SECURITY...

• Vulnerability prompts forced upgrade for MSN Messenger users - Starting February 10, 2005, the MSN Messenger service will notify customers running a vulnerable version of MSN Messenger that there is an upgrade available. Customers that have accepted this upgrade and have applied the update will be protected from this vulnerability. Customers that have not accepted this upgrade may not be allowed to connect to the MSN Messenger service with a vulnerable version of the client. Clients may be upgraded immediately by installing the update available here - MSN Messenger 6.2.0205 / Windows Messenger 4.7.2009 (SP1) | 4.7.3000 (SP2).
• Teen Sentenced in Microsoft Attack - On Friday a federal judge sentenced a teen to probation and community-service for releasing the so called RPCSDBOT worm which infected computers and directed them to attack the Microsoft.com website. The Microsoft website was taken down for four hours due to the attack in 2003. The Judge Robert Lansik sentenced the teen to 3 years probation and 300 hours of community-service, he also wants the teen to write him a letter every six months describing his community-service activities.
• Microsoft Plots Fixes to IE Browser - Microsoft Corp. recently held a secret Webcast with some of its closest partners to discuss ways in which the company might improve its Internet Explorer browser and customer confidence in the platform. Sources said Microsoft officials discussed potential "fixes" to IE as the company is losing market share to other browsers, such as the open-source Firefox. Though the strategy is still in its initial phases, Microsoft is looking to resolve some fundamental issues with IE's operating system.
• Lavasoft and Pest Patrol removed WhenU? -  According to this thread on Broadband Reports security forum, both Lavasoft and Pest Patrol removed WhenU from their detection databases. Lavasoft removed WhenU's applications from their definitions database sometime in the last month -- it looks like it was probably the Feb. 5 update, but it might have been earlier. It also appears that Pest Patrol removed WhenU from its detections database, though the situation here is a bit murkier.
• Apple attacked for attacking hacks' sources - US Organisation the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said it has asked the California supreme court to protect three online journalists being forced by Apple to reveal their sources. The EFF said Apple is asking a court to get three hacks to turn over their unpublished materials to the corporation. But, says the organisation, US online journalists are protected by the reporters privilege laws from doing that.
• China net cafe culture crackdown - Chinese authorities closed 12,575 net cafes in the closing months of 2004, the country's government said.
  According to the official news agency most of the net cafes were closed down because they were operating illegally.

OFF-TOPIC...

• NASA: 2005 could be warmest year recorded - A weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, NASA scientists said this week. While climate events like El Nino -- when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean --affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part.
• Altered HIV Attacks Mice Tumors - The UCLA AIDS Institute scientists genetically altered HIV and folded it into an envelope made of another virus called sindbis, which typically infects insects and birds. That turned the altered HIV into a missile that hunted down metastasized melanoma cells in the lungs of living mice.
• Europe launches super rocket - Europe's reputation for rocket engineering got a boost with the successful launch of the Ariane 5 ECA at 21:03 GMT on 12 February. The 50-metre high rocket is Europe's largest, able to deliver up to 10 tonnes of payload into orbit around Earth.
• Hobart man dies testing bulletproof vest - A man whose friends initially said he was killed by gunfire outside a Gary liquor store actually died after he donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest and asked a cohort to shoot him. A friend then shot Daniel Wright with a .20-gauge shotgun, but it turned out the vest Wright had put on Thursday was a flak jacket not designed to stop a bullet. Wright, 20, was mortally wounded in the shooting and died later at a Gary hospital after two of his friends drove him there.
• This must be love - If you're 35 and you've been sleeping on the same pillow for 31 years, you don't take that lightly." This isn't a joke to Raza, or to the many other adults who are deeply attached to the cushions that lull them to sleep each night. Before getting married, Raza told his fiancee, "My pillow is really important to me." She laughed, so Raza reiterated: "No, I'm not kidding. This is really important." Despite the occasional joke about security blankets, "she has actually been very respectful of it," he says. "She knows what I'm like without it."
• Microsoft goes Hollywood: "Halo" to hit big screen - Microsoft may finally be getting into a business where "blue screen of death" could actually be a good thing. The company is going from writing code to writing a movie script adapting the "Halo" video-game franchise, according to a report yesterday in Daily Variety.
• Britney Spears Wins First Grammy -  Pop star Britney Spears won the first Grammy Award of her brief but colorful career on Sunday, taking the prize in the best dance recording category.
• The Credibles! - Check it out! (Flash)

TECHNOLOGY...

