Wednesday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 03:18 PM CEST - Aug,04 2004
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- FIX for "Windows Remote Desktop May Let Remote Users Crash the System"
-
A denial of service vulnerability was reported in the Windows Remote Desktop
service in Windows XP and Windows 2003. A remote user can cause the target
system to crash in some cases. Nick Lowe reported that on systems with Remote
Desktop enabled, a remote user can hold down the Windows Key and the "U" key
simultaneously and continuously at the login prompt to cause the target system
to crash. The key sequence reportedly causes the target system to continually
load the Windows utility manager, which will terminate if another instance is
detected. However, it is reported that on some systems, instances of Windows
utility manager can be loaded more quickly than they are terminated, causing
all available memory to be consumed. Solution:
Unmap Windows-Key. (thanks
Shaitan's Blog)
- Google queries provide stolen credit cards - Simple queries using
the Google search engine can
turn up a handful of sites that have posted credit card information to the
Web, CNET News.com learned on Tuesday. The lists of financial
information include hundreds of card holders' names, addresses and phone
numbers as well as their credit-card data. Much of the credit-card data that
appears in the lists found by Google may no longer be valid, but CNET called
several people listed and verified that the credit cards numbers were
authentic.
- New MyDoom Variant Uses Yahoo People Search -
Another new version of MyDoom is worming its way through the Internet, and
this variant—like the last one—uses Yahoo as part of its infection routine.
MyDoom.P is similar to most of the other MyDoom variants in that it arrives
via e-mail, with a spoofed sending address and a subject line designed to make
it look like the message is related to one that the recipient sent. Among the
subject lines in the e-mails are "SN: New secure mail," "Secure delivery,"
"Re: Extended mail," "Delivery Status (Secure)," "Re: Server Reply" and "SN:
Server Status."
- Net virus posing as Berg video -
A
virus purporting to show video of Nick Berg alive has been released on the
internet, warn security experts.
The virus is in a message post to tens of thousands of newsgroups, said
anti-virus firm Sophos. It is the same one that posed as a suicide note from
Arnold Schwarzenegger and as images claiming to show that Osama Bin Laden had
killed himself. Computer owners are advised to ensure their anti-virus
software is up-to-date and avoid opening unknown messages.
- Off-topic: NTSB Recommends Black Boxes For All Cars - Officials at
the National Transportation
Safety Board are recommending the government
require data recorders in all passenger vehicles
(thanks Slasdhdot.org)
- Off-topic: Web Addiction Gets Conscripts Out of Army - A number of
Finnish conscripts have been
excused their full term of military service because they are addicted to
the Internet, the Finnish Defense Forces said Tuesday. Doctors have found the
young men miss their computers too much to cope with their compulsory six
months in the forces.
- Off-topic: War games reveal hormone to combat stress - Levels of a
particular hormone may influence a person's ability to cope with stress,
suggests a study of soldiers put through a prisoner of war camp simulation.
Soldiers enduring punishing stints in military survival school performed
better and felt more attuned to their environments when they had higher levels
of a hormone called dehydroepiandrosterone-S (DHEA-S), report US scientists.
The ratio of DHEA-S against levels of another stress hormone, called cortisol,
was important in coping with stress, they suggest. The researchers say
DHEA-S could one day be given to people before stressful experiences to
help them cope better during traumatic events.
- Off-topic: US Army orders weapons supercomputer - The US army has
commissioned
a new supercomputer to simulate complex weapons systems. Once built, it
will rank as one of the top 20 most powerful computers on the planet. The
computer, named Stryker, will be capable of a peak performance of 10 trillion
mathematical calculations per second - 10 teraflops. It will also be the most
powerful computer in the world use the Linux operating system, a free
alternative to Microsoft and Unix software.
- CeBit America 2005 cancelled due to poor attendance - CeBit
America, an American edition of the popular IT show CeBit, which takes place
in Hannover, Germany every year,
is now being cancelled due to the lack of attendees and exhibitor interest
in the New York based IT fair.
- Single-chip wireless transceiver possible - A research team says it
has succeeded in integrating the last two components needed to create
a one-chip wireless transceiver. The researchers expect the technology to
be applied in remote wireless environmental sensors, cell phones, laptops and
two-way radio watches.
- IBM Contributes 500,000 Lines Of Code To Apache -
IBM announced that it is contributing more than half a million lines of
relational database code to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), reportedly
valued at approximately $85 million.
