Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 04:14 AM CET - Feb,20 2003
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- All Drugs Tweak the Brain the Same, Study Finds - Whether you smoke
a cigarette or use cocaine,
certain nerve endings in the brain are tweaked in the same way, which
suggests there may be a universal way to treat addiction, U.S. researchers
said on Wednesday. In fact, alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, morphine and
nicotine all make brain cells hypersensitive, a team at Stanford University in
California reported. The affected brain cells are in a region of the brain
called the ventral tegmental area, or VTA, Malenka's team reported in the Feb.
20 issue of the journal Neuron.
- Where Does Ebola Hide Between Epidemics? - When villagers in the
remote jungles of the Republic of Congo began falling ill last month,
scientists quickly suspected Ebola. The virus had been confirmed in tests on
the bodies of animals found dead in surrounding forests, and bush meat is a
staple among the local population. Knowing how people may initially have
contracted the virus has given medical experts a jumpstart on the epidemic,
which has so far killed at least 64 people. But the larger question remains.
Where does the deadly Ebola virus hide between outbreaks?
- NASA proceeds on plan for orbiter to replace shuttles - As
investigators search for the cause of the Columbia disaster, NASA is moving
ahead with
plans to develop a new craft that would replace shuttles on space station
missions by 2012 and respond quickly to space station emergencies. The space
agency released the first set of mission needs and requirements Wednesday for
the Orbital Space Plane, which would be designed to transport a crew of four
to and from the international space station. Although it includes few
specifics, the plan stipulates the orbiter will be safer, cheaper and require
less preparation time than the shuttle. It would be able to transport four
crew members by 2012 - though it would be available for rescue missions by
2010. NASA says the craft should be able to transport injured or ill space
station crew members to "definitive medical care" within 24 hours.
- Microsoft tries to cook Hotmail spammers -
Microsoft
on Thursday filed a so-called John Doe suit in the federal court for the
northern district of California in San Jose. The suit doesn't name defendants,
but allows the plaintiff the power to issue subpoenas as part of the
investigative phase of the trial. The defendants are accused of using a
"dictionary attack" to discover active Hotmail accounts. A dictionary attack
is one in which a computer program goes through every entry in a dictionary in
an attempt to guess passwords. In this case, the program guessed millions of
random e-mail addresses to see which ones were active, Microsoft alleged.
- Microsoft to buy Connectix -
Microsoft plans to take a giant leap into the server consolidation space
this week by announcing the acquisition of virtual server software company
Connectix. The software giant, which is expected to formally unveil the
deal Thursday, will use the technology to allow customers to carve out
multiple partitions on a single Intel-based server, allowing them to run
multiple instances of a single operating system and multiple workloads.
- Watch out for those malicious referrer links -
Bloggers were warned this week to raise their guard against posting
potentially malicious referrer links into their Web logs. It's potentially
easy to hijack blogs through mendacious JavaScript code, a
posting on one Web log (kasia in a nutshell) notes. So the message
is to double check referrers to make sure they link to a valid site, with
links back to the blogger's site (if you will).
- NHS builds fraud detection system - The NHS hopes to slash its
losses through fraud by up to 40 per cent over the next three years, using
data analysis and visualisation software from business intelligence company
SAS. The NHS Counter Fraud Service (CFS) will deploy
a new fraud
detection system that uses neural networking developed by SAS to predict
where fraud is most likely to occur.
- Spring 2003 IDF: Day 1 - The 'Convergence Cowboy' kicks off
the 2003 Spring Intel Developers Forums by introducing some great new
concepts. In addition, Tom's Hardware got a look at some of the first Centrino
notebooks. They spent some time with AMD, InterVideo, Nero, Tyan, and Analog
Designs. (Another coverage have posted
Hexus and
ExtremeTech)
- Spring 2003 IDF: Day 2 -
Hexus has
posted part 2 of their IDF coverage. In overview; Burns covered digital
home and the transformation of information across common platforms. Also
covered was the 2 upcoming chipsets from Intel in the form of Canterwood and
Springdale. Chandrasker went in to more depth about the mobile market in the
form of the Centrino, Dothan and Newport
- Cooler Master HAC-V81 @ X-Dream CPU Cooler - Want two coolers for
the price of one? Then you should take a look at the new Cooler Master X-Dream
cooler! With a copper-cored heat sink and an 80mm fan whose speed can be
manually adjusted on-the-fly, the X-Dream is really two coolers rolled into
one. Why?
Check out Brian Chong's review of this cooler and find out!
- Albatron Medusa Ti4800SE - OcPrices.com has just
reviewed the
Albatron Medusa Ti4800SE video card.
- 3DMark 2003 - Talking Back to NVIDIA - A couple of days after
NVIDIA´s harsh criticism on 3DMark 2003, Tom's Hardware got a response from
Futuremark and some comments from ATi, as well.
Here's what went down.
- Office 11 Beta 2 Released on MSDN - If you have an MSDN universal
account you can go grab Office 11 Beta 2 right now as its just been posted
(thanks
Neowin).
- Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 Review - PC Mag has posted an
Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 review.
- Jet-Audio 5.01 -
Jet-Audio (download
+extension
update) features an impressive home audio system interface, including
independent A/V components for Digital Signal Processor, Audio CD Player,
Digital Audio (MP3, RA, etc.), MIDI (MID, MOD etc.), and Digital Video (AVI,
MPG, MOV, etc.), along with a Mixer and a Remote Controller.
- ClonyXXL-Tool Version 1 with Protections.ini v1.1 -
This Tool is
able to put the detected copy protection from ClonyXXL (v2.0.1.1 and higher)
to the 1:1 copy program Alcohol 120%.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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