• Xbox 2 to Release in Fall of This Year - GamesIndustry.biz has the news that the Xbox 2 will be launched sometime in late fall of this year.
• Microsoft & Nokia Collaborate on Digital Music - Today at 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, Microsoft and Nokia announced an agreement to give Nokia handsets the benefit of Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10. Microsoft and Nokia are working to ensure consumers can enjoy music from the newly-launched Nokia and Loudeye mobile music service platform on both Nokia handsets and Windows XP-based PCs.
• Motorola Unveils RAZR Successors, iTunes Phone - The popular RAZR ultra-thin flip phone which was launched last year will be joined by three more high-tech models, dubbed the RAZR black, the SLVR and the PEBL. The black RAZR, nicknamed BLZR, will be available for the Oscars this spring. The SLVR, a model without a flip, will be thin like the RAZR with Motorola hoping to bring excitement back to monoblock phones, which have lost ground to clamshell designs.
• Motorola, Oakley introduce Bluetooth sunglasses - Available in three frame colors, RAZRWire was developed to meet the needs of active consumers seeking seamless mobility, offering them an integrated easy-to-use design. For cyclists, skateboarders, rock climbers, golfers - practically anyone who is active outdoors - the innovative eyewear encourages hands-free connection while on the go.
• Meet the A1010, E1060, E1120 Motorola communicators - The new Motorola A1010 communicator sports WCDMA 2100 MHz, GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz functionality, a large TFT screen with a resolution of 208 x 320 pixels, a 2 MP and a VGA camera enabling 2-way video conferencing, as well as multimedia streaming, capture and playback (MP3, MPEG4). Running Symbian OS 7.0 and the UIQ 2.1 platform, the A1010 is also utilizing the Opera web browser and its small screen and full screen rendering technology. Other software include Picsel Document Viewer/Edit and PIM applications. The A1010 is also equipped with a TransFlash memory slot, A-GPS support for location services, and Bluetooth. The Motorola A1010 is expected to be available in Q4 2005.
• British Broadband Picks Up The Pace - Many BT customers will now have download speeds of 2Mbps, although there are usage allowances of between one gigabyte and 30 gigabytes a month. The new speeds start to come into effect on 17 February for home customers and 1 April for businesses.
• MySQL Network shifts pricing and licensing - The company is expected to announce on Tuesday at LinuxWorld here the MySQL Network, a yearly subscription service, rather than an up-front fee, for the right to use the MySQL software and access the company's support services.
• Sun beefs up Java Comms Suite security - The JSC Suite, which includes System Messaging Server, System Calendar Server, and System Instant Messaging, is designed to provide a platform for deploying email, calendar, instant messaging and other collaboration services. Enhanced features include support for the Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions protocol in the Communications Express web client, which now enables users of the JSC Suite to sign and encrypt messages, resulting in increased client-side security and stronger end-to-end security.
• New Xandros V3 Open Circulation Edition available - The Open Circulation Edition of the Xandros Desktop OS provides a secure, stable Windows replacement for everyday desktop use and everything users need for a carefree Internet experience . It offers free Skype-to-Skype calling worldwide, Firefox browsing, and Thunderbird e-mail with automatic spam filtering.

HARDWARE... 

