Thursday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 06:21 PM CEST - Sep,16 2004
- Post a comment / read (4)
- Geeks Code for the Gold - This year,
the 16th annual geek olympics is taking place in Athens, Greece, from
Sept. 11 to Sept. 18. During the games, 304 young programmers from 80
countries will compete in seven marathon programming sessions to determine who
is the world's fastest coder. Overclocked athletes popping
performance-enhancing drugs aren't a concern at this competition. Instead,
officials appear to be concerned about hacking. According to the rules,
any contestant who attempts to "attack the Olympic system's security or the
grader (the grader is a program that assigns scores to each contestant),
execute other programs or access other networks during competition, change
file system permissions, or read file system information" will be immediately
disqualified. .
- Windows XP SP2 Opens Door For Everyone - Windows XP SP2 is save
agains trojan horses, hackers, viruses and other intruders
but they open up the door for everyone if you share files for your local
area network. Here is
a quick translation by google, if anyone can translate it in proper
english it would be appriciated.
- Vulnerability in IBM Windows XP: default hidden Administrator account
allows local Administrator access - IBM OEM XP and XP SP1 contain
a
default hidden administrator account. Use of this account will allow
anyone with physical access to the computer to fully control the computer, add
spyware, keystroke loggers, password stealing software and read all files,
including temp files, local files, documents, and any email that has been
stored locally. IBM does not inform the installer of this account, does not
give them the option of putting a password on this account, and if a savvy
installer FINDS the function to change the password for the Administrator
account, they are warned that they could lose data. Security best practices
REQUIRE a password on all administrative (and root) accounts.
- Latest Mozilla releases fix 10 security flaws -
The three critical flaws could let an attacker run code on the victim's
computer, according to information published by the Mozilla Foundation on
Tuesday. The vulnerabilities are caused by the improper handling of electronic
business cards, known as vCards; overly large images in the bit map (BMP)
format; and links that have host names using nonprintable characters.
The issues are fixed in the latest versions of the Mozilla Foundation's
open-source software products:
Mozilla
1.7.3,
Firefox release candidate 1.0 (first look at Firefox 1.0PR can be
found
here) and
Thunderbird 0.8.
- Microsoft Issues Patch; E-Mail ID Plan Rejected - Microsoft
released on Tuesday a patch for its latest "critical" rated security flaw
affecting its Windows, Office and developer tools software programs.
Separately, the world's largest software maker was dealt a setback on Tuesday
after the Internet Engineering Task Force
decided not to adopt Microsoft's e-mail sender ID standard that would make
it easier for Internet providers to block unwanted junk e-mail.
- More Ways to Trap Spyware -
PCMag tested two new antispyware utilities, as well as a significantly
revised version of Lavasoft's perennially popular Ad-Aware, which looks better
than ever.
- Messenger 2 versus Trillian Basic -
A nice comparison can be found at TechConnect - "Personally I stay with
Trillian Basic at this moment, because I love the systray notification when
some one says something to me. Other people don't care if there pops up a
message in screen and some find this very annoying because you will be
interrupted with the work you are doing. Also people who are at work know how
hard it is to explain their boss why they have to chat with people on the
internet in the time they should work. Got the picture? On the other hand
Messenger 2 has great extra function like Video chat, Audio chat and peer 2
peer filesharing which are all very usefull and most wanted for most people."
- Identity Theft Suspect Pleads Guilty -
A man charged in one of the largest identity theft scams in U.S. history
pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and fraud in connection
with identity documents this week. He could face up to 50 years in prison,
according to a statement from U.S. Attorney David Kelley, of the Southern
District of New York.
- Scammers use Gmail invite as phishing hook - Scammers have caught
on to the allure of Gmail and are
using the Google e-mail service for a "phishing" scam to harvest e-mail
addresses and passwords.
- Researchers create super-secure computer network - It's a hacker's
nightmare but a dream for bankers and spies: A computer network so secure that
even the simplest attempts to eavesdrop will interrupt the flow of data and
alert administrators to the snooping. The work by researchers at Harvard
University, Boston University and BBN Technologies is the closest
scientists have come to a real-world quantum encryption system that uses
light particles called photons to lock and unlock information instead of
random-number "keys." Using the technology, the scientists can swap data, send
e-mail and visit one another's Web sites as their data is protected.
