Top Twenty Stories

1. Employees sue for unpaid Windows Vista overtime

   What price systems integration?

   Windows Vista is in more legal hot water and this time the ones getting wet are the companies who've rolled out the operating system, not Microsoft. A series of lawsuits have been brought against major US companies by staff claiming unpaid overtime based on the time it takes Windows Vista to start up and shut down. Mark …

2. BNP list hunters bring down Wikileaks

   70 hits a second

   The Wikileaks website struggled to stay online yesterday because of thousands of people looking for the leaked BNP membership list. As revealed by the Register the list of more than 10,000 BNP members was leaked early on Monday morning and although it was removed from the original blog it quickly appeared elsewhere on the net …

3. BNP membership list leaks online

   Rightwingers left exposed

   The British National Party has lost its membership list - the whole thing has been published online. The list includes names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of all members up to September 2008. It also includes some people's ages, especially those under 18 - the BNP offers family membership for £40. Many entries …

4. Google - the world's first firewalled monopoly

   Antitrust 2.0 Pricing power goes virtual

   Why did Google leave outgoing Yahoo! chief executive Jerry Yang heartbroken at the search engine altar? If you believe the words chief ad broker and CEO Eric Schmidt funneled through The New York Times, Google chafed at the prospect of winning a Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust suit. "We canceled the deal with about one …

5. US Army bans USB devices to contain worm

   Unfriendly fire

   The US Army has reportedly suspended the use of USB and removable media devices after a worm began spreading across its network. Use of USB drives, floppy discs, CDs, external drives, flash media cards and all other removable media devices has been placed on hold in order to contain the spread of Agent-BTZ, a variant of the …

6. US, UK deploy manned unmanned aircraft to save bandwidth

   Backseaters still tolerating pilots for now

   Bandwidth-starved military spyplane chiefs are resorting to the use of humans as airborne data-processing nodes, according to reports. Difficulties in deployment of unmanned robot surveillance craft have led to the purchase of basic civilian planes for use in intelligence work above Iraq and Afghanistan. For years now, ground …

7. T-Mobile leaves 300,000 disconnected

   Database corruption blamed

   300,000 UK T-Mobile customers had a quiet morning as they were unable to make or receive calls thanks to a database snafu that forced the operator to restore from backups - a process which is still in progress. The problems started at around 10am this morning, and meant that 300,000 customers couldn't be verified by the …

8. The madness of 'king cores

   Opinion 80-core servers will add-up to nothing without hypervisors

   Intel is pumping up its virility through proxies like Michael Dell reminding us of an 80-core chip future. It's impressive, but Intel is a company obsessed to distraction with Moore's Law. It's like watching a crack addict do anything to get the next hit, a doubling of processor performance every 18 months, whatever it takes, in …

9. MPs declare their ignorance on the web

   Comment If they're not ranting, they're bumbling

   The times, they may be changing on the internet, but if our Parliament has anything to do with it, that change is unlikely to be for the better. The problem is that far too many MPs not only don’t get it when it comes to the net, they actively bask in their ignorance of new technology. Two outwardly unconnected stories show …

10. BNP leaked list claims first victims

    Genie + bottle = foot + mouth

    The first public sector employees are waking up to the fallout from the leaking of the BNP membership list yesterday. Although the list was removed from its original blog home it has reappeared at several mirror sites, on bittorrent and on Wikileaks. Wikileaks uses encryption to protect its sources and is widely distributed …

11. Scots vote out ID cards

    MSPs say nae, but move means naething

    The Scottish Parliament has voted against the government's proposed ID cards, in a gesture of Phythonian futility. Members of the Scottish Parliament decided the cards would not deter crime, would not add to security and would do very little for civil liberties as well. MSP Fergus Ewing told the Parliament that the government …

12. Company sues Facebook over somethingorother

    Unified, horizontal system for communications...bitch!

    A Ohio-based technology company is suing Facebook for patent infringement, claiming it invented the platform the insanely popular social networking site uses to store and manage information. Leader Technology claims Facebook infringes on its patent for "dynamic association of electronically stored information with iterative …

13. Firefox millions - only 12 per cent Google free

    Mozilla faces IRS audit over search sugar daddy

    In 2007, the Mozilla Foundation received 88 per cent of its revenue from a certain Mountain View sugar daddy. And thanks to its longstanding Google dependence, the organization is facing an IRS audit and questions over its tax exempt status. Today, the non-profit behind the open-source Firefox browser released its long-delayed …

14. 25 years of Macintosh - the Apple Computer report card

    Part One What Steve hath wrought (from A to F)

    In two short months, Apple's Macintosh will turn 25 years old. My, how tempus doth fugit. To mark the awesome inevitability of January 24, 2009 following January 24, 1984 after exactly one quarter-century, tech pundits will bloviate, Apple-bashers will execrate, and Jobsian fanboyz will venerate the munificence that flows …

15. UK.gov tells domain industry to get its house in order

    Oh no! Here comes the government...

    A day after Nominet decided to sue one of its own directors, a senior civil servant warned that the domain industry must be better behaved to avoid government intervention. Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform official David Hendon was speaking on Wednesday at the not-for-profit's annual registrars' …

16. Google torches own brand Sadville

    'Lively' wasn't

    Could it be there isn't a pot of gold at the end of the Sadville rainbow? Google doesn't think there is, and will shutter its "virtual world" Lively after less than six months. Lively was opened in July under the Google Labs banner, the clearing house for unfinished or pointless products. Its closure merited two and a bit …

17. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 planned for 2009

    Third beta, then release

    The "standards-compatible" next edition of Internet Explorer has been bumped into 2009 by Microsoft. A third Internet Explorer 8 beta will now be released in the first quarter of next year and be followed by a final release, IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch has blogged. Hachamovitch did not give a date for that final …

18. Trademark owner loses domain name claim against unauthorised reseller

    Court rules against ITT

    Dealers and resellers can use a manufacturer's trademark as a domain name even when their sales are not authorised by the manufacturer, an arbitration panel has ruled. Pressure gauge maker ITT failed in its claim for the domain name ITTbarton.com and 12 other domain names owned by a seller of ITT pressure gauges, Douglas …

19. Hitachi GST spots oyster, seeks HDD pearls

    Comment Storage doesn't have to spin

    When you are recovering from a long period of hard times and light appears at the end of the tunnel and gets closer and closer until you emerge into glorious daylight, you get a spring in your step and start making plans. Now you're back on your feet, the world becomes an oyster again, and you go off in different directions …

20. The GUI that almost conquered the pocket

    Farewell then, UIQ

    The death of UIQ deserves a footnote for posterity – and a chance to take look back at a decade in which almost everything that everyone predicted for mobile data proved to be wrong. Given the way the market turned out, it didn't stand a chance. In case you missed the news, the adventure is over. While much of UIQ survived the …