Wednesday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:01 PM CET - Jan,28 2004
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- SCO Puts Bounty on Worm Writer - The SCO Group confirms it is
experiencing a distributed denial-of-service attack apparently related to the
Mydoom worm, and it is offering a reward for capture of the virus writer. Its
apparent target is SCO, which is embroiled in legal action against IBM over
intellectual property rights related to its ownership of System V Unix code.
The company says
it is offering a reward of up to $250,000 "for information leading to the
arrest and conviction of the individual or individuals responsible for
creating the Mydoom virus." Experts says the damage could continue for months
or years. About one in
every 12
messages being sent through the Internet contains the virus. Another story
can be found
here.
- "DVD-Jon" demands compensation - Jon Lech Johansen, who spent four
years fending off computer piracy charges,
now wants some compensation. He's demanding nearly NOK 150,000 from the
white collar crime unit that prosecuted him. It's a modest claim by
international standards, amounting to around USD 20,000. But that will
apparently satisfy Johansen, who was a teenager when all the fuss around him
started.
- Nullsoft Winamp creator Justin Frankel resigns from AOL - Justin
Frankel, the controversial software engineer who created the Winamp media
player,
has resigned from America Online. In an interview over instant messenger
with CNET News.com on Monday, Frankel said the time was right to step down
after shepherding the latest version of the player, Winamp 5, to a public
launch in late December.
- Off-topic: New brain disease could be affecting many thousands - A
newly discovered neurodegenerative disease could be affecting tens of
thousands of men around the world, say researchers. The disease closely
resembles Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and senile dementia, but appears to be
caused by a genetic defect linked to fragile X syndrome. Until now carrying
the defect was not thought to be harmful. Researchers believe the new disease,
named FXTAS (fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome),
may affect up to one in 3000 men, with most sufferers being over 50 years
old.
- EU customs set to slap 14% tax on PC monitors - The European union
is set to reclassify monitors which have DVI outputs as TVs, meaning that
manufacturers will have to pay 14% tariffs on these so-called "video
monitors". According to display analyst firm Meko, a change of emphasis in
guidance supplied by the customs authorities has prompted the
reclassification, and sent manufacturers and dealers gasping in disbelief.
- No profit on Xbox One - John Connors, Microsoft's chief financial
officer, spoke to financial analysts in Boston this morning. Among other
things, he acknowledged that the company still loses money on every Xbox it
sells, and he said that isn't going to change until after the next generation
Xbox is released, because of the cost of making the current console. Access
the audio of the full presentation through
this site
(thanks Bink.nu)
- NV40, NV41, NV45 & CO. Information -
3DCenter have posted some details on Nvidia's upcoming range of grahics
cards NV40, NV41, NV45. Here are the specs for nVidia NV40: 175 million
transistors, in 130nm manufactured, 8x2 architecture, however 16 Z/Stencil
tests per clock, DirectX 9.0 architecture, supports Shader 3.0, opposite NV38
and Shader doubled more efficient pixels, supports DDR1, GDDR2 and GDDR3,
internal AGPx8 interface, exact clock rates: unknown; there is estimated 500
to 600 MHz chip clock and 600 to 800 MHz storing act, Improvements with anti-
Aliasing: (at least) a new mode; its SAM polarizing sample is however unknown,
Improvements with the anisotropic filter: unknown, Presentation: GDC or CeBIT
at the end of March 2004, Market entrance: At the end of April or May, 2004
Sales name: GeForceFX 6XXX. (thanks
Warp2Search)
- Intel's Prescott 3.2GHz compared to Northwood 3.2GHz - It's already
known that this
CPU has a
longer pipeline and more cache memory, with 16KB of L1 and 1MB of L2
cache, and that it's warmer than a Northwood based P4 at the same clock speed.
It's cooled with an Intel traditional top line cooler but it ends up 10 or
even more Celsius degrees hotter than the Northwood core.
- WinFast A360 Ultra TDH -
The theme of this review is definitely "bang for your buck" because that's
what the nVidia GeForceFX 5700 Ultra video card provides. LeadTek has put
together a fantastic solution for gamers and people looking to upgrade alike
with a very attractive board that won't kill you in the wallet - the price tag
should be very popular with gamers used to getting a stroke when wishing to
upgrade to a video card with similar statistics to this card.
- GFX chipsets round-up -
The chipsets
under comparison today are going to the the high-end and mid-range
chipsets from both companies. These are: Bleeding Edge: ATI 9800XT,
Nvidia FX5950 / High End: ATI 9800Pro, Nvidia FX5900XT / Midrange: ATI 9600XT,
Nvidia 5700Ultra.
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster Wireless Music First Look -The
company's
Sound Blaster Wireless Music ($249.99 direct) device lets you connect a PC
that's part of a wireless 802.11b or 802.11g network to any speaker or sound
system in the house. Although not the first consumer product to provide
wireless music distribution, it could be the most flexible and easiest to use.
- Creative T7700 7,1 surround kit and Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS -
RBMods has posted
a review of the Audigy 2 ZS and T7700 sound kit.
- Creative Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro review - Sudhian Media has posted
a review
on the Creative Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro sound card.
- A Roundup of Coolers for Pentium 4: Q4'2003 - While the PC
enthusiast can afford a cooler at $30-$40, the common user at best puts aside
$10 of the budget for a cooler. At the same time, for this money the user
would want to get an absolutely noiseless cooling (which is a sensible
decision). Snatching these trends, cooler manufacturers are increasingly
focusing on coolers with the variable fan rotational speed.
