Friday Massive Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:57 PM CET - Feb,14 2003
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- IBM makes another run at embedded DRAM - IBM has developed an
embedded DRAM architecture that improves the memory's access time and
bandwidth enough to compete with traditional SRAM. It will be offered in a
144-Mbit chip that will be "the fastest standalone DRAM in the industry, by
far," says design engineer Harold Pilo (shown).
- CodeCon Registration Deadline Approaching -
CodeCon is fast approaching,
and there are only three days left to register online for CodeCon at the
reduced rate. CodeCon 2.0 is the premier event in 2003 for the P2P,
Cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community. It is a
workshop for developers of real-world applications with working code and
active development projects. CodeCon registration is $95; a $15 discount is
available for attendees who register online prior to February 15th. CodeCon
2.0 will be held February 22-24, noon-6pm, at Club NV (525 Howard Street) in
San Francisco.
- DVD piracy reward offered - Offering a whole new take on Customer
Appreciation Day, a Missouri company announced
a $10,000 reward Tuesday for tips leading to the conviction of anyone
using its DVD-copying software for piracy. The move is the latest attempt by
St. Louis-based 321 Studios to demonstrate its anti-piracy fervor. That's
important because the major Hollywood studios want to ban 321's products on
the grounds that they promote piracy.
- TV channel buys $150 ID for FBI 'most wanted' suspect -
Using a fake driver's licence bought via a web site, US TV's NewsChannel 4
fooled ID checking software and got confirmation that the licence could
probably be used safely to fly on any commercial airline, rent a car, or cross
the border into the US. Although they seem to have wimped out of trying any of
these things. Oh, and just to spice things up,
NewsChannel 4 had used a picture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a star of the
FBI's 22 most wanted list, with a $25 million price on his head.
- Motorola shows of Linux based smartphone - Motorola has shown off
the world's
first
handset combining a Linux Operating System (OS) and Java Technology, with
full multimedia PDA functionality. The Motorola A760 combines the ideal
features of a mobile phone with the capabilities of a personal digital
assistant (PDA), digital camera, video player, MP3 player, speakerphone,
advanced messaging, instant Internet access and Bluetooth wireless technology.
Packed into one compact device with a vivid color touch-screen, the Motorola
A760 excels in information management as well as communication services to
offer the voice, text and entertainment services to help meet the needs of
today's multi-tasking mobile consumer.
- Intel launches its first GSM chips -
The Intel PXA800F cellular processor (screenshot)
features a high-performance, low-power processor running at 312 MHz based on
the Intel XScale technology with four megabytes of integrated Intel On-Chip
Flash memory and 512 kilobytes of SRAM for industry leading application
performance. In addition, the Intel PXA800F cellular processor includes a 104
MHz signal processor using the Intel MicroSignal architecture with 512 KB of
integrated Intel On-Chip Flash memory and 64 KB of SRAM, resulting in a
complete system on a single chip for advanced GSM/GPRS cellular networks.
- 4 GB Microdrive by fall 2003 - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
announced plans to squeeze four gigabytes of data onto the 1-inch Microdrive,
known as the world's smallest hard disk drive. With considerable advances in
miniaturization technology thanks to the Pixie Dust concept originally
developed by IBM, HGST engineers have overcome magnetic recording challenges
associated with developing hard disk drives of this size, and expects the 4 GB
Microdrive to be available in the Fall of 2003. The new drive will use
ultra-miniaturized components, including a new read-write head that is half
the size of its predecessor and results in a 40-percent decrease in the height
at which the head travels above the disk platter. Analogous to a Boeing 747
airplane flying one millimeter above the surface of the earth, the
Microdrive's new head technology, called the femto slider head, is so small
that it is equivalent in size to a grain of table salt.
- 'Ultima Online' hacker arrested over 'house' sale - The
Metropolitan Police Department has arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of
illegally accessing an Internet game server to sell a virtual "house"
owned by a woman to another game participant for 50,000 yen, police said
Thursday. According to the MPD, Ryusei Sakano of Itabashi Ward, Tokyo,
posed as a female game player he met online while playing "Ultima Online," a
popular Internet-based game.
- Boffins outline 24Mbps mobile phone chip design - Boffins at Lucent
Technologies' Bell Labs has come up a blueprint for a mobile chip, designed
with 3G mobiles in mind,
which works at a blistering fast 24Mbps. The chip, which is 10 times
faster than anything available today, is unlikely to be deployed anytime
before 2006.
