Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:03 AM CEST - Oct,21 2004
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- Ballmer: We need a $100 PC - What's one of Steve Ballmer's biggest
headaches? It's not Linux or security breaches. It's piracy, the Microsoft CEO
said Wednesday. "The biggest problem we have right now is that people who
should be paying for software aren't," Ballmer told an audience of technology
executives at an industry conference here sponsored by market researcher
Gartner. One way to stem piracy is to offer consumers in emerging countries a
low-cost PC, Ballmer said. "There
has to be...a $100 computer to go down-market in some of these countries.
We have to engineer (PCs) to be lighter and cheaper," he said.
- [!] Major browsers bitten by security bugs! - What do Internet
Explorer, Mozilla's browsers, and Opera all have in common? Bugs! First off,
http-equiv has discovered
two
vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious
people to compromise a user's system, link to local resources, and bypass a
security feature in Microsoft Windows XP SP2. Sadly, there also are
vulnerabilities in
Opera,
Mozilla /
Mozilla Firefox / Camino,
Safari,
Netscape,
Konqueror,
Avant Browser
and Maxthon.
- How to Break Windows XP SP2 + Internet Explorer 6 SP2 -
The following technical exercise demonstrates the enormously elaborate
methods required to defeat the current [as of today's date] security
mechanisms in place in both Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Internet Explorer
6.00 SP2 fully patched: It is by no means easy. The 'locking down 'of the
local zone is and has been the 'Achilles' Heel' of the manufacturer known as
Microsoft from time of inception to date.
- Singapore to jail and fine software pirates -
Singapore will next year introduce jail terms and stiff fines for people
who break software and internet copyright laws, the government said on
Tuesday. People found to be illegally using software or downloading off the
internet will face a maximum six months in jail and a fine of 20,000 Singapore
dollars ($A16,395) for their first offence, according to ammendments to the
Copyright Act introduced into parliament. Repeat offenders face three years in
jail and a fine of 50,000 Singapore dollars.
- Self-destructing DVDs to help market new film - At the center of
the Convex Group's plan is
a low budget Christmas movie called "Noel," directed by Chazz Palminteri,
that will debut in up to 10 U.S. cities on Nov. 12. On the same day, the
disposable DVD can be bought for $4.99 through online retailer Amazon.com. A
little over two weeks later, the movie will air once on cable television
network TNT, which Convex hopes will only spur greater ticket sales and higher
revenues from the DVDs, which become unplayable 48 hours after their air-tight
package is opened.
- Off-topic: Internet about to collapse, says Finnish scientist - Dr.
Hannu Kari says the Internet will will collapse in 2006 as reported in an
article on
ARS Technica.
- Off-topic: Humans Have Fewer Genes Than Previously Thought - A more
refined analysis of the human genome, or book of life, shows people have
fewer genes than previously thought, an international team of scientists
said on Wednesday. Instead of 100,000 genes, the initial estimate, scientists
working on the Human Genome Project, a publicly funded collaboration of
scientists from 20 institutions in the United States, Europe and Asia, have
reduced the number to 20,000-25,000.
- Off-topic: Miniature jet engines could power cellphones - Engineers
have moved a step closer to batch producing
miniaturised, jet engine-based generators from a single stack of bonded
silicon wafers. These chip-based “microengines” could one day power mobile
electronic devices. By spinning a tiny magnet above a mesh of interleaved
coils etched into a wafer, David Arnold and Mark Allen of the Georgia
Institute of Technology, US, have built the first silicon-compatible device
capable of converting mechanical energy - produced by a rotating microturbine
- into usable amounts of electrical energy. The key advantage of microengines
is that they pack in at least 10 times more energy per volume of fuel than
conventional lithium batteries, take up less space and work more smoothly than
much-touted fuel cells.
- Nvidia Puts a Firewall on a Motherboard - The catch is that the new
PCI-based chip set will only work with AMD Athlon 64, 64 FX, and Sempron
processors. Consequently, the company expects that NForce 4 will be aimed at
higher-end applications such as gaming in its initial roll-out. It is not
clear whether the chip set will be made to work in Intel systems at a later
date. Although software firewalls are effective on PCs,
the NForce 4 "ActiveArmor" protection engine claims to carry out its
security routines without hindering the performance of the PC, acting as an
"accelerated" co-processor. This should improve system performance by
unburdening the main CPU from having to process network traffic. ActiveArmor's
firewall functions look fairly standard, and include packet inspection, port
filtering, and other anti-hacking features as well as remote administration
which is a must for IT departments.
- NV41 is Geforce 6700 -
This chip
will be clocked at 400MHz while the memory on cards will work at 1000MHz.
You will be able to buy 128MB and 256MB versions. NV41 is derived from NV40
and will have full support for Pixel Shader 3.0 and at this time it's PCIe
only. Those cards are set for production in November.