• AMD cuts chip prices - The company nipped the price of its flagship Athlon 64 4000+ chip by 12 percent to $643. The Athlon 64 3800+ and 3700+ processors were lowered by 34 percent and 30 percent, respectively, to $424 and $329. The Sempron for desktops using Socket A motherboards--the same type of socket used by the company's older Athlon XP chip--were among those cut. The Sempron 2800+ for Socket A boards was clipped by 17 percent to $90. The Mobile Sempron 2800+ for full-size notebooks, meanwhile, dropped 19 percent to $87.
• AMD unveils latest x86 Opterons - According to the firm, the 852 and 252 chips feature performance-enhancing features including support for SSE3 software instructions, and better HyperTransport performance through an increase in bus frequency to 1GHz. AMD also announced its AMD-8132 HyperTransport PCI-X 2.0 tunnel, scheduled to ship for servers and workstations this month.
• Intel ships 2MB cache 64-bit Xeon - The new Xeon DPs contain 2MB of on-die L2 cache, up from the 1MB built into the previous version, and are clocked at 3.0, 3.2, 3.4 and 3.6GHz. The chips are priced at $316, $455, $690 and $851, respectively.
• SanDisk queues up 1GB mini memory card for $100 - Underscoring the dramatic price drops in the market for memory cards, flash memory specialist SanDisk said Monday that it will sell a 1GB mini SD card for $100.
• GeForce 6600 goes mobile - NVIDIA has announced the launch of their GeForce 6600 Go GPU for thin and light laptops. The GeForce 6600 Go GPU is like its desktop counterpart is SM 3.0 compliant and has Purevideo technology. NVIDIA has also announced the immediate availabilty of PCI Express GeForce 6600 Go and GeForce 6200 Go powered laptops from a wide range of vendors
• Intel Xeon 3.6 2MB vs AMD Opteron 252 Database Test -  For dual-processor applications, Intel leads the way in everyday small to heavy transactional applications, whereas AMD shines in the analytical side of database applications "Data Warehousing".
• NVIDIA nForce4 Chipset Series for AMD64 - The new generation of chipsets from this company is represented by three products. The basic modification is "simply" called nForce4, the modification with advanced functionality - nForce4 Ultra, and finally the topnotch modification with intuitive name - nForce4 SLI.
• The ASUS DRW-1604P DVD±RW DL drive - Besides its 16x DVD+/-R capabilities, this drive will write a DVD+R DL at 4x, DVD+/-RW at 4x, CD-R at 32x and CD-RW at 24x speed. It reads DVD-ROM with a maximum of 16x and CD-ROM with a maximum of 40x speed.
• ViewSonic VP171b - up of the ViewSonic VP171b 8ms 17in TFT display which you can find here - Trustedreviews take a look at the ViewSonic VP171b 8ms 17in TFT display.

GUIDES... 

• Curing Laptop Overheating - This article focuses on the true "air breather" laptops/notebooks; those that have case openings, an internal heat exchanger and (usually) a fan.
• Memory Market Overview: February 2005 - New releases, company news, prices, events...@X-bit Labs
• How To Avoid Internet Theft, Fraud and Phishing - Phishing is one of the main scams in the present moment. People set up phoney websites and email addresses. Then they spam Email inboxes with official-looking messages explaining that your account with Company X has encountered a problem and that they need you to login and confirm some details. The email addresses are masked to appear official and the links provided in the email all seem to check out. If you click on the link provided then you will usually be taken to a site that looks for all intents and purposes to be official. When you click 'submit' your details will be sent to a criminal somewhere who will do as they please with your information, such as withdrawing money from a bank account or purchasing things in your name.
• ATI Catalyst 5.2 Performance Analysis - EliteBastards take a look at this driver to see how it measures up against ATI's claims. Another similar article can be found on TweakTown.

SOFTWARE...

• Firefox Preloader Build 366  - This is a little program for people who use Mozilla Firefox on older machines. It is designed to preload Firefox in the background so it will load faster when requested.
• XP Codec Pack 1.0.3 - XP Codec Pack is one of the most complete codec pack which helps you to play all major audio and video formats.
  And... to complete your multimedia experience, instead of 3 or 4 different players you get one, simple integrated player that plays almost all audio and video files: Media Player Classic.
• VirtualDub 1.6.4 Experimental - VirtualDub (changelog ~ download ~ download AMD64 version) is a video capture and processing program. It features fast capturing, process files larger than the 2 gigabyte limit, optimized for linear editing, support for Motion-JPEG, MPEG-1 video and layer 3 audio, real-time and near-realtime video processing, video job queues, and much more.
• Jet-Audio 6.1.1 - Jet-Audio (download) features an impressive home audio system interface, including independent A/V components for Digital Signal Processor, Audio CD Player, Digital Audio (MP3, RA, etc.), MIDI (MID, MOD etc.), and Digital Video (AVI, MPG, MOV, etc.), along with a Mixer and a Remote Controller.
• SSH Tunnelier - Windows - Tunnelier is a friendly and flexible SSH client for Windows which includes state of the art terminal emulation, graphical as well as command-line SFTP support, an FTP-to-SFTP bridge, powerful tunneling features, and also remote administration for WinSSHD. Free for individual use!
• nHancer v1.0.3 - nHancer (NVIDIA Advanced Profile Editor) is a replacement for NVIDIA's own Profile Editor, which is integrated in their driver. With nHancer you can also change the global driver settings, but the focus is on creating and manipulating profiles.