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Nightly Tech Reading - tech

(hx) 02:07 AM CET - Nov,20 2002

Comdex Fall 2002 Coverage Day 1 - AmdDB, AnandTech, Rage3D, Sudhian.com
MS accused of banning mod chip Xbox from Live service - Microsoft's campaign against Xbox mod chips has ratcheted up a notch with the launch of the Xbox Live online gaming service. According to a posting at Got Mod?, (there's a site that's going to be pretty concerned about the issue) the company is attempting to detect mod chips when users connect, then placing them on a banned list - forever. CNews has posted a similar article called "Xbox Live not for everyone" - Mod chip" fans, AOL subscribers, and some owners of older game machines are having problems with the new online service for Microsoft's Xbox video game console.
IBM starts work on computer to rival the human brain - The first supercomputers to approach and even surpass the processing power of the human brain are to be built by IBM, under a L184 million contract announced by the US Government yesterday. ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L will be the fastest and most powerful machines built, with a combined capacity equal to the 500 best of today's computers. ASCI Purple, which will be built first and used to simulate nuclear tests, will be able to complete 100 thousand billion calculations per second - a speed known as 100 teraflops that some scientists say is comparable to the human brain. Blue Gene/L, which has a broader range of functions and will be used by US Department of Energy's three main laboratories, will be more powerful still, with a maximum speed of 360 teraflops.
Could Your Cell Phone Watch Over Your Home? - Nokia and Matsushita Electric Industrial have reached an agreement to jointly develop technologies for data exchange between mobile phones and home appliances, they announced Tuesday. This tie-up aims to make it possible to offer services like monitoring inside the house, checking the contents of a refrigerator, or recording a TV program, while on the move.
Nokia Tout Fast Downloads at Comdex - Nokia is previewing a new phone that doubles download speeds and integrates features once found only in PCs and personal digital assistants. The Nokia 6200, touted as the industry's first EDGE (Enhanced Data-Rates for GSM Evolution) handset, is being showcased at this week's Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. Aimed at business users, the device is in testing and will be available early next year, reportedly selling for $250 to $350, depending on the retailer.
How Much Hack Info Is Too Much? - Researchers counter that without full disclosure, companies often fail to swiftly patch security holes. Full disclosure, in theory, also alerts computer users to problems that are already known to malicious hackers, who often exploit holes before patches become available. But a recent post on security news mailing list BugTraq has infuriated some who normally favor full disclosure. The post details how a bit of programming code embedded in a Web page can reformat site visitors' hard drives, deleting all files stored on the affected drive. The exploit affects users running Microsoft Internet Explorer browser versions 5.5 or 6.0. Flynn has posted a Web page documenting the problem and offering possible workarounds.
Armageddon Can Wait: Stopping Killer Asteroids - Sooner or later, scientists who study Earth-crossing asteroids say, astronomers will find one that has a significant chance of striking the planet. A nuclear detonation, some scientists say, could break the asteroid into several large pieces, increasing, rather than eliminating, the threat. And a blast some distance from an asteroid, designed to shove it into a slightly different orbit, might not work either; the asteroid might soak up the energy like a sponge. "I'd say forget that," said Dr. Keith A. Holsapple, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the effects of simulated nuclear explosions.
Big Mac Attacked by Sims - In the soon-to-be blockbuster The Sims Online, players could find it difficult to avoid getting their fingers soiled on virtual McDonald's hamburgers. A deal struck between Sims publisher Electronic Arts and the fastfood mega-corporation allows Sims players to open up their own McDonald's kiosk and improve their game stats by consuming McD's greasy goodies. While news of this groundbreaking sponsorship deal fades quickly from memory, failure to address this latest barrage in the war on ad-free gaming could result in a super-sized sandwich of misery. Based on the success of previous Sims offerings, The Sims Online is an ideal high-profile backdrop in the war against "advergaming." The McDonald's kiosks that dot the imaginary battlefield are mere burger bunkers to be ad-busted in an anti-advergaming mission that could go down in the annals of gaming history.
Simputer Review - The Simputer was conceived by a team of computer scientists at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. To make the machine cheap enough to sell in poor regions, the developers kept the hardware requirements to a minimum. The Simputer's microprocessor is an Intel Strong-ARM chip, which is known for its low power consumption. The device will have as much as 64 megabytes of random-access memory and 32 megabytes of flash memory, as well as a modem that can connect to a telephone line. And the computer runs on the Linux operating system, which is available free of charge.
Memory prices falling again - Memory Watch site DRAM Exchange reports that the spot prices of memory, both DDR and SDRAM flavours, are beginning to show a decline. The site says that the prices on the spot market are falling to join the prices of contract memory, the prices PC manufacturers pay. The reason is, the site reckons, that the peak of the manufacturing season has been and gone, and there's no particularly bright news, whether from Comdex 2002 or from the industry itself to boost the prices. In fact, and as we reported earlier today, Comdex 2002 is looking decidedly underattended.
Hyperthreaded P4s hit Audigy snagette - A posting on the Ace's Hardware forum by a character called Sander Sassen claims that Audigy and Audigy 2 cards, rather than getting a welcome chime when entering XP with hyperthreading enabled, just ends up stuttering badly. Hyperthreading was revealed to an expectant world last week to cheers of acclamation from a bunch of hacks in a club near Leicester Square last week. Sassen, who runs the Hardware Analysis site, said that every effort to make the Creative babies work has met with failure. Creative Labs has not yet answered Sassen's emails about the problem, he said.
Exchange 5.5 Information Store Service Provider Patch 2656.96 - This patch resolves problems that were found in the Exchange 5.5 Information Store Service Provider since SP4 was released.
Windows Longhorn Alpha Leaks to the Web - An internal alpha build of Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, made its way onto Internet sites early Tuesday. The leaked build, which is numbered 3683, appears to be from late September and sports quite a few new feature concepts - although many are not yet functional.
Actual Transparent Windows 1.3 - Actual Transparent Windows lets you apply a transparency effect to any window in Windows 2000/XP. The transparency effect looks very impressive and may be useful with such objects as Windows Taskbar, WinAmp, drop-down menus and other windows.
Nvidia Geforce FX Benchmarks - 3DCenter.org (DOOM3 alpha benchmarks) | UKGamer (DOOM3 alpha, 3DMark, UT2003, Q3A...).
Kerio Personal Firewall 3.0.0 beta 4 - Kerio Personal Firewall (KPF) is a software agent that builds a barrier between your personal computer and the Internet. KPF is designed to protect your PC against attacks from both the Internet, and other computers in the local network.
Klient 2.0.11 Beta - Klient (download) is an IRC application for WinALL. Klient features a fully customizable interface, multiple server support, highly robust scripting, external .dll support, and much more.
RadEdit 1.102 Beta - This is the first universal BIOS editor for Radeon-based videocards. This program let you modify clock speeds and BIOS fonts for any videocard based on R100, RV100, RV200, R200, R300, RV300 chips.
OnBoard Audio Drivers - Realtek ALC AC97 Driver | Cmedia 8738 driver 6.42 for Win98SE ~ WinME ~ Win2K ~ WinXP.

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