SECURITY...

• Windows and Office patches ahead - Microsoft has announced in a security bulletin on its website that it expects to release three software patches on Tuesday 12 July.
• Apache Request Smuggling Vulnerability -All versions of Apache previous to 2.1.6 are vulnerable to a HTTP request smuggling attack which can allow malicious piggybacking of false HTTP requests hidden within valid content. This method of HTTP Request Smuggling was first discussed by Watchfire some time ago. The issue has been addressed by an update to version 2.1.6.
• Microsoft to Pay Reward to Sasser Worm Informants, author sentenced - Microsoft Corp. today announced that two individuals who helped indentify the creator of the notorious Sasser Worm in 2004 will share a reward of $250,000 (U.S.). The author of the worm, arrested in May 2004, was found guilty Friday by a court in Verden, Germany, and handed a sentence of one year and nine months on probation and 200 hours of community service.
• 'Spam report' Trojan spreading fast - The emails claim to be from a member of the recipient's IT team warning that their system has been compromised and is distributing spam. The emails, which carry the subject line 'Spam Report', were first detected at 3.25am yesterday. The attachment, which contains Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Small.arf, is a small executable report.log.exe file of 16KB size. If executed it downloads harmful content from an external website.
• VXers release 'London bombing' Trojan - Virus writers have created a Trojan which poses as London terrorist attack news footage. Infected emails harbouring the Trojan pose as a CNN Newsletter which asks recipients to 'See attachments for unique amateur video shots' (example below). If executed, the malicious attachment turns infected Windows PCs into spam zombies. The as-yet unnamed Trojan attempts to obtain a list of SMTP servers that the victim's machine is configured to use and starts to use these servers to send large volumes of unsolicited mail.
• Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Remote Wipe functionality - Remote Wipe is a new feature in E2K3 SP2 that will enable the Exchange admins to force a device to delete its contents remotely. This can come in very handy when an end user loses their device or if the device is stolen -- and there is a risk that someone could access personal or confidential data.
• Mozilla Platform's Code Execution Vulnerabilities (Exploit) - Several vulnerabilities were identified in Mozilla Suite, Firefox and Thunderbird that may be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary commands or bypass certain security features
• Microsoft Downgrades Claria Adware Detections - Microsoft's Windows AntiSpyware application is no longer flagging adware products from Claria Corp. as a threat to PC users. Less than a week after published reports of acquisition talks between Microsoft Corp. and the Redwood City, Calif.-based distributor of the controversial Gator ad-serving software, security researchers have discovered that Microsoft has quietly downgraded its Claria detections. Is this a surprise to anyone? ;)

OFFTOPIC...

• Two 'Fantastic Four' reviews - ComingSoon.net has posted two Fantastic Four reviews, which you can read here.
• Aeon Flux Movie Updates - Paramount Pictures has updated the official website for Charlize Theron sci-fi actioner Aeon Flux, set to hit theaters later this year. At the site, you can get a first peek at the upcoming comic book adaptation from Dark Horse Comics, a new video clip (shown after you click on 'Gallery') featuring Theron and Sophie Okonedo (who plays Sithandra) and a photo gallery with 33 images from the anticipated film. (thanks Superheroes.com)
• Aliens v. Predator 2, Alien 5 Likely - Another great video interview over at IESB. This time it's a Fox exec, Tom Rothman, who confirms a lot of rumors about the Alien series. Apparantly a sequel to Aliens v. Predator is already in the works for a 2007 release. (thanks EvilAvatar)
• Images from phones add to London attacks coverage - Mobile phones transformed victims into journalists after the transport attacks in London as amateur photographs and video footage played a key role in newspaper, television and Internet coverage.
• Data Flows from Deep Space Comet Collision - Mission scientists said they expect to be busy for years analyzing data from the impact and the resulting plume of debris. They said frozen carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and radioactive materials from inside the comet could blow gas into space from the crater "for a long time.
• China Plans Deep Impact Mission - China is planning its own Deep Impact mission. The goal of the mission, unlike the exploratory NASA project, is to push potential life-ending comets or asteroids away from a collision course with the earth

TECHNOLOGY...

