Friday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 05:18 PM CEST - Aug,01 2003
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- EA Sees Countdown to Next-Generation Game Consoles - In an
interview with Reuters, EA CEO Larry Probst also said he expected industry
leader Sony Corp to make a decision in the next 30 to 45 days on whether
to cut the price of its PlayStation 2 console again this fiscal year.
- Hackers turn to Google to find weakest links -Computer hackers have
adopted a startling strategy in their attempts to break into websites.
By using the popular search engine Google, they do not have to visit a
site to plan an attack. Instead, they can get all the information they need
from Google's cached versions of web pages, say experts in the US. One way
that hackers can break into a website is by hunting for private pages that
contain the usernames and passwords required to access secure parts of the
site. These pages are usually hidden from the casual browser because there are
no hyperlinks to them on the web.
- U.S. gives warning about hackers - The U.S. government has
issued a stern warning that computer hackers may be preparing to launch a
sweeping attack that could potentially compromise millions of computers
running Microsoft Corp.'s popular Windows operating systems. The SANS
Institute, an Internet security firm based in Bethesda, Md., estimates that
about 2,000 computers around the world are at work scanning for
vulnerabilities. Johannes Ullrich, SANS chief technology officer, estimates
that about 20 per cent of the world's computers have been searched for flaws
and thousands of users probably are unaware their systems have been
successfully breached.
- Europe Battles Insiders-Turned-Hackers - The security adviser for
the European Electronic Crimes Task Force in Milan, Italy,
warned this week that Europe is dealing with a growing problem that has
already had ramifications for governments and businesses around the world:
insiders who become hackers for profit.
- Network Solutions glitch darkens sites - A software glitch in
Network Solutions' hosted Web addressing system knocked what may have been as
many as 30,000 Web sites and e-mail addresses offline for several hours
Thursday morning. The problem with the company's hosted domain name service,
which provides links from sites' domain names to the numbered Internet
addresses where data is actually reached, affected only Web sites which had
allowed Network Solutions
to take over this address-book service for them. The company had recently
touted the near-infallibility of its addressing system as a core selling point
for new customers.
- UK P2P users may face legal action - The British Phonographic
Industry (BPI) is
waiting until the new European Union copyright directive is implemented
before it decides whether to take legal action against UK peer-to-peer (P2P)
users. The BPI has no current plans to follow the actions of the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) and sue individuals who download music
from P2P sites, saying that it prefers to educate people rather than take a
heavy handed approach.
- Virtual reality conquers sense of taste - Already, virtual reality
devices have been built that try to simulate experiences for four of our five
senses - vision, hearing, touch and smell. But the complexity of the sense of
taste has made it difficult for computers to conquer.
Taste combines the feel of food in the mouth with chemical and even
auditory cues. Before simulating a foodstuff, the team first measures and
records various phenomena associated with chewing it. One such parameter is
the force required to bite through a piece of the food. A thin-film force
sensor placed in a subject's mouth records these forces. Biological sensors
made of lipid and polymer membranes record the major chemical constituents of
the food's taste. And a microphone records the audible vibrations produced in
the jawbone while chewing.
- Intel Celeron price cuts revealed - Intel is expected to
cut the prices of its Celeron desktop processors on 24 August, but until
now the extent to which those prices will be reduced has not leaked out of the
chip giant. The Celeron price cuts will be accompanied by the launch of a
2.7GHz chip at $103.
- Broadcom Debuts 10 Gb Ethernet Switch - The Irvine,
Calif.-based company said its new
Broadcom BCM5673 is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) multi-layer switch with
a HiGig uplink port that delivers wire-speed Layer 2 through Layer 7 switching
and routing capabilities over copper already found in most data centers --
10GBASE-CX4 specifically.
- AOL delivers AOL 9.0 Optimized - America Online Inc. (AOL)
is ready to deliver AOL 9.0 Optimized (first
look), touting it as its "most compelling upgrade" ever, beginning with
broadband users who can get the software starting Friday. The AOL 9.0
Optimized client software offers enhancements in spam filters and parental
control as well as new features such as a blogging tool and shared family
calendaring, among a host of other updates, AOL said in a statement Thursday.
- K8 AXP 3100 processor on Socket 754 photo - OCWorkbench has posted
a photo of the K8 AXP 3100 processor on Socket 754.
- Xeon vs Opteron: Memories Of The cache battle? - The most often
cited aspect of the competition between Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron is the
extra 64-bitness of the AMD platform, at a price competitive with the Xeons.
