Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 04:05 AM CEST - Oct,01 2002
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- Tanatos - A Worm with a "Trojan" In Its Pocket -
Kaspersky Labs today
announced the detection of a new Internet worm called Tanatos, which is
currently spreading via email and is busy hijacking confidential information
from infected computers. Presently Kaspersky Labs has already received
confirmation Tanatos infections in the UK. Tanatos is a Windows attachment
about 50 KB in size (it is packed by the UPX compression utility) and written
in Microsoft Visual C++. The worm is spreading via email attachment files with
differing headings, body texts and file attachment names. After the worm
arrives in the inbox of potential victims, Tanatos waits for its email message
to be read (for example, in the preview window), once this occurs, by
exploiting the "IFRAME" vulnerability in the Windows Explorer's security
system, it secretly infects the machine. While infecting a victim computer the
worm registers itself in the system registry auto-run key so that its
malicious code will activate each time Windows is booted. Tanatos also sets a
keyboard "bug" that records all keyboard actions to a specified file.
- Do climate shifts spark ice meteors? - There's another
article about climate, this time about ice meteors. A Spanish scientist says
global warming may be to blame for
giant blocks of ice which fall from clear skies and rip gaping holes in
cars and houses. Jesus Martinez-Frias has spent the last two and a half years
investigating so-called megacryometeors - ice meteors.
- Ozone Hole Over Antarctica Smaller - The ozone hole over Antarctica
is
markedly smaller this year than in the last few years and has split in
two, government scientists reported Monday
- BMW M3 SMG - In
Europe an acceleration-assist feature is programmed in to automate a 4000-rpm
clutch-drop, clutch-slip launch, but an internal counter permits only one
such launch per hour, 30 for the life of the clutch. We won't get that, so for
best results engage S6, floor the throttle to call for an aggressive clutch
drop, then back off to 75 percent to allow the tires to hook up at about 3000
rpm. Then keep your foot down, upshifting at 8000 rpm. This technique can't
beat an expert's foot on a clutch, however. Our most recent three-pedal M3
outran the SMG by 0.3 second, with the entire advantage gained in first gear.
The SMG hit 60 mph in 4.8 seconds and ran the quarter in 13.4, 0.3 second
slower than our long-term M3 at both points, and each crossed the quarter-mile
at 107 mph, suggesting they were equally powerful. Running in the A5 mode
slowed the SMG by another 0.2 second.
- Samsung SGH-T100 Review -
The
SGH-T100 is a dual band (900/1800) GSM clam-shell phone with a 4,096 color
screen (128x160 pixels) on the inside and a second smaller non-color screen on
the outside, which shows the time, SMS messages received and who is calling,
among other things. The phone weighs 94g with a slim battery and measures 88 x
55 x 23 mm when closed. It comes with a second thicker standard battery for
longer standby-by (110 hours) and call time (4 hours). Even though it has a
color screen it held up well over a three-day period with good usage with the
standard battery, which is good enough for taking it with you on a short trip
over the weekend. The slim included battery holds up well, and gives the phone
a very nice form factor.
- ATI announces the new ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO - Multimedia on the PC
rises to a new level with
today's announcement from ATI Technologies Inc. of the ALL-IN-WONDER
9700 PRO. The world's fastest multimedia graphics card joins the
award-winning ALL-IN-WONDER family to offer mulTView for dual TV tuner support
and 128MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory plus more - powered by the new
RADEON 9700 PRO VPU (visual processor unit) graphics chip with cutting edge 2D
and 3D graphics performance. ATI's new flagship multimedia video card,
ALL-IN-WONDER 9700 PRO, will be available this fall for less than USD$500 and
will complement the currently shipping ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV at USD$199
and the value-priced ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 7500 at USD$149.
- Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP TV Tuner Card Review -
The card itself
is quite compact and so will not cause any problems due to length. The
tuner on the card however is quite bulky so if you were to use it in a
computer with all the PCI slots being filled then a little rearrangement of
the cards maybe necessary to allow it to fit in properly. Once I had found the
right PCI to slot it in the rest was easy. It was a very nice fit into the
slot and I didn't have to push overly hard to seat it properly.