• Yahoo Expands Mobile Search Options - Yahoo short message service (SMS) Search users can send a text message that includes the shortcut term and a parameter such as a zip code, address or ticker symbol. Available shortcuts are: local information, WiFi hotspot finder, weather, stock quotes, daily horoscopes, dictionary definitions, and zip and area code lookup. They'll receive a text message with the results in reply. The SMS response from will include a URL linking to Yahoo's mobile Internet search if more information is needed.
• Google Invests in Power-Line Broadband - Current Communications Group, which offers broadband Internet service over power lines, said Thursday that it has received investment money from Google, Hearst and Goldman Sachs. Although Current did not specify the amount it received from the search king, the media giant and the investment banker, The Wall Street Journal reported that the three companies have invested roughly $100 million in the start-up
• EU considers helping online music providers - The European Commission is looking into ways of helping stimulate the sales of online music from Europe-based providers. Providers currently spend an average of L300,000 per song to acquire licences for all 25 states. This makes break-even achievable after the sale of around 4.7 million songs
• Microsoft Readies Disk-Based Recovery System - Microsoft has completed production of its disk-based data backup and recovery system and will release the product to manufacturing in the next 30 days, says Ben Matheson, group product manager for DPM at Microsoft. The vendor also has set the pricing for the product at $950 for one DPM server and the ability to protect three other file servers.
• Longhorn To Ship In Fall 2006 - Microsoft plans to ship its next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, in the fall of 2006, but executives acknowledged that it could slip into the following year. In related news, the Office 12 Beta 1 is still due this fall. Final product is on target for the latter half of 2006, Capossela said.
• Sony Facing Increasing Threat of PSP Piracy - Hackers have now figured out how to run PSP games downloaded from pirate websites on their PSP memory sticks. The exploit only works with the original 1.5 version firmware that the PSP shipped with in the U.S., but as larger capacity memory sticks begin to hit the market and more pirate sites pop up on the web, Sony could be in for the same kind of battle that Nintendo has had to deal with for its GBA.
• Toshiba announces a few more details on its HD DVD players -The most interesting thing for people buying TVs at the moment is that Toshiba have stated that their HD-DVD Player will ONLY output high Def on the player's HDMI output (plus other digital connections) the analogue output will be downrezed to 480 lines (in the US - expect the equivalent, no doubt, in Europe). The Toshiba player will also have a USB interface to allow connection to computers for enhanced content and interactive options direct off the disk. In addition mastering of the underlying DVD content will be based on 1080p - but there was no discussion on the resolution of the MPEG4 images.

HARDWARE... 

