SECURITY...

• Asian Trojans attacking U.K., agency warns - Three hundred key U.K. business and government organizations have been threatened by a wave of data-stealing cyberattacks coming from Asia, the British government has warned. According to the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre, hackers in East Asia have developed Trojan horse programs that attempt to steal information from certain parts of the critical national infrastructure, which includes not only government agencies but businesses in the finance, transportation and telecommunications sectors.
• Adobe releases patches for Acrobat and Reader - Adobe Systems on Wednesday rolled out patches for security vulnerabilities found in Adobe Reader 7.0 and 7.0.1, and in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and 7.0.1.  The hole in the products, referred to as an XML External Entity vulnerability, under certain circumstances allows XML scripts to be used to discover a user's local files.
• Browser Flaws Spoil Opera Tune - Alternative Web browser company Opera Software on Thursday pushed out a new version of its flagship browser to fix several cross-site scripting vulnerabilities discovered by private security researchers.
• Java flaws open door to hackers - Sun Microsystems has fixed a pair of security bugs in Java that could be exploited by attackers to take over computers running Windows, Linux and Solaris. The flaws are "highly critical," security monitoring company Secunia said in an advisory posted Tuesday. Flaws that get that ranking--one notch below Secunia's most severe "extremely critical" rating--are typically remotely exploitable and can lead to full system compromise.
• Spyware Floods In Through BitTorrent - According to Chris Boyd, a renowned security researcher who runs the VitalSecurity.org nonprofit resource center, the warm and fuzzy world of BitTorrent has been invaded by a massive software distribution campaign linked to New York-based adware purveyor Direct Revenue LLC.
• AOL Most Infected Web Network, company states - Prolexic, a provider of security consulting products, has claimed that Deutsche Telecom, Wanadoo and AOL are Europe's top three internet providers for harboring infected PCs.
• Microsoft sues U.S. stores over pirated software - Microsoft Corp sued four small software retailers in California and Virginia on Wednesday for selling pirated software.
• U.S. Delays Biometric Passport Requirements - The U.S. is delaying by up to a year a deadline for 27 countries covered by its visa waiver program to begin issuing passports with biometric identification information, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said this week. The country had been planning to require biometric passports issued from October 26 for admission into the U.S. under the visa waiver program. The deadline wouldn't have affected existing and valid passports issued before the date, says Michael Boyle, a spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

OFFTOPIC...

• The X-Men 3 Teaser Poster!  - Here's the official teaser poster for X-Men 3, opening in theaters May 26, 2006! The third installment, to be directed by Brett Ratner, will start filming in Vancouver this August.
• New Fantastic Four trailer - 20th Century Fox has launched the new Fantastic Four online at Apple! The Tim Story-directed adaptation opens in theaters on Friday, July 8th
• Deal struck to develop "Son-of-Concorde" - A deal to develop a new supersonic commercial jet to succeed the now retired Concorde has been signed by Japan and France. The jet will be capable of carrying 300 passengers from New York to Tokyo in just six hours, and could be in operation as soon as 2015.

TECHNOLOGY...

• PSP Launching September 1st In Europe - Sony today confirmed that the Playstation Portable will launch September 1st in Europe, at a cost of EURO 249 (L179). The PlayStation Portable Value Pack contains an added-value package of accessories and entertainment content, including the PSP system with a protective pouch, 32MB Memory Stick Duo, Battery Pack, Headphones with Remote Control, AC Adaptor, Wrist Strap and a video/music/game sampler Universal Media DiscTM (UMDTM) including several non-interactive game demos. A copy of Spider-Man 2, on UMD Video will be available free of charge to early purchasers of PSP, who register their PlayStation Portable and order their Spider-Man 2 UMD Video through www.yourpsp.com.
• Firefox creeps closer to Microsoft's IE - The popular product now accounts for 8% of the global market; up from 7.38% in April, after clocking up consistent gains during May.
• Yahoo Launches Search For Subscription - The new service available through Yahoo's general search page lets people choose the subscription service they want to scour for information. The content provider, however, must be a partner of Yahoo's in order for the search engine to have full access to the site. Subscription services typically don't allow others to search their sites, or provide only a tidbit of information to a search engine.
• Samsung Introduces 'Bluetooth Voice Recognition Phone' - Samsung Electronics announced that it has released the Bluetooth Voice Recognition Phone (Model: SGH-E620) into the European market, which can make calls using one's voice via a bluetooth headset.

