SECURITY...

• Analysis of the Troj/Winser-A Malware - The main program, ccEvtMngr.exe is a trojan that spreads via the WINS MS04-045 vulnerability, and it does so via outbound connections to port 42/tcp. When a new machine is compromised, the infected machine "phones home" back to the attacking machine to port 37264/tcp, and then spawns a command shell, waiting for input. The attacking machine sends what amounts to a small batch file that launches an FTP program. It calls back to the attacking machine on port 36010/tcp, which is listening with a pseudo-FTP server. It downloads and installs itself on that machine.
• Mozilla XBM Image Vulnerability - Mail client and Web Browser allows the usage of XBM graphic files and a security flaw in the way softwares handles those images, allow a malicious user to perform a denial-of-service attack. The X BitMap data is stored as ASCII data, and files begin with '#define' statements in substitution of a header.
• Extremely Critical IE6/SP2 Exploit Found - Secunia is reporting another three vulnerabilities in IE6 running on WinXP SP2. Any of these, in combination with an inappropriate behaviour where the ActiveX Data Object (ADO) model can write arbitrary files, can be exploited to compromise a user's system.  This vulnerability is far worse however: it makes command lines run on the user's machine. Why is that bad? Because someone can make that command be "del C:WindowsSystem32*.dll" or something equally sensitive, causing Windows to crash... permanently. The solution? Switch browsers; stop using Internet Explorer.
• MS AntiSpyware vs Ad-Aware vs SpyBot - It was time to pin Microsoft AntiSpyware against SpyBot S&D by first scanning with SpyBot then checking to see how many files SpyBot had left behind. SpyBot's initial scan resulted in 358 problems detected. After running SpyBot a second time to make sure it did not report any other problems, we ran Microsoft AntiSpyware. AntiSpyware was able to detect 659 infected files on the machine with 2.223 registry keys infected.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Does the Brain Work Like the Internet? - Computer scientists studying the stability of Internet connections may someday find their research used to help patients suffering from schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease or stroke. Recently published research indicates, for the first time, that networks in the human brain work similarly to those in the World Wide Web and other apparently unrelated networks. Thus, techniques to optimize one kind of network could potentially be applied to another.
• Video games with heroes make kids aggressive - Computer games in which children can identify with a hero or heroine who attacks his or her enemies are more likely to make them aggressive than games featuring indiscriminate violence, according to a recent survey.

TECHNOLOGY...

• PSP to launch this spring in the US - Sony officials said at the CES in Las Vegas that the game player will hit U.S. stores in March. Sony executive Howard Stringer said the console will sell for less than $200. Sony hopes U.S. demand will be strong for the black-and-silver console, which also plays music and movies. Stores in Japan sold out of the 200,000 PSPs they had in stock within hours of its debut Dec. 12.
• Yahoo! Unveils Year's Top Sites - The Yahoo! Search team have looked at thousands of websites, braving the weird, the wonderful, and the downright obscure to track down the ten best sites of 2004.
• CES 2005 coverage - @ TheTechLounge | Phantom Game Service @ Legit Reviews | NVIDIA Powered Intel SLI? | Another Nforce 5 board makes a showing | CES 2005 photo journal @ FiringSquad | Behind the Scenes at the CES Keynote | Best of CES 2005 in Photos | Samsung launches speech-to-SMS phone | Fatal1ty cock of the gaming pile again
• Studios announce HD DVD movie release lists - While games publisher Vivendi Universal was touting its support for the Blu-ray Disc format yesterday, the movie business in which it owns a 20 per cent stake, Universal Studios, was announcing plans to release 16 HD DVD titles in the US. It was joined by Paramount, which will ship the first titles from its initial 20-strong list of HD DVD products in Q4 2005, and by Warner Bros., which plans to lead the field with a catalogue of 50 HD DVD titles, again commencing Q4 2005.
• Intel promises to "upgrade your life" - In a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel chief executive Craig Barrett said: "We are going to upgrade your life and upgrade some of the equipment in your life." The appliance transports PC applications to the living room, notifying the user when they have been outbid at an online auction or forwarding alerts from a home security system. The Intel chief went on to demonstrate a prototype of a living room PC using a dual-core processor. The device featured a touch screen and 3D user interface that allows easy navigation through the content offered, both locally and through online services.
• AOL testing free 100MB storage locker - Called the service My Storage, AOL will give a 100MB digital locker to every subscriber and up to seven additional screen names that each account holder can create. Because the locker is accessible on the Web, subscribers will be able to retrieve files using any Web-enabled device. AOL will allow subscribers to place files in public storage and share with other users.
• Phone biz agrees on $1 DRM levy - The mobile phone industry has already agreed on a DRM standard for locking down media - and it'll cost $1 per handset, plus a percentage of each piece of media downloaded. The money will be divided out between patent holders ContentGuard, Intertrust, Matsushita, Philips and Sony.

