Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 03:19 AM CEST - Jul,09 2004
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- DrinkorDie suspect back in Oz jail - The alleged ringleader of a
gang of Internet copyright pirates
was back in jail last night after US authorities won the latest round in
their battle to extradite him from Australia on multi-million dollar software
piracy charges. Hew Raymond Griffiths, 41, of Bateau Bay, New South Wales, is
back in Silverwater jail after judge Peter Jacobson ruled magistrate Daniel
Reiss was wrong to release him on bail in March. Jacobson ruled that Reiss's
reasoning in concluding no extraditable offence had been committed was
incorrect. The judgment is a setback for defence efforts to have Griffiths
tried in Australia, but it does not mark a definitive ruling.
- Building a Better Mozilla - Most people who
switch to Mozilla or Mozilla's Firefox browser quickly notice that the
browser is pretty bare. It contains exactly what you need to browse the Web --
no less and no more. And while there's a lot to be said for running a lean,
clean program, sometimes you long for more features, a little extra
functionality. Enter Extensions, little programs that you can add to
Mozilla or Firefox to make
the browser do what you want it to do. There are now close to a hundred
extensions available for
downloading. Most work perfectly; others are a bit buggy.
- Experts worry that synthetic biology may spawn biohackers - Design
automation systems tailored to the task of genetic engineering could prove to
be double-edged tools. While they represent a central thrust of the emerging
synthetic biology movement,
they also can lead to the accidental or deliberate creation of pathogenic
biological components.
- Off-topic: Brain implants 'read' monkey minds -
Brain implants have been used to "read the minds" of monkeys to predict
what they are about to do and even how enthusiastic they are about doing it.
It is the first time such high level cognitive brain signals have been decoded
and could ultimately lead to more natural thought-activated prosthetic devices
for people with paralysis, says Richard Andersen project leader at the
California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, US. By decoding the signals
from 96 electrodes in a region of the brain just above the ear – called the
parietal cortex - the researchers were able to predict 67 per cent of the time
where in their visual field trained monkeys were planning to reach.
- Off-topic: The Man Who Knew Too Much - As of yesterday,
the 30-year-old
software engineer from Salt Lake City had won a total of $788,960, beating
the previous record-holder, Tom Walsh, by a margin of over $600,000. Granted,
this unprecedented victory streak was also made possible by this season's
change in Jeopardy! rules—the term limits have been lifted, as it were, so
that the run of a winning contestants may continue indefinitely, instead of
being stopped after five consecutive games. But Ken is no mere beneficiary of
this loophole in Jeopardy!
- Apple says that Sony's walkman capacity claim is misleading - When
Sony released its rival to the i-Pod it claimed that it could hold 13,000
songs compared to the iPod's flacid 10,000, even though the total capacity was
half the size. Greg Joswiak, vice president of Hardware Product
Marketing at Apple said that Sony could only stuff 13,000 songs on the hard
drive because its ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding for MiniDisc 3)
compression system could be set at the low rate of 48Kbps which was
nowhere near CD quality.
- Fujitsu Flashes Megapixel PDA - Fujitsu launched this week
a new PDA targeted at business users. The first new feature is support for
VGA (640 pixels by 480 pixels) resolution screens and the second is the
ability to display images in either portrait or landscape mode. The display
used in the device is a 3.7-inch TFT LCD. Other features include a
1.3-megapixel class digital still camera function and built-in support for
IEEE802.11b wireless LAN. At its heart the device has an Intel PXA270 XScale
processor running at 520 MHz and supported by 128MB of RAM and 64MB of ROM.
- Intel Begins Shipments of 3.60GHz Processors - Intel Corporation
has
initiated shipments of its recently announced Pentium 4 3.60GHz processor
also known as Intel Pentium 4 560. Announced in mid-June, the chip did not
immediately make appearance in retail and personal computers assembled by
leading makers of PCs, such as Dell. Intel Pentium 4 processor 560 operates at
3.60GHz, features HT and SSE3 technologies and comes in LGA775 form-factor.
The chip is compatible with Socket T mainboards supporting 800MHz processor
system bus, based on i915- or i925X-series chipsets from Intel. The chip can
dissipate up to 115W of power and requires mainboards to support Platform
Compatibility Guide 04B. Two stores in the USA listed by Xbitlabs.Dealtime.com
offered the chip for $720 and $745, but at press-time the product was out of
stock. Intel's official price for the product is $637 when bought in business
quantities.
