SECURITY...

• New Worm Piggybacks on MSN Messaging - A new worm called "Bropia.A" spreads through the MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger instant messaging clients, security firms report. The worm loads a Trojan horse that can log keystrokes, collect system information and spread IM spam.
• Tsunami E-mail Hoaxer Jailed - A hoaxer who e-mailed the families of people caught up in the Asian tsunami telling them their relatives were dead has been jailed for six months. Christoper Pierson, 40, from Lincolnshire, was arrested on New Year's Eve after sending 35 e-mails.
• PayPal Leaking Customer Email Addresses - Most emails sent from corporations have "removal" links to comply with anti-spam legislation in the USA. On clicking the link sent out by PayPal, users can remove themselves from future mailings from the company. However, the system used to do this suffers from a lack of proper input validation and security. By changing elements of the URL (example), a malicious user can reveal other PayPal user's email addresses. The problem exposes a serious flaw in the system.
• Trojan Horses Take Aim at Mobile Phones - Two new Trojan horse programs threaten to render some Symbian-based mobile phones totally useless. The programs, Gavno.a and Gavno.b, masquerade as patch files designed to trick users into downloading them, says Aaron Davidson, chief executive officer of SimWorks International. Although almost identical with Gavno.a, Gavno.b contains the Cabir worm, which attempts to send a copy of the Trojan horse to other nearby Symbian-based phones via short-range wireless Bluetooth technology.
• Software glitch leaves Cisco routers vulnerable - Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) Software release trains 12.1YD, 12.2T, 12.3 and 12.3T, when configured for the Cisco IOS Telephony Service (ITS), Cisco CallManager Express (CME) or Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) may contain a vulnerability in processing certain malformed control protocol messages. A successful exploitation of this vulnerability may cause a reload of the device and could be exploited repeatedly to produce a Denial of Service (DoS).

OFF-TOPIC...

• Steve Ballmer pitching Windows 1.0 in a TV commercial spoof - Here's a video clip from 15 years ago of Steve Ballmer pitching Windows v1.0 on a television (T.V.) commercial/advertisement as a spoof. Another cool movie can be found here.
• The Lost 1984 Mac Video - Never seen video footage of the introduction of the Macintosh in January 1984 was published for the first time on the Internet today.
• Suicide bomber sells VW Polo - hoax ad takes internet by storm - The spoof ad opens with the suicide bomber leaving his home and jumping into his VW Polo. The bomber parks at a busy London restaurant where carefree diners crowd the pavement. Cut to the terrorist sitting in his car as he pushes the button to detonate his bomb. The blast is contained within the car, saving the diners. The ad ends: "Polo. Small but tough".
• Where are London's missing mobiles? - Close to 100,000 mobile phones mysteriously vanish in London each year, a survey published today has claimed.
• US stem cell research in jeopardy - US stem cell research faces an uncertain near future after scientists reported that existing stocks of such cells are contaminated - and therefore useless for treating people - while the US administration has terminated federal funding for the extraction of fresh cells. The problem is that current stocks have taken up a "non-human molecule called N-glycolylneuraminic acid or Neu5Gc" - probably when they were grown in a lab culture containing animal-derived materials from mice and calf foetuses. Neu5Gc is found on the surface of animal cells, but the human immune system attacks it - the major reason for transplanted animal organ rejection in humans.
• A Countdown To Global Catastrophe? - The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.
• Machine learns games "like a human" - A computer that learns to play a "scissors, paper, stone" by observing and mimicking human players could lead to machines that automatically learn how to spot an intruder or perform vital maintenance work, say UK researchers. CogVis, developed by scientists at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire, UK, teaches itself how to play the children's game by searching for patterns in video and audio of human players and then building its own "hypotheses" about the game's rules.
• Robot soldiers deployed in Iraq - The US Army is deploying the first robotic soldiers in Iraq next month. More than 18 of the remote-controlled robotic snipers, with machine guns for noses, will go into action. Apparently the robot is a conversion of the Talon robot, which has been in military service since 2000 and defusing roadside bombs in Iraq. Each one costs $200,000, and is armed with either the M249, which fires 5.56-millimeter rounds at a rate of 750 per minute, or the M240, which can fire about 700 to 1,000 7.62-millimeter rounds per minute.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft Accepts EU Decision - Microsoft announced today that it will not appeal against the European Union's court order compelling the company to remove Windows Media Player from the Windows XP operating system in Europe.
• Bill Gates plots a Windows future -  In the first part of a two-part interview, Stephen Cole of the BBC's technology show Click Online talks to Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates about the "digital lifestyle".
• Quarter Billion Songs Sold - Apple today announced that they had sold a quarter billion (250m) songs from their iTunes music store. At a rate of 1.25m songs being sold daily, the store expects to be selling approx. half a billion songs annually.
• BBC Re-launch Radio Player - The BBC has today announced a re-launch of their popular online Radio Player software. The player is being re-launched with a variety of new features being made available, including list of the most popular shows and contextual lists to aid listeners find other shows they might enjoy. Listeners will also be able to listen to the BBC's local content as well as popular radio shows that were previously un-available online
• Mozilla Firefox Lead Engineer Joins Google - Ben Goodger, Lead Engineer for the popular browser Firefox has announced that he is no longer paid by Mozilla, and has joined Google. In a posting on his blog, Ben noted his role will remain unchanged at Mozilla. "I will continue doing much the same work ...with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases". Ben, 24, has been working on Firefox since Summer 2003 after the demise of Netscape browser development. Before working on the Firefox project he spent time with America Online/Netscape contributing to a range of their Netscape products (6, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7.1). In related news,  Firefox has this morning hit 20 million downloads. Learn more about the roots of Firefox and about the 19-year-old who co-created the browser in this article.
• Windows 64 to arrive in April - Sources claimed Microsoft is planning to introduce its 64 bit operating system for Intel and AMD processors (iAMD64) on the 29th of April. The sources are close to Microsoft. It appears there will be a release to manufacturing version of WinXP 64 in March. That's the stage before the CDs get stamped out and the boxes get printed.
• TI unveils mobile on a chip - Texas Instruments has sealed a deal with Nokia which will see the mobile giant incorporate TI's Digital RF Processor (DRP) single-chip mobile phone technology into future handsets.