Fine, yes, Opteron extends the X86 architecture to true 64-bit level in a
reasonably elegant manner, knowing all the quirks of the 20 yeards old
platform and its zillion patch-ups over time. And it still keeps full native
32-bit performance along the way.
But what
about something that is equally important in both 32-bit and 64-bit scenarios?
The memory and I/O hierarchy? Is there a genuine threat for Xeon there, and
does the launch of 1 MB L3 cache XeonDP surprise us then? If you look within
the CPUs, "Prestonia" Xeon has 512K L2 cache coupled with 16 KB L1 data cache
plus trace cache, just like its mirror image, the Northwood Pentium 4. Opteron
has a larger 1 MB cache, coupled with 2 x 64 KB L1 caches.
- AMD Opteron 2.0GHz "Benchmarks" Revealed - AMD confirmed the
upcoming Opteron 2.0GHz processor release
by publishing the Composite Theoretical Performance (CTP) calculations for
AMD Opteron microprocessors, including x40, x42, x44 and x46 chips with 1.40,
1.60, 1.80 and 2.0GHz core-clocks respectively. The CTP calculations are
stated in Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second (MTOPS) and are based
upon a formula in the United States Department of Commerce Export
Administration Regulations 15 CFR 774 (Advisory Note 4 for Category 4).
- Corsair TwinX1024-4000 Troubleshooting - Viper's Lair has posted
some useful informations about Corsair TwinX1024-4000 memory.
- HW reviews GFX Round-up -
3DLabs Wildcat VP990 |
ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup |
ATI Radeon
9800 Pro 128 MB |
Explorer Technology GeForce FX5200 |
FIC A96P Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB |
Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH MyVIVO |
MSI FX5900-VTD128 |
Solarism Flex-View LM-1730 17in LCD Monitor |
Acer AL716 17” LCD Display
- HW reviews MB/CPU/RAM Round-up -
Intel Pentium M 1.4GHz CPU |
Kingmax PC3500 Memor |
ASUS & Gigabyte i875P/i865PE |
Epox 8K9A9I |
FIC Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB |
Gigabyte 7VAX1394-A KT400A
- HW reviews Storage Round-up -
Compact Flash 1 GB RAM Comparison |
Lite-On LTR-52327S 52/32/52 CD-RW
- HW reviews Case/Cooling Round-up -
A+GPB - CA-AP107 Case |
AOpen A600 Case |
Athenatech A747-SS Case |
iCute
0314TL-BS Case |
Nexus PHT-3600 P4 Heatsink |
Thermaltake Fireball Fan
- HW Reviews Sound -
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 Sound Card |
iRock 730i
MP3 Player
- HW Reviews Network Round-up -
Buffalo Tech WLA2-G54 AirStation 54-Mbps Wireless Compact Repeater Bridge-g
|
Linksys EG008W Gigabit 8-Port Workgroup Switch |
SMC EZ Connect 2642W
WiFi Adapter
- HW Reviews Misc Round-up - Eumax
Transfer Panel |
HP iPAQ h2210 |
NEC e606 & Three Network |
Gateway 200XL Laptop Review
- Stereo VU Meter Guide -
The LM
3916 is an integrated circuit (IC) that takes analog voltage levels and
drives 10 LEDs, LCDs, or vacuum fluorescent displays to represent digital
voltage levels just like a VU meter. An LM3916 IC will take one signal source.
Thus if you want to display a stereo representation of your audio, you must
install 2 LM3916 ICs.
- Windows XP Refresh Guide - Tweak3D has posted
a Windows
XP Refresh Guide on making your aging Windows XP installation run like
new. Reinstalling the OS usually takes too much time and effort, so for now
we'll just 'refresh' our Windows XP install with a few tricks of the trade.
- 3DMark 03 Performance Factors - Aces
Hardware has posted a nice editorial which will make you see 3DMark 03 in
a different light. "While doing some research on an old 350 MHz Pentium II
system, Johan came across some interesting results while benchmarking
3DMark03. When equipped with a high-end video card, like a Radeon 9700 Pro,
the 350 MHz Pentium II was able to more than keep pace with a 1.4 GHz Pentium
III Celeron and even a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 in several of the 3DMark03 game
tests. Perhaps this should not come as a suprise, since 3DMark03 is, after
all, primarily a video card benchmark. But how much of one? Given the sheer
magnitude of difference between the 350 MHz Pentium II and more modern
hardware, we decided to investigate further."
- Nero 6 Recode introduces "bug" that could wipe hard drive -
German online
magazine PCwelt.de reports that Nero 6 contains a 'bug' that could delete your
entire harddrive. The bug is introduced with the Nero 6 Recode project.
