Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:23 AM CEST - Sep,01 2004
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- Microsoft security chief uses Firefox - Microsoft's head of
security, Stephen Toulouse, has
accidentally revealed that he uses Firefox. In an interview with Wired
here, Toulouse was chatting about how security was an industry wide
problem and not Internet Explorer specific.
- Bruce Schneier Interview -
Neowin has posted an interview with "security guru" Bruce Schneier, well
known security analyst who has gained notoriety from his popular security
mailing list, Cryptogram, and his 3 books on various security subjects, as he
talks about himself, security, Microsoft, and much more. Bruce also talks
about how to stay safe on the internet, program security, and gives some views
on Microsoft's Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, making for interesting reading.
- Windows XP Service Pack 2: The 10% Problem - Upgrading to Windows
XP Service Pack 2 will
cause problems with about one in every 10 PCs running the operating
system, according to research published Tuesday by a Canadian asset-monitoring
service provider. AssetMetrix probed more than 44,000 Windows XP systems
housed in nearly 350 companies to come up with its numbers, matching what it
found on the PCs against various lists that Microsoft has posted of programs
that have, or may have, compatibility issues with the massive update.
- Film group turns to secure DVD players - Cinea, a subsidiary of
Dolby Laboratories, this week
announced a deal with the academy to supply SV300 DVD players. The academy
will distribute the players to its voting members for films competing in the
Orange British Academy Film Awards, which takes place Feb. 12. The SV300 can
play encrypted discs created using Cinea's security system called S-View, the
company said. The security system is designed to allow movie and TV producers
to secure their content against piracy at production and post-production
stages. Only authorized persons can access the protected content and a large
number of encrypted discs can be created. Each SV300 player is individually
addressable so that pirated versions can be tracked.
- GmailFS - Gmail Filesystem -
GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail
account as its storage medium. GmailFS is a Python application and uses the
FUSE userland filesystem infrastructure to help provide the filesystem, and
libgmail to communicate with Gmail. GmailFS supports most file operations such
as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename.
This means that you can use all your favourite unix command line tools to
operate on files stored on Gmail (e.g. cp, ls, mv, rm, ln, grep etc. etc.).
- Battery-free backup power system achieves 2 hour runtime - Active
Power Inc. (Austin) said it has operated a prototype of its battery-free
energy storage system
at 10 kilowatts (kW) for over 2 hours, a feat the company expects to help
position the product for the telecommunications segment.
- Sony licenses VIA tech for PSP -
Sony has licensed VIA subsidiary S3 Graphics' S3TC texture compression
algorithm for use in the PlayStation Portable (PSP), the two companies
announced this week. Texture compression essentially allows a 3D graphics
engine to display crisper, more detailed scenes and models without swamping
the system's bandwidth.
- Apple launch iMac G5 - Apple have just sent word that the latest in
the iMac line, the G5, is
being launched today (specs).
Apple claims the iMac will run very quietly (~25db), making it suitable for
all locations in the home. Its I/O ports are neatly designed on the computer;
it features 5 USB ports and 3 Firewire ports. Interestingly, Apple offers
"internal support" for Airport Extreme cards, yet does not ship with them as
standard - the same is true for its support on Bluetooth - you need to buy the
extra card, but it integrates with the iMac G5. It also has built in Ethernet
ports (10/100). The system packs a SuperDrive (DVD/CD writer combo), up to 2
gig of DDR 400mhz RAM and up to 250 gig of hard drive space (SATA). The new
iMac also has an AGP 8X nVidia based (GeForce FX 5200 Ultra) graphics
solution.
- AMD Shows First Dual-Core Processor - AMD has demonstrated the
company's
first dual-core microprocessors at its Austin, Texas, office, the company
says. Dual-core processors, set to hit the market next year, offer improved
performance over single-core chips, especially in multithreaded applications.
- Intel's 65nm chip will make laptops go further - Intel has built a
fully functional 70Mb static random access memory (SRam) chip with more than
half a billion transistors,
using 65nanometer
(nm) process technology. SRam chips are often used as test vehicles for
new manufacturing processes because their design is relatively
straightforward.
- Ericsson Pulls Bluetooth Division -
According to this article, Ericsson has shut down its Bluetooth division.
Ericsson has not made any formal announcement though.
- Defective Siemens phones will not affect OEM contracts -
Taiwan-based handset makers Lite-On Technology and Quanta Computer will
continue to fulfill OEM orders for Siemens Mobile
despite the German handset vendor's announcement it will stop producing its
65-series handset models due to a software-related defect, according to
sources at the makers.
- Intel preps 2MB L2 Pentium 4 6xx line? -
Intel's plan to ship a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with 2MB of in-core L2
cache - as opposed to 2MB of on-chip L3 cache - is to be followed up by a
version pitched at mainstream desktops. The 3.73GHz P4EE is currently believed
to be scheduled for late Q4 2004 availability. The chip will be the first 90nm
P4EE, and the first to be based on Pentium 4 technology rather than Xeon
chips. According to
the Japanese site's report, it will debut in Q1 2005, in four incarnations
clocked to 3.2GHz, 3.4GHz, 3.6GHz and 3.8GHz, dubbed the 640, 650, 660 and
670, respectively.
- HDTV "Starter" Kit for PC Comes with Some Kinks -
Instead of dropping more than $1,000 for a new TV, set-top box and antenna
to bring in the signals that dramatically improve TV picture quality, look not
in the living room, but in the home office. A $200 upgrade can turn a
personal computer into a "starter" high-definition television.
