Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:26 AM CET - Jan,29 2003
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- Microsoft not immune to Slammer - Microsoft's policy of relying on
software patches to fix major security flaws was questioned Monday after a
series of internal e-mails revealed that the
software
giant's own network wasn't immune from a worm that struck the Internet
last weekend.
- Internet cafe guilty of piracy - The chain of internet cafes
launched by Easyjet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has been found guilty of
copyright infringement for
allowing its customers to download music from the web and copy it on to a CD.
The high court judgment brings to a close an 18-month war of words between the
major record labels and the EasyInternet cafe chain over a promotion in which
it charged customers £5 to copy a CD's worth of music from the internet.
- Companies test prototype wireless-sensor nets - About 100
organizations worldwide are
running prototype self-organizing wireless-sensor networks, which were
originally developed by the Pentagon to monitor enemy action on the
battlefield. "Many companies are now in the demonstration stage," says
professor David Culler (shown) of the University of California at Berkeley.
- Thousands of fake Two Towers DVDs seized in the UK -
Ten thousand pirate DVDs of the Two Towers have been found by customs
officers in the UK. They'd been copied in the US from a version given to this
year's Oscar judges. Judges get sent copies of all the films in the running,
but under the strict rule that they're not copied in any way.
- A Cancer Pill Whose Time Has Come - A two-decade-old
discovery might finally bear fruit as a treatment for leukemia and hepatitis
C, and it may also become the first therapy for damaged livers. More
than 20 years ago, a Swedish researcher discovered that a substance called
histamine dihydrochloride seemed to boost the immune system.
The drug now goes by the brand name Ceplene and is in the final stages of
clinical trials for the treatment of leukemia, melanoma and hepatitis C.
Recently it has also shown potential for treating liver damage.
- RepliGo offers precise file rendering -
RepliGo
converts Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF files, Web pages and
various other document types into replicas of their original documents in
RepliGo's own internal format for viewing and printing (but not editing) on
Palm OS and Pocket PC handheld devices (homepage)
- Sony SJ33 released in Asia - Released in Japan and Hong Kong,
the
SJ33 is a 68k-based Palm OS 4.1 device (hi-res
shots). It measures 72.5 mm x 107.8 mm x 22.0 mm and weighs in at 172
grams. The casing is colored plastic, and sports a built-in attached flip
cover that covers the entire front of the device. The cover is slightly
translucent, but not enough to see the screen through it. The screen, of
course, is a 320x320 16-bit color display, no surprise for a Sony handheld. It
does not have a virtual Graffiti area, however. The SJ33 will be
available in Hong Kong and Japan in early February, as well the recently
announced NZ90. The SJ33 will cost HK$2,480.00, or about $320 USD. If Sony
follows their traditional rollout plan, an English-language version, possibly
with a slightly different name, should be available in the US within the next
few weeks.
- Lindows tackles DVD, music -
Idot, a small PC maker
specializing in direct online sales,
will sell a Lindows Media Computer model that incorporates some home
entertainment functions such as DVD and digital music playback. The company
plans to begin selling the PCs early next month, with prices starting at $330
without a monitor.
- Pentium price cuts on tap - The
chipmaker
has planned the price adjustment for desktop Pentium 4 chips for
late February, according to sources. It will be
the first such cut for these chips since November. The
3.06GHz chip will move from $637 to less than $600, sources said. Prices on
Intel's 2.26GHz, 2.4GHz, 2.53GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz chips will also drop.
The pricing move will also put Intel's 2.26GHz, 2.4GHz and 2.53GHz chips at
the lowest end of the company's price scale. The 2.53GHz chip will drop from
$243 to approximately where the current 2.4GHz is at $193, sources said.
Meanwhile, the 2.4GHz and 2.26GHz chips will cascade from $193 to about $163,
sources said. Intel will follow these February price cuts with
another wave of cuts when it introduces its
3.2GHz Pentium 4, which is expected in March. The
second cut will lower the 3.06GHz chip to about $400, or
to the same level where the 2.8GHz chip is now, sources said. The 2.8GHz chip,
which lists for $401, will end up at a price below the 2.66GHz chip's $305
list price, the sources said. Finally, the 2.66GHz Pentium 4 will have moved
from its price of $305 to about $193, sources said.
