SECURITY...

• Suspected computer worm authors arrested, FBI says - Authorities in Morocco and Turkey have arrested two men for unleashing computer worms that disrupted networks across the United States last week, the FBI said on Friday. Farid Essebar, 18, of Morocco, and Atilla Ekici, 21, of Turkey, are believed to have been responsible for the Zotob worm that hit the Internet less than two weeks ago, along with predecessors called Rbot and Mytob released earlier, the FBI said.
• Simple PHP Blog File Upload and User Credentials Exposure - Simple PHP Blog suffers from insecure default permissions and lack of validation on uploaded images. Proof of concept code included.
• Web of crime: Internet gangs go global - Many intelligent, tech-savvy criminals now "work as mercenaries for the highest bidder," says Tom Kellerman, until recently a specialist in data risk management for the World Bank. He calls organized Web crime "the cocaine of the new millennium," likening its mystique of lawlessness and easy money to that surrounding drug trafficking in the United States during the 1980s.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Fall IDF 2005 - More Details on VIIV and Next-Gen Architecture / Pat Gelsinger Reveals Intel's Server Plans / IDF Fall 2005. Day 2 @ X-Bit Labs / IDF Fall 2005 Coverage @ HardwareSecrets
• DoCoMo Speeds Up Infrafred - NTT DoCoMo, Sharp and Waseda University have developed a new standard that can speed up Infrared (IR) communication 4 to 10 times.
• Google - the new Microsoft? - Google is the new Microsoft, reckons author Gary Rivlin in a New York Times article provocatively titled Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain.
• Light bulbs could face extinction - The report predicts that the market for LED lighting will show an annual growth rate of over 50 per cent and be worth $850 million by 2010. The bulk of this will be in lighting for electronics but, in the longer term, LED lighting could move into the home.

HARDWARE... 

• CPU - Intel Pentium-M 780 (2.26 GHz) / Intel Pentium 4 670 & Pentium D 820 CPU / Pentium 4 670 and Pentium D 820 CPUs
• Motherboard - Abit AL8 945P / Abit AW8 / ABIT NI8 SLI / ASrock 775Dual-Pro880 / EPoX 5NVA+SLi / Epox EP-9NPA+ SLI / Foxconn NF4UK8AA-8EKRS / Foxconn WinFast NF4K8AC / Jetway 939GT4-SLI
• Complete / SFF Systems: mCubed HFX Media PC (German)
• RAM - PC2-5400 DDR memory comparison
• Storage - Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA HDD, BenQ DW1640 16x DVD±RW / Thermaltake Max 4, 3.5" HDD USB external enclosure
• Video - ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX 256MB (1) / ASUS Extreme N7800GTX (2) / ATI All-in-Wonder X800XT | ATI ALL-IN-WONDER X800 GT PCI Express (1) / ATI RADEON All-in-Wonder X800GT 128 MB PCIe (2) / Nvidia Geforce 7800GT (1) / NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT (2) / MSI NX 7800 GTX ./ NVIDIA 6600LE in SLI / Sapphire Radeon X550
• Cooling - Acousti Products Dust Proof Fans / Akasa EVO 120 heat sink/fan (HSF) CPU cooler / Copper Silent 3 (Copper Lite) Socket A Heatsink CPU cooler / Evercool Neon Crab Memory Cooler / SilverStone FM82 & FM121 fans / Thermaltake Golden Orb II Cooler / TTIC NPH-2 Socket A Heatsink
• WaterCooling - Asetek WaterChill Xtreme 12V Pump-Reservoir / Thermaltake Symphony / Thermaltake Bigwater SE Water Cooling Kit / Wintsch Labs Arctic Web w-437W TEC Water Block / XSPC Passive Aluminium Reservoir / Zalman Reserator 1 Plus Water Cooling
• Case - Cooler Master Praetorian PAC-T01 case / Lian Li PC-777 case / Logisys Blue Acrylic Yin Yang Case / Nextherm ICS 8200 AC case / Silverstone SST-TJ05 case / Thermaltake Tenor Designer Home Theater ATX Computer Case
• PSU/UPS - SLI Ready Power Supply Roundup / Antec Smart Power 2.0 500W / AOpen Prima Power AO700-12ALN 700W PSU / HEC WinPower Win 550UB PSU / Logisys 500w Mesh PSU / OCZ 1,100 Watts Power Supply Prototype / XG Magnum 500w PSU
• Sound - Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music Edition Sound Card / Icemat Siberia Headset
• Peripheral - Hiper Clavier Aluminum Keyboard / Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3000 mouse / Saitek Cyborg Evo Force joystick / Saitek Eclipse Illuminated Keyboard / SunBeamTech EL-KB-05-AC Acrylic Lite-Up Slim Keyboard / Wolf Claw Type II Keyboard
• Printer - Epson EPL-6200 Laser Printer
• Network - Compex 80.211G 108Mbps Super-G XR USB 2.0 Adapter
• Modding - SunBeamTech Chameleon / V.L. System M-Play 202 Indicator & Remote Controller / The Tonkputer by Nev@Lehmä
• Miscelanous - Jackson Armor Card / eMagin Z800 3DVisor
• Notebook / Bluetooth -Logitech V200 cordless optical notebook mouse
• Cameras, MP3 players - Fujifilm FinePix F10 Digital Camera / Kodak EasyShare Z740 Digital Camera Bundle / MobiBLU DAH-1500i MP3 Player / Samsung YP-T7Z 1 GB MP3 Player
• Cell/VOIP phones - SE-VOIP USB Skype Phones / Mio Technology Mio A701 / Samsung X620 GSM phone / Samsung X800 GSM phone / Siemens AX75 GSM phone / Siemens A75 GSM phone

