SECURITY... 

• Single Windows security patch coming next week - Tuesday, Microsoft  will release a single patch addressing a critical flaw in its Windows operating system. The update will be issued as part of the software company's monthly security update.
• Microsoft Patches Break Some Sites - Two patches released by Microsoft earlier this year for its Internet Explorer browser may cause some Web sites not to load properly. After installing MS05-038, which was published August 9 on the Microsoft Download Center, Web pages containing Component Object Model (COM) objects called monikers may not work as expected.  Microsoft has published instructions on how to resolve the MS05-038 issues.
• NERO: Urgent Virus Warning - Criminals are currently sending virus contaminated e-mails which appear to originate from Nero (e.g. [email protected] or [email protected] ). Please delete such e-mails immediately and do not under any circumstances open the attachments. Nero does not send any e-mails with attachments concerning registration.
• Cisco Patches 'Black Hat' IOS Vulnerability - Cisco has warned users of a flaw in its IOS software which might be used by hackers to bypass security restrictions and run hostile code on network devices. The vulnerability reportedly affects all Cisco products that run Cisco IOS software, including routers and a limited range of switches that don't run CatOS.
• Apple QuickTime Player Remote Denial Of Service - Apple QuickTime Player is reported prone to remote denial of service attack (exploitable via remotely originated content). A missing movie attribute is interpreted as an extension, but the absence of the extension is not flagged as an error, resulting in a de-reference of a NULL pointer. This will cause a denial of service against any application loading remotely-originated content.
• World of Warcraft hackers using Sony BMG rootkit - World of Warcraft hackers have confirmed that the hiding capabilities of Sony BMG's content protection software can make tools made for cheating in the online world impossible to detect.
• Phishing attack hits PayPal subscribers - A new phishing attack is targeting PayPal users, redirecting them to a fake site in an attempt to collect password details. The executable, named 'PayPal-2.5.200-MSWin32-x86-2005.exe', is a Trojan Horse which modifies the DNS server of the local workstation and then deletes itself. All future requests are then transparently redirected to a bogus website.
• Technology can't beat us, casino cheat says -  A self-proclaimed casino cheater has criticized the effectiveness of many technologies touted as anti-cheating measures--including controversial solutions like RFID and facial recognition--and suggested they are doomed to expensive failure. Richard Marcus said he is "more or less retired" but is still widely regarded as a leading authority on casino cheating. Marcus scammed a reported $5 million in Atlantic City, N.J., Las Vegas, London and Monte Carlo over a 25-year period.

CRIME/LAW...

• US youth arrested for botnet cyber attack - A 20-year-old Californian was arrested by the FBI for assembling a botnet comprising hundreds of thousands of computers to spread spam and other malware, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday. Jeanson James Ancheta of Downey, California, was also accused by US Attorney's Office of having illegally distributed adware, software that pops up advertisements in infected computers, to earn a profit. If convicted of all charges, he could be sentenced to 50 years in prison, according to the prosecutors. Another article can be found at Wired.
• Police Need 90 Days To Crack Hard Drives - The UK police may need 90 days to hold terrorist suspects because it takes that long to crack a suspect's PC hard drive.
• China cracks down on online games - The new regulations, which include tight limits on playing time and a ban on underage players in violent games, were announced earlier this year, and the government plans to begin full enforcement early next year.

OFF-TOPIC

• US man seeks movie plotline patent - Andrew Knight, a rocket engine inventor and registered patent agent, filed the test application in November 2003, the first of its kind, arguing that fictional plots are patentable under the US system. Knight suggests on his website that the plots of several films - including Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, The Matrix, The Truman Show, Minority Report, The Village and Groundhog Day - may have been eligible for patent protection. But presumably he doesn't see anything in the memory loss genre as prior art that could damage his own prospects of winning a monopoly right.
• Survey: One in five U.S. teens has a blog - Nearly three in five school-age teens with Internet access have created on-line content, including Web pages with artwork, photos and stories - and about a fifth have their own blogs, which also allow friends and other readers to create feedback postings

TECHNOLOGY...

