SECURITY...

• Multiple Firewall Products Bypass Vulnerability  - This is a generic problem of common Personal Firewall products which are accept shortcuts or provide an interface that enables to click without require a password for controlled actions (acting as server -listening ports-, executing another program, connecting to another computer etc.).
• Mozilla Browser NNTP Heap Overflow - Mozilla browser supports NNTP URLs. Remote side is able to trigger news:// connection to any server. Maurycy found a flaw in NNTP handling code which may cause heap overflow and allow remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on client machine.
• Anti-Santy worm on the prowl - F-Secure said on Friday that it was aware of seven sites that had been defaced by the worm, which appears designed to combat the Santy worm. The anti-Santy worm searches Google for sites that use the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software exploited by the earlier worm, infects the sites and attempts to make the sites more secure by installing a patch.
• Trojan Takes First Place in Top 10 List of Malware - Trojan dubbed "Downloader.GK" caused the most damage to computers in 2004, marking the first time a worm hasn't occupied the top spot, according to Panda Software. This signifies an important change in the impact that malicious code is having on computers, the company concluded. Downloader.GK is blamed for 14 percent of all attacks last year, according to data gathered via Panda ActiveScan, a free online scanner.
• Man arrested in tsunami death e-mail hoax - British police said on Sunday they had arrested a man after a hoaxer posing as a government official e-mailed relatives of people missing since the Asian tsunami, saying their loved ones had been confirmed dead. The hoaxer, claiming to be from the "Foreign Office Bureau" in Thailand, targeted people who had placed appeals for information about relatives and friends on the Web site of TV station Sky News. Police said they had arrested a 40-year-old man and seized computer equipment. The man was being questioned at a London police station, a police statement said. All the messages came from one bogus e-mail address, ukgovfoffice+aol.com.

OFF-TOPIC...

