SECURITY...

• A COM Object (javaprxy.dll) Could Cause Internet Explorer to Unexpectedly Exit - Microsoft is investigating a new public report of a vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer. We have not been made aware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability or customer impact at this time, but we are aggressively investigating the public report. Another article can be found here.
• Soldier of Fortune II DoS Vulnerability - The /ignore command is used for saying to the server that the client don't want to receive the messages of a specific user. The command is followed by a number that identifies the ID of the client we want to ignore. This client ID is then used by the server for positioning into the g_entities array composed by 1024 entities so if we specify a big ID like 123456789 the server will crash immediately because it tries to access a zone of memory not allocated.
• Advertiser Sues Google Over Click Fraud - Google knows that click fraud is rampant in its pay-per-click advertising program and hasn't seriously attempted to prevent this practice of individuals clicking on ads with malicious intent, an advertiser has charged in a lawsuit filed against Google.
• FBI cracks down on "warez" piracy sites - The operation targeted 22 warez groups, including Myth, TDA, HellBound, Corrupt, Gamerz, NOX and Goodfellaz, the DOJ said. The DOJ accused these groups of pirating software such as Autodesk Inc.'s Autocad 2006 and Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop and movies such as Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Apparently, an FBI agent was working undercover, being a "Site Op" of 4 gbit "topsites" with more than 27TB of pirated material. Griffen, his "scene" nick, played a crucial role on the busts. More than 70 searches in the United States and 20 overseas were executed, in just 24 hours!
• MPA Shuts down pirate movie website - Armed with a new computer hacking charge against Mr. Lupis, the Jakarta Police had all the evidence they needed to not only raid, but also arrest Mr. Lupis. The arrest occurred just before midnight of the same day. According to the MPA, the Jakarta police seize his computer and approximately 5,000 pirated DVDs
• BitTorrent Whiz Extolled Piracy? -  BitTorrent programmer Bram Cohen may be in legal jeopardy after the discovery on Wednesday of an old agenda buried on his website saying he creates programs to "commit digital piracy."

OFFTOPIC...

• Statham, Sobieski in 'Dungeon Siege' movie - Jason Statham and Leelee Sobieski are set to headline the cast of director Uwe Boll's $60 million adaptation of the sword-and-sorcery video game "Dungeon Siege," which begins filming Sunday in Vancouver, British Columbia. Statham, whose credits include "Cellular" and "Collateral," plays the film's hero, Farmer, and Sobieski, who credits range from "Eyes Wide Shut" to "Max," has been cast as Muriella, daughter of the court sorcerer Merrick, who will be played by John Rhys Davies, who appeared in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
• Video gamers may have quicker eyes - Researchers found that gamers who devote much of their free time to Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario may be able to scan their environment and spot the target of their search more quickly than non-gamers can. In experiments with college students who were either hard-core video game players or novices, the researchers found that players were quicker to detect target objects on a busy computer screen than their peers were.
• Undead: The Spierig Brothers - The brothers talked to ComingSoon.net about the making of their movie when they came to New York for the film's premiere.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft considers licensing Xbox 360 software - CNN is reporting that Microsoft may license the software behind its upcoming Xbox 360 game console.
• New engine may beat Google - Gates - Microsoft's new search engine may rival or even surpass the world's most popular web tool Google, Microsoft co-founder and chair Bill Gates said on Thursday. In Bangkok to unveil a deal with the Thai government, Gates said his company was developing products to make the internet easier to use.
• New tax for broadband customers?-  Many broadband customers will pay new universal service taxes akin to those on their telephone bills if Congress bows to suggestions from rural legislators.
• IBM Wins $850M Settlement vs. Microsoft - The courts have ruled that Microsoft has to pay 850 million to IBM for not playing fairly!
• Adult Site Sues Amazon Over Sexy Images - Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 is suing Amazon.com, alleging that the e-tailer's search engine is violating copyright law by displaying thousands of images from its Web site without permission.
• Philips Develops Platform for $20 Cell Phones -  By the end of this year, Philips intends to deliver a sub-$5 system, called Nexperia Cellular System Solution 5130, that integrates all the electronics needed for a mobile phone. The Nexperia-based phone will be capable of making calls and sending text messages via Short Message Service (SMS). It will have a monochrome screen and be able to play polyphonic ring tones.
• Hitachi Releases Slim Hard Drive with Video Streaming - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has introduced a 2.5-inch hard drive with several features that company executives predict will make it a leading contender in several segments of the notebook market, as well as the consumer electronics market. The 4,200 rpm Hitachi Travelstar 4K120 hard drive uses new technology developed by Hitachi that makes power consumption more efficient.

HARDWARE... 