• G71 is the Playstation 3 RSX chip - NVIDIA calls its 90 nanometre graphic core of Playstation 3, RSX. This graphic chip is set to work at 550MHz and Nvidia can guarantee that a million chips will work at this speed as it's not that challenging at this process level. Nvidia can obviously make G70 work fine at 550MHz but it can not ship millions of those chips, more likely tens of thousands.
• Nintendo announces Wi-Fi Connection plans for Europe - Nintendo has announced that more than 15,000 Wi-Fi Connection hotspots will be active in time for the European launch of the service - a figure which is set to almost double by the end of the year.
• Microsoft publishes report on possible next-generation OS - Singularity is a research project (in PDF) focused on the construction of dependable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools.
• Google Opens Up Library Doors - Google have opened up the library doors to their beta Google Print service.
• Microsoft to digitise 100,000 books - Microsoft and the British Library have come together to make 100,000 of the institution's titles available online. The deal covers some 25 million pages which will be made available as part of Microsoft's book search service, next year.
• Long Standing Bug Still Plagues Thunderbird Users - Are you a Mozilla Thunderbird user who lives in an area that observes Daylight Savings Time? Is your computer running a Windows operating system with FAT or FAT32 formatted drives? If so, chances are you may have experienced problems with Thunderbird since the change from Daylight Savings Time went in to effect earlier this month. A long standing bug that causes severe performance issues and has existed in various stages of the Mozilla project now known as Thunderbird continues to plague users despite having a history of bug reports that have been filed via Bugzilla, Mozilla's online bug reporting tool.
• Ford squeezes an office into a truck - Ford Motor unveiled a mobile office designed for the new F-Series truck that includes a touch-screen computer, printer, wireless broadband access and Global Positioning System.
• Wireless: The new backseat driver? - On Thursday, General Motors demonstrated a vehicle-to-vehicle, or V2V, wireless communication system that alerts you when a collision is imminent. The automaker equipped regular Cadillac STS sedans with wireless and Global Positioning System antennae and computer chips that allow the cars to communicate with other vehicles with similar equipment.
• Think GAIA - Sanyo eneloop Batteries - The eneloop battery is the world first rechargeable battery that can be used like a dry cell battery, because it comes pre-charged. Rechargeable batteries usually suffer from self-discharge. Sanyo solved this issue and achieves with the eneloop a residual ratio after one year of non use of 85% in tests.
• 7800GTX 512MB hits the street on 14th - The 7800GTX 512MB is already SKUed and the delivery date is set for Monday, November 14th.

GADGETS...

• iRobot Takes Orders for the Scooba Floor Washing Robot - iRobot sells the Scooba for $399.99 with free shipping and a 30 day risk free trial. Only issue is that the delivery time is 8-10 weeks. The Scooba features a four stage cleaning process in a single pass. It vacuums, washes, scrubs and dries floors automatically.
• Nokia 770 Linux Internet Tablet Now Available in Europe - The Nokia 770 is available for 12 European Countries. Apparently the German version is not in stock anymore has never been. the UK version is in Stock and sells for £245.00 (~$ 432). No word yet when the Nokia 770 is available in the United States.
• Sony PSP TV Adapter Kit - The PSP2TV Sony PSP TV adaptor kit actually requires to open up the Sony PSP and by doing this void your warranty. The PSP On TV is works without voiding the warrenty of the PSP. Lik-Sang is also offering a warranty safe version, but it will not be released until December.
• T-Mobile offers own-brand HTC Wizard in UK - T-Mobile has become the first carrier to offer HTC's Wizard Wi-Fi-equipped Windows Mobile 5.0 handset in the UK. Its version of the device is called the MDA Vario, but it provides the usual messaging and browsing features standard to all versions of the device. The unit contains 128MB of memory, expandable using MiniSD cards, and incorporates Bluetooth and 802.11b wireless network connectivity. It has a quad-band GSM/GPRS radio with EDGE support for higher data transfer rates.

HARDWARE... 

