Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 05:10 AM CET - Feb,06 2003
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- Columbia FAQ: Hard Questions, Simple Answers -
Some of the most common questions about the Columbia tragedy, and the
answers as best we know them right now. Here are two other links for some
alternatives to the current shuttle approach -
How
Space Elevators Will Work ~
Orbital Space Plane (OSP).
- Kevin Mitnick Answers - Kevin Mitnick has been crazy-busy with
media tours and book promotion stuff, and apologizes for taking so long to
answer your questions.
But answer he has, at length and in detail, with a brief intro at the
start to correct a story in which he says he was misquoted
- Phantoms of the Opera driven out - Opera, the Norwegian software
company, rushed to release a
patch for the latest major release its multi-platform Web browser on
Wednesday,
following
five security advisories that were released on Tuesday, three of them
rated critical.
- The robot gets connected - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has
developed a robot on wheels that the Japanese manufacturer says will
become a future house-sitter, caretaker, nurse and friend for the family.
The 100cm-tall bubble-headed, mouthless robot, shown to reporters yesterday,
has cameras inside its head and comes equipped with voice and face recognition
capabilities that allow the machine to search for and follow voices, faces and
movements. The still experimental robot is suited for older people or those in
frail health, the Tokyo-based company said. It will likely sell at about Y1
million ($A14,247), although Mitsubishi did not say when it will go on sale.
- Dell: It's Time Floppy Drives Go Way Of The Dodo - For nearly 16
years, one piece of personal computer technology has remained the same: the
floppy disk drive. While microprocessor speeds and computer memory have
improved by leaps and bounds, the lowly floppy disk, with its measly
1.44-megabyte capacity, hasn't changed. Over the years, other technologies
have been touted as floppy drive replacements, namely zip drives and
recordable compact discs. But they couldn't slay the floppy disk drive, which
is still standard on most desktop PCs.
The
floppy drive may have finally met its match in small, high-capacity portable
storage devices called USB flash memory drives. They pack 16 MB or more of
storage into a thumb-sized device that many companies sell as a key chain
accessory.
- Bye-Bye CD-RW? - CD burner used to be the only practical and
affordable option for a rewritable optical drive. That has changed radically.
Selecting DVD burners over older CD-RWs is becoming a no-brainer, with the
future clearly moving to DVD. And now multiple generations of DVD burners are
available, giving you a range of speeds and prices to choose from. Today, a
top 52X/24X/52X CD-RW drive costs less than $150. But for $100 more, you can
get a DVD burner with CD-RW functionality. If you add another $50,
you can buy a fast, new rewritable DVD drive like Pioneer's DVR-A05.
- Nokia reveals N-Gage technical details - Besides its gaming
features, the Nokia N-Gage
game deck
also
offers music playback capabilities of files in MP3 and AAC format, and
comes with PC software from Nokia called Audio Manager to let users manage
their music collection. In addition comes a stereo FM radio and tri-band GSM
900/1800/1900 mobile phone functionality. Like other Series 60 devices, the
N-Gage will also sport an XHTML browser, support for SMS and MMS, an e-mail
client and various PIM applications, as well as support for J2ME applications
- all presented on the 12-bit TFT color display in a 176 x 208 pixel
resolution.
- Making the Nokia 7650 roomier -
Dubbed
Space Doubler, the application is an automatized, transparent compression
system for Series 60 devices - much like utilities that were once common in
the heyday of DOS and early Windows versions. As far as users are concerned,
the application acts transparently to compress applications and data stored on
the 7650, providing more room to store additional data and applications.
Compressed applications need not be unpacked manually to enable users to run
them, as that process is carried out. automatically.
- Smartmedia-based video/music player for GBA - A company called am3,
funded by Toshiba, Imagica, and Bandai, are set to start test marketing in May
(in Japan)
a device for the Game Boy Advance (and Game Boy Advance SP) that will
allow you to replay video and music file stores on SmartMedia memory cards.
They plan on a full-scale release in the fall.
- 1st Episode Of Animatrix Released - The
official Matrix page has word of
the first officially released widescreen Anime episode of the
Animatrix for
download (in
quicktime format). This is the first of 4 free episodes that will be released
on the web. A total of 9 episodes will be availible for purchase on DVD within
the next few months. (thanks
SlashDot).
- WinXP - Unchecked Buffer in Windows Redirector Could Allow Privilege
Elevation -
A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to
compromise a computer running Microsoft(r) Windows(r) XP and gain control over
it. To attempt an attack, the attacker would have to be able to log on to the
computer. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from
Microsoft.
- WinXP - Fast User Switching issue on WindowsXP Media Center Edition -
This update resolves the Fast User Switching issue on WindowsXP Media
Center as described in Microsoft Knowledge Base
Article
811009.
- Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer February
5, 2003 -
This is a cumulative patch that includes the functionality of all
previously released patches for IE 5.01, 5.5, 6.0. In addition, it eliminates
two newly discovered vulnerabilities involving Internet Explorer's
cross-domain security model - which keeps windows of different domains from
sharing information.
- SQL Server 2000 Security Tools Updated -
Use SQL Server 2000 security tools to scan instances of SQL Server and
detect security vulnerabilities, and then apply updates to the affected files.
- Office XP Custom Maintenance Wizard -
The Custom Maintenance Wizard (download)
enables you to make changes to a Microsoft Office XP installation after the
initial deployment. Using the Custom Maintenance Wizard, you can modify almost
every feature that you can set in the Custom Installation Wizard - including
default user settings, security levels, Outlook settings, and registry keys.
- GNOME 2.2.0 - Whilst you are enjoying
2.2, the GNOME
development team will be running back to the coalface, eager to work on the
next release - in fact, we've already started! Stay tuned for more information
about the 2.3 development series...
- KaZaA Lite Toolbar 1.6.1 -
KaZaA Lite Toolbar is
a customizable toolbar and web address bar integrated to KaZaA Lite interface.
It's useful to open favorite web pages, web email, shared folder or external
tools (like Antivirus, Windows Media Player, AVI Preview, Sig2Dat, etc.)
directly from KaZaA Lite. Also works with KaZaA Media Desktop. The toolbar
also includes a file organizer that classify the downloaded files in separate
folders based on the file extension.
- CDRWIN 3.9c DateCode.20030204 - Goldenhawk website now offers
a new updated version of
CDRWIN 3.9c.
- Opera 7.01 Final - This new version (with
java ~
without
java) fixes five security advisories that were released on Tuesday.
- New GLIDE2x and GLIDE3x runtime - Download it from
Guru3D.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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