SECURITY...

• Microsoft to abandon passwords - Microsoft has revealed at a security panel at CeBIT that it is preparing to dump passwords in favour of two-factor authentication in forthcoming versions of Windows. Detlef Eckert, the senior director in charge of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, did not specify which form of two-factor authentication would be used in the next edition of the company's operating system, codenamed Longhorn.
• British ISPs Must Identify File Sharers - British record companies applauded Friday's ruling in court that gave them the right to obtain the identities of people who use file sharing programs from Internet service providers. The labels were looking for the identities of 31 persons suspected of uploading large numbers of illegal files onto various P2P services.
• Zombie PCs being sent to steal IDs - The report, released on Monday, summarizes the findings of researchers who have tapped into more than 100 different bot nets since last summer. Some of the networks were made up of more than 50,000 computers, said the Honeynet Project, a security group that sets up heavily monitored systems, or honeypots, and allows them to be attacked.
• FTC Shuts Down Fraudulent Antispyware Company - The FTC announced that it's filed a restraining order against a company that allegedly offered Internet users a spyware scanner program that falsely reported that computers were infected with spyware, and which failed to remove any spyware at all from infected machines.
• 911 Trojan author jailed for six months - A Louisiana man who wrote malicious e-mails that caused some computers to dial the 911 emergency number was sentenced on Monday to six months in prison.
• Hack most wireless LANs in minutes - Now with the new active attacks on WEP described in Ossmann’s follow-up article, hackers no longer need to passively wait for legitimate packets on a wireless LAN because they can actively inject packets into a wireless LAN to ensure a speedy packet collection session. The end result is, any WEP based network with or without Dynamic WEP keys can now be cracked in minutes!

OFFTOPIC...

• Star Wars Revelations trailer - This is an independent film, completely put together by volunteers and organized by Panic Struck Productions. Well, check out this trailer!
• Martian dust devils finally caught on camera - Swirling dust devils on Mars have given NASA scientists both a scientific treat and a very welcome power boost. On 10 March, the rover Spirit captured images of two dust devils in one day. It is the first time any have been seen on Mars since first being identified in a single image from the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997. One of the two appears on two different images from the rover's Navigation Camera, making it possible to track its direction and speed.
• Thousands join hunt for gravitational waves - On Monday 14 March, the 126th anniversary of Albert Einstein's birth, over 50,000 people around the world are helping in the hunt for the gravitational waves predicted by the great physicist nearly a century ago. These people have already downloaded the distributed-computing program Einstein@Home, which was only launched on 19 February 2005, and more than 1000 people per day are still joining. Dense moving objects such as spinning neutron stars or colliding black holes are predicted to send out ripples in space-time - gravitational waves - according to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. But so far no gravitational waves have ever been observed.
• [RIP] Billy Wilson Dead at 33 - Billy "Wicked" Wilson (Voodoo Extreme former) has passed away at the age of thirty-three. He is survived by his wife and son. Specific details surrounding his death aren't public at the moment. Pretty sad news ....:(

TECHNOLOGY...