• New Xbox Karaoke Songs - Microsoft has announced that 100+ new Xbox Music Mixer karaoke songs have just been made available. Take a look at the "New Releases" section and load up for your 2005 karaoke parties.
• Soldiers Relax With Video Games - At the Marine base several miles southeast, high-speed wires snake down hallways, through doors and out windows. The Navy engineers play "Half-Life 2." At the gym, where seven Playstations get heavy use, Marines wage "Madden NFL 2005" tournaments. "Neverwinter Nights" reigns in the public affairs office.
• Protein offers allergy care hope - Scientists believe they have identified a protein which could be crucial in creating new treatments for allergies. Researchers told Nature that blocking p110delta in mast cells - which cause allergic reactions - substantially reduced symptoms in tests on mice.
• Satellite images of Asian disaster -  A week after the tsunami that hit Asia on 26 December the death toll is still rising. Nearly 140 000 people are confirmed dead, more than 1.8 million people need food aid and an estimated five million are homeless. The tsunami formed when an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude vertically jolted the seabed by several metres, displacing hundreds of cubic kilometres of water.
• Novel calendar system creates regular dates - A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year.
• Boy, 15, easily buys M-rated video games - The Crime Commission enlisted Dan Shemwell, the 15-year-old grandson of its treasurer, Phyllis Luzader Swartz, to go to 15 stores Thursday. He attempted to buy "M-rated" (mature) games, including "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."  Despite most retailers voluntarily adopting policies banning the sale of such M-rated games to youths under 17, Dan Shemwell was able to buy games at 11 of the places he stopped.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta Due 6th January - Microsoft have just finished distributing an internal Beta 1 escrow build to internal beta testers. "Atlanta" is the code-name for Microsoft's rehashed GIANT Software Anti-Spyware. In a memo internally, the company looks clear to distribute the software this coming Thursday calling it "new, it's fresh, and it's all good".
• Fujitsu Siemens loses German PC levy case -  A German court has ordered PC maker Fujitsu Siemens to pay a royalty of 12 EURO for every PC it sells in Germany. A Munich district court believes that as with blank media such as audio and video cassettes, the levy should compensate rights holders for lost royalties. The suit was first brought in 2001 by VG Wort rights society, a copyright management organisation. It argued that Fujitsu Siemens hardware can be used for copying - and therefore infringes the rights of its members. Fujitsu Siemens is the first company targeted by the society. More PC vendors may follow later this year.
• World's Smallest Secure Web Server - Sizzle runs on the Berkeley/Crossbow "motes" -- battery-powered, wireless devices equipped with an 8-bit microprocessor, 128KB of FLASH and a mere 4KB of RAM. While many small web servers have been demonstrated previously, none has addressed the capability of secure communication within such tight resource constraints. Sizzle implements the industry standard security protocol, SSL, used to protect Internet-based transactions like stock trading, e-commerce and on-line banking.
• Samsung Prototype Devices - Mobile website Mobile Review has gotten a hold of some slides of Samsung prototype devices. Most of the devices are more convential cell phone devices, but three are Windows Mobile based. One, code named "B-Bop," is a Phone Edition device. Another is code named "Javelin" is and Smartphone device. The third is code named "Thor" and not only has a 3 GB hard drive but is said to be running "MS Smartphone Magneto."
• Philips Unveils DVD Burner - Philips Electronics unveiled an optical disk drive on Monday for use in computers that can burn and play CDs and DVDs in three formats, including the new Blu-ray standard. The drive, to be presented at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week and to be available in the second half of 2005, comes as electronics giants jockey for support of their new DVD systems.
• New optical disk offers huge storage  -  Japanese electronics giant has developed an optical disk with a storage capacity of up to 510 gigabytes - or just more than half a terabyte. With its huge storage capacity, Pioneer's 12cm thick silver platter will store the amount of data that would require 100 typical DVDs today. An ultraviolet laser will be used to write to the disk.
• DVD Copy Protection: Take 2 - With manufacturers about to unveil a new generation of DVD players and discs, moviemakers now see a rare opportunity to get the horse back into the barn and lock the door tight. So, this past July, two entertainment companies joined with six electronics manufacturers and chip makers to announce the creation of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the copy protection scheme designed to keep future generations safe from pirated DVDs. The specification was due by year-end 2004, and products incorporating it are slated to appear by year-end 2005.
• TiVo Upgrade Shifts TV Shows to Computer Laptop -  TiVo Inc.on Monday said it has started shipping "TiVoToGo," a service upgrade that allows some subscribers to view recorded programs on a computer or laptop. TiVo, the best known maker of digital video recorders (DVR), said the upgrade is free, and will be available to standalone customers who own the "Series 2" version of its set-top box. TiVo first announced the service one year ago. DVRs record hours of TV programs to a built-in hard drive, and allows viewers to pause and replay live TV. TiVo's fee-based system offers enhanced features such as advanced and online scheduling and the ability to play music and photos via a home network.
• AMD Chips in For Portable Video Players - AMD has developed a low-power chip that it thinks will make portable video players more compelling by reducing the time needed to transfer content to the devices. The company is expected to announce the chip at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week. Portable video players with the new Alchemy Au1200 processor will play MPEG files recorded by digital video recorders, eliminating the need for users to change those files to a different format.
• Apple Set to Launch $500 Mac - In a bid to take advantage of the success of the iPod music player, Apple Computer Inc. is set to release a Mac retailing at under $500.
• Justin Frankel Reveals Life After Winamp - Speaking out for the first time on life after AOL/Nullsoft, Winamp creator Justin Frankel sat down with BetaNews to discuss his new endeavors. (thanks Slashdot.org)

HARDWARE...