- Intel chip defect slows down DDR2 packaging and testing orders to
Taiwan - With Intel's recent chip defect likely delaying production ramps
of DDR2 chips, Taiwanese memory packaging and testing firms are seeing
slowdowns in their DDR2-related orders, according to sources.
- Is DDR2 Ready To Replace DDR1??? -
Expect
DDR2 memory at 533MHz to be comparable to DDR1 at 400MHz, but don't expect
to see any "noticeable" memory bandwidth performance gains till DDR2 667 and
above with low timings!
- Microsoft Mice Photos - Microsoft has released
five
new mice today; including two designer mice: Optical Mouse by S+ARCK
(Red/Blue): $34.95, Wireless Optical Mouse in Mood Ring: $44.95, Wireless
IntelliMouse Explorer in Cobalt Basin: $54.95 and Wireless IntelliMouse
Explorer in Crimson Fire: $54.95
- Testing the memories - Does latency mean anything? - Well
yes, the
average difference will be a few percent, sometimes more (when
applications are more latency-bound or memory-bound in general), sometimes
less (when it is either the case of cache-fit, or just pure memory bandwidth
that matters, as in video streaming). But isn't it the same case when, say,
moving from 3.2 GHz to 3.4 GHz Northwood, where we also talk about, say, 3% on
average?
- Olympus C8080 Wide Zoom review - Hardware Analysis take
a closer look at the Olympus C8080 Wide Zoom, a camera that sets itself
apart by offering excellent image quality and ease of use.
- Sony VAIO VGN-S1VP notebook review - Finished in a very fetching
black and silver,
the S1VP is the kind of machine that all self confessed IT style junkies
would love. The black lid is offset beautifully by the mirrored VAIO lettering
and the smallest of Sony logos. Opening the lid reveals a black keyboard at
the centre of a silver chassis, although opinion in the office is split about
the chrome plated touch pad buttons....
- Acer Ferrari 3200 Notebook review - Although
THG's benchmarks showed the Ferrari 3200 is not the fastest gaming notebook,
it certainly represents an excellent compromise between gaming and normal use.
Another point about which Acer can be proud is the fact that its mobile
Athlon64 notebook is the most sophisticated, best performing, best equipped
and most attractive laptop around.
- DDR2 Roundup: Reaching for 667 and Beyond - Right now, Micron
memory chips have proved to be the top performers, and these were found in
Crucial, Micron, Kingmax, and Corsair memory. The Kingmax may well be the
equal of the other 3, but the performance was hampered by our 256MB DIMMs, so
we cannot state that with confidence.
The Corsair 667, Crucial 533, and Micron 533 were all at the top in every
benchmark, so clearly, these 3 are the top performers.
- ASUS V9520/TD GeForce FX 5200 Video Card - It's abundantly clear
that L50 - L60 isn't going to buy you the kind of performance that will run,
say, Doom III with ease. That's an obvious point which is worth making. ASUS
hasn't done anything intrinsically wrong with its interpretation of a GeForce
FX 5200 video card. The bundle is solid for a budget card and construction is
excellent. The problem, if you can call it that, lies with the NV34 GPU.
Comparative (and that's the key word)
performance looks poor with other GPUs that hover around the L100 mark, so
much so that running at 1024x768, with no image enhancement, can be
problematic with new titles that make full use of DX9's feature set. This
point is exemplified by the v9520/TD's performance in AquaMark3.
- HIS X800XT IceQ II VIVO LE / HIS X800Pro IceQ II VIVO Limited review -
What we have here are two very fast and very high in quality videocards
from HIS based on ATi's latest X800 series 'VPUs'. The
performance difference between the two is quite noteworthy, the HIS X800XT
IceQ II really starts to dominate at higher resolutions, particularly when
introducing AA and AF.
- Lite-On, LG and BenQ Bring 8.5-GB Recordable DVDs to the Party -
Dual-layer technology, which makes it possible to store 8.5 GB of data or four
hours of DVD quality video (MPEG-2) on a DVD, is finally here.
TGH tested the Lite-On SOHW-832S, the LG GSA-4120B and the BenQ DW-1600 to
see what this technology is about.
- Philips PSC724 Ultimate Edge -
The PSC724 was capable of besting the Revolution 7.1 on multiple
occasions. One large advantage many of you should consider of the Ultimate
Edge is the price that it rolls out at; a mere $69.99. While this isn't quite
a budget sound card, it certainly brings with it high quality audio at an
affordable price point. The package is a no frills bundle, but with the money
one saves on this card over an expensive Audigy bundle you could buy the games
you really want or sink that extra dough into a worthy set of speakers.