HARDWARE... 

• Acer TravelMate 4401LMi Turion 64 based laptop - The TravelMate is relatively large and weighs in at 2.84kg, so it's no ultra-portable. The main reason for this is because it's carrying a very large 15in display.
• AMD Athlon X2 4800+ CPU - At the end of the day it's easy to see AMD as the clear, overall leader of the pack when it comes to having the ultimate desktop CPU - their chip hauls ass, runs cool and is priced very competitively to Intel. One of the biggest challenges as a reviewer is quantifying in words the difference running a dual-core CPU can make in ones overall computing experience.
• Intel Pentium D 820 2.8 GHz Dual Core CPU - The dual core Pentium D 820 processor (well actually the whole system) pulls in an idle load of 148 watts and 233 watts at a full load in the CineBench 2003 rendering test. This is significantly less than the Pentium 840 XE processor at 291 watts, but it is still higher than the 660 processor which is single core and pulls 207 watts at full load.
• Corsair XMS XPERT PC3200 Memory - Installation for this ram was like any other, with the notable exception of actually placing the LED's on the ram. What exactly is the purpose of all of those LED's on that display anyway? Well in short Corsair has a hardware controller on the RAM which collects data and then displays it. This doesn't affect the speed of the ram at all as it is independent which is why the DIMMs are so much taller than regular sticks of DDR ram. This controller collects the data and then displays it across the 10 digit alphanumeric display.
• Corsair XMS TWINX1024-4400C25PT Dual Channel DDR Memory - If you want to get to 600DDR speeds with tight timings, TCCD chips are your only choice. If you want some of the best-implemented TCCD sticks made (and soon to be the only ones made), then Corsair is the deal.
• Mushkin Redline Memory - Mushkin's XP4000 redline memory is rated to run at 3.3-3.5 Volts, which is above the redline on many boards. To be honest only DFI's DFI LanParty UT NForce4 Ultra-D, DFI LanParty UT NForce4 SLI-DR, and DFI LanParty NForce4 SLI-DR offer the voltages needed to operate correctly.
• MSI RS480M2-IL Motherboard  - This motherboard supports any Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX processor on the market and can be stuffed with up to 4GB of unbuffered non-ECC PC3200 DDR RAM. Onboard goodies include the aforementioned integrated videocard, 10/100 LAN, 5.1 channel audio and IEEE 1394.
• Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe and Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE Motherboards - Fanless design is a real plus point in our opinion and I personally look for as low a noise threshold as possible when building PC's so the P5ND2-SLI would fit the bill nicely. Despite the silent cooling the board performed to a very high standard and overclocked extremely well, opening the door to the performance fanatics amongst you. Memory performance was another real stand out result and should you pair the P5ND2-SLI with some of Corsairs finest you really will have one of the fastest performing boards money can buy.
• ATI's All-in-Wonder X800 XT Video Card - When ATI first released the All-in-Wonder X800 XT, the card sold for around $500. Since then, prices have dropped dramatically. The AIW X800 XT is now widely available for less than $400, with at least one reliable online retailer selling the card for $325 after a $50 mail-in rebate. Contrast that with the price of the standard Radeon X800 XT, which sells for about $400 and up, and the All-in-Wonder looks like a phenomenal deal considering its multimedia extras and bundled Remote Wonder II.
• BFG PCI-E 6800 GT OC 256MB Video Card - Looking past the temperature problems, this is still a fantastic card. It screams through all the current games at 1280 * 1024, max details, with ease. Currently, the only Nvidia card faster than this one is the 6800 Ultra. Not for long though, as the 7800 GTX is supposed to be released within weeks. Chances are, when the new series is released, then this card, and other 6800 GT/Ultra's should go down in price.