• ABIT Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB Details - The Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB is, as we've come to expect from all Falat1ty branded ABIT products, designed with gamers in mind. An essential prerequisite to overclocking is, of course, cooling. The Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB has a single slot cooler design with a copper base to quickly conduct heat away from the GPU and a 6cm fan to dissipate the heat.  512MB of uber-fast 1.6ns DDR3 RAM sits on the PCB of this card, providing ample memory for high-res gaming.
• Evesham Acumen DC10 Workstation - Evesham's new Acumen DC10 workstation stands big and tall in a matt black Chieftec DX-01B Dragon case. Inside there's acres of space for the E-ATX Asus K8N-DL motherboard with its pair of Opteron 275 processors, and taken together the case and motherboard provide plenty of scope for expansion.
• Athlon 64 FX-57 vs. Pentium 4 670 - Both platforms are very capable of working in the multitasking environment, but in this area the Intel 670 outperformed AMD's FX-57. The Intel system also was able to run multiple programs simultaneously with less hesitation before the various applications were opened than the AMD system.
• 1GB Mushkin HP3200 Redline dual pair  - With a stock speed of 200 MHz and conservative timings of 2-3-2-6, the Mushkin HP3200 Redline doesn't look like anything special at first glace, but educated users know better. In our case the Mushkin HP3200 Redline test sample was able to hit an amazing 261 MHz while keeping 2-2-2-5 memory timings, but at a high voltage of 3.5V. At this voltage/speed, the HP3200 Redline got very hot and we definitely recommend users to actively cool the memory! With lax memory timings, the memory could run at a respectable 276 MHz, still very good.
• XFX GeForce 7800 GTX - HardwareSecrets has posted a review of GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX, which comes overclocked and with a free gamepad.
• HIS X850 XT IceQ Turbo - With Radeon prices shortly poised for freefall, how does the card hold up? The chaps at Bit-Tech put it through a series of real-world gameplay tests, including Battlefield 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.
• HP LaserJet 1022nw -  The main thing about the "nw" variant of the LaserJet 1022 is that it has 802.11g wireless networking built in. This means anybody with a home or office wireless network can print to the 1022nw without any physical data connection.
• Navicore Personal GPS navigation system - The Navicore box consists of a GPS receiver that connects to your phone over Bluetooth, an in-car charger and a set of Tele-Atlas based maps provided on a MMC card. This is 256MB in size. The maps only take up around 143Mb on the card leaving over 100MB of free space, and as most phones will come with a smaller capcity card, you're gaining in this regard. The maps are compatible with phones running the Symbian Series 60 operating system, which in the main consist of Nokias.
• Standalone DVD Recorder roundup - Two products stand out from our selection - the Sony RDR-HX910 and the Lite-On LVW-5045. The former is the most technically advanced; the HX710 version with a 160 GB disk is the best choice due to lower cost. The Sony's ergonomics and picture quality put it on the top shelf, while its compatibility with both recording formats is an undeniable plus, as is its automatic chaptering function. The Lite-On, on the other hand, offers an unbeatable quality-to-price ratio.

GUIDES...

• Over 20 DVD Media Discs Tested with Four DVD Burners -  In the DVD+R category, the Digitex 8x, TDK 16x and Verbatim 16x have performed well. The RIDATA 16x can be put in here, too, but none of the four optical drives could burn it at 16x, and only one drive did the burning at 8x. This must be due to the drives' firmware, so it would be too hasty to reject this medium altogether. The discs of the DVD-R format have been in the focus of this review due to the arrival of blanks from TDK and Verbatim rated for 16x. Both these discs have performed well. We have no concerns as to their quality. We have no such concerns about the 8x blanks from Digitex, TDK and Verbatim, either. In the DVD+RW category, high-quality media are Imation 4x, Fujifilm 4x, L-PRO 2.4x, Sony 4x, Philips 4x, Verbatim 4x. Indeed, the rest of the participating discs aren't hopeless, either.

SOFTWARE...

• Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) 2.0 - Version 2.0 of MBSA (download) includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems. MBSA runs on Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, and Windows XP systems and will scan for common security misconfigurations in the following products: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0, and 6.0, SQL Server 7.0 and 2000, Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 and later, and Office 2000, 2002 and 2003.
• GIMP 2.2.8 - The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
• Quintessential Media Player Beta Build 103 - Quintessential Player (download) brings a huge arsenal of quality features, and uses simplicity as its decoy. It is truly the most unique player available. Supports MP3, CD Audio, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, VQF, MP+, Windows Media, and streaming audio including SHOUTcast.
• FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder 2005-07-01 - FFDSHOW is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 movies. It uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project for video decompression, postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL'ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.
• mp3DirectCut 2.01 - mp3DirectCut (download) is a non-destructive audio editor and recorder for MP3
• MSN Messenger 7.0.816 - download / there're no release notes.
• Internet Download Manager 4.05  - Internet Download Manager (download) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 500 percent, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages.
• Net Transport 1.94.280 - Net Transport is a fast and powerful file download tool. Net Transport can use multiple threads to download files. If a sites allows multi-threaded downloads, you can expect much faster speeds.
• Sisoftware Sandra Lite 2005.SR2a (10.61) - SiSoftware Sandra is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software, and other devices whether hardware or software.
• NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) v2.2a - NiBiTor v2.2a has just been released. This tool allows users to tune and edit the NVIDIA GeForce BIOS.
• Realtek AC'97 Sound System Software 3.73a WHQL  - Realtek released version 3.73a driver for their ALC AC97 audio chipsets.