- ASUS Terminator 2: a Universal Barebone review - Terminator 2 is
unlikely to become a hit in sales.
It is a bit too expensive for an ordinary PC base, the Standard variant
has too poor package and functionality for an entertainment-oriented home PC,
while the Commercial Deluxe one has no extension slots. On the other hand, the
price for T2-P Standard can be quite suitable for those not trying to
economise as much as possible on their first purchase.
- BenQ FP231W 23-Inch LCD Flat Panel review - ExtremeTech has posted
a review of BenQ FP231W 23-Inch LCD Flat Panel.
- Benchmarking with Far Cry - This is the extreme torture test, 1600x1200
with a good amount of AA and AF piled on top. The frame rates these cards are
able to achieve are truly remarkable, but remember; during actual gameplay the
frame rate would be slower in scenes of action. The X800 XT does incredibly
well here, showing an 11% jump over the shader model 3.0 path and
an impressive 25% boost over the shader model 2.0 path on the 6800 Ultra.
- ATI Catalyst 4.7 Performance Analysis - Well, there are the new ATI
Catalyst 4.7 drivers for your viewing pleasure. The performance jump isn't as
great as last time and there is nothing new like the last release which
brought us Overdrive for the new line of Radeon X800 graphics cards – on the
outside, the ATI Control Panel looks exactly the same as the 4.6 version.
While there isn't a big jump in performance (and in fact, a decrease in
certain areas), it is always a very good idea to update to the latest set
of drivers as it fixes up some of the bugs in your favorite games that were in
previous releases and this is usually a good enough reason to update for many.
- SATA RAIDing With Maxtor - RAID comes in a couple main flavors:
RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5. These are others, but these are the most commonly
used RAID configurations. The first two are increasingly common in the
machines of home PC enthusiasts while the latter is almost exclusively found
in business-class servers.
In this
article, I'm going to take a brief look at SATA RAID performance with two
120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 SATA hard drives.
- ATI Bios, Softmod & Tweak Guide Inc X800 VIVO > XT -
check it out!
- List of Live CDs with Linux -
The
purpose of this page is to provide a comprehensive, easy-to-search list of
all available Linux-based Live CDs.
- MySQL 4.1.3 Beta -
changes ~
download
- mIRC 6.16 - To use IRC you need a small program like
mIRC (changelog
~ download), an
IRC client for Windows, written by Khaled Mardam-Bey. mIRC is a friendly IRC
client that is well equipped with options and tools.
- GSpot v2.5 Beta 4 -
GSpot (download
beta4) determine what codec a video/audio file uses and what codec your
system will use to play it. Identifies MPEG (.mpg), QuickTime (.mov),
RealMedia (.rm), Windows Media (.wma / .asf), Flash (.swf) and others; will
attempt a DirectShow render those (and any other) file, and report either the
error or detailed results.
- CustomBar 1.0 -
CustomBar (download)
is a bar that is always visible, much like the taskbar. Unlike the taskbar,
you can put pretty anything you want on it. This is accomplished through a
scripting/plugin/skinning system that is powerful enough to create some basic
apps in. C++ plugins can be used to further extend functionality.
- SpywareBlaster 3.2 -
SpywareBlaster doesn't scan and clean for spyware - it prevents it from
ever being installed. Spyware, adware, browser hijackers, and dialers are some
of the fastest-growing threats on the Internet today. By simply browsing to a
web page, you could find your computer to be the brand-new host of one of
these unwanted fiends!
- Firefox 0.9.2 -
FireFox 0.9.2. is out! Firefox is a free, open-source web browser for
Windows, Linux and MacOS X and is based on the Mozilla codebase. It is small,
fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over Internet Explorer, such
as the ability to block pop-up windows.
- Opera v7.52 - Opera
(Win32
w/o Java ~
Win32
with Java ~
Linux) introduces the looks and the performance of an exceptional Web
browser. Opera's user interface has received a major overhaul with the new
start-up dialog, and new default buttons, skin and panels in a blue and white
color scheme that can be changed back to classic Opera look or another design.
At start-up you can select a single or multiple document interface (SDI/MDI).
- Maxthon (MyIE2) v1.0.0168 Beta -
Maxthon (MyIE2) (download)
is a powerful web browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on
the Internet Explorer engine (your most likely current web browser) which
means that what works in IE, works the same in Maxthon but with many
additional efficient features.
- UniAN Catalyst driver 1047a - These are
modified/hacked ATI Catalyst drivers based on ATI Catalyst v4.7.
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Updated:12:47 AM CEST Jun,04
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