SECURITY...

• Bluetooth poses security risk - Bluetooth wireless technology poses as great a security threat to corporate data as wireless LANs (WLANs), according to intrusion detection and management tools vendor Red-M. The firm said that Bluetooth is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in client systems, and that attackers could exploit this fact to gain access to networks and data.
• EBay virus fears dismissed as scaremongering - Security fears sparked by the recently identified W32/Myfip virus are unfounded, according to a security industry executive who claims the concern is nothing more than empty scaremongering by antivirus firms.
• AOL Shows Safe Chat Rooms - America Online is showing a "safe chat room" for children and teenagers that uses so-called "multifactor authentication" technology from VeriSign to verify a child's age. Equipped with secure tokens that plug into computer USB outlets, kids will be able to securely access AOL chat rooms without fear of being preyed upon online criminals, according to a statement from VeriSign.
• Spanish MP3 site owner to pay RIAA $10m - Four men who attempted to use what they believed was a loophole in Spanish law to allow them to sell MP3s online legally, along with the company behind the site they ran, have agreed to pay music labels $10.5m to settle the copyright infringement case brought against them by the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA).
• Bush Website Blocked Outside N. America - The BBC News are reporting that George W Bush's re-election website (don't bother if you aren't in the USA) is blocked to people accessing it from outside the USA. Oh well, at least John Kerry's site still works for us outlanders :)
• Suse warns of hole in Linux kernel 2.6 - The problem lies in the way the kernel handles iptables firewall logging, and only affects systems with iptables-based firewalls, such as SUSEfirewall2, Suse said. An attacker could use a malformed packet to shut down the system, according to Suse's advisory, which ranked the bug nine out of 10 in severity.
• Easy to remain untraceable - Breaking into computer networks and remaining untraceable after the breach has been detected is apparently easier than anyone would like it to be, said The Grugq, a Britain-based hacker. The Grugq, who refused to reveal his true identity, said remaining undetectable, even from computer forensics experts, is achievable with freely available tools that can be downloaded from the Internet.
• What Is a Cookie & Should I Accept or Reject It - The Tech Zone explains what a cookie is and whether you should accept them or reject them.

TECHNOLOGY...

• NASA's Columbia Supercomputer is World's Fastest - Silicon Graphics with NASA today confirmed that NASA's new Intel Itanium 2 processor-based Columbia supercomputer is the most powerful computer in the world. Only days after NASA completed installation of Columbia—and using just 16 of Columbia's 20 installed systems—the new supercomputer achieved sustained performance of 42.7 trillion calculations per second (teraflops), eclipsing the performance of every supercomputer operating today. Built from SGI Altix systems and driven by 10,240 Intel Itanium 2 processors, Columbia's 16-system result easily tops Japan's famed Earth Simulator, rated at 35.86 teraflops, and IBM's recent in-house Blue Gene/L experiment, rated at 36.01 teraflops.
• John Deere, iRobot team on military robot - John Deere & Co. and iRobot Corp. are teaming up to produce an unmanned ground vehicle for use by U.S. military personnel. The vehicle combines Deere's M-Gator military utility vehicle platform with iRobot's military robotic controls. The machine called the "Military R-Gator," would conduct unmanned patrols and reconnaissance as well as acting as a sort of packhorse for soldiers. It would be built with off-the-shelf components, the partners said.
• Brain prosthesis passes live tissue test - The microchip, designed to model a part of the brain called the hippocampus, has been used successfully to replace a neural circuit in slices of rat brain tissue kept alive in a dish. The prosthesis will soon be ready for testing in animals. The device could ultimately be used to replace damaged brain tissue which may have been destroyed in an accident, during a stroke, or by neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. It is the first attempt to replace central brain regions dealing with cognitive functions such as learning or speech.
• DivX Networks touts new studio deals - DivX already has a partnership with News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox to encode films for an airline movie-rental service. Now its video file format will be used in planned Internet video-on-demand services that would be available to consumers by the first half of 2005, DivX President Shahi Ghaman told CNET News.com at the Consumer Technology Ventures Conference.
• Google buys satellite image firm Keyhole - Search giant Google said Wednesday that it has acquired Keyhole, a company specializing in Web-based software that allows people to view satellite images from around the globe.
• Wireless LAN knows where you are - Wireless LAN specialist, Airespace, has developed a system using regular Wi-Fi that can pinpoint you to within ten metres. Its Wireless Location Services (WLS) using a technique known as RF (radio frequency) pinpointing. According to Airespace's Jeff Aaron, other location methods have far less accuracy. He pointed out that using triangulation from base stations doesn't always work because a Wi-Fi user could be standing feet away from a base station but doesn't get a strong signal because there's a wall in the way. RF fingerprinting takes the geography of a building into account.
• Sony to ship PlayStation Portable for under $200 - Sony will ship the PlayStation Portable for 20,790 Yen ($195), the Japanese consumer electronics giant said today. The PSP-1000 - to give the device its official model number - will go in sale on 12 December, achieving Sony's goal of shipping the handheld by the end of the year. It is due to debut in the US and Europe by the end of March 2005. In related news, the battery life is quoted as being 4 to 6 hours (specs ~ Japanese PDF ~ translated here).
• Panasonic Unveils International 3G Cell Phone - Panasonic Mobile Communications is unveiling its first Wideband Code Division Multiple Access cell phone for the international market, the company says. A prototype of the handset, called the Z800, was on show at the PT/Expo Comm China 2004 telecommunications exhibition in Beijing, according to a company statement. Launch plans for the handset were not announced.
• Finis unveils first waterproof MP3 player attached to goggles - Developed by Finis, this underwater MP3 player dubbed the SwiMP3, (pronounced swim P-3 thank you) is unique in that it bypasses your ears via "bone conduction" and directly stimulates the inner ear. The company claims that this results in unparalleled clarity of sound for the user.

