SECURITY...

• Virus warning hits Windows Media Player - Computer users have been warned to be on their guard when viewing images after the discovery of a vulnerability affecting the processing of PNG (Portable Network Graphic) files by popular applications including MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player. The issue affects applications including Windows Media Player 9.0 (when running on Windows 2000, XP Service Pack 1 and Server 2003), Windows Messenger version 5.0 (standalone version that can be installed on all supported operating systems), and MSN Messenger 6.1 and 6.2.
• F-Secure flaw opens door to intruders - The security hole in the antivirus library affects 18 products for desktops, servers and gateways, with the network products at "critical" risk, F-Secure said in a bulletin Thursday. By creating a specially crafted ARJ archive file, an intruder could use a buffer overflow to run arbitrary code on an unpatched machine, said Tony Magellanez, a systems engineer at F-Secure. Update details are here.
• TriCipher Ships Multipart Authentication System - TriCipher Inc., which was spun off from Japanese technology company Nippon Systems Development Inc. in Kansai, Japan, says its authentication technology uses a multipart credential. This works by placing part of the authentication credential on the user's computer, and the other part on the server on which authentication is desired.
• Hewlett-Packard throttles viruses between network and desktop -  Rather than offering yet another hunter for viruses, HP's new virus throttle software takes an unusual approach: It acts as border patrol and aims to contain attacks. Instead of relying on existing virus definitions, the software monitors network connection requests and detects "abnormal" activity that could indicate an attack.
• Windows more secure than Linux - Nash said that Vole compares very favourably with Linux on security. In the year-to-date Microsoft has fixed 15 vulnerabilities affecting Windows Server 2003. However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users have had to patch 34 vulnerabilities and SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 users have had to patch over 78 vulnerabilities.
• Proposed Norwegian law limits cross-media copies - The Norwegian government has proposed a new copright law regarding copying music. The proposed law would make it illegal to copy songs from CDs to a different medium such as an MP3 player. It would still be legal to duplicate a CD, as long as it's copied to the same medium.
• Lokitorrent website downed - Despite attempts to raise money to defend itself, it seems that web site Lokicurrent has lost. The website, here, has a notice on it from the Motion Picture Association of America, warning about breach of copyright. The notice says that the site has been permanently shut down by court order because it contributes to the illegal downloading of films.
• Philips developing tools to identify and block P2P video content - Researchers at Royal Philips Electronics are developing new "fingerprinting" technology that could automatically identify and block transmission of digital-video files, potentially handing movie studios a new weapon in its war on peer-to-peer networks.
• Hackers sued for tinkering with Xbox games - According to the complaint, Greiling and Glynn were webmasters of ninjahacker.net, an online forum dedicated to creating custom content and modifications for certain video games. Also included in the suit, filed January 21st in Illinois, are up to 100 anonymous users of the site, whose identities the company vowed to unmask.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Man constructs replica of Apollo guidance computer - CNET News has a fun story about John Poltorak, who spent his free time the last few years building a reconstruction of the guidance computer used in the Apollo space missions: "The AGC is a piece of computing history. It had a 1MHz processor, 1K of random-access memory and 12K of read-only memory. By contrast, typical desktop computers today have about 1,000 times the processor speed and about 500,000 times the RAM, and have dropped ROM for hard drives with millions of times the capacity."
• Falling in Love in Three Minutes or Less - It seems that the heart wants what the heart wants -- and it can figure it out fairly quickly, according to evolutionary psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania. Psychology has often viewed relationships as transactions where people select mates based on substantial qualities a mate has to offer, such as power and money. According to Kurzban, the data show that, when people meet face-to-face, things like smoking preferences and bank accounts don seem to loom large in intricate complexities of attraction.
• Man Arrested Over Valentine's Net Suicide Pact - An American man has been arrested after allegedly trying to arrange a mass online suicide pact for Valentine's Day on Monday. Gerald Krien, 26, was caught after one woman alerted authorities after hearing one of those planning to take part talking about killing her children. Krien, of Klamath Falls in Oregon, had apparently recruited more than 30 people to take part in the pact, which had been arranged through chatrooms. Police are now trying to trace some of those involved in an attempt to make sure they are safe.
• Chinese used diamonds to polish sapphire-rich stone in 2500 BC - Researchers have uncovered strong evidence that the ancient Chinese used diamonds to grind and polish ceremonial stone burial axes as long as 6,000 years ago -- and incredibly, did so with a level of skill difficult to achieve even with modern polishing techniques.
• Tom-Yung-Goong Trailer -  The trailer for Tony Jaa's (star of Ong Bak) new action film Tom-Yung-Goong is now online and ready for visual consumption
• Nuke Test - This is video of an underground nuclear bomb test