- IBM protects passwords with PC chip - Big Blue will be the first
computer maker to use National Semiconductor's SafeKeeper Trusted I/O Device,
which
stores a computer's identity in silicon, making it harder for outsiders to
access. It's adding the technology as part of an upgraded input-output chip,
which is a secondary PC chip that shuttles data from various parts of a PC.
- Bill Gates Gives $20M to CMU for New Building - Carnegie Mellon
University announced on Tuesday that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had
donated $20 million toward the cost of a new building to be called the
"Gates Center for Computer Science.
- Debugging the Megahertz Myth Editorial - Most, if not all, of
you have read or been in heated debates over
why or why not higher clocked microprocessors are better than their
"comparable" competition. Just why is it that so many people stand behind
their arguments about a 2.4GHz processor outperforming a 3.4GHz processor
overall?
- Nose-steered mouse could save aching arms - Tired of using a mouse
to control your PC? Perhaps there is another option for when your arm starts
to ache: your nose. A novel PC control system lets users nudge a cursor around
the screen
with gentle movements of their nose. Blinking the left or right eye twice
takes the place of left or right mouse clicks
- 1st Xbox2 pictures - Here're some
Xbox2
pictures.
- Tapwave Zodiac 1 review - The
Zodiac looks like a portable gaming device and comes with a built in
joystick with 360 degree capability. The joystick will be very useful in games
such as Tony Hawk where learning the tricks of the trade and being able to
manuever stunts will give you the edge.
- BlackBerry 7100t review - The firsts keep coming:
this is
the first BlackBerry to provide instant messaging, and it even has a
wizard, designed by T-Mobile, to set up not just AOL Instant Messenger, but
Yahoo Messenger and ICQ as well. The streamlined e-mail setup can handle any
POP3 accounts plus AOL Mail. (Despite what you may have read, there's
currently no support for Hotmail or MSN Messenger in the T-Mobile version of
the 7100).
- 4 Digital Cameras, 6 Million Pixels -
Four new digital cameras from Kodak, Fuji and Olympus may offer
six-million-pixel resolutions, but that is just a starting point. THG details
how each device fails or delivers when it comes to optical quality, color
fidelity, dynamic contrast and other features.
- ATI to launch RX480 AMD K8 chipset by the end of this month - At
the end of this month, ATI Technologies
plans to unveil its RX480 north bridge, which will be the company's first
discrete chipset to support Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) K8 platform, said
Reuven Soraya, director of platform product marketing at ATI, during a recent
visit to Taipei.
- Locking Down Your Data with Cipher Shield External Hard Drive
Encryption - External hard drives are sitting ducks for data thieves if
lost or stolen.
Cipher Shield offers a 2.5" device that encrypts external hard drive data.
But is the solution worth a base price of $300?
- Athlon 64-939 Processors review - Socket754 is also good in the
other respect - already now you can buy both the processors and the
motherboards. What's good is the price for both is quite sensible. But for
Socket939 the situation is a bit worse: prices for the motherboards are quite
affordable, but the lower-end Athlon64 3500+ model costs around 375$. That is
why the
Socket939 platform will gain popularity no earlier than the reduction of
prices to a reasonable level. Since all the high-end processors run at the
same speed actually, I think it doesn't make sense paying extra 200$ for the
CPU.
- Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6 GHz LGA775) Processor review - Bjorn3D has
posted a
review of the Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6 GHz LGA775) Processor.
- MSI NX6800 128MB review - For those looking to upgrade their video
card,
the NX6800 should be at the top of your list. If money is no object and
you would prefer the top-of-the-line 6800 Ultra video card, we recommend you
still stay with the MSI brand. MSI has taken a regular video card and
presented it in such a way that you feel like you are getting a complete
gaming system. The NX6800 is a solid performing card for its price range, but
when you add in the amount of software and the quality of the board itself,
the NX6800 stands apart from the crowd.
- Seagate160GB NCQ HDD review - Seagate is marching head-strong into
this fall with
a new SATA technology called Native Command Queuing - their Barracuda
160GB unit is the first drive to have this feature. While it won't set any
storage capacity records, this new drive - an updated version of the 160GB
drive released last year – it's sure to turn some heads with its performance
and what lies beneath the hood.
- Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX - External Sound Card review -
The Audigy 2 NX may not be perfect, but its plus points definitely
outweigh the minus ones. The sound quality is superb, and once you factor in
the price and the fact that you can connect it to any number of machines, its
appeal grows. If you want high-quality audio on all your PCs, including your
notebook, the Audigy 2 NX will do the job nicely.
- Aesthetic Water Cooling Solutions: Zalman Reserator 1, ZM-WB2 Gold and
ZM-GWB1 -
The ZM-GWB1 kit should only be used with low-power graphics cards. The GPU
temperature on cards of the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra class and hotter may become
critical with the ZM-GWB1.
- Logitech Rumblepad 2 Vibration Feedback PC Gamepad review - Let's
face it,
US$25 bucks is not all that bad for a high quality vibration feedback PC
controller. Some people might say, "Why do you think that?". Well, seeing that
in the gaming market a gaming mouse pad can be tagged with a ridiculous US$50
pricetag for some models, a whole controller for half the price seems to be
quite the deal. I myself thought that this controller was going to be at least
US$50+ dollars only to be pleasantly surprised when I found out just how cheap
it really is.
- LG Flatron 2320A 23" LCD Media Station review -
This product transforms your computer into an all-in-one solution. The
Xbox games look terrific, and your desktop is just a click away. You can even
play games on the Xbox and surf the internet at the same time, thanks to the
picture-in-picture option.
- Viewsonic's VP912B LCD Monitor -
With a 19" diagonal viewing size and a native 1280 x 1024 resolution (12ms),
it's big enough to satisfy the needs of the vast majority of gamers, and the
price tag is quite reasonable in comparison to other 19" LCD's on the market.
There's really no reason to look at any other 19” LCD currently out there,
since the VP912b will cost just as much but deliver much better performance
- TomTom's Go GPS navigation system - The TomTom GO makes no claims
to being as flexible as a PDA. It's a one trick pony and proud of it, which
actually brings a number of advantages. For one,
the GO lives up to its name and works as soon as you take it out the box.
There's no software installation to deal with, you don't have to worry about
application conflicts or fiddling with a Bluetooth connection. You also get a
system that you can transfer easily between any car.
- [MS Patch] - Critical Update for Windows XP (KB885626) for Prescott C-0
CPU's -
This non-security critical update helps resolve an issue where a limited
number of systems running a BIOS without production support for Intel Pentium
4 and Intel Celeron D processors based on Prescott C-0 stepping can
potentially hang on Windows XP Service Pack 2 installation. After you install
this update, you may have to restart your computer.
- Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility - If you encounter a
problem while using Windows Media Player 10 to play a DVD or to synchronize
(copy) recorded TV shows to a Portable Media Center or other device,
use this utility to verify that you have a compatible MPEG-2 decoder
installed on your computer.
- Microsoft GDI+ Detection Tool -
The Microsoft GDI+ Detection Tool helps detect the presence of non-Windows
Microsoft products that contain the GDI+ component. Microsoft customers can
run this tool to help determine if a GDI+ security update should be applied.
- Shadow Key Timestamping Utilities - Brian Madden posted
2 tools from Microsoft: SDT and RDT, these tools can be used to set the
shadow key area of the Terminal Server registry. The shadow ley area could
cause a lot of headaches. Funny think is these tool date back to 1999 (win2k
RTM build) and I never heard of them before. AFAIK they were not in any
resource kit or support tools, maybe these tools were used by MS engineers at
premier customers. There are many issues and KB articles on shadow key, wonder
why MS never pointed to these 5 year old tools (thanks
Bink.nu)
- SSL Diagnostics Version 1.0 -
This tool allows users to review configuration information in a easy to
read view mode or to run the tool silently with only the creation of a log
file. During use, administrators can simulate the SSL handshake to find
errors. They can also quickly "hot swap" certificates for testing purposes.
- Java Language Conversion Assistant 3.0 (Beta) -
The Java Language Conversion Assistant is a tool that automatically
converts existing Java-language code into Microsoft Visual C# for developers
who want to move existing applications to the .NET Framework. Version 3.0 adds
support for J2EE 1.3 functionality, including JDK 1.3, EJB, JAAS, JCE, JMS,
JNDI, and RMI.
