Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 12:46 PM CEST - Oct,18 2003
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- Microsoft Releases Super Patch for XP - Making good on a promise
made last week by Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to simplify
security-patch deployment for companies, Microsoft this week released
a consolidated Windows XP update that brings together 22 critical updates
into one downloadable package. The new release, known as Update Rollup 1 for
Microsoft Windows XP, was posted on the Redmond, Washington, company's
Windowsupdate.com Web site and includes almost 9MB of security fixes for
machines running the operating system.
- Teen hacker is not guilty - Aaron Caffrey, the teenager hacker
accused of crippling the Port of Houston's web-based systems,
was found not guilty today. The jury took just three hours to reach their
verdict. Prosecution and defence agreed that a DDOS attack had begun from
Caffrey's home PC. But Caffrey claimed the evidence against him was planted on
his machine by attackers who used an unspecified Trojan to gain control of his
PC and launch the assault.
- RIAA sends letters to 204 individuals saying they will be sued unless
they settle - The Recording Industry Association of America has
sent letters to
204 individuals saying that they are in line to be sued for copyright
infringement. Unlike the last time where the RIAA had issued lawsuits against
261 individuals, this time they have sent out warnings and if the RIAA receive
no word back within a period of 10 days, they will be sued.
- Software engineers - the ultimate brain scientists? -
Can software engineers hope to create a digital brain? Not before
understanding how the brain works, and that's one of the biggest mysteries
left in science. Brains are hugely intricate circuits of billions of elements.
We each have one very close by, but can't open it up: it's the ultimate Black
Box. The most famous engineering brain models are "Neural Networks" and
"Parallel Distributed Processing." Unfortunately both have failed as
engineering models and as brain models, because they make certain assumptions
about what a brain should look like.
- Video games fight phobias - Scared silly of spiders? Horrified by
heights? Terrorized by tight spaces?
Play a video game -- doctor's orders. Regular, off-the-shelf computer
video games are an effective method of treating people's fears, using a style
of therapy that exposes people to what scares them in a controlled setting,
according to a new study released on Friday.
- iTunes for Windows may face new piracy threat - Apple's successful
music download service
iTunes faces a new threat of misuse now that it has been extended to
include users of Microsoft's Windows operating system, say experts. The threat
comes from the combination of the relatively light copy protection iTunes uses
and the big increase of potential hackers that comes with opening up to the
world's most common operating system.
- Datel plans third party Game Boy Player device - UK-based console
accessory specialist Datel is set to launch a smaller,
lightweight alternative to Nintendo's Game Boy Player on October 24th,
allowing gamers to play GBA titles on their GameCubes via the memory card
slot. The "Advance Game Port" will cost L29.99 (the GB Player generally
retails for L39.99) and acts as a sort of bridge adapter for GBA carts,
slotting into a memory card slot and drawing power from the GameCube, and
allowing you to play GBA titles on your TV screen using the Cube pad
(including the analogue stick) as a controller.
- Games retailers report dismal first week for N-Gage - Figures from
videogame retailers around the UK are showing an extremely low sell-through of
Nokia's new N-Gage game deck in its launch week,
with fewer than 500 units sold by the 6,000 game stores polled by
Chart-Track. Although these figures don't include sales from mobile phone
stores, which might well be expected to shift a few units of the N-Gage, they
still spell out something of a setback for Nokia's ambitions in the console
space. By way of comparison, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance hardware outsold the
N-Gage by a ratio of almost 30:1 last week, despite the fact that no key
titles launched on the GBA over the course of the week, and that the system is
long overdue a price cut. In contrast to this report,
the first official statement from Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia on the
launch of its N-Gage game deck has claimed that the device is sold out at many
retailers following a "very positive" consumer response.
- VoodooPC preps Athlon 64 gamers' notebook -
The Envy m:855 is built around a VIA K8T800 chipset. Its graphics
sub-system is driven by an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 chip with 64MB of video
RAM, hooked up to a 15in screen. Since all of VoodooPC's machines are built to
order, the company didn't detail memory, hard drive and DVD-RW optical
storage, but the HDD it's offering is Hitachi's 7200rpm notebook-friendly
Travelstar, probably a 60GB version. The unit includes a built in card reader,
an S/P DIF audio port, four USB 2.0 ports, a 1394 connector, 56Kbps modem,
10/100Mbps Ethernet. And a 12-cell battery
- Graphics card supply chain shuffles - Gigabyte Technology next
Wednesday
will announce graphics cards powered by Nvidia's GeForce FX5950 (with an
NV36 core) and GeForce FX5700 (with an NV38 core) chips, joining Asustek
Computer in supplying products based on solutions from both ATI Technologies
and Nvidia. Earlier this month, Asustek Computer announced ATI-based graphics
cards, supplementing its existing offerings based on Nvidia chips.
