Thursday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:26 PM CET - Nov,06 2003
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- Are PCs next in Hollywood piracy battle? -
Starting in mid-2005, it will become illegal to sell or distribute any product
that can receive certain digital TV streams--unless it includes
government-approved copy protection. What FCC officials did not stress, but
their regulations do, is that the product definitions are broad enough to
cover not just TV tuners but also PCs. "This necessarily includes PC and
(information technology) products that are used for off-air DTV (digital
television) reception," the FCC's order says.
- Italian charged in porn dialler virus scam -
39-year-old Italian man accused of running a porn dialler scam has been
charged with fraud and virus distribution. Italian police say the unnamed
suspect stood to net 104,000 Euro from a scam which tricked users into running
a virus, called Marq-A, which altered the Internet dial-up number used by
victims to a premium rate line, La Repubblica reports.
- Intel pushes Alderwood as Canterwood's successor - Intel early this
week updated its chipset roadmap and decided to add
a new Alderwood chipset to its Grantsdale family. Positioned as the
flagship product in the Grantsdale line, the Alderwood chipset will be the
successor to the 875P (Canterwood). The new chipset will be available in the
second quarter of next year. It will support an 800MHz FSB (front-side bus)
and DDR2 dual-channel memory, in common with the 875P. Intel launched the 875P
in April. The chipset is the company's most expensive desktop chipset to date,
priced at US$53 for a version with integrated software RAID and US$50 for a
non-RAID version. The FOB (free on board) price of an 875P motherboard is over
US$150 per unit, with some priced at over US$200.
- Sony Cell CPU to deliver two teraflops in 64-core config -
"Cell", the massively parallel processing chip currently being designed by
Sony and IBM, will scale from single-chip systems through to entire server
rooms packed with thousands of them, Sony's executive deputy president Ken
Kutaragi told attendees of the company's Transformation 60 conference
yesterday. A four-core chip home server system will be able to deliver one
billion floating-point operations per second, apparently. Move up to a 32-core
chip - in, say, a blade server module - and you'd get 32 gigaflops of
processing power, while a 64-core slab of silicon inside a rack-mount unit
doing graphics work would churn out two teraflops, according to Kutaragi's
presentation foils.
- New Hitchhiker's Guide Radio Series Announced - It's now become
clear that three of the
Hitchhikers' novels are indeed getting their first radio adaptation. A
six-part adaptation of Life, the Universe and Everything will be up first in
the spring. This will be followed towards the end of 2004 by an eight-week
serialisation combining So Long and Thanks for All the Fish with Mostly
Harmless.
- Intel announces development of new chip material - The new Intel
technology would not come into effect until about 2007, still perhaps three
generations of chip advances into the future. The industry is just now making
the transition to 90 nanometers.
After that it hopes to scale down to 65 nanometers first, followed by a leap
to just 45 nanometers, where the new material, which Intel refuses to
identify, would come into play. The semiconductor industry has been searching
intensely for a new material to replace silicon dioxide, which is used as an
insulator between the gate and the channel through which current flows when a
transistor is switched on.
- Elpida Memory Ships Samples of Industry's First 2 Gigabyte DDR2
Registered DIMMs - Elpida Memory announced that it has shipped
samples of the industry's first 2 Gigabyte DDR2 registered dual in-line
memory modules. The modules also support 1.8V operation, thus offering a 50%
power reduction over DDR at 400 Megabits per second (Mbps) operation. The new
2 Gigabyte module (PC2-4300) is the latest addition to Elpida's comprehensive
DDR2 registered DIMM product family that also includes 512 Megabyte and 1
Gigabyte densities.
- New Longhorn Graphics Tool Called "Flashkiller" - Top
developers at Microsoft
are working on a new graphics and animation toolset for Longhorn (the next
generation of Windows) that could spell trouble for Macromedia's popular Flash
MX and Director MX animation tools, sources familiar with the situation told
internetnews.com. Code-named "Sparkle," the tools under development would be
integrated with Microsoft's .NET (define) runtime environment. That would
ultimately mean developers could have Flash- and Director-like animation and
graphics tools ready-built for them soon after Longhorn hits the marketplace.
- Gigabyte M1600A Multimedia DVD-ROM review -
The M1600A from Gigabyte is both DVD player and audio console combined,
and what's more, it will run with the rest of the PC turned off. Dial in your
favourite FM radio station while slugging it through a long word document, or
after a hard day when the last thing you want to do hear is noisy cooling
fans. The M1600A plays CD's and MP3 CD's, with or without the computer powered
up, and features FM radio presets and a very cool.
- ATI Radeon 9800 XT Visual Gaming Performance - Half a grand is a
lot of money to spend on a graphics cards. In this article
TweakTown examine visual gaming performance of ATI's latest GPU, the
Radeon 9800 XT, in Counter-Strike, NHL 2004, Max Payne 2, Midnight Club II and
Halo PC to work out if it is really worth spending all those dollars.
- Abit 5900 Siluro FX review - From the results shown the
ABIT Siluro FX wins 3 of the benchmark test and the ATI card wins 2 of them.