• IBM launches dual-core PowerPC 970 chip - IBM has launched a dual-core version of its 64-bit PowerPC 970 (G5) chip at a "Power Everywhere" event in Tokyo. The dual-core 970MP has 1MB of L2 cache for each core, and clocks from 1.4 to 2.5 GHz.
• Creative Sound To Boost UT2004 Frames? - An article on HarwareZone reveals Creative's assertion that their new X-FI Xtreme Fidelity audio processor will give a significant boost to frames per second of titles like Unreal Tournament 2004.
• G70 has 'many' clocks - Nvidia - Nvidia's Chief Scientist, David Kirk has suggested that "People just don't know as much as they think they do" when it comes down to the "Many" clocks within the GeForce 7800, aka G70. In a statement on Beyond 3D forums, Unwinder, the name behind RivaTuner, aired some scepticism surrounding Kirk's response to our understanding that there were only three clock domains inside G70. Kirk formulated a cryptic reply stating that we were making the assumption that there were only three clocks across the 300-million transistor GPU.
• XDR2 to be 5 times faster than GDDR3 - In a statement made by memory developer RAMBUS, the company claimed that their newly released XDR2 memory is five times faster than today's fastest GDDR DRAM chips, as currently used on all high-end graphics solutions. The company says that their new RAMBUS XDR2 technology makes use of a micro-threaded DRAM core among other circuit enhancements that allows them to deliver data rates at a healthy 8GHz. The graphics memory used on the upcoming Playstation 3 is XDR1, running at a modest 4.8GHz, which will deliver bandwidth approaching 50GB/sec according to RAMBUS' Senior Principle Engineer, Steven Woo.
• Alienware now doing 64bit - Alienware has announced the availability of the new Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 operating system on its Alienware MJ-12 7550a workstation. Powered by Windows x64, MJ-12 7550a workstations offer faster performance and greater reliability while delivering a migration to 64-bit applications.
• ASUS W2V 17inch Widescreen Notebook - Powered with the latest Intel 915PM chipset, with a Intel mobile 770 processor (90nm) clocked at 2,13GHz, and dual channel DDRII 533MHz 1GB memory, along with an ATI X700 GPU, the W2V provides good good 3D performance and great desktop stability. Worship the pictures.
• Sempron 3100+ - Palermo Core - We were able to reach nearly 2.4GHz with default voltages, or almost a 33% overclock. Yes, that is a nice looking overclock without too much effort put into it. There is a chance that some of these Palermo cores could have 3GHz coaxed out of them with a bit of luck, and a better overclocking setup. Clearly with a price tag of just over one hundred dollars, and now with the 64 bit support that Sempron has been missing for so long this becomes an attractive CPU to the budget overclocker. The only downside is the comparatively short life of Socket 754 compared to 939. That being said Socket A Semprons are still available.
• Corsair XMS TWIN2X1024A 8000UL Memory  - These new modules not only have the ability to operate at 1000MHz, but they also do it with reasonably good DDR2 timings of CAS5-4-4-9. These modules are guaranteed to be able to operate at 1000MHz, but you might be wondering how the hell you do it with a 1:1 ratio with the CPU’s font side bus.
• nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream - If you looking to save even more money, the 9NPA, based on the nForce4 x4 chipset, has a street price of around $90. You give up the SATA 2 support and 1000 bus, but most of the performance features are still available in the same basic motherboard.
• Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition AGP - In our benchmarks Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition was faster than its main competitor, GeForce 6800 Ultra, in almost all tests. nVidia advantage was basically on X2 - The Threat and Doom III when we increased the image quality. So, we can really consider Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition as the fastest video card for AGP platform - since there is no GeForce 7800 GTX for AGP bus.
• 6600GT with Dual-BIOS from Galaxy - Galaxy's GeForce 6600 GT Smart Flash is an interesting concept, but one that doesn't work quite as well as it should do. The buzzer alarm is supposed to turn on when the core reaches a temperature of 70 degrees C - we heated our test lab up, overclocked the video card and then fired Half-Life 2 up while monitoring the core temperature. We achieved a temperature of 71'C as reported by the BIOS and did not hear the buzzer alarm sound.
• ASUS Extreme N6800GT - Under the heatsink you get 256 Megabytes of GDDR3 memory running at 1050 MHz, and the Geforce 6800 GT core, clocked at 367 MHz. The reference specifications for the 6800 GT are 350 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory, so we can see that Asus pushed those up just a little bit to earn this card the Extreme title.
• Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor - TrustedReviews posted a review of the Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor: "The whole box connects to your PC via USB, so it's rather ironic that the front of the device sports a Firewire connection. Having this though could be useful if your PC doesn't already have a Firewire port. However, a better justification for this product would be for digitising and compressing analogue video footage.  Like other Audigy cards, the back of the device has three stereo line outs (as mini-jacks) catering for surround sound. There's an additional stereo-out and stereo-in using phono plugs, SPDIF out, DIN and S-Video out with yet another set of stereo audio outs."
• Acer AL1714CB-8 17" 8ms LCD - This 17" LCD is very similar to that of the AL1715b except it offers a blazing fast 8ms response and other competitive features for the budget consumer.
• Konica Minolta Magicolor 2450 - A 200-sheet paper tray protrudes from the front and paper is fed to a folding output tray set into the printer's top. An optional second tray can be fitted underneath, holding a full ream of 500 sheets. There's no multi-purpose tray, though, so you have little facility for printing on
  specialist media, or even envelopes. Bringing some innovation to the colour laser market though is the PicBridge USB connector that adorns the front of the printer.
• Samsung YP-T7Z - The YP-T7Z has certainly been a convenient MP3 player. The compact size is a definite plus for those who already carry a number of things in their pockets. The backlit color LCD makes it very easy to read at any time of the day. The ability to do a number of things with one device is certainly better than having one device for each product.
• Sony Ericsson K750i - The design of the body is compact, even though the K750i's form has bulked up a little from that of the K700i, gaining 1mm in length and depth, and 6g in weight. But the additional mass is worn with style. The screen has stayed the same size, 176 x 220, but the colour depth has grown from 65,000 to 262,000 colours.

GUIDES...

