is forcing its IT contractors to choose between a 10 per cent pay cut or a quick exit from the company.…

NZ bank robber stashes loot where the sun don't shine

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:54:16 GMT

'Bottom area' rustling gives game away

A NZ bank robber who stashed the NZ$2,000 proceeds of a heist up his tradesman's entrance was fingered by "rustling sounds" from his "bottom area", the Southland Times reports.…

Sun Java chief to developers: 'We're genetic freaks'

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:53:11 GMT

Time to change your definition of 'application'

JavaOne Todd Fast, chief architect in Sun Microsystems' Java Enterprise tools group, took a big gulp of Web 2.0 Kool-Aid at JavaOne while telling professional developers they must embrace a broader definition of "application" if they are to take advantage of the current sea change in the way software is built and delivered.…

Texas graverobbers 'used skull to smoke dope'

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:52:36 GMT

Three cuffed over morbid tale

Houston Police Department is investigating a teenager's claim that he and two accomplices desecrated the grave of an 11-year-old boy, severed his skull, and subsequently used it as a bong to smoke marijuana, the Houston Chronicle reports.…

Microsoft orders 65nm Xbox 360 graphics chip

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:49:22 GMT

'Jasper' to break Red Ring of Death?

Claims the next incarnation of the Xbox 360's internal workings is due to begin being built into the console in August appear to be on track. Microsoft was this week said to have placed orders with chip and motherboard makers.…

MWg specs up 2008 handset roadmap

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:02:03 GMT

Windows Mobile 7 device en-route

The Mobile and Wireless Group (MWg) has given Register Hardware a sneak peek at four upcoming handsets, including its first Windows Mobile 7 device, during the official launch of the firm's two latest handsets: the Atom V and Zinc II.…

'Great tits cope well with warming'

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:01:59 GMT

BBC secures Headline of the Week

It's beers all round for the BBC this morning who've outregged El Reg leader writers with this deliciously suggestive offering:…

Rock Group goes titsup

Fri, 09 May 2008 07:02:02 GMT

Staff theft leads to cashflow problems

Rock Group PLC is in the hands of administrators who are trying to sell the UK notebook maker as a going concern.…

When flash mobs go bad

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:19:55 GMT

Facebook water fight soaks up thousands of pounds of damage

An open invitation on Facebook to hold a massive water fight in Leeds has resulted in thousands of pounds worth of damage to its prize winning public garden.…

Wanted: Americans to join Al Qaeda

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:18:03 GMT

Net is recruiting sergeant, senators warn

Al-Qaeda is getting better at using the Internet to tempt Americans into joining their cause. And that increases the threat of homegrown terrorism in the US, a Senate committee warned today.…

AMD boss keeps schtum on manufacturing restructure

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:51:25 GMT

Meeting doglegs to pointlessness

AMD's annual shareholder meeting today could have been an excellent time to elaborate on the company's plan to reverse course from an extremely rough 2007.…

Oracle sharpens axe for BEA layoffs

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:19:26 GMT

Four portals, two application servers, no future

Oracle is Friday expected to start laying off at least 500 staff, eliminating duplication across product engineering and management, following its $8.5bn acquisition of BEA Systems.…

India and Belgium decry Chinese cyber attacks

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:42:50 GMT

Join the ranks

Belgium and India have joined the growing ranks of countries voicing concerns about cyber attacks originating from China. Earlier this week, officials from both countries said computer networks inside their borders are routinely targeted by hackers trying to ferret information that could benefit the Chinese government.…

Hitachi slips past Fujitsu with speedy 320GB laptop drive

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:49:59 GMT

7,200rpm, 2.5-inch drive out-firsts 'world's first'

Hitachi is updating its TravelStar laptop hard drive range with a more capacious 320GB disk that spins at 7,200rpm.…

I Was A Teenage Bot Master

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:18:31 GMT

The Confessions of SoBe Owns

Exclusive One day in May 2005, a 16-year-old hacker named SoBe opened his front door to find a swarm of FBI agents descending on his family's three-story house in Boca Raton, Florida. With an arm and leg in casts from a recent motorcycle accident, one agent grabbed his good arm while others seized thousands of dollars worth of computers, video game consoles and other electronics. His parents looked on.…

MySpace revs profile transfer engine

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:07:31 GMT

Down with the walled garden

MySpace has launched an initiative that will one day allow its social-networking-obsessed users to automatically shuttle their profile data to third-party web sites.…

Surprise, surprise: F5 is doing something

Thu, 08 May 2008 18:35:11 GMT

A storage de-dupe and network acceleration box

According to an IT man from Arizona, F5 is up to something, something good. We've been wondering what it has been doing now that it has acquired Acopia and its file virtualising ARX switch. Well, according to this Arizonan who is familiar with the situation, F5 is developing a single box to replace two that people would need now.…

Facebook agrees to child-safety measures

Thu, 08 May 2008 18:34:26 GMT

Reining in Web 2.0 predators

Facebook has reached an agreement with 50 attorneys general to permanently deploy measures designed to rein in pedophiles and other predators on the social networking site.…

Why Microhoo! is like, so, totally dead

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:54:30 GMT

!!!!! and then, like, !!!!!!