• VisionTek XTASY Theater Pro 550 PVR card - To sum it all up if you are in the market for a new PVR card I would Highly suggest the VisionTek Theater Pro 550. The excellent image quality combined with a great software bundle make this package an incredible deal. There are two things that could have been included in the package that would have made for one of the absolute best packages on the market. One is a DVD decoder to use in a program such as BeyondTV or Media Center to be able to view Live TV. And second would be a remote control of some sort.
• NEC ND-3540A DVD Burner - The NEC ND-3540A uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity) to write DVD+R9 DL at 8x. Three zones are used to write DVD+R Double Layer discs at 8x. The average speed is 6.54x and total writing time is 18:31 minutes.
• Crucial 12-in-1 Flash Reader and 1GB Secure Digital Card - Crucial's 1GB Secure Digital card is not much different from the many products out there. Most Secure Digital cards are rated to have up to 6-8 MB/s read speeds and 3-5 MB/s write speeds. Any faster would mean spending more money. For regular uses, such as traveling, the 1GB should suffice.
• Keeping the Power On: Ultra's 1000VA UPS - In battery mode or when charging the unit does get quite warm, though not hot enough to burn. It also hums slightly when in battery mode-when operating off wall power, its silent. Overall, the unit worked very well. There were no interruptions in the supply of juice from the UPS to the computer, even during real power failures. As far as some of the other features, there are some changes I'd like to see. The software, in particular, could use some fine-tuning.
• Logitech MX1000 Wireless Laser Mouse -  If you are upgrading from a non MX series mouse, this is the mouse you should get. If you currently have an MX700, it is up to you to decide if it is worth it to have a bit better tracking and a slightly different feel.
• Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse - One of the unique things about the V500 is its scroll panel, and this is the very first mouse to actually use this concept. Throughout our testing, we are nothing but impressed with Logitech's new idea. It worked perfectly, and it's actually better than a scroll wheel in many instances. It looks like the era of scroll wheels is short-lived if Logitech applies the same design to its desktop equivalent products.
• Logitech Z-2300 2.1 Speakers - If you're in the market for a superior 2.1 speaker system, do NOT pass these up. The Logitech Z-2300 is a great system for those who may not have a lot of room for 5.1 or 7.1 setups. They're also perfect for those who don't want to spend $300-400 on speakers.
• Steel Sound 5H Professional Gaming Headset - Some gamers may actually prefer to go with 5.1 style headphones, which do a better job at simulating surround sound but it is hard to complain at the 5H. The fact that it has a microphone built in and that is can be broken down into three pieces are both superb features that give it a major leg-up over any competitor.
• OKI C5510MFP colour led printer - The C5510MFP is a C5000 colour LED printer with a 600dpi flat-bed scanner on top. Nearly all control comes from the scanner section, which sports a two-line, sixteen character, back-lit LCD display, colour and mono copy buttons and a number of preset enlargements and reductions for copying.
• HP PSC 2175 All-in-One & ScanJet 5500c - The HP PSC 2175 All-in-One Printer can now be purchased for $95 US directly from Computer Geeks, making it quite the bargain. This product weighs just 3.5kgs and acts as a color printer, scanner and copier all in one. However, the PSC 2175 does have a few minor flaws, for example it does not feature the ability to fax. There is also no LCD monitor to preview images from the flash memory cards.
• ASUS WL-500G Deluxe Wireless Router - The router isn't blameless, though. Its performance as of a file server is low, and the structure of the control software is not quite logical. They might also have enclosed a color rather than black-and-white web-cam! But anyway, the ASUS WL-500G Deluxe is worth every cent of its current price which is about $110. For us, it lacks one feature only - an ADSL modem.

