Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:07 AM CET - Nov,20 2002
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- Comdex Fall 2002 Coverage Day 1 -
AmdDB,
AnandTech,
Rage3D,
Sudhian.com
- MS accused of banning mod chip Xbox from Live service - Microsoft's
campaign against Xbox mod chips has ratcheted up a notch with the launch of
the Xbox Live online gaming service. According to
a
posting at Got Mod?, (there's a site that's going to be pretty concerned
about the issue) the company is
attempting to detect mod chips when users connect, then placing them on a
banned list - forever.
CNews has posted a similar article called "Xbox Live not for everyone" -
Mod chip" fans, AOL subscribers, and some owners of older game machines are
having problems with the new online service for Microsoft's Xbox video game
console.
- IBM starts work on computer to rival the human brain - The first
supercomputers to approach and even surpass
the processing power of the human brain are to be built by IBM, under a
L184 million contract announced by the US Government yesterday. ASCI Purple
and Blue Gene/L will be the fastest and most powerful machines built, with a
combined capacity equal to the 500 best of today's computers. ASCI Purple,
which will be built first and used to simulate nuclear tests, will be able to
complete 100 thousand billion calculations per second - a speed known as 100
teraflops that some scientists say is comparable to the human brain. Blue
Gene/L, which has a broader range of functions and will be used by US
Department of Energy's three main laboratories, will be more powerful still,
with a maximum speed of 360 teraflops.
- Could Your Cell Phone Watch Over Your Home? - Nokia and Matsushita
Electric Industrial have reached an agreement to jointly develop technologies
for data exchange between mobile phones and home appliances, they
announced Tuesday. This tie-up aims to make it possible to offer services like
monitoring inside the house, checking the contents of a refrigerator, or
recording a TV program, while on the move.
- Nokia Tout Fast Downloads at Comdex -
Nokia is previewing a new phone that doubles download speeds and
integrates features once found only in PCs and personal digital assistants.
The Nokia 6200, touted as the industry's first EDGE (Enhanced Data-Rates for
GSM Evolution) handset, is being showcased at this week's Comdex trade show in
Las Vegas. Aimed at business users, the device is in testing and will be
available early next year, reportedly selling for $250 to $350, depending on
the retailer.
- How Much Hack Info Is Too Much? - Researchers counter that without
full disclosure, companies often fail to swiftly patch security holes. Full
disclosure, in theory, also alerts computer users to problems that are already
known to malicious hackers, who often exploit holes before patches become
available. But a recent post on security news mailing list
BugTraq
has infuriated some who normally favor full disclosure. The post details how a
bit of
programming code embedded in a Web page can reformat site visitors' hard
drives, deleting all files stored on the affected drive. The exploit
affects users running Microsoft Internet Explorer browser versions 5.5 or 6.0.
Flynn has posted a
Web page documenting the problem and offering possible workarounds.
- Armageddon Can Wait: Stopping Killer Asteroids - Sooner or later,
scientists who study Earth-crossing asteroids say, astronomers will find one
that has a significant chance of striking the planet.
A nuclear detonation, some scientists say, could break the asteroid into
several large pieces, increasing, rather than eliminating, the threat. And
a blast some distance from an asteroid, designed to shove it into a slightly
different orbit, might not work either; the asteroid might soak up the energy
like a sponge. "I'd say forget that," said Dr. Keith A. Holsapple, a professor
at the University of Washington who studies the effects of simulated nuclear
explosions.
- Big Mac Attacked by Sims - In the soon-to-be blockbuster The Sims
Online,
players could find it difficult to avoid getting their fingers soiled on
virtual McDonald's hamburgers. A deal struck between Sims publisher
Electronic Arts and the fastfood mega-corporation allows Sims players to open
up their own McDonald's kiosk and improve their game stats by consuming McD's
greasy goodies. While news of this groundbreaking sponsorship deal fades
quickly from memory, failure to address this latest barrage in the war on
ad-free gaming could result in a super-sized sandwich of misery. Based on the
success of previous Sims offerings, The Sims Online is an ideal high-profile
backdrop in the war against "advergaming." The McDonald's kiosks that dot the
imaginary battlefield are mere burger bunkers to be ad-busted in an
anti-advergaming mission that could go down in the annals of gaming history.
- Simputer Review - The Simputer was conceived by a team of computer
scientists at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. To make the
machine cheap enough to sell in poor regions, the developers kept the hardware
requirements to a minimum. The Simputer's microprocessor is an Intel
Strong-ARM chip, which is known for its low power consumption.
The device will have as much as 64 megabytes of random-access memory and
32 megabytes of flash memory, as well as a modem that can connect to a
telephone line. And the computer runs on the Linux operating system, which is
available free of charge.
- Memory prices falling again - Memory Watch site DRAM Exchange
reports
that the spot prices of memory, both DDR and SDRAM flavours, are beginning to
show a decline. The site says that the prices on the spot market are
falling to join the prices of contract memory, the prices PC manufacturers
pay. The reason is, the site reckons, that the peak of the manufacturing
season has been and gone, and there's no particularly bright news, whether
from Comdex 2002 or from the industry itself to boost the prices. In fact, and
as we reported earlier today, Comdex 2002 is looking decidedly underattended.
- Hyperthreaded P4s hit Audigy snagette - A posting on the Ace's
Hardware forum by a character called Sander Sassen claims that Audigy and
Audigy 2 cards, rather than getting a welcome chime when entering XP with
hyperthreading enabled, just ends up stuttering badly. Hyperthreading was
revealed to an expectant world last week to cheers of acclamation from a bunch
of hacks in a club near Leicester Square last week. Sassen, who runs the
Hardware Analysis
site, said
that every effort to make the Creative babies work has met with failure.
Creative Labs has not yet answered Sassen's emails about the problem, he said.
- Exchange 5.5 Information Store Service Provider Patch 2656.96 -
This patch resolves problems that were found in the Exchange 5.5
Information Store Service Provider since SP4 was released.
- Windows Longhorn Alpha Leaks to the Web -
An internal alpha build of Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named
Longhorn, made its way onto Internet sites early Tuesday.
The leaked build, which is numbered 3683, appears to be from late
September and sports quite a few new feature concepts - although many are not
yet functional.
- Actual Transparent Windows 1.3 -
Actual Transparent Windows lets you apply a transparency effect to any
window in Windows 2000/XP. The transparency effect looks very impressive and
may be useful with such objects as Windows Taskbar, WinAmp, drop-down menus
and other windows.
- Nvidia Geforce FX Benchmarks -
3DCenter.org (DOOM3 alpha benchmarks) |
UKGamer (DOOM3 alpha, 3DMark, UT2003, Q3A...).
- Kerio Personal Firewall 3.0.0 beta 4 -
Kerio Personal Firewall (KPF) is a software agent that builds a barrier
between your personal computer and the Internet. KPF is designed to protect
your PC against attacks from both the Internet, and other computers in the
local network.
- Klient 2.0.11 Beta -
Klient (download)
is an IRC application for WinALL. Klient features a fully customizable
interface, multiple server support, highly robust scripting, external .dll
support, and much more.
- RadEdit 1.102 Beta - This is the first
universal BIOS
editor for Radeon-based videocards. This program let you modify clock
speeds and BIOS fonts for any videocard based on R100, RV100, RV200, R200,
R300, RV300 chips.
- OnBoard Audio Drivers -
Realtek ALC AC97 Driver | Cmedia 8738 driver 6.42 for
Win98SE ~
WinME ~
Win2K ~
WinXP.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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