Blog 0.2 Those of you au fait with my traditional morning ritual will know that I normally rise at 5.43am, dip an Indonesian virgin-thigh-rolled organic sesame seed crunch power bar into a cup of sea urchin and gauva infusion, do fifteen minutes Pilates, ensure my beachside condo is feng shui compliant before parsing the latest declaration from a besuited Beastmaster of Redmond currently jollying it up abroad.…

Interpol appeal unmasks US actor as child abuse suspect

Thu, 08 May 2008 17:44:36 GMT

Operation IDent-ification

A man matching the description of a suspected child abuser who became the target of an international manhunt earlier this week has been arrested in the US.…

MEPs back sports 'intellectual property' landgrab

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:20:34 GMT

Own(ing) goals

MEPs today voted for a bigger role for intellectual property in sports, stoking a copyright head-to-head between the powerful governing bodies of world sport and the media organisations that seek to report it.…

Renault F1 comp site spills entrants' details

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:01:51 GMT

You will never break the chain

A Grand Prix competition from Renault hit the barriers on Thursday after it emerged that the motoring firm was inadvertently leaking entrants' personal details onto the web.…

iPlayer to tart up Freesat

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:26:05 GMT

Beeb and ITV square up to Sky

iPlayer, the BBC's promiscuous media delivery software, will be available on Freesat within a year, the operator hopes.…

Britannica opens kimono, reveals widgets

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:24:07 GMT

Free access for bloggers

Britannica is opening up its content for use by publishers - including amateurs - but insists it isn't threatened by the world's biggest compendium of unusually-shaped vegetables.*…

Ofcom lays out wireless roadmap

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:18:34 GMT

Planes, trains and automobiles

Ofcom's annual research report, this year entitled The Wireless World of Tomorrow, focuses on how wireless technologies might change the transport and healthcare landscapes over the next 20 years.…

HSBC in further data loss

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:13:38 GMT

Stolen Hong Kong server contained data on 159K

Security-incident prone bank HSBC has admitted losing a server containing transaction data on 159,000 Hong Kong-based account holders.…

Salesforce boss Benioff pushes cloud

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:45:03 GMT

Pours scorn on Microsoft, bear hugs Sir Stelios

Salesforce.com boss Marc Benioff yesterday robustly elaborated on the firm's plans to push yet more services on to the cloud with the official launch of Visualforce.…

Lancashire plodcopters in laser dazzle outrage outbreak

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:46:12 GMT

Blind justice meted out to presentational-aid yob trio

It now appears that laser-pointer pilot dazzle attacks have joined the hilarious satnav-inspired motoring blunder as a staple of news kibble, with the global presentational-aid-related airborne blinding epidemic now devastating the skies above Lancashire.…

MSI releases £235 desktop Eee PC rival ahead of Asus

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:34:38 GMT

Ready for Linux

Fed up of waiting for Asus' desktop Eee PC? Rival Taiwanese manufacturer MSI has stepped in with a mini machine of its own, which it's punting at just £235.…

Orb opens iPhone for TV, video

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:42:20 GMT

Uncrippling the iPod

You don't need Steve Jobs' permission to watch TV on your iPhone any more. A native Orb client for the iPhone and iPod Touch popped up on the installer networks overnight, and Orb confirms that it's official.…

ITV fined millions for phone fraud

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:24:23 GMT

Unprecedented Ofcom smackdown

ITV must pay £5.67m in fines for misleading viewers using its premium rate phonelines - the largest fine regulator Ofcom has ever imposed.…

Id Dooms gamers to new shoot-'em-up sequel

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:09:55 GMT

Dive into the melee. Deploy superior firepower. Endure

Grand Theft Auto IV may have soaked up 90 per cent of gaming headlines for the past few weeks, but classic first-person shoot-‘em-up Doom is set to make a comeback. Version 4 is now in development.…

Firefox language pack provides adware back-door

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:56:28 GMT

Ho Chi Hack trail

Mozilla has warned that the Vietnamese language pack of Firefox 2 was compromised as a result of a viral infection.…

OpenOffice.org 3 beta lands

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:54:04 GMT

Flex your fingers

Sun Microsystems yesterday released the first beta of OpenOffice.org 3 for Windows and Mac.…

