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Nightly Tech Reading - tech

(hx) 03:03 AM CEST - Oct,21 2004

Ballmer: We need a $100 PC - What's one of Steve Ballmer's biggest headaches? It's not Linux or security breaches. It's piracy, the Microsoft CEO said Wednesday. "The biggest problem we have right now is that people who should be paying for software aren't," Ballmer told an audience of technology executives at an industry conference here sponsored by market researcher Gartner. One way to stem piracy is to offer consumers in emerging countries a low-cost PC, Ballmer said. "There has to be...a $100 computer to go down-market in some of these countries. We have to engineer (PCs) to be lighter and cheaper," he said.
[!] Major browsers bitten by security bugs! - What do Internet Explorer, Mozilla's browsers, and Opera all have in common? Bugs! First off, http-equiv has discovered two vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system, link to local resources, and bypass a security feature in Microsoft Windows XP SP2. Sadly, there also are vulnerabilities in Opera, Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox / Camino, Sa fari, Netscape, Konqueror, Avant Browser and Maxthon.
How to Break Windows XP SP2 + Internet Explorer 6 SP2 - The following technical exercise demonstrates the enormously elaborate methods required to defeat the current [as of today's date] security mechanisms in place in both Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Internet Explorer 6.00 SP2 fully patched: It is by no means easy. The 'locking down 'of the local zone is and has been the 'Achilles' Heel' of the manufacturer known as Microsoft from time of inception to date.
Singapore to jail and fine software pirates - Singapore will next year introduce jail terms and stiff fines for people who break software and internet copyright laws, the government said on Tuesday. People found to be illegally using software or downloading off the internet will face a maximum six months in jail and a fine of 20,000 Singapore dollars ($A16,395) for their first offence, according to ammendments to the Copyright Act introduced into parliament. Repeat offenders face three years in jail and a fine of 50,000 Singapore dollars.
Self-destructing DVDs to help market new film - At the center of the Convex Group's plan is a low budget Christmas movie called "Noel," directed by Chazz Palminteri, that will debut in up to 10 U.S. cities on Nov. 12. On the same day, the disposable DVD can be bought for $4.99 through online retailer Amazon.com. A little over two weeks later, the movie will air once on cable television network TNT, which Convex hopes will only spur greater ticket sales and higher revenues from the DVDs, which become unplayable 48 hours after their air-tight package is opened.
Off-topic: Internet about to collapse, says Finnish scientist - Dr. Hannu Kari says the Internet will will collapse in 2006 as reported in an article on ARS Technica.
Off-topic: Humans Have Fewer Genes Than Previously Thought - A more refined analysis of the human genome, or book of life, shows people have fewer genes than previously thought, an international team of scientists said on Wednesday. Instead of 100,000 genes, the initial estimate, scientists working on the Human Genome Project, a publicly funded collaboration of scientists from 20 institutions in the United States, Europe and Asia, have reduced the number to 20,000-25,000.
Off-topic: Miniature jet engines could power cellphones - Engineers have moved a step closer to batch producing miniaturised, jet engine-based generators from a single stack of bonded silicon wafers. These chip-based “microengines” could one day power mobile electronic devices. By spinning a tiny magnet above a mesh of interleaved coils etched into a wafer, David Arnold and Mark Allen of the Georgia Institute of Technology, US, have built the first silicon-compatible device capable of converting mechanical energy - produced by a rotating microturbine - into usable amounts of electrical energy. The key advantage of microengines is that they pack in at least 10 times more energy per volume of fuel than conventional lithium batteries, take up less space and work more smoothly than much-touted fuel cells.
Nvidia Puts a Firewall on a Motherboard - The catch is that the new PCI-based chip set will only work with AMD Athlon 64, 64 FX, and Sempron processors. Consequently, the company expects that NForce 4 will be aimed at higher-end applications such as gaming in its initial roll-out. It is not clear whether the chip set will be made to work in Intel systems at a later date. Although software firewalls are effective on PCs, the NForce 4 "ActiveArmor" protection engine claims to carry out its security routines without hindering the performance of the PC, acting as an "accelerated" co-processor. This should improve system performance by unburdening the main CPU from having to process network traffic. ActiveArmor's firewall functions look fairly standard, and include packet inspection, port filtering, and other anti-hacking features as well as remote administration which is a must for IT departments.
NV41 is Geforce 6700 - This chip will be clocked at 400MHz while the memory on cards will work at 1000MHz. You will be able to buy 128MB and 256MB versions. NV41 is derived from NV40 and will have full support for Pixel Shader 3.0 and at this time it's PCIe only. Those cards are set for production in November.
