Early Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:12 AM CEST - Aug,27 2003
- Post a comment
- SoBig will spawn yet another variant -
Another variant
of the SoBig virus is likely to appear some time after 10 September,
antivirus company Sophos has warned. SoBig F, which caused chaos globally last
week, is the sixth version of the worm, although only that variant and SoBig A
are still infecting PCs.
- Why computer virus writers are useful and we should thank them -
Zone-H has conducted
an
interview with Professor Samuel D. Forrester, one of the most famous
immunologists in the world. Dr. Forrester is on the run this year to get the
Nobel Prize for his recent discovery of the mechanisms of aggression of
over-reacting immune cells and antibodies, as he talks about the reasons why
virus writers are coding more and more viruses.
- Netgear flaw triggers 'accidental' attack - Network hardware maker
Netgear has warned its customers of
a flaw
in some of its router products that could set off an "accidental"
denial-of-service attack. The problem occurred because of a flawed
implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is a method commonly
used by network devices to contact special "time" servers that pass on the
correct time and date. This information is important for routers because they
generate a variety of time-sensitive logs. The flawed routers work fine until
one of their periodic requests for the correct time goes unanswered. If for
whatever reason the time server is unavailable, the flawed router will
continue sending requests until it is answered.
- Lik-Sang settles mod chip case out of court - Former online
retailer
Lik-Sang International has settled a case brought by Sony out of court,
undertaking to cease trade in any copyright circumvention devices and paying
an undisclosed compensation sum. The company, which formerly operated the
popular online game retail site Lik-Sang.com (now under new ownership and
unaffected by this decision), has also agreed to cancel its appeal against the
ruling in favour of Sony by Hong Kong's High Court in March. However, it
continues to fight similar cases against Nintendo and Microsoft, both of whom
were involved in the action against the company in September of last year
which won an injunction against it for selling copyright circumvention
devices.
- Game makers try to plug brain drain - European publishers
Eidos, Ubi Soft and Atari, formerly Infogrames, are shifting key business
units to North America, the world's largest market, and most companies
are trawling Eastern Europe for highly skilled but cheaper programmers.
Meanwhile, as more top games result from tie-ins with blockbuster films,
Hollywood's influence on the industry has grown, drawing many of the brightest
young developers, graphic artists and programmers to Southern California to
hone their skills.
- New PS2 to go on sale in UK next month -
According to GamesRadar, Sony will finally release the new PlayStation 2
model in the UK next month - and it'll be available in silver as well as the
traditional black. The new version of the PS2 - which was first released in
Japan back in May - includes a host of new features primarily relating to the
machine's DVD playback facilities. Along with standard DVDs, the new PS2
(which is cosmetically unchanged) will also be able to play DVD-R and DVD-RW
discs and supports DVD progressive scan playback, which can provide far higher
quality images than the current PS2.
- BT to trial 1Mb ADSL in October - BT Wholesale is to begin
a six-week trial of a new 1 Mb ADSL service aimed at home users, the monster
telco confirmed today.
The trial starts on October 6 following internal tests during September.
The monthly wholesale rental for the trial is L23 (ex VAT) with L50 (ex VAT)
for activation.
- No More Backup or Drive Install Woes - Maxtor likes to
emphasize
how easy backing up your system is with its OneTouch external hard drives
($199.95 to $399.95, direct, depending on capacity). But the drives are also
the easiest way to add hard drive capacity in chunks of 120 to 300 gigabytes.
- AMD revives Duron line - The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker
confirmed Monday that it has
begun selling three new Duron chips--running at 1.4GHz, 1.6GHz and
1.8GHz--in China, Latin America and other developing markets. An AMD
representative, however, emphasized that the new chips are available only in
developing markets in limited quantities.
- Minolta Dimage F300 Digital still camera - Conclusion,
the Minolta DiMage F300 is a superb camera in terms of quality and
results. It gives you the capability to get clear and crisp 12 x 18 print outs
for your picture from printing shops. With the comfort of audio, video, and
picture capabilities the F300 will satisfy any user. However it is a heavy
device that is generally not meant to be a pocket based camera. This camera is
a good middle range product that can satisfy novice and professional
photographers.
- Netgear Cable/DSL 54Mbps Wireless Router -
The WGR614 packs a lot of features into a small stylish unit (Much more
stylish and futuristic looking than any other router we have come across). The
four port switch, 802.11g wireless technology support, SPI and NAT protection
and a wealth of information in the administration web interface makes this a
choice router/firewall for anyone who is new to networking and hardware
firewall protection. We are not saying that this is exclusively for beginners.
- Samsung SP1614N Review - MBReview has posted
a review of
the latest line of Samsung hard drives, the SP1614N.
- Serial ATA HDD Roundup -
The models are not the latest - the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 wasn't tested
yet, and the Maxtor drive turned out to have 60GB platters again.
Nevertheless, I hope this roundup will be useful, and it will be updated as
new models. Conclusion: "So, if you need speed go with the WD360GD, if you
need a sizable drive take the WD2500JD which also demonstrates excellent
performance. If size is not critical for you, the Samsung or Maxtor can be a
good choice too. At the same time, the Seagate Barracuda ATA V line looks
already dated."
