Afternoon Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 08:42 PM CET - Jan,18 2003
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- Flying in the Face of Infertility -
Infertile fruit flies injected with a human gene are now able to produce
viable sperm -- a key step toward treating infertility in men as well as
developing a male contraceptive. The gene is human, but the sperm is fly. The
results are exciting, researchers say, because they could be directly applied
to solving human fertility problems. Researchers had already determined that
the isolated fly gene was crucial in sperm production, but this is the
strongest evidence to date that it fulfills the same function in humans.
- Classic Games Get New Life on the Web -
They were the classics of computing and game playing - Commodore 64, Atari
2600 and the Amiga -- but have long since been relegated to the attic to make
room for PlayStations and Pentium-powered PCs. On the Web, however, these
classic systems live on and favorite old games can be plucked in an instant.
Free-to-use software can recreate the look and feel of them on any personal
computer. At
Classic Gaming, the mission is "to reunite gamers with their favorite
games of old," or, as they put it in their guide for new users, to deliver
"the quarter-munching, dot-gobbling, incredibly fun games of yesterday."
- Microsoft Introduces CD Copy-Protection "Fix" - Microsoft
announced on Saturday the
introduction of new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels
control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the
ailing industry's side. Stung by the common practice of consumers copying, or
"burning," new versions of a store-bought CD onto recordable CDs, music
companies have invested heavily in copy-protection technologies that have
mainly backfired or annoyed customers. For example, most copy-proof CDs are
designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but often this prevents
playback on portable devices and car stereos too. Microsoft believes it may
have come up with a solution. The new software is called the Windows Media
Data Session Toolkit. It enables music labels to lay songs onto a
copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback
on a stereo and a PC.
- Microsoft: Security fix due for phone OS - Microsoft plans to
update its Smartphone 2002 operating system to fix security flaws that
make it possible to send rogue software programs to phones that use the OS, a
representative said Friday. The Microsoft representative did not provide
a specific release date for the update, but Stuart Jackson, a representative
for U.K. carrier Orange, which sells the affected phone, said the updated
software is expected in about two weeks.
- GameSpy could let crackers mount network DDoS attacks - Flaws
within GameSpy, a popular program that allows game clients to find and connect
to game servers,
might permit crackers to flood systems with useless packets and tie up
processors through DDoS attacks. The vulnerability, which affects many games
across Windows and *nix server platforms, is based upon spoofed UDP requests,
as an advisory by security research outfit
PivX
Solutions explains. Affected applications include Battlefield 1942 Server,
Quake, Quake 2, Q3: Arena & Team Arena, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Unreal
Tournament 2003, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein... and more, according to
the alert.
- Drivers license spam scam busted -
Several unscrupulous "spammers" have been shut down after bombarding
Internet users with e-mail offers for allegedly bogus international drivers'
licenses, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Thursday. The FTC charged six
online marketers with selling international drivers' licenses that actually
are not recognized by any government, targeting immigrants and those who have
had their real licenses revoked.
- Duncan leaves Xbox team -The effusive head of Microsoft's Xbox
division in Europe,
Sandy Duncan, has announced his intention to retire from the games
industry this year in order to focus on his personal life. Duncan has headed
up the European Xbox and Home Retail divisions since early 2000, and has been
with Microsoft for 16 years.
- Do You Read PC Gaming Magazines? -
We want to hear your views on a couple of the leading gaming magazines -
PC Zone and PC Gamer. Complete our brief survey and you'll be entered into a
free prize draw to win a brand new GeForce FX graphics card!
- SMC 22Mbps Wireless Access Point Review - What you get in the
SMC2455W
Wireless Access Point "total package" is the WAP itself, it's AC adapter,
the standard manual, and a disk with a setup utility and some help files along
with the manual in PDF form. It's nice that SMC included a setup utility, but
99% of the people already use web interfaces to setup their routers, and enjoy
the flexibility of not having to install another program on their computers if
they don't have to. The utility is only for Windows machines as well, so Mac
and Linux users are unable to install it, which is fine and dandy because you
still have the web interface primed and ready!
- eVGA e-GeForce4 Ti4600 with ACS3 Cooling System - The unique
peculiarity of graphics cards from eVGA is the unusual cooling system the
company calls
ACS - Asymmetric Cooling System. This idea has evolved to its third
generation now. The ACS3 is installed in new "exclusive" graphics cards from
eVGA based on the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 GPU.
- Windows XP Boot Process / XP Boot time speed tweak guides - I've
noticed over at ntfs.org that they have posted their
XP Boot Process and
XP Boot Speed tweak guides.
- Office 11 Broken in :) - According to NeoWin, a group called
the "Holics Project" have, according to various reliable resources,
successfully released a
working "crack" that disables Office 11 Beta 1's WPA (Windows Production
Activation) module. A source close to Neowin has confirmed the crack to be a
working example of software that "breaks" WPA, for now at least.
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP3 - Microsoft has released Microsoft
SQL Server 2000
Service Pack 3.
- Media Player Roundup - PC Mag has posted
a
media player roundup.
- Bargain 4.40 -
Bargain, the
freeware picure compressor for MSX (MSX
homepage) is updated. Release 4.40 compressed an example picture in bmp
format of 55Kb to a screen 8 (BN8 format) of 1.4Kb.
- Z80ASM v1.05 -
Release 1.05 of
the Z80ASM, a homemade Z80 assembler, is available. Bargain (the picture
compressor) was created using this assembler,
- TMG Encoder 2.510 -
TMPEGenc
converts *.AVI file to MPEG1, the format which is used in VideoCD. Using
variety of option in TMPEGenc, you can compress your video file in high
quality.
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Updated:10:44 AM CEST Sep,20
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