HARDWARE... 

• Acer TravelMate 382TM - At the heart of the system lies a low power Pentium M 725 processor happily purring along at 1.6GHz. This CPU is based on the newer 90nm process technology and packs in a full 2MB of on-die Level 2 cache along with a 400MHz FSB. Backing this up is 512MB of DDR266 memory which is expandable to 2GB, although my unit came with two 256MB modules with no more room for expansion at a later date. If you want more memory I'd recommend stating that at the time of order.
• PQI Turbo Memory PC4000 - It's rated at an aggressive 2.5-3-3-7. It used to be that if you wanted PC4000 memory, you'd have to give up your latency to do so. This appears to no longer be the case with PQI's new PC4000 sticks.
• Mushkin 1GB PC2-5300 (667) DDR2 Dual Pack - The PC2-5300 (667) picks up where PC2-4200 (533) left off with bandwidth of up to 5400 GB/s. This dual pack consist of 2 x 512mb PC2-5300 modules and is rated at CL 4-4-4-11. According to CPUZ's SPD utlity, these modules uses A-Data chips
• ATI X800XT PE Comparison - 5 Cards  -  If you look closely to all benchmarks results you may notice that ASUS is on top, after that Gigabyte and third Sapphire. The results between all five cards are almost the same and one or two frames difference is not much.
• Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT (GV-NX66T128D) PCI-E - Hi-Tech Reviews posted a review on the Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT (GV-NX66T128D) PCI-E video card.
• Hitachi 5K80 80G & Samsung MP0402H 40G HDDs - The Samsung drive is within a decibel of the quietest hard drive we've ever listened to or tested. Such a close measurement makes it difficult to give much weight to the difference; slight variances in testing conditions, procedure or samples might even flip the results. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 also turns in a great showing, with noise lower than the quietest 3.5" hard drive, and even better performance than our particular Samsung SP80 7200 rpm desktop drive sample.
• Plextor PX-716A DVD recorder - The Plextor PX-716A is shorter than its brothers, the PX-504A, PX-708A and the PX-712A. This is good news for people with a barebone computer, such as the one we're using in this review, because space is always limited in these kind of machines.
• Corsair Flash Voyager USB 2.0 Drive 256MB - OCTools take a look at one of Corsair's USB 2.0 Flash Drive offering.
• OCZ ModStream OCZ-520 12U Power Supply - The OCZ ModStream OCZ-520 12U PSU is marketed as a high-power, low-noise unit. With a handsome chrome finish and a 120mm blue LED fan, it is obviously aimed at those who appreciate style in their computers as well as well regulated power or, in the case of most SPCR fans, quiet power. One of the main selling points of this PSU is the OCZ EZMod advanced cable management system, a fancy name for detachable cables (with blue plugs!). Its cables are all shielded for superior power regulation. They also glow under UV light.
• PDP System Patriot XBL PC-3200 DC Kit - Patriot's Dual Channel (DC) 1GB and 512MB 3200+ solutions offer XBL performance. XBL solutions enable user's flexibility to determine their system's optimal performance settings. Patriot's 3200+XBL solutions provide Extreme Bandwidth performance up to PC4200 with timings of 3-4-4-8 or Extreme Low Latency timings of 2-2-2-5 at PC3200. Patriot's Dual Channel kits are composed of two (2) 256MB or 512MB modules, manufactured, tested and then immediately packaged to ensure reliability and stability.
• Waffer AirCon PAC 400 PC cooling device - This device is essentially a peltier cooling system, which the company terms as bringing the idea of "Air-Conditioning System" into computer cooling. Does this idea really work? Yes, with a but. In the process of the review, I discovered several issues that lead me to believe that this device is not for everyone.
• Asetek VapoChill XE II - Plug and play subzero cooling for your CPU, is it possible? The latest generation of asetek's VapoChill Xtreme Edition promises easy installation combined with great performance, all wrapped up in an attractive package. We thermally accelerate an Athlon 64 and P4 up to speed
  beyond air and water cooling limits.
• Dell 2005FPW 20 LCD - It may not be the best one money can buy, but it has a price much lower than the competition's. During the holiday season, if one searched around, it was very simple to find this for under $600. For a 20" widescreen monitor, this is an absolute steal. The backlighting problems did not detract that much from the overall value of this LCD. Unless you have cash to literally throw around, I wouldn't spend the extra few hundred dollars to get a comparable NEC or Samsung model.
• NB-30 battery-free wireless optical mouse - As the name suggests, the BatteryFREE mouse is a wireless mouse that does not use any batteries. It works under the principal of electrical induction. A brief overview of how this works is when an electric conductor moves through a magnetic field. Electronic current is then "induced", or created, in the electronic conductor. For the BatteryFREE mouse, the mouse houses an electric conductor in the form of copper wires. Below the gray surface of the mouse pad is another coil that causes the surface of the pad to become a magnetic field. As the user moves the mouse across the mouse pad, current is induced for the mouse; thus, it has enough electricity to power its red LED and optical sensor. The induction also creates enough power for the mouse's transmitter to broadcast weak signals to the nearby receiver which is located at the top of the mouse pad. The weakness of the signal will not cause it to interfere with other RF devices. Another reviews can be found on nVNews and MikhailTech.
• Saitek R440 Force Feedback Wheel and pedals -  Force Feedback on the R440 is also top notch. Games such as Need For Speed Underground 2 and Colin McRae Rally 2005 feel spectacular as not only road surfaces and impacts, but also acceleration, changing gear with the paddle gearbox and heavy breaking are faithfully simulated. Should you not like the feedback in any particular title Saitek's software will allow you to adjust the sensitivity of the R440 independently in Windows.
• AKG K 271 Studio headphones - AKG K 271 Studios headphones are not really expensive - well, not if you've already adjusted your attitude to accept that a couple of hundred bucks US is not an excessive amount to pay for quality 'phones, anyway. $US179 is an excellent price for sealed headphones of this quality.
• Rio Forge 256MB Sport MP3 Player - It has superior sound quality, compared to most MP3 players. In fact, its sound quality surprised me. The bundled earbuds are amongst the best stock earbuds I've ever tried. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) is easy to use and understand. It also has FM capabilites as well as customizable equalizer settings.
• Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3 camera - This camera hosts a number of features including a 4.2 megapixel CCD, 12X optical zoom and anti-shake support are just a few right off the bat. Let's take a more in-depth look at this model and see what makes it so different from the DiMAGE Z2.
• Samsung DuoCam SC-D6040  - The digital camera on the Samsung DC-D6040 uses a 4.13 Megapixel CCD, which corresponds to a resolution of 2592 x 1944. The camera offers a 3X optical zoom and a 12X digital zoom as well as a pop up flash. Samsung includes a USB cable, a 16 MB memory stick, a battery pack and a remote control for the DuoCam in addition to a special "A/V cable" that connects to a television so that you can display pictures using S-Video or composite on your television display.