S3 unveils OmniChrome graphics card - Today S3 is taking the wraps off OmniChrome, an answer to ATI's All-in-Wonder and NVIDIA's Personal Cinema. Based on a DeltaChrome S4 Nitro graphics card, OmniChrome adds a TV tuner and video decoder chip to enable video capture and PVR applications. Given DeltaChrome's native HDTV output support and less-than-stellar gaming performance, the PVR/home theater PC market seems like a natural market for S3 to pursue.
Toshiba To Offer Laptops With HD-DVD in 2005 - Toshiba will release laptops with HD-DVD under its high-end Qosmio brand and plans to ship one million units in the first year to Europe, the U.S. and China, as well as Japan.
OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 Performance Series Memory video-review - 3D Game Man has posted an OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 Performance Series Memory Video Review.
Asus AX800XT/TVD review - In this review PCstats is testing one of Asus's flagship Radeon videocards, the AX800XT/TVD.
Creative Sound Blaster Wireless Music review - For your money, you get a WiFi receiver box which sits next to your stereo, and a chunky remote control with a built-in LCD screen. The remote communicates with the receiver using radio waves rather than infrared, so there’s no need for a line of sight to the receiver. The idea is that you can have your PC and wireless access point in one room, your receiver and stereo in another, and you and your remote in a third room.
[!}Spice up your MX Mouse - The standard USB port polling frequency for mice is 125hz ( for serial port 40hz ). This will not change no matter what mouse you buy as long as it uses the USB interface. The PS/2 port however can be adjusted to deliver as much as 200hz with the help of third party programs, making it the better option for games compared to a normal USB interface. However, USB can be spiced up by doing a little hexeditingSpice up your MX Mouse.
TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide - SP2 v.1 Beta - Eric Vaughan has published a Beta version of this guide, updated for SP2.
ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide - TweakGuides have posted their latest guide that looks at tweaking your ATI Catalyst Drivers. This guide refers to the latest ATI Catalyst drivers Version 4.10, including the new ATI Catalyst Control Center and the Catalyst A.I Feature. Make sure to check back regularly as the guide is updated for each new Catalyst release.
Kernel 2.6.9 Final - check it out (download)
Microsoft Time Zone 2.1 - Microsoft Time Zone conveniently runs in the system tray and allows you to easily view the date and time in various locations around the world. You can also quickly and easily add your own personal locations to customize Microsoft Time Zone the way you want.
ICQ Lite 4.14 Build #1839 - download ~ release notes.
GAIM 1.0.2 - Gaim (download ~ changelog) is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
FRAPS 2.3.3 - Fraps is a tool that lets you monitor current framerates in a corner of the screen for programs using DirectX or OpenGL technology. It also allows you to easily take screenshots of games, make movies of gameplay, and manually determine the average framerate between two points.
Koepi's XviD Codec 1.1 Unstable - XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. Use this build with great care! It's unstable, it can mess up your encodes badly.
K-Lite Codec Pack 2.33 Full, Standard and Basic - K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools.
NVIDIA DVD Decoder v1.00.58 - NVIDIA DVD Decoder (download) enables the industry's highest quality DVD and MPEG-2 playback and rich surround sound audio for Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center Edition.
DVD Region+CSS Free 5.56 - DVD Region+CSS Free enables you to watch and copy any region code CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive.
TiVo Desktop 1.2 - TiVo Desktop allows you to access your music and photos located on a PC over the network using a TiVo.
ATI Tray Tools v1.0.1.386 - ATI Tray Tools is a small utility that can be found in the windows tray which then allows instant access to options and settings. Quite handy and quite a small download.
nVidia Unified Driver 6.11 Beta - The package (German language website, but you should be able to find _download_ link) contains: Audio driver version 4.55 (9/30 nightly INF), Audio utility version 4.49, Ethernet NRM driver version 4.57, Network management tools version 4.57, SMBus driver version 4.45 (WHQL) with updated uninstaller files, Installer version 4.55, Win2K IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL), WinXP IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL) (thanks blooduk) More info can be found here.
NVIDIA Forceware 70.41 Unveiled - OSNN.net have managed to get our hands on some new NVIDIA drivers that will eventually become what is known as Rel7. There's no download, but they've decided to take some screenshots of how things are different since the Rel6 and Rel65 releases.
ForceWare 66.81 Win2000/XP WHQL - Another unofficial ForceWare driverupdate. This one is a bit different though, it's online and serving from NVIDIA themselves (from the nzone pages) making it an official driver release. It's files are dated on the 19th of October 2004 making it the absolutely newest set available, it will work with all graphics cards from NVIDIA. Another mirror can be found on NVIDIA Zone.

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