SECURITY...

• Top ten viruses reported to Sophos in May 2005 - The report, compiled from Sophos's global network of monitoring stations, reveals that the new Sober-N worm has toppled Zafi-D, which dominated the top of the virus chart for the previous five months. The bilingual Sober-N virus, which poses as tickets for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, was detected at the beginning of the month and rapidly spread across 40 countries - accounting for 4.5% of all email at its peak.
• Commwarrior cell phone virus marches on - Network security experts F-Secure say there's a relatively simple reason why even the savviest cell phone owners are falling prey to a new virus. Phone owners are duped because the virus, known as Commwarrior, is attached to premium cell phone e-mail known as MMS, which makes incoming e-mail look as if it was sent by someone the victim knows, according to F-Secure's analysis of an interview with a Commwarrior victim in Finland.
• Window of exposure lets viruses run rampant - More than 295,000 virus-infected emails were sent to companies in the UK in May before anti-virus vendors could issue signature updates, according to email filtering firm BlackSpider Technologies. It's long been known that there is a ‘window of exposure' - the interval between when a virus begins spreading and signature updates are issued by anti-virus vendors.
• Anti piracy strikes swedish torrent page - Today, one of the most popular torrent places on the net was stormed by Swedish anti piracy officials. All the server trackers was obtained and destroyed. Now, at 23:00 pm GTM they announced that they will be back in a new version. ThePirateBay had the worlds
  biggest collection of torrent trackers, since supernova.org was shut down. (thanks Shorty)
• Vulnerability in OLE and COM Allows Remote Code Execution - A privilege elevation vulnerability exists in the way that the affected operating systems and programs access memory when they process COM structured storage files. This vulnerability could allow a logged on user to take complete control of the system. The following exploit code can be used to determine whether your system is vulnerable or not.
• Scan6 - IPv4/IPv6 Port Scanner for Windows - Scan6 is a simple high multi-threading console application IPv4/IPv6 single host port scanner for Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. It can check for ANY open port on a single IPv4/IPv6 host or you can specify a port range. Scan6 requires a mandatory option in order to specify if you are going to scan an IPv4 or an IPv6 address.

OFFTOPIC...

• X-Men 3 Director Down to Two Names - Ain't-It-Cool-News has learned that 20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios have narrowed the position for X-Men 3 director down to two names. Matthew Vaughn left the production earlier this week due to personal reasons. The site says that the director's chair will either go to John Moore, who helmed both "Behind Enemy Lines" and "Flight of the Phoenix" for Fox, or to Brett Ratner, best known for the "Rush Hour" films and who has also directed such films as "After the Sunset" and "Red Dragon".
• The Matrix: Ripped Off - Sophia Stewart, a black woman residing in Salt Lake City, is alleging that the internationally successful film that we all know as "The Matrix," was actually taken from her screen treatment and epic, "The Third Eye." Stewart also says that in the process of investigating her copyright infringement case, the FBI discovered that there was strong evidence linking "The Terminator," a film Stewart had never seen and therefore never sought compensation for, to "The Third Eye" as well.
• Fantastic Four Soundtrack Track Listing - Wind-up Records, in conjunction with Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel Enterprises have announced the complete track listing for the July 5, 2005 soundtrack "Fantastic Four - The Album

TECHNOLOGY...

• Office 12 to Get New File Formats - Microsoft is introducing the new formats as part of Office 12, officials said, and will share more details about them at next week's Tech Ed 2005 conference in Orlando, Fla. The new Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats will be designated as .docx, .xlsx and .pptx , respectively. Microsoft is referring to the family of new formats as "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats." For users of older versions of Office - specifically Office 2000, Office 2003 and Office XP - Microsoft will make available software downloads that will allow them to read, edit and save using the new file formats. Microsoft also plans to release a conversion tool that will allow users to point to files in an older format and convert them en masse to the new Office 12 XML format.
• New ITU Standard Delivers 10x ADSL Speeds - The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has finalized work on new technical specifications that will allow telecoms operators around the world to offer a 'super' triple play of video, Internet and voice services at speeds up to ten times faster than standard ADSL. The ITU-T Recommendation for very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) will allow operators to compete with cable and satellite providers by offering services such as high definition TV (HDTV), video-on-demand, videoconferencing, high speed Internet access and advanced voice services like VoIP, over a standard copper telephone cable. The new VDSL2 standard delivers up to 100 Mbps both up and downstream, a ten-fold increase over "plain vanilla" ADSL.
• Internet Group OKs 'Xxx' Web Addresses  - A proposal to create net domains ending .xxx has been approved by the body that oversees the net's addressing system. Sexually explicit sites will be encouraged to move to the new domains to make it easier for people to filter and avoid them. The .xxx approval reverses earlier decisions to block it over fears that it would be ineffective and controversial. Domains are currently planned to be offered at 60.00 each for registration. The .xxx joins the recently approved .jobs and .travel."
• Thunderbird gets podcasting support - Developers of the Mozilla Foundation's open-source e-mail client have added a podcasting feature to its arsenal and improved its defense against phishing attacks. The changes were highlighted Tuesday in a Mozilla blog that discussed modifications to the software before its upcoming 1.1 release. They are not available in the current 1.0.2 release
• AMD executive casts doubt on Intel's dual-core claim - Intel's dual-core platform consists of two separate cores in individual dies packaged together using multi-chip packaging in a single chip, which is not a true dual-core solution, according to Henri Richard, senior vice president for worldwide sales and marketing of AMD at Computex 2005 (May 31-June 4)

HARDWARE... 