HARDWARE... 

• Kingston Tests DDR2 Memory at 866MHz - Memory maker Kingston Technology has showcased DDR2 memory modules running at 866MHz, setting the world’s record for memory speed operation. The company, however, said it would not launch such high-speed products into mass market shortly, as currently only a few mainboards can handle even 750MHz memory clock-speed.
• AMD64 VIA K8T890 Performance Preview - T-Break have posted a preview of A new VIA K8T890 PCI-E AMD64 based Soltek motherboard.
• nForce Professional Technology Overview - For both servers and workstations, NVIDIA is offering two solutions for the market. Today, NVIDIA is announcing the nForce Professional 2200 and nForce Professional 2050 chipsets (the latter being an I/O companion chip). Designed specifically for the AMD Opteron platform, both chips are scalable PCI Express MCPs. Since they are based on a single-chip architecture, they are cost effective solutions for the business market.
• ASUSTeK Computer A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI motherboard -  If you're looking to replace your current motherboard, or even build a system from scratch, the model you choose can have a serious impact on your system's overall performance. ASUSTeK Computer's (ASUS) A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI motherboard is about as powerful as they come, offering support for Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 processors and nVidia Scalable Links Interface (SLI) graphics cards.
• Inno3D GeForce 6600GT PCI-E & AGP - In the end, the Inno3D 6600GT PCI-e is a great card with a reasonable price tag. Best of all, the PCI-e version supports SLI and both of the AGP and PCI-e versions it supports SM3.0. On the other hand, the Inno3D 6600GT AGP was quite disappointing as it did not overclock at all and we had to downclock it to stabilize it. So we would not recommend the AGP version for you yet. Hold your horses until we get a new sample from Inno3D. Nevertheless, the CoolerMaster GPU cooler isn’t quite effective when compared to the reference model but the rubber pads around the core provided excellent support for the heatsink thus preventing it from wiggling off. Besting in each tests, the Inno3D 6600GT PCI-e should be on your Intel LGA rig or even on your NF4 rig that supports PCI-e. With a better cooling installed, we would be seeing the Inno3D 6600GT PCI-e scoring beyond the 10K mark in 3DMark03!
• D-Link Air Premier 802.11a/b/g Wireless Network - With that network, Internet and file sharing worked well for small files, but when streaming videos off of my server to the wireless clients, things got choppy at times. So I started my search for a faster wireless solution. This led me to the local Best Buy where I picked up a D-Link DI-784 Wireless Router. I chose this router due to the ability of it being able to work with 802.11a/b/g. This would let me set up the network independent on the cards I used for the wireless network. This router also has full support for WPA security, which is stronger protection than WEP which also is a plus.
• Multifunction roundup - The multifunction market is changing. Prices are falling, printing rates rising and ink costs have gone down. In this test BeHardware put the Canon MP390, Epson RX425 / CX4600, HP PSC 1350 and Lexmark P6250 up against each other.

