SECURITY...

• Microsoft Steps Up XP Anti-Piracy Drive - Microsoft is cracking down on fake copies of Windows XP in use across Europe. The firm said it is beefing up procedures to deal with PCs sold in Europe with fake or stolen certificates of authenticity (COAs). If a user attempts to activate a copy of XP online using a suspicious COA number -- for example after rebuilding a machine -- they will be redirected to a call-center program. Staff will ask a series of questions, such as where the customer bought the PC, in order to work out whether it is a legitimate Microsoft product.
• Microsoft suing Israeli spammer - Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against an Israeli man suspected of sending spam. The software giant alleges that Amir Gans, head of marketing company New Approach, has sent 10 million junk emails and is responsible for half of the spam sent from Israel.
• Anti-piracy companies overcharge - Consumer electronics companies say they do not want to be over charged for the latest wave of anti-piracy technology. The price for anti-piracy technology, proposed by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), has been set at a dollar a unit. However, several producers have told Reuters that this is far too high.
• Phishers chip away at web security - Nearly 13,000 new phishing emails and more than 2,500 phishing websites were spotted last month, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has reported.
• Study finds majority of US customers dislike copy protection - Among respondents in Parks Associates' survey "Profiles of PC Usage," when given a choice between a normal music CD and a "copy-once" CD priced $5 less, 33% of those who do not rip CDs and 27% who rip CDs preferred the copy-once CDs."

OFFTOPIC...

• Texas Gaming Festival's ATI Ultimate LAN Party coverage - TechReport, EliteBastards
• Short History of Cellphone Ringtones - This week's New Yorker magazine includes an interesting short history of cellphone ringtones, including statistics on their (huge) profitability worldwide.
• Unseen Trinity's Revenge from The Matrix Reloaded movie - Here is the deleted scene of what Trinity actually did as a revenge on Neo when the white Twins were around :P

TECHNOLOGY...

• Toshiba fuel cell is the smallest in the world - A direct methanol fuel cell created by Toshiba has been certified in the 2006 edition of Guinness World Records as the world's smallest DMFC. The device, which outputs 100 milliwatts of power and can power a small music player for as long as 20 hours on a single 2 cubic centimetre charge of highly concentrated methanol, is only 22 millimetres wide, 56 mm long and 4.5 mm high, making it the smallest fuel cell in the world. Toshiba plans to introduce commercial samples of the DMFC for small handheld electronic devices in 2005.
• 5 Features Operating Systems Should Have - This article goes over five features that could be implemented into operating systems that could increase productivity, improve performance, and provide all kinds of new avenues for third party developers and users.
• MP3 Download Prices to Rise? - Several big labels are in talks with online music retailers to get them to increase prices,according to the FT. The labels are looking to increase the wholesale prices shops pay for tracks. Sites in the US typically sell tracks for 99 cents each. The wholesale price is currently 65 cents per track, according to the FT.
• AOL Integrates Buddy Lists With Outlook - Users of America Online Inc.'s instant messaging service can now automatically see from Microsoft Corp.'s popular Outlook e-mail application whether their friends and colleagues are online. A free tool AOL is offering beginning Monday integrates "buddy list" information from AOL Instant Messenger with Outlook.
• IBM Teams with Zend on PHP Programming Core - In a move to expand its support for open-source technologies, IBM announced a partnership with Zend Technologies yesterday that will integrate Big Blue's Apache-based Cloudscape database and Zend's open-source PHP environment.

HARDWARE... 