GUIDES...

• Hackers Run Unauthorized Programs on PSP - It appears that the folks over at PSP-DEV have created a swap trick for your PSP 1.50 to play your homebrew applications. It requires two memory cards, which are switched while the PSP is working. (the trick will only work on 1.50 - not 1.51+.)
• How to enable and disable Microsoft Update - The Microsoft Update Web site provides updates for Microsoft operating systems and programs. Microsoft Update is an optional service that you can use to update both Microsoft Windows operating systems and other Microsoft products. In contrast, when you use Microsoft Windows Update, you access only updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems. This article discusses how to enable Microsoft Update. This article also discusses how to disable Microsoft Update and return to using Windows Update.
• Battlefield 2: You won't need a new PC - You can play this game on a fairly low end system, however it will look far better on a more powerful PC. We first tested the game with a Gigabyte GeForce 5700LE graphics card on an Abit IS7-V2 mainboard with a 2.1GHz Pentium 4 and 1GB of memory running at a non-standard 133MHz bus speed. This is close to the minimum required system specifications for Battlefield 2. At low resolutions (1024x768), with most of the DirectX 9 effects turned off, the game ran well. However, with these settings, the graphical glory was sadly diminished.

SOFTWARE...

• Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for Windows XP - The Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer is a free “PowerToy” for Microsoft Windows XP that provides the ability to view, organize, and print photos captured in RAW image formats from supported digital cameras.
• Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (KB890830) - This tool checks your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps to remove the infection if it is found. Microsoft will release an updated version of this tool on the second Tuesday of each month
• Privacy Inspector version 1.70 - Privacy Inspector cleans up your tracks left by Windows, your browser, and many other programs.
• VisualRoute 9.3d - VisualRoute (download) delivers the functionality of key Internet "ping," "whois," and "traceroute" tools, in a high-speed visually integrated package. VisualRoute automatically analyzes Internet connectivity and performance problems, displaying the results in an easy to understand table and on a world map.
• WinDVD Platinum 7.0 - WinDVD Platinum 7 (download) is the ultimate DVD software player, providing you with the finest quality video and audio playback
• Fraps 2.6.0 - Fraps (download) is designed as a generic tool for DirectX and OpenGL games. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as: Benchmarking Software, Screen Capture Software and Realtime Video Capture Software.
• Winamp 5.093 - Nullsoft Winamp (download full / lite) is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. Winamp supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI, etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV), custom appearances called skins (supporting both classic Winamp 1.x/2.x skins and Winamp 3 freeform skins), audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins (including two industry dominating visualization plug-ins), an advanced media library, Internet radio and TV support, CD ripping, and CD burning
• PowerArchiver 2004 9.25.02 (shw) - PowerArchiver (download) is an award-winning archive utility for the Windows® family of products that provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools though an easy to use interface that seamlessly integrates with Windows Explorer.
• DivX 6 - DivX (release notes / download play bundle / create bundle) is a package that includes all the DivX codec, player, utilities, and documentation that you need to play DivX files. DivX codec is based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. This codec can reduce an MPEG-2 video (DVD format) to ten percent of its original size. DivX is a digital video compression technology based on the ISO MPEG-4 standard.
• Opera 8.01 - Alternative Web browser company Opera Software on Thursday pushed out a new version of its flagship browser to fix several cross-site scripting vulnerabilities discovered by private security researchers.
• Adobe Reader for Windows 2000/XP 7.0.2 - Adobe Reader is free software that enables business professionals and home users to reliably share information using intelligent PDF files. You can easily view, print, and search PDF files using a variety of platforms and devices.
• [!] ForceWare 72.14 Media Center WHQL -  This is ForceWare 72.14 for Windows 2000/XP (direct link - NVIDIA FTP / release notes) which has been WHQL certified (Microsoft tested and approved). The WHQL stamp is only for GeForce 6 series GPUs as the release highlights state, we're not 100% sure about the FX series. These drivers are intended for (as release notes state) Windows XP Media Center Edition. They should work just fine on XP though. The driver includes a handy setup.exe. The build date of the drivers is May the 16th 2005.
• ForceWare 77.40 Windows XP 64-bit - This is the fifth set of drivers that have been made available for WindowsXP x64 Professional. These drivers were built on the 19th of May.The drivers are not WHQL signed.
• NGO ATI Optimized Driver v1.5.6 (2.6) - The NGO ATI Optimized Driver (based on ATI Catalyst 5.6) is a tweaked version of the ATI Catalyst driver. The main purpose is to satisfy the users with a better performance and better image quality.The Driver has support for all Radeon cards
• AC'97 Audio CODECs - Realtek has released a new audio package. It is version A3.73 released on 06/02/2005.