Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:55 PM CET - Mar,29 2003
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- Electrifying claims for DNA are dashed - Can DNA conduct
electricity?
Some physicists claim it is a superconductor. Others believe it does not
conduct electricity at all. And biologists have agonised about how
conductivity might affect its function.
- Workers are gamers in office hours - One in four employees admits
to installing
games on their work computers, according to a research.
And more than half of IT managers report that employees are accessing online
game sites at work, according to data from internet access management company
Websense. The research found that employees are bored with Solitaire and are
turning instead to games such as Quake, EverQuest and Snood during working
hours.
- Sanyo Electric develops new blue-violet laser for dual-layer Blue-ray
discs - Sanyo
Electric announced the development of semiconductor blue-violet laser with
improved radiation power for Blue-ray recorders. The power input of new 405nm
laser reaches 100mW in impulse making it suitable for new dual-layer disc
recording. Power input of similar previous-generation lasers hasn't exceeded
50mW. Sampling will start in July, volume being scheduled to early October
2003. (thanks
Digit-Life)
- NEC Mitsubishi releases new MultiSync LCD1980S monitor -
NEC-Mitsubishi
Electronics Display (NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display of America)
released new 19" professional monitor - NEC MultiSync LCD1980SX – to be
levelled with 18" NEC MultiSync LCD1880SX and 20" NEC MultiSync LCD2080UX. For
the novelty the company plans aggressive pricing about $1000 in retail.
(thanks
Digit-Life).
- Acer to launch new PDA under US$288 in April - Acer announced
yesterday that it will launch
a new PDA product - the n10 - priced below NT$10,000 (about US$288) in
Taiwan. The product, to be launched in April, will target the medium-range to
low-end markets. According to the company, the n10 is geared toward the
younger generation with its fashionable looks and affordable price. The model
contains a full suite of handheld Microsoft Office applications, eBook reader,
embedded games, photo viewer, video player and MP3 player.
- Digital Media Receiver and Hub, Combined - In the fast-growing
arena that includes media hubs (appliances for distributing multimedia
content) and digital media receivers, there's a new device with an interesting
twist:
the Onkyo NC-500 Net-Tune ($400 street). This media hub has AM/FM stereo
receiver and an Internet radio receiver-most other media hubs let a separate
device perform the receiver functions. Against those attributes, three
drawbacks will loom large for some users: the NC-500 has wired but not
wireless Ethernet, doesn't display digital photos on your TV, and suffers from
a clunky interface. But those who just want MP3 audio delivered reliably to
their stereo systems may forgive the shortcomings.
- New build of WinXP SP2 leaks out - Thats right folks, just like
Windows XP SP2 and Longhorn a few weeks back another build of Windows XP SP2
has found its way onto the internet . This build 5.1.2600.1185
(xpsp2.030313-1931) is missing most of the meat - Media Player 9, Windows
Messenger 5/MSN Messenger6, DirectX 9, Movie Maker 2 and three degrees, so
it's largely hotfixes, but some or all of this may change before launch, which
is currently scheduled for some time this year. (thanks
Neowin.net)
- Microsoft Acknowledges Glitch in XP SP1 - Microsoft has
acknowledged and patched a glitch with its Windows XP Service Pack 1 update
that can cause system slowdowns, but has not yet made its still-developing fix
widely available. Because of changes made in SP1 to Windows XP's memory
management system, programs that affect large blocks of memory may take up to
ten times longer to load on a system running SP1 than on one without,
Microsoft said.
- DirectX9.0a Changelog - DX9 Beta News group has posted some sort of
explanation, because of the confusion over
DX9.0a and the DX9 "March Preview" Beta. "DirectX
9.0a is an updated version of DirectX 9.0 which includes bug fixes and
improves performance in the graphics and networking components. There are no
new or modified APIs in this release. Specifically, this update includes:
Performance enhancement to the runtime texture management in Direct3D, General
performance improvements to D3DX, Fix for a potential PSGP memory overwrite in
Direct3D, Support for anti-aliased render targets added, Update for DirectPlay
to address some network connectivity issues using some UPnP routers. The
DirectX Managed Code layer has been removed from this download to minimize the
potential download size. This component will continue to be offered as part of
the DirectX redistributable for developers to redistribute as required. The
DirectX 9.0a redistributable will be available soon. Expected download sizes
are now less than 8Mb for the end-user runtime on Windows XP and less than 9Mb
for Windows 98 and Me. The developer redistributable is now less than 33Mb.
The full SDK download remains the same at approximately 228Mb. We'll mail on
here as soon as the developer SDK with the updated runtime redist and symbols
is available. To reiterate the version posted currently on the consumer
DirectX website is solely for retail runtime bits. Do *not* use this to
replace developer debug bits." (thanks
Neowin.net)
- DivX Pro 5.0.4 Schizo beta 3 -
The DivX
Schizo beta (download)
release is a bug fix release for DivX 5.0.3 and includes the first version of
the EKG (Electrokompressiongraph) application, a new gadget from the R&D labs
of DARC. The EKG enables an advanced video compressionist to reallocate data
to specific scenes within a video clip.
- Fresh UI 5.60 -
Fresh UI is a fresh
solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of
useful hidden settings this software covers the customizing and optimizing
techniques that you'll be glad to know.
- YahooPOPs! 0.4.2 -
YahooPOPs! is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 access to
your Yahoo! Mail account.
- Nero InCD 3.5.24.0 - Automatically launched when Windows is booted,
InCD provides flexible drive
letter access to the CD-RW, CD-MRW, DVD+RW or DVD-RW drive providing simple
drag and drop or direct save options within applications. Files can be saved,
renamed and deleted, just as with other rewritable storage mediums such as
floppy or hard disk. InCD uses UDF 1.5 file system, the world standard file
format endorsed by OSTA (Optical Storage Technology Association).
- NeroMIX 1.3.1.11 -
NeroMIX combines dynamic CD burning (data, audio, copying) with the newest
Internet audio technology, all in one customizable interface.
- Jet-Audio 5.1 -
Jet-Audio (download)
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.
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Updated:10:40 PM CEST Jun,21
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