SECURITY...

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 embedded content cross site scripting - Sven Vetsch found a cross site scripting vulnerability in the current releases of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Thus, it is possible to use a manipulated embedded content to run arbitrary script code in the security context of the website.
• Spoof email tricks AOL users - An email scam is targeting AOL customers in an attempt to steal personal details, according to web monitoring company Websense. Users receive a spoofed email purporting to come from the security department at AOL claiming that the company suffered a security breach over the weekend and that confidential information may have been compromised.
• Platinum Secure Smart Card security bypass technique  - The Acer notebooks include a smart card reader, two smartcards and a security application called Platinum Secure. The smart card security system should prevent access to the console while the smart card is not present or when password has not been entered. This test was conducted on the aforementioned notebooks with the latest versions of the software downloaded from the Acer website and the latest BIOS upgrade
• Kerio ServerFirewall Unspecified Denial of Service Vuln. (v1.1.1 and older) - Kerio ServerFirewall is prone to an unspecified vulnerability which may result in a denial of service. They recommend to install version ServerFirewall 1.1.2.
• Security Fix for DirectX 8 on 98/ME/W2K - There are two buffer overruns with identical effects in the function used by DirectShow to check parameters in a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) file. A security vulnerability results because it would be possible for a malicious user to attempt to exploit these flaws and execute code in the security context of the logged on user.
• Firefox Update Squashes Bug - The Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of its Firefox browser that contains fixes for two critical security bugs in the software that were reported over the past week. According to a Secunia vulnerability report, this still leaves Firefox with 3 out of 23 unpatched advisories
• Microsoft Anti-phishing White Paper - The focus of this white paper is to describe the basic workings of a new capability, the Microsoft Phishing Filter, which will be included in the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 7, and as an add-in to the MSN Search Toolbar
• PayPal Glitch Sparks Customer Anger - Online payments company PayPal is working to fix a glitch that has been causing duplicate debit card withdrawals and deposits on some customer accounts since the beginning of September. The problem first surfaced on Sept. 6, when some PayPal customers noticed duplicate withdrawals from their debit cards that sent their accounts into the red. Two weeks later, more PayPal customers also reported duplicate withdrawals and deposits into their accounts.
• Apple plugs ten 'critical' security holes - Apple has released a security update for its OS X 10.3 and OS X 10.4 operating systems.

OFF-TOPIC

• The History of Microsoft Internet Explorer - The first version of Internet Explorer was not included with Windows 95 when the operating system was officially launched on August 24, 1995. Rather, we were introduced to Microsoft's first Web browser when the Windows 95 Plus! Pack was released.
• Microsoft 30th Anniversary Factoids - 40 years ago, in 1965, a 2311 Disk Drive sold for $2,057 per Mb. In 1971, it went for $300 per Mb. In 2003, one Mb cost $0.005...more facts.
• Grand Theft sales to resume in October - Take-Two's Rockstar Games publishing house said that starting Oct. 18, it would sell a special edition of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for Sony's PlayStation 2 console system. It will include a DVD with a backstory to the game and a documentary film called "Sunday Driver."
• Nintendo to cut 10% off DS price - Nintendo UK is to knock a tenner off the price of its DS handheld console, the videogames company announced this morning. The cut will come on 7 October and leave the standard DS retailing for £90.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Vista Graphics Drivers to be More Stable Than XP Drivers - Graphics drivers developed for Vista, Microsoft's next generation operating system, will be far more stable than their Windows XP-based counterparts, and will not crash the operating system anymore, said an ATI executive.
• New Virtual Earth Website - Virtual Earth is a new map and search system released by Microsoft; Special: trace Hurricane Rita  
• MSN to Close Adult, Mature Groups - BetaNews has learned that MSN plans to remove mature and adult rated communities from its MSN Groups service in late November. The groups would be moved to a third-party site, WorldGroups, who will handle mature and adult categorized groups for the service after the transition.
• 2GB iPod nano Only Costs $100 to Make - After disassembling the iPod nano, iSuppli discovered something that’s bound to make iPod nano owners angry. The entire cost of materials inside the nano adds up to a measly 90.18 and if you add 8 dollars per unit for labor, Apple still makes $100.82 per 2GB iPod nano sold.
• iPod Nano Owners in Screen Scratch Trauma - People slavering to get Apple's "impossibly small" iPod Nano into their sticky hands may want to pause a moment: those ahead of them in the queue have discovered that it's also unbelievably easy to scratch the screen, nixing its photo-displaying abilities
• Gigabyte attempts quad-SLI  - The board is powered by NVIDIA's new nForce4 SLI x16 chipset, whose 40 PCI Express lanes are more than enough to provide each graphics card with eight lanes of PCI-E.
• Acer to deliver 24-inch wide screen LCD monitors in October - Set to be priced at NT$ 28,800 (US$871) in Taiwan, the new 6ms response time 24-inch widescreen model features a native resolution of 1920×1200, and a contrast ratio of 1000:1.

