Early Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:23 PM CET - Jan,19 2002
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- Terrorist PCs cracked! - The default encryption standards on
exported versions of Windows 2000 may have revealed confidential details about
the movements of the al-Qaeda network. Two computers bought by Wall Street Journal
reporters from looters in Kabul after it was captured by the Northern Alliance turned out
to have been lifted from al-Qaeda headquarters and still contained documents relating to
the terrorist group's activities. Of the thousands of files stored on the machines some of
the more interesting documents, including a number that may relate to 'Shoe Bomber'
Richard Reid, were encrypted using Windows 2000's standard 40-bit DES Encrypting File
System. Using a cluster of computers, the Wall Street Journal managed to crack the
40-bit encryption keys. But this took five days as the computers had to cycle through over
a trillion different keys.
- Intel to create new mobile chips - Intel will launch a line of new chips
for mobile PCs that includes a low-cost Celeron running at more that 1GHz.
- Will we move back to dial-up? - A new study says average broadband prices are
rising and will encourage consumers to keep their slower dial-up connections instead
of switching. Cable broadband access prices rose on average 12 percent, from
$39.40 a month in January to $44.22 in December, while digital subscriber line (DSL)
service went up 10 percent from $47.18 to $51.67, according to ARS, a La Jolla,
Calif.-based marketing research firm.
- Arrest Thwarts Hacker Kimble's Threatened Suicide - Just days
before he claimed he would commit suicide, self-proclaimed millionaire hacker Kim Schmitz
was arrested by
police in Thailand yesterday, according to German media reports.
- Boffins develop exploding mobile phone - All the recent hype
surrounding stolen mobile phones could be solved with a 007-style self-destruct chip which
would immobilise a mobile phone at the behest of its rightful owner, according to US
scientists. Researchers at the University of California San Diego, say that they have
developed a porous silicon chip, treated with gadolinium nitrate, that could explode the
moment it got a signal to do so, rendering the device useless.
- GURU3D is back - Guru3D.com is back on-line!
- 3DMark2001 SE Announced - 3DMark2001 Second Edition will
feature support for DirectX 8.1,
fully compatible with WinXP, a new DirectX 8.1 feature test, utilizing Pixel Shader 1.4,
Updated "System Info" which can display additional system configuration info,
including installed hard drives and AGP settings, optimized usage of compressed textures,
support for the latest AMD and Intel processors and all reported compatibility issues
fixed.
- Homemade Watercooling - Hexus has posted a howto about building
your own watercooling kit.
- Top Six FAQs on Win2K Disk Performance - O'Reilly Network has
posted the top six FAQs on Windows 2000 disk performance.
- Aquanox Benchmarks - The following benchmarks show how
current video cards perform in the actual retail version of the game (v1.17).
- Pentium 4, Over 3 GHz - Our thanks go to a large PC vendor, who
was able to give us a hand-picked processor that is particularly suited to air-cooled
overclocking. The fact is, the majority of existing, available Pentium 4/2200 CPUs with
the Northwood core do not run stably at the extreme clock speeds higher than 3000 MHz, no
matter what tricks you use.
- AMD DDR Motherboards Shootout - Overclockers.co.nz has posted
very useful AMD DDR motherboards shootout from Abit, Asus, Epox, Iwill, and
Soltek.
- DVI Explained & Improving GeForce2/3 Image Quality -
Anandtech has posted an article about the Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and how it is
shaping up to eliminate these transmission problems when it comes to PC monitors. We'll
also be talking about DVI implementations in currently available video cards, as well as
how to improve your present-day analog video output if it's not so hot.
- Nomad 3 Preview - Firstly, the Nomad 3 comes standard with a
20GB hard drive. Larger capacities might roll out later in the year, but 20GB should be
more than fit the bill for most users. You know how long it would take to transfer 20GB
through USB? Too damn long. And yes, the Nomad 3 has a USB port. More at gear.ign.
- Gainward Ti/500 XP GeForce3 - First off, consider that you have
a cherry picked, bin sorted GeForce3 core to work with. It comes at a standard clock of
240MHz. Then add a cooler with a decent sized fan, and razor thin cooling fins to keep the
heat off. Then use RAM heatsinks on 64MB of quality 3.8ns DDR RAM which comes at a default
clock of 500MHz. What does this all add up to?
- PocketPC 2002 Updates - Microsoft has released MSN
Instant Messenger for Pocket PC 2002 - English(US) and
Terminal
Services Client for Pocket PC 2002 - English(US).
- Microsoft Network Security Hotfix Checker v3.3 - HFNetChk can be run from WinNT/2k/XP systems, and will
scan either the local system or remote ones for patches available for the following
products: WinNT 4.0, Win2k, WinXP, IIS 4.0/5.0, SQL Server 7.0/2000 (including MSDE), and
IE5.01+.