• Netscape browser makes comeback - The once-mighty Netscape browser is attempting a comeback. How, you ask? Simple. By combining the best elements of its two leading rivals. Netscape is out with a test release of version 8.0, and the new browser is nothing like its recent predecessors, which were mostly about fixing bugs and playing catch-up.
• IBM lets Millipede storage out for a stroll - IBM tantalized chip aficionados at CeBit here last week with a storage device that it says can achieve data densities of more than 1 terabit per square inch. The MEMS prototype can hold the equivalent of 25 DVDs on an area the size of a postage stamp, IBM said. MEMS stands for micro-electrical-mechanical system.
• Japanese Giants Launch 170Mbps over powerline - The speed is three times faster than wireless technology Wi-Fi and is fast enough for high definition television signals. Unlike wireless alternatives, the powerline technology performance is stable throughout the home. SECA will compete with existing technology from the HomePlug alliance of 50 companies, including Japanese group Sharp (6753.T). The two systems are not compatible.
• 3D Raytracing Chip Shown at CeBIT - As noted at heise.de Saarland University is showing a prototype of a 3D Raytracing Card at CeBIT2005. The FPGA is clocked at 90 MHz and is 3-5 times faster in raytracing then a Pentium4 CPU with 30 times more MHz. (Slashdot.org)
• Nokia Plans Three New Phones for the U.S. Market - Nokia plans to sell its new 6155i CDMA phone in the fourth quarter. The 6155i offers a fold-over cover, built-in zoom lens camera (which supports streaming video), and GPS applications. The 3155 CDMA phone also plans to go on sale with the 6155i in the fourth quarter. The 3155 CDMA also offers a fold-over case with extra memory for storign pictures, along with integrated FM Radio. Both phones are expected to cost $100 to $250, a middle-tier price range described by Nokia.
• Sony PSP Euro debut delayed? - Sony has apparently pushed back the UK release of the PlayStation Portable to late June, if Amazon.co.uk's PSP product page is to be believed. If the site's new date is credible, the delay marks a serious slippage from the late March timeframe Sony originally had in mind for the handheld console's UK debut
• DRM comes to mobiles - SanDisk is working with a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to make storage cards which include digital rights management. The flash card maker will offer cards for use in mobile phones from the last quarter of this year. SanDisk cards will use NDS's mVideoGuard Mobile DRM technology.

HARDWARE... 

