SECURITY...

• Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) Refresh Released - Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. This download has been updated to include signature version 5687, which is the most current as of February 10, 2005. Customers who have installed Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware prior to this date do not need to re-download. They will receive signature updates as part of their next automatic or manual signature update.
• MyDoom Worm Spreads Via Search Engines - Internet users are being threatened by yet another variant of the MyDoom mass mailing worm, which is spreading in part by using e-mail addresses found through popular search engines, security experts warn. The worm proliferates by e-mailing itself through its own SMTP engine, according to Sophos. When it infects a computer it scans the hard disk for e-mail addresses and then takes the domains of the addresses it finds and queries search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Lycos looking for similar addresses, Cluley says. Here's an updated W32.Mydoom@mm Removal Tool 1.5.1 removal tool from Symantec.
• "Deadcode" virus attempts political mischief - Security experts today warned users to be on their guard against the newly discovered Deadcode-A virus which infects executable files on compromised computers and displays a political message when launched. The text of the message, which reads 'BlackHand.w32 Long Live Great Serbia', is believed to refer to a nationalist slogan used by Serbian Radical Party politician Tomislav Nicolic to finish his speeches.
• Microsoft fixes potential antipiracy hole - Microsoft said Tuesday that Japanese hackers had discovered a potential weakness in its copy protection technology but that the software company fixed the flaw before it was widely used.The Redmond, Wash., giant on Tuesday introduced an update to its Windows Media Player, which included changes aimed at blocking the Japanese hackers' work, as well as a security update
• Microsoft on 'rootkits': Be afraid. Be very afraid. - Microsoft security researchers are warning about a new generation of powerful system monitoring programs, or "rootkits," that are almost impossible to detect using current security products and that could pose a serious risk to corporations and individuals. With names like "Hacker Defender," "FU" and "Vanquish," the programs are the latest generation of remote system monitoring software that has been around for years, according to Mike Danseglio and Kurt Dillard, both of Microsoft's Security Solutions Group.

OFF-TOPIC...

•  New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to Battle - The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.
• Xbox 360 Revealed? - Kotaku claims to have an "exclusive source" who revealed to them many details of the Xbox 360, as it is now apparently known.
• Bubbles Flash Game - Your objective is to float a bubble through the water while collecting other bubbles to increase your size and score. Also, you must beware the nasty spiked balls that happen to be passing by that will pop your bubble and end the game. Check it out.
• Microsoft's Parent's Primer to Computer Slang - Leet words can be expressed in hundreds of ways using different substitutions and combinations, but once one understands that nearly all characters are formed as phonemes and symbols, leetspeek isn't difficult to translate. Glad to hear that someone at Microsoft is "1337" ;)
• Less liver cancer in coffee drinkers - A study of more than 90,000 Japanese found that people who drank coffee daily or nearly every day had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank coffee. It's the caffeine in coffee that makes some people nervous and it has been shown in other studies to prompt mental alertness in many people. Some studies have suggested caffeine aggravates symptoms of menopause or intensifies the side effects of some antibiotics. Heavy caffeine use has been linked to miscarriage. But studies have also shown that a skin cream spiked with caffeine lowers the risk of skin cancer in mice.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Major Recall Burns Xbox Users - Microsoft announced today that it will recall 14.1 million Xbox power cords after discovering that a defect in the cords gave some users minor burns or damaged carpet. The recall involves Xboxes manufactured before October 23, 2003, in all worldwide regions except continental Europe. In continental Europe, the recall affects Xboxes manufactured before January 13, 2004. Xboxes made since then have been changed and don't exhibit this problem, Microsoft says.
• N.Y. Times to buy About.com for $410 million - The New York Times Co. on Thursday said it will buy online information portal About.com for $410 million from publisher Primedia as it looks for new ways to advertise itself online. The Times Co., whose newspapers include The New York Times and The Boston Globe, said it will expand About.com's content and visibility and use the site to market its products.
• Get a 1000 Mb Gmail account for free - Go to gmail.afraid.org and enter your e-mail address. Then you'll receive an invite to open a 1000 Mb Gmail account for free.

