Review The Nokia 6103 is that rarest of beasts, a drop-dead simple mobile phone. In this fast-moving world of smart phones, music phones, GPS phones, camera phones and gpsmusiccamerasmartphones it's unusual to find a plain old-fashioned phone phone. The Nokia 6103 is just that though, and it's none the worse for its simplicity... It's a classic clamshell device, and is an obvious update of the pre

April Fool The People's Republic of China has acquired a controlling stake in the United States' fastest growing technology company, Google. Google announced the transfer of 140m shares of Class B stock to a new entity owned by the Chinese Ministry of Information in typically forthright style.  The news was disclosed in a Captcha graphic on its Google Canteen Menu weblog; investors had to click a

Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over 'renegade' Linux maker The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker Cent OS. Problem is CentOS didn't hack Tuttle's web site at all. The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server. This tale kicked off yesterday when Tuttle's city manager Jerry Taylor f

iTunes DRM cracked wide open for GNU/Linux. Seriously Exclusive Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen, who broke the DVD encryption scheme, has opened iTunes locked music a tad further, by allowing people to play songs they've purchased on iTunes Music Store on their GNU/Linux computers. "We're about to find out what Apple really thinks about Fair Use," Johansen told The Register via email. Johan

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business - desktop software. A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as 'Goobuntu'. Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project called Goobuntu, but declined to supply f