HARDWARE...

• NEC to Market DVD Burners - NEC Solutions is taking an unusual step in today's modern age of CD and DVD burners: The company has begun marketing and shipping a DVD burner under its own brand. NEC joins a crowded market, but the company believes there's room for one more player--especially given the super-low $100 price of its ND-3500A model.  The drive, which has been shipping for several months as part of OEM packages (and sold as a "bare" OEM drive online), can write at up to 16X for DVD-R and DVD+R; 4X for DVD-RW and DVD+RW; and 4X for DVD+R Double Layer.
• Intel plans to introduce five south-bridge chips for Smithfield - Intel plans to introduce five versions of its ICH7 south-bridge chip for its Smithfield dual-core platform, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers. In addition to the ICH7 for standard PCs, there will be an ICH7 DH for entertainment PCs, an ICH7 DO for digital-office devices, an ICH7 DE for digital-enterprise applications and an ICH7 R for RAID storage applications, the sources noted. The ICH7 DO and ICH7 DE will feature support for Intel Active Management Technology (iAMT), while the ICH7 DH, ICH7 DE and ICH7 R will support Matrix Storage Technology, according to the sources.
• Intel intros 90-nm low voltage Xeon - Intel today expanded the 64-bit capabilities of its product line with the addition of an Intel Xeon processor-based platform with Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) aimed at the storage industry. Intel also unveiled a key optical design win with Emulex Corporation and a new compiler for storage applications. The new chip (specs) is fabbed using 90-nano process tech, runs at 2.8GHz on an 800MHz front-side bus, comes with 1MB of L2 cache and 64-bit extensions, and boasts a Thermal Design Power (TDP) of only 55W. AMD's low voltage Opteron HE processors, which are available at 2.0GHz, also carry a TDP of 55W.
• HyperTransport problems stall nForce4 chipset - TheInquirer is reporting that NVIDIA is still having problems getting its nForce4 chipset running with a 1GHz HyperTransport bus. The issue was supposed to be fixed in the A02 stepping of the chipset, but now it looks like it will take an A03 stepping to iron out the kinks. Until
• AMD's Athlon64 FX-55 Processor review - Still, performance levels between the Athlon64 FX-55 and Pentium 4 3.4 GHz Extreme Edition are actually very close in many cases. While the Athlon64 FX-55 simply trounces the competition in gaming and raw number crunching, Intel's high-end Pentium 4 processors still put up a major fight in multimedia and media encoding applications, which gives Intel the edge in the creative workstation field. The Athlon64 FX-55 has quite a lot of major and minor fringe benefits in compared to the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors. First off, the Athlon64 FX-55 costs less. Not that much less, mind you, simply a mere 10% or so.
• Corsair TWIN2X1024-5400C4PRO DDR2 memory - There is alot of speed improvement with this new memory and I don't think we have even seen the possibilities with DDR2 yet. The cost is a bit high still as the cheapest we found it was for $344 USD@Moarch computers which is still quiet a bit of money bit if you want good stuff you have to be prepared to pay for it
• Abit AA8 Duramax 925 Express Alderwood motherboard review - If you are interested in the upgrade but you want something a little more overclocker friendly then the AA8 Duramax is absolutely perfect for your situation. Without a single corner cut, ABIT packed every single enthusiast option they could into their entry into the Alderwood including extensive Windows and BIOS overclocking and monitoring, excellent cooling, industry leading uGuru technology and let's not forget about the onboard high definition 8 channel audio and firewire.
• Elitegroup 915P-A review - ECS has managed to implement an AGP compatible slot on a 915P motherboard, which it calls AGP Express. This lets upgraders move to Intel's latest system generation while continuing to use their AGP graphics card. How do they do it, and how well does it work?
• Five GeForce 6800 Cards Compared - TrustedReviews has posted a comparision between the latest cards from Asus, Galaxy, Leadtek, MSI and XFX.
• XFX 6800U review - This particular board is clocked at 450MHz core and 1100MHz on the memory, as opposed to the reference 6800U speed of 400/1100.
• Gigabyte 6800 Video Card review - CoolTechZone has posted a review of Gigabyte 6800 Video Card.
• PowerColor X300SE review - Is this card going to attract owners of systems with integrated graphics? Priced at about $80, it really can, in those special cases exposed early in this review when the integrated graphics core like i915G, nForce2 IGP or RADEON 9100 does not satisfy the owner with its low-quality 2D picture, lack of DirectX 9 support or missing TV output. The i915G system has one more unpleasant trait – Intel's graphics driver is full of bugs yet. You might also want to purchase the PowerColor X300 SE to save your system RAM for other tasks.
