SECURITY...

• MySQL Criticized in Wake of MySpooler Worm - In the wake of the MySpooler worm that spread via weak MySQL passwords on Windows installations last week, database users criticized the open-source database for lax security lockdown on installation, saying that it should be held to the same high standards as traditional security whipping-boy Microsoft Corp.
• W32/Bropia Worm details - This memory-resident worm propagates itself via MSN Messenger by sending a copy of itself using different file names to all available or online contacts. Thus, users of the said messaging program should not accept or open these files to avoid infection.
• First French P2P "pirate" fined EURO10,200 - Alain Oddoz, a French teacher and one of approximately eight million French people who have downloaded music via the internet, is the first person in France to be sentenced because of illegal file-sharing. In addition to confiscating his computer system and the fact that he was arrested in August 2004 is he condemned to pay EURO10,200 and to take out a series of newspaper adverts to publicize the "crime and punishment".
• Spammers play illegal XP Windows card  - The cheeky spamsters have still to tweak the spelling and grammar on the e-missive, but the general idea is for you to go to a web site and, guess what, enter your credit card details.
• New trick boosts volume of spam, strains Internet, experts warn - A new spamming technique could push the volume of unwanted e-mail to new heights in coming months, straining the online communication system, say several experts who monitor the activity of spam gangs around the world. Illegal bulk-mailers have been able to deploy massive blasts of spam by routing it through the computers of their Internet service providers, rather than sending it directly from individual machines, the experts said.
• Ex-AOL Worker Pleads Guilty - A former software engineer for America Online is charged with selling 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses to spammers. A judge finally lets the guy plead guilty to conspiracy.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Air Force War Game Aims to Test Space Technologies - The U.S. military on Saturday launched a five-day war game to see how space-based assets such as satellite communications and precision bomb guidance systems would fare in a hypothetical war against terrorism in 2020.
• Gizoogle.com - This is really interesting website! Check it out! (thaks NeoNSX)
• Girl who loves Vibrating.. - check it out :)

TECHNOLOGY...

• Bill Gates Interview - German magazine "Spiegel" has conducted an interview with Bill Gates as he speaks about issues of computer security, competition, software bundling.
• Is the Half-Life 2 EULA illegal? - More interesting, perhaps, are the legal agreements that surround a purchase of Half-Life 2. One is that no mention of Steam is on the HL2 box or in the End User License Agreement, yet it is required to play. The second is that where a gamer buys a copy of the game for which the CDKey has already been hacked, he will have to wait up to two weeks to get a replacement from Sierra/Vivendi, since shops will generally not take back opened software. The third is that no copy of the game can be sold without paying Valve a $10 fee to transfer the CD-Key to another Steam account.
• Leaders see video games' chaos reflected in D.C. streets - District of Columbia political, religious and community leaders gathered at a church this week to support a proposed ban on the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors. They summed up their objections in a word: poison.

HARDWARE... 

• Trapped under ICE: Extreme FX-55 overclocking - When you have the fastest CPU (at stock speeds) on the planet, you just have to push it further, although phase change cooling can get your underway, LN2 is bound to give you the edge. Let's pour a few litres on this blazingly fast A64 FX-55 to see how high it can fly.
• Kingston HyperX DDR2 5400 - Kingston HyperX PC2-5400 has opened my eyes to DDR2 memory. My initial thoughts were that the performance increase was not going to be something we would see for sometime. I also had the misconception many do about the CAS ratings and how high all of the DDR2 modules seem to be. Yes there are faster and tighter DDR modules on the market, if you are lucky enough to have a motherboard that supports both and you don't OC, you might just stick with DDR memory. If, however, you want to pump up the FSB, Kingston HyperX will fill that request, and wait for the BIOS updates to show you what it is truly made of...
• EPoX 9NDA3+ Socket 939 (nForce3 Ultra) Motherboard - If you've been looking at the Socket 939 platform for your next big upgrade and still have a workable AGP based video board, the EPoX 9NDA3+ is a motherboard that deserves a very close look. With gaming scores that are nearly on par with the VIA chipset boards available and features that leave others in the dust, it has something for everybody and performs admirably as well.
• XFX NVidia G-Force 6600 GT 128meg AGP Video Card - If you are contemplating upgrading your video card but do not want to spend 400 dollars, take a close look at the XFX 6600GT. This card performs exceptional and at a moderate price. With the new PCI-e board coming out, this is a logical solution to make your current AGP system perform into the next year, saving up for the new stuff hot off the assembly lines.
• BFG GeForce 6600 GT OC 128MB AGP - So is the BFG GeForce 6600 GT OC card worth the money? Absolutely. The warranty, the build quality, the enhanced clock speed, the dual DVI out, the GPU and HSI bridge heatsinks, the effective and quiet cooling system, the low CPU overhead during video playback, the impressive 3D performance and the outstanding display output all add up to make it worth the small increase over the cost of a standard GeForce 6600 GT.
• MSI NX6600-VTD128E Diamond - The real jewel in the crown for this board, assuming it is indicative of these boards as a whole, is overclockability. If the price is right, then this part could become something of a darling for those looking for a bargain in the mid-range video card sector - A board cheaper than a 6600GT but overclockable to beyond 6600GT clocks would be coveted much like the GeForce 6800GT has been at the high-end.
• AOpen Aeolus 6600 GT - This 6600 GT just like all the others has 128 MB's of DDR III memory, and the NV43 GPU. This card also features a maximum resolution of 2048 X 1536 at 85Hz. The NV43 GPU provides 8 pixel pipelines, and 128 bit graphics core. Basically a reference 6600 GT with a different color PCB and fancy looking HSF.
• ABIT RX600 Pro-GURU Video Card - Utilizing ATI's X600 design based on ATI's R380 core, the RX600 Pro-GURU features four pixel pipelines and two geometry engines. At stock speed the RX600 Pro-Guru operates with a 400MHz core and 256MB of high speed Samsung DDR memory running at 600MHz Nothing mind-boggling or cutting edge to be found here, however this card can handle all of today's hottest games at modest settings.
• ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition review - This card is now ATI's flagship card, and has all the features you would expect from a top of the line card, like VIVO, DDR3 RAM, HDTV Decoding, etc. However no matter what the card is capable of, the main thing people purchase these high end cards for is the gaming. So today I am going to tell you about all the features, and show you how the card performs in some of the most popular games out.
• Seagate 100GB Portable External HDD -  This drive can be found for around $220 out on the e-market. Yes, it is portable and a very good drive, but spending over two dollars per GB of data storage may make many cringe at the thought. This is a product that will suit the needs of many people and that price will not stop them from picking this drive up.
• Winter Audio Reference: On-Board, Consumer, and Pro Solutions - AnandTech take a look at a cross section of the audio industry. The lineup includes two cards from Creative (the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro and Audigy 4 Pro), the Realtek Intel HD Audio solution, and the Echo Audio Gina3G. With these cards, we are covering our bases for the consumer add-in market, professional recording, and onboard audio solutions.
• AOpen Silent Power AO400-12AHN PSU - Maximum peak power output of the AOpen Silent Power AO400-12AHN is 400W. The power supply features over-voltage protection, which apparently shuts itself down to avoid damage in the case of a power surge.
• Zalman CNPS7700-Cu Heatsink Fan - One of the main features of the CNPS7700-Cu heatsink fan (HSF) is the ability to provide excellent cooling along with near silent operation. The large diameter of the heatsink provides extra cooling to other components located around the CPU socket area, like the NB, RAM modules and voltage regulators
• ASETEK Waterchill - Asetek's all-in-one water-cooling kit, WaterChill, offers a fantastic way for new users to enter the arena of watercooling. The setup procedure is easy and well documented, and the results in temperature and noise reduction are more than any air-cooling system could offer.
• Akasa AK-688 Black Knight Heatsink - MikhailTechtake a look at Akasa's AK-688 Black Knight copper heatsink with included 3.5” fan controller/USB hub.
• I-Rocks IR-7220 Optical Mouse - The I-Rocks IR-7220 Beetle is quite responsive. Light weight and very comfortable to use, it should be a “must have” item for anybody with small hands that find some larger mice cumbersome.
• Logitech Z-640 5.1 Speaker Set - If you always listen to music and you don't watch movies or play games on your PC, you should consider something other than the Logitech Z-640. Its mid-range is not impressive and you are going to notice it especially when you listen to music. However, if you don't really care much about its rather lacking mid-range, then the Z-640 can be considered. If you are into gaming and watch a lot of movies on your PC as well as on a budget, the Z-640 would probably be your best choice. Z-640's accurate and solid bass is exactly the type of bass that I like.
• NZXT Nemesis and Nemesis Elite case - The Elite model has a total of three 120mm LED fans (photo). The first is mounted at the front of the case before the HDD cage. It has a 3-pin motherboard connector and is meant to be connected to the LCD display to maintain control as well as monitor the performance of the fan. In fact, the second 120mm fan mounted at the back also has this ability.
• L.I.S. POP Indicator VFD Display - The IT professional can also use the L.I.S. POP Indicator as a display to quickly assess critical information without having to plug in a monitor.
• Logisys White Laser LEDs - Logisys' Laser LED kit consists of the cluster with 4-pin pass-through molex connector, a couple optional installation screws, and some velcro. It's available in white, red, green, blue, and UV. Ours was the white version. As it turns out, white lights (fluorescent or LED), the cool kind, look pretty amazing inside a windowed case with white sleeving and other white painted components. If nothing else, it's certainly a departure from the typical blue.
• Brother MFC-410CN multi function printer - This is a neat little machine, not that much bigger than an A4 page, with a control panel set into its front edge and paper input and output trays below. As with HP's range of ink-jet printers, paper makes a full 180-degree turn during printing. Connection to an individual PC is made via USB or via Ethernet as a network device.
• Acer AL2671W - 26in Widescreen LCD TV - There's no getting away from the fact that the Acer AL2671W is a fantastic display. It's smart, easy-to-use, and delivers great picture quality. The caveats are having only two Scart connections, the lack of six-pin S-Video inputs, and the uncertainty over HDCP support.
• palmOne Tungsten T5 PDA - The battery life of the T5 was not the best I have seen, but certainly was nothing to scoff at. The PDA lasted for about four hours and twenty minutes of use with BlueTooth off and the backlight on maximum.
• Three-CCD semi-professional HDV camcorder - Sony's HDR-FX1E is a true statement of intent. It's only L500 more expensive than the company's DCR-VX2100 and anyone currently considering that model should seriously consider ways of finding the extra money for the FX1E. The FX1E is just as good at shooting DV as the VX2100, so only a small premium is being paid for its HDV capabilities. Sony also has a professional version of the FX1E on the horizon, the HVR-Z1U. Unlike the FX1, there won't be different versions for Pal and NTSC. Instead, one model will support the 25fps and 30fps timebases, along with 24fps via the CineFrame mode. The Z1 could be to the Sony PD170 what the FX1E is to the VX2100 - a killer.

SOFTWARE...

• Marco's Excel Management Macro 1.1 - It's a Microsoft Excel Add-In (download) with a collection of functions which can be useful in an Enterprise environment based on Microsoft Windows operating systems. The main functions are based on retrieving information from Active Directory, modifying Active Directory and getting information from computers through WMI. Although there are more free tools available nowadays (like ADModify), it can be quite convenient to perform certain tasks directly in Excel.
• IBindCFG 0.1 - IBindCFG (download), automate disable/enable binding of ms_msclient and ms_server on nic interfaces IBindCfg version 0.1. Usage: IBindCfg [-interface Networkname] [-dis_client|-en_client ClientName] [-dis_service|-en_service ServiceName] [-dis_protocol|-en_protocol ProtocolName][-verbose]
• Useful tools for Windows - This website has some useful free tools for Windows
• Free Avast! Virus Cleaner - avast! Virus Cleaner is available free for every user. This tool will help you remove selected worm infections from your computer.
• Avant Browser 10.0 Build 121 Final - Avant Browser is a fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile web browser. Avant Browser is a multi-window browser which features with many functions such as Pop-up Stopper, Built-in Google Searching, Safe Recovery, Integrated Cleaner and Advanced Browsing Options.
• Advanced X Video Converter 3.9.18 - Advanced X Video Converter is a comprehensive video software that makes it easy to Convert, Join, and Split video files among AVI (DivX, XviD, MPEG-4 ...), MPEG (MPEG-1, MPEG-2), WMV, ASF, VCD (.dat), SVCD, DVD formats. It can also extract audio track and images from videos.
• Mozilla Sunbird - Mozilla has finally released the official Sunbird Calendar for mass consumption.
• eMule 0.45a - eMule (download full install / updates files only) is a filesharing client which is based on the eDonkey2000 network, but offers more features than the standard eDonkey client, because it's opensource but under the restrictions of the GPL License. (thanks nitrox)
• XP Codec Pack 1.0.1 - XP Codec Pack 1.0.1 includes: AC3Filter 1.01a RC5, AVI Splitter 1.0.0.3, CDXA Reader 1.0.0.0, CoreAAC 1.1.0, CoreFlac Decoder 0.4, FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder 2004.10.12, GPL MPEG-1/2 Decoder 0.1.2.0, Matroska Splitter 1.0.2.4, Media Player Classic 6.4.8.3, OggSplitter/CoreVorbis 1.0.0.0, RealMedia Splitter 1.0.0.9, RadLight MPC Filter 1.0.0.4, RadLight APE Filter 1.0.0.4, RadLight OFR Filter 1.0.0.4, RadLight TTA Filter 1.0.0.2, VSFilter 2.33.
• nHancer (NVIDIA Profile Editor) - The programmer of this handly little tool was very rather unhappy with nVidia's own control panel, especially with its game profile editing module.
• ATI FireGL Display driver 8.083 - ATI's FireGL cards are designed to accelerate 3D workstation applications based on OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX 9.0. With full certification on the leading computer aided design (CAD), architecture/engineering/construction (AEC) and digital content creation (DCC) applications, ATI FireGL is the high performance choice for graphics professionals working in Windows. 
• 2005 New Year Driver Pack Official Released (supports Live, Audigy 1/2/ZS)  - This software pack is a crack/mod based on the original CD of Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook & Audigy4 Pro. Please read the followings carefully. They removed the package though. Anyone know a good mirror?

SECURITY...

• 13 patches on 8th February - On 8 February 2005 the Microsoft Security Response Center is planning to release  9 security patches for Microsoft Windows, and other for Microsoft SharePoint Services, Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and Windows Media Player, and MSN Messenger.
• Windows XP SP2 Vulnerability Patch - Russian company Positive Technologies has released an unofficial utility eliminating vulnerability in SP2.
  FBI's email hacked - The FBI said Friday it has shut down an e-mail system that it uses to communicate with the public because of a possible security breach. The bureau is investigating whether someone hacked into the www.fbi.gov e-mail system, which is run by a private company, officials said.
• Huge security hole in .Net - According to Gosling, the security hole is based upon the fact that several features of the older languages are ambivalent with regards to security: "C++ allowed you to do arbitrary casting, arbitrary adding of images and pointers, and converting them back and forth between pointers in a very, very unstructured way.
• Eudora open to multiple high risk flaws - Security consultancy firm Next Generation Security Software (NGSS) has discovered "multiple high risk vulnerabilities" in the Windows version of the popular Eudora email client. According to NGSS representative John Heasman, versions affected include Eudora 6.2.0 and below. Heasman warned that the flaws permit hackers to execute arbitrary code on victims' PCs via previewing or opening a specially crafted email. Hackers can also run malicious programs by opening specially crafted stationary or mailbox files. Testing by NGSS suggested that these issues have been resolved in Eudora 6.2.1 as detailed here. Version 6.2.1 can be downloaded here.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer .ANI Files Handling ConnectBack Exploit - A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that cursor, animated cursor, and icon formats are handled. An attacker could try to exploit the vulnerability by constructing a malicious cursor or icon file that could potentially allow remote code execution if a user visited a malicious Web site or viewed a malicious e-mail message. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system.
• Painkiller CD-Key Buffer Overflow - The vulnerability is caused by overflowing the buffer that stores the Gamespy CD-key hash for the online server-side authorization. This buffer is 100 bytes long (the Gamespy CD-key hash is long 72 characters), therefore if an attacker uses a longer hash than 100 bytes he can cause the overflow of the buffer.
• Deceased woman named in file-sharing suit - Gertrude Walton, a deceased eighty-three-year-old woman, was named as the only defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by a group of record companies. They claimed Walton made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name 'smittenedkitten.' Needless to say, the suit has since been dropped.
• FBI Unable to Launch New Computer Program -Audit - The FBI has squandered $170 million on a failed computer system agents can use to instantly share information, and seems to know neither how long it will take nor how much it will cost to build one, a Justice Department audit showed on Thursday. In a harsh criticism of the FBI's efforts to fix a shortfall identified after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Inspector General Glenn Fine said the bureau still relies on an antiquated case-filing system that hampers agents' ability to properly do their jobs

OFF-TOPIC...

• Why Does Windows Still Suck? - Why do PC users put up with so many viruses and worms? Why isn't everyone on a Mac?....read on
• Terminator 4 will have no T3 cast - Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines star Nick Stahl, who played John Connor, told Sci Fi Wire that neither he nor his "T3" co-star Claire Danes will appear in Terminator 4. "None of the cast is coming back." Stahl said. "The [T4] story is changing conceptually. I believe it's a jump to the future, so my character will be quite a bit older. That's all that I know. So I'm not coming back, which is a drag." He added that the producers' current plans may not include original "Terminator" series star Arnold Schwarzenegger either.
• Chinese man grows his own chairs - A Chinese man has patented his technique for growing his own wooden chairs. Mr Wu, from Shenyang City, Liaoning province, moulds branches into shape while the tree is still growing. He uses elm trees which are pliant and do not break easily, reports the China Morning Business View.
• Global Warming Could Make Mars a Second Home - Greenhouse gases may be a problem on Earth, but injecting them into the Martian atmosphere could make Mars a second home. A team of researchers has proposed injecting synthetic "super" greenhouse gases into the planet's atmosphere to raise its temperature and melt its polar ice caps to provide conditions suitable for biological life.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Europe may have to wait for PSP - According to reports from Reuters and others, Sony may delay its European PSP launch until April--or later. The reports say SCE is planning to focus on the handheld's presence in America and Japan, given that processor shortages are preventing Sony from producing PSPs fast enough.
• PlayStation 3 Cell chip aims high - Tom Halfhill of the Microprocessor Report has studied patents and other documents relating to Cell, which will be unveiled Monday at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. He sees a number of chip breakthroughs likely to dramatically boost computing power in everything from game machines to cell phones.
• France's DiBcom unveils first mobile DTV chip -  French fabless semiconductor company has demonstrated working silicon for a mobile TV demodulation chip. The advance comes as France prepares to begin DTV broadcasts from the Eiffel Tower next month.
• Group to Divide Linux Standards Base - The Free Standards Group has decided to move away from a single, core LSB (Linux Standards Base) specification, and is instead going to break this down into different modules that can be combined to give a server or desktop LSB standard.
• Few bugs in MySQL database - A source-code analysis of the MySQL database, a popular open-source program at the heart of many Web sites, revealed few bugs compared with the number found in commercial code, testing company Coverity said Friday.
• Photoshop Cloning Tool Automatically Corrects for 3-D Perspective - Mok3 has introduced a Perspective Clone Brush plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. According to Mok3's Jan. 31 press release, this plug-in lets graphic designers rapidly clone areas in an image with automatic correction for 3-D perspective and simultaneous correction for differences in lighting and scale in the image.
• 1TB Disks This Year? - Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) will be capable of massive storage, as well as transfer rates of up to 1 GB per second. Optware's announced came less than a week after a similar announcement from InPhase Technologies. InPhase recently began shipping its GDS5000 HVD drives based on WORM (Write Once Read Many) technology. A newer version, the Tapestry HDS-200R will be a fully recordable 200GB drive with 20MB per second transfer – it is expected to hit markets later this year.

HARDWARE... 

• Corsair Ships XPERT Memory Modules with Advanced Monitoring Caps.- Corsair Memory said this week it was shipping its new XPERT memory modules with complex monitoring capabilities that allow users to keep an eye on various critical parameters without using special software or devices.
• AMD Athlon64 vs Sempron comparion part #2 - At the end of the day the Sempron has proved once again that it is a worthy processor at just $140 US. The final paragraph of my original article when something like this "Bottom-line is the Sempron is an excellent budget processor that is certainly capable of getting the job done. The processor is ideal for office based computers, or for those that only wish to play the odd game now and then. If you are building a budget gaming system I would recommend looking at getting a lower clocked Athlon64 processor. Furthermore if you are into overclocking pushing an Athlon64 processor that little bit further should not be a problem".
• Certain MSI GeForce 6800 GT Graphics Cards Do Not Comply to Specs - A Germany-based web-site TechPowerUp claimed late last week that at least some of MSI's retail PCI Express x16 graphics cards sold as NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT products had the GeForce 6800 graphics chips on them. The original NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT graphics chip has 16 pixel processors and 6 vertex processors, whereas the GeForce 6800 graphics processing unit employs 12 pixel and 5 vertex processors, thus, delivering lower performance. TechPowerUp! has follow-up information on the MSI 6800GT's that were delivered with degraded performance - MSI delivered 350 of the cards out to the retail chain and has offered "immediate free replacement or full refund" of those cards. The root cause is still not known, as MSI simply cites an "unknown chip problem" but the translated German press release points to the additional bridge chip of the NV45 package.
• Asus 6600GT SLI - SLI support in games is a total different story, the NVIDIA drivers work in two ways: in AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) or in SFR (Split Frame Rendering) mode. The first method (AFR) will render the first half on the first card and the second half on the other card. The other method (SFR) splits every frame in two pieces and each card draws one piece. Which method is used depends on each game; NVIDIA selected 100 games and created profiles for each game. If there is no profile for a game then the NVIDIA driver will NOT use SLI. We didnt encounter any problems in the selected tests, but you can always create your own game profiles if there is none present.
• MSI RX600XT-TD128E - PC Modding Malaysia has posted a review of MSI RX600XT-TD128E.
• Dual-Layer DVD Burner Round-Up - HotHardware.Com posted a Dual-Layer DVD Burner Round-Up  - They've got drives from Sony, Plextor, BenQ, Lite-On, and Asus.
• MSI Mega View 561 20GB Portable Media Player  - GideonTech.com has posted a review of the MSI Mega View 561 20GB Portable Media Player

GUIDES...

• Get a 1000 Mb Gmail account for free - Go to gmail.afraid.org and enter your e-mail address. Then you'll receive an invite to open a 1000 Mb Gmail account for free.
• ABC's of DVD Drive Abbreviations - The number of different formats available in DVD drives can be confusing to anyone in the market for one. The list is much longer, but to address a few of the common formats, we have DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM ,DVD+R DL and DVD=B1RW
• MSFN's Official Unattended XP CD Guide (updated) - Through the course of this guide, you will create a CD that does all the installing for you. The CD will be fully updated with the latest hotfixes, and install all your programs for you.
• Windows XP Backup Strategies For Home Users - This article is intended to introduce the average user to the various backup methods available and to provide a brief overview of these methods.
• Networking Basics - In the article they cover all the basics terms and what they mean and look at different types of networks and how they are set up. A network is a group of computers, printers, and other devices that are connected together with cables
• Beginners Guides: Most Common Ways to Kill a PC - PCstats guides you through the list of the most popular ways by which you will eventually kill your PC, despite your good intentions. This is a good primer for "what not to do" folks. - Version 1.0.0

SOFTWARE...

• DVD2one v1.5.2 - This software is a 3 step program for putting your favorite movies on to one DVD recordable for backup. This version adds checks to verify the consistency of structures in the IFO files and to correct them if necessary. This solves problems with movie-only copy of Alien Quadrilogy. Also adds program chain analysis to detect and remove damaged parts of the DVD for ARccOS disks like Resident Evil Apocalypse, The Forgotten, Little Black Book, The Grudge and Wrestlemania.
• K-Lite Mega Codec pack 1.18 - A new version of the K-Lite Mega Codec pack (download) is available. It includes K-Lite codecpack full, QuickTime Alternative 1.40, Real Alternative 1.30 and BSPlayer.
• Real Alternative 1.30 - Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player.
• QuickTime Alternative 1.40 - QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player.
• Easy CD-DA Extractor 8.0 (shw) - All-In-One music software (download) - CD-Ripper, CD-Burner, and Music File Format Converter.
• HDDlife 1.0.14 - HDDlife can work in the prophylactic mode when it checks the health of your hard drives at regular intervals and informs you about the results of these checks in an unobtrusive way. If you get warned about a possible hard drive failure , you will protect yourself against losing your naturally priceless personal data.
• [!] Total Commander v6.51 Final - Total Commander 6.51 (download) is now available for download. This upgrade corrects some problems, mainly with the new functions introduced with Total Commander 6.50.
• RadLinker & RadClocker - RadLinker is a tweaker/linker for ATI Radeon based graphics cards. RadLinker allows you to create a "RadLink", a special kind of shell link (a.k.a. shortcut) to your games/programs that allows you to change it's individual settings. A RadLink will look and act just like a normal shortcut except it's property settings can be custom tailored for your video settings.
•  nHancer (NVIDIA Replacement profile editor) - The programmer of this handly little tool was very unhappy with nVidia's own control panel, especially with its game profile editing module. (requires 1.1 of the .net framework)

SECURITY...

• Antivirus Tools Fool XP's Security Center - Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 is supposed to improve security. Its Windows Security Center should alert you when your antivirus software is missing or out of date. But in PC World Magazine tests, both McAfee's Internet Security Suite 2005 and Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2005 crippled SP2's ability to deliver accurate alerts immediately after installation. McAfee and Symantec acknowledge that their products intentionally disable the Windows Security Center's messaging feature.
• Mutated Worm Spreads Through MSN Messenger - A new variant of the Bropia worm is fast spreading through popular Internet chat program MSN Messenger. Computer security companies AhnLab and Hauri said Thursday that they found a variant of the virus which infects users of MSN Messenger by sending itself as a picture file. Infected computers slow down to a crawl. The virus automatically sends itself to others in the users list of contacts.
• Limited buffer-overflow in Painkiller 1.35 - The bug is about the buffer that must contain the Gamespy cd-key hash for the online server-side authorization. This buffer is limited to 100 bytes (the Gamespy cd-key hash is long 72 chars), so if an attacker uses a longer hash will be able to overflow the buffer.
• Microsoft: SP2 shimmy's not a flaw - Responding to a Russian security company's claim that it found a way to beat a protective element of Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2, the software giant on Tuesday said it does not believe the issue represents a vulnerability. In fact, the company said the technology highlighted by Moscow-based Positive Technologies was never meant to be "foolproof" and added that the reported flaw does not, by itself, put consumers at risk.
• The "hacker tool" worm that gurned - The Wurmark-F worm, a variant of Wurmark-D which began spreading last month, arrives as a zipped email attachment and displays a picture of an old man pulling an impressive gurn. Meanwhile the worm installs itself in the Windows system folder, along with a new version of the Rbot worm, which spreads via networks without the need for user interaction.
• Heise.de under DDoS attack - German tech publication Heise.de has been targeted by a persistent and determined denial of service attack, it says. The origin of the attack is unknown so far, and Heise's publishing house is offering a €10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the attacker.
• Student Logs Teachers Keystrokes - A 16-year-old student has been charged with a misdemeanor for rigging a keystroke-recording device onto a teacher's computer. School district police received a tip from students that the boy was trying to sell answers to final exams. The District Attorney's Office has charged the teen with breach of computer information, a Class B misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and up to 180 days in.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Antarctic ice sheet is an "awakened giant" - The massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, scientists warned on Tuesday. Antarctica contains more than 90% of the world's ice, and the loss of any significant part of it would cause a substantial sea level rise. Scientists used to view Antarctica as a "slumbering giant", said Chris Rapley, from the British Antarctic Survey, but now he sees it as an "awakened giant".
• Mirror that reflects your future self - In Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the eponymous subject keeps his youthful looks while the vagaries of age are visited upon his portrait in the attic. Now a digital version of Wilde's idea is being developed to show you what you will look like in five years' time if you take no exercise, eat too much junk food and drink too much alcohol. At Accenture Technology's lab in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice in France, a flat-screen LCD TV linked to a set of cameras and a powerful image-processing computer replaces the portrait described in Wilde's novel.
• Sex and the single robot - Scientists have made them walk and talk. There are even robots that can run. But a South Korean professor is poised to take their development several steps further, and give cybersex new meaning. Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software, which will be installed in a robot within the next three months, will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire.
• UPN Cancels "Star Trek: Enterprise" - UPN and Paramount today jointly announced the show's cancellation. The show's series finale, which may feature Jonathan Frakes (William T. Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi), will air on Friday the 13th of May. The show's fate was probably sealed when last Friday's episode reached only 2.5 million viewers - but even so, the people at EnterpriseFans.com are still trying to raise money for a fan campaign to save the show." 

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft Goes It Alone With MSN Search; Bill Gates Writes Open Letter Online - Microsoft yesterday unveiled its first, 100% Microsoft-built search engine, MSN Search. Prior to this, Microsoft had relied upon Yahoo's algorithms and search results. MSN Search uses search technology developed by Microsoft alone. They are however still using Yahoo's sponsor advertisement mechanism powered by Overture.
• T-Mobile & Microsoft launch first 3G device - Today, at the T-Mobile International Press Conference in Bonn, Germany, T-Mobile and Microsoft announced the MDA IV - the first Windows Mobile based 3G device. The T-Mobile MDA IV, is just 100 centimeters squared and offers users access to Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Internet Explorer and a choice of GPRS, UMTS and W-LAN connectivity options. The device is expected to be available this coming Summer, prices will be available around that time too.
• Sun Launches Vision of "The Network is the Computer" - Sun have announced their plans to offer businesses a simple way of doing I.T., by utilising the power of grid computing. For the price of $1 per cpu hour, business customers can tap into massive computer grids run by Sun
• Gainward drops out of graphics card business - Taiwan-based TNC Industrial has decided to sell the Gainward brand and branch Gainward Europe GmbH to Palit Microsystems for US$1 million and the net worth of the branch office at the end of 2004 (as certified by a CPA).
• Get 1GB of wireless data for $10 - A new variation of its OFDM based wireless data technology, known as Flexband, has been launched by America's Flarion. The company estimates Lexband will enable existing cellular operators to offer subscribers up to 1GB per month for just $10 per month. That figure assumes around 600 users per cell.
• MP3.com alum to launch DRM-free music service - The brains behind the original MP3.com and Linspire is gearing up to launch a new online music service called MP3tunes that offers DRM-free downloads
• HP's 'Crossbar Latch' to Replace Transistors? - Researchers at HP have come up with a new signal technology they claim could replace transistors in computers one day. In a paper published in Tuesday's Journal of Applied Physics, three members of HP Labs' Quantum Science Research (QSR) group demonstrated what they call a "crossbar latch." A latch consists of a single wire acting as a signal line, crossed by two control lines with an electrically switchable nanoscale junction where they intersect. The technology is so small, HP claims thousands of the strands could fit across the diameter of a human hair.