• X-bit labs CeBIT 2005 Coverage - #Day1 |  #Day2 | #Day3 | #Day4 / another extensive coverage can be found on THG
• ECS announces first INTEL/AMD combo motherboard - The solution is codenamed PF88 and it is expected to be formally launched in April, according to senior manager of marketing at ECS Adam Chou. He also said that shipments should begin before May. Both the P4 motherboard and K8 converter card use SiS northbridges, the SiS656 and SiS756 respectively. The motherboard supports up to 4 GB of dual-channel DDR2-667 memory.
• Asustek previews Turion 64 platform - One of key players in notebook industry, Asustek introduced its future implementation of the AMD Turion 64 platform at CeBIT. The product, initially called A6000K, will come out with 15- or 15.4-inch TFT LCD display, Nvidia GeForce Go 6200 mobile graphics processor, DDR333 memory (upto 2GB), wireless LAN module supporting two (b and g) or three (a, b and g) versions of IEEE 802.11 standard, the company said.
• SiS761GX Anounced DirectX 9 Integrated Chipset - Silicon Integrated Systems today announced their new SiS761GX integrated chipset supporting AMD64 platforms with a PCI Express x16 high-speed graphics interface. The SiS761GX is equipped with a 3D graphics core, and fully supports new generation AMD64 central processors, including the AMD Sempron, Athlon64, Athlon64 FX and Opteron. In addition to its Mirage1 graphics core and software support for DirectX 9.0, the SiS761GX is capable of dual screen output when paired with the SiS307 video bridge chip.
• SLI Bridge Available in Retail - This week some Japanese hardware stores started offering the SLI bridge card, which is shipped together with Gigabyte's or Leadtek's graphics cards as well as with all the SLI supporting mainboards based on nForce4 SLI available in the today's market. Why could anyone be willing to buy a separate SLI bridge card at all?
• Dual-core AMD Athlon 64 benchmarks emerge - The first dual-core Athlon 64 benchmarks have appeared on the web, courtesy of an Italian-language hardware site and an unnamed Taiwanese OEM. The Italian site came up with a rendering time of 41.4s for the Athlon 64 dual-core sample, second only to a two-way, HyperThreading-enabled 3.6GHz Xeon system, which clocked in at 38.4s. The Xeon rig offers four logical cores to the Athlon 64's two physical cores.
• Memory Shootout - Extremely High Performance DDR using Samsung TCCD DRAMs - To sum up, if you want the coolest modules on the block and you're feeling flush, the Corsair Xpert is in a niche of its own. Paired with Samsung's TCCD modules, there's a world of performance to be had from them at modest Vdimm. Otherwise, the G.Skill and OCZ both come recommended at around the £200 mark, with Corsair's XL PRO and XL PT under that price, too.
• ASUS AX800XL - The easiest way to think of the 800XL is a clocked-down version of the X800 XT - same amount of pixel pipelines and vertex shaders but clocked quite a bit lower and it's built on a .13-micron process. This allows the GPU to run significantly cooler and also yields some nice overclockabilty which we'll get into later on in this review.
• ASUS N6800GT SLi - The ASUS card currently retails for $489 at newegg and multipling that by two for an SLI setup gives a figure with which you can easily buy an entire PC with reasonable performance. They also says: "We think that playing with the 6800 series in an SLI mode is only for the rich kid's at the moment. As prices come down and more games take better advantage, only then will we be able to recommed an SLI setup."
• Leadtek WinFast A6600GT (AGP GeForce 6600 GT) - Leadtek has taken this technology and tossed it into a great package. The WinFast A6600GT TDH offers performance that almost matches that of the next generation's hardware, at a fraction of the cost.
• ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB (PCI Express) video card - To put it simply, R480 is a tweaked version of the R423 core used to power the PCI Express version of ATI's initial X800 products. These tweaks serve the purpose of reducing heat and increasing clock speeds over its predecessor and, most importantly, avoiding some of the supply constraint issues we've seen in the past. The Radeon X800 line-up (X800 Pro aside), has picked up a far from illustrious reputation of being near vapourware, with X800 XT parts, the Platinum Edition in particular, being all but non-existent. Indeed, early indications are good that supply of these new R480 (and R430)-based parts are plentiful, with X850 products aplenty available for purchase. Whether this trend will continue with the AGP-based variants of these boards that come to market shortly remains to be seen of course, but the situation is looking decidedly more hopeful.
• Asus DRW-1608P - The DRW-1608B will burn DVD+/-R media at 16x, DVD+RW at 8x and DVD-RW at 6x. Of course I wasn't able to test the DVD+RW and DVD-RW performance properly since the respective 8x and 6x media isn't available yet. The CD-R specification is a little disappointing at 40x, while the 24x CD-RW speed is pretty much par for the course. But it's the DVD+R DL specification that really impresses with the Asus drive – at 6x, this drive promised to be considerably faster than the 4x drives already on the market
• Seagate 100Gb USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive - It's basically a small (2.5") harddrive packed inside a strong shell with a high speed, USB 2 adaptor on rear; it's also got a bright blue LED light for good measure. Seagate offer two version of the drive; a 40gig version and a 100gig version - we looked at the 100gig version
• XG's X-Case - XG has done a nice job of dressing up a good solid case. It is both practical and unique looking. It provides more then enough room to work in and fit all of your components. Cooling and noise levels are both decent and I think most gamers would be very happy to have their system in this case. It is fairly heavy though, so it is not for you people that carry your system to LAN parties.
• Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3100 - The only drawback I can see with the MX 3100 is the keyboard layout is not standard - the Insert key has been removed from the middle roll and placed next to the F12 key and because the Windows Start key was removed from the right side of the keyboard, the right Ctrl key doesn't line up with the right Shift key. The sifted over Ctrl key placement was by far the most troublesome. Many time when I wanted to hit the Ctrl key I ended up hitting the left arrow key. I didn't miss the relocation of the Insert key but not having the Ctrl key line up with right side of the Shift key took a lot of getting use too.
• Netgear's MP101 wireless audio system - check it out!

.GUIDES... 

• PCStats' Linux guide part #2: installing a PC - In the first part of PCstats Beginner's Guide to using Linux, they explored the basic features of this open-source operating system by using the Knoppix 'live' CD Linux distribution which does not require a permanent installation onto your computer's hard drive, but instead loads entirely from a single CD. For the second installment of this guide, they're going to take one of the most popular and easy to use free Linux distributions, SUSE Personal 9.1 and explore the process of installing Linux onto your hard drive as a full operating system.
• Motherboard Basics - A  motherboard, also known as a main board, is the primary circuit board inside of a computer, and is where the central processing unit (CPU), memory, expansion slots, drives, and other peripheral devices are connected.
• Basics of Flash Memory, Part 2 - Bigbruin.com has posted the second part of their basics of flash memory series.
• Hack most wireless LANs in minutes - Now with the new active attacks on WEP described in Ossmann’s follow-up article, hackers no longer need to passively wait for legitimate packets on a wireless LAN because they can actively inject packets into a wireless LAN to ensure a speedy packet collection session. The end result is, any WEP based network with or without Dynamic WEP keys can now be cracked in minutes!
• Building A Silent Server/HTPC - OCModShop has posted a guide about building a silent Server/HTPC
• Pureoverclock's March buyer's guide - check it out

SOFTWARE...