HARDWARE... 

• CPU - AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 / AMD64 3700+ San Diego S939 2.2GHz  / AMD Athlon64-X2-3800+ CPU / Dual Core Computer Processors: Luxury or Necessity?
• Memory - Apacer DDR2/667 Memory / Corsair TWIN2X1024-8000UL Memory Modules / Kingmax DDR2/667 Memory / OCZ EL DDR PC-3500 Gold GX RAM / OCZ PC4800 Platinum / OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 2GB Gold Edition / OCZ DDR Booster Mod
• Motherboard - nVidia GeForce 6100 and nForce 400 Chipset Family || Asus P5LD2-Deluxe WiFi-TV Edition / Biostar I945P-A7 / ECS PF21 Extreme / Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 / Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 Socket 939 / Three Premium nForce4 Motherboards from Gigabyte, Jetway, and MSI
• Complete / SFF Systems - FIC Ice Cube HU61 Barebones / Shuttle SD31P XPC SFF PC
• Storage - Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 Hard Drive / Maxtor Shared Storage Drive 200 GB HDD || AOpen DUW1608/ARR DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner
• Video - AOpen Aeolus 7800GTX-DVD256 / Asus Extreme N7800GT  / nVidia GeForce 7800 GT / PixelView GeForce 7800 GTX / Radeon X700 vs GeForce 6600 Comparison (AGP & PCIe) / Sapphire X800XL & X700 Hybrid AGP
• Cooling - Cooler Master Cooldrive 4 / SilenX IXTREMA Pro Fan Series  / SilverStone FM82 & FM121 Fans / Thermaltake Blue Orb II / ThermalRight V-1 GPU Cooler
• WaterCooling - Asetek WaterChill Water Cooler
• Case - AeroCool Masstige and AeroEngine II ATX Case / Asetek VapoChill Micro Showdown / SilverStone LC17 HTPC Case / Thermaltake Tai-Chi Super Tower
• Modding - A Fan Controller For $240?
• PSU - PSU Roundup / Hiper Type-R Modular 580W PSU / MGE XG Vortec 600 Watt Power Supply
• Sound - Edifier e3100 Speaker
• Peripheral - Hiper Clavier Keyboard  / Logisys 4-Direction LED Gaming Mouse / Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3000 / Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 4000 / Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse
• Misc - Transcend Digital Album
• Printer/Scanner - Canon Unveils 15 New Imaging and Printing Products / Seiko Smart Label Printer
• Notebook - Acer Ferrari 4000 4005WLMi Notebook / Panasonic ToughBook CF-51 Notebook || Jetart Xcool NP6900 Foldable Notebook Cooler
• Cameras, MP3/DVD players/recorders - Joytech AV Control Centre 2 / Nikon D70s Digital Camera / Pioneer DVR-633H-S DVR/PVR / Vantec AVOX Jukebox Multimedia Player

GUIDES...

• What To Look For When Buying a Computer Case - TechZone will show you what to look for when buying a new computer case.
• AMD64 Overclocking Guide - It's a visual guide aimed to increase your system performance without killing your rig.
• Sharky Extreme's September value gaming PC buyer's guide - check it out!
• BIOS for Beginners - Here is a step-by-step guide to setting BIOS parameters, using a popular Asus motherboard as an example.
• Firefox Tweak Guide (updated) - The guide is designed specifically for those running Firefox on Windows XP, however most of the tweaks in this guide apply to Firefox on other platforms

SOFTWARE...

• Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 - Internet Explorer 6 SP1, the latest version of Internet Explorer for users not running Windows XP, provides a flexible and reliable browsing experience with enhanced Web privacy features for all Windows users. This version includes a full installation of the Web browser and the most recent version of Outlook Express, the e-mail client that is included with Internet Explorer.
• Mozilla Suite 1.7.12 - Mozilla is an open-source Web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability.
• PHP-Nuke 7.9 Final - This version (download) includes a new variables validation and filtering system more effective and more secure, potential security vulnerabilities generated from the wysiwyg editor has been fixed, BBtoNuke 2.0.17, added banned IP edit function, improved search module internals, and more.
• 7-Zip 4.27 Beta - 7-Zip (download) is a free file archiver with high compression ratio. This new beta allows to unpack CHM/HXS (MS HTML HELP) archives, multivolume CAB archives and deletes files to the Recycle Bin by default.
• AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic 6.31.00.07 - A pretty decent free antivirus package...
• Google Talk 1.0.0.70 Beta - Google Talk (download) enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free-anytime, anywhere in the world.
• YPOPs! 0.7.7 - YPOPs! (download) is an application that provides POP3 access to Yahoo! Mail. It is available o­n the Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac platforms.
• AIM Fix (9/23/05) - AIM Fix was created to remove all known AIM viruses in one consolidated removal tool.
• Picasa 2.1.0 Build 27.54  - Picasa (download) is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC
• HyperSnap-DX 5.63.01 - HyperSnap-DX 5 (dowload trial) is a screen capture and image editing tool for MS Windows. It captures screens from standard desktop programs and even those hard-to-grab DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx Voodoo and Glide mode games.
• VirtualDub-MPEG2 1.6.10 build 23784 - VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
• AutoGK (Auto Gordian Knot) 2.18 beta - AutoGK (Auto Gordian Knot) is a DivX / XviD backup utility. With support of DVD sources and other MPEG2 sources (such as DVB captures and transport streams) encoding into your favorite MPEG4 format was never as easy as now.
• VSO PhotoDVD 2.0.11 - VSO Software has released a newer version of the program PhotoDVD bringing it up to 2.0.11 (download)
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.9.4.5 fixes a problem with external drives - A new version of DVD Region+CSS Free fixes a problem with external USB and Firewire drives and DVDFab lets you now choose the write type of DVD-R media.
• AnyDVD 5.4.4.1 - This program runs in the background automatically unprotecting DVD-Movies and removes pesky region coding as well. Once in this state, you can use any of your Windows applications you wish with the movie. When coupled with CloneDVD, Pinnacle Instant Copy, InterVideo DVD-Copy, etc. you are now able to copy CSS protected movies. This new version adds support for a new protection as found on "Lords of Dogtown" R1 (US) to the option to remove "Protection based on unreadable Sectors"
• VSO Inspector 1.1.0..47 - VSO-Inspector is a free add-on to report various information about your hardware configuration.
• NvTempLogger - This is a simple program that is used to watch the temperature (Core and Ambient) of Nvidia Based GPUs. You Have the options to check the graph for the last 10 mins approx. and/or make a log file for as long as you like.
• XTreme-G WarCats 5.9 PRO  - WarAnakin took what he developed in the WarCat 5.8 drivers and applied it to the Catalyst 5.9 drivers and out came a great set of WarCats.
• Creative Audigy 2/ZS/4 Beta Drivers - This beta driver is recommended for gamers who want full OpenAL support for their audio devices. Try only at your own risk!
• nForceRemix 2.5.1 - Windows 2000/XP - This remix package is primarily for users of the NVIDIA nForce1 and 2 Platforms
• nForce Drivers 6.67 WHQL - Here's a new set of nForce4 Drivers version 6.67 WHQL (microsoft tested and approved) for Windows 2000/XP
• NEC 3540A firmware v1.03 - Liggy has patched the official firmware and published a unmodified, riplock removed and rpc1 version of the original firmware together with bitsetting firmwares on the Liggy & Dee website.