HARDWARE... 

• Gigabyte to introduce new dual-GPU graphics cards in February - Gigabyte Technology plans to introduce a series of dual-GPU graphics cards built using Nvidia GeForce 6600 chips, following the December launch of its first dual-GPU model, the GV-3D1, according to market sources.
• OCZ Technology & GeIL Shrinks DDR2 Latencies, Boosts DDR2 Performance - OCZ PC2-5400 DDR2 Enhanced Bandwidth Platinum Edition are designed to function at 667MHz speeds with CL4 2-2-8 latencies, which is significantly lower compared to the company's previous-generation PC2-5400 flavour that could operate with CL4 4-4-12 settings. Also GeIL offers 533MHz DDR2 memory modules with CL3 3-3-8 latency settings in capacities of 256MB, 512MB and 1GB for single-channel packages as well as pairs of such modules as dual-channel bundles. Pricing for such memory is unknown.
• 1GB OCZ EL DDR PC 3700 Gold Rev. 3 dual channel memory - If you are not looking to spend too much too much money on high end RAM, want to run your FSB at around 230-260+MHz, and don't have a lot of Vdimm to spare, then the OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev.3 is what you want. Reasonable price, great overclockability with great timings, and great looks.
• GeCube SilenCool X700 PRO 256MB - GeCube pull off silent X700 PRO running with aplomb, for competetive money, by not going overboard on the bundle. If it lies in your price range and silence appeals, be sure and consider it.
• GeCube Radeon X800XL & X850XT Graphics Cards - TweakTown compare the performance of two new ATI Radeon high-end graphics chips - the Radeon X800XL & X850XT through retail cards from GeCube. After examining each card they compare the performance of each against an nVidia GeForce 6600GT and 6800 Ultra which are what ATI's new cards are aimed at competing against.
• Leadtek PX6600GT Extreme Version 6600GT PCI-E VGA - Overclockers New Zealand has posted a review of Leadtek PX6600GT Extreme Version 6600GT PCI-E VGA.
• HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO - The point of HIS's IceQ line of boards is providing this high-performance cooling so that the board does not have to be modified to get every last bit of performance out of it. Bjorn3D has already taken a look at a couple (X800 Pro and X800 XT) of these solutions from HIS, and today I am pleased to present another one - the X700 Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO.
• SapphireTech Hybrid X800 256MB PCIe Video Card - The X800 comes stock clocked at 390Mhz Core and 350 MHz (700MHz effective) memory. I can already tell you that the Samsung GDDR3 RAM on this card is seriously under-clocked at 350MHz since it is rated for 500MHz (Samsung Part#: K4J55323QF-GC20). With a healthy overclock and the extra 4 pipelines this should be a nice card.
• NCQ-enabled SATA hard drives comparison - Maxtor DM10 vs. Seagate 7200.8 - The Seagate Barracuda 7200.8, unfortunately, is somewhat disappointing to us. While the drive performs fairly well, only about 5-10% slower compared to our DiamondMax 10, there are no killer features here which elevate the 7200.8 over Seagate's previous generation drives. The drive still just performs “ok”, and was audible louder during testing compared to the DiamondMax 10. While the drive does boast a terrific five year warranty, it can't make up for the fact that the drive runs louder, slower, and is more expensive compared to the DiamondMax 10.
• SunbeamTech Light-Bus & Laser LEDs - When the loud noise of your water cooling radiator fan rig or high performance heatsink fan bothers you a lot, the fan controller (rheostat) will come to the rescue. When your modded case does not have enough lighting or too much lighting, Sunbeamtech has the Light-Bus for you. In fact, this Light-Bus serves a dual purpose duty in controlling the fans and light intensity plus more.
• Dlink DWL-2100AP Wireless Access Point - D-Link's latest DWL-2100AP wireless AP claims to push the standard 802.11g 54Mbps speed up to 108Mbps when a compatible D-Link card is used.
• Logitech MX 3100 Cordless Desktop -  The mouse, keyboard and software are all damn good. Yes, there are improvements that can be made on the software side, but I expected that it will happen sooner rather than later. The keyboard on the other hand, could use a little work. The buttons were really too small, and detracted from what would otherwise be a very good package.
• Microsoft Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader - The really clever thing, though, is that whenever you come across a dialogue box or frequently used website that requires a username and password you can do the same. Just dab one of your registered digits onto the reader, fill in the boxes and whenever that logon presents itself again, all you have to do is scan your finger and the software fills in the username and password boxes for you.
• Samsung CLP-550 Laser Printer  - ipKonfig.com takes a look at the Samsung CLP-550 Laser Printer.
• AJP G220 laptop - This G220 is based on a Celeron M processor running at 1.5GHz. This, in combination with the Intel i855GME chipset and the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG 802.11b/g wireless network card, means that it gets the Centrino branding. Perhaps AJP could have put together an even more affordable machine if the G220 had used a different chipset and wireless solution, but the fact is that the Centrino branding sells.
• Japanese Rechargeable USB Flashlight - Japanese Sanwa is selling a USB powered portable flashlight. About the size of a flash drive, the miniature flashlight powers a single LED light for four continuous hours that can be controlled by an On / Off switch, with an even longer charging time of 4.5 hours.

GUIDES...

• Top Ten Survivor Tips for Active Directory - This 6-page white paper is an easy-to-read compilation of practical information from BMC Software's customers and its own technical staff - including information that you won't find in Microsoft's Knowledge Base. This is for IT managers who dream of really controlling their Active Directory environments.
• Using Visual C++ Express to Build Secure Applications - Review some of the new language and library features available in the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition that will help you to more efficiently produce secure and reliable code.

SOFTWARE...

• VIA Releases Automated Game Updating Tool - VIA Technologies and GameShadow today announced the launch of VIA Grease Monkey, an easy-to-use desktop application that ensures up-to-the-minute updates for all of the most popular PC games, eliminating time-consuming online searching and waiting for important updates to download. By simply clicking on the desktop icon, VIA Grease Monkey carries out a comprehensive scan of a user's library of PC games, automatically generating a list of the latest patches, maps, drivers and other key gaming information necessary for the ideal gaming environment. VIA Grease Monkey then provides direct downloads of all the selected updates through a high speed connection, simply and efficiently.
• Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.0 RC1 - It contains all Windows98 SE updates from Windows Update site and more. It is a self-extracting and self-installing pack like Microsoft's update files. Thus, you cannot choice files individually. However, the pack installs only required fixes for your system.
  Uninstallation is possible from Add-Remove Programs,
• Microsoft Terminology Assistant 1.0 - Microsoft Terminology Assistant (requires the 1.1 NET runtime) is an windows-based assistant tool to find the translated terminology and its definitions. The TA tool can grab the text on your screen and you can use your mouse cursor to point to the words you are going to query. The tool provides "Dictionary" feature as well. You can input any text you'd like to find and see the definition immmediately.
• Promqry 1.0 - Promqry can accurately determine if a modern (Windows 2000 and later) managed Windows system has network interfaces in promiscuous mode. If a system has network interfaces in promiscuous mode, it may indicate the presence of a network sniffer running on the system.
• Weather Pulse - Weather Pulse (download) is a weather monitoring tool that that displays detailed weather information for selected US cities, as well as popular satellite images from around the globe. It includes weather alert options, 10 day forecast, hourly forecast, detailed forecast and more.
• SkinStudio 4.5 - SkinStudio (download) makes it easy to create new visual styles, you can even draw up your ultimate masterpiece and import it as a template, highlight each part with the mouse to modify virtually any part of the Windows XP interface
• CCleaner v1.17.90 Final - CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) (download) is a freeware system optimization tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space.
• Tray Helper 4.7 - Tray Helper it's freeware application with many features (f/e: email checker, auto mail responder, anti-spam, popup-killer, event reminder and more).
• MSN Toolbar Suite 2.0.1.1203 Beta - The MSN Toolbar Suite combines several great programs that speed up your search tasks and help you surf the Web. There's now an MSN Toolbar for Microsoft Office Outlook, the MSN Deskbar in the Windows taskbar, and an MSN Toolbar that works in both Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer.
• MuzicMan v5.0 Build 023 - MuzicMan (download) makes your MP3 music more accessible and easier to manage than anything else around.
• DU Meter 3.07 Build 200 - DU Meter (download) is an award winning utility from Hagel Technologies which provides an accurate account of the data which is flowing through your computer`s network connection at any given moment.
• BlindWrite Suite 5.10 - Blindwrite Suite (download) is the best set of tools to reproduce or clone any CD, even protected ones. Blindwrite Suite is the most powerfull tool to create a perfect copy from your original CD for personal private copy.
• DropToCD (DataCD/DVD) 3.04 - DropToCD (DataCD/DVD) is a very easy to use tool to create a data CD/DVD based on drag & drop technology. Just drag & drop files and folders to a little window and hit 'Burn disc' from popup menu to burn a CD or DVD. Simple as 1, 2, 3. You can create and burn multisession, bootable disc or ISO images, erase rewritable, view and extract sessions from multisession discs and more.
• AnyDVD 4.5.7.2  - The new version 4.5.7.2 fixes a problem with unrecognised disk changes and disables the information window by default.
• Realtek ALC AC97 Audio Driver v3.69 - Realtek has a new AC97 audio driver online in the version of 3.69. The driver supports all ALC series audio chipsets from ALC100 up to ALC850 mainly used as onboard sound on various motherboards.

SECURITY...

• Flaw found in Windows XP Data Execution Prevention - A Russian security company claims it found a way to beat a security measure in Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 (exploit), a major update aimed at securing customers' PCs.  The SP2 measure, known as Data Execution Protection, is intended to prevent would-be attackers from inserting rogue code into a PC's memory and tricking Windows into running the program. However, in a paper published Friday, Moscow-based Positive Technologies said two minor mistakes in the implementation of the technology allow a knowledgeable programmer to sidestep the protection
• Juniper routers exposed to attack - Networking company Juniper Networks is encouraging customers to upgrade their routers to fix a serious vulnerability in its operating system.  Juniper's M- and T-Series routers are affected by the flaw in the version 6 series of Junos, which makes them vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks. Such an attack could allow a hacker to gain access to the router and crucial areas of a company's network.
• Broadcast crash in Xpand Rally 1.0.0.0 - The problem is caused by an unchecked memory allocation controlled by the attacker that can decide the exact amount of data to allocate through a 32 bits number in his packets. If the memory to allocate is too big the malloc() function will fail and no instructions will check it so the game will try to write into a bad memory zone (0x00000000).
• MSBlast.b Hacker Gets 18 Months In Jail - Citing neglectful parents and an Internet that she said was a "dungeon" for lonely people, a federal judge Friday afternoon sentenced Jeffrey Lee Parson, a teen hacker who created 2003's MSBlast.b worm, to 18 months in prison, less than half the time prosecutors had requested. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman added three years of supervision after his release, and ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service. A restitution hearing will be held next month to decide what amount Parson, 19, must pay Microsoft and several individuals to make up damages for his worm.
• Researchers: We Cracked Car Alarm System - Researchers said Saturday they have found a way to crack the code used in millions of car keys, a development they said could allow thieves to bypass the security systems on newer car models. "We stole our own car, and we bought gas stealing from our own credit card," said Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins who led the research team.

OFF-TOPIC...

• DOOM: The Boardgame - It is for 2 to 4 players, playable in 1 to 2 hours, based on the groundbreaking DOOM 3 computer game by id Software.
• Cute Blonde Bunny Video - A video of a cute blonde girl transformed into a Bunny!
• Several casting announcements for Pirates of the Caribbean sequels - Taggart star Alex Norton (The Count of Monte Cristo) has joined the "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels cast, reports the Daily Record. The 55-year-old actor will play Edinburgh sea captain Sam Bellamy. "I've only just heard that I got the part of Captain Bellamy. I'm really excited," said Norton, "I start filming in Los Angeles next month. We then head out to the Caribbean island of St Vincent in June and July."
• First Amendment no big deal, students say -  The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech. It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.
• Terrorist explosive blows up without flames - An explosive sometimes used by terrorists does not burn when it detonates. Instead, its molecules simply fall apart. Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) has been used by suicide bombers in Israel and was chosen as a detonator in 2001 by the thwarted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. Now calculations by Ehud Keinan from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa show that most of its explosive force comes from a rapid release of gas rather than a burst of energy.
• Bill Gates Handwriting Analyzed - The BBC is reporting that a doodle left behind at a Davos press conference given by Tony Blair, Bill Gates and Bono shows the writer to be: "an unstable man" amongst other things.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Bill Gates and Paul Allen are in a rare head-to-head fight - Since leaving Microfost in 1983 Paul Allen has pretty much stayed out of cofounder Bill Gates' way. Aside from buying into cable companies and funding a small, unsuccessful foray into educational software, Allen has focused his investments on things Microsoft doesn't invest in--like sports teams, music museums and the film industry. Now, for the first time, Allen is competing directly with Gates for the same business: set-top-box software that lets cable companies offer digital video recording, video on demand and, eventually, shopping.
• Microsoft To Rename Media Free XP - Microsoft have agreed to change the name of "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition." The European Commission have asked Microsoft to rename the media free edition after fears that the name would discourage people from purchasing the edition. The name is now unknown and Microsoft and EU officials are working together to come to an agreement on the new editions naming scheme.
• Wireless gaming firms play for big stakes - Wireless gaming is poised to become the most lucrative and prevalent wireless data application, industry experts have predicted. According to the latest research from IDC, gaming will overtake ring-tones in 2005 as the biggest US wireless money spinner and generate sales of nearly $1.5bn annually by 2008.
• Blackberry use "can damage thumb" - Sales of the L200 gadget, which can be used to email, page and phone, have boomed in recent years with celebrities such as David Beckham using them. But US and UK doctors said repetitive use could cause arthritis or harm tendons in the thumb.
• More Detail on Firefox 1.1 Plan - Ben Goodger, the lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, has updated the Roadmap with more detail on the 1.1 Plan.
• Google is now a domain registrar - Google is now an ICANN-accredited registrar of domain names, providing it with yet another potential line of expansion. The fast-growing search provider is approved to sell names in seven top-level domains (TLDs) including .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro.

HARDWARE... 

• X850XT available in Canada - You can get some cards of those desirable but expensive cards in Canada. You can find one here but it will cost you $645 but we are not sure which one US or Canadian. You will get Sapphire X850XT 256M PCX with 256M DDR TV-Out DVi-i VIVO Bulk edition for the money. This card is in stock and you can buy it now while it lasts.
• VIA's PT880 Pro and PT894 series chipsets - TechReport take a look at all of VIA's new chipsets, plus performance test results for the enthusiast-oriented PT894 chipset. Another reviews can be found on Hexus.net and TweakTown.
• NVIDIA's nForce4 Professional Launch - nForce4 Professional 2200 is the same physical CK8-04 product that nForce4, nForce4 SLI and nForce4 Ultra. It's just advertised as a Pro 2200 to the mainboard components by on-package configuration. Each variant shares the same feature set and performance and all that distinguishes them is their CPU support and whether they officially support SLI. It's an adaptable ASIC that NVIDIA can customise for four markets and four price points, using a single fabricated bit of silicon.
• SuperWorkstation 7044A-82 - Supermicro's Super Quiet Technology - I'm really impressed with the SuperWorkstation 7044A-82. When you consider the hardware that's installed inside of this beast, you'll be amazed at how quiet the system can run. The fan speed control mode that I settled on was "4-pin Quiet Workstation". I really couldn't discern much (if any) of a difference between that and "4-pin Super Quiet Workstation" therefore I decided to take the slight increase in fan speed.
• Intel 3.46GHz EE CPU - The chaps over at T-Break take a look at Intel's 1066MHz FSB based Extreme Edition CPU clocked at 3.46GHz and find out how it compares to the current crop of AMD and Intel CPUs.
• ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE Motherboard - This is the most overclockable Intel P4 board that money can buy to date. Finally, here's an extreme board that can go the distance as long as you have the right components to go with it. We've never seen any board that can overclock like this out of the box and with such ease".
• XFX GeForce 6600 GT Dual-DVI - XFX, intelligently, also knew that bigger NVIDIA partners would probably steal the limelight unless it did something special to its package. A pre-overclocked GPU speed was always unlikely, so XFX has gone with video RAM that runs at a full 20% faster than the default 1000MHz. That extra memory bandwidth, totalling 19.2GB/s off only a 128-bit bus, is the reason why XFX's effort is between 5-10% faster than the competition in the majority of our benchmarks. 
• HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO 256MB PCI-E - Overclockers Online take a look at a card sporting ATi's mainstream PCI-E solution, the HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO 256MB PCI-E. This card from HIS is a very impressive package. The card is enhanced with a great cooling solution, software, performance, and features.
• OCZ 520W ModStream Power Supply - OCZ offers two versions of their ModStream, the OCZ-450 and the OCZ-520. Bjorn3D's review sample was the OCZ-520 that produces 520 watts but is capable of a peak load of 620 watts.
• 500W Ultra Products X-Connect PSU - In terms of performance, the X-Connect by Ultra Products passed even my high expectations for a good quality PSU; after all, I have personally gone through about 12 of them in my system alone due to unstable voltages, cable clutter and shier noise of the unit.
• Samsung SyncMaster 243T 24" LCD monitor - Although it seems very attractive to gamers due to its size, it won't provide the best gaming results because it wasn't designed with that in mind. It is a bit weak in the contrast ratio department, which can affect such tasks as editing extremely dark or bright videos, but overall, it is a very convenient monitor to use. This monitor doesn't come light on your pocketbook; you could even buy a good LCD TV with that money!
• Canon EOS 20D Digital SLR camera - Probably the most notable change however is the newly developed 8.2 megapixel sensor that delivers images up to 3,504 x 2,336 pixels in size, in the same 3:2 aspect ratio as conventional 35mm film.

GUIDES...

• Intel Centrino Overclocking Guide!  - It is surprisingly easy to overclock. But as you will see, not always successful.
• U.S. Army Guide to Code Breaking - This manual presents the basic principles and techniques of cryptanalysts and their relation to cryptography. Cryptanalytics is the art and science of solving unknown codes and ciphers.
• A Faster, Better Behaved Windows XP  - Another Windows XP guide!
• Microsoft opens Office 2003 XML schemas - Microsoft offers open and royalty-free documentation and licenses for the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. These Reference Schemas include Spreadsheet (the schema for Microsoft Office Excel 2003), FormTemplate Schemas (the schema for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003), Wordprocessing (the schema for Microsoft Office Word 2003), and and DataDiagraming (the schema for Microsoft Office Visio 2003). The Schemas provide developers and representatives of business and government a standard way to store and exchange data stored in documents.
• Disable Hyperthreading on heavy used Virtual Server 2005 servers - Several people internally at Microsoft have commented that you should turn off Hyperthreading when you're running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, especially under load. It appears that the overhead of scheduling between logical processors gives either no performance gain or even possibly adverse performance effects when the host OS is under a "high load".

SOFTWARE...

• Crap Cleaner 1.17 - CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) (download) is a freeware system optimization tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it's fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free. (thanks ally russell)
• CineBench 2003 - CineBench 2003 is the free benchmarking tool for Windows and Mac OS based on the powerful 3D software CINEMA 4D R8. The tool is set to deliver accurate benchmarks by testing not only a computer's raw processing speed but also all other areas that affect system performance such as OpenGL, multithreading, multiprocessors and Intel's new HT Technology.
• MultiRes 1.49 - MultiRes works very much like a 32-bit version of the venerable Microsoft QuickRes 16-bit applet for Windows 95, with administrative scripting facilities and extended capabilities to handle refresh rates and multiple monitors
• OpenGL Extension Viewer 2.15 - The extension registry is maintained by SGI and contains specifications for all known extensions, written as modifications to the appropriate specification documents.
• NVIDIA SDK 8.5 - This release of the NVIDIA SDK includes hundreds of code samples, effects, and libraries to help you take advantage of the latest in graphics technology.
• nVidia nTune 2.00.23 - NVIDIA nTune (version 2.0 of the NVIDIA System Utility) is an easy, fast and safe performance optimization and monitoring application available for your PC. With NVIDIA nTune your system can automatically adjust to maximum performance settings for intense gaming or will detect that you've inserted a DVD and will set the system to quiet operation.
• Intel Chipset Identification Utility 2.91 - The Intel Chipset Identification Utility provides an easy way to identify the specific Intel chipset that is located on your motherboard.
• ForceWare 71.80 Win2000/XP - This new driver set was found on NVIDIA's FTP server by one of our forum members. It has been released for NVIDIA's professional card lineup, the Quadro series but the driver supports the entire range of graphice cards to date. These drivers are date stamped at the 20th of January 2005 making them the absolute newest set to date. These drivers are not WHQL (Microsoft tested) signed but do have support for all NVIDIA graphics cards.
• SiS AGP driver v.1.19a - SiS have released a new AGP driver version 1.19a dated 25/01/05.

SECURITY...

• MySQL worm hits Windows systems -  A worm that takes advantage of administrators' poor password choices has started spreading among database systems.  The malicious program, known as the "MySQL bot" or by the name of its executable code, SpoolCLL, infects computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system and open-source database known as MySQL. The worm gets initial access to a database machine by guessing the password of the system administrator, using common passwords. It then uses a flaw in MySQL to run another type of program, known as bot software, which then takes full control of the system. Update: the worm had essentially stopped spreading on Friday, after the systems infected with the program were cut off from the control of several central computers.
• New Bagle Worms Making the Rounds - Two new versions of the Bagle e-mail worm are spreading on the Internet and through peer-to-peer file sharing networks, according to warnings issued on Thursday by antivirus software companies. The latest Bagle variants, Bagle.AX and Bagle.AY, are the 50th and 51st versions of the original Bagle worm, which appeared in January 2004. Like the first Bagle, sometimes spelled "Beagle," versions AX and AY spread in executable files and infect machines running Microsoft's Windows operating system, antivirus companies say.
• Microsoft Preps Next Windows Update - Microsoft is preparing to beta test the next revision of Windows Update dubbed v6, or version 6 of the technology. Testing of Windows Update v5 ended late last year and is now operational for all Windows users. Newsgroups for v6 are expected to open within the coming weeks
• Microsoft to axe Windows 2000 security upgrades - Microsoft has confirmed that there will be no equivalents of its Windows XP Service Pack 2 to boost security on earlier operating systems.The announcement leaves the 50 per cent of Microsoft customers not currently using XP with the choice of upgrading or relying on platforms that will become increasingly less secure.
• Winamp Squashes Critical Security Bug - America Online Inc.'s Nullsoft unit has quietly rolled out a new version of the popular Winamp media player to plug multiple critical flaws that put users at risk of code execution attacks. The fixes were included in Winamp version 5.08c after a warning was issued last November by private research firm Security-Assessment.com.
• Norwegian Student Ordered to Pay for Hyperlinks to Music - The AP reports that Norway's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a student whose Napster.no homepage (no relation to the U.S. Napster, apparently) had links to free Internet music files must compensate the music industry. The around 170 links to mp3s will cost its creator $15,900.
• Teen Sentenced for Unleashing Blaster Worm - A federal judge sentenced a teenager to a year and half of prison on Friday for releasing a variant of the Blaster worm that was used to attack more than 48,000 computers. Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, appeared in U.S. District Court in Seattle, where he was also ordered to perform community service, pay restitution and be placed under supervision for three years following the sentence.
• UK police arrest tsunami donations hacker - The Metropolitan Police has arrested a 28 year-old man from east London over alleged attempts to hack into the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) tsunami donations website. The alleged attempt took place on new year's eve and was identified and blocked by BT, which runs the site's secure payment system. Police arrested the man in London's Bishopsgate and stated that they are currently examining his computer equipment for evidence.
• Man sentenced over banned game - A New Plymouth man has been sentenced for copying and distributing a banned computer game where the player takes on the role of a convicted murderer .Christopher William Jones has been fined $2,400 and had two computers destroyed after pleading guilty to selling the Playstation 2 game, Manhunt.
• Man raided by armed cops for using wrong browser - Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx -- a text-based browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual" event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Screening Reviews - Initial reviews are up at Ain't It Cool News from a "work-in-progress" screening of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Pasadena, CA. Reaction seems mixed-to-positive, mostly due to some uneven performances.
• Episode III Opening Crawl - Here's  the opening crawler text for Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, currently scheduled for a May 19th, 2005 release." In related news, here's a link to a 6.5 minutes funny parody of Star Wars: Episode III.
• MGM's DVD Class Action Settlement - "Apparently all of MGM's 'theatrical wide screen' DVD releases for the last few years have been the pan-scanned versions with the top and bottoms cut off. I checked this against my copy of CQ, and it's true. The list (PDF) of butchered movies includes almost every Woody Allen film, Silence of the Lambs, and Ghost World, just to name a few. If you own any of the eligible movies, you have until March 31 to either opt to exchange your copy for $7.10, or a new DVD from MGM, presumably in its proper aspect ratio." (thanks Slashdot.org)
• Microsoft has a record quarter - For the quarter ending Dec. 31, the company reported $10.8 billion in sales, a 6.5 percent increase from the previous year, while profit more than doubled to $3.46 billion, or 32 cents a share after factoring in stock-compensation expenses.
• Unusual Arctic cold raises fears for ozone hole - The seasonal hole in the Arctic ozone layer could be the worst ever this year if the current cold conditions persist, scientists are warning. Temperatures in the Arctic ozone layer are now the coldest for 50 years and have been consistently low for two months. The ozone layer blankets the Earth at an altitude between 15 to 30 kilometres. It is part of a zone called the stratosphere, and absorbs ultraviolet light
   

TECHNOLOGY...

• Google, Yahoo Turn On Video Search - Google has officially unveiled a prototype video search that scours the closed captioning text of television shows. Results are displayed with a still image of the video, along with snippets of text that contain the search terms. Yahoo, meanwhile, has ramped up video search efforts of its own in response to Google's move.Still in early beta testing, Google Video has been indexing since December television programming from PBS, Fox News, CSPAN, as well as local San Francisco channels including ABC and NBC. Until licensing is ironed out, users will not able to view the full video clip nor read a transcript of the program.
• 8mb Broadband in UK From UK Online -  The UK Broadband market could see another high speed shake up from UK Online. The company has just announced plans to launch an 8 megabit broadband service in the UK. With a massive download speed of 8mb, the service comes with a somewhat limited upload speed of 400K yet has an impressive content ratio of 33:1. The service is capped at 500GB per month, and will cost only L39.99 per month. Cable rival Telewest offer a 4MB service for L50.00, which comes free of any caps on usage. UK Online will be offering new sign ups a free wireless ethernet router before the 21st February.
• Apple / Pepsi in 200 Million iTune track giveaway - Apple plan to give away around 200 million free music tracks with Pepsi’s soft drinks and products, the promotion will start at the end of January. As with the similar deal done with Apple last year codes will be printed on various Pepsi products and each winning code can be used to redeem a free music track.
• Sony PlayStation 3 Playable by May, Says Report - Sony Computer Entertainment Inc reportedly said its PlayStation 3 console will be functional by May, 2005, confirming earlier available information.

HARDWARE... 