• MySQL 4.1.10a - MySQL (download ~ changelog) is the world's most popular open source database, recognized for its speed and reliability.
• Java 2 Runtime Environment Standard Edition 5.0 Update 2 - Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) software is the premier solution for rapidly developing and deploying mission-critical, enterprise applications.
• LimitLogin v1.0 - This application adds the ability to limit concurrent interactive user logons in an Active Directory domain. It can also keep track of all logins information in Active Directory domains (without necessarily enforcing logons quotas).
• Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 4.0 - Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) contains the tools and documentation you need to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying on these platforms.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.1 Update - download (thanks Mr.Tech)
• xplorer2 Lite 1.2.0.0 - The lightweight version of xplorer2 is not a crippled unusable salesman of the professional version. It shares the same browsing and management engine, and gives many rival professional file managers a run for their money - literally. It is a complete little file manager, albeit lacking a bit in bells and whistles.
• Process Guard 3.150 - ProcessGuard is a powerful new cutting-edge program that greatly increases the security of your computer by preventing processes from being able to attack each other. It is considered by experts to be a must-have program for all users of Windows, and is the only program available that can actually prevent the installation and infection of all known rootkit stealth trojans.
• NeroLINUX 2.0.0.0-6 - NeroLINUX is a comprehensive, yet flexible application provided you have some prior knowledge of CD/DVD technologies.
• K-Lite Codec Pack 2.41 - K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-decompressor. This new version includes Media Player Classic v6.4.8.3 and DirectVobSub (vsfilter) v2.35.
• QuickTime Alternative 1.42 - QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install QuickTime Player from Apple
• Real Alternative 1.32 - Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer or RealOne Player from Real Networks. Supported are: RealAudio (.ra .rpm), RealMedia (.rm .ram .rmvb .rpx .smi .smil), RealText (.rt) and ReadPix (.rp). It also supports RealMedia content that is embedded in webpages.
• Nero Burning ROM 6.6.0.8a - As the version number itself still remains the same and there is no mention of this 'a' version in their changelog, it appears like this update may fix something small such as possibly a bug fix in its new LightScribe support. Nero Version 6.6.0.8a is available on its FTP mirrors and its website update section here.
• iPod2PC 1.10 - iPod2PC enables you to copy MP3-songs from your lovely iPod back to a PC's harddisk. Transfer easily your music library to another PC to play them there or make a backup of your songs.
• BitTorrent v4.0.0 - BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol designed to transfer files. Users connect directly to send and receive portions of a file, while a central tracker coordinates the action of all peers and manages connections without knowledge of the contents of the files being distributed.
• Firefox 1.0.2 Beta - A new beta release of the Firefox Mozilla web browser is available.
• My Drivers v3.11.2600 - My Drivers enables easy and fast detection, backup and restore of all hardware device drivers currently on your system. Also, you can even find the latest drivers for your hardware and install them onto your computer.
• nVHardPage v2.2 - The nVHardPage tweaker has been updated to version 2.2 Multilanguage and serves on en/disabling hidden features in nVidia control panel, tweaking nVidia Direct3D and OpenGL settings and overclocking your nVidia graphic card.
• ForceWare 3D Stereo Driver 71.84 - Two files are required to use your 3D glasses with any GeForce card. The first is the 71.84 videocard ForceWare drivers, and the other is the official Nvidia Stereo drivers. 71.84 3D Stereo drivers require 71.84 ForceWare Graphics drivers to run.
• NVIDIA Linux display drivers 1.0-7167 - NVIDIA has again released two new Linux display drivers. One for normal x86 systems and one for 64bit extended systems.