- GNOME 2.8 (Linux) -
The GNOME project (download)
provides two things: The GNOME Linux desktop environment, an intuitive and
attractive desktop for end-users, users, and the GNOME development platform,
an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest
of the desktop.
- FreePOPs 0.0.16: -
FreePOPs is an
easily extensible program, which allows to have an access to the most varied
resources through the POP3 protocol. Mainly, it can be used to download
mail from the most famous webmails, but it could also be used as an aggregator
for RSS feeds and many more. Supported webmails and resources include: Gmail,
Hotmail (and company: msn, compaq, etc...), Yahoo (com, ca, it), Lycos (for
many countries), AOL (for many countries) , Squirrelmail, Libero.it, Tin.it,
Tre.it, Kernel.org, RSS Aggregator and others.
- WindowSizer 1.3 (shw)-
WindowSizer 1.3 (download),
intelligent window management for the Windows desktop, includes some much
requested features: keyboard shortcuts (including a new shuffle windows
command) and a window exclusions list.
- SPAMfighter Standard 2.96 -
A tool to remove spam
from your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
- PHP 4.3.9 RC3 -
PHP 4.3.9RC3 (download
Win32 ~
Linux) has
been released for testing. This is the last release candidate before the final
release and should have a very low number of problems and/or bugs.
- [!] Apache HTTP Server 2.0.51 - The Apache Software Foundation and
the The Apache HTTP Server Project have released
Apache HTTP Server version 2.0.51. This Announcement notes the significant
changes in 2.0.51 as compared to 2.0.50. This version of Apache is principally
a bug fix release. Of particular note is that 2.0.51 addresses
five security vulnerabilities.
- PassMark BurnInTest 4.0 build 1018 -
BurnInTest
(download
demo) is a software tool that allows all the major sub-systems of a
computer to be simultaneously stress tested for endurance, reliability and
stability.
- CleanMOCache 1.05 -
CleanMOCache is
a free (for 1 - 2 systems), very powerful Mozilla/Netscape/Firefox/Opera and
Windows XP cleaner. It will delete all browser tracks, AutoComplete, WinXP
tracks and the deletion of user created additives.
- CleanCache 2.15 -
CleanCache
is a free (for 1 - 2 systems), very powerful Internet Explorer 6.0 and Windows
XP cleaner.
- FirePanel XP v1.5.1720 -
FirePanel XP
is an add-on for the new firewall found in Windows XP SP2 and Windows
Server2003 SP1. It extends your Windows Firewall, with features not normally
available. It sets rules, monitors firewall's activity, displays logs, helping
you keep realtime tabs on what exactly your system is being exposed to. This
new version adds IP filtering to prevent any TCP/IP & ICMP pattern you choose.
- Fresh UI 7.19 -
Fresh UI (download)
is the fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with
hundreds of useful hidden settings, this software covers the customizing and
optimizing technique that you'll be glad to know: Customizing Windows User
Interface, Optimizing system settings, Optimizing hardware settings,
Customizing Windows application settings, and Control user environment with
policies.
- WinRAR 3.40 Final -
WinRAR (download
win32 ~
DOS ~
Linux) is a
powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of email
attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and
create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
- SpeedTree Demos - Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) has released
the Trees of Pangaea demo, which contains seven of the most stunning
environments ever seen in real-time.
- ATI Radeon DNA-drivers 3.0.4.9 -
These are modified/hacked ATI Catalyst drivers, use them at your own risk.
The drivers have been optimized with two things in mind, better Image Quality
and more/stable frames per second when compared to the Beta Catalyst drivers
from ATI.
- ForceWare 66.32 BETA Win2000/XP -
The
files are dated on the 4th of September 2004 and will work with four
graphics cards namely: NVIDIA_NV43.DEV_0140.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT",
NVIDIA_NV43.DEV_0141.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce 6600", NVIDIA_NV43.DEV_0145.1 =
"NVIDIA GeForce 6610 XL", NVIDIA_NV43.DEV_014E.1 = "NVIDIA Quadro FX 540"
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Updated:03:57 PM CEST Jun,03
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