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft Delays CRM Update, Again - Microsoft's famously slippery ship dates are sliding once again when it comes to the company's long-delayed Microsoft CRM 2.0 update. Microsoft said this week it is expanding the software's feature set and delaying its release-to-manufacturing until the fourth quarter of 2005.
• Google Offers Assistance To Wikipedia - Google has offered to assist online encyclopedia Wikipedia, by providing some much needed storage and hosting services to the giant non-profit site.
• Cell phones get surround sound -  A new line of multimedia phones has hit the streets in Japan over the past few weeks that incorporates three-dimensional sound technology from British start-up Sonaptic. As yet, the content for it is slim--a fishing game, a handful of sound and video clips--but the technology promises a substantial advance for mobile-phone audio.
• Macromedia Flash On Nokia Mobiles - Nokia is to install a version of Macromedia Flash in its Series 60 mobile platform. The licencing agreement between the two companies will also stretch to other Nokia devices. Tools will be made available to allow developers to produce cell phone flash content with ease.
• First Linux-powered UMTS 3G mobile arrives - The world's first UMTS/Edge smartphone reference design based on the Linux operating system has been unveiled. Developed by a group of companies including Samsung Electronics and Infineon Technologies, the platform is designed to incorporate advanced 3G and multimedia services such as UMTS/Edge dual mode voice calls, video calls and video streaming. It also supports high performance multimedia applications (H.264, MPEG-4, AAC+, MP3), ultra-fast web browsing, stereo loudspeaker with 3D audio and Java-based 3D gaming.
• Sony Movie Unit to Issue Films for PSP Game System - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment said it will release "XXX," "Hellboy," "Resident Evil 2" and "One Upon A Time in Mexico" on April 19 in the Universal Media Disc or UMD format, with additional monthly releases in the future. The unit did not set a price for the movie discs. The small UMD holds 1.8 gigabytes of data, three times the capacity of a CD-ROM. It was designed as a vehicle for games and other media on the PSP.
• Nokia 7710 communicator now shipping - Announced as recently as in November 2004, Nokia has now started shipping the Series 90-based 7710 communicator device in Europe and Africa. Featuring tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz connectivity, the 7710 is Nokia's first touch screen-enabled smart device, and features handwriting recognition software similar to that found in numerous Windows Mobile handhelds.

HARDWARE... 

• Toshiba's 17" Satellite P35-S611 gaming notebook - Adding to its existing line-up of P35 gaming notebooks, Toshiba has introduced the Satellite P35-S611, designed as a desktop replacement with a 17" screen and powerful specifications. Joining the existing P35-S6111 and P35-S629 models, the P35-S611 comes with Windows XP Home as opposed to Windows XP Professional, and includes an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics card less powerful than that of the top model.
• Intel Quietly Adds New Chipsets into Lineup - Intel's i915PL and i915GL chipsets support dual-channel PC3200 (400MHz) memory only, instead of supporting both DDR and DDR2 which is a standard for the i915P and i915G chipsets, but still boast with support for LGA775 processors and PCI Express interconnection. In contrast to usual i915-series chipsets, the i915PL and i915GL support only 2GB of memory, not 4GB of RAM.
• AMD Readies New Opteron Processor for 1000MHz HT Bus - The forthcoming AMD Opteron processor 252 will be clocked at 2.60GHz, will incorporate dual-channel PC3200 memory controller, 1MB of cache and SSE3 technology, something that only Intel Corp.'s chips have sported so far. The upcoming Opteron chip will also sport 1000MHz HyperTransport bus, a speed boost over contemporary AMD Opteron products with 800MHz HT bus, according to CNET News.com web-site.
• DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb - The LANParty UT nF3 250Gb comes with 2 IDE ports and allows a total of 4 devices to be installed. The devices can be hard drives or optical drives, whichever you choose. Since SATA hard drives are becoming the norm, the LANParty UT nF3 250Gb offers 4 SATA ports for up to 4 SATA hard drives. The two located right below the CPU socket are controlled by the nForce3 250Gb chipset. The nForce3 250Gb controlled SATA ports allows RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, and JBOD.
• Sapphire Toxic Radeon X700 Pro and Hybrid Radeon X800 - AMDZone has posted a review of Sapphire Toxic Radeon X700 Pro and Hybrid Radeon X800
• Gainward PowerPack! 6800 - For Gainward, we have mix feelings. The certainly won't impress gamers who are looking for free packaged games with their graphics cards and they certainly won't impress HTPC users with DVD software that many manufacturers include, but modders are a possibility for them. If someone is looking for a red theme, Gainward has the answer.
• Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X800 XL - The Sapphire Radeon X800 XL is a great card. It offers very similar (and sometimes slightly better) performance than a 6800 GT at a price that is very similar. The Sapphire X800 XL (OEM version) can be found for as low as $380 according to our price search engine. A simply packaged 6800 GT PCIe card can be found for about the same. This is going to be a very interesting $350-420 battle over the coming months as PCIe gets more and more popular.
• Chaintech GeForce 6600 GT AGP - The only real drawback with the card was the heatsink not having any contact with the memory chips. This was by design and not accident. The memory chips were declocked 10% with the Chaintech card and I can't help but speculate that the cooling, or lack there of is why.
• NEC ND-3520A DVD Writer - The ND-3520A will write to DVD+/-R media at 16x, DVD+R Dual Layer discs at 4x, DVD+RW media at 8x and DVD-RW discs at 6x. The big news here is, of course, the performance boost in the RW space.
• Samsung CLP-550N Colour Laser Printer - PC Stats has posted a review on the Samsung CLP-550N Colour Laser Printer.
• Divx/dvd portable player Gold G40 - Digital Gamers posted a review of the Divx/dvd portable player Gold G40.
• Kodak EasyShare DX7590 - The 5 megapixel DX7590 replaced the 4 megapixel DX6490 as Kodak's second 10x ultra-zoom digicam. The DX7590 features a Schneider-Kreuznach lens capable of a 38 - 380mm zoom (35mm equivalent). It offers a wide range of still recording modes from full auto to manual exposure in addition to 14 preset scene modes and a movie mode with a maximum resolution of 640x480. Like all of Kodak's EasyShare cameras, the DX7590 has an intuitive menu and controls that lead to a hassle-free shooting experience.
• Apple iPod Shuffle - First the top-end daddy iPod with its big scroll wheel. Then the mid-market girly iPod Mini, which puts the buttons into the scroll wheel. They can hold about 120 or 240 songs encoded at 128Kbps; I managed 220 on a 1GB stick with songs encoded at 160Kbps, still more than enough to get lost in music.
• New MSN Direct Services Found In A Fossil - It's been possible to read the time from your wrist for many decades. But the ability to get news and weather information off your wrist has only been around for a couple of years. We take a look at the latest Smartwatch from Fossil to see what it can do now, and learn what else may be possible in the future.

