Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 09:05 PM CET - Nov,02 2002
- Post a comment
- Astronomers locate oldest known star in Milky Way -
Astronomers may have
detected the oldest star in the Milky Way galaxy, which could date back to
the beginning of the Universe more than 12 billion years ago. The star lies
towards the southern constellation of Phoenix, about 36,000 light years from
Earth. It is among the 10,000 or so brightest stars in the sky. An analysis of
its chemical composition suggests that the star, known only by its catalogue
name, HE0107-5240, is almost devoid of metals. This indicates that it is a
relic from the very early history of the galaxy, when it was formed after the
Big Bang.
- Cassini-Huygens Mission Status - A successful test of the camera on
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has produced
images of Saturn 20 months before the spacecraft arrives at that planet.
The planet was 285 million kilometers (177 million miles) from the spacecraft
when the images were taken last week, nearly twice the distance between Earth
and the Sun.
- Microsoft attacks spam in new Outlook -
Outlook
11 will, by default, no longer grab data such as images from outside servers
when previewing e-mail formatted like Web pages. The ability to send and
receive e-mail formatted in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) was at one time
touted as a feature in Microsoft's e-mail programs.
- Wi-Fi Alliance Boosts Security - In an effort to address mounting
security concerns, the
Wi-Fi Alliance has launched new specifications, called Wireless Protected
Access (WPA), for wireless local area networking products. Wi-Fi Protected
Access (WPA) uses a higher level of encryption and brings in dynamic key
exchange functions absent with WEP. WPA is designed to work with existing
products and is expected to first appear in Wi-Fi certified products during
the first quarter of next year.
- Nvidia Audio Interview - Wall Street Webcasting has posted
a
half-hour long interview with Mark Burkett, Nvidia CFO. The interview was
recorded at Nvidia Corp. Technology Conference which took place in New York on
October 29th-30th.
- 4th Annual NetHack Tournament - /dev/null's Fourth Annual
NetHack Tournament
has just opened. As with past years, the Tournament is open to anyone who'd
like to play. NetHack is a monstrously complicated dungeon exploration game of
great antiquity. Not only is it probably the oldest game of its type still
being developed (and it's only up to version 3.3.1 ...), it's also one of the
last large programs to try to support such a massive variety of operating
systems in a single codebase.
- US Robotics Wireless Access Point - In the competitive world of
wireless networking--now even more cutthroat with Microsoft's recent push into
the market--U.S.
Robotics hopes to differentiate itself with its new 22Mbps wireless access
point. This mutant 802.11b product works with typical Wi-Fi products at
11Mbps but also features a mode that promises to boost speeds up to 22Mbps.
- Speaker Buying Guide - You've made up your mind to get yourself
some new speakers, and you want to get it right the first time. But there are
dozens of speakers to choose from, and different configurations, with 2.1,
4.1, 5.1, and now even 6.1 setups among your choices. So which are the right
ones for you? Read on, and
ExtremeTech will show you how to figure out which type, and make the best
choice no matter what your budget is.
- AMD Athlon XP 2800+ and Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz in 3DSMAX5 - The
guys at X-bit labs have posted
pretty
interesting comparison between AMD Athlon XP 2800+ and Intel Pentium 4
2.8GHz in 3DSMAX5.
- Official Final Fantasy XI Benchmark Test -
check
it out (download).
- OpenBSD 3.2 - It's available
by FTP, CDROMs
are shipping, and is CVS if you want to source upgrade. This is a big release
for OpenBSD with
many substantial changes.
- Opera 6.10 Final for Linux and FreeBSD - Opera Software has
released a new version of their browser for
Linux and
FreeBSD.
- HyperSnap-DX 5.00 RC1 -
HyperSnap-DX 5
is a screen capture and image editing tool for MS Windows. It captures screens
from standard desktop programs and even those hard-to-grab DirectX, Direct3D,
3Dfx Voodoo and Glide mode games.
The RC1
add help texts and fixes minor bug fixes.
- Creative WebCam Monitor version 2.06.04 - This is the release of
the
Creative WebCam Monitor version 2.06.04 in English and Japanese for all
Creative WebCam series except Video Blaster WebCam I & Video Blaster WebCam
II.
- YahooPOPs! 0.3.9 -
YahooPOPs! (download)
is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 access to your Yahoo! Mail
account. YahooPOPs! is available on the Windows and Unix platforms.
- Tweak-XP Pro 2.04 -
Tweak-XP
Pro bundles more than 37 different utilities in one - it was
developed to combine both tweaking and optimizing features to increase the
speed of your Windows XP system.
- Windows Media Player 9 build 2928 (beta) -
Microsoft has updated the official Windows Media Player 9 beta to Build
2928 (WinXP
~
Win2k/9x/ME),
Windows Movie Maker Beta 2.
- Kazaa Movie Finder 2.0 -
Kazaa Movie Finder enables you to download complete movies with help of
the sig2dat program. It sends parameters to sig2dat and it adds the selected
movies into your download section.
- Easydivx v0.821 -
Freeware Easydivx is a
all in one rippack or graphical user interface program for vStrip, MPEG2AVI,
AC3DEC Normalize, VirtualDub and MicroDVD menu.
- VirtualDub 1.4.11 -
Freeware
VirtualDub is a video capture and processing program. It features fast
capturing, process files larger than the 2 gigabyte limit, optimized for
linear editing, support for Motion-JPEG, MPEG-1 video and layer 3 audio,
real-time and near-realtime video processing, video job queues, and much more.
- Ahead Nero Burning ROM 5.5.9.17 -
Nero is a
flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use application designed to write to both
CD-R and CD-RW discs. It supports ISO 9660 images, as well as ISO mode 1 and
XA mode 2, and allows for on-the-fly disc recording, in addition to
overburning (if supported by hardware). Nero also supports multisession and
mixed-mode recording; HFS, ISO/HFS hybrid, UDF, PSX, OFAS (optimal file access
speed), track-at-once (TAO), and disc-at-once (DAO) writing; and digital audio
extraction.
- SpeedFan v4.07 -
SpeedFan is a
freeware program that monitors fan speeds and temperatures in computers with a
known monitoring chip.
- NTFS Driver For Red Hat Linux - The Linux NTFS Project has posted
NTFS RPMs for Red Hat Linux 7.3/8.0.
- EVGA Offers Detonators 40.72 WHQL - EVGA instead is now hosting
WHQL certified drivers
40.72 for
Win9x/ME and
Win2k/XP.
- Sound Blaster Audigy DriverPack for Win2k/XP (updated) - This
is an
updated driverpack (dated first of October) that features some new fixes
and improvements (Dolby Digital decoding from external SPDIF Input, Speaker
settings in Creative Audio Mixer are synchronized with Windows Multimedia
setting, added presets and effects). This update requires the
installation CD to be installed before running the update.
|
Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
(new)
