Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:23 AM CET - Jan,14 2003
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- NASA Test Environmentally Friendly Rocked Fuel - NASA has
successfully tested
an alternative rocket fuel that may increase operational safety and reduce
costs over current solid fuels. The new paraffin-based fuel could eventually
be used in Space Shuttle booster rockets. Two years of collaboration between
Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., and NASA's Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field, Calif., have led to the development of a non-toxic, easily
handled fuel made from a substance similar to what is used in common candles.
The by-products of combustion of the new fuel are carbon dioxide and water;
unlike conventional rocket fuel that produces aluminum oxide and acidic
gasses, such as hydrogen chloride.
- Thieves steal processors worth $12 million -
Thieves stole L4.6 million ($A12.86 million) worth of computer chips from
an unattended truck near London's Heathrow Airport yesterday, police said. The
shipment of Pentium 4 chips had been flown into Britain from Miami, Florida,
and was en route to an unknown destination, London's Metropolitan Police said.
The consignment was inside an unattended American Airlines truck at a trading
estate near the airport when thieves drove away in the vehicle sometime before
11:15am, police said. Officers later found the vehicle abandoned nearby, with
about one quarter of the chips still inside.
- Internet browser that quadruples surf speed wins Irish science prize -
A computer browser that is said
to least quadruple surfing speeds on the Internet has won the top prize at
an Irish exhibition for young scientists, it was announced on Saturday. Adnan
Osmani, 16, a student at Saint Finian's College in Mullingar, central Ireland
spent 18 months writing 780,000 lines of computer code to develop the browser.
Known as "XWEBS", the system works with an ordinary Internet connection using
a 56K modem on a normal telephone line.
- Sobig worm stomps on PCs -
Sobig is
a mass-mailing worm incorporating its own SMTP engine, according to
antivirus companies. It arrives from the e-mail address "[email protected]" and
bears a subject line such as "Re: here is that sample", "Re: Movies", "Re:
Document" or "Re: Sample". The e-mail contains an attachment called
"Document003.pif", "Sample.pif", "Untitled1.pif" or "Movie_0074.pif". It
affects the Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000 and XP platforms. The worm was
originally not considered a serious threat, but has been upgraded due to its
rapid spread.
- PalmSource picks up handwriting tool - PalmSource is turning over
a new leaf
for handwriting recognition, replacing its idiosyncratic software amid a
growth in popularity for keyboards in the handheld industry and amid a
continuing patent battle with Xerox.
- Motorola smartphone gets color - Developed by Motorola's
design team in China, the manufacturer's proprietary-OS smartphone platform
has long been an object of interest and and curiosity among phone lovers from
the first versions - the Accompli 7188 and 008 - up to the most recent
inception, the still-monochrome A388. Now,
color
is the next major addition.
- A835 - new 3G phone from Motorola - Motorola has announced very few
details
about the A835, mainly due to the product still being in an early stage of
development. What is known so far is that the handset will support J2ME, and
is like the A830 capable of streaming video in MPEG4 format over a live
network connection. It also sports an integrated digital camera, although the
resolution of which it is capable to capture images has yet to be disclosed.
- Personal Cinema to Include Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2.0 and VideoStudio
6.0 - NVIDIA today announced that upcoming retail and OEM versions of
NVIDIA Personal Cinema products
will feature DVD MovieFactory 2 and VideoStudio 6, DVD creation and video
editing software from Ulead Systems Inc., a leading developer of video
editing, image editing, and DVD authoring software.
- Nvidia said to sell NV30 cards, NV31 and NV34 chips to downstream
clients - Nvidia is said to have decided to
handle all the design and production of new GeForce FX (NV30) graphics
cards to ensure product stability and quality. According to industry sources,
Nvidia will only release the more simplified NV31 and NV34 chips to card
makers for product design.
- MSI - New Generation GeForce FX Card - MSI has updated
their GeForce FX press release - not only MSI is the launch partner
but new MSI GeForce FX cards are scheduled to ship to North America in early
2003.
- S3 DeltaChrome Preview - Now S3 Graphics is set to release its
first desktop graphics chip, DeltaChrome, along with its companion chip
for the mobile segment, AlphaChrome. Both of these graphics cores list 2.0+
pixel and vertex shaders among their long list of features, making them bona
fide DirectX 9.0 cards.
- A Comparison of 34 Coolers for the AMD Athlon XP - Tom's Hardware
Guide has posted
a comparison of 34 coolers for the AMD Athlon XP.
- Seagate Barracuda SATA V Review - Explosive Labs has posted
a review of the Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA V harddisk.
- How to change the LED on your mouse -
Ok, you have a Blue Quad LED fan, Blue CCFL, and an ominous blue glow
coming from your computer room. Sit down, start gaming, but wait, that red
glow from your optical mouse is wrecking the scenario. What do you do? Get a
less accurate ball mouse. No way! To beat those contrasting LED's, you MOD the
sucker.
- Overclocking Guide Part 1 of 2 (a beginners guide to overclocking and
terminology) - This is
quite useful guide for beginners.
- Blindwrite Suite v4.2.8b -
Blindwrite
Suite is a set of tools to reproduce or clone any CD even protected ones.
Blindwrite Suite is the more powerfull tool to create a perfect copy from your
original CD for personal backup purpose.
- IrfanView 3.80 -
IrfanView (download
~
plugins) is a very fast freeware (for non-commercial use) 32-Bit graphic
viewer for Win9x/ME/NT/2k/XP. The first graphic viewer worldwide with Multiple
(animated) GIF support One of the first graphic viewers worldwide with
Multipage TIFF support The first graphic viewer worldwide with Multiple ICO
support.
- PowerStrip 3.30.368 -
PowerStrip provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support
to a wide range of graphics cards - from the venerable Matrox Millennium I to
the latest SiS Xabre. It's the only program of its type to support multiple
graphics cards from multiple chipset vendors, simultaneously, under every
Windows operating system from Windows 95 to XP.
- Riva Tuner v2.0 RC12.1 + SoftR9700 -
RivaTuner is the
most powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA display adapters running under
Win9x/ME/2k/XP. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the
undocumented features of the Detonator drivers.This new version added full
Detonator 41.xx - 42.xx support including the latest Detonator 42.01, and also
the promised SoftR9700 patch script for Catalyst 6.200 - 6.255, which allow
you to enable software locked 8 pixel pipelines on RADEON 9500 based boards
and turn any 128-bit RADEON 9500 into RADEON 9500PRO and any 256-bit RADEON
9500 into RADEON 9700PRO. Warning! You must read and accept RivaTuner's
license agreement before using this script.
- YanC 0.1.3 nVidia-Tweaker for Linux -
YanC is a nVidia-Tweaker for Linux.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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