- S3 unveils OmniChrome graphics card -
Today S3
is taking the wraps off OmniChrome, an answer to ATI's All-in-Wonder and
NVIDIA's Personal Cinema. Based on a DeltaChrome S4 Nitro graphics card,
OmniChrome adds a TV tuner and video decoder chip to enable video capture and
PVR applications. Given DeltaChrome's native HDTV output support and
less-than-stellar gaming performance, the PVR/home theater PC market seems
like a natural market for S3 to pursue.
- Toshiba To Offer Laptops With HD-DVD in 2005 -
Toshiba will release laptops with HD-DVD under its high-end Qosmio brand
and plans to ship one million units in the first year to Europe, the U.S. and
China, as well as Japan.
- OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 Performance Series Memory video-review - 3D Game Man has
posted
an OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 Performance Series Memory Video Review.
- Asus AX800XT/TVD review -
In this review PCstats is testing one of Asus's flagship Radeon
videocards, the AX800XT/TVD.
- Creative Sound Blaster Wireless Music review - For your money,
you get a WiFi receiver box which sits next to your stereo, and a chunky
remote control with a built-in LCD screen. The remote communicates with
the receiver using radio waves rather than infrared, so there’s no need for a
line of sight to the receiver. The idea is that you can have your PC and
wireless access point in one room, your receiver and stereo in another, and
you and your remote in a third room.
- [!}Spice up your MX Mouse - The standard USB port polling frequency
for mice is 125hz ( for serial port 40hz ). This will not change no matter
what mouse you buy as long as it uses the USB interface. The PS/2 port however
can be adjusted to deliver as much as 200hz with the help of third party
programs, making it the better option for games compared to a normal USB
interface. However,
USB can be spiced up by doing a little hexeditingSpice up your MX Mouse.
- TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide - SP2 v.1 Beta - Eric Vaughan
has published
a Beta version of this guide, updated for SP2.
- ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide - TweakGuides have posted
their
latest guide that looks at tweaking your ATI Catalyst Drivers. This guide
refers to the latest ATI Catalyst drivers Version 4.10, including the new ATI
Catalyst Control Center and the Catalyst A.I Feature. Make sure to check back
regularly as the guide is updated for each new Catalyst release.
- Kernel 2.6.9 Final -
check it out (download)
- Microsoft Time Zone 2.1 -
Microsoft Time Zone conveniently runs in the system tray and allows you to
easily view the date and time in various locations around the world. You can
also quickly and easily add your own personal locations to customize Microsoft
Time Zone the way you want.
- ICQ Lite 4.14 Build #1839 -
download ~
release notes.
- GAIM 1.0.2 -
Gaim (download
~ changelog)
is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and
Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN
Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
- FRAPS 2.3.3 -
Fraps is a tool
that lets you monitor current framerates in a corner of the screen for
programs using DirectX or OpenGL technology. It also allows you to easily take
screenshots of games, make movies of gameplay, and manually determine the
average framerate between two points.
- Koepi's XviD Codec 1.1 Unstable -
XviD is
an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. Use this build with great care! It's
unstable, it can mess up your encodes badly.
- K-Lite Codec Pack 2.33 Full, Standard and Basic -
K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools.
- NVIDIA DVD Decoder v1.00.58 -
NVIDIA
DVD Decoder (download)
enables the industry's highest quality DVD and MPEG-2 playback and rich
surround sound audio for Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center
Edition.
- DVD Region+CSS Free 5.56 -
DVD Region+CSS Free enables you to watch and copy any region code
CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive.
- TiVo Desktop 1.2 -
TiVo Desktop
allows you to access your music and photos located on a PC over the network
using a TiVo.
- ATI Tray Tools v1.0.1.386 -
ATI
Tray Tools is a small utility that can be found in the windows tray which
then allows instant access to options and settings. Quite handy and quite a
small download.
- nVidia Unified Driver 6.11 Beta -
The
package (German language website, but you should be able to find
_download_ link) contains: Audio driver version 4.55 (9/30 nightly INF), Audio
utility version 4.49, Ethernet NRM driver version 4.57, Network management
tools version 4.57, SMBus driver version 4.45 (WHQL) with updated uninstaller
files, Installer version 4.55, Win2K IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL), WinXP
IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL) (thanks blooduk) More info can
be found
here.
- NVIDIA Forceware 70.41 Unveiled -
OSNN.net have managed to get our hands on some new NVIDIA drivers that
will eventually become what is known as Rel7. There's no download, but they've
decided to take some screenshots of how things are different since the Rel6
and Rel65 releases.
- ForceWare 66.81 Win2000/XP WHQL -
Another unofficial ForceWare driverupdate. This one is a bit different
though, it's online and serving from NVIDIA themselves (from the nzone pages)
making it an official driver release. It's files are dated on the 19th of
October 2004 making it the absolutely newest set available, it will work with
all graphics cards from NVIDIA. Another mirror can be found on
NVIDIA Zone.
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Updated:11:06 PM CEST Jun,04
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