• AMD readies launch of Sempron 3300+ 754 - It's no secret that AMD is set to convert all of its cut down Sempron microprocessors to a 754 pin format during the course of this year. But TheInqurer's information is that a 754 pin Sempron 3300+ is rolling out this quarter, while it will also produce a Sempron 3200+ using 939 pins for certain accounts only. How imminent is the 754 pin 3300+? Some motherboard companies have already released updates to 754 board BIOSes during this week.
• nForce 4 TCQ Data Corruption Issue? - It appears there might be a data corruption problem when enabling TCQ on the nForce 4 chipset at least with the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe.
• NVIDIA's nForce Professional preview - The 2200 MCP and the 2050 bring the latest technologies to the Opteron platform. These technologies include PCI-Express, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA-II, USB 2.0, and 7.1 AC'97 audio. Let's start by showing you which features each of these chips support.
• Shuttle XPC SN95G5 - Let's break right into the basic system specs of the SN95G5: Nvidia nForce3 250 Ultra chipset, Socket 939 - AMD, Athlon64/FX CPU, Two (2) ATA-133 ports, Two (2) SATA-150 ports, Realtek ALC 655 6 Channel Audio, One (1) PCI slot, One (1) 8x AGP slot, SilentX 240W power supply.
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe AMD Athlon Motherboard - The Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard comes packed with all the features you expect including: two PCI Express x16 slots, Dual-channel DDR memory, Serial-ATA 3Gb/s bandwidth, RAID, Dual Gigabit LAN, 8-channel audio and more. The nForce4 supports PC3200 (DDR400) memory in dual-channel configuration using unbuffered DDR or ECC memory. The A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard has a wide range of overclocking adjustments to allow you to get the best overclocking performance including voltage adjustments & Asus AI overclocking software.
• DFI 855GME-MGF motherboard - The 855GME-MGF is DFI's latest motherboard creation that is based around Intel's mobile socket mPGA479M technology. DFI chose to use the Intel 855GME chipset, boasting full support for all Pentium M and Celeron M-based mobile processors, DDR RAM operating in Single Channel mode up to speeds of 333MHz officially, and onboard Intel graphics. The 855GME-MGF is feature complete, only requiring a socket mPGA479M based processor, DDR memory, and a PSU for a functional system
• nVidia SLI Technology - Introduction and 6800 Ultra Performance - You can complain all day long about the price of a top end SLI setup but there is no denying that two GeForce 6800 Ultra's in SLI is going to give you the best gaming experience around. This setup isn't for people with a 17" CRT or LCD that can only support 1280x1024. This setup is for people who own 21" CRTs that play at 1600 and above or Wide Screen LCD owners wanting to game at 1920x1200 without having to worry about having to drop to 16-bit or sacrifice a bit of image quality for a smooth frame rate. With an SLI setup you can play with it all turned on and still be smiling.
• A8N-SLI Deluxe - SLI Video Card - The A8N SLI Deluxe is Asus' latest and greatest offering for the AMD64 socket-939 platform, utilizing the nForce4 chipset. Asus worked hard to make this board one of the first to market sporting the newest nVidia nForce4-SLI chipset. They also added a huge list of features and accessories that would make anyone in the market for a new system drool. Although at the extreme end of overclocking, the Asus A8N-SLI was not the top dog, it still did allow for a great stable overclock.
• Gigabyte 3D1 - Aside from that, the question as to whether the Gigabyte 3D1 is a worthy purchase leaves us with the same question as purchasing two 6600GTs in SLI - Is it better to get two 6600GTs for your money, or a single 6800GT. From Hexus.net's benchmark results, that seems to vary on what settings you intend to game at - The 3D1 often seems to have the upper hand in scenarios where raw power is required, but throw anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering into the mix, especially at high resolutions, and suddenly the 6800GT and particularly the 256MB of dedicated memory for the GPU it offers seems a much more sensible proposition.
• MSI GeForce 6600GT PCIe Video Card - MSI's GeForce 6600GT offering comes in two flavors, the NX6600GT-TD128E, and the NX6600GT-VTD128. The only differences between the two are in price - $187 for the TD128E and $222 for the VTD128, and also in the fact that the VTD128 features VIVO capability while the TD128E doesn't.
• Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 hard drive NCQ gets 16MB of cache - Despite its strong desktop application performance and speedy transfer rates, the DiamondMax 10's performance in IOMeter is uninspiring. IOMeter is a veritable playground for command queuing, and while the DiamondMax 10's performance improves with NCQ enabled, the drive can't keep up with the Barracuda 7200.7's transaction rates or response times. To Maxtor's credit, the DiamondMax 10 consumes fewer CPU cycles than the Barracuda 7200.7 when command queuing is enabled, but the I/O performance is still a step behind, making the drive less attractive for low-end server and multi-user applications.
• Seagate Momentus 5400.2 100GB Hard Drive - The 2.5-inch Momentus 5400.2 100GB drive offers extreme storage capacities along with remarkable performance (for notebooks). The 100GB version is estimated to retail for around $200 US with the 80GB retailing for just $140 US.
• Corsair Voyager: Bouncy Flash Drive - Unlike Verbatim Store 'n' Go series, Corsair's Voyager 512MB version is priced around $57.00, which makes it 22.8 percent affordable than the Store 'n' Go Pro, which retails for $70.00. You may find another flash drive that is less than the aforementioned price, but with Corsair's 10-year warranty and their reputation in the industry, $57.00 is a superb price. Of course, if you are usually careful with flash drives, feel free to invest in a less costing model, since failure rates of flash drives are practically unheard of.
• Does Hercules' Fortissimo 4 Deliver at 24 Bits? - The Fortissimo 4 is really an update of preceding versions and it delivers no pleasant surprises. However, its performances will live up to the demands of gamers and DVD film buffs who demand high-quality sound for a $70 price point. Further, its main advantage, of course, is that it can handle applications that use 24 bit sound, which is becoming more and more indispensable. IN addition to its generous software bundle, the card does not disappoint.
• CTX INTERNATIONAL X701A 17" LCD Monitor with Speakers - Even though you may not be looking for a monitor that is reliable when gaming. This is an important aspect to a lot of people who are currently monitor shopping. This monitor has a 14ms response time, which means you can get your game on with out looking for ghosting. Because you won't find any. I have played a number of newer games using this monitor and even though the price is low, the quality is quite the opposite. CTX impressed me again.
• APC Back-UPS CS 500 - TargetPC have take a closer look at APC's Back-UPS CS 500 Uninterruptible Power Supply and surge protector.
• Socket's GPS Nav Kit - Are you planning a trip to a place you've never been before? Well, now you can add a complete in-car navigation system to your Bluetooth enabled Pocket PC or laptop wirelessly with Socket's GPS Nav Kit. This handy GPS Device uses MyNavigator software that makes trip planning quick and easy and with audible "turn by turn" instructions.
• DSC-L1: Sony's Latest Ultra-Compact Digicam - When it comes down to it, the Sony DSC-L1 falls just short of being great. There are several areas in which this camera excels. For example, it has a stylish and solid metal body. In our tests, it proved to have both decent resolution and incredible battery life. In addition, the camera is very fast. With respect to startup, write speed, and shutter lag, this camera is one of the most responsive ultra-compact digicams around. On the other hand, the L1 leaves something to be desired when it comes to image quality.
• Aigo P880 20GB MP3 Player - Aigo has created a curious product in the shape of the P880 - it has more features than most MP3 players, but the design, implementation and navigation let it down. Strange decisions like having no USB connectivity from the cradle are bizarre and take a lot of shine off the product. The P880's photo party piece is also let down by occasional failure to read SD cards, while the actual process of copying images from an SD card is convoluted at best
• Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) review - The fascia of the PSP is dominated by the 4.3in TFT screen and I can pretty much guarantee that you've never seen a display like this on a hand-held device before. The screen has a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, making it ideal for watching movies as well as playing games, with a resolution of 480 x 272 and a full 24bit colour depth. The screen also incorporates Sony's X-Black coating, so the image is amazingly bright and vivid. The image produced by the PSP display is just breathtaking, and I've yet to show this device to anyone that hasn't been impressed by it.
• Sony launches a new portable DVD station MV-700HR - Sony Europe has announced the launch of a new portable DVD player for 2005 -  The Sony MV-700HR. Sporting a new portable concept, different from current laptop syles, the Sony screen faces out, taking up less space and provides a convenient new way to watch movies on the go. It comes in 2 colors, silver and black with a 7 inch TFT screen.

GUIDES...

• Volume Expansion Using Diskpart.exe (updated) - Description of how Microsoft IT regularly uses the Diskpart.exe utility to dynamically increase disk volume capacity on servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. The Diskpart.exe utility extends disk volumes without downtime or application interruption, thereby increasing availability and decreasing costs.
• Reset lost virtual BIOS password - In a physical machine, you can often move a jumper on the motherboard or remove the battery to reset the CMOS. Obviously a virtual machine doesn't have anything physical like this, but the answer posted up was to "remove the virtual battery". You can't, although I did look through the .vmc (Virtual Machine Configuration) file for a battery setting :-)

SOFTWARE...

• phpMyAdmin 2.6.1 Final  - phpMyAdmin (changelog) can manage a whole MySQL-server (needs a super-user) but also a single database. To accomplish the latter you`ll need a properly set up MySQL-user who can read/write only the desired database.
• Spybot Search and Destroy Detection Update 2005-1-27 - Update your Spybot S&D detections without the need for the included WebUpdate.
• Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.0 Beta 3 - This contains all updates from Windows Update site and more. It is a self-extracting and self-installing pack. It contains only operating system updates not Internet Explorer, DirectX, Media Player or their updates.
• eXeem Lite 0.19 - Developers this week released a spy-ware free version of popular P2P app eXeem. The official version of eXeem, which entered into public beta this week, is contaminated with an adware app called Cydoor. eXeem Lite 0.19 is smaller - 1.9MB compared to 2.5MB - and promises file trading without search hijacking and pop-up ad bombardment. Unlike eXeem, eXeem Lite is also available to Linux users (who need to run the app using WINE). (thanks ally russell)
• AutoHotkey 1.0.25.09 - AutoHotkey is a simple yet powerful hotkey (shortcut key) scripting language for Windows. You can customize your keyboard, joystick and mouse with a free automation tool that is backward compatible with AutoIt v2.
• AntiVir Personal Edition 6.29.00.03 - The AntiVir Personal Edition offers the effective protection against computer viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation. In order to make possible an easy operation, the AntiVir Personal Edition is developed to the essential points.
• WinAMP 5.08d - Nullsoft WinAmp (download full ~ lite) is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. This new version fixes Critical Security bugs in in_mp4.dll and enc_mp4.dll and libmp4v2.dll, n_cdda.dll, HTTP Seeking corrected for webservers that refuse to return Accept-Range.
• PCMark04/3DMark03&05 patches - PCMark04 Upgrade Patch 1.3.0, PCMark04 Benchmark (Build 1.3.0), 3DMark05 Upgrade Patch 1.2.0, 3DMark05 Build 1.2.0 (Full Version), 3DMark03 Upgrade Patch 3.6.0, 3DMark03 Build 3.6.0 (Full Version).
• CloneDVD v2.7.1.1 - This latest version 2.7.1.1 (download) support automatic shutdown of your computer and there have also been some minor changes to how the software works
• ATI Tray Tools 1.0.1.500 - ATI Tray Tools is a small utility that can be found in the windows tray which then allows instant access to options and settings.
• nForce 6.37 Beta Drivers - These drivers are the mainboard chipset drivers for all nVIDIA nForce based mainboards for Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server.
• TC NVIDIA Optimized Driver v0.5 - This driver (based on the leaked Forceware 71.50) is been created by NVIDIA Corporation and Modified by TechConnect Magazine.

SECURITY...

• Microsoft Plans Restrictions on Fixes - Microsoft Corp. plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes. The new authentication system, announced Tuesday and due to arrive by midyear, will still allow people with pirated copies of Windows to obtain security fixes, but their options will be limited. The move allows Microsoft to use one of its sharpest weapons - access to security patches that can prevent viruses, worms and other crippling attacks - to thwart a costly and meddlesome piracy problem. (FYI, they already launched the scheme first at the end of October 2004 for Czech, Chinese and Norwegian versions).
• BlowSearch to Offer Encrypted IM - BlowSearch  plans to launch early next month the BlowSearch Secured Messenger, an IM service that offers different levels of encryption to prevent malicious hackers from intercepting the communications. BlowSearch Secured Messenger lets users aggregate into its interface buddy lists from the four main public IM services: America Online's AIM and ICQ, Yahoo's Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft's MSN Messenger.
• Cisco patches IOS - Cisco has released a fix for a denial-of-service vulnerability affecting versions of IOS software. According to a security advisory found here, the bug affects all Cisco devices that are configured for IOS Telephony Service, CallManager Express or Survivable Remote Site Telephony services.
• Alabama Spammers Settle Case - Two members of an alleged spamming ring paid Earthlink an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit, agreeing also to stop sending unsolicited e-mail, the Internet service provider said Tuesday. The two, Damon DeCrescenzo and David Burstyn, were sued last year by Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc., which claimed they were part of a multi-state spamming operation that spewed more than 250 million illegal e-mails.
• Malaysia plans jail for disc peddling pirates - Malaysia's government is proposing mandatory jail sentences for producers, distributors and vendors of bootleg movies and music compact discs. A high level meeting to review the 17-year-old Copyright Act will be held next week. It will decide on whether to incorporate the mandatory jail clause and a range of other new penalties, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Shafie Apdal said.
• Cctde - Covert Channel and Tunneling Over the HTTP Protocol Detection - The main goal of this project is to provide a way to register and disclose informations leading to the detection of unauthorized tunnels and covert channels embedded into the HTTP protocol but the concepts could also be applied to the detection of arbitrary data flows inside other high level protocols. Located between a mandatory HTTP proxy server and the HTTP clients (or before the NACS if no proxy exists), cctde is trying to detect if someone on the internal located network is using a CC|T (Covert Channel OR Tunneling) tool to bypass the NACS.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Do game designers burn out like rock stars? - Take Doom III. Like every Pink Floyd album after The Final Cut, it is a technical masterpiece, utterly devoid of verve, invention or the sheer folly of youth. Could it be that John Carmack's obsession with amazing graphical effects is similar to the way in which middle-aged rock stars start to "experiment" with the latest technology and trendy genres - Peter Gabriel with world music, David Bowie with Drum N Bass, Dave Stewart with, oh god, don't even go there.
• Watching brain waves could quantify libido - Monitoring the change in specific brain waves could be the first quantitative method for measuring libido, new research suggests.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Patent reveals secrets of Xbox 2 - A patent has shown up at the US repository (patent) of such thing$ that gives us some more clues as to the nature of the technology that Microsoft and ATI will employ with its next generation Xbox and the R520 component. The patent is for a method and apparatus for determining a processing speed of an integrated circuit.  The patent appears to confirm that the R500/R520 part will be something substantially different to anything we've seen in the past.
• What's next for next-gen consoles?  - We may not know when they will be released, what they will be called or even what they will be able to do but one thing is certain - they are coming. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all expected to release new machines in the next 18 months.  The details of PlayStation 3, Xbox 2 (codename Xenon) and Nintendo's so-called Revolution are still to be finalised but developers are having to work on titles for the new machines regardless.
• Nanobot could fashion microprocessors - According to nikkei.net, AMS and the Pennsylvania State University startup, Micromechatronics, will create a three centimetre square robot which it says will be able to move in nanometres. And the report adds that AMS is contemplating creating nanorobots which could be used to build microprocessors.
• Samsung Starts Mass Production of XDR DRAM - The Samsung 256Mb XDR DRAM incorporates Rambus' Octal Data Rate process that transfers data at eight bits per clock cycle, while cranking up the transfer speed to an industry-leading 8GB/s per XDIMM. To transfer data in a stable manner at the extremely high speeds, Samsung is utilizing Differential Rambus Signal Level (DRSL) technology.

HARDWARE... 

• VIA 2GHz C7 CPU to debut Q4 - VIA's next-generation x86-compatible processor, "Esther", which has been designed to take the chip family beyond 2GHz, will ship in Q4, online reports suggest.
• HIS launches overclocked Radeon X850XT card - In contrast to other X850XT cards, HIS' product comes with an overclocking software that increases the core frequency from 520 to 540 MHz. Fan speeds can also be adjusted to decrease below 20dB or provide an additional 11 degrees Celsius of cooling performance.
• HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo VIVO 256MB review - HIS pulled together a terrific bundle to accompany the X700 Pro, including a detailed installation manual and setup CDs. The first CD provided the necessary drivers to get the card installed and working properly. The second disk included the iTurbo software which enables the card to run at a predetermined overclocked rate and allows for manual overclocking as well. Additionally, HIS included a series of software titles, including Video Studio, 3D Album and Counter Strike: Condition Zero.
•  MSI NX6800-TD 128 - The performance of this MSI NX6800-TD128 graphics card is very good as seen in all benchmarks, running games at 1024x768 with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering set to AA4 and AF16 is great performance for sure and definitely great image quality.
• Digest 2004: Sound Cards - Like in the year 2003, sound cards manufactured in 2004 could be divided into two categories: entertainment and professional. The first one included cards suitable for the majority of users preferring realistic 3D sound in games and downloaded MP3 files with unusual effects. The second category of experienced users that was constantly growing included owners of high-quality acoustic systems.
• JAHT 5-port Gigabit SOHO switch - Techniz.co.uk takes a look at the JS-3005GD which is five-port 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet switch, with a 10Gbps non-blocking, 8k MAC Address table, and 802.3x, full-duplex flow control.
• BenQ M310 wireless mini optical mouse - The M310 has a couple of power saving features that help extend battery life and two AAA sized batteries are estimated to last for more than 3 months. By default, the mouse is powered up when the wireless receiver is ejected from the mouse and is automatically switched off when the receiver is stored.
• Samsung CLP-550 printer - Trustedreviews have posted a review of the Samsung CLP-550 colour laser printer.
• iRiver PMC-120 Portable Media Center review -The iRiver PMC-120 offers a 3.5in screen with a resolution of 320 x 240 and a 20GB hard disk, providing a theoretical maximum of 80 hours of video storage if recorded at native resolution at 500kps. iRiver has experience of producing portable media players with its PMP-120 and PMP-140 Linux based devices having been available for some months. The PMPs offer support for AVI, ASF, and versions three, four and five of the DiVX codec - without any need for transcoding. By contrast, this unit, the PMC-120, only supports video files encoded in WMV format.
• Samsung Releases The YH-999 Portable Media Center (UK) - The device features a 3.5" colour TFT LCD screen, video out capabilities and a built-in speaker for headphone-free viewing. The YH-999 plays Windows Media Video (WMV9) files at 320x240 resolution and 500kbps. The device allows for around 80 hours of recorded TV to be stored on its 20GB HD.
• ViewSonic NextVision N3000w -TrustedReviews have posted a review of the ViewSonic NextVision N3000w 30in TFT TV/Display which features a wide range of input options.

GUIDES...

• A mini-guide to Mac OS X for new Mini owners - As anyone who has ever switched platforms will attest, there is always a bit of a learning curve involved. Differences in how applications and the user interface behave can be great, and even when there is similarity across platforms, the small differences can be just as maddening.

SOFTWARE...

• Tenomichi 3D Edit review - Like Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Tenomichi's software harnesses the power of the system's 3D graphics accelerator. But it does so at a much more fundamental level. In particular, it takes advantage of the power of DirectX 9 Shaders. Essentially, a DirectX 9 adapter is required, which currently doesn't include any of Matrox's graphics cards. An ATI Radeon 9550 or Nvidia GeForce FX 5700 is the bare minimum. The software is best used with Windows XP Service Pack 2, although Windows 2000 is supported.
• MySQL 4.1.9 - MySQL (download ~ changelog) is the world's most popular open source database, recognized for its speed and reliability.
• NVTweak v1.7.1 - NVTweak unlocks many extra options in the nVidia control panel/driver, including but not limited to - Overclocking, AGP & Hardware settings, Fan control, Temperature settings, Debugging, Twin View, Video Mixing Renderer, OpenGL 2.0 support, 3D viewer types (for 3D Stereo drivers), and more. This tweak is intended for use with GeForce/Quadro cards and ForceWare 55.xx - 7x.xx 3D Stereo drivers. NVTweak is not fully compatible with Windows 98/Me or driver versions older than 55.xx.
• NeroVision Express 3.0.1.27 -  This new version adds support for the NeroDigital file format and MP3 files with an image.
• Ad-Aware SE Personal 1.05 - This latest version (January 25, 2005) simply incorporates the latest definition files. There is no need to download it if you already have Ad-Aware 1.05 installed.

SECURITY...

• New Worm Piggybacks on MSN Messaging - A new worm called "Bropia.A" spreads through the MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger instant messaging clients, security firms report. The worm loads a Trojan horse that can log keystrokes, collect system information and spread IM spam.
• Tsunami E-mail Hoaxer Jailed - A hoaxer who e-mailed the families of people caught up in the Asian tsunami telling them their relatives were dead has been jailed for six months. Christoper Pierson, 40, from Lincolnshire, was arrested on New Year's Eve after sending 35 e-mails.
• PayPal Leaking Customer Email Addresses - Most emails sent from corporations have "removal" links to comply with anti-spam legislation in the USA. On clicking the link sent out by PayPal, users can remove themselves from future mailings from the company. However, the system used to do this suffers from a lack of proper input validation and security. By changing elements of the URL (example), a malicious user can reveal other PayPal user's email addresses. The problem exposes a serious flaw in the system.
• Trojan Horses Take Aim at Mobile Phones - Two new Trojan horse programs threaten to render some Symbian-based mobile phones totally useless. The programs, Gavno.a and Gavno.b, masquerade as patch files designed to trick users into downloading them, says Aaron Davidson, chief executive officer of SimWorks International. Although almost identical with Gavno.a, Gavno.b contains the Cabir worm, which attempts to send a copy of the Trojan horse to other nearby Symbian-based phones via short-range wireless Bluetooth technology.
• Software glitch leaves Cisco routers vulnerable - Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) Software release trains 12.1YD, 12.2T, 12.3 and 12.3T, when configured for the Cisco IOS Telephony Service (ITS), Cisco CallManager Express (CME) or Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) may contain a vulnerability in processing certain malformed control protocol messages. A successful exploitation of this vulnerability may cause a reload of the device and could be exploited repeatedly to produce a Denial of Service (DoS).

OFF-TOPIC...

• Steve Ballmer pitching Windows 1.0 in a TV commercial spoof - Here's a video clip from 15 years ago of Steve Ballmer pitching Windows v1.0 on a television (T.V.) commercial/advertisement as a spoof. Another cool movie can be found here.
• The Lost 1984 Mac Video - Never seen video footage of the introduction of the Macintosh in January 1984 was published for the first time on the Internet today.
• Suicide bomber sells VW Polo - hoax ad takes internet by storm - The spoof ad opens with the suicide bomber leaving his home and jumping into his VW Polo. The bomber parks at a busy London restaurant where carefree diners crowd the pavement. Cut to the terrorist sitting in his car as he pushes the button to detonate his bomb. The blast is contained within the car, saving the diners. The ad ends: "Polo. Small but tough".
• Where are London's missing mobiles? - Close to 100,000 mobile phones mysteriously vanish in London each year, a survey published today has claimed.
• US stem cell research in jeopardy - US stem cell research faces an uncertain near future after scientists reported that existing stocks of such cells are contaminated - and therefore useless for treating people - while the US administration has terminated federal funding for the extraction of fresh cells. The problem is that current stocks have taken up a "non-human molecule called N-glycolylneuraminic acid or Neu5Gc" - probably when they were grown in a lab culture containing animal-derived materials from mice and calf foetuses. Neu5Gc is found on the surface of animal cells, but the human immune system attacks it - the major reason for transplanted animal organ rejection in humans.
• A Countdown To Global Catastrophe? - The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.
• Machine learns games "like a human" - A computer that learns to play a "scissors, paper, stone" by observing and mimicking human players could lead to machines that automatically learn how to spot an intruder or perform vital maintenance work, say UK researchers. CogVis, developed by scientists at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire, UK, teaches itself how to play the children's game by searching for patterns in video and audio of human players and then building its own "hypotheses" about the game's rules.
• Robot soldiers deployed in Iraq - The US Army is deploying the first robotic soldiers in Iraq next month. More than 18 of the remote-controlled robotic snipers, with machine guns for noses, will go into action. Apparently the robot is a conversion of the Talon robot, which has been in military service since 2000 and defusing roadside bombs in Iraq. Each one costs $200,000, and is armed with either the M249, which fires 5.56-millimeter rounds at a rate of 750 per minute, or the M240, which can fire about 700 to 1,000 7.62-millimeter rounds per minute.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft Accepts EU Decision - Microsoft announced today that it will not appeal against the European Union's court order compelling the company to remove Windows Media Player from the Windows XP operating system in Europe.
• Bill Gates plots a Windows future -  In the first part of a two-part interview, Stephen Cole of the BBC's technology show Click Online talks to Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates about the "digital lifestyle".
• Quarter Billion Songs Sold - Apple today announced that they had sold a quarter billion (250m) songs from their iTunes music store. At a rate of 1.25m songs being sold daily, the store expects to be selling approx. half a billion songs annually.
• BBC Re-launch Radio Player - The BBC has today announced a re-launch of their popular online Radio Player software. The player is being re-launched with a variety of new features being made available, including list of the most popular shows and contextual lists to aid listeners find other shows they might enjoy. Listeners will also be able to listen to the BBC's local content as well as popular radio shows that were previously un-available online
• Mozilla Firefox Lead Engineer Joins Google - Ben Goodger, Lead Engineer for the popular browser Firefox has announced that he is no longer paid by Mozilla, and has joined Google. In a posting on his blog, Ben noted his role will remain unchanged at Mozilla. "I will continue doing much the same work ...with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases". Ben, 24, has been working on Firefox since Summer 2003 after the demise of Netscape browser development. Before working on the Firefox project he spent time with America Online/Netscape contributing to a range of their Netscape products (6, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7.1). In related news,  Firefox has this morning hit 20 million downloads. Learn more about the roots of Firefox and about the 19-year-old who co-created the browser in this article.
• Windows 64 to arrive in April - Sources claimed Microsoft is planning to introduce its 64 bit operating system for Intel and AMD processors (iAMD64) on the 29th of April. The sources are close to Microsoft. It appears there will be a release to manufacturing version of WinXP 64 in March. That's the stage before the CDs get stamped out and the boxes get printed.
• TI unveils mobile on a chip - Texas Instruments has sealed a deal with Nokia which will see the mobile giant incorporate TI's Digital RF Processor (DRP) single-chip mobile phone technology into future handsets.

HARDWARE... 

• Kingston Tests DDR2 Memory at 866MHz - Memory maker Kingston Technology has showcased DDR2 memory modules running at 866MHz, setting the world’s record for memory speed operation. The company, however, said it would not launch such high-speed products into mass market shortly, as currently only a few mainboards can handle even 750MHz memory clock-speed.
• AMD64 VIA K8T890 Performance Preview - T-Break have posted a preview of A new VIA K8T890 PCI-E AMD64 based Soltek motherboard.
• nForce Professional Technology Overview - For both servers and workstations, NVIDIA is offering two solutions for the market. Today, NVIDIA is announcing the nForce Professional 2200 and nForce Professional 2050 chipsets (the latter being an I/O companion chip). Designed specifically for the AMD Opteron platform, both chips are scalable PCI Express MCPs. Since they are based on a single-chip architecture, they are cost effective solutions for the business market.
• ASUSTeK Computer A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI motherboard -  If you're looking to replace your current motherboard, or even build a system from scratch, the model you choose can have a serious impact on your system's overall performance. ASUSTeK Computer's (ASUS) A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI motherboard is about as powerful as they come, offering support for Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 processors and nVidia Scalable Links Interface (SLI) graphics cards.
• Inno3D GeForce 6600GT PCI-E & AGP - In the end, the Inno3D 6600GT PCI-e is a great card with a reasonable price tag. Best of all, the PCI-e version supports SLI and both of the AGP and PCI-e versions it supports SM3.0. On the other hand, the Inno3D 6600GT AGP was quite disappointing as it did not overclock at all and we had to downclock it to stabilize it. So we would not recommend the AGP version for you yet. Hold your horses until we get a new sample from Inno3D. Nevertheless, the CoolerMaster GPU cooler isn’t quite effective when compared to the reference model but the rubber pads around the core provided excellent support for the heatsink thus preventing it from wiggling off. Besting in each tests, the Inno3D 6600GT PCI-e should be on your Intel LGA rig or even on your NF4 rig that supports PCI-e. With a better cooling installed, we would be seeing the Inno3D 6600GT PCI-e scoring beyond the 10K mark in 3DMark03!
• D-Link Air Premier 802.11a/b/g Wireless Network - With that network, Internet and file sharing worked well for small files, but when streaming videos off of my server to the wireless clients, things got choppy at times. So I started my search for a faster wireless solution. This led me to the local Best Buy where I picked up a D-Link DI-784 Wireless Router. I chose this router due to the ability of it being able to work with 802.11a/b/g. This would let me set up the network independent on the cards I used for the wireless network. This router also has full support for WPA security, which is stronger protection than WEP which also is a plus.
• Multifunction roundup - The multifunction market is changing. Prices are falling, printing rates rising and ink costs have gone down. In this test BeHardware put the Canon MP390, Epson RX425 / CX4600, HP PSC 1350 and Lexmark P6250 up against each other.

GUIDES...

• Installing ATI Silencer 4 on x800 Series Cards - The instructions are pretty good, but this is 100% idiot proof. Step by step instructions on how to install an ATI Silencer 4 on your X800 Series Video Card. The Card used in this guide is a Gigabyte X800XT.
• Using Linux For The First Time - There are many, many Live CDs available. Some of the best-known ones are Knoppix, Gnoppix, Mepis, SuSE Live CD and Mandrake Move Live CD. These are all freely available, and you can use any one you like. For the purposes of this article, we will be using the Mepis variant of Live CD.

SOFTWARE...

• Mobile Net Switch 3.1 - Mobile Net Switch enables you to use your computer on more than one network with the click of a button. Mobile Net Switch allows you to automatically select the correct drive mappings, printer settings, IP settings and much more. This new version adds support for Firefox and improves network connection handling.
• Windows File Protection Switcher 0.8 Beta - Windows File Protection Switcher lets you disable and re-enable Windows File Protection (WFP).
• Kerio Personal Firewall 4.2.0 Beta - Kerio Personal Firewall (KPF) (download) helps users control how their computers exchange data with other computers on the Internet or local network. Kerio Personal Firewall is a necessity for all desktop computers connected to broadband Internet, using DSL, cable, ISDN, WiFi or satellite modems.
• SPAMfighter Standard 3.2.5 - A tool to remove spam from your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
• Harden-It 1.2 - Harden-It is a new lightweight software release from YASC .ltd and Zoller Thierry. Harden-it was designed to harden your Windows installation against numerous attacks
• MemTest 3.1 - MemTest is a RAM reliability tester. It evaluates the ability of your computer's memory to store and retrieve data.
• BSPlayer 1.02 - BSplayer (download) is a Windows player that plays back all kinds of media files ( avi / mpg / asf / wmv / wav / mp3...) and specialises in video and divx playback.
• DivXToDVD Converter 0.4.2.71 - DivxToDVD converts your movie files from a wide range of formats (AVI, XVID, MPEG, and DIVX) to compliant DVD structures (VOB and IFO).
• AnyDVD update 4.5.6.2 - AnyDVD is a driver, which descrambles DVD-Movies automatically in the background. This DVD appears unprotected and region code free for all applications and the Windows operating system as well. With AnyDVD's help copy tools like CloneDVD, Pinnacle Instant Copy, InterVideo DVD-Copy, etc. are able to copy CSS protected Movies.
• Codec 7.8i - This codec pack includes DivX Pro 5.2.1, XviD 1.1.0 Beta1, Ligos Indeo XP Codec 5.2820.15.58, AC3Filter 1.01a (rc5), Fraunhoffer IIS Mpeg Layer-3 DirectShow Decoder 1.9.0.311, Fraunhoffer IIS Mpeg Layer-3 ACM Codec 1.9.0.305, Ogg Vorbis 1.1 (rc1), Ogg Vorbis DirectShow Filter 0.9.9.6, Ogg Vorbis DirectShow Filter Decoder 1.0, Ogg Vorbis Audio ACM Codec 0.0.3.6, DivX AntiFreeze 0.4.
• RadLinker 2.028 - RadLinker is new tweaker/linker for ATI Radeon based graphics cards.
• Xtreme G 67.66  - This is the Xtreme G driver which includes many performance and Image Quality tweaks. These are modified NVIDIA ForceWare drivers for Windows 2000 & XP.
• Forceware 71.25 Windows 2000/XP - A new Forceware with build 71.25 appeared on the web today. These drivers are date stamped at the 10th of January 2005. These drivers are WHQL (Microsoft tested) signed but do not have support for all NVIDIA graphics cards, only series 6 and a few Quadro's are supported

SECURITY...

