SECURITY...

• Microsoft revamps security hole approach - Microsoft has a new security service that will provide an immediate response when researchers publicise unpatched vulnerabilities. The pilot programme run by the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC) and called simply Microsoft Security Advisories, complements the monthly scheduled Security Bulletins ordinarily accompanied by patches.
• QuickTime PictureViewer GIF Images DoS Vulnerability (Depth) -  QuickTime player contains a module PictureViewer to view still images". PictureViewer for Windows suffers from a vulnerability that allows an attacker to crash the program when opening a specially crafted GIF file.
• Security Fears Over Google Accelerator - Google Web Accelerator is currently in beta and automatically stores and updates the content of pages accessed through it. However, ZDNet reports at least one user having problems as he suddenly discovered he was logged in as someone else - a problem replicated here. The searchenginejournal.com is offering some free code to companies who want to block Google's Web Accelerator traffic from accessing their web site here.
• Key-loggers the new phisherman's friend - Phishing attacks are increasingly using key-loggers as another method to steal personal information, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). These attacks usually redirect users to a bogus website and record details once they are entered. But the past six months has seen a tenfold rise in the number of phishing sites hosting key-logging software which can be transferred to a user's PC via an improperly patched browser.
• Spammers launch Tony Blair Trojan - UK computer users are being warned of a malicious email purporting to be about Tony Blair. The emails were spammed out last night with the subject line: 'BBC: Tony Blair email account hacked!'. If users click on the link a series of Trojan programs are downloaded that monitor key strokes and could allow a hacker to take remote control.
• Jail for "Robin Hoods" who cost Microsoft millions - Four Britons have been jailed for being part of a global gang described as "Robin Hoods" who stole expensive software from rich companies and gave it away for free over the internet. The group, described by prosecutors as 'sad individuals' who spent their lives in front of computers, were said to have cost firms such as Microsoft Corp. millions of dollars in profit and enraged its chairman, Bill Gates. Prosecutors told London's Old Bailey criminal court that the four men, motivated by a hatred of software companies, were the key players in an international ring called DrinkorDie.com, said to be one of the world's most sophisticated Web piracy groups.The gang allowed internet surfers to download new software for free, often before it came on the market, including the Windows 95 operating system two weeks before it was released.
• Court says 'No' to digital TV 'copy flag' - A federal appeals court on Friday struck down an antipiracy rules requiring computer and television makers to use new built-in technology that would make it difficult for consumers to copy and distribute digital programs.
• Hackers figure out file extraction from Sony UMD - Software developers have figured out how to extract files from the Universal Media Discs used in Sony Corp.'s new PlayStation Portable handheld video game device, though there is no way to play the games extracted from those discs. Some details of the exploit were posted Wednesday night on the Web site PS2nfo.com, along with lists showing all the files pulled off the game discs for "Ridge Racers," "Wipeout Pure" and "Vampire Chronicles." Another story can be found here.

OFFTOPIC...

• Bold thieves build complete ATM - Audacious thieves in Romania have constructed a complete automated teller machine (ATM), minus the cash box, to steal the details of account holders, banking officials said. Fake ATMs have appeared at apartment buildings or in areas of the capital where there are no banks, local papers reported.
• Vacuum elevator gives users a gentle lift - A one-person vacuum elevator that slots into buildings with a minimum of fuss has gone on sale in the US. The tube-shaped transporter carries a person upwards at a steady speed of 15 centimetres per second using turbines to suck air out of a pressurised chamber above the passenger capsule. The capsule is lowered when the pressure in the upper section is returned to normal.
• Gore to receive Internet lifetime achievement award - Al Gore may have been lampooned for taking credit in the Internet's development, but organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements don't find it funny at all. Gore, who boasted in a CNN interview he "took the initiative in creating the Internet," was only 21 when the Internet was born out of a Pentagon project. But after joining Congress eight years later, he promoted high-speed telecommunications for economic growth and supported funding increases for the then-fledging network, according to the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which presents the annual award
• Central Park Media Offers PSP Downloads - Starting today, the trailers include both recent CPM releases such as Munto, Cat Soup, Shadow Star Narutaru as well as classic anime titles such as Dominion Tank Police and Patlabor. Ranging from the family oriented Doggy Poo to the ultraviolent Ichi The Killer: Episode Zero, CPM's trailers will demonstrate the amazing variety of animation art which is the hallmark of Japanese anime. Trailers will rotate on a regular basis.
• The Dukes of Hazzard trailer - See Jessica Simpson, Johnny Knoxville, and Seann William Scott in the trailer debut for 'The Dukes of Hazzard."