- Intel dual-core desktop chip "to ship mid-2005" - Intel will
release its
first dual-core desktop Pentium 4 processor in a year's time, the chip
giant's latest roadmaps reportedly reveal. The part, codenamed "Smithfield",
will be pitched at high-end and mainstream PCs, themselves aimed at creative,
corporate, lifestyle and business buyer categories, according to a
presentation slide posted at AnandTech. The slide, done up in the usual Intel
colours, reveals the chip maker will "likely" offer three versions of the
part, one at the high end and two mid-range products. All three Smithfields
will use Socket T connectors, but there's no indication as to how high their
frontside bus will be clocked - 1066MHz seems likely - or the CPUs themselves,
for that matter. Intel has yet to decide their processor numbers.
- ATI's R520 is codenamed Fudo - R520 is the next chip that will come
after R480 Q4 speed update of R420/423 marchitecture and it will represent the
chip with
new features with at least Shader model 3.0 support if not even more
advanced.
- Intel Quietly Starts to Offer 64-bit Pentium 4 Processors - As
expected,
the new 64-bit capable product line contains Pentium 4 at 3.20GHz, 3.40GHz and
3.60GHz priced at $278, $417 and $637 respectively. The costs of the
Pentium 4 chips with Extended Memory 64 Technology will equals to processors
with no such capability at the same core-clock. To distinguish between chips
with and without EM64T, Intel names the 64-bit capable chips as 3.20F, 3.40F
and 3.60F. Sources close to the company said that that the company would slash
the pricing of its 3.40GHz and 3.60GHz chips to $278 and $417 on August 22,
2004.
- Western Digital releases huge Caviar drives - Western Digital said
it has released
WD Caviar
RAID Edition hard drives, aimed at the server market. The drives come with
either Serial ATA (S-ATA) or EIDE interfaces and spin around at 7,200 revs per
minute. WD said the drives have a mean time before failure rate of one million
hours, include a time limited error recovery (TLER) feature. are warrantied
for three years and come in 120GB, 160GB and 250GB capacities.
- HP to ship notebook with preloaded Linux - Hewlett Packard has
become the first major PC manufacturer to launch a notebook running the Linux
operating system in the US.
The machine is offered with Novell's Suse Linux 9.1 and is bundled with
OpenOffice, The HP Compaq nx5000 business notebook will be equipped with
either an Intel Celeron or Pentium processor, a 15-inch TFT screen, and hard
disk options between 30Gb and 60Gb. The nx500 will also support CD-R/RW, DVD
and media player, wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. Although less than the
average business notebook, the difference in price is not as much as you might
expect. Hewlett Packard says that the nx5000 will retail at around $1,140.
- Toshiba intros 60GB 1.8-inch hard drive - TOSHIBA said that
it has
launched 60GB and 30GB 1.8-inch hard drives for the PDA, MP3 and tiny
notebook markets.But the drives aren't likely to be available in volume until
the fourth quarter of this year.
- ATI unveils top-end AGP FireGL card - ATI will ship its latest
workstation-class graphics card,
the FireGL X3-256, later this month, the company said today. The successor
to the X2-256T, the X3-256 provides the same 256-bit memory bus, connected to
256MB of GDDR 3 memory. The new GPU provides 12 pixel pipelines fed by six
geometry engines, up from its predecessor's eight pixel and four vertex
pipelines.
- The Fastest Graphics Cards of Summer 2004 -
X-Bit labs have taken 13 high-end and mainstream graphics cards and
benchmarked them in 35 gaming benchmarks to find out which are worth their
money.
- AMD's Athlon 64 3500+ processor review -
Comparing the 3500+ to an equivalent Pentium 4 from Intel is a little more
difficult. The 3500+'s $345 street price is sandwiched between the Pentium 4
3.2GHz at $251 and the 3.4GHz at $397. That doesn't take into account Intel's
latest LGA775 chips, but those require virtually a system-wide upgrade.
However, LGA775 or not, it's tough to recommend a Pentium 4 of any speed
unless you spend the majority of your time encoding video or using
multi-threaded apps that take advantage of Hyper-Threading's second virtual
processor.
- 512MB OCZ Premiere PC3200 Memory review -
At
$94 a stick from NewEgg, I was able to get an easy 300MHz overclock
resulting in a noticeable performance gain. For those who don't OC, I had no
problems running the RAM at more aggressive timings.
- nVidia GeForce 6800 GT (PCI Express) review - Bytesector has posted
a review on the nVidia GeForce 6800 GT (PCI Express) video card.
- Gigabyte GV-NX57128D PCI-E Videocard review -
The Gigabyte GV-NX57128D video card is a PCI Express x16 solution that is
based on the GeForcePCX 5750 GPU. The blue-PCB card is backed up by 128MB of
TSOP-II 3.6ns Samsung DRAM, and it supports S-Video out, DVI and analog
connections. The card doesn't require any extra power connectors incidently.
- HIS Excalibur X800 XT IceQ II VIVO LE review - Bjorn Endre let us
know he done
some testing of the HIS Excalibur X800 XT IceQ II VIVO LIMITED EDITION.