• Worm Masquerades as CNN Headline Alerts - A new e-mail worm masquerading as news headlines from CNN has the ability to log keystrokes and open backdoors for new threats, anti-virus vendor Sophos Inc. said in an advisory. Researchers at Sophos said the worm, identified as W32/Crowt-A, takes its subject lines and message content from headlines gathered in real-time from Time Warner's CNN Web site. The worm's subject line and attachment share the same name, but continually change to mirror the front-page headline on the CNN site.
• Virus masquerades as email from security firm - An as yet unnamed mass-mailer worm which masquerades as an alert from IT security firm BitDefender has been discovered spreading in the wild. The infection, which comes in an email message with a spoofed 'from' field ([email protected]), prompts users to download harmful executables from a Romanian website.
• Researcher Pokes Holes in Microsoft Patch - Microsoft's first software patch for 2005 does not adequately fix the critical vulnerability it was intended to address, according to a warning issued by IT security services firm GeCAD NET. The flaw is still exploitable in Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, even when fully patched and up-to-date (MS05-001 included), Avram warned. Users of Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2) are not vulnerable to the attack method.
• US peer-to-peer pirates convicted - New Yorker William Trowbridge and Texan Michael Chicoine have pleaded guilty to charges that they infringed copyright by illegally sharing music, movies and software. The two men faced charges following raids in August on suspected pirates by the FBI. The pair face jail terms of up to five years and a $250,000 fine. In a statement the US Department of Justice said the two men operated the central hubs in a piracy community organised across the Direct Connect peer-to-peer network. The piracy group called itself the Underground Network and membership of it demanded that users share between one and 100 gigabytes of files. During its investigation FBI agents reportedly downloaded 84 movies, 40 software programs, 13 games and 178 "sound recordings" from the five hubs that made up the larger piracy group.
• "Evil twin" could pose Wi-Fi threat - Researchers at Cranfield University are warning that "evil twin" hot spots, networks set up by hackers to resemble legitimate Wi-Fi hot spots, present the latest security threat to Web users. Attackers interfere with a connection to the legitimate network by sending a stronger signal from a base station close to the wireless client, turning the fake access point into a so-called evil twin.
• eXeem opens new file-swapping doors - Called eXeem, the software aims to merge the speedy downloads of BitTorrent with the powerful global search capabilities of Kazaa or eDonkey. The first public version of the program was released by a company called Swarm Systems but has been associated with SuprNova, a Web site that, until recently, drew millions of people seeking free content online through the popular BitTorrent software
• Big names gang up on digital pirates - A group of the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturers are developing a digital rights management (DRM) standard to stop pirated material being played on their home entertainment systems. The alliance, including Samsung, Sony, Philips and Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), has joined with DRM developers Intertrust Technologies to form the Marlin Joint Development Association (JDA).
• Review: Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Tools Ineffective - check it out.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Mr. Potato Head Feels the Dark Side of Force - A spud on the dark side. That's how toy maker Hasbro Inc. is promoting its latest Mr. Potato Head figure, Darth Tater. The toy spud will be available next month, ahead of the May release of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," the latest installment in that film series. Darth Tater will come with a light saber, cape and helmet, in addition to the regular Mr. Potato Head accessories such as eyes, mouth and nose.
• Titan a 'Flammable' Moon Covered in Liquid Gas - Saturn's moon Titan is covered by "dirty" ice ridges and seas of liquid natural gas, a team of scientists said on Friday after a week of research into data from the space probe Huygens.
• Why some people entice mosquitoes - It was already known that some people produce "come and get me" smells which appeal to the blood-suckers. Rothamsted Research, in Herts, found those less likely to be bitten produced odours which masked these scents. The natural repellent could be used to protect everyone from the bugs, suggests the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
• Ex-girlfriend Deletes Lineage Character and Gets Arrested - A jilted Japanese girlfriend logged onto her ex-lover's Lineage account with his username and password. Once there, she deleted his game data including all the items, weapons and clothes he had collected. Although the boyfriend did not suffer financially he reported the misuse of his account to the police. Police then reported the woman of Toyama Prefecture, to the Fukushima District Public. Prosecutors

TECHNOLOGY...

• Xbox Live! Passes 1.4 Million Subscribers - The success of Xbox Live! comes after a successful Christmas period for the US giant, with highlights including the Xbox becoming the only platform to witness year-to-year growth during Q4 as well as the full 2004 calendar year, whilst the overall market saw a dip in year-to-year comparison.
• Microsoft Research's C-Omega - Microsoft Research has produced a data-oriented programming language by merging C#, XPath and SQL.
• Playstation 3 details - You can read it for yourself here. The Cell is set to be unlocked at a techie conference in February. See this slide. It purports to show Mr Cell will run at 4.60GHz, at 1.3 volts, and have 6.4Gb/s off chip communication.  (thanks TheInquirer)

HARDWARE... 

• Intel's 64-bit P4 Processors Begin to Emerge in Retail - Akiba PC Hotline web-site reports that a number of stores in Tokyo, Japan, sells Intel Pentium 4 processors models 3.20F, 3.40F, 3.60F and 3.80F with EM64T capability enabled. The chips come in black and white retail packaging and are positioned primarily for uniprocessor servers and workstations. The central processing units cost approximately $299, $311, $449 and $755 for 3.20GHz, 3.40GHz, 3.60GHz and 3.80GHz speed-bins respectively.
• Western Digital to Ship 6GB 1" Hard Disk Drives - Western Digital announced it would enter the market of miniature hard disk drives aimed at handheld consumer electronics, such as players, phones or cameras. The company's first product for the market will be 6GB HDD in 1" form-factor that will ship in Q2 2005 and will become one of the world's largest HDD of its size.
• BenQ announces three hard disk DVD recorders - Digitimes is reporting that BenQ has announced three hard disk (HDD) DVD recorders. The models, DE305S, DE305H and the DE305P all use double-chip modules whit one chip for recording and another chip for playback this to avoid signal noise and delays. The recorders support only recording to the DVD+R(W) format, others like Lite-On have already released dual format HDD DVD recorders.
• ABIT Okays Repair of Faulty Mainboards, but Claims No More - ABIT Computer said Friday it admits certain issues with it mainboards, and claimed its most-recent products were problem-free, following lawsuits launched Thursday. The firm said it would reimburse or repair free of charge some of its outdated mainboards for its clients, but said its mend it products based on certain documents and experts'claims and provided that those mainboards were not tortured by overclockers – enthusiasts who practice rising mainboards and processors clock-speeds in a bid for high performance.
• Acer Ferrari 3200 and ASUS A4S00K comparison - X-bit Labs compared the two powerful mobile solutions from ASUS and Acer, which differ in their design, dimensions, weight and price, but have similar configurations. So who is the winner of this comparison? The ASUS A4S00K has been faster in more tests and it is also preferable from the price/performance ratio standpoint. The Acer, however, boasts a high performance, too, and its ergonomic properties and wide functionality match those of the ASUS.
• Acer TravelMate 8100 Centrino notebook - All in all, the Acer TravelMate 8100 is still an excellent notebook with great performance. Save for a SATA hard disk drive and an Expresscard slot, features we were expecting in a performance 'Sonoma' notebook, the well endowed TravelMate 8100 is able to deliver the performance while offering you a complete suite of wireless connections for work and play in almost every location in town.
• Dell Inspiron 700M Notebook  - The 700m has a look that's a little bit different, a little more elegant, than most Dell. Gone are the dull blues and grays, and we are left with a case that resembles the slightly battered offspring of a Powerbook and an iBook.
• 1GB Kingston PC2700 SODIMM - This particular stick is built specifically for Dell Inspiron notebooks (hence the "KTD-INSP5150/1G" label on the sticker). To fit 1GB onto a single board, Kingston used a total of 16 small modules, each 64MB in capacity.
• Corsair Flash Voyager 512MB - Hi-Techreviews.com has posted a review of the Corsair Flash Voyager 512MB memory.
• eVGA e-GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E - nVNews has posted a review of eVGA's e-Geforce 6600GT PCI-E in an SLI setup.
• MSI RX800PRO-TD256 - MSI's RX800PRO-TD256 does not vary much from the ATi-based card specifications and Radeon X800 graphics processor on which the device is based. However, a lot of games bundled with the not-so-shabby card at least merits a second look. These are Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Uru Ages Beyond Myst and XIII. The Japanese bundle comes with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow instead of Prince of Persia.  To round the bundle off, MSI also includes a CD with 14 game demos. Unfortunately, none of the games are new.
• BenQ PB 6100 projector - Once you get used to having a projector at your disposal, playing games and watching movies is never the same again. I think most hardware enthusiasts will take the plunge eventually. Big is good! So how does the PB6100 fare? Though it doesn't blow me away, I've mostly warmed to using this projector with the one, albeit large, caveat regarding the visual anomalies caused by the DLP rainbow effect. If you have a room where light can be strictly controlled, have at least 14' to throw the image, and can place the projector 12" - 18" off the floor with some ventilation room in the rear, the projector does a very good job for the money. If you can't really fulfill these requirements you either have to make trade-offs that frankly are not worth it, more appropriately, look elsewhere.
• Sony MDR-V700DJ Headphones - The Sony MDR-V700DJ headphones produce serious sound for the most demanding audio-philes. And with a $149 price tag, they'd better. Designed for live DJs, the V700DJ headphones are perfect for professional live performers and casual mixers alike. Their superior sound works well for casual home use as well.
• Saitek X52 Flight Control System - TrustedReviews take a look at the Saitek X52 Flight Control System which is one of the best flight stick setups you can get for under L100 and it even has a built in LCD display.

GUIDES...

• How to assign a drive letter or directory to a shadow copy - Adi Oltean has posted a really cool method to assign a drive letter or directory to a shadow copy. This will allow you to access files that are otherwise exclusively opened by an application. Please note, this will only work on Windows Server 2003 and not in XP because it does not have shadow copy. The ability to do this is extremely useful! This might even let me backup SQL Server's data files without any external tools or shutting down SQL Server.
• Deploying Windows XP Service Pack 2 in Enterprise Environments  - The guide describe planning and implementation considerations for deploying Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) in enterprise environments.
• XP Myths - Myths Regarding Windows XP - A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology. There are numerous Myths floating around the Internet regarding Windows XP, especially relating to Optimizations and Security. Hopefully this site will debunk some of these.
• Sharky Extreme's January value gaming PC buyer's guide - The holiday season has now passed, and for those who weren't lucky enough to find a new system in your stockings, the time has never been better to assemble a new gaming system.
• Ultimate PC Building Revisited - Here's an article about building the ultimate PC. This being an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe system. The first problem is that when you want to put 4 Gig of RAM in the system (4) 1 gig sticks which the system is supposed to be able to handle. Only (2) sticks are ever seen but yet the RAM in my article was on the QVL list originally for running with 4 sticks in Dual Channel mode but if you go look now they changed it from their original QVL list and removed a V from the third column for the Kingston 1024 RAM???

SOFTWARE...

• Kernel 2.4.29 - Check changelog here and download at Kernel.org.
• Ethereal 0.10.9 - Ethereal is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education.
• GAIM 1.1.2 - 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.
• nVIDIA SLI - Test your own Games with SLI - A very cool application was created by 3DChipset forum member; Andrew Poison that lets you - the user - select if you wish to play a game (that is not offically supported in the NVidia SLI-Supported Games List) in SLI mode or not. You can select between AFR and SFR. You can also select to use just a single GPU.
• AutoPatcher XP January 2005 - This release is based on the all-new AutoPatcher 5.0. Although it was made with Windows XP SP2 (English) in mind, it will load on any Windows version or language, showing only the items which match the running environment.
• FileZilla Server 0.9.4e - A lot has changed since the last release of this FTP server. The most important change is the improved list of connected users which now displays more details like the current active transfer details (file, progress, speed)
• Secure-It 1.22 - Secure-It is a local Windows security hardening tool, proactively secure your PC by either disabling the intrusion and propagation vectors proactively or simply reduce the attack surface by disabling unimportant functions.
• Exeem 0.20 Public - eXeem 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. eXeem contains NO SPYWARE.
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.65 - DVD Idle has updated its DVD Region+CSS Free software to version 5.65.  They added support for the Settec ALPHA DVD and support for a new version of the Sony ARccOS protection.
• RightMark Memory Analyzer 3.46 - The RightMark Memory Analyzer (download) provides the detailed, stable and accurate measurements of the most important low-level characteristics of the CPU/Chipset/RAM subsystem of your PC. Seven types of tests are implemented in the current release of the RightMark Memory Analyzer suite, that allow you to determine the following low-level parameters of the platform.
• CloneCD v5.1.0.0 - This new version (download) fixes some blacklisting issues with CloneCD Tray.
• Hmonitor 4.2.1.2 - Hmonitor has much more functions than MotherBoard Monitor, for example, including thermocontrol features and COM/PerfMon API support.
• Driver Cleaner Professional Edition - Driver Cleaner Professional Editon is a program which helps you to remove parts of drivers that are left after uninstalling the old drivers. The program is for ATI, nVidia, Creative, Realtek, SIS, 3Dfx, S3 and more drivers.
• xpy 0.86 - xpy is a small tool which disables the default threats of a windows xp installation. besides the classic antispy features, xpy closes recent security holes like the remote procure call (rpc) service and the distributed component object model (dcom).
• Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition 4.7.0.6815 - This driver provides support for high-performance Serial ATA RAID 0 arrays and redundant RAID 1 arrays on select Intelr 915, 925, 865, and 875 chipset-based platforms on Windows* XP or Windows 2000.
• Plextor PX-716A v1.04 firmware - Plextor Japan has released a new firmware for its PX 716A. Version 1.04 enables besides 8x speed for DVD+RW and 6x speed for DVD+R DL also 2x speed for DVD-R DL.
• Forceware 71.21 Win2K/XP - A new Forceware with build 71.21 appeared on the web today. Props to the bro's @ osnn.net for noticing them. These drivers are dated the 6th of December. These drivers are not WHQL (Microsoft tested) signed but do have support for all NVIDIA graphics cards, as they are not an official release they should be treated with the same care that you should maintain when using all beta software.

SECURITY...

• Computer Worm Exploits Tsunami to Spread Virus - A mass e-mail posing as a plea for aid to help the victims of last month's Asian tsunami disaster is actually a vehicle for spreading a computer virus, Web security firm Sophos said Monday. The worm appears with the subject line: "Tsunami donation! Please help!" and invites recipients to open an attachment called "tsunami.exe" -- which, if opened, will forward the virus to other Internet users. It could also initiate a denial-of-service attack against a German hacking Web Site, Sophos said, in which the site's server would be bombarded with messages, putting it out of action.
• Microsoft will patch Windows Media Player to fix the DRM exploits - One week after saying it had no plans to change the way WMP (Windows Media Player) handles the download of DRM licenses, Microsoft now says it will release an update in the next 30 days to help thwart the threat of spyware infection. The about-face comes amid reports that malicious hackers are rigging .wmv files and using the anti-piracy mechanism to infect computers with spyware, adware, dialers and computer viruses
• Worm poses as porn-purging program -  A new mass-mailing worm which tries to scare naive users into running it by saying pornographic content has been found on their PCs has begun doing the rounds. Users are told that adult material on their PC can be hidden by running an attached program called "Evidence Cleaner", actually the Baba-C worm. Baba-C turns the frequent trick of offering malware posing a XXX-material on its head by offering to remove adult content from Windows PCs. The end result is much the same though. Users duped into running Baba-C further the spread of the worm and open up backdoor access to their Windows system.
• Experts warn of trick to bypass IE download warnings - The warnings came after the hole was identified on the Bugtraq Internet security discussion list by someone using the name "Rafel Ivgi." The hole affects Internet Explorer Version 6.0.0, including the version released with Windows XP Service Pack 2. The vulnerability allows malicious attackers to bypass warnings designed to inform users when a file is being passed to their computers using a specially-crafted HTML Web document.
• Word and Excel have RC4 flaw, claim - According to this this report (PDF), there's a serious security flaw in Microsoft Word and Excel. The stream cipher RC4 [9] with key length up to 128 bits is used in Microsoft Word and Excel to protect the documents. But when an encrypted document gets modified and saved, the initialization vector remains the same and thus the same keystream generated from RC4 is applied to encrypt the different versions of that document. The consequence is disastrous since a lot of information of the document could be recovered easily.
• Linux fights off hackers - Linux systems are getting tougher for hackers to crack, security experts have reported today. A study by not-for-profit IT security testing organisation Honeynet Project has shown that, on average, Linux systems today take three months to fall prey to hackers, up from 72 hours in equivalent tests conducted between 2001 and 2002.
• State bill could cripple P2P - A bill introduced in California's Legislature last week has raised the possibility of jail time for developers of file-swapping software who don't stop trades of copyrighted movies and songs online. The proposal, introduced by Los Angeles Sen. Kevin Murray, takes direct aim at companies that distribute software such as Kazaa, eDonkey or Morpheus. If passed and signed into law, it could expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don't take "reasonable care" in preventing the use of their software to swap copyrighted music or movies--or child pornography.
• FBI stops using Carnivore wiretap software - The FBI has effectively abandoned its custom-built Internet surveillance technology, once known as Carnivore, designed to read e-mails and other online communications among suspected criminals, terrorists and spies, according to bureau oversight reports submitted to Congress. Instead, the FBI said it has switched to unspecified commercial software to eavesdrop on computer traffic during such investigations and has increasingly asked Internet providers to conduct wiretaps on targeted customers on the government's behalf, reimbursing companies for their costs.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Bill Gates 1983 Photo Shoot - The Monkey Methods blog has posted two images it characterizes as "Teen Beat" photo shoot that Mr. Gates underwent in 1983 :) (thanks Bink.nu)
• Micromachine grows its own muscles - A micromachine that walks using muscles that it grew for itself has been developed in a US laboratory. The remarkable device could eventually lead to muscle-based nerve stimulators that let paralysed patients breathe without a ventilator, or to nanobots that clear away plaque from inside the walls of a human coronary artery.
• Nostalgia Central - Most families own a box or a scrapbook full of tokens and mementoes of their lives. Every object unlocks an attic in the mind, a storehouse of reminiscence. Nostalgia Central is a scrapbook providing a trip from the Swinging Sixties, via the Mirror-balled Seventies, to the Day-Glo Eighties.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Picasa Goes 2.0 - Picasa, the Google-owned photo-sharing service, has gone live with version 2.0 of its software. The service's new edition includes some basic photo-editing tools, including the ability to brighten dark images; CD burning; integration with Blogger; a collage-generating tool; and the ability to send pictures easily through Gmail.
• Seven Longhorns to debut in May 2006? - According to one Redmond watcher, the next version of the Windows operating system, Longhorn, will be ready for manufacturing in May 2006 and will ship to the public in seven different versions.
• Software Remotely Controls PCs by Cell Phone - Toshiba has developed software to remotely operate a PC using a mobile phone over a cellular network. The software, called Ubiquitous Viewer, is installed on the mobile phone and on a client computer running Windows. The software recreates the desktop of a PC or notebook PC on the mobile phone's screen. The user can use the PC via the mobile phone to complete tasks such as reading e-mail messages and editing documents.
• More Details about NVIDIA and Sony Joint Developments - X-bit Labs have conducted an interview with NVIDIA's Vice President of Corporate Marketing, David Roman, who kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the cooperation with Sony and about the situation with Playstation 3 related projects.
• N-Gage to quietly dis-Ngage? - The INQ's Nordic mole claims Nokia is plotting to get rid of its entire Bochum, Germany facility by Q1 2006. That's not just N-Gage R&D we're talking about, it's the production facility as well. Nokia was refusing calls at press time. Sven Mole was pretty much adamant that this is the end for the N-Gage as we know it, although Nokia could easily switch N-Gage production elsewhere.

HARDWARE... 

• Stolen AMD CPUs spotted in Croatia? -Crotian journalist Theo Valich claims that you can buy stolen AMD CPUs in his home land of Croatia. You can buy Athlon XP 2600+, 2800+, 3000+ and 3200+ B grade CPUs all based on the Bsrton core. They are all about %15 to $20 cheaper than you would have to pay for non "B grade" CPUs.
• NVIDIA Ships Entry-Level GeForce 6 for AGP Bus - NVIDIA Corp. quietly announced it had begun shipments of its entry-level GeForce 6200 visual processor units for AGP 8x bus.
• Intel's dual-core CPUs to set new record high in power consumption - Intel's upcoming dual-core processors once again will test the limits of power consumption. According to documents seen by Tom's Hardware Guide, the Smithfield CPUs are rated at a thermal design power of 130 watts, an increase of 13 percent from today's Prescott processors.
• Ultra High Performance Memory Roundup A64 Socket 939 - While socket 754 is certainly not dead, the upgrade path to socket 939 was eased with the rollout of Winchester core CPUs coming in at price points starting at $150. The Athlon 64 for socket 939 enjoys a dual channel memory controller versus its 754 brother that makes due with a single channel controller. While the single channel controller is not the performance albatross that some might think, every little bit helps, and a few percentage points here and there can add up in the end.
• AOpen i855GMEm-LFS motherboard - TrustedReviews take a look at the AOpen i855GMEm-LFS which is a motherboard for Pentium M processors.
• GeForce 6600 GT Video Card Round-up - Personally, I felt MSI offered the best all round packages sporting the best performing cooling solution on one of the best looking PCB boards. The card also comes at a very affordable price tag of $210 US and easily offers the biggest range of software titles. The MSI NX6600GT-VTD128E really is an impressive board that is well worth every penny.
• Albatron GeForce 6600GT PCIe - Albatron GeForce 6600GT comes in two flavors, the PC6600GT and the PC6600GTV, the only difference between the two being the PC6600GTV's VIVO capability. We'll be reviewing the PC6600GT and comparing it to the XFX GeForce 6600GT, as well as ATI's mid-ranged Radeon X700 Pro graphics card.
• ATI RADEON X800 XL - However, this is one of these value for money products that will kick your PC's gaming ass for real. It offers twice the performance over the Radeon 9800 Pro series for example.
• OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU - Legit Reviews has posted a review of the OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU.
• Zoom ZoomTel X5v 5565 VoIP ADSL Router - The most impressive aspect of this Zoom is the quality of the VoIP calls, although I only made a few VoIP calls - this was due to the fact that I only had one other person to call, and that was thanks to Zoom supplying me with two units. All the calls were crystal clear with no background noise. Add to this the fact that you can use a normal handset, and not have to even power your PC on, and the ZoomTel starts to look pretty attractive.
• Logitech MX1000 - Please note that the CCD sensor in the MX1000 is the same as in the MX510. It has a resolution of 30x30 pixels and a "processing" rate of 5.8 MPixels/second. 5,800,000 / (30 * 30) = 6444 images captured and processed per second. Not bad. The MX300/500/700 samples 5250 images/second. The movement information is broken down into a stream of 125 packets/second to the host pc. Typical cordless mice run at 60 packets/second or less.
• Belkin Wireless Keyboard and Ergo Optical Mouse  - Dev Shed take a look at the Belkin Wireless Keyboard and Ergo Optical Mouse, which they hope will remedy the situations described above.
• PistolMouse FPS - Despite its shortcomings, the PistolMouse is an exceptional mouse for $39.99. But when it comes to features and software, this unit is as basic as a mouse can get. So those who love to tweak their mouse to their liking outside of a game or running program, you may want to look elsewhere. However, if you just want to have a sturdy, reliable mouse, that just oozes cool, then the PistolMouse is a welcome addition to any gaming rig.
• Saitek Cyborg Evo Wireless Joystick  - TheTechLounge checked out the Saitek Cyborg Evo Wireless Joystick
• Samsung SyncMaster 711T 17" LCD Monitor - Compared to the multifunctional Samsung SyncMaster 192MP 19" Display reviewed earlier on BFR, the 711T gets back to the basics offering just two input modes at an extremely high contrast ratio of 1000:1. For those unfamiliar with the term, the "contrast ratio" is the measurement of the difference in light intensity between the brightest white and the blackest black. While most 17-inch LCDs today offer 600:1 contrast ratios, the SyncMaster 711t provides a super-high 1000:1 contrast ratio.
• Vosonic Xs Drive Super VP6210 - Not only is the VP6210 a music and video player, but it is also a portable storage device capable of reading over 10 types of portable digital data cards. Capable of playing four video formats (to include MPEG, MOV, and AVI) as well as four audio formats, this Multimedia Viewer is capable of fulfilling the needs of most high demand users. With amazing features and capabilities, the VP6210 is amazing; however, if anything is lacking in this product it is battery life.

GUIDES...

• Athlon 64 Overclocking - AuphanOnline.com has posted an article on Athlon 64 Overclocking.
• Driver XP - A Windows XP Driver Guide v1.0.1 - Installing the latest drivers improves system performance and application compatibility. Updated drivers include numerous bug fixes as well as system optimizations.
• Catalyst 5.1 Driver Comparison - TweakTown compared Catalyst drivers 5.1 against the two previous versions (4.11 and 4.12) in their usual array of benchmarks.
• ATI CATALYST 5.1 Performance Analysis - Also Hexus.net has posted its "ATI CATALYST 5.1 Performance Analysis". Yet another comparsion can be found on rage3d.
• RAIDers of the Lost Benchmark  - XYZ Computing has just posted a new article called "RAIDers of the Lost Benchmark".

SOFTWARE...

• Total Commander v6.50 final - Total Commander (download ~ changelog) is a file manager for Windows. This new version features "Two file windows side by side", multiple language support, enhanced search function, compare files / synchronize directories function, Quick View panel with bitmap display, ZIP, ARJ, LZH, RAR, UC2, TAR, GZ, CAB, ACE archive handling + plugins, Built-in FTP client with FXP (server to server) and HTTP proxy support, Parallel port link, multi-rename tool, Tabbed interface, regular expressions, history+favorites buttons and humbnails view, custom columns, enhanced search.
• Picasa 2 - Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you know. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups.
• Harden-It - Harden-It is a Network and System hardening tool for Windows, by hardening the IP stack your Network can sustain or completely thwart various sophisticated network attacks.  The program allows you Harden your server's TCP and IP stack (Netbios, ICMP, SYN, SYN-ACK..), Protect your servers from Denial of Service and other network based attacks,Enable SYN flood protection when an attack is detected, Set the threshold values that are used to determine what constitutes an attack, etc.
• TaskInfo 6.0.1.130 (shw)-  TaskInfo2003 is combination of Task Manager and System Information Utility, It visually monitors different types of System information in Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
• FileZilla 2.2.10 - FileZilla (download) is powerful Open Source FTP/SFTP client with many features. It includes a site manager to store all your connection details and logins as well as an Explorer style interface that shows the local and remote folders and can be customized independently.
• Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.6 - Whether you're an Expert or Standard user, Nero 6 Reloaded (mirror1 ~ mirror2 ~ mirror3) makes your digital media projects a breeze to complete. To get the major update of Nero 6 Ultra Edition Major Update – Version 6.6, you will have to download all 6 update-packages. If you are only interested in the update of Nero Version 6.6, please download package 1 and package 2 in order to get the full functionality.
• Codec Pack 1.8.0.141 - X Codec Pack is an small/essential codec pack for viewing/encoding movies. It includesDivX Codec, XviD Codec, AC3 Filter, DivX AntiFreeze, DivXG400 and Video Inspector.
• VideoInspector 1.2.2.72 - VideoInspector is a tools designed to provide you with as much information as possible about your video files.
• DU Meter 3.0.7 Build 196 - DU Meter is an award winning utility from Hagel Technologies which provides an accurate account of the data which is flowing through your computer`s network connection at any given moment. This readout is presented in both numerical and graphical format, in real time.
• Style XP 3.0 (shw) - Style XP (download) is theming software that helps customize the way your Windows XP, Windows XP Service Pack 1, Tablet PC, or Server 2003 system looks.
• Intell Installation Utility 6.3.0.1007 - A new release of the Intel Chipset Installation Utility is now available which includes latest software for Intel USB, PCI, IDE, ATA and AGP chipsets.
• VIA Vinyl Stylus Audio driver v580a - This driver supports all VIA southbridges with integrated sound plus several audio codecs.
• VIA Audio (Envy 24 Family only) driver v442a - This driver supports VIA Vinyl Envy24 controllers: MT/DT/GT/PT/HT-S ( Envy24GT Envy24HT-S Envy24MT Envy24PT )
• VIA Ethernet (VT82xx) driver 40F - This driver supports South Bridge integrated VT8231, VT8233, VT8235 & VT8237 ( VT6107 VT610731 VT8233/A/C VT8235 VT8237 ) and VT6107 Rhine Fast Ethernet Controller ( VT6106H VT6106L VT6106S
• VIA Ethernet (VT6105/L/LOM and VT6106) driver version - 24 - This driver supports VT6105/L/LOM and VT6106 series Rhine Fast Ethernet Controllers ( VT6105 VT6105L VT6105LOM ).
• Intel Pro 100/1000 drivers 9.2 -  Intel has released version 9.2 (Win2k/XP ~ Win9x/ME ~ NT40) for their Pro100 and Pro1000 series network adapters.
• ATI Optimized Driver v1.9 - TCMag designed this driver to provide the maximum performance and Quality. Features: Based on the offical Catalyst WHQL 5.1, Removed OpenGL selection prompt (avaliable in the start menu), OpenGL Driver switcher has been updated, Few Bug fixes, Installer has been fixed, Added ATITool 0.23 to the package.
• Forceware 67.66 Win2K/XP official beta - For Windows 2000/XP, this is an official Beta NVIDIA release as found on their FTP servers.

SECURITY...

• Scots man held over DDoS charges -  27 year-old man suspected of launching denial of service attacks is to appear in a Scottish court today following his arrest on Friday, 14 January in a joint operation between Scottish police and the US Secret Service. Police searched housesin Elgin, north east Scotland and seized some computers.
• Gambling Sites Battle DDoS Attacks - Many of the gambling sites suffering DDoS attacks are in offshore data and hosting centres, so any large scale data flood could knock out access to many more sites than just the one the criminals were targeting, said Mr King. This overspill effect was only likely to grow as attacks grow in size and scale.
• BREED's game servers vulnerable - The game server can be easily crashed through the sending of an empty UDP packet. In fact if the packet size is equal to zero, the game passes a NULL pointer to the function used to parse the packet's content.
• Apple iTunes Playlist Parsing Buffer Overflow Vulnerability - Remote exploitation of a buffer overflow vulnerability in Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music player allows attackers to execute arbitrary code. The problem specifically exists when parsing playlist files that contain long URL file entries.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Welcome to Titan - After a seven-year, four-million-kilometre journey, the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Huygens probe is now sitting on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The probe landed on Titan's surface Jan 14, 350 years after it was discovered. The probe has begun sending data, including first pictures and audio, which sounds like some celestial heartbeat. ~ Titan's orange squash has scientists gasping / Color Photos Reveal Details of Titan's Surface
• Religions in World of Warcraft? - Landover Baptist Church say (thanks Slashdot) Christian game enthusiasts around the U.S.A. are turning the world of Azeroth inside the new video game, "World of Warcraft" into a mission field, where virtual battles are fought and real souls are won to the Lord Jesus Christ.
• EA Considering Sims TV Show - Reuters is carrying the news that Electronic Arts is considering creating a television show based on "The Sims". The show would allow viewers to vote on what the avatars in the show would do: "One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show."
• Celebrity Soundboards - There're various audio clips/quotes from celebrities in TV shows and/or movies.
• Biology Meets Microchips to Make Tiny Robots - Rat cells grown onto microscopic silicon chips worked as tiny robots, perhaps a first step toward a self-assembling device, researchers working in the United States reported on Sunday. They described a new method for attaching living cells to silicon chips. They then and got the combined entities to move like tiny, primitive legs
• One last, long campout for "the Star Wars guy" - Jeff Tweiten lives on a periwinkle blue, fold-out futon on the sidewalk in front of the Cinerama Theatre. He is not homeless, but camping out for 139 days. Waiting. For Godot, you wonder? An organ transplant? The end of the world? Tweiten is waiting for "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which opens May 19.