• ASUS Extreme AX800XT review - The Extreme AX800XT uses Samsung's K4J55323QF-GC20 GDDR3 (Part number K4J55323QF). According to Samsung's specifications, the BGA ram is rated at 500MHz (1GHz DDR). The AX800XT, while a full fledged X800 XT, is not a Platinum Edition part, as that version of the card uses 560MHz ram. ASUS clocks the AX800XT at the maximum ram speed, so at the moment, we're not holding our breath for overclocking potential.
• SilverStone FP52 "Eudemon" Multifunction Fan Controller - The single failing in this system in my view comes from the predetermined fan speed/temperature ratios which can't be altered.
• LiteOn SOHW-1213S Dual DVD±RW Recorder review - Like many products from Lite-On, this drive left a nice general impression: no leaders in any class, they usually show good, sometimes average, and rarely excellent results. The SOHW-1213 is a workhorse that provides an opportunity to estimate the quality of the written discs and has good technical parameters, although in an unassuming design.
• Accordance ARAID 2000 review - This compact, easily-installed system provides RAID 1 support without configuration. The ARAID 2000 supports two hard drives, and works completely without drivers. THG compared the ARAID 2000 with a Serial ATA RAID controller made by Silicon Image (model Sil3152). We found that in most I/O categories, the Accordance system logs better results than its competition. However, when it comes to application benchmarks and transfer rates, the Silicon Image controller holds a slight edge.
• Coolmax 3.5" Xtreme Files F1-B review - Are you backing up your computer? Are you backing up your files at least? No? Do you think you should? Well, this is one of the newest accessories from Coolmax. The F1-B, for short. What it does is make an image of your C: drive for complete disaster recovery. You can backup files additionally from your C: Drive, or any other drive. Sound like something you would use?
• Asetek Hard Drive Cooler - Asetek has released a cooling block for hard drives, allowing you to lower the temperature of your hot running drives.
• BuffaloTech Fully Customizable NAS shell review -  If you're interested in embedded Linux, there are a lot of little devices to experiment with these days. The Kuro Box is a powerful little home server, easy to develop for, and powerful enough to handle the needs of a home network. After a few days of casual experimenting, I was able to configure it with Apache, MySQL, an X10 home-automation program, a Web Camera, an iTunes server and more.
• Enermax Noisetaker EG475P-VE SFMA 2.0 470W PSU - The Enermax Noisetaker 470W power supply is one of the few products that works as good it is looks. The power supply includes just about everything an enthusiast could expect: SATA connectors, dual 12V rails, 24-pin motherboard support, and 6-pin auxiliary connectors for modern video cards. Best of all, this power supply is stable!
• Kingwin KT-424 Aluminum Midtower Case - The KT-424 sits at a sub $100 price-point, yet somehow packs many of the features found in today's more expensive cases. Some of these features include a removable motherboard tray, a tool-less design, HDD shock absorbers, front USB & firewire ports, a hidden fan controller, and folded edges. It has been established that this is a great case on paper, but now it's time to put it to the test.
• Creative Zen Touch Player review - Without any doubt, the Zen Touch audio-player from Creative is going to make a good buy for many users, but people with a small budget are unlikely to be interested. Of course, the high price of the device is due to the use of new hardware stuffing, but they could have reduced the cost by abandoning the exclusive software and switching to the OS's generic driver.
• Don't Believe Your BIOS: MSI's K8N Neo 2 Falsifies its Multipliers - Fairly interesting article, check it out.
• 3D Performance with Counter-Strike: Source Part 2 Mainstream Cards - First, Counter-Strike: Source will take advantage of the extra memory found in 256MB graphics cards. The 256MB X700 PRO swept all the 1600x1200 tests against the 128MB X700 XT with 4xAA enabled, and pulled ahead with 2xAA/16xAF turned on as well. Whether or not the game is playable at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and an X700 PRO 256MB is up to your personal taste, but certainly an argument can be made for cobble, where the X700 PRO delivered 56.8 frames per second. Some gamers will want to shoot for 60 frames per second or more in CS: Source, while others will be happy at just 30-40 fps. We've found that practically everyone has a different opinion on what a playable frame rate is. But if you can spare the extra cash on a 256MB card, definitely do it.

