Early Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:49 PM CEST - Aug,25 2003
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- Hackers cut off SCO Web site - SCO's Web site was largely out of
commission until Monday morning, a representative of the Lindon, Utah-based
Unix and Linux seller said Monday. Performance measurement statistics from
Netcraft indicated that the site had been down since Friday night. In a
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, numerous computers simultaneously
send so much data across a network that the targeted system slows to a crawl
while trying to keep up with the traffic it's receiving. The SCO
representative could not say where this weekend's strike originated.
- Sobig.F May Have Started on Usenet -
The Sobig.F worm, which is estimated to have infected more than 100,000
computers and generated tens of millions of e-mails, could have begun life
disguised as a pornographic picture in a posting to a handful of Usenet
newsgroups. Details of one posting made using the account were released by
Easynews. It shows a posting on Monday August 18 at 19:46 GMT (3:46pm EDT) to
six newsgroups: alt.binaries.amp; alt.binaries.boneless; alt.binaries.nl;
alt.binaries.pictures.chimera; alt.binaries.pictures.erotica; and
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.amateur.female.
- Free GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP Available - In a bid
to help administrators preempt a possible wave of new virus outbreaks, GFI
today released
a
freeware version of GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP 8, its email
content security solution. The freeware version scans inbound and outbound
mail using a single anti-virus engine, and can be used as additional
protection by companies who do not yet perform virus scanning at mail sever
level or at the gateway, and by those who run just one anti-virus engine. The
freeware version can also check message bodies and subjects for keywords; this
feature can be used to detect inappropriate mail.
- Intel snips desktop Celeron prices - As expected, the chipmaker on
Sunday
cut list prices by as much as 14 percent, to below $100, on its Celeron
processors for low-priced desktop PCs. The cuts pave the way for the
introduction of a 2.7GHz desktop Celeron in the future. This time around,
Intel's largest price cut was on its fastest Celeron. It decreased the price
of the 2.6GHz desktop chip by 14 percent, from $103 to $89. Intel also dropped
the price of the 2.5GHz Celeron by 7 percent, from $89 to $83. Its 2.4GHz
Celeron was reduced by 6 percent, from $84 to $79.
- Edison's light bulb replacement any soon? - Three local companies
think it's about
time to change Edison's light bulb. They say that light-emitting diodes,
or LEDs, are the future of illumination. Most people are familiar with the
glowing red LEDs used as indicators, to show that there are messages waiting
on your answering machine, for example. But today's LEDs can be used to light
up restaurants, Broadway stages, and even bridges. No one knows how quickly
the shift to LEDs will happen -- the technology has been around since 1962 --
but most experts consider it inevitable. And this is an overwhelmingly
positive tech trend: By some estimates, LEDs could reduce global energy use
for lighting by half by 2025. But to be prepared for the possibility of more
blackouts between now and 2025, you can already buy an LED-powered flashlight
today -- for less than $20.
- Silent pump for water-cooled PCs developed -
A new water-cooling system for computer chips has been developed that
incorporates a clever pump with no moving parts. The system, developed by
Californian start-up company Cooligy, aims to silently solve the problem that
the faster chips get, the hotter they become. In the near future, the chips in
high-speed laptops and desktop PCs will generate so much heat that traditional
air cooling systems will struggle to cope. Simply increasing the speed of the
fans used will increase the noise they make and the risk of mechanical
failure. So a number of companies are now working on systems that use water to
draw heat away.
- Macromedia retools MX family - Macromedia will soon announce
the next generation of its MX product line. New in the family are
Dreamweaver MX 2004, featuring support for the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
standard, and Macromedia Studio MX 2004, which combines new MX tools with
Freehand MX for an integrated development suite.
- Tiny Hitachi drive hits 4GB -
The 4GB
Microdrive, a miniaturized version of a hard drive used in PCs, can be
used by a wide range of devices to store data files for computers or image
files for digital cameras, among other uses, the company said. The San Jose,
Calif., hard-drive maker is offering samples now and plans to ship the 1-inch
drive in volume in November. The company expects the 4GB Microdrive to sell
for $499. Lexar Media sells 2GB and 4GB flash memory cards that cost as much
as $799 and $1,599, respectively, according to its online store.
