Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:00 PM CEST - Jul,13 2002
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- Hollywood gets tough on copying - Keith Tyler signed up for broadband
Internet access three weeks ago, and did what many high-speed Net users do - he started
swapping music and movies. But within days, the movie industry and his ISP tracked him down and
told him to stop offering movies for download, or else. Such threats are now the
weapon of choice for the Motion Picture Association of America, which says it's slinging
some 2,000 complaints a week toward alleged movie pirates.
- PC prices to fall again - PC prices are falling again - and the merger
of Hewlett Packard (HP) and Compaq could push them down even further, according to researchers IDC. Moves
towards Pentium 4, as well as increased memory and storage prices, pushed desktop and
server prices back to mid-2001 levels in the first quarter of this year. But IDC said slow
business in the last two months had forced vendors to be more aggressive, pushing prices
down again.
- Panic stations as DDR price soars - if you are planning on buying DDR
memory you'd better get your skates on, as spot market watcher Marco Fumagalli tells us
that 256MB sticks are
likely to hit $60 on the spot market at the beginning of next week. Currently, and in
the European market, such sticks are costing around $57, with these prices spot market
rather than retail market prices.
- Hackers Put Fake Stories on USA Today Web Site - Fake news stories
appeared on the Web site of USA Today after vandals apparently broke into the newspaper's computers Thursday night, a USA Today
spokesman said Friday. Intruders placed six bogus stories on the site and included links
on the front page at around 11 p.m. EDT Thursday, spokesman Steven Anderson said. Editors
took the site offline 15 minutes later, and restored service at about 2 a.m. Friday,
Anderson said.
- McAfee anti-virus software fails to block Klez virus - The problem
occurs when the Klez worm tries to spread itself via shared files on a network. On some
anti-virus software configurations, McAfee does not pick up the worm until it has been executed, meaning
it is free to spread as an embedded file within networks.
- Profits and Perils in China, Inc. - During the next two decades, China
will become a thoroughly new type of political and economic entity. It will be
brutally competitive in both the political sphere and the marketplace, innovative and
resilient in the face of turbulence, and more dominant as an international political and
economic power than any nation except the United States.
- GeForce4 440 Go - NVIDIA announced that the Computer Systems Group (CSG) of Toshiba
America Information Systems, Inc. has chosen the NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go mobile Graphics
Processing Unit (GPU) to provide the graphics functionality for the Toshiba Satellite
5105-S701 notebook computer. By selecting the GeForce4 440 Go with 64MB of dedicated
Double Data Rate (DDR) memory, Toshiba will deliver the most jaw-dropping graphics
performance available on a notebook. The Toshiba Satellite 5105-S701 featuring the
GeForce4 440 Go is available immediately at www.shoptoshiba.com.
- Kaya And NV30 - NVIDIA recently held
their annual stockholders meeting and during it their CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, reaffirmed
that NV30 would be on a .13um silicon process as it was "impossible to make on
.15um" and that it would also be here this fall. They mentioned the NV30
several times, and showed references to it on several slides. One of the slides showed a
schedule for chip releases, and it showed the NV18 and NV28 showing up in what appeared to
be the August/Sept time frame, and NV30 appearing in Oct/Nov (approximate, the slide was
marked in quarterly increments). The slide also mentioned how many transistors were on
each chip: NV18: 81 million / NV28: 86 M / NV30: 120 M. They stated that they thought the
NV30 was going to be the biggest revolution in 3D graphics in the last 10 years. At
a later part of the presentation, they stated that NV30 was on TSMC's 0.13um process that
had copper interconnects. It was an FSG process (i.e. no low-k dielectrics were being
used). I believe that Jen Hsun said the only part coming this Fall that was 0.13um was the
NV30, the other parts are 0.15um. Also, the NV30 would fully support DX9 (thanks Sancheuz,
source: NVNews)
- Buyer's Guide: Value SOHO - July 2002 - This month AnandTech
takes a look at the value SOHO class of machines to determine what configuration would
best fit a large number of value SOHO computer owners. The small office/home office
machine has a unique set of requirements. It must provide quick and snappy 2D performance
and be very stable.
- Samsung SyncMaster 171MP LCD Monitor - I myself have been in awe of this monitor
because of the picture quality while working in Windows, gaming, and watching TV on it.
For an LCD display you couldn't ask for a better one. 17 inches is a pretty size for an
LCD monitor and with all these options, it is one of a kind.
- nForce2 Board Images - OCWorkBench has posted some new images of the new nForce2 chipset with AGP 8x and DDR400s
support. AGP8X, 2x the bandwidth of AGP4X, provides cutting-edge graphics performance
while Dolby digital 6-channel support brings incredible sound quality. In addition, Twin
Bank DDR400 and Serial ATA technology significantly enhance overall system performance,
while a dual LAN design and Windows' native Internet connection streamline your networking
platform ...
- Graphics Card Roundup - Asus V8420 GeForce4 Ti
4200 Deluxe / Leadtek
WinFast A250LE (GeForce4 Ti 4200) / Visiontek Xtasy GeForce4
Ti 4200 / Unitech
Optimus Radeon 8500 eXP 128MB
- USB Flash Drive Roundup - Don't you hate sorting through your cd's and
floppies to find that one file you need? Or what about having to waste CD-Rs or slow
CD-RWs to transfer pesky 10MB files from computer to computer? Do you hate carrying CDs
and floppies from computer to another? Well, it seems the makers at Soyo, Easydisk, and
Transcend have created the answer, the
USB flash drives.
- Build 3660 of .NET Released - Microsoft has officially released build 3660 of Windows .NET
Server Family (shot) to beta testers.
- Visual Boy Advance v1.0a - Visual Boy Advance is a Game Boy Advance and
Game Boy emulator that runs with Windows system. You can download the DirectX version of Visual
Boy Advance and the SDL
version. SDL stands for Simple DirectMedia Layer. It is a cross platform library for
graphics, input, audio, threading, etc... that can be used for games, emulators, etc. To
some people, the SDL version on Windows may be faster than the DirectX version.
- Gens v2.00 - Gens is an excellent Sega Megadrive/Genesis emulator which works on
Windows 9x. You need Directx 7.0 or higher to run this emulator.
- jv16 PowerTools 1.1.0.135 Beta 2 - jv16
PowerTools is a full set of tools to keep your computer up and running. Until now your
computer might have been the one who is in charge, but with jv16 PowerTools you can take
the control. It contains all the tools needed for monitoring and cleaning the Registry and
the file system. In addition to that, you can control all the computers in your LAN.
- Fresh Diagnose Version 4.40 - Fresh Diagnose (freeware) is an utility designed to analyze and
benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such
as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard
information, and more.
- Savage2000 Drivers (Win9x/ME) - There's a new Savage2000 driver
(v4.12.01.9020-9.51.17) for Windows 9x and ME.
- D-Force 30.30g Drivers - These drivers are part of the xPower performance driver set
which guarantees maximum gaming and office performance for all chipsets.
- ASUS Detonators 29.80 - Asus has released Detonators 29.80 (Win9x/ME
/ WinXP/2k) for their nVidia based graphics cards.
- nVidia Detonator 30.30 (Leaked beta) - There is a new Detonator version
30.30 leaked (mirrors: Guru3D, StationDrivers)
on the web for all WinALL and these drivers are dated: 06/14/2002 and contains
multilanguage as well as nView support. PC-Extreme has posted some benchmarks
taking a look at these drivers compared to older versions.
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Updated:09:48 AM CEST Jun,21
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