HARDWARE... 

• SiS PCI Express chipsets in mass production - Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) announced that the SiS656, SiS649, and SiS756 PCI Express chipsets have entered mass production. The SiS656, SiS649, and SiS756 chipsets are being adopted by at least 10 motherboard manufacturers.
• ATI's DX9 chipset hits the road - The graphics mavens up Toronto way have unveiled a new mobile chipset today, the Radeon Xpress 200M, for AMD-based laptop computers. The new chipset is substantially the same thing as the Radeon Xpress 200 with the addition of a few power-saving tricks for mobile applications, like this one, explained in this press-release.
• AMD's New Low-Power CPUs - AMD has released a new family of CPUs targeted at the portable computing market. The new CPUs, collectively named Alchemy, consume less than 1Watt of power! The CPUs have already been named the CPU of choice for Tivo's new Tivo-To-Go technology and are powerful enough to run DivX, WMV9, and MPEG. The AU1550 consumes just 0.5 Watts at 400 MHz and the AU1100 consumes 0.25 at the same clock speed.
• Samsung builds DDR3-1066 prototype - Samsung today said that it has produced the world's first working DDR3 DRAM module. The memory technology will replace today's DDR2 sometime next year with clock speeds of at least 800 MHz.
• Mushkin 1GB PC2-4200 (533) Dual Pack CL 3-2-2 - Overclocking wise, how can we complain? These Mushkin modules were able to take us up to DDR2-640MHz at tight timings of CL 3-2-2-6 and up to DDR2-750MHz at its most relaxed timing. That's 217MHz over its rated speed. You get a headroom that is sure to handle even the most extreme overclock while running at the tightest possible timings. And with the cost of PC4200 modules getting cheaper by the day, the Mushkin 1GB PC2-4200 (533) Dual Pack is a great buy no matter where you look at it.
• Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra) - The inaccurate CPU overclocking functions and the unstable operation at high frequencies of the clock generator somewhat spoil the impression from the product. On the other hand, the WinFast NF4UK8AA-8EKRS can be a good choice if you are not into overclocking, provided its retail price is sufficiently low.
• Gigabyte 3D1 (Dual GPU) - Guru3D have tested Gigabyte's DUAL GPU based GV-3D1 which of course runs in SLI mode and is a rather cool looking graphisc card.
• Swiftech H20-120-FB Water Cooling Kit - Swiftech updates their popular H20-8600 water cooling kit, a new compact and silent pump and a large radiator and accompanying 120mm fan can make the H20-120 a true performer. Read on to find out how hard it can help push an A64 FX-55 and X800XT-PE towards overclock-heaven.
• ACER Travelmate 8104 - Looking closer, the specs on this baby are pretty impressive. ATI have replaced the powerful Mobility Radeon 9700 GPUs with their PCI-E X700 something to make the desktop and mini-server box boys a tad jealous. Sure, they might have X850s, but can they leg it for the last bus? Didn't think so. Other specs for this version you see here include a 2Ghz CPU, 1Gb dual DDR, 15" WSXGA screen, 100Gb HDD, tri-mode Wifi with 802.11a/b/g support and a dual layer DVD burner.
• IBM ThinkPad T42p - The T42p is Centrino branded, so it comes as no surprise that there's an Intel Pentium M CPU inside. This particular model has a 1.8GHz chip, backed up by 1GB of RAM - the spec definitely reinforces this machine's workstation aspirations. What's particularly impressive is that IBM has fitted a 1GB SODIMM inside the T42p, leaving the end user a free slot to increase the memory without having to discard any.
• Panasonic Technics RP-DH1200 headphones - The first thing you'll notice about these headphones is that they provide plenty of power. Part of the reason for this volume is the 50mm drivers that the sound is coming from. The headphones have a total impedance of 50 ohms, and a max current of 3500 mW, which is further proof of how much power these things can handle. These headphones are also relatively sensitive, rated at 107 dB/mW.
• Canon Selphy CP500 compact photo - The Selphy CP500 is about the size of a thick paperback, though there's a separate black power supply block and a cassette carrying the 6 x 4-inch postcard blanks, which clips in at the front. You also need to allow a space on your desk at the back of the printer, to accommodate each card as it's fed out during the printing process. Various other paper sizes, including credit card, are available, with separate cassettes and ink film cartridges for each.