- Interview with ATI's Nils Horstbink - Driver Heaven have posted
a brief interview with ATI's desktop product manager Nils Horstbink as he
talks about RADEON 9800 XT.
- Combined GSM/CDMA handset by Xmas - The first phone capable of
being used globally on both GSM and CDMA networks will be released by the end
of the year.
The MSM6300
chipset has been developed by Qualcomm from a CDMA base and uses the same
microprocessor as the CDMA chipset to keep costs and space requirements low.
- The Logitech diNovo Media Desktop - Logitech introduced
a distinctly new cordless mouse-and-keyboard combination - based on
Bluetooth wireless technology - that's bound to change how the most
discriminating PC enthusiasts will view a keyboard and mouse; for work, for
play and for communicating.
- Connect3D Radeon 9600 128mb Video Card review
- LegitReviews
has posted
a review of Connect3D Radeon 9600 128mb Video Card.
PC4000 Memory Roundup - OcPrices.com has posted
a PC4000 roundup,
with memory from Corsair, Geil, Adata, Mushkin, Kingston and OCZ.
Plextor PX-708A review - 4X DVD+R is available everywhere, and
Plextor magically made 8X recording work with these media without compromising
quality and compatibility. Carrying Plextor's brand name and the ability to
burn a fully loaded DVD+R within eight minutes,
the PX-708A will be a big hit in the market even its price tag of aorund
SGD9 (as of 16 Oct) is more towards the steep side - until a similar yet more
affordable product appears, that is.
Danger Den Watercooling Kit Review -
The CPU
waterblock that comes with this kit is the Maze 4 which is the successor
to the Maze 3 which was a really good block. This Maze 4 is designed to be
used on socket A systems but you can change the top to work with Socket 478
setups. The block itself is made of pure copper which is the best material
that can be used for cooling and the top is made of Lucite which is laser cut.
The barbs on this block are chrome which look really cool especially compared
to the standard brass or polypropylene ones.
Garmin iQue 3600 review - DevHardware has posted
a review of the Garmin iQue 3600, the first PDA with an integrated GPS.
"After much fanfare, Garmin, makers of GPS systems for the military, avionics,
and general consumer industries, finally began to ship its much anticipated
iQue 3600, the first Palm OS PDA with an integrated GPS. Fortunately, I was
one of the first to own Garmin?s newest offering, after an excursion to
Alexandria, Virginia took me to Navtech Seminars & GPS Supply. Today I? ll be
reviewing that unit to see whether it is indeed worth its hefty MSRP $589
(USD) price tag."
Cinebench 2003 Ratings -
This page is for
all those who want to see the Cinebench 2003 results in CB Rating instead of
time in seconds.
Building the Ultimate Gaming PC - Puget Systems has published
an
article called "Building the Ultimate Gaming PC".
Make your own Electronic Lock with Key Card -
This is an "Advanced" guide, you may not be able to get the same parts as
I did. The locking circuit has already been tested and works with all the
parts listed. If you cannot get the same parts, I recommend having a
multi-tester, although an oscilloscope is going to be the best choice since
you're going to be able to see exactly what's happening. It's important to
read everything in this guide, so if you're having some troubles you may be
able to check what's wrong. Knowledge about electronics and digital logic will
definitely help you. You will also have to find an optoisolator that fits the
circuit and your motherboard (Voltage and Amperage), since the original
project I did used a relay and I couldn't test it with an optoisolator. Don't
be scared by all you've just read, keep reading.
Benchmarking With Halo PC - The Xbox and a PC are not
as identical as some would have you believe. There are differences between the
platforms in DirectX, and the unified memory architecture of the Xbox can make
programming for it quite a bit different than for a PC. Thus, Gearbox actually
had a lot more to do in porting Halo than simply allowing the game to run at
any resolution and tossing in mouse and keyboard support. Most of the game's
shader effects have been rewritten, utilizing a variety of code paths to
support everything from fixed-function graphics pipelines to the latest 2.0
shaders in DX9.