- Gainward GeForce 4 PowerPack! Ultra/650 TV Golden Sample -
Gainward's philosophy towards board making is to, where appropriate, discard
the reference board design and get their own engineers to design a new board
platform. The primary aim of this redesign is to be more optimal than the
reference designs. As a product of this, and careful selection of their
graphics cores and memory, Gainward feel that in some cases they can supply
boards clocked higher than the nominally suggested by the IHV for a particular
chip shipped. Alongside their normally clocked board, Gainward also
produce the 'Golden Sample's with increased performance.
- Modding the ABIT IT7-MAX2 for Improved Clocking Review - Since Tech
PC posted our ABIT IT7-MAX2 DDR Motherboard and ASUS P4T533 RDRAM Motherboard
Comparison Review last week, the reviewer Gibbo of OcUK,
decided to
push the ABIT IT7-MAX2 Motherboard even further by modding it using a volt
mod. With these new results, Tech PC are pleased to announce that we have just
posted the Modding the ABIT IT7-MAX2 for Improved Clocking Review on the Tech
PC Website.
- Aqua eye-candy comes to the PC - Stardock has released
a
small utility that brings several of the dazzling effects seen in Apple's
Aqua UI to the PC.
WindowFX 2.0, released today, performs Direct3D operations including
transparency and transitions on each window - which we think is a first on
Windows - although Stardock is shying away from a confrontation with Apple's
legal department by not including the hallmark Genie effect, for example.
- New Trailer For The Two Towers - Now available is the
new 3
minute trailer (.mov)
for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers!
- Soldier of Fortune map files - Raven Software has released
the
map source files for the multiplayer maps in Soldier of Fortune, their
previous mercenary first-person shooter. The package contains the sources for
all Deathmatch, Control, Conquer the Bunker and Capture the Flag maps in the
original game and the Gold and Platinum Editions.
- Athlon Optimized Quake Arena DLLs - Aaron Gordon has released these
Quake Arena optimized DLLs. There is a version for the Thunderbird or non
SSE, and the Palomino/Thoroughbred SSE version of the Athlon.
- Red Hat Releases Red Hat Linux 8.0 - Red Hat today released
Red Hat Linux 8.0 (download),
a highly versatile operating system designed for personal and small business
computing. Red Hat Linux 8.0 combines leading-edge Linux technologies with a
new graphical look and feel that offers users a polished, easy-to-use
operating environment.
- Mandrake Linux 9.0 First Impressions - Both
LinuxOrbit and
LinuxHelp have posted a review of Mandrake Linux 9.0.
- Nero Burning Rom version 5.5.9.13 - Ahead Software have released a
new
Nero version 5.5.9.13.
- FlashFXP v2.0 RC3 Build 880 -
FlashFXP is the most powerful and popular FTP & FXP Client for Microsoft
Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP on the market today. It is loaded with features for
the power user, but has an intuitive user interface that takes only minutes to
master.
- PowerDVD 4.0 build 2009 patch file - There is a
new patch available for the PowerDVD version 4.0 build 2009.
- ACDSee 5.0 PowerPack -
ACDSee is an award-winning picture viewer, graphic converter and digital
image management tool. The latest version of this digital photo software,
ACDSee 5.0, gives you intuitive, professional-quality imaging tools to get,
view, organize, enhance, share and print your images quickly.
- Radeonator v2.0 Beta 2 -
Radeonator
(download)
is a tweaker developed for Radeon based videocards. The tweaker makes it easy
to manipulate driversettings to squeeze out the last bit of performance. But
Radeonator offers more, it allows you to use profiles for games and
benchmarkes.
- Powerstrip 3.29 Final - The final version of
Powerstrip 3.29 has
been just released.
- Gainward Detonator 31.00 WHQL drivers + ExperTool 3.00 - Gainward
have released a new set of Nvidia Detonator 31.00 WHQL drivers for
Windows9x/ME and
2000/XP and also a new verison of
Gainward's
ExperTool v3.00.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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