• Athlon64 3700+ Overclocking Fun -  After putting the chip under the freezer, the maximum stable speed we were able to coax from it was just 3.22 GHz (with 1.7V). This is a fairly average overclock for this processor. If you're interested in overclocking the Athlon64 3700+ is a great CPU for the purpose, even with just a performance heatsink and fan.
• How To Desolder Components - Learn how to correctly desolder electronic components from printed circuit boards like motherboards and video cards.
• Windows Server 2003 services that can be disabled - One of the most effective ways to secure Windows Server 2003 is to turn off unnecessary services. This detailed Excel spreadsheet lists 102 Windows Server 2003 services (download), describes each service's function, specifies whether you can safely disable the service, and outlines the ramifications of doing so. The spreadsheet also lists each service's default configuration for specific server roles--domain controller, DHCP server, File server, mail server, and so forth.

SOFTWARE...

• RatDVD 0.7 - The software takes a full featured DVD movie and puts it into a highly compressed .ratDVD container format file - while preserving all the features of the original DVD. For many a great format to share movies or put several movies on one DVD. The latest version adds multi-language support, codec quality/speed optimizations, shut down after convert and many bug fixes and much more.
• Nero Burning ROM 6.6.0.15 -  Nero has updated its burning suite Nero 6 Reloaded to version 6.6.0.15 (download / US mirror1 / US mirror 2). The company hasn't released any change logs yet. You can also download new versions for Nero Media Player 1.4.0.34, Nero Vision Express 3.1.0.14, Nero MIX 1.4.0.34, Nero LINUX 2.0.0.2 RPM | DEB.
• Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.01 - Nero CD-DVD Speed (download) is a benchmark which can test the most important features of an optical drive. These tests include: Transfer rate, Seek times, CPU (Central Processing Unit) usage, Burst rate, DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) quality & Spinup/spindown time. It can also check the CD (Compact Disk) and DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) media quality.
• VSO Inspector 1.10 - VSO-Inspector is a free add-on to report various information about your hardware configuration (detect and list the features of your CD/DVD writers, etc)
• Nokia PC Suite 6.6 - Nokia PC Suite is a package of Windows-based PC applications developed especially for use with Nokia phones.
• SciTE Text Editor 1.64 - SciTE (download / extras) is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. Originally built to demonstrate Scintilla, it has grown to be a generally useful editor with facilities for building and running programs. It is best used for jobs with simple configurations - I use it for building test and demonstration programs as well as SciTE and Scintilla, themselves.
• Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 Build 644 - The Search Engine for Your PC (download) - Find Your Files and Emails with the Power of a Search Engine Right on Your Destop.
• Google Toolbar 3.0.124.5 for IE & 1.0.20050707 for Firefox - Search Google from this toolbar (MSIE version / FireFox version) as well as block popups, autofill forms and more.
• IconoMaker 2.10 - It's an easy (and FREE) to use IconoMaker (download) for creating and editing icons.
• FastStone Image Viewer 2.15 Final - FastStone Image Viewer 2.15 is an image browser, viewer, converter and editor with an easy to use interface and a nice array of features that include resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments, watermarks and more. There's also new beta (2.16beta) available which adds option "Auto-Hide mouse cursor in Full Screen".
• GAIM 1.4.0 - 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.
• Skype 1.03.00.57 - This new update fixes sound quality problems when not using headset (echo cancellation). There's also Skype Toolbar for Outlook - it integrates into Microsoft Outlook, the email and calendaring program in Microsoft's Office Suite..
• eXeem 0.25 Public Beta - eXeem (download) is a brand new Peer-To-Peer program, which is based on the BitTorrent idea. eXeem eliminates the need for trackers as nodes in the program will be taking their role. eXeem also features easy publication of files to the network as well as a rating and comments system
• K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 1.34 - The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack is a free software bundle which includes the K-Lite Codec Pack Full, QuickTime Alternative, Real Alternative, BSplayer and DC-DSP Filter.
• Windows XP PowerPacker 1.0 RC1 - PowerPacker will help a user create a Multiboot Windows XP disk with or without DriverPacks. It will do almost everything for you, even hex edit the files needed to be hexed, create the boot directory, boot menu, etc. It makes creating multiboot XP disks a breeze.
• Logitech SetPoint 2.41 - If you were using Logitech MouseWare with a Cordless Click! or a Cordless Click! Plus mouse, installing SetPoint on top of MouseWare will transfer control of your mouse from MouseWare to SetPoint. The latest version (v2.41) of Setpoint can be found here.
• Intel Pro & ProSet 10.0 Network Card Drivers - product page / download
• Intel Video Drivers 14.14 - product page / changelog / download