• CPU - Upcoming Intel and AMD processors / Dual-Core Shoot Out - Intel vs. AMD
• Motherboard  - AMD socket 939 Athlon motherboards review list / Abit Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB / Asus P5LD2-VM / Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 nForce 430/GeForce 6100 / MSI P4N Diamond / Tyan Tiger K8WE Opteron
• Complete / SFF Systems - Alienware Aurora 5500 PC / Shuttle SD11G5
• Memory - 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC2 6400 DDR2 / Corsair DDR PC-3500LL Pro 2GB Dual Channel Memory (video-review) / Corsair TwinX PC4000 Platinum memory / OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 2GB Gold Edition DDR RAM Kit
• Storage - Seagate Momentus 5400.2 120GB / Seagate 7200.9 SATA2 16mb Cache Hard Drive / Thecus N4100 NAS / ULTRA Mini Portable Disk / X-Micro DisGo Miniature Hard Drive
• Video - S3 Chrome S25 & S27 / Dual Graphics Card Showdown: CrossFire vs SLI vs 16X SLI / Abit Fatal1ty Radeon X800 XL / Asus A8R-MVP Video Cards / ATi Radeon X1800XL vs. NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT  / HIS X700 ICEQ 128MB / Sapphire X800 GTO Ultimate / Sapphire Radeon X800GT PCIe (256MB BGA DDR3) / Sapphire Radeon X850XT PE AGP / Workstation Graphics Card Comparison Guide Rev 3.3 / XFX GeForce 6600 256 MB gDDR2 
• Monitor/TV - Samsung 930BF 19" LCD Monitor
• Cooling - Cooljag SFO-D(18SC) Skived Copper Opteron Heatsink / Dynatron A22 V-Shaped Skived Athlon64 Heatsink / Thermaltake Golden Shower II
• WaterCooling - Thermaltake Aquabay M3 5.25" Reservoir
• Case - SilverStone Sugo SG01 case / Thermaltake Tai-Chi case / Thermaltake Muse 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure / XG Dragon case
• PSU - Enermax Liberty 500W Modular Power Supply / Ultra X-Finity 500w ATX PSU
• Sound - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Sound Card
• Peripheral - Flexiglow Cyber Snipa Mouse Pad and Gaming Keypad / Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 / Microsoft Media Center 2005 Keyboard / Razer Copperhead 2000 dpi Precision Gaming Mouse(1) / Razer Copperhead 2000DPI Laser Mouse(2) / Saitek Eclipse Keyboard || Corepad Eyepad Mouse surface
• Networking - Hawking Technologies Broadband Booster / Thecus N4100 NAS
• Printer/Scanner - Lexmark P315 Inkjet Printer
• Misc - Logitech Harmony 659 Remote
• Notebook - Acer Ferrari 4000 / Acer Aspire 3002LCi Notebook / Toshiba Qosmio G20 Laptop / $100 Laptop Negroponte (preview) / Vantec Lapcool 3 Notebook Cooler
• Cameras, MP3/DVD players/recorders - JVC GZ-MG70U Camcorder || Novatron iamm NTD-35 Multimedia Player
• Phones/PDAs - RIM Blackberry 8700c / Samsung SGH-D600 Mobile Phone

GUIDES...

• Everything You Need to Know About Digital Cameras - Everything you need to know before buying a digital camera: what is megapixel, how many photos you can store in a memory card and what the most common terms mean.
• VoIP & Internet Phone Services Compared Explanatory Guide - VoIP is one of those mysterious acronyms that almost everyone has seen by now. If you’ve read or watched TV ads for Vonage or any of the other mushrooming broadband telephone services, or read about eBay’s acquisition of Skype, you’re familiar with it. You might have experienced it without even knowing it.
• How To Secure Your Emails - You may think that when you send an email, it will only go to the person you want, but this is not always the case.
• Myths Regarding Windows XP v1.2.7 - There are numerous Myths floating around the Internet regarding Windows XP, especially relating to Optimizations and Security. Hopefully this site will debunk some of these.

SOFTWARE...

• FreeBSD 6.0 Final - release notes / download
• CloneAD avi.NET 1.4 - avi.NET is an MPEG1/MPEG2 to AVI converter (download) using AVS scripts. avi.NET is a 'AutoGK' type program but has a top priority of making AVI files that are Standalone Player Compatible.
• FastStone Image Viewer 2.27 - FastStone Image Viewer (download) is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF and DNG).
• JoJoThumb 2.9.6 - JoJoThumb (download) is a utility that allows to create thumbnails from images of the imagetypes BMP, GIF, EMF, JPG, PCD, PCX, PNG, PSD, TGA, TIF, WMF and RAW-Files from Digital-Cameras.
• AIM Ad Hack 5.0 BETA 12 for Aim Triton 0.8.8 - With this small file (download) you can effectively remove all the ads from AIM you must be using.
• Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.10 - Nero CD-DVD Speed is a benchmark which can test the most important features of an optical drive. These tests include: Transfer rate, Seek times, CPU (Central Processing Unit) usage, Burst rate, DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) quality & Spinup/spindown time. It can also check the CD (Compact Disk) and DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) media quality.
• ATI Catalyst 5.11 Beta with CP  - This driver, although WHQL tagged is unofficial and unsupported.
• nForce Drivers WHQL sets - Nvidia have released 5 new sets of nForce Drivers 5.11, 6.69, 7.13, 7.15 and 8.22 for Windows 2000/XP and Windows XP 64bits.