TECHNOLOGY...

• OpenOffice.org Mac OS X Delivery Schedule - No engineering work has been performed on Quartz or Aqua development within the OpenOffice.org project since mid 2003. For the last year and a half all engineering work focusing on a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org version has been concentrated in the NeoOffice/J project, using a combination of Java and Carbon technologies to replace X11.
• Microsoft, Alcatel team to make calls from the desktop - French telecommunications company Alcatel Thursday said it has signed a deal with Microsoft to help develop applications that allow users to make phone calls from their computers. Istanbul is the front-end application for Microsoft's upcoming Live Communications Server 2005 product, which links LCS 2005 with users' telephones.
• Sony PSP "update" adds office apps, browser, email - Sony may be preparing to release its first PlayStation Portable (PSP) update, if a file that briefly appeared on the web this weekend is what it purports to be: a leaked copy of an early version of the update code. Whatever its provenance, the software certainly includes some interesting features. In addition to the usual bug fixes, the update is said to add not only a web browser and an email program, but a word processor and a spreadsheet. At this stage, the translations from the original Japanese exploration of the alleged PSP update file doesn't make it clear whether these are fully functioning office apps - or simply readers put in place to handled emailed attachments. Given the device's nature, we suspect that latter, but early talk of a PSP keyboard accessory has led some observers to suggest they're the real thing.
• Apple hoping music fans follow iPod to Mac mini computers - The diminutive Mac mini, available after Jan. 22, is a full-blown computer, complete with a 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256 megabytes of RAM and a 40 gigabyte hard drive. But the price tag and lunch-box-sized packaging include no room for peripherals of any kind. Consumers can, however, spend an extra $100 for a double-sized 80 gigabyte hard drive and a slightly faster 1.42 GHz chip. Or, as some naysayers are noting, consumers can spend around $599 on an entry-level Dell or Gateway system, which would include a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
• Dual-Layer Standard May Disappear Soon - Dual-Layered (DL) DVD writers may be affordable, but the question of concern is the media prices. The price per DL media averages out to $10.00, which is shockingly high. We talked to manufacturers at this year's CES about prices and what they thought about DL media in general. The replies we received were far from positive and disappointing. According to a few blank media providers, DL standard may not have a bright future ahead of it. The reason is the upcoming Blu-Ray and HD DVD standards that are supported by world's top most corporations. Due to the aforementioned standards, DL simply appears to be redundant and more of a filler in the industry until Blu-Ray and HD DVD emerge in mass quantities. As far as prices are concerned, you can probably expect them to drop $6.00 to $4.00 per disc, but not much lower than that.

HARDWARE... 

• 754 pin AMD mobile Semprons range complete - Japanase site Akiba PC Hotline said that socket 754 mobile Sempron chips at ratings of 2600+, 2800+ and 3000+ are for sale. These chips, according to site, consume 62W and are for sale at Y10,800 (~$105), Y13,800 (~$135) and Y14,800 (~$145) respectively.
• Logitech readies top gaming mouse - Logitech is about to change gaming peripherals once again with a new mouse. One of the things it did not announce at CES was the new 518 mouse. This successor to the MX510 gaming mouse combines the best of the older one, the laser technology from the MX1000, and has a new twist. The twist is adjustable DPI, intended for the gamer. The 518 has a hardware switch that will instantly change the sensitivity from 800 to 1200 to 1600DPI.
• Abit's Fatal1ty-AA8XE motherboard - At over $220 online, the Fatal1ty-AA8XE is far from cheap, but it's no more expensive than other premium 925XE motherboards. With plenty of OTES cooling, a decent cable bundle, a tweak-filled BIOS, and uGuru delivering the best hardware monitoring around, the Fatal1ty-AA8XE is definitely a premium board worthy of any Pentium 4 overclocking enthusiast.
• Winfast NF4UK8AA-8ERKS NF4 Ultra Board - This board, NF4UK8AA-8EKRS supports the Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64 processor, 4 GB DDR400, USB 2.0, PCI Express 16x, 8 ch audio, 1394, GbE LAN, NVRAID, SATA. The board also comes built in with overclocking features like voltage adjustments for VDIMM, VCORE, Vhtt. FSB is adjustable to 300MHz.
• Sapphire Radeon X800 (R430) - One thing that can be noted on this board is that it features full 2ns GDDR3 RAM, which is the same RAM used on the X800 XL and numerous other higher end boards. Given that X800's RAM is only running at 350MHz this represents a fairly serious underclock of that RAM and board vendors could very well just utilise DDR memory closer to those ratings. As such, while we believe initial board samples will use 2ns GDDR3 RAM this may not continue further into the lifetime of the board.
• ATI Radeon X800 Pro - Viper Lair has posted a review of the ATI Radeon X800 Pro
• Asus Extreme N6800 GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe - Even in single card scenarios, the GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe proves itself to be a faster overall card compared to ATI’s Radeon X800 XT, although this may be a hollow victory. ATI’s next generation Radeon X850 XT cards will be shipping in early February and will likely give ATI the performance edge to best the 6800 Ultra in single card systems. When SLI is added to the mix though, there is simply no question that dual 6800 Ultra PCIe cards perform much faster. Keep in mind though, in order to truly see the performance benefits of such a high-end SLI system, resolutions and image quality settings must be set at ultra-high levels.
• LG GSA-4163B Triple Format Double Layer DVD Writer - This one-of-a-kind triple format DVD writer gained quite a bit of interest since its release. The successor to the 4120B was the 4160B, which did not bring enough new features worth an upgrade consideration. LG Electronics has recently released their latest DVD writer, the GSA-4163B. This new drive finally offers 4x double layer writing and should compete well with all other 4x double layer writers currently on the market.
• Seagate 5GB Pocket Hard Drive -  While it is not as small as a USB flash drive, it is extremely portable and convenient thanks to its retractable USB cable.
• Corsair Flash Voyager Flash Memory Drive - Adrian Rojak take a look at the Corsair Flash Voyager USB flash memory drive. In particular, the 512MB model.
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LGA775 P4 Heatpipe Cooler - Tweaknews.net has posted a review of Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LGA775 P4 Heatpipe Cooler.
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 review - The Freezer 64 utilizes a patented fan that creates almost no noise. Hopefully, this heatsink will be just as effective as their VGA Silencers were.
• Superpower XP03P Gaming Case - Hi-techreviews.com has posted a review of the Superpower XP03P Gaming Case which looks like something betwen a Power Mac G5 and a Star Wars battle pack.
• Thermaltake Xpeaker Panel - MikhailTech take a look at Thermaltake's bold attempt at a decent built-in speaker system dubbed the Xpeaker.
• PolarFLO TT AMD, Intel Water Block - These PolarFLO TT water block kits come with all the necessary fixings & screws/spacers to install including the necessary 'Y' tube adapter.
• Buffalo USB WiFi Adapter - Although the WLI-U2-KG54AI-3 doesn't have any flash storage that you can make use of, it does have 4MB of storage embedded, and it's here that the drivers are stored. When you plug the device into your USB port, it recognises the 4MB storage area as a CD-ROM with an ISO image on it. The WLI-U2-KG54AI-3 then initiates some kind of ISO extraction utility, and loads the drivers seamlessly.
• BatteryFree Wireless Optical Mouse - PDAToday has posted a review of the NB-30 BatteryFree Wireless Optical Mouse and EasyGo Optical Mouse From A4 Tec.
• Lexmark P6250 All-in-One Inkjet printer, scanner, fax - Being a multifunction device, and a photo-orientated one at that, the P6250 comes with quite a bit of software. There's the All-in-One Centre, which offers easy access to a series of common tasks, such as transferring images to your PC from the card reader or scanner, sending images via email and, of course, viewing and printing them.
• Dell Axim X50v PDA - There are three new Axims in the X50 range - a basic one offering a 416Mhz processor, a QVGA screen, 64MB of ROM and Bluetooth - a 520MHz version with 128MB of ROM and integrated Wi-Fi - and at the top-of-the-range, and the X50v, which offers a 620MHz CPU and a 3.7in screen boasting full VGA (480 x 640) resolution. Dell is also now offering a bundle with a GPS solution as well.

GUIDES...

• TI-Calculator Turbo Page - Curently, the TI-81, TI-82, TI-83, TI-85, TI-86, TI-89, TI-92,a nd TI-92 Plus can be accelerated. The 81, 85 and 86 can be accelerated to approximately 2-3x their normal speed, about 18 MHz. The TI-82 and TI-83 can also be accelerated to about 1.5-2x normal speed. They only about double their speed to around 12 MHz. The TI-89 and 92 can be accelerated to around 20 MHz!
• Medium Business Guide for Backup and Recovery v 1.0 - This guide provides referential guidance on implementing techniques to protect against data loss due to hardware failures, software corruption, or accidental deletion.

SOFTWARE...

• Novell offers free SuSE 9.2 download - Novell said it is making SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 available as a free download. Novell said the version differs from the LiveDVD version, is a fully installable version, and is not time limited. (thanks DistroWatch)
• Bugzilla 2.18 Goes Gold - Bugzilla is server software designed to help you manage software development. It contains many new features, a huge number of bug fixes, some security updates, and more. It is also the first Bugzilla version to run unmodified on Windows. In parallel, security release 2.16.8 and a new development snapshot 2.19.2 have been announced.
• Delete Doctor 1.1 - Delete files that are difficult to delete, such as some files left by viruses and trojans, or files with corrupted file names. This program can also delete files like the "index.dat" files, which store Internet history, by scheduling them for deletion upon system restart.
• GMail Drive 1.0.5 - GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.
• CloneDVD v2.6.2.3 - Elby/SlySoft has released an updated version of the CloneDVD. This latest version addresses a problem with the automatic update check, that was introduced in the previous CloneDVD version.
• SpeedFan 4.20 - SpeedFan (download) is a freeware program that monitors fan speeds, temperatures and voltages in computers with hardware monitoring chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature (almost all :-)) and show hard disk temperatures too, if supported
• Koepi`s XviD Codec 1.1.0 Beta 1 - XviD (download) is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. It`s no product, it`s an open source project which is developed and maintained by lots of people from all over the world.
• 3dfx Voodoo 3/4/5 alpha 22 (SFFT) - Did you know it's still possible to play Half-life 2 and Doom 3 on an old 3dfx card? For the few of you still running them, there are some new 3dfx Voodoo 3/4/5 Alpha SFFT drivers. These drivers are Windows 2000/XP compatible and I've recompressed the archive towards 1,7 MB. The archive has both Windows 2000/XP drivers for 3dfx Voodoo 3, 4 and 5 graphics cards.
• ForceWare 70.78 Win2000/XP - Originally released as Quadro fx1400 drivers from Dell this is a NVIDIA Forceware driver targeted at the professional cards. The .inf file has been modified to make these drivers compatible with all graphics cards. This set is not WHQL, ), nView comes in a seperate directory with it's own setup file. The drivers are date stamped on the 23rd of November.

SECURITY...

• Worm plays games with victims - The worm, known as Cellery.A, uses a playable version of the Russian video game to attract victims. While people play Tetris, the worm attempts to spread to networked hard drives and other accessible systems on a company's network that use the Microsoft Windows operating system, the firm stated in an advisory.
• Froogle/Gmail Hack Warning - An Israeli hacker has uncovered a flaw in Froogle, Google's price-comparison service, which could allow access to users' Gmail accounts. Nir Goldshlager, who discovered the flaw, warned that URL-embedded Javascript could end up causing personal information to be revealed. If users execute the script by clicking a link, they would be redireted to a malicious website. From there, hackers can read a user's cookie. It may contain personal information, such as purchase histories, or the username and password used to access Google services - such as Gmail.
• Are feds spying on web users' browsing?  - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI and other divisions of the Department of Justice (DoJ). The EFF said that it wants to the government departments to disclose whether they have been using provisions of the US Patriot Act to spy on Internet users' browsing without taking out a search warrant. In a statement, the EFF said that Section 216 allows the government to track pen registers or trap and trace devices, known as pen traps. These pen traps collect information about phone numbers dialled, but don't record their content.
• Microsoft: No Plans to Tweak DRM Download Mechanism - Microsoft Corp. says it has no plans to change the way its Windows Media Player handles the download of DRM licenses. Security experts warn that crackers are rigging .wmv files to use the DRM (digital rights management) features of Windows Media Player to browse sites infested with malware. The WMP software includes an option to "acquire licenses automatically for protected content." When a user tries to play a DRM-protected file, the software triggers an Internet Explorer browser session and walks the user through the installation process.
• Secure your Emails - for FREE - Munich-based Company Ciphire Labs today released a new version of their "Ciphire Mail". This is an email-encryption tool, which uses standard, well-known cryptographic algorithms.  It works in conjunction with your existing email client. Ciphire Mail operates seamlessly in the background and does not interfere with normal emailing routines. It encrypts and decrypts email messages, and can digitally sign each message to provide authentication and guard against identity theft. Ciphire Mail is the first out-of-the box solution to match power with ease of use.
• FBI May Have to Scrap New Computer Program - The FBI said on Thursday it may have to scrap a new $170 million computer program designed to allow agents to share information instantly and fix a main problem identified after the Sept. 11 attacks. The software is already outdated and inadequate, with the bureau able to use only about one-tenth of the program, an FBI official said on condition of anonymity.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Upgrade Planned To "Tron" V2.0 - Dark Horizons is reporting that there will be a remake of "Tron" movie, the 1982 film about a computer programmer who gets sucked into the world of a computer program. Lee Sternthal said the new conceit is that the computer programmer gets trapped in a cyberworld, so that the film can utilize the Internet.
• Boring Becomes Elektra - It's not as bad as Catwoman, but the superhero/martial-arts flick Elektra certainly could use a little more juice.
• Titanic Voyage Reaches Its End - After a seven-year trek covering 2 billion miles, the Huygens probe lands on Saturn's mysterious moon Titan. Now a short period of intense work begins
• "Smashing hole" in comet may reveal key to solar system - The "smashing" of a hole in a far away comet by a NASA spacecraft July 4 this year might reveal frozen remains from the early years of the formation of the solar system, reports Xinhua.  According to scientists, NASA's 'Deep Impact' spacecraft will "smash" a hole in Comet Tempel 1, which is about 132 million km away from the earth, at a speed of 37,000 kmph. The craft, launched Wednesday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will release a 372-kg projectile one day before the craft runs into the comet.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Macworld Conference & Expo 2005 - The Macworld Conference and Expo 2005 opened this morning with a keynote by Apple Computer Inc.'s CEO, Steve Jobs. Jobs eased his way into the keynote with a quick update of Apple's worldwide retail presence which has grown to 101 stores since 3.5 years ago. Jobs noted that the stores serve over a million visitors a week - "that's 20 Macworlds a week," Jobs said.
• 2004 Digest: Mobile Technologies and Communications - Let's start our summary by checking how much the number of mobile users changed. If you remember, it was a mobile phone that was listed among the most unloved and still the most useful inventions of mankind.
• Samsung Phone Senses 3-D Movements - Samsung Electronics has developed a cell phone that can sense movement in three dimensions and respond to those movements by performing actions such as dialing numbers or ending a call, the company says. The SCH-S310's motion sensing system allows users to, for example, draw a number three in the air to dial a three, says Samsung. Shaking the phone twice will end a call or delete a message. Other movement functions programmed into the handset include a sharp move to the right or left to tell the built-in MP3 music player to skip forward or back a track, while drawing a "O" or "X" in the air makes the phone say "Yes" or "No" out loud, the company says.
• Sony PSP to ship in UK on 18 March - Amazon - Sony will release the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in the UK on 18 March. So claims Amazon.co.uk, which has now begun taking pre-orders for the in-demand handheld games console
• Mobile Personal Server - Dual CPUs in Your Pocket - This portable computer plugs into another computer via USB, and regardless of the host's operating system will take over the keyboard, mouse, monitor, and network connections without leaving a trace, providing access your web-enabled applications virtually anywhere. The specs are impressive for such a small unit, featuring dual 425MHz PowerPC processors, 1GB of flash or a 20GB hard drive, and 64MB of DRAM. Security is also embraced with a biometric scanner for file encryption, and a 2048-bit encrypted VPN connection to Realm System's SBOA router allows for updates (or can disable a stolen unit entirely.)

HARDWARE... 

• Intel Preps 3.50GHz Server Chips with 8MB Cache - Intel's Xeon processor family for multiprocessor (MP) applications will finally be updated in Q1 2005 with chips code-named Cranford that contain 1MB of L2 cache, but operate at 3.66GHz, much higher than today's 3.0GHz. In server environments clock-speed does not necessarily mean performance crown, as server software is seriously dependant on cache size and from that perspective Intel's Xeon MP 3.0GHz with 4MB L3 cache may be a better choice for certain types of server deployments.
• Intel's Pentium 4 570J, just shy of 4GHz - Hardware Analysis take a look at the Pentium 4 570J and try to answer the question whether 200MHz extra clockspeed helps it to reign supreme and beat the fastest Intel processor to date - the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz.
• GeIL Ultra Platinum Series PC4200 (DDR533) and PC4400 (DDR550) - These memory modules will be a gift for overclockers due to their ability to work synchronously with the FSB at frequencies up to 280-285MHz. When choosing between these two particular kits, which are actually very similar, you may want to pay special attention to their price as the guiding factor.
• G.SKILL Extreme Series PC4800 512mb Dual Channel Kit - The Extreme Series PC4800 512Mb Dual Channel DDR Kit showed tremendous potential for overclocking. The ability to run at aggressive timings at high speeds is something that overclockers have been waiting for for a long time. Running CAS 2.5-3-3-7 at DDR562 is indeed quite an achievement.
• ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE - The AA8XE is the first motherboard from the ABIT Fatal1ty series of products with official support for Intel's latest 1066MHz based processors. If you are looking for a motherboard that is going to get you the speed crown in every "e-penis" benchmark out there, this motherboard is not for you. If you are wanting a rock solid Pentium 4 gaming platform that will allow you to overclock into MHz territory before unknown, the ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE should be on your very short list.
• MSI NX6600GT-VTD128 Geforce 6600GT AGP Video Card - This card is compatible with 8x/4x AGP motherboards only, and will not physically fit in AGP 2X or earlier slots. It comes equipped with 128MB of Samsung GDDR3 BGA memory on a 128-bit memory bus.
• Dangerden TDX775 Socket 775 Water Block - This is the standard package from Dangerden. It's a white box that covers the block and the accessories. The block is pretty small I have to say and the question is if it will be able to cool the processor as well as the bigger Asetek block. The mounting accessories are packed in a small zip lock bag.
• Verbatim 90X Store 'n' Go PRO USB 2.0 Drive - For reliability, Verbatim's new Store ‘n' Go Pro drives feature an on-board 32 bit ARM-7 microprocessor that manages I/O operations and many of the drive's technical features. An advanced wear-leveling algorithm is used to distribute writes evenly among flash storage cells
• Aspire Chameleon Series 550w PSU - Aspire USA has produced a fine power source with the Chameleon 550w PSU. Strong stable power with a bit of panache. The changeable colors of the LED fan and UV reactive cable sheathing and connectors will be the pride of many windowed case owners. This in addition to the unit's adjustable fan speed and its ability to run virtually silent, make it a top choice for an upgrade or replacement component to anyone's system. The only real negative aspect observed was the restrictive rear exhaust.
• A4Tech Wireless Mouse -  This little optical mouse claims to use the latest wireless RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Technology and to save the environment from pollutants by never using batteries. How cool is that? This mouse gets its juice from the mouse pad via electromagnetic induction.
• HP Photosmart 8450 Printer - We were disappointed that this printer didn't achieve either its black or colour ink-yield claims, falling short by over 100 pages in each case. HP used to be very conservative in its estimates, but its new print cartridges don't hold as much ink as the previous generation and, even with the same test pages, we can't achieve the usage HP does. Even so, the printer produced a text cost of 3.4p per five per cent black page. It isn't the cheapest you can go, but is fair for the quality of print, and the figure of 33.3p for a 20 per cent colour page with photo highlights is also reasonable.
• Commodore 64 DTV - Hexus.net has posted a review of Commodore 64, or rather the new DTV which is essentially the C64 within a retro-style joystick.
• Sony Ericsson V800 cell phone - TrustedReviews take a look at Sony Ericsson V800 3G mobile phone.

GUIDES...

• Driver XP - A Windows XP Driver Guide v1.0.0 - Installing the latest drivers improves system performance and application compatibility. Updated drivers include numerous bug fixes as well as system optimizations. It is recommended for optimal system stability to only use Official drivers and not Beta or Prerelease versions. Performance differences between driver versions including Beta or Prereleased drivers is negligible

SOFTWARE...

• Microsoft Windows Anti-Spyware (beta) Software Review  - Where the Microsoft beta stands head and shoulders above at least the free antispyware apps is in the area of prevention. The real-time protection agents block vulnerable system areas from being subverted by spyware, malware and browser hijacking programs, hopefully preventing most future spyware infestations. This seems like it would be very effective, especially coupled with the (we assume) frequent updates and feedback from the SpyNet community.
• Ciphire Mail tool - Ciphire Mail operates seamlessly in the background and does not interfere with normal emailing routines. It encrypts and decrypts email messages, and can digitally sign each message to provide authentication and guard against identity theft. Ciphire Mail is the first out-of-the box solution to match power with ease of use.
• FirePanel XP 1.5.7.0 - FirePanel XP is an extension of the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 firewall that uses a kernel-mode, stateful packet inspection method.
• VMware 5.0 Build 11888 - VMware Workstation (download) is powerful virtual machine software for the desktop. Optimized for the power user, VMware Workstation runs multiple operating systems -- including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Novell NetWare -- simultaneously on a single PC in fully networked, portable virtual machines.
• MP3 Goes 5.1 - Fraunhofer has released its new MP3 Surround codec (download), allowing full 5.1 audio to be easily compressed and downloaded. And to encourage use of the new format, free encoders are being made available until the end of the year.
• DivXToDVD 0.4.0.67 - DivxToDVD converts your movie files from a wide range of formats (AVI, XVID, MPEG, and DIVX) to compliant DVD structures (VOB and IFO). You can then burn them with CopyToDVD (or other DVD burner) and watch the movie via a DVD Player. At this time DivxToDVD allows to convert a .AVI or .DIVX etc to a compliant DVD format set of files. This way you can watch a Divx or a AVI on a regular home DVD Player.
• OPN64 v0.3.0 - OPN64 (download) is an intelligent program designed specifically to translate the three codes found on, or around the core of AMD Processors. What you can expect the program to do, can be found in either or the screenshots in the screenshots section.
• ForceWare 71.40 Win2000/XP beta  - This is the absolute newest set of unofficial NVIDIA drivers available. The drivers are date stamped on the 16th of December.

SECURITY...

• Hacker penetrates T-Mobile systems - Securityfocus is reporting that a hacker known by the alias "Ethics" successfully penetrated T-Mobile's systems for at least a year. Twenty-one year-old Nicolas Jacobsen was charged last October after an elaborate sting between a Secret Service informant and IRC chatrooms. Jacobsen obtained U.S. Secret Service e-mail, customers' passwords and Social Security numbers, and downloaded candid photos taken by Sidekick users, including Hollywood celebrities like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Nicole Richie, and Paris Hilton. Jacobsen could access information on any of the Bellevue, Washington-based company's 16.3 million customers, including many customers' Social Security numbers and dates of birth, according to government filings in the case. He could also obtain voicemail PINs, and the passwords providing customers with Web access to their T-Mobile e-mail accounts. He did not have access to credit card numbers.
• Bawdy holiday worm preys on prurience - The virus, dubbed by Sophos as Wurmark-D worm (or W32/Wurmark-D), is being distributed via a mass e-mail campaign which offers a New Year's message in the form of an attached photograph of naked bodies. Labeled as an "amusing file," the attachment carries the destructive worm along with a graphic image of naked men and women whose bodies have been aligned to form the words "Happy New Year."
• Hackers use DRM to plant spyware - According to anti-virus vendor Panda Software, two new trojan horses -- dubbed WmvDownloader.a and WmvDownloader.b -- had been planted in video files seeded to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like eMule and KaZaA. The trojans took advantage of a new anti-piracy features in Windows Media Player 10 and Windows XP SP2 to trick users, said Panda. Another article can be found here.
• Windows ANI File Parsing Proof Of Concept - This document demostrate an exploit of vulnerability in USER32.DLL's handling of Windows animated cursor (.ani) files that will allow a remote attacker to reliably overwrite the stack with arbitrary data and execute arbitrary code.
• Gmail glitch yields access to messages - The programmers, part of a community site dedicated to the Unix-like FreeBSD operating system, found that an improperly formatted address allowed Gmail users to retrieve the message body of the last HTML-formatted e-mail processed by the server.
• Finding bugs in software will get you jail - French security researcher who published exploit codes that could take advantage of bugs in an anti-virus application, could be imprisoned for violation of copyright laws.
• The US Army is mad, and gunning for you - A filing on a forum from Phil DeLuca at America's Army game project indicates that the US Army is not at all happy at people s0dding about with its code. DeLuca said that the US Army is very unhappy with hackers and others breaching its licence agreements, and it knows who these people are. He said: "When you tamper with the [America's Army] game not only are you breaking the EULA, you're misusing Army property, and worse, you're misusing US Army computer programs and equipment".
• Microsoft Turns to External Patch Testers - Looking to improve and possibly speed up the creation and release of software security patches, Microsoft Corp. is implementing a closed beta program for external testing teams. The formalization of Redmond's new Security Update Validation Program clears the way for external patch testers to get "limited and controlled access" to security updates ahead of public release.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Robots will win the World Cup by 2050 - Japanese robotic boffins think that by 2050 they will be able to create a team of robots who could beat any international football side.
• NASA craft to study comet - A NASA spacecraft blasted off Wednesday on a six-month trip to smash a hole in a comet and give scientists a glimpse of the frozen primordial ingredients of the solar system. The craft, Deep Impact, should end its 268-million-mile journey to Comet Tempel 1 on July 4. Some hours after takeoff, the spacecraft placed itself in a protective sleep mode because of an unknown problem, and flight controllers were reviewing sensor data, NASA said. The comet will be more than 80 million miles from Earth when the collision takes place -- on the sunlit side of the comet, NASA hopes, in order to ensure good viewing by spacecraft cameras and observatories. The resulting crater is expected to be two to 14 stories deep, and perhaps 300 feet in diameter.
• Early universe bears imprint of Big Bang's echo - The early universe rang with the sound of countless cosmic bells, which filled the primordial darkness with ripples like the surface of a pond pounded by stones. The wave fronts later served as spawning grounds for galaxies, astronomers announced Tuesday.
• First ever earthquake movie created - A pioneering technique using data from GPS receivers has been used to make the first movie of an earthquake. The animation shows the Earth's surface deforming during a magnitude 8.3 quake in September 2003 off the coast of Hokkaido in Japan.

TECHNOLOGY...

• CES 2005 coverage - @ TechReport, @TGH, Photo Report @ HotHardware, @ AnandTech (chipsets, motherboards, and memory), DDR & DDR2 plans, Prototype Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD player
• First details on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2006? - According to AnandTech the next version of the software is definitely going to add support for CableCard, which means you'll be able to plug digital cable directly into the box and natively record HDTV programming. Windows Media Center XP 2005 did add support for HDTV tuner cards, but they're only able to record over the air HDTV broadcasts.
• Multi-chip packages to power Sony PlayStation Portable - Samsung Electronics today unveiled multi-chip package (MCP) technology which will be incorporated into Sony Corporation's PlayStation Portable (PSP) game system and and next generation consumer devices. With a MCP processing rate of 1.3GB per second, the MCP devices supplied for the Sony PSP have a capacity of 64 megabytes and consist of 256 Mb NAND flash memory and high-speed mobile DDR (double-data-rate) DRAM memory.
• Samsung developed new digital TV receiver chip - Samsung Electronics announced developed a new digital TV receiver chip, that enables digital TV receivers to acquire and track signals in harsh environments such as multi-path channel conditions, dynamic conditions with multiple signal variations and where the overall receiving capability is weak.
• Digital Cameras: How Low Can You Go? - For less than $100, you can expect to get a digital camera with very limited features. The lens is likely to be fixed-focus, which means that it tries to keep the entire universe in focus at the same time but can't do justice to any one part of it, resulting in poor-quality (andr potentially grainy or blurry) pictures. Most sub-$100 cameras lack an LCD, too, forcing you to rely on an optical or electronic viewfinder to frame shots.

HARDWARE... 