- Blue laser DVD format gets green light - Manufacturers looking for
a higher-capacity recordable DVD format will want to mark Feb. 17 on their
calendars.
The nine
companies promoting Blu-ray Disc technology--a next-generation recordable
DVD format using blue-violet lasers--announced Thursday that licensing will
begin Feb. 17. Blu-ray Disc technology allows for 27GB storage capacities on a
single-sided 12cm disc. DVDs hold 4.7GB of data. Hitachi, LG Electronics,
Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung
Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Thomson are known as the "Blu-ray Disc Founders"
and have been pursuing a broad acceptance of the format.
- Yamaha to Withdraw From CD-R/RW Business - Somehow I missed
this
PR a couple days ago, but here is it : Yamaha Corp. decided at a board
meeting to cease sales of CD-R/RWs for personal computers and to withdraw
completely from the business by the end of March 2003. Since Yamaha entered
the CD-R/RW market in April 1994 its products have consistently led the
industry in drive speeds and won recognition for their high performance and
quality.
- Conversion-free office docs on the Palm - Cutting Edge Software and
Snapperfish have announced a partnership to integrate their respective
products, Quickoffice
and Snappermail, to offer complete support for desktop-style files via e-mail
attachments. As a continuation of a partnership since early 2002, the two
companies intend to
add
support to allow Snappermail to save attached Microsoft Office files which
the user can then open and edit in Quickoffice, without any intermediary
server or desktop for conversion, and then send the file again in native
Office format as an attachment.
- Bulldog intros 4Mbps DSL - Bulldog Communications has unveiled
a
4Mbps DSL broadband service for residential punters. Called Primetime
4000, it costs L79.99 a month and is available at some 35 unbundled exchanges
in central London.
- Microsoft entertainment OS, take two - The Redmond, Wash.-based
company has started working with its PC partners
on the updated version of Windows XP Media Center Edition, as well as
soliciting beta testers. Microsoft debuted the entertainment operating system
in January 2002 and shipped the software to PC makers in the third quarter of
last year. The first computers running the software reached store shelves in
October.
- Microsoft shows off Yukon at VSLive! Conference - Microsoft showed
off some of the
forthcoming programmability features of "Yukon," the next version of its
SQL Server database, here at the VSLive! developer conference on Thursday.
- Crossover Projector Preview -
At 800-by-600, the resolution provided by the X1's Texas Instruments SVGA DLP
chip is lower than that of many projectors but more than sufficient for
viewing movies and PowerPoint presentations. InFocus rates its projector at
only 1,000 ANSI lumens; we measured 905, which means that this unit is better
suited for smaller screens or rooms with reduced ambient lighting. The
contrast ratio is outstanding at 378:1, but the brightness uniformity ratio is
about average at 1.24:1 with a noticeable glow along the left edge on an
all-black image.
- nVidia NV40 Specs Leaked? -
Betas.intercom.net has
some details and specs about the upcoming NV40 from nVidia, that is due to
come out in the second half of next year (2004). NV40: 0.09u process, 300-350
Million Transistors, 750-800 MHz Core clock speed, 16 Mb Embedded DRAM
(134 million transistors), 1.4 GHz 256-512 Mb DDR-II Memory, 8 Pixel
Rendering Pipelines (4 texels each), 16 Vertex Shader Engines, 204.8 GB/sec
Bandwidth (eDRAM), 44.8 GB/sec Bandwidth (DDR-II), 25.6 GigaTexels per Second,
3 Billion Vertices per Second, DirectX 9.1 (or even DirectX 10)
features. + X-bit labs has posted
an article called NVIDIA nForce With DirectX 9.0 Support to Come This
Year?
- First Tests of AMD's Athlon XP 3000+ -
PC World tested three high-end PCs using the Athlon XP 3000+: Polywell's
$2099 Poly 880-NF2-3000; Sys Technology's $3153 Sys Performance 3000+; and
Falcon Northwest's $3275 Mach V 3000+. All three systems came with 1GB of
333-MHz DDR memory and a list of high-end components, including ATI's Radeon
9700 Pro graphics card. The Polywell and Falcon units ran Windows XP Home
while the Sys ran Windows XP Professional, but this difference in operating
systems was a negligible factor in PC WorldBench 4 tests. (Polywell sent a
preproduction unit; the other two were production models.)