- Chipset war to be first seen in the K8 sector in 2003 - Based on
the current progress of chipset designers, products supporting new K8-core
Athlon 64 processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are expected
to herald the first chipset price war for 2003. In line with AMD's
original timetable, VIA Technologies, Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and ALi
Corporation (formerly Acer Laboratories) finished developing their K8-based
chipsets last year. Now, with shipments of K8 processors to hit the market in
the second quarter, the companies are ready to launch marketing campaigns for
the chipsets.
Samsung Declares Breakthrough in SRAM - The South Korea-based
manufacturer said
its new 72Mb memory controller runs at 1.5 Gb per second. Last week,
Samsung said it is also working on 4GByte DDR Dual In-line Memory Modules
(DIMM). Mass production of both chips is expected in the second half of 2003.
Is this the ultimate PC monitor? -
If you have
a spare $20,594.95 sitting around doing nothing, maybe you should buy the
hemsipherical monitor Hammacher is selling. The monitor - really a projection
system, has a projection screen which the firm claims blurs the lines between
the real and simulated world. Its dimensions are 5'3" high, 5'5" wide and 3'5"
deep, and supports 16 million hues at 24 bits and has a native res of over two
million pixels.
Ultra/750-8X XP 128MB Golden Sample Firewire Announced - Here is a
PR: "For
Gainward GeForce4 Power Pack Ultra/750-8X XP 128MB Golden Sample FireWire,
we adopt nVidia GeForce4 Ti4800se GPU in combination with Gainward's unique
High-Performance/Wide-Bandwidth hardware design, and with 128MB DDR memory,
with one VGA connector, one DVI connector, plus both internal and external
video-in and video-out ports "offers by far today's best price/performance
ratio and will again easily blow away competitive products simply based on
NVIDIA's reference design," commented Norman Liang, Gainward's General
Manager."
Five USB Flash-Drives Roundup - There are several reasons for flash
drives as small as a lighter or trinket to grow in popularity. Today we will
take a
closer look at five 256MB USB flash drives and their attractive features
as well as their drawbacks. The testing participants are: HandyDrive from
Apacer, EasyDisk from Shenzhen Luwen Electronics, JetFlash from Transcend,
Mobile Disk from TwinMOS and unknown but very interesting USByte
DivX? We Don't Need No Stinking DivX! - Why, you ask?
Because I choose to be different and use Microsoft's Windows Media 9. (DivX
loyalists: Feel free to begin your flames.) The advantage of using Windows
Media is it produces small, high-quality files. The downside is Windows Media
Player's proprietary format, WMP; DivX-based AVI files can be converted to
virtually every known format (MPEG, MPEG2, etc.). Still, Windows Media files
are designed to be a final resting place for your video, so conversion issues
shouldn't be so critical.
I have spent some time researching how to convert a DVD to Windows Media Video
(WMV) and while this is by no means the definitive way to do this, it's
worked for me. And the results have been unbelievable.
Windows XP Post SP1 Update Pack (English) - German website
WinFutures have posted a
Pre-SP2 Service Pack (English) for Windows XP.
jv16 PowerTools 1.3.0.183 Beta -
jv16
PowerTools (download)
is the next generation of RegCleaner. A full set of tools to keep your
computer and your LAN up and running. jv16 PowerTools is basicly the Tool to
control your computer. Until now your computer might had been the one who is
in charge, but with jv16 PowerTools you can take the control.
Active Network Monitor 1.2 -
Active Network Monitor (ANM) is a tool for the day-to-day monitoring of
computers on a network. ANM runs under WinNT/2k/XP. It lets Systems
Administrators gather information from every computer (even Win9x/Me
computers) on the network without installing server-side applications on any
of these computers.
DrvCareXP 1.5 - Makes the chore of caring for your drives easier.
The program uses existing XP system utilities to clean, scan for errors,
and defragment your drives. Written in C#, DrvCareXP requires Microsoft .NET
Framework.
Opera 7.0 Final -
Opera (what's
new ~ download
No Java version /
Java version ) has proved itself faster than the competition in magazine
tests for home users. Opera is significantly faster on computers with lower
modem speeds and weaker system resources. And these are also the types of
computers that many home users are equipped with today. It may be more
difficult to notice the difference if you are running a machine with the
latest in processors, available memory, and a fast connection, but it is still
there.
DVD X Copy v1.4 - 321 Studio's has released
a new DVD
X Copy version 1.4. This new version adds support for Windows 98 SE/ME,
Gearworks is now the default internal burning engine, Nero is now available
only as an external burn engine, and more.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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