SOFTWARE...

• Far Cry HDR Guide - NVNews' forum member Ruined has put together a guide with instructions on how to enable HDR in the Far Cry 1.3 patch
• Hacking Windows XP: Speeding Disk Access - This excerpt from the ExtremeTech book, Hacking Windows XP, shows you how to use the Intel Application Accelerator and fine-tune page-file settings to give your Windows XP apps more zip.
• Microsoft to Ship Photo Story 3 for Free - On Wednesday, Microsoft will ship Photo Story 3 for Windows (review), the latest version of its amazing digital photo slideshow utility. However, this version of Photo Story differs from previous versions in many ways, adding a wide range of new functionality. Best of all, it will be made available free to all users of Windows XP.
• End of Support for AVG 6.0 - Grisoft announces the end of support for AVG version 6.0 effective on December 31, 2004 for technical reasons.
• OpenSSL 0.9.7e released - The OpenSSL project team has released OpenSSL 0.9.7e (changelog). This new OpenSSL version is a bugfix release and incorporates changes and bugfixes to the toolkit. The most significant changes are: 1)Fix race condition in CRL checking code 2)Fixes to PKCS#7 (S/MIME) code.
• YMPEG 2.2 - YMPEG is an award winning professional codec which can integrate itself with Windows and offers seamless encoding from your favorite application (VFW).
• Opera 7.60 Preview 2 - Update for those who need it, or just want to give it a try - download / changelog.
• MSN Messenger 6 - Windows X 7.2.137 Refresh - This package of MSN Messenger will install MSN Messenger with removed advertisment (code by vorte[x] and pHaez) and extra skins without any extra patcher after installation.
• SecureFX 2.2.8 (shw) - The SecureFX (download) lets you choose between SFTP or FTP over an encrypted SSH2™ connection for secure transfers, or standard FTP for non-secure transfers
• SecureCRT 4.1.9 (shw) - 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.
• PuTTY 0.56 Beta - PuTTY (download) is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.
• QuickTime 6.5.2  - Apple's multimedia software suite QuickTime has been updated to version 6.5.2. (download)
• ATI Radeon DNA-drivers 3.2.4.10 -  These are modified/hacked ATI Catalyst drivers, use them at your own risk. The drivers have been optimized with two things in mind, better Image Quality and more/stable frames per second when compared to the Beta Catalyst drivers from ATI.
• ForceWare 66.74 Win2000/XP WHQL (unofficial!) - There's a new ForceWare driver on the loose, this time they came from FDR France who on their term got them from manufacturer Medion. In it's current form these drivers have been Microsoft approved (WHQL certified). If you need to replace when your graphics card would not be supported the .inf file then you of course will loose that WHQL label. In related news, Station-Drivers has ForceWare v70.40 beta.