• Samsung offers zero-pixel-defect warranty for LCDs  - Samsung is now offering a zero-pixel-defect warranty for LCD monitors. Customers that find a pixel defect in an LCD screen within six months of purchase can return the screen for a free replacement, although it's unclear whether the replacement is then covered for an additional six months.
• Skip Gateway's MP3 Photo Jukebox - Gateway's MP3 Photo Jukebox is an interesting combination of good ideas poorly implemented. The $250 player has some intriguing features--including the ability to store and display digital photos--but in the end its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. One of those weaknesses is the display. The Jukebox is the first "mini" hard drive MP3 player to offer a color LCD, which Gateway touts as a major selling point. Unfortunately, at just 1.6 inches across (measured diagonally), and with a meager resolution of 128 by 128 pixels, the oddly square screen is much too small for comfortable photo viewing.
• Nvidia to debut 6200 AGP - Nvidia plans to debut an entry-level version of its GeForce 6-series graphics chip, one that supports the AGP8X standard by the second quarter of 2005, according to sources in Taiwan. Nvidia's AGP-capable GeForce 6200 graphics chip will support Shader Model 3.0, the sources said. Then, its GeForce 6600 graphics chip supporting AGP8X will follow soon after the introduction of the AGP-enabled GeForce 6200, the sources added.
• Samsung Q30 Ultra-Portable Notebook - The Q30 isn't quite as light as the Sony X505, weighing 1.1kg as opposed to 822g, but the Samsung can hardly be described as heavy. And with dimensions of only 287 x 197 x 24mm (WxDxH) it's small enough to be slipped into almost any bag unobtrusively. But despite the tiny dimensions of the Q30, it is a well featured little machine. In fact, even though the Sony X505 is slightly lighter, you would have to carry some extra bits and pieces with you to match the functionality of this little Samsung.
• Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm Processor - The Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm processor seems to be in high demand, and popular online retailers are showing a significant price gap between the 90nm and 130nm models. In one price survey we found the Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm in the $330-$350 range, while the 130nm CPU was approximately $260 for OEM and $270 for retail.
• Mushkin PC2-5300 DDR2 Memory - MadShrimps take a closer look at Mushkin's Enhanced DDR2 Memory rated to run at DDR667 speeds. Using a high end system they push this 1GB kit as far as it can go.
• Gigabyte's nForce4-SLI chipset - The K8NXP-SLI is definitely not short on features. The nVidia nForce4 chipset allows for an SLI setup using two supported Video Cards. The chipset also supports ten USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet with Firewall and 3Gb/s SATA and nVRAID. On top of that, Gigabyte adds an additional Gigabit Network controller using the Marvel 8053 chip as well as three Firewire ports.
• Nine Socket 939 Athlon64 Motherboards - While the K8N Diamond from MSI sports Bluetooth and 54MBit WLAN, the A8N-SLI Deluxe from Asus offers two x1 PCIe slots where MSI does not -- although the second x16 slot can be outfitted with a x1 card in a pinch.  Abit's AV8 and Soltek's K8TPRO-939 stood out thanks to the rear panel of the VIA chipset-equipped boards. Abit offers extra goodies in the form of extensive overclocking options and a solid design, as well as its µGuruClock.
• MSI GeForce 6600GT AGP/PCIe - Performance of the 6600GT, given its pricepoint, is hard to ignore - overclock them and you'll have enough performance to muster through most any game out today. Need more power down the road? Go for PCI Express and SLI.
• Gigabyte Radeon X800XT - The positive aspects of this product in a nut shell are ... the power connector setup, excellent performance, superior stability, quiet operating volume, extreme overclocking abilities and the PCI Express support. The PCI Express support is particularly important as there are few powerful PCIe solutions available at the moment.
• Pioneer DVR-S806 16x Dual-Layer DVD Writer - The Pioneer DVR-S806 drive is an external unit that interfaces with your computer through the included Firewire/IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 cables. You will need to have one of these protocols available to use the drive for best possible performance. The drive is quite attractive with ion sliver and black colors as the color scheme.
• Toshiba 80GB 16MB Cache 2.5in HDD - The drive features a Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor for quieter operation and spins at 5400 RPM. It's rated for ATA-100 speeds and has a 12ms average seek time. While this may seem slow by desktop standards, keep in mind that more compact lower density notebook drives have a lot of catching up to do. From a laptop perspective, things are looking good for Toshiba's high-end HDD. Two 40GB platters are used to account for the 80GB rating, which is good news since larger platters offer better performance.
• ZyXEL HomeSafe Parental Control Gateway Router with 802.11g Wireless (HS-100W) - If you are concerned about having easy-to-configure Parental Controls, the HS-100W just might be the right buy for you, especially when you consider its low cost. With relatively painless installation and easy to follow configuration, the HS-100W is likely to gain popularity in homes where parents are concerned about their children's use of the Internet.

GUIDES...

• TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide - SP2 version 1.0 Final  - Tweakhound's Eric Vaughan has updated his Windows XP tweaking guide to revision SP2 version 1.0 Final! this has to be one of the best tweaking guides around. This guide is all about optimizing XP.
• Rojak Pot's desktop graphics card comparison guide rev. 7.4 - Currently covering over 200 desktop graphics cards, this comprehensive comparison will allow you to easily compare 14 different specifications for each and every card!

