Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:28 AM CEST - Sep,11 2004
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- Sneaky Sharing - Where has all the good illegal peer-to-peer action
gone? Underground. In some cases, waaaaay underground. Fearful of reprisals
from the major entertainment companies and worried about virus-laden,
corrupted, or spoofed files, many users are shying away from the big-name
file-sharing networks like Kazaa and WinMX, and have gone straight, buying
their music and video from legal sources. That's a win for Hollywood. But it
is also clear that
large numbers of music and video pirates are simply looking elsewhere for
their booty and have turned to lesser-known P-to-P networks, Usenet, and even
invitation-only networks.
- The Trojan resume: MyDoom authors encode job plea -
MyDoom.V and MyDoom.U contain a malicious e-mail attachment that attempts
to download a backdoor Trojan horse called Surila if the recipient tries to
open the infected file. Also secretly embedded inside the malicious code is a
message to the antivirus industry: "We searching 4 work in AV industry."
- [Exploit] : Cerulean Studios Trillian 0.74i Buffer Overflow in MSN
module exploit -
A
buffer overflow vulnerability in basic edition version 0.74i (latest
version) occours in the MSN module when receiving a string of around 4096
bytes ended with a newline character from an MSN messenger server. This
vulnerability is remotely exploitable but require the use of the
man-in-the-middle technique.
- [Exploit] : Off-by-one bug in Halo 1.04 - Halo uses the Gamespy SDK
and moreover the handshake algorithm provided in this
library to let players to join servers. The off-by-one bug is located just
in the client's response (the last stage of this handshake) because
if
it is longer than 32 bytes causes the immediate crash of the server.
- Students, college face off over Wi-Fi - The university
administration issued
a new policy this week that bars students from running their own private
Wi-Fi networks in campus housing. The unregulated hot spots are interfering
with the university's own wireless service, which is offered freely to
students and staff, campus technology administrators said.
- McAfee's Trojan horse error gets developer's goat - An Australian
software developer is
considering suing McAfee after the antivirus company wrongly identified
his Internet setup program as a Trojan horse in a recent virus definition
update. Griffiths sells the Internet setup program, ISPWizard, to Internet
service providers in more than 20 countries. McAfee antivirus software on ISP
customers' computers labeled ISPWizard as the BackDoor-AKZ Trojan horse.
- Tech Firms Announce Video Anti-Piracy Technology - NDS,
STMicroelectronics and Thomson said on Friday they
will develop new encryption technology to foil video piracy, a $3.5
billion problem for broadcasters and movie studios. The new technology is
designed to allow media companies to encrypt their content with their own
digital rights management (DRM) specifications and have it unscrambled for
viewing solely by devices embedded with SVP-enabled chips.The companies hope
enough SVP-enabled video playback devices and TV set-top boxes will hit the
market in coming years so as to allow consumers to transport the encrypted
content to specially equipped SVP devices for playback.
- Off-topic: Engineer Builds Robot That Walks on Water - With
inspiration from nature and some help from research at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, a research team led by Carnegie Mellon engineering
assistant professor Metin Sitti has built
a tiny robot that can walk on water, much like insects known as water
skimmers, water skaters, pond skaters or Jesus bugs. Although it's only
a basic prototype, Sitti and other researchers imagine that his water-skimming
robot could be used on any still water. With a chemical sensor, it could
monitor water supplies for contamination or other toxins; with a camera it
could be a spy or an explorer; with a net or a boom, it could skim
contaminants off the top of water.
- Off-topic: How Well Do You Estimate? - A random UK blogger
has published
a quiz asking readers (part
#2) to estimate various numeric values which they may or may not have
knowledge of; and has analyzed the resulting answers to determine how well
people guess. (Slasdot.org)
- Off-topic: Hypnosis really changes your mind -
Hypnosis significantly affects the activity in a part of the brain
responsible for detecting and responding to errors, says John Gruzelier, a
psychologist at Imperial College in London. Using functional brain imaging, he
also found that hypnosis affects an area that controls higher level executive
functions.
- Off-topic: Stroke victim robbed of her dreams -
The stuff that dreams are made of is a chunk of grey matter deep down at
the back of the human brain, reveals a study of a rare form of brain damage.
The case of a woman who lost the ability to dream for several months after a
stroke has raised some interesting questions about how and why people dream.