GUIDES... 

• AMD K8 E4 Stepping: SSE3 Performance - The goal of this article is to bring out a quick look at what SSE3 brings to the table for Opteron and the future revision E Athlon 64 cores. As desktop parts do not enable coherent HT links at all, the 1GHz support won't matter. Also, the newer A64 parts are already 90nm on organic packages. Other than the usual small tweaks we see between steppings, the only thing that will be new across the board for K8 processors is SSE3
• ATI Radeon 9800 to FireGL X2 hard mod guide - As the title suggests, this guide is going to teach you how to hard-mod your Radeon 9800-series card into a FireGL X2 workstation card. This guide will cover all Radeon 9800 cards - Radeon 9800 SE, Radeon 9800, Radeon 9800 Pro and Radeon 9800XT.
• Mikhailtech's basic system buyer's guide (Feb2005) - Check it out!
• Wi-Fi hotspot security tips - Wi-Fi Hotspots are great but don't get so relaxed that you ignore security and give all your confidential information to some unscrupulous hacker. The next time you're at a Hotspot, use these security tips to keep yourself safe.
• Half-Life 2 optimization guide (updated) - The testbed has changed for this optimization guide. I have added a few more cards to the lineup and have dropped the MX440 8X and the Radeon 8500. The MX440 really has no chance of even pulling 30FPS out of this game with decent quality

SOFTWARE...

• Windows XP x64 RC2 available - Microsoft has finally made Windows XP Professional x64 Release Candidate 2 available to the general public through its Customer Preview Program
• Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) Refresh Released - Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. This download has been updated to include signature version 5687, which is the most current as of February 10, 2005. Customers who have installed Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware prior to this date do not need to re-download. They will receive signature updates as part of their next automatic or manual signature update.
• McAfee AVERT Stinger 2.5.0 - Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. It is not a substitute for full anti-virus protection, but rather a tool to assist administrators and users when dealing with an infected system.
• Symantec W32.Mydoom@mm Removal Tool 1.5.1 - Symantec Security Response has developed a removal tool to clean the following infections: W32.Mydoom.A@mm | W32.Mydoom.B@mm |W32.Mydoom.F@mm | W32.Mydoom.G@mm | W32.Mydoom.H@mm | W32.Mydoom.L@mm | W32.Mydoom.M@mm | W32.Mydoom.Q@mm | Backdoor.Zincite.A | W32.Zindos.A | Backdoor.Nemog.
• YahooPOPs! 0.7  - This application emulates a POP3 server and enables popular email clients like Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, Calypso, etc., to download email from Yahoo! accounts
• Google Toolbar 3.0.119.6 Beta - When the Google Toolbar (download beta WinXP/2k ~ Win9x/ME) is installed, it automatically appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar. This means you can quickly and easily use Google to search from any website location, without returning to the Google home page to begin another search.
• MemTest86+ 1.51 - MemTest86+ 1.51 has been released. This new version adds support for Intel i955X (Glenwood) and for nVidia nForce4.
• Pioneer A09 / DVR-109 Firmware 1.17 - This new firmware (DV adds support 16x writing on New 16x DVD-R Media, 16x writing (Mitsubishi Chemical/Maxell), 12x writing(FBeALL), Support 16x writing on New 16x +R Media, Support 8x writing on New 8x DVD-R Media, 8x writing(Daxon/Gigastorage), DVD-R/RW/+RW Writability Improvement  and Error correction at the Packet Write on the CD-RW. Here are two links to the appropriate firmware: Link one and Link two.