- AVP Weekly Update - This will update the Kaspersky
Anti-Virus (AVP) virus databases to the latest (January 18, 2002).
- McAfee update - Both McAfee VirusScan 4.x/5.x DAT file update 4181 & VirusScan SuperDAT has just been released. The SuperDAT file will not only
update your DAT files, but will update the scanning engine as well.
- Opera v6.01 beta build 1026 - This is an in-development, beta version of
Opera. Opera is a user-friendly, versatile, and fast Internet/intranet browser that also
includes a newsreader. The keyboard plays an integral role in surfing, which can make
moving around the Web easy and fast. You can run multiple windows, even at start-up, and
special features are included for users with disabilities. Opera supports CSS, Java
(through the Sun Java plug-in), JavaScript SSL (128-bit), TLS (Transaction Layer
Security), and more.
- Songs-DB v1.1 alpha 2 - Songs-DB is FREEWARE
manager for music files. It means that it manages MP3s, WMAs, WAVs and others. The main
task for Songs-DB is to take care of your collection stored on harddisks, CD-ROMs or other
media, so that you can always listen to the music you like.
- Macromedia Shockwave Player v5.5.1 - Leech this baby here.
- DVDx v1.7 - DVDx allows you to convert DVD to VCD2.0 or SCVD1.0 in one step
(Including multiplexing, splitting). It produces good quality movies in MPEG1/2 format and
you don't need to have 5GB or more free on your hard disk. DVDx has been designed
especialy for unexperimented users, it is a simple and intuitive program. You only need
Nero to write your VCD/SVDC.
- AVI2VCd v1.3.13 Encoder - Freeware Avi2vcd
is an mpeg encoder with only one purpose: Encoding VideoCD 2.0 compliant mpeg streams.
Avi2vcd can create all 3 valid VideoCD streams: FILM (23.976 fps), PAL (25 fps), and NTSC
(29.97 fps). The horizontal resolution must be 768 pixels or less, the vertical resolution
must be 576 pixels or less. Audio need not even be present, and if it is, can be stereo or
mono, 8 or 16 bit, and any of the following sample rates: 8, 11.025, 12, 16, 22.05, 24,
32, 44.1, or 48 KHz.
- Easydivx v0.791 - Easydivx is
a all in one rippack or graphical user interface program for vStrip, MPEG2AVI, AC3DEC
Normalize, VirtualDub and MicroDVD menu. It includes all required programs.and works with!
- DVDSubber beta 4 build 502 - DVDSubber subtitling engine is more powerful than the standard DVD
Video format, where DVD subtitle are limited to 4 colors, DVDSubber give you access to
more than 16 millions colors. You can even add effect to the subtitle like a shadow or an
outline to enhance readability.
- Easy CD-DA Extractor v4.6.1 build 3 - With Easy CD-DA Extractor
you can make great-sounding direct digital copies from audio compact discs. It has many
great features : easy-to-use user interface, MPEG Layer-3 (MP3) encoder and decoder,
Windows Media(tm) Audio (WMA) encoder and decoder, Windows Audio Compression Manager
compatible.
- Registry Healer v3.1 - Registry Healer
checks registry
for: invalid path references, empty registry keys and invalid font references. So it's
better than nothing :P
- GeForce Tweak 3.2.1 - Johannes Tuemler has just released version
3.2.1 Final of his extremely popular GeForce overclocker/tweaker.
- ATI kills dev driver updates? - ATI sent along an email that unfortunately they can no longer provide access to this
secure site. Due to leaks of developer only drivers in the past month we must limit
access...blah..blah.
- Radeon Series WinXP Driver 6018 Leaked - This is the 6.13.10.6018
driver dated January 8, 2002. The driver allows
to adjust Anisotropic Filtering adjustments (2X to 16X) in DirectX and OpenGL tabs.
- ATI Radeon Beta for Win9x - The latest
leaked ATi Radeon driver in question is dated 01/08/2002 (8th of January 2002) and its
full version is 4.13.9012. So far there is no information with regards to its performance.
- Hercules KYRO Drivers - Hercules KYRO/II
Driver 14.028 for Win9x/ME, Hercules KYRO/II
Driver 14.028 for Win2k, Hercules KYRO/II
Driver 14.028 for WinXP.
- ASUS A7V266 BIOS - ASUS have posted a new BIOS v1006-03e for the
A7V266 motherboards: ASUS A7V266-E bios 1006-03e, ASUS A7V266 bios 1006-03e, ASUS A7V266-M bios 1006-03e.
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Updated:11:08 PM CEST Jun,22
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