Friday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:32 PM CEST - May,02 2003
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- RIAA cashes in on file-swapping students -
The RIAA has tacked on $59,500 to the amount four college students must
pay in addition to their student loans. The Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA) settled on this amount as part of a lawsuit it filed aginst the
students last month. The music-label backed organization could have sought as
much as $100 million from the students but let them off with individual fines
ranging from $12,000 for one student, $15,000 for two and $17,500 for the
last. The kids can stack these payments on top of their college loans, as the
deal calls for them to make an installment on the lump sum each year from 2003
to 2006.
- Old age's mental slowdown may be reversible - The slowdown of
the brain with old age is due to the lack of a brain chemical which helps
neurons to be selective about what they respond to, reveals research involving
the world's oldest monkeys. Higher brain functions, such as visual recognition
or understanding language, require the processing of information in the brain
but decline as people get older. This decline appears to be due to a reduction
in
a neurotransmitter called GABA, say researchers, which means neurons with
specific tasks become more easily fired by some other stimulus.
- New sub-atomic particle confounds theory - A sub-atomic
particle predicted to exist by physicists
has been detected for the first time in a particle accelerator in
California - but its properties do not fit with theory. The particle, called
Ds (2317), was discovered in the debris of collisions between other sub-atomic
particles. But it has baffled and intrigued the 500 physicists working on the
project.
- IBM Makes Breakthrough in Ever-Shrinking Computing -
International Business Machines Corp. said on Thursday it used
microscopic carbon molecules to emit light -- a breakthrough some
scientists say might one day make faster and smaller computers. In the quest
for ever-smaller computing devices, researchers are seeking to replace silicon
as the foundation for chips. Researchers at IBM have been studying tiny carbon
nanotubes -- molecules resembling rolls of chicken wire that are 50,000 times
narrower than a human hair.
- Lexar ships 2 GB CompactFlash card - Lexar Media has announced that
the company
is now
shipping a new 2 GB 40X-speed Professional Series CompactFlash card. The
card is guaranteed to be capable of a minimum sustained write speed of 6 MB/s,
and may operate up to a maximum write speed of 7 MB/s or more. The 2GB Type I
cards are expected to have a retail price of $699.99 USD.
- Front projectors take center stage in home theaters - The
convergence of consumer electronics and computing devices is spurring
major growth in the front-projector home theater market, with unit sales
expected to grow sevenfold from 2002 to 2007, iSuppli/Stanford Resources
predicts.
- AMD 400MHz FSB Athlon to be launched in mid-May, Intel 800MHz 3.2GHz P4
soon after - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is set to launch
its new 400MHz FSB (front-side bus) Athlon XP processors in mid-May,
shortly before rival Intel adds the top-end 3.2GHz Pentium 4 processor into
its product line on May 21, motherboard makers revealed.
- Asetek WaterChill Watercooling Kit Review - Performance-wise,
the
Asetek WaterChill didn't disappoint. Even when the radiator's fan was set
to 7v via the control system, the performance exhibited toppled that of a
premier air-cooling solution. Asetek have promised availability of graphics
card and chipset blocks in the near future, thereby giving the user even
greater appeal.
- Samsung SyncMaster 241MP TFT LCD Monitor/TV - MonkeyReview just
posted
a new review of Samsungs SyncMaster 241MP TFT LCD Monitor/TV.
- The WD360 (alias Raptor with 10,000 rpm and Serial ATA Interface) Test
- Although it only serves up a meager 36 GB,
it offers a lot more than you'd normally expect from an IDE hard disk drive.
The Raptor, alias WD360 is a new hard disk drive that is attracting
considerable attention to itself due to two major new features: it spins at
10,000 rpm and comes complete with Serial ATA. The highlight: it's supposed to
be good enough to stand up against SCSI in the lower and middle server
segment.
- Serial ATA Overview - What does SATA mean today? -
According to this article, the serial ATA isn't quite the revolution
many people expected - yet. While many people expected huge performance
boosts, that simply isn't the case. However, serial ATA does provide a
speed-up of anywhere from 5-25% in most cases with much power consumption
(signaling voltage on SATA is 0.25v compared to 5v for PATA) and thinner, more
flexible and attractive cables.
- Slackware-Live CD 2.9.0.14 -
Slackware-Live CD (download)
is a bootable CD containing Linux operating system. It runs Linux directly
from CDROM without installing. The live CD described here is based on
Slackware Linux distribution and is downloadable from this website as an ISO.
There are also available all scripts and source codes needed to build your own
live CD.
- Obtaining Windows XP Setup Boot Disks -
Windows XP Setup boot disks (WinXP
Pro ~
WinXP home) are available only by download from Microsoft. The Setup boot
disks are available so that you can run Setup on computers that do not support
a bootable CD-ROM. If your computer does support booting from a CD-ROM, or if
network-based installation is available, Microsoft recommends that you use
those installations methods instead.
- Dashboard Since 1.0 public Beta -
The first public beta of DashBoard (download)
has been released. Just a snippet of some of the new nice features from a
Quick launch of your favourite programs, new XP start menu (not shown),
calculator, slideshow (not shown), New News Agrigator, Drive Watcher, Note
Manager and many many more features. This is a beta build, so it may not be as
stable or reliable as a production build. Use it at your own risk I've noticed
it's still buggy :]
- Quintessential Player 3.51 Plus -
Quinnware has released
new version of their
Quintessential Player.
- Fresh Diagnose 5.80 -
Fresh Diagnose (download)
is an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can
analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard
disk performance, video system information, mainboard information and more.
- AVI Preview 0.26a -
AVI Preview (download)
is capable of playing partially downloaded AVI movies. To make it unique, it
is capable of playing files which are in the stage of downloading.
- EPoX 8RDA+ BIOS 3501 *Beta* - EPoX Tech UK has posted
a new BIOS beta version (download)
of the famous EPoX 8RDA+ board.
- Nvidia Detonator 50.06 -
The
driver has been released by Hewlett-Packard for their workstation models
zx2000 and zx6000 and according to the release notes you must have the HP zx1
AGP GART driver installed. (thanks
Warp2Search).
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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