• IRam Speeds Windows XP Start Up - Taiwanese hardware maker Giga-byte Technology has stumbled upon a faster way to boot up PCs based on Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. Giga-byte's IRam is a PC add-in card with four DDR DRAM (double data rate dynamic RAM memory) slots that's designed to be used as a PC drive. Because the IRam uses DRAM rather than a hard disk to store information, data can be retrieved from the drive up to 60 times faster than is possible with a hard drive, according to Giga-byte, which showed the board at the Computex exhibition in Taipei this week.
• Samsung unveils high-powered wireless laptop - Samsung has launched a notebook computer that uses multiple radios to boost wireless networking speeds. Using a technology called Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), not only is the data transmission speed doubled from 54 to 100Mbits, the maximum signal range is also increased from the current 300ft to 900ft.
• Compaq Presario V4000 notebook - There are two main groups that this notebook will attract. People needing the high end performance with low levels of mobility should find this notebook attractive for the price. This also goes for those looking for a reasonably priced multimedia platform (the V4000 with BrightView). The catch is going to be that this is, after all, is a relatively inexpensive machine, and is not a top of the line multimedia notebook. Even with a BrightView screen, it isn't completely up to par with the glare-type displays found on the competitive models we have seen from some other companies.
• Pentium Extreme Edition 840 Processor - The Pentium Extreme Edition 840 still uses an LGA775/Socket T package, but due to the changes in the Smithfield core, requires a new platform base. This is a bit different from the Athlon 64 X2, which can be used in many current Socket 939 motherboards.
• Corsair XMS PC4400 1 GB TwinX DDR - OverclockersOnline take a look at a matched set of DDR modules rated for 550 MHz operation at 2.5-4-4-8 timings in the form of Corsair's XMS TWINX1024-4400C25PT.
• Leadtek GeForce 6600GT 128MB (PCI Express) video card - Looking at the GeForce 6600GT as a whole, it really becomes almost impossible to fault it. NVIDIA have managed to transition the full, excellent, feature set of their high-end parts into the mid-range, and done so without sacrificing performance in any real fashion. Shader Model 3.0, a full floating point pipeline, SLI support, good overclockability and a very intelligent pipeline structure makes the 6600GT a nigh-on perfect card for almost any situation that is thrown at it - If you're gaming on a budget, then it's hard to put a checkbox against it.
• PowerColor Bravo X700 PCI-e - If you are looking for a mid-range card with passive cooling system, Tul is one of the companies that offer such solution on X700 based cards. With good performance in its class and okay bundle, PowerColor Bravo X700 is an interesting product to consider.

SOFTWARE...

• Scan6 - IPv4/IPv6 Port Scanner for Windows - Scan6 is a simple high multi-threading console application IPv4/IPv6 single host port scanner for Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. It can check for ANY open port on a single IPv4/IPv6 host or you can specify a port range. Scan6 requires a mandatory option in order to specify if you are going to scan an IPv4 or an IPv6 address.
• Notepad++ 3.0 - Notepad++ is a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.
• MR Tech's Local Install 2.5.0 Firefox Extension - This extension adds "Multi-extension installation support, just hold the ctrl, cmd or shift keys to select multiple XPI's" and more.
• Thunderbird 1.1 Alpha 1 - This release is intended for testers ONLY, to get some early exposure on some of the new features under development for Thunderbird 1.1
• Exact Audio Copy 0.95 Beta 2 - Exact Audio Copy allows you to get audio tracks off a CD and save them to your hard drive. It uses the Windows ASPI Interface, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported. It supports hidden sector synchronization and has a secure, fast and burst extraction method selectable
• CloneCD 5.2.3.2 & AnyDVD 5.2.2.1 - SlySoft.com has released updates for Clone CD and Any DVD. Clone CD allows you to create backups of games that are protected by a copy protection. This new version adds support for a new version of the "Sony ARccOS protection" as found on "Closer" (Italian) to the option to remove "Protection based on unreadable Sectors".
• XP firewall control - XP firewall control uses all the present abilities of the firewall and extends them with application level security model. XP firewall control introduces per-application named security zones and allows security zone management at application level.
• Total Commander v6.53 Final  - Total Commander (changelog / download) is a file manager for Windows, a program like Windows Explorer to copy, move or delete files. However, Total Commander can do much more than Explorer, e.g. pack and unpack files, access ftp servers, compare files by content, etc
• Realtek AC'97 Sound System Software 3.73 WHQL - This driver supports all ALC series audio chipsets from ALC101 up to ALC861. It is used as onboard sound on many motherboards. Chips covered include ALC101/201/202/203/250/650/653/655/658/861.
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor Driver 1.2.2.1 -  This driver supports AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processors on Windows 64 bit OS..