GUIDES...

• AnandTech's buyer's guide - Most people looking for a budget computer don't have a lot of money, and the last thing that they want is to have to go out and replace parts (or buy additional parts) because of some issue that comes up. Performance would be nice to have as well, of course, but that's a distant concern

SOFTWARE...

• Microsoft Services for Netware 5.03 SP2 and FPNW 5.02 - Services for NetWare 5.03 SP2 is a free download which simplies the adoption of Windows Server 2003 by reducing overall network administration and facilitates the migration to Windows Server 2003 from NetWare, NDS and eDirectory. It consists of two tools - Microsoft Directory Synchronization Services (MSDSS) and Microsoft File Migration Utility.
• Kazaa Lite Resurrection 0.0.7.6F - Kazaa Lite Resurrection is a P2P file sharing program based on the client that is developed by the Kazaa Corporation. Kazaa Lite Resurrection has been edited so that it does not include spyware, malware or ad-aware.
• MAME v0.90 - MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with an arcade game's data files (ROMs), MAME will more or less faithfully reproduce that game on a PC. MAME can currently emulate over 2600 unique (and over 4600 in total) classic arcade video games from the three decades of video games - '70s, '80s and '90s, and some from the current millennium.
• AnyDVD 4.5.1.1 beta - Slysoft has just released another beta version of its popular AnyDVD. This new beta fixes problem with Autoplay and adds information window which shows you what AnyDVD is doing.
• Adobe Reader SpeedUp 1.32 - As with the previous versions, this version works with Adobe Reader (Professional included) 7.0. But it doesn't support any 7.0 tweaks.
• Torrent Searcher 4.1 - With Torrent Searcher 4.0 (download) you can search for torrents. It's very small and easy to use. There are no ads included at all.