Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 03:56 AM CET - Jan,22 2003
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- New Games Console announced - A newly formed US technology
company,
Infinium Labs Corporation, today announced (PR
~ homepage) that
they will develop and market a new games console that they claim will
outperform the Xbox, Sony Playstation 2, and GameCube. The product
(called 'Phantom', at the moment) will be geared towards hardcore gamers and
PC users, and will be the first always-on broadband console. This next
generation game console provides a robust, fault tolerant delivery system that
supports games on demand, game rentals, game demos, seamless upgrades and
patch management. The official spiel claims.
- The first 'Matrix' sequel hits in May, the second in November -
The plots of "Reloaded" and "Revolutions" have been closely held secrets
but take moviegoers into Zion -- the world's last remaining haven for humans
-- and an epic showdown between Neo and the forces of evil, Silver said.
Several characters will be back to help Neo, including his love interest,
Trinity, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, and Morpheus, the rebel leader played by
Laurence Fishburne, as they try to save the world. New arrivals include Niobe
(Jada Pinkett-Smith), who is Morpheus' former lover and, like Morpheus, is
captain of a rebel ship. Princeton scholar Cornel West has a role in both
movies as a Zion elder. (Note: If you missed earlier movie trailer from
Japanese website, here is
a link).
For more information and goodies about "Matrix" visit
MatrixFans.net.
- BT shuts Games Domain Multiplay - BT has informed subscribers
to its Games Domain branded multiplayer product that it intends to
discontinue the services on February 17, less than a year and a half after
its original launch in November 2001. Meanwhile, GAME Plc has recently
launched its new Game.net service, based on the veteran UK online gaming
service Barrysworld.
- Jail for "wipe-out" virus creator - A British Web designer has been
sentenced to two years in prison for writing one of the world's most
destructive viruses which wiped out computers worldwide. Simon Vallor, 22, was
trapped after an FBI tip-off to Scotland Yard. He received his sentence on
Tuesday at Southwark Crown Court, London, after pleading guilty in December to
three counts of releasing a computer virus. Vallor created cyber bugs at his
home in North Wales and sent them around the world as e-mails, infecting an
estimated 27,000 computers in more than 40 countries. The worst of his
creations was first seen on December 5, 2001 when the e-mails flooded into
users' inboxes. As soon as they were opened they infected the complete address
list of each user.
- 40 arrested in Spain for CD and DVD piracy - Police arrested
40 people and needed two large trucks to cart away more than 240,000 CDs and
DVDs in Spain's biggest crackdown on pirate recording, Interior Minister
Angel Acebes said Monday. The raids over the past 24 hours took place in 11
Madrid apartments, a country villa and a warehouse on the capital's outskirts,
said Acebes. The 40 arrested included 29 Chinese, nine Senegalese and two
Taiwan-born Spaniards.
- Legendary hacker to get unleashed and online - One of the world's
most famous computer hackers gets off probation this week and plans to dive
back into the Internet, his former playground where breaking-and-entering
landed him in jail for five years. On Tuesday,
39-year-old Kevin Mitnick will log on to the Internet for the first time
in eight years, during the live TechTV show "Screen Savers." Also scheduled to
be on the program are Shawn Fanning, creator of Internet music downloading
pioneer Napster, and Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple Computer Inc.
- Open Windows policy tested in Russia -
Russia
becomes the first country to get its hands on one of the world's most
closely guarded corporate secrets--the source code for the Microsoft operating
system.
- Microsoft unlocks new CD copy protection - Microsoft announced on
Saturday new digital rights software
aimed at
helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the
biggest thorns in the ailing industry's side. Stung by the common
practice of consumers copying, or "burning," new versions of a store-bought CD
onto recordable CDs, music companies have invested heavily in copy-protection
technologies that have mainly backfired or annoyed customers. For example,
most copy-proof CDs are designed so that they cannot be played on a PC, but
often this prevents playback on portable devices and car stereos too.
- Nvidia adds special FX for workstations - The Quadro FX (PR)
initially will come in two versions -
the FX
2000 and the FX 1000 - in video cards made by manufacturing partners PNY
for the North American market and Leadtek for Asia, according to Jerry Chen,
an Nvidia product manager. Recent innovations that have made their way into
the Quadro FX cards include DDR-II memory, much more precise pixel-by-pixel
control of images and enhanced support for processor-intensive effects such as
anti-aliasing, which selectively redraws parts of an image at higher
resolutions.
- Via puts "Padlock" on PC data - The chipmaker, best known in the
United States for its Apollo chipsets, will announce on Tuesday
a new C3
processor that includes a data security feature, dubbed Padlock. According
to Via, the C3 will ship by month's end. The 1GHz processor incorporates a
random number generator, a tool used in file encryption. Software makers can
use a programming tool from Via to write applications that, in turn, use the
generator to encrypt their files.