GUIDES...

• $2000 Q3-05 system guide - HardOCP took a $2000 budget and applied it to four different build scenarios.
• Recording and Producing Your Podcast - THG explains how to record and produce your own podcasts. Podcasting allows you to convey your message to a wide audience in a personal way.
• The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide Revision 8.2.2 - Adrian Rojak has updated his premier BIOS optimization guide.
• Trialling Microsoft Windows XP x64 - What is the difference between Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows XP x64? What are the benefits? How compatible is it with hardware and software? These questions and more, in this article.
• Windows 64bit Compatibility Guide - Check it out!

SOFTWARE...

• First Debian/kFreeBSD Live-CD Appears - The first Live-CD based on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has appeared. Its name is Ging (for Ging Is Not Ging) and it includes a GNOME 2.10 desktop, Abiword, and a complete toolchain with gcc 4.0.
• MySQL 4.1.14 - MySQL (download / changelog) is the world`s most popular open source database, recognized for its speed and reliability.
• Longhorn Visual Styles Pack 3.0 - TCMagazine have posted working download link
• FastStone Image Viewer 2.22 - FastStone Image Viewer 2.22 (download) is an image browser, viewer, converter and editor with an easy to use interface and a nice array of features that include resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments and more.
• Anti Trojan Elite 3.1.9 - Anti Trojan Elite is a trojan/keylogger remover.
• AutoHotkey 1.0.37.07 - Customize your keyboard, joystick and mouse with an open source automation and hotkey utility that is backward compatible with AutoIt.
• nLite 1.0 beta 6 - Works for every version of Windows XP installation, tested with SP2 build 2180. To avoid confusion, this is for pre-installation, not like XPlite which is post installation customizer.
• Free Download Manager 1.9 Build 334 - Free Download Manager (download) is a full-featured download accelerator and manager. It is absolutely free! Using this software product you can easily download a list of files and whole web sites from any remote server via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP.
• FlashGot 0.5.9.9 - FlashGot (download) is a free Mozilla/Firefox extension, meant exploit the popular FlashGet download manager.
• Skype 1.3.0.66 - Skype (download / release_notes) is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users – not to share files this time, but to talk for free with your friends.
• Yahoo! Messenger 7.0.0.437 - download
• K-Lite Codec Pack 2.53 - The K-Lite Codec Pack is a free collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. The very user-friendly installation is fully customizable, which means that you can install only those components that you want.
• Hmonitor 4.2.2.1 - Hmonitor has much more functions than MotherBoard Monitor, for example, including thermocontrol features and COM/PerfMon API support.
• ATITool 0.25 Beta 4 - ATITool is an overclocking utility designed for ATI video cards.
• Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.2.1.1006 - The Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (mirror1 / mirror2) installs to the target system the Windows* INF files that outline to the operating system how the chipset components will be configured. This release adds Intel® Lakeport Chipset & Intel Glenwood Chipset & Intel Mukilteo Chipset support.
• Creative Labs X-Fi drivers - For those who may have misplaced the Sound Blaster X-Fi Installation CD. This package includes updates and fixes for Sound Blaster X-Fi
• NVIDIA SVX StarStorm (77.77) - These are modified NVIDIA ForceWare drivers for Windows 2000 & XP. Modified drivers simply means that the author takes official or beta drivers from the manufacturer and starts to tweak them for either better image quality and or performance. Please bare in mind that the driver manufacturer, in this case NVIDIA, does not support drivers like these. You use them at your own risk.
• Forceware 78.01 Win2000/XP WHQL (BETA) - The driver is compatible with GeForce Series 6 and 7 graphics cards. The drivers have been recompressed to save on file-size as they where 27 MB big. They are now 18 MB. Of course these drivers are WHQL certified yet to be considered beta.
• 56x BIOS and 10x Firmware updates - Lot's of new motherboard BIOS updates from last week.