SOFTWARE...

• jIRCii 01.03.05 - jIRCii is a cross platform Internet Relay Chat client. It is fully scriptable using a Perl-like language called sleep. The focus is to provide a console client experience with the advantages of a solid GUI. It includes DCC/CTCP support, the ability to connect to SSL servers, and over 65 built-in commands.
• OpenOffice.org For Windows 1.1.4 - OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. It establishes the necessary facilities to make this open source technology available to the developer community.
• AVG Free Edition 7.300 - AVG Free Edition (download) is designed and made available for individual home PC use and may not be used in business, commercial or organizational environments
• Maxthon Combo 1.1.115 - Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface.
• PDF SpeedUp for Adobe Reader 1.42 - PDF SpeedUp (download) allows you to significantly speed up the time it takes to load Adobe Reader. If you notice that when the Reader starts it loads many plug-ins which you may or may not need, this program simply disables the plug-ins and loads only the absolute necessary ones so the program starts quickly. It offers several options and you can also manually enable or disable the plug-ins as needed. PDF SpeedUp works with Acrobat versions 3 through 6.xx.
• SNES9x Windows v1.43 - Snes9x is a portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator. It basically allows you to play most games designed for the SNES and Super Famicom Nintendo game systems on your PC or Workstation; which includes some real gems that were only ever released in Japan
• RockNES v4.02 (AthlonXP + SSE2) - This software is a Nintendo Entertainment System 8-bit (NES) videogame emulator for PC machines. RockNES is a full rewrite of original RockNES (old xNes). It was designed to be very compatible and as fast as possible.
• Visual Boy Advance v1.80 beta 2 - This a newer version of the VisualBoy Advance, but still in early stages of development.
• Aim Ad Hack 4.00 - Aim Ad Hack will effectively remove all the ads from AIM. Just extract the file into your AIM directory.
• DVD Identifier v3.6 - With this tool you can retrieve the media information stored on DVDR DL discs and find out who the actual manufacturer is and at which speeds the discs can be recorded. The latest version, 3.6, adds preliminary DVD-R DL support
• AnyDVD v4.4.1.1 (beta) - SlySoft has released another beta version of the AnyDVD that adds support for newer versions of the Sony ARccOS copy-protection as found on "Resident Evil - Apocalypse" (US) or "Little Black Book" (US).
• Alcohol 120% Device Support Patch v2.3.8.1231 - There's a new patch for The Alcohol 120% which adds support for new recorders.
• CPUCooL 7.3.5 - CPUCooL (download) is a program that monitors temperature, fan speed, and voltages for many motherboards. It provides Cpu cooling under Win9x/2000/XP/NT, allows FrontSideBus changing, optimizes your memory and CPU.
• Vstudios Xtreme G 71.20b - This is the Valance Studios Xtreme G driver which includes many performance and Image Quality tweaks here are some of the many changes over the normal Nvidia drivers. Here it is what youve been waiting for a driver that fixes the ogl performance issues that plagued previous Xtreme G Drivers. Also fixed some invalid Texture entries.
• Creative MediaSource 3 web update version 3.10.16 for PCMCIA SB Audigy 2 ZS Notebook and SB Audigy 4 - This update contains enhancements and fixes to improve the performance of your PCMCIA Sound Blasterr Audigy 2 ZS Notebook and Sound Blaster Audigy 4.
• Creative Audigy 4 Pro update version 3.00.55 - This update for Creative Audigy 4 Pro, provides more functionality for your Remote Control, and fixes operational issues in the Entertainment Center software.
• Creative Smart Recorder Patch for SB PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS Notebook and SB Audigy 4 Pro audio cards version 2.10.56 - This patch upgrades your Creative Smart Recorder application from version 2.10.52 or 2.10.11, to version 2.10.56. It is only applicable to Creative Sound Blaster PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS.
• Creative EAX Console update for users with a Creative MP3 player - This update resolves a compatibility issue between Creative EAX Console, which is included with selected Creative audio devices, and Creative MediaSource with Theme Engine 3.00.55
• BIOS updates - There's a lot of new motherboard BIOS updates from last week @ PCTuning.cz