- Hitachi 57S700 HDTV review - If you want to experience true High
Definition television and watch DVD movies featuring sharp and crisp color
images,
look no further than the Hitachi 57S700 (which will soon be replaced by
their 57S715 – the only difference is that the S715 includes HDMI instead of
DVI). Hitachi's HDTV sets offer the consumer “state-of-the-art” technology
with a terrific feature package in a very stylish and handsome cabinetry. It's
a set for today and tomorrow featuring an integrated HDTV tuner and QAM cable
tuner. By including both DVI and 1394, this set won't become obsolete for many
years to come.
- HP iPAQ rx3715 Pocket PC -
HP is definitely serious about targeting the consumer PDA market, and
there are a lot of good features on the rx3715 that could make it a winner on
the high street. That said, the price is high for a consumer product, which
could swing potential buyers towards a Palm OS device.
- Sempron 2600+ vs Mobile Barton 2600+ - Overal the
performance of the Sempron CPUs is quite satisfying, especially when we
consider the minor performance drop of the 2600+ model compared to the Mobile
Barton with the same performance rating, that is around 15$ more expensive
when purchased in 1K quantities than the Sempron.
- Asus' Socket 939 A8V Deluxe review -The A8V Deluxe's street price
hovers around
$140, which is a pretty incredible deal, all things considered. With
8-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11g Wi-Fi, Firewire, support for four
Serial ATA and six ATA devices, and plenty of RAID options, the A8V Deluxe is
a steal. The board's fast, too, and it's built around the 939-pin socket that
AMD says is the future of the Athlon 64.
- Mega 12-way Intel 925 and 915 motherboards roundup - TweakTown have
a massive roundup of motherboards based on the I915(P/G) and I925X
chipsets from various motherboard vendors with various degrees of support and
platform adoption.
- Inno3D GeForce 6800 review -
The NVIDIA GeForce 6800 is a unique GPU. On the negative side it has 12
rendering pipelines (four less than the GT and Ultra's 16 pipelines), has
128MB memory, and has a low core/memory clock. But on the positive side, the
6800 has all the same rendering features as its more powerful brothers, like
Shader Model 3.0 support. The other two big plus points are that the 6800 is
readily available in retail stores and online hardware vendors and is under
$300.
- Sapphire Toxic X800 PRO VIVO review -
The
board is distinctive and performs well in relation to the standard X800
PRO configuration. With stiff competition from NVIDIA at the moment, the main
question for the X800 PRO series is the price of the boards relative to the
overall performance. X800 PRO VIVO's are gaining a lot of interest with
enthusiasts that the moment since there appears to be a startling number
shipped with 1.6ns RAM, which is good for 600Mhz, and the capability of
successfully re-enabling the extra four pipelines - however those pipelines
have been disabled for a reason and you certainly shouldn't purchase a PRO
VIVO expecting to get 16 pipelines operational.
- 3Ware, Highpoint and Raidcore/Broadcom Bring Multi-channel RAID to SATA
-
THG tests reveal what 3Ware, Highpoint and Raidcore/Broadcom have to offer
and how they stack up performance and price wise.
- Western Digital's Caviar RAID Edition review - All-in-all, we see
the
Caviar RAID Edition as a higher performance solution compared to today's
Caviar Special Edition drives. The Caviar RE drives also have better
warranties, higher tolerances, and lower noise levels. For these attributes,
Western Digital is charging about 10% more for the RE series compared to the
SE series drives. We would say that the price difference is well worth it.
Unfortunately though, Maxtor's new DiamondMax 10 drive with its 16MB of cache
and NCQ support bests the Caviar RE in both single disk and RAID performance,
making it hard to recommend the Caviar RE over this drive.
- EPower Lion 450 Watt Fanless Enhanced Cooling Power Supply -
Is it
worth 150 dollars? Well silence is certainly priceless as we all know, and
that is one way to justify it. The fact that it has enough juice to carry you
over for a few upgrades should help ease the pain as well. In the end, no
matter what justification I have, I feel that a PSU should not cost more then
my hard drive, or my ram or even a DVD burner. I'll let you decide on your own
if it's worth 150 of your hard earned dollars.
- The Swiss Army Knife of USB Drives -
The
Swissmemory USB is definitely the coolest integration of a USB flash
device to date. Putting a flash drive inside a Swiss Army Knife just make it
that much more useful. Available from the Swiss Knife Shop for $80.95 for the
128MB unit and $63.95 for the 64MB unit, the Swissmemory USB is an impulse
purchase. To make the impulse even more impulsive, Swiss Knife Shop will
personalize your knife by engraving it with up to 10 characters. Now how can
you resist that deal?
- Rio Nitrus 1.5 GB MP3 Jukebox review -
The
Nitrus is a "measly" 1.5GB's, which translates into about 25 hours of
music (at 1 Meg. per minute, standard for an mp3 at 128kbps). If I listen to
it an hour a day that's 25 days worth of music without repeating a song. Isn't
that enough for everyone? I don't understand spending $300-$400 on 20 to 40GB
MP3 players.
- Backdoor.Agent.B Removal Tool 1.0.1.2 - Here's
a free removal tool for Backdoor.Agent.B.
- Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 -
The primary focus of Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (SP1) (here's
a version for Windows 2003) is improved security. In addition, the service
pack includes roll-ups of all reported customer issues found after the release
of the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1. Of particular note, SP1 provides better
support for consuming WSDL documents, Data Execution prevention and protection
from security issues such as buffer overruns.
- XviD 1.0.2 -
XviD is an
ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec.
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Updated:01:06 AM CEST Jun,06
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