TECHNOLOGY...

• Yahoo developing an audio search engine - The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company plans to introduce the music search engine within the next couple of months, according to a source familiar with the service. The specialty engine will let people search on an artist's name, for example, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music.
• Yahoo! video search is fully operational - Yahoo! has launched its eagerly awaited its video search service, which will allow viewers to search news clips, music videos and movie trailers from sources such as CBSNews.com, MTV.com and IFILM.com. The yahoo video search, which was released as a test site last December, is now available as a fully operational site at http://video.search.yahoo.com.
• AOL Builds Browser into AIM - America Online Inc. is bundling its own Web browser into the newest versions of AOL Instant Messenger in an effort that is likely to expose a wider swath of users to the browsing features it has built atop Internet Explorer.
• Red Hat/Apache Slower Than Windows Server 2003? - In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing.

HARDWARE... 

• NVIDIA to Fix “Dual Display Issue” with Upcoming GPUs - Those of you with NVIDIA's SLI configuration and dual monitors know that both monitors must run from a single card in order to operate. If dual monitors are enabled, two cards operating as one takes control of the single screen, which leaves the other monitor ineffective.  A source close to NVIDIA recently confirmed that the dual display issue will be corrected with NVIDIA's upcoming line of GPUs that are expected to debut at Computex in early June.
• AMD Next Gen. Socket M2 & S1 Revealed! - AMD's next generation of processors will be based on the Socket M2, like the current Socket 939 it will be based on the PGA package, but the pin counts will increase to 940. The S1 socket, engineered for the mobile platforms for the next generation, will have a pin drop from 754pins to 638pins.
• Alienware Unleashes Star Wars PC - Star Wars-series computers are based on up to AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 processors as well as NVIDIA nForce4 SLI core-logic. Users may choose to equip their computers with up to two NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra graphics cards for enhanced performance in modern games. Systems' price starts at $1499 for a mainstream configuration.
• ASUS M5A Notebook - This review is about the ASUS M5A model that has all the typical traits of a small-size notebook like small dimensions and weight, portability, compactness, but is not technically impaired as it is based on the new platform. Yes, ASUS based the M5A on the second-generation Centrino technology thus increasing its performance in contrast to its analogs on the older platform.
• Processors for common people Part 2: Intel LGA775 Platform - Celeron is no good for complex professional packages anyway (though Photoshop was a pleasant surprise), the same concerns games, at least if you expect high performance. However, there are still a couple of applications, where these processors are very good - MP3 and DivX/XviD encoding. In other respects, it's a regular low-end, nothing special.
• Asus K8N4-E Deluxe Motherboard - Based around the nForce4 chipset, this motherboard supports Socket 754 AMD Athlon64 or Sempron processors. It's memory slots will accommodate up to 3GB of single channel DDR memory. Graphics come courtesy of a standard PCI Express x16 slot, which is the key selling point as far as we're concerned.
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT Round-Up - Asus provided the fastest card overall, although it didn't seem to be clocked any faster than the competition. We can guess that Asus has somehow overclocked its card but tweaked things so that the card reports standard clocks, essentially delivering overclocking but under warranty. But in the end the winner of this group test is MSI, as the NX6600GT-TD128E is the cheapest card on test. It performed just as well as any of the other cards in the 3D benchmarks and comes with a very good accessory and software bundle.
• Budget GPU Comparison: TurboCache vs HyperMemory - Without going into too much detail here, both HyperMemory and TurboCache technologies attempt to do the same thing. Using the north bridge of the core logic chipset that usually controls the memory (except for the case of AMD's Athlon 64 processors), ATI's X300 SE HyperMemory GPU can directly address system memory for frame buffer usage, just as the TurboCache technology allows the 6200 TC cards to do the same.
• PNY Verto GeForce 6600 GT 128MB AGP - The underlying technology is good enough to state that you cannot buy a bad GeForce 6600 GT card. It's best-suited for playing games at 1280x1024 with a modicum of image enhancement. That fits in perfectly with the kind of customer it's aimed at, who'll most likely be using a 17" TFT or 19" CRT that both tend to run natively at that resolution. PNY's effort, by dint of its bundle and warranty, is a pretty good choice for those who have <L150 to spend on a graphics card right now, although the addition of a custom, quieter fan and dual-DVI would be on the top of my wish list for PNY's engineers, however. A solid card based on sound tech.
• Heatsink Comparison - By comparison Gigabyte's G-Power is a wonder; reasonably sized and not too heavy, it has the best performance, is the easiest to install and comes with is the only heatsink of the three which is supplied with a re-usable tube of thermal paste. Far and away the best heatsink on test here today.
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy4 Pro Sound Card: Nothing New? - Creative Labs replaced the converters with better quality ones and pushed the product into the market. Therefore, the actual hardware of the sound card got only a few small changes. It would be fun if next time Creative launches not the fifth version but maybe the tenth right away, why wait? Maybe the next offspring will be designed for PCI Express, but I am not quite sure about it yet, because in this case they will have to completely modify the CA-102-ICT, which implies additional financial investments in RND.
• Hitachi SATA II - 250 Gig Hard Drive -  As with SATA 150 we are not seeing the full speeds as per the specifications. However if you are building a new computer it makes sense to go with a SATA 300 drive. Provided your motherboard supports it of course. Currently the Hitachi cost the same as most SATA 150 7200 RPM equivalents or even less and it's faster.
• External Storage round-up - At the end of our testing we couldn't help but be impressed with each drive in a different way from the others. The Maxtor won us on looks, durability and its best-in-class performance, while the Seagate 100GB took our hearts for its size, and finally the 400GB Seagate unit did us in for its sheer capacity and lower price.
• Corsair USB2.0 Flash Voyager 512MB - Overall, the 512MB Flash Drive is a solid in what it does. With a slew of sizes to choose from (128MB - 2GB, it also provides shock protection, water resistance, password protection and bootability at an affordable price.
• LG Flatron L1750H 17in TFT monitor - That said, the L1750H is not really designed for high-end colour critical applications - you'd have to pay far more than the L1750H's current L203.16 price tag for one of those - yet for gaming and day-to-day use overall image quality is acceptable.