- DirecTV Plans 1500 HiDef Channels by End of 2007 -
DirecTV
plans on launching four Ka-band satellites by 2007. This means local HiDef
channels over satellite for the biggest markets by the end of 2005, with room
for 500 HD channels. Plus 1000 more HD local channels and 150 national HD
channels by the end of 2007.
- T-Mobile to offer MS Smartphone in EU -
Mobile will begin selling a smartphone in Europe running Microsoft's
Windows Mobile software for less than EUR100 when purchased with a service
contract, it has been claimed. The SDA features a 65,000-colour screen,
built-in camera and Bluetooth, and weighs 100g. The battery lasts for 240
minutes of talk time, or 200 hours on standby, and the phone supports a memory
card. The Windows Mobile software will offer mobile users calendar, Microsoft
Word, Excel and PowerPoint functions, has a PDF reader and syncs with Outlook
e-mail. The tri-band phone will be available in Germany in early
October, and is expected to be sold in other European countries where T-Mobile
operates such as the UK, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic and
Austria.
- O2 and NTL trial TV on mobile phones -
Oxford will see
the UK's first trials of multi-channel television on mobile phones next
spring. The trial is to be run by NTL's Broadcast division and O2. Around 500
people will be issued with a multimedia phone able to pick up 16 different TV
channels.
- AMD starts shipping 90 nanometre chips - AMD is telling
investors who ask that
it has
started shipping 90 nanometre Athlon 64 microprocessors. Although it
hasn't said which vendors have started shipping the chips, it said a few
vendors are using the process shrink in their machines.
- AMD Samples Athlon 64 4000+, FX-55 Chips, but on 130nm -
Pictures of AMD Athlon 64 4000+ and AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 processors located
at a Chinese web-server have been posted in a forum thread of
AMDZone web-site. It appears that the model 4000+ will be clocked at
2.40GHz, contain 1MB of L2 cache and sport dual-channel memory controller,
fully copying specs of the currently shipping AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 processor
for Socket 939 infrastructure. By the time the AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 hits the
market, the Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker is likely to launch its
Athlon 64 4000+ (Q4 2004), Athlon 64 4200+ (Q1 2005) and Athlon 64 4400+ (Q2
2005), sources said.
- 600MHz DDR Modules Sneak Into Market - Data, a maker of memory
modules, is reportedly preparing to begin shipments of the world's first DDR
SDRAM memory modules certified to operate at 600MHz, a speed-bin that is
higher compared the majority of currently shipping DDR2 products.
- 200 watt dual core heatsinks pictured -
Oh my
gosh! :) + This article at TheInquirer claims that
Intel Dual
Core needs 150W-180W :]
- Sparkle to ship 6600s next week - Knowing Sparkle, it will stick
with Nvidia reference clock speeds. So
you can
expect 500/1000 MHz 6600GT and 300/500MHz 6600 non GT.
- ATI set to kickstart PCI-Express in the mainstream enthusiast -
HEXUS.net has posted
some information on new chipsets from ATi for the AMD Socket 939 platform:
"Now on the AMD chipset front, things seem really set to change for ATI, as
our sources have told us that testing of ATI's PCI-Express core logic for AMD
Athlon 64 Socket 939 platforms is developing well, and a solid Q4 launch date
is imminent. "
- AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 (Socket 939) CPU review -
Yes, the Athlon 64 FX-53 is a pricey beast, but when you put out that much
money it is good to know you will be the big boy on the block. As I stated
early on, this is not a competition between AMD and Intel, but it doesn’t take
much research to see that when it comes to gaming, AMD is where the power
lies. As this piece is being written, prices for the FX-53 have just fallen to
US$775 and lower as you can see on DealTime at online stores such as Newegg,
so while the prices are already heading downward, it will still cost a pretty
chunk of change.
- UltraProducts PC3200 DDR 1 gig Dual Channel Kit review -
Xtremecomputing has posted
a
review of the UltraProducts PC3200 DDR 1 gig Dual channel kit.
- Gigabyte's GA-K8NSNXP-939 MB review - For starters, Gigabyte's use
of a
10/100 Fast Ethernet PHY cripples the nForce3 Ultra's integrated Gigabit
Ethernet controller, reducing potential peak throughput by a factor of 10.
That's inexcusable, and PCI-bound GigE doesn't do much to ease the pain.
- Socket 939 motherboards roundup - Throughout the synthetic, gaming,
and encoding tests,
all four of the motherboards they've looked at in this article performed
at near identical levels. In the "real-world" testing with the Business and
Content Creation Winstones benchmarks, however, the two NVIDIA nForce3-powered
motherboards - the Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 and the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum - had a
distinct performance advantage.