- Speeding up the iPAQ H1910 - The iPAQ H1910 is, as delivered from
the factory, set by Hewlett-Packard to operate at a processor speed setting of
200 MHz. Its processor
is
however able to operate at speeds from 100 to 300 MHz, as part of the
built-in speed stepping features of XScale processor. Why HP decided not to
include tools to allow H1910 owners to scale their handhelds to run at 300 MHz
is unknown, although a likely answer could be that not all components of the
H1910 are capable of supporting the processor when running at more than 200
MHz. Deciding to address the issue, Seattle-based
Revolutionary Software
Front (RSF) has come up with an application called ClearSpeed for the iPAQ
H1910. By allowing users of the iPAQ H1910 to scale their processor speed up
to 300 MHz, the company found that it could increase the handheld's general
performance, experiencing only a 7% drop in battery life.
- Samsung Introduces 4GB DDR Module - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
today announced
the industry's first 4GB DDR Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM). The module
encompasses thirty-six 1 Gigabit (Gb) DDR synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) components
that achieve 4GByte density for high-performance applications such as servers,
workstations and supercomputers.
- Microsoft Office ready for Linux - Linux software maker SuSE
announced Tuesday the release of
Linux
Office Desktop, software that allows Linux PCs to run Microsoft Office.
The software reworks the application programming interfaces (APIs) behind
Office 97 and Office 2000 to allow the applications to run in the open-source
operating system.
- MyDVD Media Suite Announced- Adaptec today announced the
availability of
MyDVD Media Suite software that enables home computer users with a DVD or
CD burner to create and play professional-quality DVDs and CDs containing
movies, home videos, digital photo albums, music and backups of important
documents.
- Visio 2002 Service Release 1 (SR-1) Update -
The GDI Plus update for Microsoft Visio 2002 Service Release 1 (SR-1)
fixes an error that occurs in Visio 2002 SR-1 after installation on Microsoft
Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, or Microsoft Windows
Millennium Edition.
- Outlook 2002/2000 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup - Backing up your
Microsoft Outlook information is quicker and easier with the Personal Folders
Backup feature.
Personal Folders Backup (free) creates backup copies of your .PST files at
regular intervals, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely
backed up. With Personal Folders Backup, you can choose which of your .PST
files you wish to back up, and how often you wish to back them up.
- Apache 2.0.44 -
Apache 2.0 (download)
offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3
codebase. The most visible and noteworthy addition is the ability to run
Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any platform that supports both
threads and processes. This has shown to improve the scalability of the Apache
HTTP Server significantly in our testing. Apache 2.0 also includes support for
filtered I/O. This allows modules to modify the output of other modules before
it is sent to the client. We have also included support for IPv6 on any
platform that supports IPv6.
- ICQ Pro 2003a Beta Build 3800 -
ICQ (download)
is a revolutionary user-friendly Internet program that notifies you who's
online at all times and enables you to initiate contact with those people at
any time. I don't know what is new in this beta, probably bugfixes.
- TMPGEnc 2.510.49.157 -
TMPGEnc
(download
Free /
Plus)
converts *.AVI file to MPEG1, the format which is used in VideoCD. Using
variety of option in TMPGEnc, you can compress your video file in high
quality. TMPGEnc enables us adjust bitrate, quantize matrix, GOP structure,
Interlace and many other parameter so that you can create most appropriate
movie file depends on your purpose.
- HWiNFO32 v1.22 -
HardwareInfo32 is a powerful system information utility designed
especially for detection of hardware. It's able to identify a large scale of
system components and supports the latest technologies and standards.
- SecureFX 2.1.3 -
The SecureFX (download)
client application lets you choose between SFTP or FTP over an encrypted SSH2
connection for secure transfers, or standard FTP for non-secure transfers. It
has a simple Explorer-like interface, so it's easy to learn and use.
- TaskInfo 2003 v5.0.0.82 RC1 -
TaskInfo2002
(download)
is combination of Task Manager and System Information Utility, It visually
monitors different types of System information in Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
TaskInfo2002 for Win95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP shows in real time information about
all running processes and threads including ring0 VxD threads.
- TweakNow PowerPack 2003 Professional v1.2.1 - TweakNow has released
TweakNow PowerPack 2003 Professional v1.2.1, a comprehensive and
easy-to-use Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP utility that lets you fine-tune
Windows and Internet Explorer.
- MSI Graphic Card BIOSes - You can get many BIOSes for most of MSI's
Nvidia graphics cards
here.
(thanks
X-bios)
- R8500 flash to 9100? - It seems that flashing from 8500 to 9100
works! When you have a card based on the ATI reference Design.
kmf has posted a flash guide on the 3DCenter.de Forums, here is
a short summary of it in English.
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Updated:10:40 PM CEST Jun,21
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