News and Analysis Results
How the Dunning-Kruger effect will stop techies buying houses
By Jove, I think we've finally got an explanation for the unremitting horrors of so much of modern life - the way in which anything touched by politics, bureaucracy or officialdom simply turns to shite. No, it's not simply the current shower of authoritarians who are in power, and it's not that they're all paid too much/too …
Adobe Flash attack vector exploits insecure web design
An unpatched security risk involving Adobe Flash creates a possible mechanism for hackers to load exploits onto websites. The vulnerability was discovered by security researchers at Foreground Security and reported to both Adobe and Google, whose Google Applications, including Gmail, are potentially vulnerable to exploit. No …
Bishop calls for Priests 2.0 to evangelise on the net
A French Bishop has called for the Vatican to unleash a cadre of crack Web 2.0 trained priests to push the Church of Rome's message on the internet. The call to spiritual cyberarms came from Monsignor Jean-Michel Di Falco, the Bishop of Gap, in France, at the opening of a Vatican conference on the internet this week. Di Falco …
Wikipedia sued for publishing convicted murderer's name
A man who served 15 years for the gruesome murder of a famous German actor is taking legal action against Wikipedia for reporting the conviction. Attorneys took the action on behalf of Wolfgang Werlé, one of two men to receive a life sentence for the 1990 murder of Walter Sedlmayr. In a letter sent late last month to Wikipedia …
Wikipedia's founder gets €10K coolness credit
Jimmy Wales can add "Nokia Foundation scholarship" winner to his list of achievements, having received €10,000 for his sterling work as Maximum Leader of the Wiki. The award was made to Jimmy on the basis of his "unique contribution to accelerating online collaboration... effectively democratizing information sharing" according …
Electronic ink: The whole story in black and white
Electronic books are popping up everywhere, but in the quest for colour it's worth remembering that ink isn't just used to print books. Every time El Reg covers electronic books we get questions about why such devices aren't colour yet, and what's so great about electronic ink compared to other screen technologies, not to …
El Reg receives message from planet 'Female Pigeon'
Our suggestion yesterday that exoplanet HD 43848 b in the constellation Columba would probably benefit from a name other than "Female Pigeon" (Peristera) prompted the planet formation expert responsible for the idea to beam over a mild email protest. Wladimir Lyra writes: Dear Mr Haines, I just saw the text you wrote about …
Exoplanets dubbed 'Vulcan', 'Romulus' and 'Female Pigeon'
A planet formation expert has decided he's not happy with the International Astronomical Union's insistence that exoplanets will be known solely by their "assigned scientific designation", and has come up with names for the 403 such bodies discovered to date. Wladimir Lyra chillingly made "extensive use of Wikipedia" to find …
WikiReader feeds you factiness on the go
OpenMoko's Project B: WikiReader, a hardware implementation of Wikipedia offering mobile users access to the font of all knowledge, goes on sale today. Openmoko promised the new hardware when the company admitted it couldn't afford to develop a new handset, the GTA03. We had no idea what the mysterious "Project B" would be, but …
Orange says now everyone can be their own MVNO
Orange has signed a deal with Mobile Virtual Network Aggregator (MVNA) Transatel to handle technical details for as yet unborn MVNOs that could now launch within weeks rather than months. MVNA is such a new concept that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry yet, but that's not stopped Orange signing a deal with one to provide a …
Cambridgeshire cops get coy with FOI
Cambridgeshire Police has emerged as the latest force that prefers not to explain itself to the public – and then not to explain why it won’t explain itself. Back in December 2008, following the Internet Watch Foundation’s (IWF) controversial decision to block images of the Scorpions album cover on Wikipedia, a member of the …
O2 launches democratically-minded MVNO
O2's new MVNO, giffgaff, claims it will be run by its customers to reduce costs and reward loyalty. Assuming it gets any customers, that is. The new company will offer SIM-only connections hosted on O2's network, but reckons it can reduce costs by getting customers to provide each other's technical support and paying them in …
US deputies taze traffic dodging rogue emu
Sherriff's deputies in Mississippi were forced to taze an emu on Sunday at the culmination of three days of Dromaiusine mayhem on the highways of Scott County. Scott County law officers were first alerted to a pair of rogue emus bothering traffic last Friday, but could not track down the huge flightless birds for two days. On …
Cyclists give TV chef a Wikikicking
It's been all go for the last couple of days down at the Wikipedia page celebrating TV food-molestor James Martin, who's earned himself a bit of a Wikikicking from irate cyclists following an entertaining review of the Tesla Roadster for the Mail. James Martin Martin (pictured) wrote: "God, I hate those cyclists. Every last …
Moondreams, engineers and bureaucracies
With world+dog celebrating the Apollo program this summer, we thought we'd try something different. So a few weeks ago, I looked at the Lunar Orbiter, a fascinating tale of technology improvisation that brought in some cracking mail. Here are some thoughts on technology, optimism and bureaucracies. Before we get going, I want to …
Byrne's naked shorting crusade outs Yahoo! security vuln
Patrick Byrne's unrelenting crusade against naked short selling has uncovered a gaping security hole in Yahoo!'s ever-popular message boards. Yahoo! has now patched the cross-site scripting bug - which allowed miscreants to snatch Yahoo! IDs, cookies, and IP addresses from users merely searching the message boards - but not …
Cisco's UCS needs a bra
Apparently the "California" Unified Computing Systems cannot defy gravity as a young server with generous capacity should. Thanks to El Reg having an office in San Francisco, I have been spared the grief of traveling out to the VMworld extravaganza going on this week and am reporting remotely from the show. But thanks to …
Android app puts signs where they should be
Augmented reality offers many exciting possibilities and applications, but encouraging drivers to gaze at a mobile-phone screen when behind the wheel surely isn't one of them. Wikitude Drive overlays directional arrows, lane guides and text onto reality, as captured on an Android handset's camera. This enables a driver to see …
Wikipedia to crack down on celebrity Wikideaths
Wikipedia is preparing a program to combat the leading cause of premature celebrity Wikideath by requiring "experienced volunteer editors" to sign off on changes to certain articles. The Wikimedia Foundation has said that in coming weeks it will introduce a two-month trial of "flagged revisions," intended to lessen the impact of …
Doctor investigated for posting inkblots to Wikipedia
A doctor is under investigation for misconduct after publishing 10 inkblots used by psychologists to get insights about a subject's frame of mind. James Heilman told told The New York Times he posted the Rorschach test images in an attempt to demystify the psychological profession. At least two psychologists didn't appreciate …
Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
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