Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:51 AM CEST - Aug,14 2002
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- India plans moon mission "by 2007" - According to the Times of
India, scientists with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) have sent
a report to government officials saying they have the technical capability
to launch an expedition to Earth's nearest neighbor by 2007. They say they
expect the project to cost in the region of $82.5 million.
- Going up? Space elevator wins support - NASA has
given HighLift a US$570,000 grant to continue research into the elevator
and the company has received an indication of support from the European Space
Agency, which has representatives attending the Seattle conference. Unlike the
science fiction version, this space elevator need not be anchored improbably
both to Earth and an asteroid. Instead, it would be tethered just to Earth
from a floating platform in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. From there, a
100,000-kilometre-long ribbon about one metre wide with the thickness of a
sheet of paper would be propelled by rockets beyond the point in space where
orbiting objects remain above a fixed point on the Earth's surface, the
so-called geosynchronous orbit.
- U.S. vulnerable to data sneak attack - A terrorist team
would be
able to do significant localized damage to the nation's systems, according
to a recent war games simulation.
- Symantec unveils automated Norton AntiVirus - On Monday the company
announced Version 2003, due September 1, which it says will automatically
protect a PC from evolving threats such as advanced e-mail worms and infected
instant messaging attachments.
- "Serious flaw" found in Internet Explorer - The IE problem has been
around for at least five years and
could
allow an attacker to intercept credit card and/or personal data when a
user is making a purchase.
- Gamers get Ł500 to change their name - Gamers are being asked to
change their names by deed poll to promote the launch of a new game called
Turok Evolution. UK publisher Acclaim wants five people to agree to change
their name to Turok for one year as part of its promotion. According to the
company, those
taking part in the promotion will receive Ł500, an Xbox console and a copy
of the new game.
- EverQuest = big money - Smedley, 33, is the chief operating officer
of Sony Online Entertainment, where he's master of the virtual boomtown known
as EverQuest. Once a destination for the fringe Dungeons & Dragons crowd, the
online role-playing game now has
433,000 paying customers who generate $5 million a month for the Japanese
entertainment giant. Given the 40 percent gross-profit margins, and the fact
that this world practically runs itself, the dragon-slaying business is
looking pretty good these days.
- An MP3 player trapped in a cassette tape's body - You've loaded
your portable MP3 player with your favorite tunes, and now you want to play
them in your car on a summer road trip. With most digital music players, you
have just one option: plug a cassette-shaped adapter into the player's
headphone jack. That approach works, but it makes for a messy dashboard.
You'll have a cable dangling from your car's tape slot, and you'll need some
place to park the digital player. A company called Digisette has a much more
elegant solution.
The Digisette Duo-DX is a digital audio player in a lightweight aluminum
case that is shaped exactly like an audio cassette.
- Red Hat Announces Hammer Support -Red Hat and AMD today announced
that Red Hat will offer
global support for the upcoming AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon
processors based on AMD's Hammer technology in Red Hat Linux Advanced Server,
and future enterprise Linux offerings from Red Hat. Red Hat will provide
native 64-bit support for processors based on AMD's x86-64 technology, while
providing support for existing 32-bit Linux-based applications.
- ATi Radeon 9700 available in Japan - According to Rage3D, the
Powercolor Radeon
9700 Pro is now being sold in the famous Akiba market.
- Intel's 90 nano technology to use strained silicon - We know that
Intel has
planned to move from its current 130 nanometer to 90 nanometers for some
time, but Barrett will describe a process called "strained silicon" which is
already used by IBM. Strained silicon will increase the speed of transistors,
while copper interconnect technology, which competitor AMD has used for some
time, also increases performance. The firm claimed that it used a 90 nano
process to make SRAM chips at 52 megabits last February, with around 300
million transistors in a 109 square millimetre area. The SRAM cell size is one
square micron, claims Intel, which is 100 times smaller than a red blood cell.
This SRAM technology will help inprove cache sizes in the future chips.