- Microsoft in talks with SiS on Xbox2 south bridge order? -
Microsoft is in talks with Taiwan-based Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS)
on potential orders for a south bridge chip for the Xbox2 game console,
according to high-level SiS sources. Some market rumors reported that SiS had
already landed the order, but company sources declined to confirm it. As the
Xbox2 will not be released until 2005, it is still too early to say anything
for sure, the sources said. According to market rumors, SiS has also landed
chipset orders from IBM and European distributor Medion. The company, however,
refused to comment on the reports.
- Tachyon G9600Pro Review -
The G9600Pro made a great compliment to the system and is an easy size to
deal with. A welcome refresh from some of the klunkier cards that are
gargantuan in size from the nVidia side of the house.
- Chaintech FX71 Apogee (GeForce FX 5600 Ultra) review -
Each company which puts out the FX series cards has to use the same GPU.
Therefore, the manufacturers have to do what they can to distinguish theirs
from the other guys.
And Chaintech has certainly done that here. No other 5600 card on the
market that I know of lights up. I mean that adds coolness points right there.
Plus the fact that one of the LED's is activated only when under load. So very
cool there. This card has got to be the tops of the 5600 series in my humble
opinion. Another review can be found at
MonkeyReview.
- 18 P4 boards Shoot out -
AOpen, Intel, and, Soyo rank high in the feature they offer. AOpen has
Serial ATA RAID and FireWire together with numerous other useful features, but
factory overclocking beyond our tolerance levels disqualifies it. Intel offers
a fast chipset and even Gigabit Ethernet, and was the winner of our benchmark
tests. Soyo overshot the mark here. Its board offers two Serial ATA
controllers, plus Ultra ATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, and overclocking
features that will delight all fans of overclocking. All very nice features,
but they make this board the most expensive in our group test by a wide
margin.
- Sound Blaster Audigy Review - Gaming
is really where this card shines. No cracks, no pops, no static. Just pure
in your face ass kicking! I've tested on every type of game I own, from RPG to
RTS to FPS and let me tell ya, there is nothing quite like being able to hear
rockets fly by your head and take out the guy right behind you. You can
actually hear the gibs deteriorate. In Cossacks, there's nothing quite more
impressive than the sound of a battalion of cavalry bolting across the screen,
and the Audigy does a very good job of picking up and amplifying even this
small sound. Dialogue is also an area where this card shows it's potential. It
follows the "lip" movements perfectly and there aren't any cracks or pops
while they speak. This is a definite plus as I personally have a hard time
paying attention to dialogue when I cant even follow their mouth movements I
think it's cause I get flashbacks as my days as Godzilla but that's another
story.
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Review -
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 is a stunning product. Although biggest available
storage capacity is only 160GB when some other manufacturers have 250GB
drives, performance and silent operation noise raise this new Seagate
absolutely one of the best SATA drives available. Especially to basic use and
-machine this fast, silent and rather cheap SATA drive is excellent choice.
Only problems that I encountered were quite big heat production and a
little objectionable compatibility with different RAID controllers.
- WD Raptor RAID Performance - In this article,
HardwareZone explore the performance of two Western Digital Raptor drives
combined using the rather well-known Silicon Image SiI3112A SATA RAID
controller. The results in the next few pages will give you an idea of the
Raptor's RAID performance as compared to a 10,000RPM SCSI drive. We picked an
older Seagate Cheetah 36ES drive for this comparison as its performance is
more or less in the same ballpark. We'll also compare its results with some
15K SCSI drives.
- Linux 2.4.22 Stable Kernel - Marcelo Tosatti has officially
released another stable 2.4 Linux
kernel (fixes)
- PHP 4.3.3 Final - The PHP developers today
announced the
immediate availability of PHP 4.3.3 (download).
This release contains a large number of bug fixes and we strongly recommend
that all users of PHP upgrade to this version.
- WebStripper 2.58 -
WebStripper (download)
creates an exact copy of the site which you can browse offline whenever you
want without having to connect to the internet.
- CopyToDVD 2.2.8 -
CopyToDVD is the
easiest way to backup your files. Integrated to the shell or used as a normal
application, CopyToDVD works with all CD & DVD Writers to create the cd type
of your choice.
- Nvidia WDM Driver v2.09 - Innovision3D's FTP has now offers
a new video capture driver
WDM for Nvidia based graphics cards.
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Updated:10:31 PM CEST Jun,20
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