GUIDES...

• Installing ATI Silencer 4 on x800 Series Cards - The instructions are pretty good, but this is 100% idiot proof. Step by step instructions on how to install an ATI Silencer 4 on your X800 Series Video Card. The Card used in this guide is a Gigabyte X800XT.
• Using Linux For The First Time - There are many, many Live CDs available. Some of the best-known ones are Knoppix, Gnoppix, Mepis, SuSE Live CD and Mandrake Move Live CD. These are all freely available, and you can use any one you like. For the purposes of this article, we will be using the Mepis variant of Live CD.

SOFTWARE...

• Mobile Net Switch 3.1 - Mobile Net Switch enables you to use your computer on more than one network with the click of a button. Mobile Net Switch allows you to automatically select the correct drive mappings, printer settings, IP settings and much more. This new version adds support for Firefox and improves network connection handling.
• Windows File Protection Switcher 0.8 Beta - Windows File Protection Switcher lets you disable and re-enable Windows File Protection (WFP).
• Kerio Personal Firewall 4.2.0 Beta - Kerio Personal Firewall (KPF) (download) helps users control how their computers exchange data with other computers on the Internet or local network. Kerio Personal Firewall is a necessity for all desktop computers connected to broadband Internet, using DSL, cable, ISDN, WiFi or satellite modems.
• SPAMfighter Standard 3.2.5 - A tool to remove spam from your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
• Harden-It 1.2 - Harden-It is a new lightweight software release from YASC .ltd and Zoller Thierry. Harden-it was designed to harden your Windows installation against numerous attacks
• MemTest 3.1 - MemTest is a RAM reliability tester. It evaluates the ability of your computer's memory to store and retrieve data.
• BSPlayer 1.02 - 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.
• DivXToDVD Converter 0.4.2.71 - DivxToDVD converts your movie files from a wide range of formats (AVI, XVID, MPEG, and DIVX) to compliant DVD structures (VOB and IFO).
• AnyDVD update 4.5.6.2 - AnyDVD is a driver, which descrambles DVD-Movies automatically in the background. This DVD appears unprotected and region code free for all applications and the Windows operating system as well. With AnyDVD's help copy tools like CloneDVD, Pinnacle Instant Copy, InterVideo DVD-Copy, etc. are able to copy CSS protected Movies.
• Codec 7.8i - This codec pack includes DivX Pro 5.2.1, XviD 1.1.0 Beta1, Ligos Indeo XP Codec 5.2820.15.58, AC3Filter 1.01a (rc5), Fraunhoffer IIS Mpeg Layer-3 DirectShow Decoder 1.9.0.311, Fraunhoffer IIS Mpeg Layer-3 ACM Codec 1.9.0.305, Ogg Vorbis 1.1 (rc1), Ogg Vorbis DirectShow Filter 0.9.9.6, Ogg Vorbis DirectShow Filter Decoder 1.0, Ogg Vorbis Audio ACM Codec 0.0.3.6, DivX AntiFreeze 0.4.
• RadLinker 2.028 - RadLinker is new tweaker/linker for ATI Radeon based graphics cards.
• Xtreme G 67.66  - This is the Xtreme G driver which includes many performance and Image Quality tweaks. These are modified NVIDIA ForceWare drivers for Windows 2000 & XP.
• Forceware 71.25 Windows 2000/XP - A new Forceware with build 71.25 appeared on the web today. These drivers are date stamped at the 10th of January 2005. These drivers are WHQL (Microsoft tested) signed but do not have support for all NVIDIA graphics cards, only series 6 and a few Quadro's are supported