GUIDES... 

• Install and Upgrade to Windows Server 2003 R2 - This article describes how to install and upgrade from earlier versions of Windows Server to Windows 2003 R2. Includes information about installing Server 2003 from the product CDs, a shared network resource, and using unattended setup.
• Voice for the Masses - Voice Over IP technologies, on the other hand, have come a long way in the last decade, and they have finally reached the level of integration and performance that turns them into a viable alternative to traditional phone calls. They still require the use of a computer, which may well be a household item, but that still has many older generations terrified with its blue screens of death and incomprehensible jargon.

SOFTWARE...

• SQL 2000 Service Pack 4 - SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) (download) adds platform support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition, allowing 32-bit SQL Server 2000 applications to run on 64-bit platforms using the Windows on Windows emulator (WOW64). SP4 addresses specific issues discovered in SQL Server 2000 since its ship date. SP4 is also the first service pack to service the 64-bit edition of SQL Server.
• MDAC Utility: Component Checker updated - The new tool includes updated snapshots for MDAC 2.7 SP1 on Windows XP SP1 and MDAC 2.8 SP2 on Windows Server 2003 SP1
• MSN Messenger for Windows 7.0.0813 - MSN Messenger lets you see when your friends are online and exchange instant messages with them.
• Google Web Accelerator 0.1.52.58 Beta - Google Web Accelerator employs a number of different methods to speed up Web browsing, including caching frequently looked at pages to make them more accessible. Google will only refresh a Web page when it has been updated, saving the user from reloading content when unnecessary
• FlashFXP 3.2 (shw) - FlashFXP (download) is the most powerful and popular FTP & FXP Client for Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP on the market today
• WhereIsIt? 3.67 - WhereIsIt (download) is an application written for 32-bit Windows operating systems, designed to help you maintain and organize a catalog of your computer media collection, including CD-ROMs, audio CDs, diskettes, removable drives, hard drives, network drives, DVDs, or any other media that Windows can access as a drive
• Opera 8.01 Technical Preview 1 - Opera Software has released the first Preview release of Opera 8.01. Word is: "Unfortunately, a number of users have been experiencing frequest crashes when clicking links on certain pages since installing Opera 8.0 Final. This build contains a fix for these crashes. Your feedback about the stability of this release compared to Opera 8.0 Final is greatly appreciated."
• xp-AntiSpy 3.94-1 - The xp-AntiSpy (download) is a little utility that lets you disable some built-in update and authentication 'features' in WindowsXP.
• RivaTuner 2.0 RC 15.5  -  The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of the Detonator drivers. All versions of the Detonator drivers have a lot of undocumented registry entries. Some of them don't affect anything, but there are some that are very useful.
• DNA-Force 1.4.7644 (ForceWare) - These are modified NVIDIA ForceWare drivers for Windows 2000 & XP. Modified drivers simply means that the author takes official or beta drivers from the manufacturer and starts to tweak them for either better image quality and or performance. Please bare in mind that the driver manufacturer, in this case NVIDIA, does not support drivers like these.