• NVIDIA adds AGP, PCI-E graphics card variations - NVIDIA has added new AGP and PCI Express graphics products to its lineup. For budget-minded gamers, the GeForce 6600 AGP will face off against the Radeon 9600 XT in the $149-$199 price range. The 6600 AGP carries a core clock of 300MHz and memory clocked between 250 and 275MHz, depending on board manufacturer discretion.  For PCI-E, NVIDIA has introduced the GeForce 6800 LE PCI Express. Cards will be priced between $229 and $279, right between ATI's new Radeon X800 and X800XL. The 6800 LE PCI-E is clocked at 325MHz core and 300MHz memory and comes with a 256-bit memory bus and full SLI support.
• Cinego D-1000 instant theater DLP projector with DVD player - This is an all-in-one, plug and play portabe DLP projection system. It features an integral DVD player, speakers and even a detached subwoofer. This would be ideal if you are just living in an apartment or are even in a dorm room, whatever, you can just whip this puppy out and in minutes, you are watching your movies on the big screen.
• Mesh Elite 560 DVI-Xtreme PC - The core of the Elite 560 DVI-Xtreme is quite easy to guess, as the model name refers to the CPU, a Pentium 4 560 3.6GHz processor. To accompany the processor, Mesh has included a generous complement of RAM - 2GB of Samsung PC4200 533MHz DDR2 memory in a four by 512MB module configuration. The only downside to this is that there are no free memory slots, but 2GB of memory should be good enough for a fair while.
• Corsair XMS Xpert Preview - Hexus.net take a brief look at a sample of the evolution of the XMS line, in the form of the XMS Xpert range. Final speeds and latencies haven't yet been decided for these products but, to be honest, that isn't what makes these memory modules unique...
• EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra Mainboard - EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra is going to be an interesting product due to the chipset used and the efforts of the EPoX engineers invested into its development. Combining a lot of useful features with excellent overclockability, this mainboard is going to make a good buy (we think its price won't be very high).
• Abit v Epox - Socket 939 - Bit-Tech have 2 motherboards sporting AMD's Socket 939. The first, Abit's AV8 3rd Eye, uses Via's K8T800Pro chipset. The second, Epox's 9NDA3+, uses the Nvidia Nforce 3 Ultra. They are pitting these two together to see which works out the better - whilst both Via and Nvidia have announced successors to the chipsets we're working with here, you'll still be hard pressed to actually buy them
• NVIDIA GeForce 6200 - Beyond3D takes a look at NVIDIA's NV43 based (non-TurboCache) GeForce 6200. Another review can be found on Digit-Life,
• XFX GeForce 6600GT PCIe -  In VRZone tests without Anti-Aliasing turned on, the GeForce 6600GT is clearly the fastest card, running every game tested from Doom 3 to Unreal Tournament 2004 faster than the ATI Radeon X700 Pro. However, when Catalyst A.I. is turned on and combined with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering in high resolution gaming tests, the benchmark results flip towards ATI's corner. This happens in every game we tested except for in Doom 3, where the GeForce 6600GT runs .7 FPS faster than the Radeon X700 Pro with AA and AF turned on at 1600x1200x32.
• Sapphire Radeon X850 XT PE - Just to recap briefly, the X850 XT PE, codenamed R480, is a 16 pixel-pipeline and six vertex pipeline VPU, backed up by 256MB of GDDR3 memory. Unlike the recent X800 XL, which has been shrunk to 0.11 Micron process, this part is still based on TSMC 0.13 Micron process. However, experience has enabled ATI and TSMC to optimise the process enabling higher clock speeds to be achieved. The core is running at a new high for ATI of 540MHz, while the memory is up to 590MHz or 1.18GHz effective.
• LG GSA-4163B DVD recorder - LG GSA-4163B DVD is excellent DVD±R/RW/+R9 DL and CD-R recorder, which also support the DVD-RAM format.
• Seagate ST650211USB HDD - The release of this pocket storage device from Seagate into the market offers users a much broader choice of solutions like that, because there haven't been that many of the in the market so far.
• Corsair Flash Voyager USB 2.0 Drive - Corsair has done a good job with the Flash Voyager drives. They are the fastest USB Flash drives I have looked at. The software security feature is nice since it does let you look at both the secure and unsecure partitions at the same time. The rubber covering of the drive provides the drive with a protective cover that keeps the device from damage from water and being banged around.
• Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4 Pro - 3DVelocity has posted a review of the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4 Pro sound card.
• SilenX 400w 0dBA Luxurae PSU - The SilenX website says that this power supply can to operate for 100K Hours @ 25C MTBF (mean time between failures) which basically means the average time before the device fails. The lifespan of this system will be lower in most situations since your temperature is normally going to be higher than 25C. Some features added to protect your system include: Short-Circuit Protection on Outputs, Over Voltage Protection (3.3V/4V 5V/6V 12V/14V), and Over Power Protection (105%~150% of max load). Along with these nice features this power supply uses a passive PFC (Power Factor Control).
• Thermaltake PurePower 680W Power Supply - From my experience, the Thermaltake PurePower 680W seems like a very solid power supply. It offers more than enough connectors, a great finish, colorfully sleeved cables, and plenty of stable power. In addition, it features three +12V rails that provide 38A of power. An SLI system would require a lot of power, and the PurePower 680W might just fit the bill nicely in the right case.  
• ATake Pipe VGA For Dual Heat-Pipe VGA Cooling Kit - BigBruin.Com has posted a review of the ATake Pipe VGA For Dual Heat-Pipe VGA Cooling Kit.
• MSI SW8G 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch - PC Stats has posted a review of a MSI SW8G 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch.
• Altec Lansing MX-5021 speaker system - These speakers are a 2.1 channel, THX certified set of speakers designed for high quality audio listening and even a bit of gaming.
• I-Rocks X-slim Keyboard - Small, clean and generally understated in appearance; this keyboard will look equally at home on a desk in your office or in front of a tricked out gaming system.

GUIDES...

• Understanding audio compression: MP3, WMA, Ogg, and more - A digital copy, however, is not a "curvy line". Instead, it's similar to a bar graph, or "connect the dots" depending on how you choose to display the end result. There is a series of singular points of data, with only certain available values for both. The scale along the bottom follows regular intervals, depending on the sampling rate.
• RAID 0 - good or bad for games? - RAID arrays still has dominance when it comes to professional multimedia applications. It offers *much* faster I/O performance then a stand alone drive. The advent of SATA could be a herald of some technology breakthrough looming in the not-too-distant future. When you add Native Command Queuing into the mix the performance only increases.
• 5 Reasons to Update Windows XP to Service Pack 2 - BigBruin.Com has posted 5 Reasons to Update Windows XP to Service Pack 2.
  Windows XP Tweaking Companion - Version 1.02 Update - The Windows XP Tweaking Companion (XPTC) has been updated to Version 1.02. The changes in this version are minor, mainly improvements in formatting and some minor tweak revisions and clarifications.
• Doom 3 Performance results - OnlyNewZ selected in total 32 different cards, 14 NVIDIA cards and 18 ATI cards. 23 cards are AGP and 9 cards are PCI-Express.
• NVIDIA Forceware Comparison (61.77 - 66.93 - 67.03 - 67.50) - NVIDIA Forceware Comparison (61.77 - 66.93 - 67.03 - 67.50) NVIDIA released some new drivers lately on NVIDIA nZone and ofcourse the latest official 66.93 WHQL drivers. The drivers have new features, performance improvements and ofcourse several bugfixes for games and more. Also a good brief description of known issues associated with the official released drivers is included to inform the users about bugs that could appear with different configurations in certain applications.
• Basic Applied Cryptography - The Tech Zone has posted a guide on Basic Applied Cryptography.

SOFTWARE...

• Windows XP Professional X64 Edition RC1 review - Unfortunately, there is still the lingering matter of driver and software incompatibility issues. Much like there were compatibility issues when moving from 16-bit Windows to 32-bit Windows variants, we will also see some when moving to 64-bit. Microsoft's WoW64 system does an incredible job of letting you run 32-bit software at full speed in a 64-bit environment, but there are still edge case scenarios where 32-bit software won't work off the bat. The 64-bit driver situation is looking pretty good so far, and most platforms will have necessary 64-bit driver support when the OS is released.
• Update for Windows XP (KB890831) - After you install Windows XP SP2 and then try to run MSN Messenger, the input method editor (IME) may not respond or run as expected. Dowload patch.
• Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter Update - This optional update provides the Junk E-mail Filter in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with a more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered junk e-mail. This update was released in January 2005.
• OpenOffice.org for Windows 2.0 (Snapshot Build 1.9.m69) - OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. It establishes the necessary facilities to make this open source technology available to the developer community.
• CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 Updates - CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 Service Pack 1 (download) || CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 12 Full/Upgrade EPS Fix (Multi-lingual) (download)
• The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities (Updated) - There are a lot of great freeware programs out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives.
• Win32Whois 0.9.2 - Win32Whois (download) is a small and efficient Whois client. It is able to retrieve domain information for most of the common TLDs (top level domains). It has it is internal list of servers that it connects to in order to provide a detailed report on a requested domain.
• Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool - The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (download) checks Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 computers for and helps remove infections by specific, prevalent malicious software - including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed
• HyperSnap-DX 5.62.02 (shw) - HyperSnap-DX 5 (download) is a screen capture and image editing tool for MS Windows. It captures screens from standard desktop programs and even those hard-to-grab DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx Voodoo and Glide mode games. HyperSnap-DX 5 can capture frames from many software DVD players and other video playing software
• XP-Antispy 3.93 - XP-AntiSpy (download ~ mirror) is a little utility that let's you disable some built-in update and authetication "features" in WindowsXP. For example, there's a service running in the background wich is called "Automatic Updates". I don't know what this service transfers from my machine to other machines on the internet, especially the MS ones.
• Winamp software updated to v5.08c - According to the changelog this version, 5.08c, fixes a critical security bug (download full ~ lite) so users of Winamp 5 are recommended to upgrade.
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.62 - This new version now also supports the new type of the Sony ARccOS copy protection which was found on movies like Resident Evil - Apocalypse.
• CloneDVD updated to version 2.6.1.3 - Elby has updated its CloneDVD software to version 2.6.1.3 (download). Besides some sound additions and other improvements brings this new version support for 4.85GB Extreme Extended DVD-R.
• VirtualDub 1.6.3 - VirtualDub (download ~ Intel / AMD64 version) is a video capture and processing program. It features fast capturing, process files larger than the 2 gigabyte limit, optimized for linear editing, support for Motion-JPEG, MPEG-1 video and layer 3 audio, real-time and near-realtime video processing, video job queues, and much more.
• Vstudios Xtreme G 67.65 - This is the Valance Studios Xtreme G driver which includes many performance and Image Quality tweaks. These are modified NVIDIA ForceWare drivers for Windows 2000 & XP
• DNA-Force 1.0.7124 - These are modified NVIDIA ForceWare drivers based on the ForceWare 71.24 release.
• ATITool 0.0.23 - ATITool is an overclocking utility designed for ATI video cards. Design target is to write a light-weight application for the enthusiast - so no questionable registry tweaks.

SECURITY...

• Microsoft Virus removal tool TITAN - Starting from January 11th, 2005, Microsoft will provide Windows customers with Malicious Software Removal Tools. New versions of these tools will be available monthly (second Tuesday of every month on the same schedule that Microsoft already delivers other security updates) or more frequently if necessary. Microsoft will provide new versions of this tool updated to remove malicious software that is found to be prevalent for that month. The first version of the tool available in January will be able to remove Blaster, Sasser, MyDoom, DoomJuice, Zindos, Berweb (also known as Download.Ject), Gailbot and Nachi viruses / worms.
• McAfee Calls in Google for Anti-hack Drive - Details such as financial records, passwords and personal information can often accidentally appear on public pages, the firm warned. It believes its new software will help cut down on the problem. It uses Google to conduct a series of searches on a company's website, flagging up any potentially private information as it goes.
• Cell phone virus turns up the heat - Writers have released a virus, known as Lasco.A, that spreads both through wireless connections and by attaching itself to files, antivirus company F-Secure said Monday. Until now, malicious cell phone programs have spread using one mechanism or the other.
• Spammers' New Tactic Upends DNS - One troublesome technique finding favor with spammers involves sending mass mailings in the middle of the night from a domain that has not yet been registered. After the mailings go out, the spammer registers the domain early the next morning. By doing this, spammers hope to avoid stiff CAN-SPAM fines through minimal exposure and visibility with a given domain. The ruse, they hope, makes them more difficult to find and prosecute.
• Software pirate sentenced to 18 months - A Maryland man has been sentenced in Northern Virginia to 18 months for distributing pirated software over the Internet, the Justice Department said Friday. Singh operated a pay-for-access Web site through which he offered pirated copies of business software altered by the removal of copyright protection devices, the department said.
• BeCrypt acquires Data Sentry from Serco - Serco today sold the rights to its Data Sentry security software to BeCrypt, a UK encryption specialist. BeCrypt is an established provider of encryption software to UK police forces and will used Data Sentry to offer higher security for government and defence contractors' mobile devices.

OFF-TOPIC...

• UGO's Top 50 DVDs - check it out
• World of Warcraft Shatters Sales Records - Blizzard Entertainment today announced that World of Warcraft has sold through more than 600,000 units to customers in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The fastest-growing massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) has also shattered all previous concurrency records in North America, achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players during the holiday period.
• New plastic can better convert solar energy - Researchers at the University of Toronto have invented an infrared-sensitive material that's five times more efficient at turning the sun's power into electrical energy than current methods. The discovery could lead to shirts and sweaters capable of recharging our cellphones and other wireless devices, said Ted Sargent, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Philips turns knife over Gates' failed CES demos - Speaking during CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft director of worldwide standards Patt Griffis said that there was an answer to standards problems. "We have that. We call it Windows," Griffis told delegates at the conference session about the battle for control of the digital living room. However, fellow panellist Frans van Houten, CEO of Philips Semiconductor, countered: "Not everybody wants to put Windows in all boxes. Certainly, when we are sitting on the couch and watching TV, we don't want to see that blue screen in front of us."
• A Look Inside the BBC's Network - The BBC have provided the entire internet with a look inside their amazing network. It shows everyone the almighty web power they are with over 40 webservers and 12 firewalls and their 8Gbps intersite connections. (thanks Slashdot.org)
• NVIDIA Will Not Release a New Architecture Until the End of 2005 - Research and investment firm Goldman Sachs said in its recent report it did not expect NVIDIA to release a new graphics architecture earlier than in late 2005 and any significant market share changes between ATI Technologies and NVIDIA. The company said it expected NVIDIA's handset products revenue to grow significantly.
•  Shinco shifts from DVD players to EVD players - Jiangsu Shinco Electronics in view of the continued drop in domestic retail prices of DVD players and problems of royalty payments for exports, has decided to give up manufacturing the product line and shift to production of players based on China's self-developed enhanced versatile disc (EVD) format, according to Chinese makers of DVD players.
• Sirius teams with Microsoft to deliver satellite TV to cars - At the CES Show, Sirius a major satellite radio provider has teamed up with Microsoft to bring satellite TV to the car using the same delivery method as with its satellite radio (requiring no dish). Due to very limited bandwidth on its satellite, it will use Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 compression to fit two to three channels containing premium video content via its satellite. As the main backseat viewers are children, these channels will mainly dedicate their content to children's programming.
• Via to start India LAN gaming push - VIA Technologies is set to promote local area network (LAN)based computer gaming in India. The company has worked on a PC configuration, which is going to be what it claims is a unique offering for India.
• Samsung Develops Eight-Die Multi-Chip Tech - Samsung's new multi-chip (MCP) offers a combined capacity of 3.2 gigabits in a package only 1.4mm thick, the company says, promising a new generation of cell phones and mobile devices that can offer more services and faster Internet surfing.
• AMD unveils 64-bit mobile Turion - AMD today unveiled its latest high-end mobile processor, the Turion 64. Based on the firm's existing 64-bit technology, AMD said its Turion 64 mobile processors will provide high-performance notebook PCs with long battery life, wireless compatibility, rich graphics and enhanced security. Notebooks based on Turion 64 processors are expected to begin shipping from OEMs in the first half of 2005.
• AMD Helps Verify Authentic Chips - The holographic label will appear on the bottom left corner of the packaging for boxed Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64, Sempron, and Opteron chips, the company says. AMD's boxed processors are often purchased by system builders and PC buyers choosing their own components. They come with a heatsink and a fan and carry a 3-year limited warranty.
• SanDisk adds USB connection to SD Card - SanDisk has developed an SD memory card that includes a built-in USB connector so the card can be directly plugged into a computer, the company said at the CES. The card has a hinge in the center and folds back on itself to reveal a thin USB connector. The card, which was designed in-house by SanDisk, removes the need for an SD card adapter and is compatible with any operating system that recognizes USB Mass Storage devices. The interface is USB 2.0.
• CES: Some Interesting Gadgets for Gamers  - So how much of CES is dedicated to gamers? Nearly all of it - if you are the kind of gamer who enjoys MP3 players, gadgets, GPS systems, cell phones, and digital cameras. But if you are looking for products purely designed to enhance game playing, you may be a bit disappointed.

HARDWARE... 

• Gigabyte's dual GPU GV-3D1 - Neoseeker is the latest web site to check out Gigabyte's dual GPU GV-3D1 graphics card. Based on the GeForce 6600 GT, the GV-3D1 contains two GPUs running at 500MHz and 256MB of memory running at an effective clock speed of 1120MHz. Gigabyte is planning to bundle the GV-3D with their PCI-Express based GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard as a kit for around $550 USD (MSRP).
• AOpen DUW1608/ARR DVD recorder - The first point we would like to mention is the DVD+R9 DL support, the technology is quite young and it is an interesting format to experiment with. The next point is the 16x DVD+R CAV writing technique that leads to faster burns when compared with 16x Z-CLV. This AOpen drive also supports DVD-ROM booktype bitsetting on DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD+R9 DL which leads to high compatibility on i.e. DVD standalone devices. Nero CD-DVD Speed can be used to measure disc quality/conditions with this AOpen drive. The drive is an ok reader and it can read CD-R's at 48x, DVD-Rom/Video at 16x and DVD-R/+R at 12x. Due to "two sheep" burner and the DAO-RAW writing mode - the drive can be used to backup copy protected CD's. It also supports 99 minutes CD-R's and the writing quality on CD-R's is excellent.
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook - The Audigy 2 ZS Notebook is designed to be a one-stop solution. You get Dolby Digital EX and DTS ES decoding, of up to 7.1 surround channels, a healthy signal to noise ratio that will have no trouble walking over an onboard sound chip, EAX support, hardware mixing to reduce the load on the CPU and high resolution DVD Audio. For gamers in particular, no other card offers this range of features, and it's potentially a perfect companion for laptops that like to take their owners to LAN parties.
• Can 19" LCDs Pass the Frag Test? - LCD vendors claim their new crop of 19" displays are up to par with their 17" wares. But THG past tests show that OEM claims in this space aren't always worth too much. THG put four of BenQ, NEC, Philips and Xerox' 19" finest to the test to see what is and what is not up to snuff for the demanding gamer and film buff.
• Samsung ML-2251n Printer  - This printer comes from the ML-2250 family of printers, with 2250 being the base model, 2251n adding built in ethernet connectivity and ability to expand with 802.11b wireless, and the 2251NP which has all the capability of the 2251N but with additional Postscript3 support, and the 2252W which comes standard with 802.11b in addition to ethernet but without Postscript3 emulation.
• Logitech's MX1000 wireless mouse - PyroPort take a look at Logitech's MX1000 wireless mouse.
• ATake EasyView 4 Port USB KVM Switch - MikhailTech take a look at ATake's 4 port USB KVM, featuring shared ports and a custom scrolling system.

GUIDES...

• Configure an IIS Honeypot - Configuring a honeypot in IIS is a simple task that you can do to reduce attacks on your IIS webservers. Now this is not exactly a honeypot, a honeypot is a host with known vulnerabilities deliberately exposed to a public network, but more of a redirector of traffic
• Read-Only USB Storage -If you've been concerned about the possibility that users in your Windows XP environment might plug in a USB storage key and walk away with hundreds of megabytes of proprietary corporate information, XP Service Pack 2 (SP 2) lets you make USB storage devices read only, removing the possibility of leaking data via a USB key. To configure USB storage for read only, perform the following steps. (thanks Bink.nu)
• The Windows XP Tweaking Companion v1.02 - TweakGuides have updated their extensive 170 page Windows XP Tweaking Companion (XPTC) version 1.02!

SOFTWARE...

• The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities - There are a lot of great freeware programs out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives.
• Win98 and WinME Boot Disks - download
• Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.5 - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.5 (direct link) is available! Another goodies: Nero Media Player 1.4.0.27, NeroMIX 1.4.0.27, NeroVision Express 3.0.1.18, Nero InCD 4.3.11.1
• PowerArchiver 2004 9.11.01 (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. This new version  adds faster ZIP compression in certain situations. and improves support for HP-UX file systems accessible on a LAN.
• PowerStrip 3.57 (shw) - PowerStrip provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support to a wide range of graphics cards - from the venerable Matrox Millennium I to the latest GeForce 6600GT and ATI X850.
• Easy CD-DA Extrator to version 7.7 (shw) - Poikosoft has yesterday released version 7.7 of their all-in-one audio software Easy CD-DA Extractor. This version adds support for Cue Sheets (.cue + audio file), fixes Freedb problems, memory leaks and more.
• AnyDVD 4.5.2.1 final - SlySoft has now officially released version 4.5.2.1 of AnyDVD. The new version adds support for a new variant of the Sony ARccOS protection which was found on "Resident Evil - Apocalypse" and much more.
• PCI Latency Tool 2.0 - Utility to set PCI Latency and prevent game stutter or simply improve FPS. This tweak is an important one, and one well worth checking into. Apparently, newer high-end video cards hog PCI latency for no known reason. This makes other components wait for access and causes stutters and lower frame rates. If you adjust the latency, users are reporting big improvements.

SECURITY...

• Analysis of the Troj/Winser-A Malware - The main program, ccEvtMngr.exe is a trojan that spreads via the WINS MS04-045 vulnerability, and it does so via outbound connections to port 42/tcp. When a new machine is compromised, the infected machine "phones home" back to the attacking machine to port 37264/tcp, and then spawns a command shell, waiting for input. The attacking machine sends what amounts to a small batch file that launches an FTP program. It calls back to the attacking machine on port 36010/tcp, which is listening with a pseudo-FTP server. It downloads and installs itself on that machine.
• Mozilla XBM Image Vulnerability - Mail client and Web Browser allows the usage of XBM graphic files and a security flaw in the way softwares handles those images, allow a malicious user to perform a denial-of-service attack. The X BitMap data is stored as ASCII data, and files begin with '#define' statements in substitution of a header.
• Extremely Critical IE6/SP2 Exploit Found - Secunia is reporting another three vulnerabilities in IE6 running on WinXP SP2. Any of these, in combination with an inappropriate behaviour where the ActiveX Data Object (ADO) model can write arbitrary files, can be exploited to compromise a user's system.  This vulnerability is far worse however: it makes command lines run on the user's machine. Why is that bad? Because someone can make that command be "del C:WindowsSystem32*.dll" or something equally sensitive, causing Windows to crash... permanently. The solution? Switch browsers; stop using Internet Explorer.
• MS AntiSpyware vs Ad-Aware vs SpyBot - It was time to pin Microsoft AntiSpyware against SpyBot S&D by first scanning with SpyBot then checking to see how many files SpyBot had left behind. SpyBot's initial scan resulted in 358 problems detected. After running SpyBot a second time to make sure it did not report any other problems, we ran Microsoft AntiSpyware. AntiSpyware was able to detect 659 infected files on the machine with 2.223 registry keys infected.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Does the Brain Work Like the Internet? - Computer scientists studying the stability of Internet connections may someday find their research used to help patients suffering from schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease or stroke. Recently published research indicates, for the first time, that networks in the human brain work similarly to those in the World Wide Web and other apparently unrelated networks. Thus, techniques to optimize one kind of network could potentially be applied to another.
• Video games with heroes make kids aggressive - Computer games in which children can identify with a hero or heroine who attacks his or her enemies are more likely to make them aggressive than games featuring indiscriminate violence, according to a recent survey.

TECHNOLOGY...

• PSP to launch this spring in the US - Sony officials said at the CES in Las Vegas that the game player will hit U.S. stores in March. Sony executive Howard Stringer said the console will sell for less than $200. Sony hopes U.S. demand will be strong for the black-and-silver console, which also plays music and movies. Stores in Japan sold out of the 200,000 PSPs they had in stock within hours of its debut Dec. 12.
• Yahoo! Unveils Year's Top Sites - The Yahoo! Search team have looked at thousands of websites, braving the weird, the wonderful, and the downright obscure to track down the ten best sites of 2004.
• CES 2005 coverage - @ TheTechLounge | Phantom Game Service @ Legit Reviews | NVIDIA Powered Intel SLI? | Another Nforce 5 board makes a showing | CES 2005 photo journal @ FiringSquad | Behind the Scenes at the CES Keynote | Best of CES 2005 in Photos | Samsung launches speech-to-SMS phone | Fatal1ty cock of the gaming pile again
• Studios announce HD DVD movie release lists - While games publisher Vivendi Universal was touting its support for the Blu-ray Disc format yesterday, the movie business in which it owns a 20 per cent stake, Universal Studios, was announcing plans to release 16 HD DVD titles in the US. It was joined by Paramount, which will ship the first titles from its initial 20-strong list of HD DVD products in Q4 2005, and by Warner Bros., which plans to lead the field with a catalogue of 50 HD DVD titles, again commencing Q4 2005.
• Intel promises to "upgrade your life" - In a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel chief executive Craig Barrett said: "We are going to upgrade your life and upgrade some of the equipment in your life." The appliance transports PC applications to the living room, notifying the user when they have been outbid at an online auction or forwarding alerts from a home security system. The Intel chief went on to demonstrate a prototype of a living room PC using a dual-core processor. The device featured a touch screen and 3D user interface that allows easy navigation through the content offered, both locally and through online services.
• AOL testing free 100MB storage locker - Called the service My Storage, AOL will give a 100MB digital locker to every subscriber and up to seven additional screen names that each account holder can create. Because the locker is accessible on the Web, subscribers will be able to retrieve files using any Web-enabled device. AOL will allow subscribers to place files in public storage and share with other users.
• Phone biz agrees on $1 DRM levy - The mobile phone industry has already agreed on a DRM standard for locking down media - and it'll cost $1 per handset, plus a percentage of each piece of media downloaded. The money will be divided out between patent holders ContentGuard, Intertrust, Matsushita, Philips and Sony.

HARDWARE... 

• Acer TravelMate 382TM - At the heart of the system lies a low power Pentium M 725 processor happily purring along at 1.6GHz. This CPU is based on the newer 90nm process technology and packs in a full 2MB of on-die Level 2 cache along with a 400MHz FSB. Backing this up is 512MB of DDR266 memory which is expandable to 2GB, although my unit came with two 256MB modules with no more room for expansion at a later date. If you want more memory I'd recommend stating that at the time of order.
• PQI Turbo Memory PC4000 - It's rated at an aggressive 2.5-3-3-7. It used to be that if you wanted PC4000 memory, you'd have to give up your latency to do so. This appears to no longer be the case with PQI's new PC4000 sticks.
• Mushkin 1GB PC2-5300 (667) DDR2 Dual Pack - The PC2-5300 (667) picks up where PC2-4200 (533) left off with bandwidth of up to 5400 GB/s. This dual pack consist of 2 x 512mb PC2-5300 modules and is rated at CL 4-4-4-11. According to CPUZ's SPD utlity, these modules uses A-Data chips
• ATI X800XT PE Comparison - 5 Cards  -  If you look closely to all benchmarks results you may notice that ASUS is on top, after that Gigabyte and third Sapphire. The results between all five cards are almost the same and one or two frames difference is not much.
• Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT (GV-NX66T128D) PCI-E - Hi-Tech Reviews posted a review on the Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT (GV-NX66T128D) PCI-E video card.
• Hitachi 5K80 80G & Samsung MP0402H 40G HDDs - The Samsung drive is within a decibel of the quietest hard drive we've ever listened to or tested. Such a close measurement makes it difficult to give much weight to the difference; slight variances in testing conditions, procedure or samples might even flip the results. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K80 also turns in a great showing, with noise lower than the quietest 3.5" hard drive, and even better performance than our particular Samsung SP80 7200 rpm desktop drive sample.
• Plextor PX-716A DVD recorder - The Plextor PX-716A is shorter than its brothers, the PX-504A, PX-708A and the PX-712A. This is good news for people with a barebone computer, such as the one we're using in this review, because space is always limited in these kind of machines.
• Corsair Flash Voyager USB 2.0 Drive 256MB - OCTools take a look at one of Corsair's USB 2.0 Flash Drive offering.
• OCZ ModStream OCZ-520 12U Power Supply - The OCZ ModStream OCZ-520 12U PSU is marketed as a high-power, low-noise unit. With a handsome chrome finish and a 120mm blue LED fan, it is obviously aimed at those who appreciate style in their computers as well as well regulated power or, in the case of most SPCR fans, quiet power. One of the main selling points of this PSU is the OCZ EZMod advanced cable management system, a fancy name for detachable cables (with blue plugs!). Its cables are all shielded for superior power regulation. They also glow under UV light.
• PDP System Patriot XBL PC-3200 DC Kit - Patriot's Dual Channel (DC) 1GB and 512MB 3200+ solutions offer XBL performance. XBL solutions enable user's flexibility to determine their system's optimal performance settings. Patriot's 3200+XBL solutions provide Extreme Bandwidth performance up to PC4200 with timings of 3-4-4-8 or Extreme Low Latency timings of 2-2-2-5 at PC3200. Patriot's Dual Channel kits are composed of two (2) 256MB or 512MB modules, manufactured, tested and then immediately packaged to ensure reliability and stability.
• Waffer AirCon PAC 400 PC cooling device - This device is essentially a peltier cooling system, which the company terms as bringing the idea of "Air-Conditioning System" into computer cooling. Does this idea really work? Yes, with a but. In the process of the review, I discovered several issues that lead me to believe that this device is not for everyone.
• Asetek VapoChill XE II - Plug and play subzero cooling for your CPU, is it possible? The latest generation of asetek's VapoChill Xtreme Edition promises easy installation combined with great performance, all wrapped up in an attractive package. We thermally accelerate an Athlon 64 and P4 up to speed
  beyond air and water cooling limits.
• Dell 2005FPW 20 LCD - It may not be the best one money can buy, but it has a price much lower than the competition's. During the holiday season, if one searched around, it was very simple to find this for under $600. For a 20" widescreen monitor, this is an absolute steal. The backlighting problems did not detract that much from the overall value of this LCD. Unless you have cash to literally throw around, I wouldn't spend the extra few hundred dollars to get a comparable NEC or Samsung model.
• NB-30 battery-free wireless optical mouse - As the name suggests, the BatteryFREE mouse is a wireless mouse that does not use any batteries. It works under the principal of electrical induction. A brief overview of how this works is when an electric conductor moves through a magnetic field. Electronic current is then "induced", or created, in the electronic conductor. For the BatteryFREE mouse, the mouse houses an electric conductor in the form of copper wires. Below the gray surface of the mouse pad is another coil that causes the surface of the pad to become a magnetic field. As the user moves the mouse across the mouse pad, current is induced for the mouse; thus, it has enough electricity to power its red LED and optical sensor. The induction also creates enough power for the mouse's transmitter to broadcast weak signals to the nearby receiver which is located at the top of the mouse pad. The weakness of the signal will not cause it to interfere with other RF devices. Another reviews can be found on nVNews and MikhailTech.
• Saitek R440 Force Feedback Wheel and pedals -  Force Feedback on the R440 is also top notch. Games such as Need For Speed Underground 2 and Colin McRae Rally 2005 feel spectacular as not only road surfaces and impacts, but also acceleration, changing gear with the paddle gearbox and heavy breaking are faithfully simulated. Should you not like the feedback in any particular title Saitek's software will allow you to adjust the sensitivity of the R440 independently in Windows.
• AKG K 271 Studio headphones - AKG K 271 Studios headphones are not really expensive - well, not if you've already adjusted your attitude to accept that a couple of hundred bucks US is not an excessive amount to pay for quality 'phones, anyway. $US179 is an excellent price for sealed headphones of this quality.
• Rio Forge 256MB Sport MP3 Player - It has superior sound quality, compared to most MP3 players. In fact, its sound quality surprised me. The bundled earbuds are amongst the best stock earbuds I've ever tried. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) is easy to use and understand. It also has FM capabilites as well as customizable equalizer settings.
• Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3 camera - This camera hosts a number of features including a 4.2 megapixel CCD, 12X optical zoom and anti-shake support are just a few right off the bat. Let's take a more in-depth look at this model and see what makes it so different from the DiMAGE Z2.
• Samsung DuoCam SC-D6040  - The digital camera on the Samsung DC-D6040 uses a 4.13 Megapixel CCD, which corresponds to a resolution of 2592 x 1944. The camera offers a 3X optical zoom and a 12X digital zoom as well as a pop up flash. Samsung includes a USB cable, a 16 MB memory stick, a battery pack and a remote control for the DuoCam in addition to a special "A/V cable" that connects to a television so that you can display pictures using S-Video or composite on your television display.