This makes it an interesting graphics test, if only because there are so
few games that utilize 2.0 shaders at all. In the 2.0 shader path, Halo does
utilize partial-precision hints, allowing GeForce FX cards to operate using
faster 16-bit floating point operations.
DirectX 9.1 and GFX golden combo -
Guru3D is
reporting that "Quite an interesting tidbit of news can be found at the
French PC Inpact website. This site claims that DirectX9.1 opens up a new bag
of tricks in favor for NVIDIA's GeForce FX. As you know Shader 2.0 performance
on DX9 has been the achilles heel of the GFX series bigtime. The site figures
that Shader performance can get boosted upto 60% in favor of the GeForce FX
series. Read that again, upto 60% better Shader performance, not overall
performance!"
FeedDemon 1.0 RC-1 -
FeedDemon enables you
to quickly explore the world of RSS from your desktop without having to visit
hundreds of sites. Written by Nick Bradbury, creator of TopStyle and HomeSite,
FeedDemon makes RSS as easy to access as your email.
VisualBoy Advance 1.7 Beta2 -
Visual Boy Advance (download)
is a Game Boy Advance and Game Boy emulator that runs with Windows systems.
DAEMON Tools 3.41 -
This
new version 3.41 (download)
is already two weeks old, but I forgot to mention it here. The new version
adds support for *.pdi files (Instant CD/DVD) and plugin support for mounting
3rd party images.
PowerStrip 3.46 Build 422 -
PowerStrip (download)
provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support to a wide
range of graphics cards - from the venerable Matrox Millennium I to the latest
Radeon 9700DV and Matrox Parhelia.
Real Alternative 1.10 -
Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files. This way you can
play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. You
do need a player that is capable of playing RealMedia.
K-Lite Codec Pack 2.10 Final -
The K-Lite Codec Pack contains everything you need to be able to playback
the most popular audio and video formats. The basic version contains all the
codecs that are needed for playing most movies that can be downloaded from the
Internet. The full version has some extra codecs which are used less often and
includes a media player. In the basic version 3ivx is used to playback XviD,
3ivx and MPEG4.
SecureCRT 4.0.9 -
SecureCRT
(download)
gives you an encrypted SSH session with both SSH1 and SSH2 servers. SSH
security goes far beyond the basic secure logon, rerouting data or local
applications using TCP/IP ports through an encrypted channel.
AIDA32 3.85 -
AIDA32 (download)
is a professional system information, diagnostics and benchmarking program
running on Win32 platforms. It extracts details of all components of the PC.
It can display information on the screen, print it, or save it to file in
various formats like HTML, CSV or XML. For corporate users, AIDA32 offers
command-line switches, network audit and audit statistics, remote system
information and network management.
CrystalCPUID 2.0.11.20 - Japanese software called
CrystalCPUID is
becoming the star of some threads, thanks to a new integrated feature,
named LoveHammer, said to be able to change Athlon 64's, and also some Athlon
XP, multiplier directly under Windows. (thanks
Warp2Search)
The Official Catalyst 3.8 Problems - As many of you may have
already read
on various community forums that the 3.8's are overheating video cards
(foremost Radeon 9800 Pro cards), along with monitors burning out. Terry
Makedon, Senior Software Manager at ATI, has sent out the following notice:
"1) Overheating. We have spent a great deal of time analyzing the temperatures
due to the CATALYST 3.8 drivers. We do not under any circumstance see anything
near a 10 degree Celsius increase in temperature (but we don't overclock our
test cards either). We do see a slight increase in temperature in certain
cases (3Dmark2003 Nature Scene for example). However any temperature increase
is well within our safety range.Investigation continues and we are trying to
determine why this change intemperature exits 2) Monitors. We have spent
a great deal of time trying to reproducethis problem and analyzing the driver
code. There is nothing to be found. At this point we are working very closely
with an ATI Beta Tester who experienced a monitor loss. There have been zero
reports in our customer support of monitors dying." (thanks
NVNews)
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Updated:05:39 PM CEST Jun,09
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