- Zalman Fan Control Review -
FAN MATE 1 is an adjustable fan speed connector for allowing you to
control the speed of a fan.
- Triplex Millennium Silver GeForce 4 Ti4600 Review -
The card sports 128Mb of Samsung 2.8ns DDR, which equates in theory to a
max speed of 714Mhz. The default speed of the GeForce 4 Ti4600 is 300 Core/650
Memory, so they are giving you a little overclocking headroom here (in theory
anyway). It will be interesting to see just how fast we can get her purring
later on....
- ATi Radeon 9000 Pro Review - The long awaited RV250 core is finally
here. At first, rumors would have suspected
that the Radeon 9000 Pro (rv250 core) would be the successor of the Radeon
8500 (R200 core). Instead the Radeon 9000 Pro seems to be ATi's budget card
for their next generation video cards. All of ATi's internal benchmarkings has
the Radeon 9000 Pro go against Nvidia's GeForce4 MX460. All specs of the
Radeon 9000 Pro and the Radeon 8500 including clock speeds, memory speeds,
bandwidth, etc. are the same except the Texture Units per Pipeline where the
Radeon 9000 Pro has 1 whereas the Radeon 8500 has 2. Can it really be that
similar you ask? Have a lookg for yourself.
- eVGA GeForce4 Ti 4400 Review - There are 3 flavors of the GeForce
Ti series cards. There is the Top end Ti 4600. The middle guy, Ti 4400 and the
more budget friendly Ti 4200 version which is the cheapest of the three. All
three varied in price ranges with their own specific markets. The Ti 4400
seems to be a favorite card among enthusiasts as it provides the best bang for
the buck. Normally a 4400 can be had for 100$ cheaper than a 4600, yet if your
lucky enough to get a quality card,
you can overclock the 4400 to near or beyond 4600 default speeds.
-
Stealth CDROM Guide - Due to popular demand,
eliteHW has started on a sequence of articles involving simple case mods.
Hopefully these guides will show you how to improve the aesthetics of your
case without huge costs. The first in this series of articles will be on
stealth-ing your CD-ROM bays. This mod is not all that original or new,
but I post in several forums, and when people see my rig I get a lot of "Whoa,
how'd you do that?" or, "Then how does the drive open?" Hopefully I will
answer these questions with a simple guide.
- Nero InfoTool V1.02 -
Nero InfoTool
v1.02 is the latest addition, this small download does a scan of your
hardware and gives you a complete overview of components hardware/software
installed and now can detect drivers.
- AntiVir Personal Edition 6.14.16.66 (FREE) -
The
AntiVir Personal Edition offers the effective protection against computer
viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation. In
order to make possible an easy operation, the AntiVir Personal Edition is
developed to the essential points.
- mp3PRO Winamp plugin v1.1 (Free) -
Playback mp3PRO files and streams on your Winamp player.
- WM Recorder 2.0 -
Freeware WM Recorder (WMR20) allows you to record Windows Media stream
video and audio clips from the Internet and save them to your hard drive or
CD. The program provides two recording modes. In Browse Mode you can record
media clips while browsing the Net.
-
Nvidia 3D Stereo 30.82 Driver for stereo 3D glasses -
Nvidia have released thier 3D Stereo 30.82 Drivers (Win9x/ME
/
WinXP/2k) for use with your 3D glasses .
Hercules Catalyst Radeon (7.74) Reference Drivers -
Hercules have released their
Catalyst Radeon (7.74) reference drivers and the Hercules Control Panels
7.74 for Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/2000/XP that should work on all Hercules ATI
Radeon cards from the 3D Prophet 7500 DDR 64MB to the latest 3D Prophet 9000
PRO 128MB.
A-tuner v1.1.7.5 -
A-tuner
is a small tool for changing the following 4 settings on your Nvidia card: Anti-Aliasing (including all unofficial modes), Anisotropic Filtering, Vsync,
MipMap LOD (Level Of Detail) Bias. |
Updated:09:48 AM CEST Jun,21
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