• Intel nForce Announced - NVIDIA has officially announced that their nForce chipset for Intel Pemtium 4 series of CPUS will be unveiled tommorow March 1st at IDF. The new nForce chipset line will include a chipset which will allow for Intel CPU powered SLI setups.
• ATI Officially Releases New RADEON X850, X800 (AGP) - The RADEON X850 is a native AGP 8x visual processor (PR) family code-named R481 featuring the RADEON X850 XT and other models. The R481 is produced using 0.13 micron process technology with low-k dielectrics and can operate at up to 540MHz clock-speed. The RADEON X800 XL originally known as R430 is a native PCI Express visual processing unit (VPU) that uses ATI’s PCI Express to AGP Bridge chip code-named Rialto, which allows PCI Express graphics processors to be used in AGP-based computers. ATI produces R430 using 0.11 micron process technology at TSMC. While this process technology does not allow extremely high clock-speeds, it gives ATI opportunity to offer the chips at lower cost compared to 0.13 micron fabrication processes.
• NV48 is NV45 with 512MB RAM - Despite earlier claims, Nvidia will introduce one more card codenamed NV48. It won't be an exciting part of the phenomenon hardware thang, as Nvidia will use NV45 chips and will plug 512 MB of memory at the card. Actually, this time NV48 is the codename for graphic card more than it is for the chip. Clocks will remain the same it will be the same card clocked to 400 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory as it is with NV45, Geforce 6800 Ultra card.  In related new, some 512MB GeForce 6800 Ultra in pictures can be found  here.
• Voodoo Rage F:5 gaming PC - Inside, the machine packs an overclocked (by 100MHz, to 2.7GHz) Athlon FX-55 on an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe board. Two nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in SLI mode power the graphics, and there’s 2GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR400. Unlike the Katana SLi (reviewed on page 68), the Rage F:5 uses two 1GB DIMMs instead of four 512MB DIMMs. This provides an upgrade path that doesn’t involve junking your old DIMMs.
• Sony VAIO VGN-FS115B Sonoma based notebook - Inside the FS115B is a 1.6GHz Pentium M CPU and 512MB of memory - although Sony has decided to go with DDR rather than DDR2 memory. Sony has made use of the dual channel memory support and installed two matched SODIMM modules. The down side of this is that you're left with no spare memory slots for future upgrades, although 512MB should be fine for most users of this type of notebook.
• SLI comparison - DFI vs. Asus - Hexus compares the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe to the DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-D.
• Leadtek WinFast PX6800 GT TDH (GeForce 6800 GT) - Obviously, the 6800 GT should slap around the 6600 GT like a freshman in a locker room. That will not surprise anyone. The main thing I want to look at is if the price premium that the 6800 GT demands is worth it. For example, if 6800 GT performs less than 20% better than the 6600 GT on the majority of the benchmarks, perhaps paying twice as much for the higher-powered GPU is not worth it.
• Netgear DG834GT - The main differences between the DG834GT and the older model is the fact that it supports faster 108Mbit/sec operations. Physically, it’s much smaller than its predecessor, although this white plastic lozenge offers an equally good hardware specification. For starters, you get an integrated ADSL modem teamed up with a four-port Fast Ethernet switch, while the internal wireless access point (AP) supports simultaneous access from 802.11b and g clients.
• MSI MEGA View 561 - ViperLair take a look at MSI's latest media device, capable of playing not only MP3s, but DivX files as well.
• LCD roundup: 7 low priced 20'' LCD - The release of reasonably priced 20" LCDs was, however, quite inevitable. They replace 22" CRTs which also have 1600 x 1200 pixels. The pixel size of the 20" LCD and 22" CRT is almost identical and the display surface the same (it’s even a couple of millimetres bigger for the LCD).

GUIDES... 

• DVD Troubleshooting Guide - You really enjoy those DVD movies and games and the last thing you need or want is to experience problems with your DVD drive. If your DVD is not feeling its best, then this troubleshooting guide should bring it back to life.
• Cooling down your video card - If your system is freezing or resetting when it's using a graphically intensive program (such as gaming), it could be caused by all sorts of issues and heat is one of them. It might be wise to investigate the matter further and possibly insert an extra case far to get air directly flowing over the video card. This guide will show you how.
• OverClocking the Socket 754 AMD Athlon 64 - If you choose to overclock your system or any components inside of it, you do so at your own risk. This is simply an informational guideline, which you may use at your own risk.
• The easy way to set up the hard drive and set up the system - Sooner or later every PC user faces a full operating system installation. While there is not absolute correct procedure there are hints, tips and tricks that can save any user time and problems in the future. This guide takes the novice step by step through the process of setting up Windows XP and reminds veterans of a few good habits.
• 5 impressive Windows XP tricks - From the folks who brought you the ever sturdy, always controversial Windows XP operating system. Check it out.

SOFTWARE...

• Update for Exchange 2003 - This update resolves problems that were found in Exchange 2003 since Exchange 2003 SP1 was released.
• Attach Plus - Attach Plus (download trial version) adds a button to your e-mail application's "Select Files" dialog window. From the "Select Files" window you can attach the file "as-is", convert it to an Adobe Acrobat PDF or compress it into a ZIP file. On the same screen you can secure the file by selecting a password and choosing only the pages you want and attach. It's that easy, efficient and secure!
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.80 - DVD Region+CSS Free enables you to watch and copy any region-coded/CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive! It works automatically in the background to make a DVD appear region code free and unprotected to any DVD player and DVD copy software. With its help, DVD copy software is able to copy DVD's which are CSS protected.
• Nero InfoTool 3.00 / Nero CD-DVD Speed V3.70 - Nero InfoTool a utility which analyses and displays the most important information about a drive, disc, configuration and software. CD/DVD Speed is a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD/DVD-ROM drive.
• Serious Samurize 1.61 - Samurize (download / changelog) is a system monitoring utility with outstanding configuration power. The configuration program is totally separated from the client for minimal memory usage.
• Maxthon (MyIE2) v1.2.000 - Maxthon (MyIE2) (download standard / combo) is a powerful web browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that what works in IE, works the same in Maxthon but with many additional efficient features.
• Yahoo! Messenger 6.0.0.1922 - download / homepage
• Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1 - Mozilla (download / changelog) is an open-source Web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. Mozilla is a cousin to Netscape Communicator that is being developed by the Free Software Community with the cooperation and support of Netscape.
• X-Setup Pro 7.0 - X-Setup Pro is a so-called "hacker" or "tweaker" program. It allows you to change settings that are normally hidden deeply in some configuration-files like the registry fast and easily. It offers several advantages, making it the "ultimate tool for black belt system tuning". It's runs on any Windows version, is clutter-free, easy to use, extensible, powerful, covers any aspect of your computer and has more configuration options than any other tweaker.