With lastly the Splinter Cell Benchmark being a tie between the 2 cards. Based
on the test results the Siluro is the winner when put up against a 9700 Pro.
However the Siluro’s main competition now is the ATI 9800 based on an even
price/performance comparison. When taking that into consideration a winner is
not so easy to pick. As the ABIT card is one of the top Nvidia FX cards out
there it still performance and IQ wise cannot beat the 9800 when compared in
today’s and tomorrows graphics tests.
- Highpoint e.SATA Kit V2.0 review - Serial ATA drives are great.
They are quick, use thin cables and don't break the bank account in the
process. Though what happens if you want to run drives external to your case?
You turn to
Highpoint with their e.SATA Kit V.2.0, of course.
- Shuttle SB65G2 SFF System - In summary, the
Shuttle SB65G2 is an effortlessly competent barebones unit that'll appeal
to many potential buyers on the basis of performance, portability, features,
stability and overclocking potential. It's not perfect by any means, but you
can do a whole lot worse than have the SB65G2 sit on your desk. Ironically
enough, the SB65G2's main threat isn't from powerful, full-size PCs, it's from
other SFF PCs and Shuttle's very own SB6xxx and SN85G4 cubes. If you're
determined to go down the Intel route, the SB65G2 is a classy performer in
most respects.
- Office 2003 Critical patch - Microsoft has released
an update
for Microsoft Office 2003. This update fixes a problem that occurs when
you try to open or to save a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 file, a
Microsoft Office Word 2003 file, or a Microsoft Office Excel 2003 file that
includes an OfficeArt shape that was previously modified and saved in an
earlier version of Microsoft Office. When a PowerPoint 2003 file, a Word 2003
file, or a Excel 2003 file is opened in an earlier version of Office, empty
"complex" properties may be introduced into the file and a bit may be changed
in the file record that describes these properties. Earlier version of Office
will ignore this bit value but when this bit value is detected in Office 2003,
you may experience the following symptoms:The document may not open
completely, The document may be corrupted, The document may open but with
missing content, You might receive an error message.
- MSIE 6 SP1 Update: Internet Explorer Unexpectedly Quits When You
Use It to View a Web Page That Contains VML - When you use Microsoft
Internet Explorer 6 to view a Web page that contains Vector Markup Language
(VML), Internet Explorer may unexpectedly quit (crash) ->
download patch
- MSIE 6 SP1 Update: Internet Explorer May Unexpectedly Close When
You Leave the Pointer on the Text in the DHTML Editor - In the DHTML
editor of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1), when the text in
the DHTML editor is a link, and the pointer is at the end of the link text,
Internet Explorer may unexpectedly close (crash) when you try to exit the
page. You may also receive a "General Protection Fault" error message on the
Dhtmled.ocx file. ->download
patch
- Fedora Core 1, aka Yarrow (formerly Red Hat Linux 10) - The
first release of Fedora
Core is now being made available. The goal of
The Fedora Project is
to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose
operating system exclusively from free software. Development will be done in a
public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core
about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule.
- Apache HTTP Server 2.0.48 for Win32 -
Apache HTTP Server 2.0.48 for Win32 (Win32
Source: httpd-2.0.48-win32-src.zip [PGP] [MD5] ~
Win32 Binary (MSI Installer): apache_2.0.48-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi) is
available for download. This version of Apache is principally a bug fix
release. A summary of the bug fixes is given at the end of this document. Of
particular note is that 2.0.48 addresses two security vulnerabilities.
- Qwik-Fix Beta 0.41 -
Qwik-Fix is
designed to pro-actively prevent known software vulnerabilities in Windows &
Internet Explorer from being exploited by malicious hackers, virus writers and
worm writers. Qwik-Fix is simple to use, Qwik-Fix is easy to download and
install. Qwik-Fix is dynamic in that it serves as a temporary fix to known
vulnerabilities until Microsoft releases a periodic monthly cumulative patch
or a new Service Pack. As we find new vulnerabilities our subscribers will be
updated immediately, thus staying 1 step ahead of the bad guys.
- Opera v7.22 - Opera
(Win32
with Java /
Win32
w/o Java /
Linux / Unix)
is faster, smaller and more standards-compliant than other browsers
- Real 3D Matrix -
v1.0
of Isotope244 Graphics' latest screensaver has been released, titled
"Real 3D Matrix".
As expected from the title this screensaver emulates the falling code found in
the hit movie "The Matrix". What sets this screensaver apart from all the
other matrix screensavers out there is this is the first one to use real 3D
objects for the falling glyphs, creating a more 3D feel and environment than
ever before.
- CPU-Z 1.20a - CPU-Z
is a diagnostic tool that provides information on your CPU, including:
processor name and vendor, core stepping and process, processor package,
internal and external clocks, clock multiplier, partial overclock detection,
processor features, supported instructions sets, L1 and L2 cache information,
location, size, speed, and technology. CPU-Z 1.20 has been upgraded to the
1.20a version. This new release adds the full support of nVidia nForce2
chipsets based boards. It also fully supports VIA KT600 chipset.
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Updated:03:04 PM CEST Jun,20
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