Bug might even not be the correct word for it, it seems more that Ahead forgot
to limit the feature to empty the destination folder for temporarily files. If
this destination directory is set to the root of a disc (e.g C : ) and if the
question: "Destination folder is not empty, do you wish to clear it" is
answered with yes, all files will be deleted. Description (badly translated
with Babelfish): Who clicks now over-hurried on "Yes" and had selected as
goal file a root listing, short time experiences later its blue miracle: not
only a "Video_ts" file put on in the goal file in former times is deleted, but
also all other files and file on the partition concerned are deseamed within
seconds by the plate. The user is nevertheless asked still whether he wants to
delete the files. A "Design error" is not however nevertheless. Because
actually the user should assume "Nero Recode" means the existing "Video_ts"
file in under "the target folder" indicated drive assembly and/or listing.
- Java Runtime Does Not Initialize the WMP Fix- If you use a version
of Netscape Navigator that has an embedded tag for the Windows Media Player 9
Series OCX control, the Java Runtime may not initialize the control.
This problem occurs because the Windows Media Player 9 Series OCX control
uses methods that are no longer supported by Netscape ->
download fix
- Windows Memory Diagnostic -
The
Windows Memory Diagnostic tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your
computer for errors. The diagnostic includes a comprehensive set of memory
tests. If you are experiencing problems while running Windows, you can use the
diagnostic to determine whether the problems are caused by failing hardware,
such as RAM or the memory system of your motherboard. Windows Memory
Diagnostic is designed to be easy and fast. On most configurations, you can
download the diagnostic, read the documentation, run the test and complete the
first test pass in less than 30 minutes.
- Windows Services For UNIX 3.5 beta - Before you continue, it is
important to understand that the Beta release of any product will not display
the stability of a shipped Microsoft product. You may encounter problems with
beta release of
Services for
UNIX version 3.5 (download),
which could possibly result in a loss or destruction of data. This release is
not appropriate for production use, and we suggest that you back up your
existing data before you install and run this software.
- B-Free 0.0.20 -
The B-Free
project is a collaborative work aimed at creating a BTRON operating system
from scratch, with free distribution. It is a preemptive multitasking
operating system constructed through micro-kernel technology, which assumes
32-bit or higher CPUs.
- PHP 4.3.3RC2 -
PHP 4.3.3RC2
has been released for testing. This is the first release candidate and should
have a very low number of problems and/or bugs.
- phpMyAdmin 2.5.3 RC1 and 2.5.2pl1 -
phpMyAdmin (changelog)
can manage a whole MySQL-server (needs a super-user) but also a single
database.
- Diet Kaza (formerly KaZaA Tap) v2.51 -
Diet Kazaa is a utility that removes all advertising, speeds up searches,
gives more results and takes out useless icons (i.e. Shopping).
- VideoLAN 0.6.1 -
The VideoLAN Client can
read the stream from the network and display it. It can also be used to
display video read locally on the computer : DVDs, VCDs, MPEG and DivX files
and from a satellite card. It is multi-plaform: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X,
BeOS, BSD, Solaris, QNX, iPaq... The VideoLAN Client and Server now have a
full IPv6 support.
- XMark 7 Final -
XMark 7.0 is a highly comprehensive distributed system benchmarking and
optimization suite. It supports client-server benchmarking, system
information, and optimization, reducing the amount of time required to test or
optimize an entire network of systems by using distributed benchmarking.
- PlexTools Professional v2.06 - Plextor has released the
PlexTools Professional software version 2.06.
- Outertech Cacheman 5.50.30 -
This build will repair registry tweak settings which have been damaged by
other tweak programs (wrong datatypes, values out of range etc).
- CPUInfo 2.01 -
CPUInfo shows detailed informations about the processors on the mainboard.
It detects the processor type and manufacturer, the clock ratio, level 1 and
level 2 cache and the processor instruction set extensions.
- Asus PCProbe 2.21.02 -
Asus
PCProbe is a convenient utility to monitor the computer's vital
components.
- AVM FRITZ!Card DSL Driver v03.07.04 - AVM Germany released a new
driver (Win98/ME
~
XP/2k) version for the internal PCI card DSL modemFRITZ!Card DSL (thanks
Warp2Search)
- Matrox Parhelia, 650 & 750 Drivers - Matrox has released
a
new drivers for their Parhelia, 650 & 750 line of graphics cards for
Windows XP and 2000.
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Updated:11:42 PM CEST Jun,20
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