GUIDES...

• AnandTech's buyer's guide - Most people looking for a budget computer don't have a lot of money, and the last thing that they want is to have to go out and replace parts (or buy additional parts) because of some issue that comes up. Performance would be nice to have as well, of course, but that's a distant concern

SOFTWARE...

• Microsoft Services for Netware 5.03 SP2 and FPNW 5.02 - Services for NetWare 5.03 SP2 is a free download which simplies the adoption of Windows Server 2003 by reducing overall network administration and facilitates the migration to Windows Server 2003 from NetWare, NDS and eDirectory. It consists of two tools - Microsoft Directory Synchronization Services (MSDSS) and Microsoft File Migration Utility.
• Kazaa Lite Resurrection 0.0.7.6F - Kazaa Lite Resurrection is a P2P file sharing program based on the client that is developed by the Kazaa Corporation. Kazaa Lite Resurrection has been edited so that it does not include spyware, malware or ad-aware.
• MAME v0.90 - MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with an arcade game's data files (ROMs), MAME will more or less faithfully reproduce that game on a PC. MAME can currently emulate over 2600 unique (and over 4600 in total) classic arcade video games from the three decades of video games - '70s, '80s and '90s, and some from the current millennium.
• AnyDVD 4.5.1.1 beta - Slysoft has just released another beta version of its popular AnyDVD. This new beta fixes problem with Autoplay and adds information window which shows you what AnyDVD is doing.
• Adobe Reader SpeedUp 1.32 - As with the previous versions, this version works with Adobe Reader (Professional included) 7.0. But it doesn't support any 7.0 tweaks.
• Torrent Searcher 4.1 - With Torrent Searcher 4.0 (download) you can search for torrents. It's very small and easy to use. There are no ads included at all.

SECURITY...

• Microsoft offers free antispyware - As promised, Microsoft has rolled out a free antispyware program (direct download) which you can download from this page. There is a known incompatibility between Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) and Windows Media Center Extender. If you install Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) on a computer running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, Windows Media Center Extender will not be able to establish a remote connection.
• All Symantec Products All Versions Until 2005 - Remote Stack Buffer Overflow - Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2004 installs many DLLs and COM objects. One of its DLL's "ccErrDsp.dll" has a vulnerability in the "sProduct" parameter at the "DisplayError" function of the object. Symantec is currently investigating this issue.
• Microsoft Preps Patches for "Critical" Flaws - Microsoft Corp.'s first monthly patch day for 2005 will include security fixes for three vulnerabilities in Windows products, the software giant said Thursday. It  is not known whether all three flaws are "critical," and Microsoft is withholding details until the patches are released. The next batch of patches is due Tuesday, Jan. 11.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Magazine Names Seattle Fittest U.S. City - Seattle has been named the fittest city in the United States in the February issue of Men's Fitness magazine, leaping past the buff competition from Honolulu, Colorado Springs, San Francisco and Denver. Houston was named the fattest city for the fourth time in five years, followed by Philadelphia, Detroit, Memphis and Chicago.
• Genetic HIV Resistance Deciphered - Scientists unravel the mysteries of AIDS immunity, finding that ethnicity and heredity make some people resistant to HIV infection -- but only if they have the right genes.
• Radar satellites capture tsunami wave height - A pair of satellites that happened to be over the Indian Ocean just after the massive Sumatran earthquake on 26 December have captured the only measurements of the tsunamis' height in deep water. The images, which will be released within days, will help improve future forecasts of the deadly waves. The satellites saw the first two wavefronts produced by the main quake, spaced 500 to 800 kilometres apart. These reached a maximum height of 50 centimetres in the open ocean.
• The black hole that cannot stop eating - Astronomers have recorded the most powerful eruption of energy yet observed in the universe. It comes from a gigantic black hole, a billion times more massive than our sun, which is swallowing vast amounts of material from its surrounding galaxy. The eruption was discovered with the Chandra X-ray observatory operated by Nasa, the US space agency, and is reported in the journal Nature.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Bill Gates : CES Coverage 2005 - Bill Gates, like many years before, headed up the keynote (live 56k / 100k / 300k) for the Consumer Electronics Show 2005 (news) Introduced with some light hearted comedy by TV presenter Conan O'Brian, Bill Gates keynote announced Microsoft's plans for the "digital lifestyle" in 2005. Another coverage: G4techTV CES 2005 coverage | CES 2005 Digital Camera Coverage | various gadgets @ Engadget | CES 2005 news @ NetworkLife | CES Coverage @ CNET | Photos From the Second 24 Hours @ PCWorld
• Gigabit Transfer Rates Over Power Lines? - Penn State engineers, Pouyan Amirshahi and Mohsen Kavehrad, estimated in a research paper released Wednesday that their system could deliver data at close to one gigabit per second over medium-voltage electrical lines in ideal conditions, with speeds of hundreds of megabits per second available to home users. (thanks Slashdot.org)
• Next-generation DVD formats rally support - Groups representing the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD--both of which are blue laser formats aiming to become the technology to replace DVD--made their announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show here. Both formats offer storage capacities of about 10 times what the DVD format can hold. A DVD disc can store about 4.7GB of data on a single side, while Blu-ray Disc can hold up to 50GB and HD DVD can hold 30GB.  In related news, EA and Vivendi Universal have pledged allegiance to the Blu-Ray cause, setting them firmly in camp alongside another hundred-or-so companies (and Sony) using the new DVD disc technology.

HARDWARE... 

• ATI announces TV Wonder Elite - This new TV capture card incorporates the same advanced video processing technology that ATI developed for high-end televisions - almost all the major TV manufacturers are using ATI's digital television (DTV) technology. As a result, TV WONDER ELITE delivers high-end TV image quality to PCs, offering exceptional visual results previously seen only in home theater settings. ATI equips the Elite with a silicone TV and FM radio tuner which delivers slightly better image quality than analog tuners. And instead of requiring an external audio cable for audio transmission, the Elite passes audio via the PCI bus. The TV Wonder Elite is compatible with Windows XP and Media Center Edition 2005 and carries a MSRP of $149.
• Creative's Triple Duty External Sound Blaster - Perhaps the most versatile external device ever introduced, Creative's new USB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor is first a THX-certified external sound card that delivers 24-bit Advanced HD in 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 surround sound with EAX, Dolby Digital DX and DTS-ES support. In addition, it can encode video via its onboard LSI Logic DoMiNO A/V processor into either MPEG or DV format from S-Video, composite and even FireWire camcorder.
• Motherboards Compared: 865P and 915P chipset for Socket 775 - Both the Albatron and the Chaintech boards offered good performance and are viable options for persons looking to upgrade to a socket 775 platform. The Albatron 865 PE7 Pro seems to offer a slight performance advantage in memory subsystem benchmarks and in PCMark as well. As far as 3D benchmarks go, I'm going to call it a tie. I think each board will appeal to a different set of people, let me explain.
• PCI-Express Mainstream Roundup Part 2: nVidia 6600 and 6600GT - Still saving up your lunch money for a PCI Express graphics card? Salivating in anticipation for Nvidia 6600 series graphics card benchmark numbers? Or just bored enough to read part II of our PCI Express Graphics card comparison? No matter, we got you covered here as MadShrimps added an Albatron 6600 and a XFX 6600GT to the mix, stirred the pot, and came up with some interesting numbers that just may change your opinion of mainstream PCI Express graphics cards.
• ATI Radeon X850 XT PE and X800 XL - The X800 XL is a much more interesting product. Priced $100 below the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT at $299, the card has the potential to become a hit. The performance certainly isn't shabby at all, trailing not too far behind the X850 XT PE. Both cards should become available during the first few months in 2005.
• ATI's Radeon X800 XL - So the $50 price cut and full four quad performance at 400MHz seek to make X800 XL arguably the most attractive PCI Express SKU for the gamer looking for serious performance punch. Partnered with 1000MHz GDDR3 memory with full 256-bit wide access to the GPU's memory controller, for around 32GB/sec of theoretical bandwidth, let's take a closer look at the reference board to see if the on-paper promise is fulfilled.
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro - This definitely qualifies to be considered a prosumer card. The lack of balanced ins and outs prevent it for being a true professional card, along with some minor resampling issues, but if you use unbalanced lines, then this card can satisfy your recording needs, even for 24-bit recording. For the serious gamer, you get everything you need for serious power gaming, plus you can run your game consoles through the inputs for Dolby and DTS decoding. Movie lovers will enjoy the clarity and dynamic range offered. Music lovers will be able to have the quality they desire for whatever rigs they use, be it multimedia systems, HT systems, or quality headphones and dedicated headphone amplifiers. If you are looking for a one-card solution for everything, and are serious about wanting quality playback, the Audigy 4 Pro is one to seriously consider.
• Buffalo Wireless Router - Of course being almost identical to the WBR2-G54 means the WBR2-G54S is still a superb router and the high transfer speeds will bridge the gap for many high data transfer users until the proposed arrival of 125n, but for the average punter the WBR2-G54 offers better value for money right now.
• Xerox Phaser 3150 Mono Laser Printer - The Phaser 3150 is a large, square-cut printer with no pretensions to be anything else. A 250-sheet A4 paper tray slides in underneath the main mechanism and a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray unfolds from its front. The paper falls into a deeply indented tray in the printer's top surface and there's no paper-up output tray at the rear, though there is a fold-down panel to help deal with any paper jams.
• A4Tech Easy Go Optical Notebook Mouse - MkhailTech take a look at A4Tech's Easy Go miniature notebook optical mouse.

GUIDES...

• Sharky Extreme's January video cards price guide - The video card price lists are not meant to duplicate the vendor selection of an online price engine like PriceWatch, but instead looks to present a view of the overall video card marketplace.
• Beginners Guides: Annual PC Checkup - There comes a time in every once-new computer's life when it just doesn't feel fresh anymore. You know, when it's taking 5-10 minutes to boot up into Windows, the fans are making funny squealing noises, and there's a wad of orange cat hair protruding from the rear fan grille. It's the computer equivalent of senility, your once precious box has lost its edge.Time for action.
• 6800 Ultra SLI Benchmarks -  The only problem I had was getting NBA Live 2005 to work, does not seem to be compatible at this time with SLI, but no worries, I'm sure a driver update will take care of that
• Howto upgrade your Hotmail account to 250MB - Here's a tip to get your Hotmail account upgraded to 250MB instead of the regular 2MB which can be a little bit too small sometimes.

SOFTWARE...

• Microsoft AntiSpyware BETA - Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software.
• Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8 - Microsoft ActiveSync 3.8 is the latest synchronization software for Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones. ActiveSync 3.8 contains fixes making synchronization more trouble free than ever before and includes all the significant improvements brought to you in ActiveSync 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7.1: it is easy to install and use while offering the best levels of reliability.
• nLite 0.99.6 Beta  - Mainly, it's a little bit of a slipstreamer, customizer, reducer and iso creator all in one package. Works for every version of Windows XP installation, tested with SP2 build 2180.
• Eudora 6.2.0.14 Beta - In response to the growing problem of online "phishing" schemes, Eudora 6.2+ introduces ScamWatch, which analyses the weblinks within email messages for phishing or other deceptive practices and warns the user to exercise caution before making the connection. Specifically, ScamWatch looks for the use of IP addresses rather than hostnames or hostnames in link URLs that don’t match hostnames in the link text.
• Torrent Searcher 3.1 - With Torrent Searcher 3.1 you can search for torrents. It's very small and easy to use. There are no ads included at all.
• ConfigInspector - ConfigInspector displays the most important information about you system. The application possesses the same features as Windows XP task manager and much more.
• Nero Mega Plugin Pack 1.0 - This Plugin Pack will give you more features than Enterprise Edition.
• DVD Decrypter 3.5.2.0 - DVD Decrypter is a free tool which enables you decrypt and copy a DVD to your PC's hard disk. From there you can choose to watch them with the likes of PowerDVD and WinDVD or you can re-encode them to MPEG1 (VCD) or DivX. DVD Decrypter 3.5.2.0 supports various types of copy protection via corrupt disc structure, supports bitsetting on NEC, Plextor and AOpen burners, supports multimonitor configurations, has a modified burn engine that relieves stress from the I/O subsystem while burning the lead-in, the write retries have been reintroduced and a few bugs have been fixed as well.
• USB Mouserate Switcher V0.2 Beta - Increase USB port sample rate to 250hz or 1000hz boost precision and improve mice accuracy.
• PlexTools Professional update, v2.19a - PlexTools is an application designed for use with Plextor optical drives only and allows you to control every feature of your Plextor drive. This new version adds suport for latest drivers.
• NVIDIA Optimized drivers V0.4a - TechConnect offers a new optimized drivers v0.4a based on Forceware 71.24. They have added support for all cards except Go series and there's a mall frame rate boost in DirectX/OpenGL games.
• ForceWare 67.65 Win2000/XP  - This set originates from Asus - dated the 30th of December. These drivers are not WHQL (Microsoft tested) signed, if your graphics cvard is not suppoprted then please use the supplies modified .inf file.
• Toshiba offers 16x DVD-R upgrade for SD-R5372 - Toshiba Storage Device Division has released a free firmware upgrade for its SD-R5372 DVD recordable drive that will boost the DVD-R write speed to 16X.
• Plextor PX-716 firmware soon - Probably sometime next week, Plextor will release a new firmware (v1.04) forPlextor PX-716 series that improves the writing speed of DVD+R DL to 6x, DVD-R DL to 2x and DVD+RW to 8x.

SECURITY...

• New WINS Exploits Making Rounds  - Almost a month after Microsoft released a fix for a security issue in the WINS name server, malicious exploits continue to haunt tardy network administrators. According to an alert from the SANS ISC (Internet Storm Center), there has been a startling increase in hacker probes directed at TCP port 42 and UDP 42, which handle WINS services. "If you have not patched your WINS servers in respective companies or campuses, beware. Patching these systems is now overdue," the center warned.
• Microsoft Readies "A1" Security Subscription Service - Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware strategy is taking shape. Sources say Redmond's prepping a fee-based bundle, which could go beta soon. Microsoft is currently expecting to field its A1 anti-spyware/anti-virus bundle in the form of a renewable subscription service, the same way a number of other security vendors do, sources said. The service will allow users to keep current on the code needed to combat ever-changing viruses, worms, spybots and the like. Some elements of A1 are likely to be built directly into future versions of Windows, according to partners. Specifically, some of the security-management functionality, such as the security-health-validation technology which Microsoft officials discussed last year, would likely be bundled into Windows itself, partners said.
• AOL's Online Password Reset feature does not fully validate - This report is in reference to the Online Password Reset that exists for the AOL client for paying user accounts and not AOL Instant Messenger.
• Mozilla Firefox Download Dialog Source Spoofing - Secunia Research has discovered a vulnerability in Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox, which can be exploited to spoof the source displayed in the Download Dialog box. The problem is that long sub-domains and paths aren't displayed correctly, which therefore can be exploited to obfuscate what is being displayed in the source field of the Download Dialog box.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Digital Watches May Pose Airline Threat - The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security are warning transportation officials to look for al-Qaeda terrorists wearing two types of digital watches. Altimeters, which measure altitude, but could be used to trigger an explosive when a jetliner reaches a certain height and watches containing hidden cigarette lighters, which could be used to ignite a bomb, like the one show bomber Richard Reid hid in his sneakers on a flight from Paris to Miami. Both types of watches are readily available on the Internet.
• TV Cream's Top 100 Toys - TV Cream's Top 100 Toys shows the list of favorite toys based on the Web site readers.
• Japanese Console Sales for 2004 - Nintendo DS: 1,286,074 / Sony PSP: 352,295 / Sony PS2: 2,799,009 / GameCube: 880,836 / Xbox: 36,976 / GBA SP: 2,532,107.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Internet2 in Russia - Already Reality? - Corbina Telecom, Russian all-around telecoms operator, has started the Internet2 project in Moscow, which will connect the clients of Corbina Telecom - both present and future - into a high speed data network possessing much wider features in comparison with the networks of the previous generation. On December 15, 2004 the company arranged a press conference, where several features of this data network were demonstrated.
• Microsoft Windows Mobile 2005 Revealed - Magneto - Currently in beta testing, Magneto is the code-name for what is expected to be finally named as Windows Mobile 2005. Microsoft is progressing well with Magneto and is currently running a Beta 2 (v5.0.1512 Build 14207) dogfood test internally. The first release candidate of Magneto is expected on the 16th February with an RTM following on the 13th April. Currently Microsoft are only testing Magneto on the Motorola MPx220 Smartphone. This indicates that the device will be able to be upgraded sometime this year. It's unclear what others devices will be supported for upgrade.
• Canon to Start Making Rear Projection TVs in 2005 - Japanese camera and office equipment maker Canon said on Tuesday it would start producing rear projection televisions later this year, aiming to secure a chunk of the rapidly growing market for big screen TVs.
• Samsung develops 21-inch OLED for TVs - The chipmaking division of the South Korean company on Tuesday announced a 21-inch display for TVs based on organic light-emitting diode technology. OLED is viewed as a potential successor to liquid crystal displays, used in many flat-panel TVs and computer monitors.
• InPhase shows off holographic disc drive - The prototype has been reviewed and photographed at the Pabster and can handle capacities of up to 1.6 TB. The company is planning a range of holographic drives, with data capacities that range from 200GB to 1.6TB. It works with Blu-ray 407 nm blue lasers to provide high capacity holographic storage.

• Hitachi plans big boost for small drives - Hitachi is planning to at least double the capacity of its 1-inch Microdrive hard drives within a year, the company said, ahead of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. At present Hitachi's most capacious Microdrive can hold 4GB of data, but the new drives, due in the second half of this year, will be able to hold between 8GB and 10GB, said Bill Healy, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing at Hitachi.

• AMD confirms raid on illegal CPU labeling in Taiwan - Taiwanese law enforcement officials raided several businesses that were allegedly "remarking" AMD processors, an AMD official confirmed Tuesday (Jan. 4).  Remarking is the process of fraudulently remarking processor chip packaging with the part number of an enhanced specification device. AMD spokeswoman Cathy Abbinati said the legal investigation is still ongoing and that AMD is not releasing details of the raid.

HARDWARE...

• The best of 2004 hardware & tech - @ TechReport, @ GamersDepot
• Intel Preps Onslaught with New Pentium 4 Processors 600 - Intel Pentium 4 processors series 600 are expected to be positioned for high-end and performance-mainstream market segments in Q1 2005. The new microprocessors will be based on the Prescott 2M core that brings 2MB L2 cache, Intel EM64T, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) as well as Execute Disable Bit (EDB) capability. The chips will be clocked at 3.20GHz, 3.40GHz, 3.60GHz and 3.80GHz and will be intended for infrastructure supporting 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and TDP of up to 115W.
• Intel Smithfield chipsets said to support SATA 2 - Intel's next-generation Pentium 4 desktop chipsets, "Glenwood" and "Lakeport", will support Serial ATA 2, 667MHz DDR 2 and a 1066MHz frontside bus clock frequency, according to Taiwanese motherboard-maker sources of DigiTimes. Glenwood and Lakeport are the successors to today's 925- and 915-series chipsets, and are believed to carry the official designations 955 and 945, respectively. Both are likely to be pitched at Intel's first dual-core desktop P4, Smithfield, which is due to ship mid-2005.
• Linksys Secures Media Streaming - The Linksys Wireless-G Media Link, to be announced this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is one of a growing number of devices for sending music, video, and photos from a PC to consumer electronics devices around a home. The new Linksys device will include DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol), which is designed to allow users to share content among many users in a home while protecting it from neighbors within range of a home wireless LAN, says Rob Crooke, vice president and marketing director of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group.
• Plextor introduces low-cost high performance CD-R/RW drive -  Plextor has announced yet another CD-R/RW drive - the PX-230A. This drive offers the features of its previous CD-Recorders but at a lower Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $65. The drives main features include improved CD-RW recording speed of 32X (up from 24X in its previous model) as well as the usual 52x CD-R recording, 52x reading and error-free digital audio extraction .
• Gigabyte does dual PCI-E graphics for LGA775 - Gigabyte has announced an LGA775 motherboard that supports dual PCI Express graphics cards. The GA-8I915P Dual Graphic appears to be based on Intel's 915 chipset, making it unlikely that the board serves a full 16 PCI-E lanes to each of its x16 slots
• NV40/45 WDM video acceleration still broken - Nvidia recently released its Pure Video marchitecture driver together with its Turbo cache marchitecture. It will work on Geforce 6600 and its variations and partially on 6800 cards. Geforce 6600 can do hardware WDM encoding and DVD encoding and with new driver it dramatically lowers the CPU consumption. However Geforce 6800 cards - both NV40 based AGP cards or NV45 based bridged PCIe cards won't show any difference while decoding–playing WDM files for you.
• Nanometer Wars: Athlon 64 versus...Athlon 64  - With the 3500+, AMD has managed to reduce overall thermal output by a noticeable margin. Winchester's voltage requirements have been reduced slightly, to 1.4v from 1.5v for the 130nm part. The rated nominal thermal output is 67W, versus 89W for 130nm. But does this reduction translate into real world advantage? ExtremeTech dug out their Fluke digital voltmeter and a thermocouple and decided to find out.
• AMD64 PCI Express Chipsets – nVidia nForce 4 vs. ATI 200 Series - The ATI 200 Series is a good chipset, not great but good nonetheless. On the other hand the nVidia nForce 4 is a great chipset. Both of the reference motherboards we received from both companies performed extremely close to each other so you couldn't decide which board is better or worse by just looking at the performance numbers alone. While the ATI chipset is shown terrible numbers in USB/Firewire transfer rates, this isn't a big deal as it is a well known issue and the latest revision of the chipset will have this problem fixed, according to ATI.
• 1GB PQI Turbo PC3200 DPU DC kit - The PQI Turbos will run for a little less than 250 dollars, about 30 dollars less than the average price for TCCD modules. While the price was right for these modules, they did not overclock as well as some of the other TCCD sticks I have tested. For a pair of sticks that are only rated to run at DD400, these modules are amazing for their price and performance.
• Corsair Rev2 PC3200XL 2-2-2 Memory (TWINX1024-3200XL) - At the heart of the new revision of the 3200XL modules are the same Samsung TCCD chips that were used in the original 3200XL sticks (and now in many competing products). The main difference between the old and new XL's is the PCB (printed circuit board). Corsair made some design enhancements to the PCB in order to support higher top-end clock speeds. That adds up to the new 3200XL overclocking to high speeds with more success than the old one.
• Radeon x700 Pro 256 MB VIVO (HiS) - Directly compared to the the 6600 GT both cards have some advantages and disadvantages. But make no mistake, considering it's equal price the GeForce 6600 GT does have the overall lead in performance and it has a newer feature set (Shader Model 3). When you are in doubt what to buy, well look at the results as they speak for themselves. But although the GeForce 6600 GT has an edge over the x700 Pro, thanks to HiS this product is very close to that competition.
• Abit RX300 SE-Guru Review at Trusted - The card running in Turbo mode which clocks it up from a default speed of 325MHz core and 200MHz DDR for the memory (effectively 400MHz) to a fairly impressive overclock of 405MHz core and 256MHz memory (effectively 512MHz). The memory can however be pushed further, but with 4ns memory you're still limited with regards to how far it will overclock.
• Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual core GPU) - The Gigabyte GV-3D1 has 256MB GDDR3 memory and a 256-bit memory bus with two GPUs on one card. There are new benchmark results available for FutureMark Bundle, Far Cry, Painkiller, Half-Life 2, Need for Speed Underground 2, Colin McRae Rally 2005, Doom 3, Call of Duty and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Another r eview can be found here.
• GeForce 6600 GT AGP roundup - Right now AGP-based GeForce 6600 GT cards are selling for a little more than their $200 list price, but once more board partners bring their cards to market and supply catches up to demand, prices will quickly fall to the sub-$200 price point PCI Express-based GeForce 6600 GT cards are currently going for. 
• Asour VPC-1000B Multimedia DVD Optical Drive - Even though the price for this VPC-1000B is around 5 times than a normal optical drive; USD$149.99 but it is still cheaper than a home audio and it can work without a PC where user can install it inside a room, anywhere or even in the toilet to enjoy the CD/MP3 and it saves the electric power too; 18W when it is played isolated. Besides that, it is also a FM radio receiver, SRS WOW audio processor is great even though for normal speaker only, and it is free of any software installation. This is a great product especially for PC enthusiasts.
  Seagate Momentus 100gb 5400.2 - Yes you read correctly 100 gigs of laptop storage. Seagate has continued it's tradition of high speed with a low power consumption, but will this massive storehouse live up to the expectation? I'm betting it will since it's little brother, the 40gb racked up the awards last year. The 2.5" Momentus is a 100gb hard drive running at 5400 RPM with a sweet 8mb cache, which you normally only see on desktop hard drives.
• Toshiba 80GB 16MB Cache 2.5in HDD - The drive features a Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor for quieter operation and spins at 5400 RPM. It's rated for ATA-100 speeds and has a 12ms average seek time. While this may seem slow by desktop standards, keep in mind that more compact lower density notebook drives have a lot of catching up to do.
• JAHT JN-1110R32C Gigabit Ethernet Adapter - The JN-1110R32C is a 10/100/1000Mbps 32bit Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Local Bus Ethernet adapter designed to address high-performance system application requirements. The Bus-Master architecture provides very high data throughput as it runs in the 32-bit PCI bus of the serve's mainboard rather than waiting on the CPU.
• Extreme Wireless Networking from Gigabyte - Turbo G emerges - The 108mbps implementation really is a fine touch. The need for wires now is simply not an issue with the Gigabyte Super-G, unless you want to go Gigabit which should be the only time you would want to have any network cables for this setup. Overall Gigabyte has put a lot of work into getting this unit up and running 100% trouble free with a great easy to use interface and setup.
• Intel P4 Socket 775 Heatsink Roundup - Looking to cool that small nuclear reactor Intel has sold you in the Prescott P4. MadShrimps just informed us they have tested 6 samples of aftermarket LGA775 coolers that might just let you squeak a little more MHz out of your CPU, or at the very least allow the CPU to run just a bit cooler.
• QTechnology 460w Gold Series PSU - PowerSupplyUnits take a look at the QTechnology QT-03460G power supply. This is their 460w Gold Series PSU.
• MGE XG Vigor 500 Watt Power Supply - After running our tests for 38 minutes the results came out better than expected. Looking at the Core voltage you can see it was rock steady at 1.54 volts all the way through the tests, this is something that should make any overclocker pay a bit more attention. Moving to the 3.3 volt line we see that it averaged an outstanding .04 volts during our tests which makes it falls easily within a 3% tolerance.
• Cooler Master Cavalier 2 Desktop Case - The Cavalier desktop series comes in four different models. The retro-look Cavalier 2 includes a large analog sound level meter on the front and comes in either silver or black. For users who desire cleaner lines, the Cavalier 4 is available without the analog meter. All of the Cavalier series of desktop enclosures come with a 300 watt power supply and can accommodate a full size ATX motherboard.
• SAITEK Cyborg EVO - The Saitek Wireless Evo Joystick is a great joystick for flight or space sim gamers. The joystick is good for left and right handed users. The value for dollar this joystick is economical for and gamer. The adjustable palm rest is a great feature so that my thumb can use the buttons along the top of the joystick

GUIDES...

• Basic System Buyer's Guide - January 2005 - They're still pricing out components exclusively from NewEgg to avoid extra shipping fees and headaches when purchasing from several vendors. The budget remains the same: $400 or lower with at least some of the shipping included. Just like last month this is only the box and does not include keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, or any other peripherals.
• Extreme Overclocking w/ ASUS A8N SLI - Extreme overclocking 2 6800 ultras in SLI mode is quite challenging due to spacial and powering constraints. But I decided to take on the challenge in order to hit the big numbers.
• X800 Pro VIVO to XT PE Bios Mod - Describes how to mod the X800 Pro VIVO to an XT PE only by flashing the Bios.
• Optimize XP - A Windows XP Optimization Guide v1.8.3 - This guide will help you improve your overall system performance. I avoid using or recommending "all-in-one" Windows XP Tweak programs since many blindly adjust settings that have no affect on performance and can cause future problems. This guide is designed to be performed top to bottom, in sequence since some steps are required to be performed before others. Before using this guide make sure your system meets the Windows XP System Requirements.
• Secure XP - A Windows XP Security Guide - Improve Windows XP's Security on computers not connected to a Domain. Windows XP Home does not include all the security features Windows XP Professional does, so some security options may be unavailable to the Home user. Security on Windows XP starts with having the latest updates. Installing SP2 is essential in making sure your system is secure. SP2 requires a Spyware and Virus free system to install without problems. Please read the advisory and run through Steps 1 and 2 completely before installing SP2.

SOFTWARE...

• Avalon 3D - Demo Video Availiable - There's a demo of Avalon 3D (direct link ~ 70MB) Really cool stuff. Originally designed to only run on the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, Avalon is now supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
• inBookmarks 1.45 - inBookmarks (download) is a powerful bookmark solution. It allows you to store, organize, comment and check you Internet pages. It has many powerful facilities that replace and compliment the browser's bookmark management systems. You can easy add URLs from all opened browser sessions.
• Easy PDF to Text Converter  - Easy PDF to Text Converter (download) can extract text from pdf files -- it does NOT need Adobe Acrobat software.
• Unknown Devices utility - By checking Device Manager for unknown devices and extracting information from it, this program attempts to figure out what the device is. You might not have to open your case or look up random numbers off of PCI cards to figure out what they are. Program supports Win95, 98, 98se, Me, 2k, XP and 2003 but not NT. It also attempts to support future OSes. It runs fine from a CD or floppy. Another useful utilities can be found here
• Vstudios Xtreme G 71.24a - This is the Valance Studios Xtreme G driver which includes many performance and Image Quality tweaks. These are modified NVIDIA FOrceWare drivers. Modified drivers simply means that the author takes official or beta drivers from the manufacturer and starts to tweak them for either better image quality and or performance.