- Apacer Photo Steno Pro II 1GB CompactFlash Card review -
Rated at an impressive 100X (where 1X equals 150KB/sec), Apacer’s latest
Type I CF card is, in theory, more than twice as fast as the current crop of
high-speed 40X memory cards, and has been specially designed with rapid-fire
shooting in mind. Of course, it’s not just digital photographers who demand
top-notch performance these days. CompactFlash cards also have their uses in
numerous other devices such as MP3 players, PDAs and notebook computers.
- Scythe Samurai Heatsink SCSM-1000 review -
SCSM-1000 and it can fit onto Socket 370, Socket 478 (P4) and Athlon
Socket 462, 754, 939 and 940 boards. It has a dimension of 80x80x25mm (fan)
and combined dimensions of 98x84x33mm. It weighs 605g. It has a variable fan
speed of 1300-3400rpm (with rheostat). Airflow is 13.6CFM (1300rpm) ~ 34CFM
(3400rpm). The Fan noise level is 16dBA @ 1300rpm and 37dBA @3400rpm.
- Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 review - Envy News has posted
a
review of Hitachi's 5200RPM small form hard drive.
- 13 Barebones Reviewed Are Anything But Square -
THG reviews a baker's dozen for home entertainment capabilities versus
noise levels.
- Lite-On LVW-5005 All-Write DVD Recorder review - Bjorn3D has posted
a review
on the Lite-On LVW-5005 All-Write DVD Recorder.
- Plextor ConvertX M402U review -
Plextors
ConvertX eliminates the extra step in the conversion process and captures
audio and video in Real Time. The WinDVD creator software included in the
bundle effectively captured and organized my video files.
- LG Flatron L1810B LCD Monitor -
The resolution is a fine fit for the overall screen size, 19" CRT owners
will tell you that, and its even brightness and pin sharp display with the DVI
connector are a pleasure. Colour reproduction, something that's hard to
objectively test without expensive hardware or software, seems excellent.
- Bluetooth BT200 printer adapter review -
Using a Bluetooth enabled printers or using a Bluetooth dongle along with
an ordinary printer could be pretty useful. This will make it easy to place
your printer, wherever you want within 10 meters from the device that will use
it.
- Basics to System Cooling Explained - Around eight percent of
computer problems are caused by insufficient cooling. The fact is that
more computers suffer heat-related problems than users realize. Your
computer's stability and speed can both be affected when heat builds up inside
the case, which, in return, can cause crashes at odd times and reduce
performance significantly. Even if your computer seems to be running fine, it
will probably fail prematurely if it's running hot.
- Native Command Queuing [NCQ] Technology Explained -
CoolTechZone explains Native Command Queuing [NCQ] Technology. Hard drives
are the most mechanically-driven data-devices in a computer system. Due to
this, hard drives are quite inefficient and are the usually culprits for
keeping your system from its true potential. Obviously, mechanical devices are
significantly slower than their electronic counterparts, and thus, one can
only wait for the first fully electronic hard drive.
- Avant Browser 9.02 Build 101 -
Avant Browser (download)
is an upgrade to Internet Explorer. Avant Browser is a fast, stable,
user-friendly, versatile multi-window browser.
- Dr. Hardware 2004 5.5.0 -
Dr.Hardware 2004 5.5.0e is out. What's new: partition information for
physical drives, detection of Pentium 4E (Prescott), Athlon 64 FX-53, NSC
Geode and SiS processors, improved detection of AMD 64 bit processors,
extended CPUID information, detection of PCI Express devices (incl. detailed
PCI Express device description), support for Intel chipsets 915P, 915GE, 925X,
E7525, E7210 and a number of newer SiS and VIA chipsets, etc.
- nLite 0.98.5 Beta -
nLite (changelog
~ download)
is a GUI for permanent Windows component removal by your choice. After removal
there is an option to make bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing
in virtual machines. So that means that with nLite you will be able to have
Windows installation cd which on installation doesn't install, or even contain
on cd, unwanted components
- WinRAR 3.40 Beta 4 -
WinRAR (download)
is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of
email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from
Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
- Ultimate Boot CD 2.34 -
You need
the Ultimate Boot CD if you want to: Run floppy-based diagnostic tools
from CDROM drives. More and more PCs are shipped without floppy drives these
days, and it is such a royal pain when you need to run diagnostic tools on
them.
- Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition 4.5.0.6515 -
The Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition (release
notes ~
download) software package provides support for high-performance Serial
ATA RAID 0 arrays and redundant RAID 1 arrays on select Intel 865 and 875
chipset-based platforms using Windows XP or Windows 2000.
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Updated:05:35 PM CEST Jun,04
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