- Xincom DPG-602 Dual WAN Router With Inbound Load Balancing review -
The DPG-602 offers the same outbound load balancing features as the 402
along with an inbound load balancing function. Inbound load balancing can be
very advantageous for small to medium sized businesses. For instance, a
company can save a great deal of money by switching from a T1 connection to
two cable internet connections. Normally, the upload speed is much slower for
a cable modem than a T1. However, with two broadband connections at 4000K
downstream and 500K upstream a piece, you can get near T1 speeds on the upload
and up to six times faster download speeds.
- Power Supply Roundup - TweakTown has posted
a power supply roundup comparing some of the latest units from OCZ,
Thermaltake, Vantec and Coolermaster
- Samsung introduces a lower millisecond LCD for gamers - One of the
biggest downfalls of LCD monitors is ghosting. But Samsung has kept working on
it. With its latest release, the Samsung 172X, it has produced a 17" LCD
pushing a response time of 12ms. The gaming community hasn't shown great
interest in LCD monitors due to the ghosting factor,
but here we have a monitor capable of making gamers heads turn, and
rethink the possibilities.
- Samsung SyncMaster 172X LCD review - One of the biggest fall backs
on LCD monitors is ghosting. But this hasn't sopped Samsung from working on
it. With their latest release, the Samsung 172X, it has produced
a 17" LCD pushing a response time of 12ms.
- LG RU-52SZ61D DLP HDTV review - To sum up,
LG's RU-52SZ61D is a better-than average HD Capable display device. It is
an HD Capable
- model, which to this reviewer's mindset is more desirable these days than
a fully integrated model with CableCARD. Let's face it; you'll either going to
add a satellite HD set-top box or a cable HD one. So, why bother paying for
tuning that you don't want or need. At a suggested retail price of $3,499
(probably less than $2,999 Street), it offers new DLP display technology,
which is a worthy successor to the old-fashioned CRT picture tube.
- Canon Rebel Ti SLR Camera review - Buck for buck,
the
Rebel Ti is one of the best 35mm SLRs you can get. It has many features
which are close in quality to professional models, and an autofocus that
rivals them. And though it is built of cheaper materials, the Rebel Ti is a
great choice for those looking for a less expensive entrance into the world of
SLR photography.
- Catalyst 4.9 R3x0 Performance and AA review -
3DChipset have published some benchies for ATi's latest Catalyst 4.9
driver plus a performance comparsion against Catalyst 4.7 , 4.8. (thanks
Warp2Search)
- MySQL 4.0.21 -
MySQL (download
~
changelog) is the world's most popular open source database, recognized
for its speed and reliability.
- FirePanel XP 1.0.1710 -
FirePanel XP is a tool
that will configure & monitor your Windows Firewall activity, and keep tabs on
what exactly you're being exposed to, in real-time.
- BSPlayer 1.01 -
BSplayer (download)
is a Windows player that plays back all kinds of media files ( avi / mpg / asf
/ wmv / wav / mp3...) and specialises in video and divx playback.
- DVD Decrypter 3.5.1.0 - A new version of
DVD Decrypter is
available (thanks ally russell)
- FRAPS 2.3.1 -
Fraps is a tool
that lets you monitor current framerates in a corner of the screen for
programs using DirectX or OpenGL technology. It also allows you to easily take
screenshots of games, make movies of gameplay, and manually determine the
average framerate between two points. This new version fixes crash in 2.3.0
when Save Detailed Benchmark Statistics enableda and incorrect colors recorded
from games running in 16-bit color.
- Fresh View v3.0 -
Fresh View - your free Multimedia Manager has been upgraded to version
3.0. What's new: Contact Print option in Tools menu. Just install it over the
old version on your PC
- UltraISO 7.22 (SHW) -
UltraISO (download)
is a CD image file creating/editing/converting tool, it can directly edit the
CD image file and extract files and folders from it, as well as directly make
ISO files from your CD-ROM or hard disk.
- Latest Bios updates - TCMagazine let us know they have
the latest bios updates listed by brand, ASUS has 15 bios updates, SOLTEK
has 10 bios updates, AOPEN has 9 bios updates, CHAINTECH has 5 bios updates,
EPOX has 9 bios updates and ASROCK has 5 bios updates.
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Updated:02:22 PM CEST Jun,03
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