GUIDES... 

• Blu-ray Disc technology editorial - The fact is that blue-ray technologies and high def won't be meaningful until 2006 and won't be mainstream until 2007. But that timespan isn't deterring the two camps because there will be huge amounts of money involved in licensing fees from the people who decide to produce players, drives, recorders, content and recordable media.
• How Motherboards Are Made: A Gigabyte Factory Tour - As PCSTATS recent trip to Gigabyte's Nan-Ping factory in Taiwan showed us last summer during Computex 2004, there's a lot more to it
• 32 Cards in Doom 3 tested - Version 0.2 - The article is now updated to version 0.2 and it includes more pages and a final conclusion as requested. 19 cards are AGP based and 13 cards are PCI-Express
• Browser speed comparisons - There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs.
• Windows XP Tweaking Companion - The Windows XP Tweaking Companion (XPTC) is the complete Windows XP and system optimization guide. No longer do you have to put up with so-called XP Tweak Guides which have a handful of Registry tweaks and some vague optimization advice - the XPTC brings an enormous range of detailed descriptions and resources together in one free 170 page downloadable PDF file.

SOFTWARE...

• Apache 2.0.53 -  Apache 2.0 (download / changelog) offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase.
• WinSCP 3.7.4 - WinSCP (download) is an open source freeware SFTP client for Windows using SSH. Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer.
• VNCScan 2005.2.10 - VNCScan allows you to remotely control and manage your workstations and servers. VNCScan is the legendary front end to VNC.
• SpoofStick for Firefox 1.05 - SpoofStick is a simple browser extension that helps users detect spoofed (fake) websites. A spoofed website is typically made to look like a well known, branded site (like ebay.com or citibank.com) with a slightly different or confusing URL.
• Winamp Cover Notifier Alpha 1 - Winamp Cover Notifier is an alert that will show a CDs cover and music name everytime Winamp starts a new song. If no picture is found, a default picture will be shown. The alert will be shown next to the Windows clock
• HyperSnap-DX 5.62.04 (shw) - HyperSnap-DX 5 is a screen capture and image editing tool for MS Windows. It captures screens from standard desktop programs and even those hard-to-grab DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx Voodoo and Glide mode games
• ZoneAlarm Free 5.5.062.011 - ZoneAlarm includes five interlocking security services that deliver easy-to-use, comprehensive protection.
• CPU-Z 1.27 - CPU-Z is a diagnostic tool that provides information on your CPU, including: processor name and vendor, core stepping and process, processor package, internal and external clocks, clock multiplier, partial overclock detection, processor features, supported instructions sets, L1 and L2 cache information, location, size, speed, and technology.