- Onkyo DV-SP800 SACD/DVD-Audio Player Review -
The DV-SP800 plays both DVD-Audio and SACD through dual sets of
two-channel and 5.1-plus-channel analog outputs. The plus refers to an extra
set of surround outputs, which (via a rear-panel switch) allow you to run a
single set of surrounds or two sets of surrounds in parallel (not to be
confused with four discrete rear channels). The DV-SP800 offers progressive
scanning via its component outputs (switchable with interlaced) or interlaced
via two S-video or two composite jacks. There's plenty of minor video bonuses,
like the 16:9 compressed mode that lets you watch 4:3 DVD material on a 16:9
screen; it prevents your TV from assuming the image is anamorphic just because
it's coming in progressive. As for compatibility, the DV-SP800 can play most
any consumer audio or video format on a 5-inch disc, including CD, CD-R/-RW,
MP3, videoCD, and DVD-R/-RW.
- IE re-releases IE patch - Yesterday MS re-released
the last cumulative patch for IE (download
~
non-english). It seems that users weren't able to access some websites
including MSN users trying to read their mail via web-access: This update
fixes an issue caused by the February 2003, Cumulative Patch for Internet
Explorer (810847) where users could potentially be unable to log into MSN mail
accounts or authenticate with a web site in various programs. For more
information please see KB article
813951.
- Hide drive calculator - When securing a Windows or Citrix based
server environment it is a common practice to "hide" the view on system drives
for users. Calculating the required registry values isn't the most exciting
job in the world so thats why I wrote this rather simple program to do this
for you. This
program (download)
takes your input (the drive letters) and shows you the required registry
values to hide these drives, you can then cut and paste this into a .reg file,
put it into your login script or write a custom .adm file.
- Bulk user import tool -
This program
(download) opens
an Excel sheet with useraccounts you filled in and then create those accounts
in your Active Directory. You can specify the accountname, fullname, password
(or generate them random), description, homedirectory, profile, disable,
expiration date and homedrive. Please note that there is a known "feature"
that it reports "user allready exist" when it can't even find the domain you
specified.
- LDAP query -
This program
searches (download)
your Active Directory based on the LDAP query you specify. It makes filtering
accounts, retrieving information and saving it to text files available in one
free application.
- Tag N Rename 3.0 Beta 1 -
Here is a new
version (download)
with full ogg vorbis (ogg) and windows media (wma, asf, wmv) files support.
- n.player 1.1.0.3 -
Freeware n.player is
a versatile media player that plays DVD, audio CDs, MP3, WMA, AVI, DiVX, or
any media with the preinstalled DirectShow decoder. It also supports enhanced
features for playing video and audio.
- WinBoost 4.0 -
WinBoost 4 (download)
is a special utility designed to boost Windows XP, 2000, Millennium Edition
(ME), 98 Second Edition, 98, 95 performance and productivity. Using easy to
use graphical user interface you can configure hundreds of Windows hidden
settings from Start Menu, Desktop, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, etc.
- Fresh UI 5.30 -
Fresh UI (mirror)
is a fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with
hundreds of useful hidden settings this software covers the customizing and
optimizing techniques that you'll be glad to know.
- NeroNET - Share a CD recorder in a network -
NeroNET is a network-capable extension of the Nero burner program, which
can be used in an IP-capable Intranet. The aim is to give all Intranet users
easy access to all available recorders. If you want to be a participant in the
free NeroNET Customer Preview Program you are entitled to use a copy of the
NeroNET Server Release
Candidate 1 (RC1).
- Nero fast CD-Burning plug-in for WMP - Ahead Software has released
a powerful plug-in for
the Windows Media Player 9.0 Series via a free download at
www.wmplugins.com. This exciting Nero
plug-in provides full speed recording and Nero reliability, all from within
the Windows Media Player.
- KaZaA P2P 2.1 - The
KaZaa Media Desktop (download)
is a second-generation peer-to-peer file-sharing service with which you can
search and download media files from other KaZaa users.
- Rage3D Tweak 3.8 -
Rage3D Tweak v3.8
(download) has been
just released. What is the Rage3D Tweaker? Rage3D Tweaker is a Radeon Tweaker
program designed to fit right in with the other ATi option tabs in the
Advanced Display Properties accessed through the Control Panel. It allows easy
access to registry tweak options, custom display modes, and overclocking all
through an easy to use interface.
- Xabre drivers v3.10.51 - Sillicon Integrated Systems (SiS) has
released new
drivers version 3.10.51 (WinALL) for the Xabre 80/200/400/600 video
chips/cards.
- Plextor PX-W4012TS firmware - Plextor Europe has released
a new firmware version for their latest SCSI drive, the PX-W4012TS. This
new firmware fixes a hang-up after eject of discs written by InCD under
Windows 2000/XP.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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