Digital-Daily take a look at FSP, Igloo Diamond 4200 and a new version of
the "boxed" cooler.
- Printing Your Own CDRs With Ink -
THG recommends the Stylus Photo 960, as its little extra details make this
printer more of a pleasure to use. These details also will contribute to an
overall better user experience. However, the Stylus Photo 900 should not be
ignored, but it is important to understand what you are gaining and losing by
electing the 900 model or the 960 model.
- Samsung ML-1710 Monochrome Laser Printer review - ExplosiveLabs has
posted
a review on the Samsung ML-1710 Monochrome Laser Printer. "Text printing
quality is great with the ML-1710 while graphics quality does lack somewhat.
Also pleasing with this printer is its quiet and responsive operation. The 30
second warm up time is pretty much standard for all laser printers, even on
some higher end models. The simple control panel fits the design of the
printer nicely and does have some nice features to it. It would have been nice
to see a few more features to the CP however."
- Evesham Axis 64 3000 review - Hexus.net has posted
a review of the Evesham Axis 64 3000. "Multi-use setups like the Axis will
always appeal. It's for that reason, it's multi-talented abilities as a games
machine, simple video capture and editing box and multimedia TV hub, that I'm
happy to award it a high score. It has some downsides, I'd be looking to put a
512MB stick of something like Corsair XMS3200 in there for starters, relieving
myself of the Hyundai mess, but overall it's a very well executed PC. With the
Radeon 9800SE All-In-Wonder playing a large part, the excellent warranty and
attractive £999.99 (sans VAT) price, combined with great HIDs and good
speakers, I really recommend the Axis 64 3000+ if the budget fits."
- Ricoh's G4w digital camera review - PyroPort.com let us know they
have posted
a review of Ricoh's Caplio G4w digital camera.
- Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 review -
SFU is
not an operating system. It is a subsystem and we will discuss how this
differs from Cygwin and UWIN later on in this review. SFU is tacked on as a
process that houses sub processes. SFU is a full UNIX environment to to let
UNIX developers continue their Linux/UNIX work but leverage the advantages of
the Windows platform but you must have Windows 2000/XP Professional Server
2000/2003, it no longer runs on Windows NT and it cannot be installed on
Windows XP Home Edition.
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services - Microsoft Corp.
today announced the
availability of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (download
evaluation version) Reporting Services provides companies with a powerful
new reporting tool that can increase business insight by providing real-time
information from any data source to any device.
- Word 2003 Update: KB830000 - Under certain circumstances Word 2003
can become unresponsive when the user saves a file or when Word automatically
saves an AutoRecover file. This update corrects that potential error. For more
information on this update, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (830000)
Overview of the Word 2003 Update:
KB830000.
- Auto Switching Bluetooth BETA - Unfortunately HTC Voyager model of
Microsoft smartphone, branded among others as "Orange SPV e200", "Qtek 8080",
etc - has no
ability to switch on the Bluetooth only then when a call is incoming (so
that you could use Bluetooth headset to take the call).
This program can solve this problem (you must be logged-in to the forum
there to be able to download it; registration is free).
- PowerArchiver 2003 8.70.09 Final (SHW) -
PowerArchiver (download)
is an award-winning archive utility for the Windows family of products that
provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to
many powerful features and tools though an easy to use interface that
seamlessly integrates with Windows Explorer.
- Get Win32.Mydoom.A removal utility - Win32.Mydoom.A is a worm
spreading via e-mail and P2P file sharing network. The worm has been
distributed as 22,528-byte, UPX-packed Win32 executable and may be included in
a ZIP archive. Download removal utility from
here (direct
link)
- McAfee Stinger 1.9. - This version of
Stinger
includes detection for all known variants, as of January 26, 2004:
(BackDoor-AQJ Bat/Mumu.worm Exploit-DcomRpc, IPCScan IRC/Flood.ap
IRC/Flood.bi, IRC/Flood.cd NTServiceLoader PWS-Narod, PWS-Sincom
W32/Bugbear@MM, W32/Deborm.worm.gen, W32/Dumaru@MM W32/Elkern.cav
W32/Fizzer.gen@MM, W32/FunLove W32/Klez W32/Lirva, W32/Lovgate W32/Lovsan.worm
W32/Mimail@MM, W32/MoFei.worm W32/Mumu.b.worm W32/MyDoom@MM, W32/Nachi.worm
W32/Nimda W32/Pate, W32/Sdbot.worm.gen W32/Sober@MM W32/SirCam@MM, W32/Sobig
W32/SQLSlammer.worm W32/Swen@MM, W32/Yaha@MMP)
- Codec Pack All in 1 6.0.0.0 -
Codec Pack All in 1 6.0.0.0 includes: DivX 5.1.1, XviD Koepi's 1.0 b3,
DivX, XviD - FFDShow 28.11.2003 alpha, MPEG2 2.0.0.2525, Subtitles g400 2.83,
Subtitles DVobSub (Win9x, Win2k a WinXP) 2.23, 2.32, OGG Vorbis 0.9.9.5, AC3
0.70b and Morgan Multimedia Stream Switcher 0.97b.
- VIATray 1.53 -
VIATray is an add-on utility for VIA's Hardware Monitor. It moves VIA's
HWM from the task bar to the system tray and adds a few extra options.
- Realtek ALC650 drivers A3.54a -
download
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Updated:03:04 PM CEST Jun,20
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