SECURITY...

• Multiple Firewall Products Bypass Vulnerability  - This is a generic problem of common Personal Firewall products which are accept shortcuts or provide an interface that enables to click without require a password for controlled actions (acting as server -listening ports-, executing another program, connecting to another computer etc.).
• Mozilla Browser NNTP Heap Overflow - Mozilla browser supports NNTP URLs. Remote side is able to trigger news:// connection to any server. Maurycy found a flaw in NNTP handling code which may cause heap overflow and allow remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on client machine.
• Anti-Santy worm on the prowl - F-Secure said on Friday that it was aware of seven sites that had been defaced by the worm, which appears designed to combat the Santy worm. The anti-Santy worm searches Google for sites that use the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) software exploited by the earlier worm, infects the sites and attempts to make the sites more secure by installing a patch.
• Trojan Takes First Place in Top 10 List of Malware - Trojan dubbed "Downloader.GK" caused the most damage to computers in 2004, marking the first time a worm hasn't occupied the top spot, according to Panda Software. This signifies an important change in the impact that malicious code is having on computers, the company concluded. Downloader.GK is blamed for 14 percent of all attacks last year, according to data gathered via Panda ActiveScan, a free online scanner.
• Man arrested in tsunami death e-mail hoax - British police said on Sunday they had arrested a man after a hoaxer posing as a government official e-mailed relatives of people missing since the Asian tsunami, saying their loved ones had been confirmed dead. The hoaxer, claiming to be from the "Foreign Office Bureau" in Thailand, targeted people who had placed appeals for information about relatives and friends on the Web site of TV station Sky News. Police said they had arrested a 40-year-old man and seized computer equipment. The man was being questioned at a London police station, a police statement said. All the messages came from one bogus e-mail address, ukgovfoffice+aol.com.

OFF-TOPIC...

• New Xbox Karaoke Songs - Microsoft has announced that 100+ new Xbox Music Mixer karaoke songs have just been made available. Take a look at the "New Releases" section and load up for your 2005 karaoke parties.
• Soldiers Relax With Video Games - At the Marine base several miles southeast, high-speed wires snake down hallways, through doors and out windows. The Navy engineers play "Half-Life 2." At the gym, where seven Playstations get heavy use, Marines wage "Madden NFL 2005" tournaments. "Neverwinter Nights" reigns in the public affairs office.
• Protein offers allergy care hope - Scientists believe they have identified a protein which could be crucial in creating new treatments for allergies. Researchers told Nature that blocking p110delta in mast cells - which cause allergic reactions - substantially reduced symptoms in tests on mice.
• Satellite images of Asian disaster -  A week after the tsunami that hit Asia on 26 December the death toll is still rising. Nearly 140 000 people are confirmed dead, more than 1.8 million people need food aid and an estimated five million are homeless. The tsunami formed when an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude vertically jolted the seabed by several metres, displacing hundreds of cubic kilometres of water.
• Novel calendar system creates regular dates - A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year.
• Boy, 15, easily buys M-rated video games - The Crime Commission enlisted Dan Shemwell, the 15-year-old grandson of its treasurer, Phyllis Luzader Swartz, to go to 15 stores Thursday. He attempted to buy "M-rated" (mature) games, including "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."  Despite most retailers voluntarily adopting policies banning the sale of such M-rated games to youths under 17, Dan Shemwell was able to buy games at 11 of the places he stopped.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta Due 6th January - Microsoft have just finished distributing an internal Beta 1 escrow build to internal beta testers. "Atlanta" is the code-name for Microsoft's rehashed GIANT Software Anti-Spyware. In a memo internally, the company looks clear to distribute the software this coming Thursday calling it "new, it's fresh, and it's all good".
• Fujitsu Siemens loses German PC levy case -  A German court has ordered PC maker Fujitsu Siemens to pay a royalty of 12 EURO for every PC it sells in Germany. A Munich district court believes that as with blank media such as audio and video cassettes, the levy should compensate rights holders for lost royalties. The suit was first brought in 2001 by VG Wort rights society, a copyright management organisation. It argued that Fujitsu Siemens hardware can be used for copying - and therefore infringes the rights of its members. Fujitsu Siemens is the first company targeted by the society. More PC vendors may follow later this year.
• World's Smallest Secure Web Server - Sizzle runs on the Berkeley/Crossbow "motes" -- battery-powered, wireless devices equipped with an 8-bit microprocessor, 128KB of FLASH and a mere 4KB of RAM. While many small web servers have been demonstrated previously, none has addressed the capability of secure communication within such tight resource constraints. Sizzle implements the industry standard security protocol, SSL, used to protect Internet-based transactions like stock trading, e-commerce and on-line banking.
• Samsung Prototype Devices - Mobile website Mobile Review has gotten a hold of some slides of Samsung prototype devices. Most of the devices are more convential cell phone devices, but three are Windows Mobile based. One, code named "B-Bop," is a Phone Edition device. Another is code named "Javelin" is and Smartphone device. The third is code named "Thor" and not only has a 3 GB hard drive but is said to be running "MS Smartphone Magneto."
• Philips Unveils DVD Burner - Philips Electronics unveiled an optical disk drive on Monday for use in computers that can burn and play CDs and DVDs in three formats, including the new Blu-ray standard. The drive, to be presented at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week and to be available in the second half of 2005, comes as electronics giants jockey for support of their new DVD systems.
• New optical disk offers huge storage  -  Japanese electronics giant has developed an optical disk with a storage capacity of up to 510 gigabytes - or just more than half a terabyte. With its huge storage capacity, Pioneer's 12cm thick silver platter will store the amount of data that would require 100 typical DVDs today. An ultraviolet laser will be used to write to the disk.
• DVD Copy Protection: Take 2 - With manufacturers about to unveil a new generation of DVD players and discs, moviemakers now see a rare opportunity to get the horse back into the barn and lock the door tight. So, this past July, two entertainment companies joined with six electronics manufacturers and chip makers to announce the creation of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the copy protection scheme designed to keep future generations safe from pirated DVDs. The specification was due by year-end 2004, and products incorporating it are slated to appear by year-end 2005.
• TiVo Upgrade Shifts TV Shows to Computer Laptop -  TiVo Inc.on Monday said it has started shipping "TiVoToGo," a service upgrade that allows some subscribers to view recorded programs on a computer or laptop. TiVo, the best known maker of digital video recorders (DVR), said the upgrade is free, and will be available to standalone customers who own the "Series 2" version of its set-top box. TiVo first announced the service one year ago. DVRs record hours of TV programs to a built-in hard drive, and allows viewers to pause and replay live TV. TiVo's fee-based system offers enhanced features such as advanced and online scheduling and the ability to play music and photos via a home network.
• AMD Chips in For Portable Video Players - AMD has developed a low-power chip that it thinks will make portable video players more compelling by reducing the time needed to transfer content to the devices. The company is expected to announce the chip at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week. Portable video players with the new Alchemy Au1200 processor will play MPEG files recorded by digital video recorders, eliminating the need for users to change those files to a different format.
• Apple Set to Launch $500 Mac - In a bid to take advantage of the success of the iPod music player, Apple Computer Inc. is set to release a Mac retailing at under $500.
• Justin Frankel Reveals Life After Winamp - Speaking out for the first time on life after AOL/Nullsoft, Winamp creator Justin Frankel sat down with BetaNews to discuss his new endeavors. (thanks Slashdot.org)

HARDWARE...

• Samsung offers zero-pixel-defect warranty for LCDs  - Samsung is now offering a zero-pixel-defect warranty for LCD monitors. Customers that find a pixel defect in an LCD screen within six months of purchase can return the screen for a free replacement, although it's unclear whether the replacement is then covered for an additional six months.
• Skip Gateway's MP3 Photo Jukebox - Gateway's MP3 Photo Jukebox is an interesting combination of good ideas poorly implemented. The $250 player has some intriguing features--including the ability to store and display digital photos--but in the end its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. One of those weaknesses is the display. The Jukebox is the first "mini" hard drive MP3 player to offer a color LCD, which Gateway touts as a major selling point. Unfortunately, at just 1.6 inches across (measured diagonally), and with a meager resolution of 128 by 128 pixels, the oddly square screen is much too small for comfortable photo viewing.
• Nvidia to debut 6200 AGP - Nvidia plans to debut an entry-level version of its GeForce 6-series graphics chip, one that supports the AGP8X standard by the second quarter of 2005, according to sources in Taiwan. Nvidia's AGP-capable GeForce 6200 graphics chip will support Shader Model 3.0, the sources said. Then, its GeForce 6600 graphics chip supporting AGP8X will follow soon after the introduction of the AGP-enabled GeForce 6200, the sources added.
• Samsung Q30 Ultra-Portable Notebook - The Q30 isn't quite as light as the Sony X505, weighing 1.1kg as opposed to 822g, but the Samsung can hardly be described as heavy. And with dimensions of only 287 x 197 x 24mm (WxDxH) it's small enough to be slipped into almost any bag unobtrusively. But despite the tiny dimensions of the Q30, it is a well featured little machine. In fact, even though the Sony X505 is slightly lighter, you would have to carry some extra bits and pieces with you to match the functionality of this little Samsung.
• Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm Processor - The Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm processor seems to be in high demand, and popular online retailers are showing a significant price gap between the 90nm and 130nm models. In one price survey we found the Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm in the $330-$350 range, while the 130nm CPU was approximately $260 for OEM and $270 for retail.
• Mushkin PC2-5300 DDR2 Memory - MadShrimps take a closer look at Mushkin's Enhanced DDR2 Memory rated to run at DDR667 speeds. Using a high end system they push this 1GB kit as far as it can go.
• Gigabyte's nForce4-SLI chipset - The K8NXP-SLI is definitely not short on features. The nVidia nForce4 chipset allows for an SLI setup using two supported Video Cards. The chipset also supports ten USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet with Firewall and 3Gb/s SATA and nVRAID. On top of that, Gigabyte adds an additional Gigabit Network controller using the Marvel 8053 chip as well as three Firewire ports.
• Nine Socket 939 Athlon64 Motherboards - While the K8N Diamond from MSI sports Bluetooth and 54MBit WLAN, the A8N-SLI Deluxe from Asus offers two x1 PCIe slots where MSI does not -- although the second x16 slot can be outfitted with a x1 card in a pinch.  Abit's AV8 and Soltek's K8TPRO-939 stood out thanks to the rear panel of the VIA chipset-equipped boards. Abit offers extra goodies in the form of extensive overclocking options and a solid design, as well as its µGuruClock.
• MSI GeForce 6600GT AGP/PCIe - Performance of the 6600GT, given its pricepoint, is hard to ignore - overclock them and you'll have enough performance to muster through most any game out today. Need more power down the road? Go for PCI Express and SLI.
• Gigabyte Radeon X800XT - The positive aspects of this product in a nut shell are ... the power connector setup, excellent performance, superior stability, quiet operating volume, extreme overclocking abilities and the PCI Express support. The PCI Express support is particularly important as there are few powerful PCIe solutions available at the moment.
• Pioneer DVR-S806 16x Dual-Layer DVD Writer - The Pioneer DVR-S806 drive is an external unit that interfaces with your computer through the included Firewire/IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 cables. You will need to have one of these protocols available to use the drive for best possible performance. The drive is quite attractive with ion sliver and black colors as the color scheme.
• Toshiba 80GB 16MB Cache 2.5in HDD - The drive features a Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor for quieter operation and spins at 5400 RPM. It's rated for ATA-100 speeds and has a 12ms average seek time. While this may seem slow by desktop standards, keep in mind that more compact lower density notebook drives have a lot of catching up to do. From a laptop perspective, things are looking good for Toshiba's high-end HDD. Two 40GB platters are used to account for the 80GB rating, which is good news since larger platters offer better performance.
• ZyXEL HomeSafe Parental Control Gateway Router with 802.11g Wireless (HS-100W) - If you are concerned about having easy-to-configure Parental Controls, the HS-100W just might be the right buy for you, especially when you consider its low cost. With relatively painless installation and easy to follow configuration, the HS-100W is likely to gain popularity in homes where parents are concerned about their children's use of the Internet.

GUIDES...

• TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide - SP2 version 1.0 Final  - Tweakhound's Eric Vaughan has updated his Windows XP tweaking guide to revision SP2 version 1.0 Final! this has to be one of the best tweaking guides around. This guide is all about optimizing XP.
• Rojak Pot's desktop graphics card comparison guide rev. 7.4 - Currently covering over 200 desktop graphics cards, this comprehensive comparison will allow you to easily compare 14 different specifications for each and every card!

SOFTWARE...

• jIRCii 01.03.05 - jIRCii is a cross platform Internet Relay Chat client. It is fully scriptable using a Perl-like language called sleep. The focus is to provide a console client experience with the advantages of a solid GUI. It includes DCC/CTCP support, the ability to connect to SSL servers, and over 65 built-in commands.
• OpenOffice.org For Windows 1.1.4 - OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. It establishes the necessary facilities to make this open source technology available to the developer community.
• AVG Free Edition 7.300 - AVG Free Edition (download) is designed and made available for individual home PC use and may not be used in business, commercial or organizational environments
• Maxthon Combo 1.1.115 - Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface.
• PDF SpeedUp for Adobe Reader 1.42 - PDF SpeedUp (download) allows you to significantly speed up the time it takes to load Adobe Reader. If you notice that when the Reader starts it loads many plug-ins which you may or may not need, this program simply disables the plug-ins and loads only the absolute necessary ones so the program starts quickly. It offers several options and you can also manually enable or disable the plug-ins as needed. PDF SpeedUp works with Acrobat versions 3 through 6.xx.
• SNES9x Windows v1.43 - Snes9x is a portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator. It basically allows you to play most games designed for the SNES and Super Famicom Nintendo game systems on your PC or Workstation; which includes some real gems that were only ever released in Japan
• RockNES v4.02 (AthlonXP + SSE2) - This software is a Nintendo Entertainment System 8-bit (NES) videogame emulator for PC machines. RockNES is a full rewrite of original RockNES (old xNes). It was designed to be very compatible and as fast as possible.
• Visual Boy Advance v1.80 beta 2 - This a newer version of the VisualBoy Advance, but still in early stages of development.
• Aim Ad Hack 4.00 - Aim Ad Hack will effectively remove all the ads from AIM. Just extract the file into your AIM directory.
• DVD Identifier v3.6 - With this tool you can retrieve the media information stored on DVDR DL discs and find out who the actual manufacturer is and at which speeds the discs can be recorded. The latest version, 3.6, adds preliminary DVD-R DL support
• AnyDVD v4.4.1.1 (beta) - SlySoft has released another beta version of the AnyDVD that adds support for newer versions of the Sony ARccOS copy-protection as found on "Resident Evil - Apocalypse" (US) or "Little Black Book" (US).
• Alcohol 120% Device Support Patch v2.3.8.1231 - There's a new patch for The Alcohol 120% which adds support for new recorders.
• CPUCooL 7.3.5 - CPUCooL (download) is a program that monitors temperature, fan speed, and voltages for many motherboards. It provides Cpu cooling under Win9x/2000/XP/NT, allows FrontSideBus changing, optimizes your memory and CPU.
• Vstudios Xtreme G 71.20b - This is the Valance Studios Xtreme G driver which includes many performance and Image Quality tweaks here are some of the many changes over the normal Nvidia drivers. Here it is what youve been waiting for a driver that fixes the ogl performance issues that plagued previous Xtreme G Drivers. Also fixed some invalid Texture entries.
• Creative MediaSource 3 web update version 3.10.16 for PCMCIA SB Audigy 2 ZS Notebook and SB Audigy 4 - This update contains enhancements and fixes to improve the performance of your PCMCIA Sound Blasterr Audigy 2 ZS Notebook and Sound Blaster Audigy 4.
• Creative Audigy 4 Pro update version 3.00.55 - This update for Creative Audigy 4 Pro, provides more functionality for your Remote Control, and fixes operational issues in the Entertainment Center software.
• Creative Smart Recorder Patch for SB PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS Notebook and SB Audigy 4 Pro audio cards version 2.10.56 - This patch upgrades your Creative Smart Recorder application from version 2.10.52 or 2.10.11, to version 2.10.56. It is only applicable to Creative Sound Blaster PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS.
• Creative EAX Console update for users with a Creative MP3 player - This update resolves a compatibility issue between Creative EAX Console, which is included with selected Creative audio devices, and Creative MediaSource with Theme Engine 3.00.55
• BIOS updates - There's a lot of new motherboard BIOS updates from last week @ PCTuning.cz

SECURITY...

• Adware installed through Windows Media files - In short, the well-known copyright management/protection firm Overpeer has figured out how to install adware through Windows Media files. The technique exploits features of the Windows Media DRM functionality to launch special Internet Explorer windows that display popup ads and that also attempt to download and install adware/spyware. This happens when the user opens the Windows Media file for playing.
• IE's FTP Client can be Used to Send Mail - Internet Explorer 6 SP1 can be tricked into sending mail through its FTP client (example) without any more user interaction than loading a page. Internet Explorer will accept %0a and %0d in URLs. In FTP URLs, it will accept them in the username part of the URL. Due to the similarity between the FTP and SMTP protocols, this can be used to send mail. Spammers could host websites that contain images causing website visitors to spam more people. There are probably other protocols that the FTP client could be used to maliciously access.
• Trojan horse threatens latest Windows XP - The program--dubbed "Phel," an anagram of "Help"--infects visitors to a maliciously-created Web site through Internet Explorer's Help controls, Symantec warned in an advisory this week. A bug in the malicious program may prevent it from infecting some computers, the security company said. The Trojan horse exploits a vulnerability, found in October, in how Internet Explorer and Windows XP Service Pack 2 handle help files called from Web pages. Another story can be found here.
• Cabir worm code wriggles onto Web - Sophos said on Wednesday that a 32-year-old Brazilian programmer has published the source code for the Cabir-H and Cabir-I viruses online and said it could be used by virus writers to create their own variants.
• New perl packages fix several vulnerabilities - Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in Perl, the popular scripting language - download&install new packages.
• Availability of Windows 2000 Post-Service Pack 4 COM+ 1.0 Hotfix Rollup Package 31 - This article lists the Microsoft COM+ bugs that are fixed in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Post-Service Pack 4 (SP4) COM+ 1.0 Hotfix Rollup Package 31. Each hotfix rollup package contains all the fixes that were released in the previous Windows 2000 COM+ 1.0 hotfix rollup packages.
• Single Government ID Moves Closer to Reality - Federal officials are developing government-wide identification card standards for federal employees and contractors to prevent terrorists, criminals and other unauthorized people from getting into government buildings and computer systems.

OFF-TOPIC...

• World of Warcraft Cartoon - Chapter 7 is up for The Heroes of World of Warcraft.
• Farm Sim Flash Game - Farm Sim is a simple game that makes you a farmer to shoot down UFOs from abducting your precious cows! Another new flash games can be found here.
• FBI Investigating Laser Beams Pointed at Aircraft - Apparently the FBI is investigating incidents in Cleveland and Colorado Springs. They issued a warning on December 14th.
• Tsunami Satellite Images - Here is a collection of before/after satellite pictures of the devastation in Asia due to the tsunami/earthquake.
• Tsunami Adds to Belief in Animals' "Sixth Sense" - Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a "sixth sense" for disasters, experts said Thursday. Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
• Fly-eating robot powers itself - Scientists at the University of the West of England (UWE) have designed a robot that does not require batteries or electricity to power itself. Instead, it generates energy by catching and eating houseflies. Dr Chris Melhuish and his Bristol-based team hope the robot, called EcoBot II, will one day be sent into zones too dangerous for humans, potentially proving invaluable in military, security and industrial areas.
• Top 10 New Year's Sex Resolutions - Check it out! :P
• Akiane - 10-year-old prodigy - Just 10, Akiane Kramarik is dazzling everybody with her painting and poetry. She is also compiling a book of more than 300 poems, some long, some short, all meaningful and symbolic, And each painting has a corresponding poem

TECHNOLOGY...

• Commodore Computer Brand Sold - The company that owns the famed Commodore computer brand has been sold to Yeahronimo Media Ventures, a Beverly Hills, California, digital music distributor.
• LokiTorrent fights MPAA legal attack - The latest peer-to-peer site to come into the legal crosshairs of the motion-picture industry promised this week to fight, and put out a virtual hat to finance its legal fund. LokiTorrent, a Web site and index of files available through a peer-to-peer technology known as BitTorrent, posted a letter from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on its site on Tuesday. The letter states that the MPAA has filed suit in district court in Texas against the site and demands that Loki Torrent cease linking to video files that could infringe on studios' copyrights.

HARDWARE...

• PlayStation 3 GPU: NV40 and NV50 Hybrid with XDR DRAM, Says Report - A report over Japanese web-site PC Watch suggests that the PlayStation 3 graphics processing unit will use NVIDIA's technologies found in the current NV40 generation of its own chips as well as numerous techniques developed for the next-generation part known under NV50 code-name. Still, despite of circuitries of the company's desktop chips found in the GPU, according to NVIDIA's chief Jen-Hsun Huang, the PlayStation 3 GPU has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft DirectX or OpenGL and will use Sony's API for the console. Naturally, the PlayStation 3 graphics processing units supports XDR DRAM memory developed by Rambus. While there is nothing new in Rambus memory for Sony, NVIDIA has never worked with memory by Rambus.
• AMD, Intel sample new processors - AMD and Intel have reportedly sampled new processors to clients in Taiwan. Samples of Intel's upcoming 600-series Pentium 4 processors, which feature Speed Step technology, EM64T, and the Execution Disable Bit, are apparently making the rounds. AMD seems, however, to be still one-step ahead of chipmakers in the development of dual-core CPUs, with market reports saying that AMD has already sent samples of its dual-core Opteron chips to a number of select clients
• ATI's SLI to work without connector - ATI's way of doing SLI called AMR (ATI Multi Rendering) will work differently from Nvidia's now world famous SLI. ATI will make its SLI work without a small printed circuit board (PCB) to interconnect the cards.
• Nforce 5 to clock Pentium 4 bus to 1200MHz - The NForce5 chipset will be a highly overclockable chipset. TheInquirer's sources confirmed that the Nvidia Pentium 4 chipset will go up to FSB 1200MHz, using 300MHz rather than 200MHz multiples.
• Microsoft SPOT and Suunto n3 Smart Watch review - The SPOT watches also are something that people don't see everyday so you still call this a tech gadget despite of the fact the technology has had constant delays, products are still fresh in the market. It was unbelievable how many people asked to see the watch or just wanted to see the different features that I had enabled on the watch. Even a few people were going to do further research on the watch to see if it was something that would be a good present. Unfortunately however, SPOT and the idea behind Smart Watches suffers from certain shortcomings that not necessarily have to do with the service itself, the most important is perhaps that many of the services currently offered by MSN Direct are now commonly available on cell phones...
• Samsung YH-999 Portable Media Center - The Samsung YH-999 is a wonderful first generation PMC device. If you were to ask me for some positive attributes about the YH-999, it would be the following: lightweight, slim, beautiful, and sleek. It certainly is an eye catcher of a device. The 3.5 inch LCD display is a bit smaller than Creative's version of the PMC but it's bright and beautiful. The speaker system is loud enough if you don't want to use headphones but hey – the headphones aren't bad either so you can use them if your surroundings are too loud.
• The Best Compact Digicam for $150 - In this roundup, AnandTech have examined three popular 3 megapixel cameras: Fuji FinePix A330, Kodak EasyShare CX7330, and Olympus D-540. All three are entry-level cameras at the $150 price point with similar features.
• Tranquil T2.e - Silent Media Center PC - The Tranquil is definitely a smaller machine than the Hush, but that doesn't come as a huge surprise when you look at what's inside. Instead of going for an Intel Pentium 4 based solution, Tranquil has chosen a VIA C3 based platform. This means that the motherboard is tiny, allowing for a much smaller system case.
• Leadtek WinFast A400 Ultra/GT TDH - The most obvious selling point of these two WinFast A400 boards is the cooling solution. Not only does it look the part, but it's quiet and extremely effective too. Both the GT and Ultra variants we've looked at have exhibited impressive overclocks, and the A400 GT is almost irresistible when you look at the potential headroom in both core and RAM clocks. Away from raw performance, both of these boards come with an impressive bundle of games - Of course, as with all software bundles they may be titles you own, but if not you'll be chuffed to bits with what's on offer. Finally, anyone eyeing up the A400 Ultra will find themselves with dual DVI support, a feature being increasingly called for these days.
• Zalman's CNPS7700-AlCu cooler  - At just over $30, the ZM80A-HP isn't cheap, but its price isn't outrageous. There aren't many passive graphics chip cooling solutions available today, and there are even fewer appropriate for high-end cards and overclocking. The fact that there's potential for the cooler to last through multiple graphics card upgrades makes it even more attractive. In the end, the ZM80A-HP is the ultimate graphics cooler for a high-end silent gaming rig.
• Gigabyte 3D Rocket Cooler Pro (GH-PCU22-VG) - The little touches that Gigabyte throws in make this cooler a very solid offering. You get thermal paste, a manual fan speed control that can be installed in a 3.5" drive bay or PCI slot, a decent manual, and quick and easy installation for P4 and K7/K8 processors. It's a very cool deal indeed.
• Swiftech H20-120 REV.3 Liquid Cooling Kit - At $220 MSRP, this is definitely an "enthusiast" product. This kit will appeal to the power-driven user who is competent and/or motivated enough to design and tailor his/her personal computer, using the components that best fit his/her needs. At 34 dBA, the kit allows power-users to push their system to the limit, without sacrificing comfort of operations. It will satisfy most of users right out of the box, but will also appeal to the extreme tweaker in search of totally silent operations who will either use a good quality fan controller or rewire the fan to operate at 7 or 5 volts, for a practically noiseless cooling system.
• Diskology Disk Jockey - There are many different modes of operation to the Jockey, but in my opinion, the most useful is Mode 0, Standard Mode. It can be very convenient to be able to quickly hook up a spare hard drive to your computer in a hot-swappable fashion. You can't boot from it, but you can still use it for easy backups to separate drives. After all, redundancy is the key to real backup. Also, if you are having problems with the disk inside one computer, you can easily pop the case off and plug that drive into a clean-working PC (using the Jockey), and use the clean PC to perform any operations to the problematic disk, whether they are virus scans, spyware cleaning, etc. I can think of multiple uses.
• SilverStone LC03V case - Overall this is a really good case and would be great for your HTPC or server if you plan on building one. The paint job on this case is amazing and the aluminum bezel will really stand out in your house. The removable motherboard tray and drive cages make installation much easier and faster which is always a good thing. The VFD and bright blue LEDs will add a lot to the case from a functional and aesthetic standpoint
• Klipsch Promedia vs Creative GigaWorks vs Logitech Z-680 - Dreamnid.com has a round-up of all the high-end speakers.
• ViewSonic VP171b 17-inch 8ms TFT LCD monitor - The biggest chink in the VP171b's armor is the overly saturated colors on brighter intensities. Tweaking the available settings can help to minimize this problem, however, the limited choice of the OSD means you only have a little headroom to play with. This is another problem with the VP171b. ViewSonic has not only done away with the numbering system, the scales on different options are not the same as well. Fortunately, setting up is usually a one off affair. For other display anomalies, the auto calibration button works very well to clear things up.

GUIDES...

• Rojak Pot's ATI Radeon X800 voltage modding guide - There will be two different voltage modding methods for the GPU and two for the memory chips. These methods have been used by many modders so they shouldn't pose any problems to you.
• Modding Boot Camp - Blowholes & Handles - For this installment in my series on modding basics, I'll be covering fitting case handles and blowholes - it seems logical to me anyway, as they both tend to be fitted on the top panel of a c
• Terms Used To Describe How A Loudspeaker Sounds - Here are some common terms to describe loudspeaker sound. "Forward" indicates that vocals, male and female, tend to be very present, almost as if the singer were standing in front of the plain of the speakers. It can be a negative term, too--if singers sound too close up it may mean the midrange is boosted or exaggerated. The opposite is "recessed," which means that midrange sounds like singers and choruses seem to be farther back, a bit distant-sounding and well behind the plain of the speakers.
• How To Create Your Own Computer Games - Have you ever wanted to create your own virtual worlds through which to adventure and slay beasts? Find out how you can, even without programming experience. You might be the next John Carmack!
• How to fix Mom's computer - Fairly useful tutorial for beginners. Another interesting tools/tutorials can be found here.
• Bootcamp 358: Browser tuning tips - Some pretty cool (and easy to do) tips to help speed up that old web browser
• What You Need to Know About Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition and Windows XP Profession - The primary advantage to a 64-bit desktop, however, is performance. According to Microsoft, systems based on the x64 platform achieve a small performance bump simply by running the native 64-bit Windows OS and an even bigger bump when you run these systems in combination with 64-bit software. And 64-bit systems can access lots of RAM: The AMD x64 line can access as much as 1TB of RAM; the Intel Xeon EM64T can access as much as 64GB of RAM.

SOFTWARE...

• Picture It! and Digital Image Security Update - This update addresses a vulnerability that could allow malicious code to run on your computer through a specially crafted image file.
• AirSnare v0.6.7- AirSnare (download) is another tool to add to your Wireless Intrusion Detection Toolbox. AirSnare will alert you to unfriendly MAC addresses on your network and will also alert you to DHCP requests taking place. If AirSnare detects an unfriendly MAC address you have the option of tracking the MAC address's access to IP addresses and ports or by launching Ethereal upon a detection.
• Fresh Diagnose 6.90 - Fresh Diagnose is an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard information, and many more.
• RightMark Memory Analyzer 3.45 - RightMark Memory Analyzer provides stable and accurate measurements of the most important low-level characteristics of the CPU/Chipset/RAM subsystem of your PC.
• AnyDVD 4.4.0.0 beta - AnyDVD is a driver, which descrambles DVD-Movies automatically in the background. This DVD appears unprotected and region code free for all applications and the Windows operating system as well. With AnyDVD's help copy tools like CloneDVD, Pinnacle Instant Copy, InterVideo DVD-Copy, etc. are able to copy CSS protected Movies. This new beta version added support for a new version of the "Sony ARccOS protection" as found on "Resident Evil - Apocalypse" (US) to the option to remove "Protection based on unreadable Sectors"
• Realtek ALC AC97 Audio Driver v3.68 - Realtek released version 3.68 driver for their ALC AC97 audio chipsets