Apple out to recruit 3G-savvy iPhone field testers

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:30:46 GMT

Engineering posts offered in Oz, UK, Germany

There's now no doubt that Apple's bringing the iPhone to Australia: it's looking for an iPhone Field Validation Engineer there with "technical understanding and experience with GSM/GPRS, Edge, CDMA and UMTS".…

Washington cops may be compelled to use gun-cams

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:18:17 GMT

GunTube shoot uploads to 'improve community relations'

Cops in Washington DC could soon be compelled to fit their pistols with cameras that would record gunsight video in every situation in which the weapons were drawn, according to reports.…

Extreme porn bill gets final reading

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:04:18 GMT

Brace for dirty book burnings, smut amnesties

It must be ever so vexing to pass a law that you think will make you the most popular boy in class – only to be greeted by a mass chorus of “you still stink!”.…

Murdoch sees MySpace miss targets

Thu, 08 May 2008 10:34:30 GMT

Something about chickens and roosting

MySpace has missed its financial targets, showing that social networking is struggling to earn its keep - even as part of Rupert Murdoch's globe-spanning media empire.…

Home Secretary goes crazy on drugs... policy

Thu, 08 May 2008 10:33:32 GMT

Cannabis abuse prompts irrational legislating

Comment As an example of the brain-gobbling stupidity that affects those who dabble with drugs, you really cannot beat Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's announcement that cannabis is going to be upgraded again, from a Class C drug to a Class B one. This is the sort of drivelling idiocy more normally associated with decades on peyote rather than the few spliffs she has herself admitted to.…

I want a baby, coos broody Paris Hilton

Thu, 08 May 2008 10:31:48 GMT

Bless

El Reg's fave hotel heiress "One night in" Paris Hilton has touchingly expressed her desire to get up the duff asap and drop a sprog within the next year, according to the Sun.…

Philips hops on 'iPhone killer' bandwagon

Thu, 08 May 2008 10:15:51 GMT

A sexy little number

Pictures have been leaked out of the latest handset hoping to steal some of the iPhone’s limelight, and this time the talker’s from Philips.…

Nvidia paid the right amount for 3dfx, court affirms

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:54:55 GMT

Long-dead GPU brand exhumed, swiftly re-interred

Here's a blast from the past: graphics card maker 3dfx. The long defunct brandname - once the acme of computer graphics - briefly rose from the dead this month when erstwhile shareholders' failed to get $100m out of Nvidia.…

Blighty to become old-time Inundation Nation

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:18:05 GMT

Floods are the new terrorism, says expert

A top boffin has warned that Blighty may be headed into a "monsoon" period, possibly a decade or more in duration, in which we can expect much more flooding than has been the norm for the past generation or so. Interestingly, Professor Stuart Lane doesn't ascribe his predicted watery onslaught to climate change. He says the UK has often suffered such flooding epidemics in the past.…

Lithuanians whip out their WILI-S

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:16:51 GMT

Cheap innuendo heads for Wireless '08

Aficionados of cheap schoolboy innuendo are directed to Wireless '08 (London's Olympia, 21-22 May), where a group of keen Lithuanians will be whipping out their WILI-S.…

Rare SCADA bug poses power plant risk

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:04:32 GMT

Wonderware scare

Security watchers warn of a rare vulnerability involving software used to control industrial systems. A denial of service vulnerability in monitoring software from Invensys poses a severe risk to the factories and utilities running its Wonderware subsidiary's InTouch SuiteLink application.…

[NSFW] Isabella Rossellini romps with praying mantis

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:03:06 GMT

Bizarre 'Green Porno' trailers hit YouTube

NSFW We're not quite sure what to make of this one, but Isabella Rossellini is currently wowing the crowds down at YouTube with a couple of trailers for a series of "Green Porno" shorts - no-holds-barred insights into the wonderful world of invertebrate rumpy-pumpy:…

Bournemouth floats UK's first 100Mbps sewer broadband network

Thu, 08 May 2008 08:02:04 GMT

Insert fibre/ Wii/ pipe/ download / backdoor/ flush/ log pun here

Bournemouth will be the UK's first town to benefit from a town-wide fibre network, with 100Mbit/s access available to businesses and consumers, via the sewer system.…

Inventor of first practical transistor dead at 91

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:43:49 GMT

Bell Labs tolls for thee

Morgan Sparks, inventor of the first "practical" transistor and one of the reasons your cell phone doesn't use vacuum tubes, died this week at the age of 91.…

Comcast mulls overage fees for bandwidth lovers

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:47:56 GMT

250GB monthly cap

Comcast is considering monthly download caps for all those people on its cable-based internet service.…