- OCZ EL DDR PC4000 Gold Dual Channel Kit - OCZ's packaging has
changed since we've last looked at their OCZ EL DDR PC3200 Dual Channel
Platinum. Rather than two individually packaged ram modules, we now got both
of them in the same package. This of course doesn't really mean much, but it
does make it clearer that this kit is a matched pair.
- Albatron GeForce FX 5900PV 128MB Review - Beyond3D has posted
a review of Albatron GeForce FX 5900PV 128MB video card. "What we can
probably surmise from this is that the 45.23 drivers are buggy or are having
problems with the DX9 HLSL compiler but their Cg compiler is right on the
money in so far as rendering quality/fidelity is concerned in Tomb Raider AOD.
From a performance perspective, there are some differences between the two
compilers when using the GeForceFX 5900PV + 45.23 drivers but this only
applies when Anti-Aliasing is used. Later in this review, this game will be
benchmarked using both compilers."
- Opteron 244 with AMD-8000 and nForce3 Pro 150 -
Sure, it's expensive. In comparison to the dual Xeon 3.06 GHz/1MB chips,
they're less expensive, and performance is comparable between the two.
Although if you're investing in a dual processor setup, you should really
examine which applications you run and which processor will run better for
your particular software config. Nevertheless, AMD's recently released Opteron
144 model offers all the same performance in a 1P environment as the 244
processor, but costs around $300 less, well below the price of a Pentium 4 3.2
GHz.
- VIA K8T800 Chipset Preview - Dual Opteron in Action - The Dual
Opteron solution is going to give people big bragging rights. For this reason,
you will find
that people with extra cash wanting to buy one of these setups, will be
going straight for a set of 244 Opteron processors or the newly released 246
(2GHz) processor, which currently cost almost two grand US for a pair - not
for the faint-hearted! It will be interesting to see what happens when more
companies release motherboards with the K8T800 chipset but it won't be a hit
with the enthusiast market due to the limitation of ECC memory given the added
cost and lack of overclockability of the type of RAM.
- A64 3100+ K8 Quake 3 benchmarks - Here is another commonly used
benchmark
Quake 3 Demo 001 (1024x768x32) that you can use to gauge the performance
of AMD K8 3100. The benchmark is done using Tyan Radeon 9700Pro with 1 x 512M
Corsair XMS3500C2. Drivers used Catalyst 3.2 (7.84).
- XP/2000 Tweaking Guide 1.4 -
Tweaking Guide for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 brings together all tweaks
for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 such as Internet, Miscellanious, System
Performance and User Interface related tweaks into a single easy-to-use
centralized helpfile.
- volt mod for 5600ultra and 5900 - Travis' leadtek 5600 did
[email protected] volts and with the volt mod [email protected] volts... my red generic
5600ultra does a bit more with watercooling....check
out this thread!
- Cool Info XP 4.0.2 -
Cool
Info XP (download)
is a system information, inventory, audit & diagnostic utility. It provides
all the information you could ever need to know about your hardware, software
and other devices, including: CPUs, modems, BIOS, drives, graphic cards,
drivers, files, fonts, network, internet, printers, software, multimedia and
DOS and Windows memory.
- Super Utilities 1.65 -
Super
Utilities (download)
is a collection of tools to fix, speed up, and maintain your PC! These
utilities include Disk Cleaner, Registry Cleaner, Uninstall Plus, StartUp
Manager, Folder Guard, Tracks Washer, Driver Backup, Auto Shutdown, Windows
Manager and Process Manager. With a cool and user-friendly interface makes it
easy for anyone to use Super Utilities. These powerful tools will keep your
system running faster, cleaner and error free.
- BlindWrite Suite 4.5.5 -
Blindwrite Suite (download)
is the best set of tools to reproduce or clone any CD, even protected ones.
Blindwrite Suite is the most powerfull tool to create a perfect copy from your
original CD for personal private copy. Blindwrite Suite can also create CD
audio from MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA, monkey`s audio and be use with an cd-rom
emulator like Daemon Tools.
- TVTool 8.2.5 -
TVTool (download
trial) that enables your video card TV-Output. Version 8.2.5 contains the
English and German language files. Also important routines to control the TV
mode have been optimized which should improve the stability and performance.
Several bugs have been fixed, for example the energy settings for the monitor
are turned off during TV mode and are restored correctly now.
- Motherboard Monitor v5.3.4.0 -
Motherboard Monitor
will try to access one or more of the following chips: LM75, LM78, LM78-j,
LM79, LM80, WinBond W83781D, WinBond W83782D, WinBond W83783S, WinBond
W83627HF, Asus AS99127F, GL518SM, GL520SM, ADM9240, ADM1021, ADM1020, MAX1016,
MAX1016a, FMS2701, VIA686A, THMC10 and THMC50 on your motherboard and provide
you with information about your motherboard's temperature, voltages, fan
speeds and CPU temperature.
- Realtek ALC Drivers v3.48 -
The ALC driver is an 18-bit, full duplex AC'97 2.2 compatible stereo audio
CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems. This driver supports all ALC
Audio-Codecs from ALC100 up to ALC655.
|
Updated:10:31 PM CEST Jun,20
(new)
