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 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,30 2003 - tech 
Tuesday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 01:30 PM CET - Dec,30 2003 - Post a comment
  • Security: From Bad To Worse? - As difficult as 2003 was for businesses battling security problems, next year promises to be just as bad--and perhaps worse, as additional threats develop from peer-to-peer file sharing software and spyware, an end-of-the-year analysis released Monday by TruSecure said.
  • Malaysian e-mail virus exploits terrorism fears - Potential victims receive a message labeled "Urgent message to all citizens of Malaysia" that claims to warn of five planned terrorist attacks, with the times and places supposedly leaked by an anonymous Malaysian government source. The e-mail says it seeks to minimize the number of terrorist victims by spreading the information on the planned attacks.
  • Off-topic: 10 Ads America won't see - Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States. (thanks SlashDot.org).
  • Off-topic: WebTV founder Phil Goldman dies - Phil Goldman, the founder and chief executive officer of Mailblocks Inc. and one of the founders of WebTV Networks Inc., has died at age 39, according to a statement released by the company on Sunday.
  • Off-topic: Memory storage: Answer in yeast and sea slugs? - By tinkering with yeast and sea slugs, scientists have found a surprising possible explanation for the way the human brain stores long-term memories. Those lowly organisms possess an unusual protein that exists in two shapes. In one shape, the protein is sluggish or inactive. In its second shape, it perpetuates itself indefinitely but can also harmlessly switch back to the inactive form. Researchers believe that in higher organisms the same protein may exploit this second shape to confer lasting stability to sites on brain cells, called synapses, that store the memories of a lifetime. Surprisingly, the shape-shifting protein in yeast and slugs has all the hallmarks of another protein, the infamous prion, found in humans and other animals.
  • The duel of the dual-layer DVD formats - The DVD+RW camp, which includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Philips, plans to put so-called "double-layer" DVD recording devices on the market by next spring. Discs on these systems are expected to hold 8.5GB, or four hours of DVD-quality video. That's about the same amount as the DVDs studios use to issue movies. But the so-called "dash" camp promoting the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats also is working on dual-layer recording, which involves writing data on two separate surfaces. And unlike in the videotape-standard battle between VHS and Betamax, "plus" and "dash" may be able to coexist for some time to come.
  • Philips to provide DVD-Dual chipsets in early 2004 at the earliest - Philips Semiconductors, a long-time advocate of the DVD+RW standard, expects to start providing DVD recorder-use chipsets supporting the DVD-Dual format in early 2004 at the earliest, according to sources. The DVD-Dual chipsets will include a servo IC, an integrated MEPG-2 single chip and supporting firmware, sources said. To offer the new chipsets, Philips will have to pay licensing fees to DVD-RW technology holders, including Pioneer and Taiyo Yuden, sources added.
  • AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU review - X-Bit Labs have tested a new AMD processor based on AMD64 architecture and targeted for the mainstream market. The major advantage of this processor is the price, which is just slightly above $200, while the performance is very nice.
  • SIS760 AMD64 northbridge preview  - Accelenation has posted a preview of SIS760 chipset.
  • Scythe Kamakaze AthlonXP / Pentium 4 Heatsink review - The Kamakaze heatsink looks remarkably similar to the Alpha Novatech PAL8942 which was one massive, and very effective heatsink. Perhaps then, it is just a coincidence that both Alpha Novatech and Scythe are based in Japan. In any case, the Kamakaze is an interesting heatsink because it is set up to work on both Intel Pentium 4 and AMD AthlonXP processors thanks to a complex mounting mechanism.
  • Spire Skive Stream II Heat Sink review - Jason Camp at Overclockers Club has completed a review on the SkiveStream II, a Spire all copper heat sink.
  • VIA K8T800 Performance Motherboard Shootout (Gigabyte, MSI and ABIT) - Gigabyte, MSI and ABIT are all massive contenders in the market and there is a reason to their continued success. Let’s find out what all you performance driven people should be spending your money on in TweakTown's VIA K8T800 performance motherboard shootout.
  • VGA Charts Part III - This year's THG VGA charts feature performance tests from ten different games and benchmarks, including an overview of 46 different graphics cards from ATi, NVIDIA, Matrox, S3 and XGI. THG also included tests gauging anisotropic filtering and FSAA and a ranking of the cards by a price/quality ratio. As always, some of the results should surprise.
  • The Plextor PX-708A 8x DVD±R/RW Drive review -  Plextor's PoweREC technology is definitely a solid solution however, allowing us to produce steady burns, even at higher speeds than the media is rated at. By getting an 8X drive out there so sooner, Plextor will really grab market share, especially as its price has dropped down as low as $220 in most U.S. markets at the time of this article. The PX-708A is a job well done by Plextor, and a well-deserved Editor's Choice Award.
  • Samsung 241MP LCD Monitor with HDTV - EnvyNews has posted a review of Samsung's 24 inch LCD Monitor with HDTV display capability.
  • Sicuro 2.1 Gaming Speakers review - EnvyNews has posted a review of Realworld Technology's immersive 2.1 channel gaming speakers.
  • Motherboard Installation Guide - Take a few minutes to read ExtremeTech's tips on installation and you'll be up and running with minimal hassle in just a few hours.
  • Zoom3 (trance generation) v1.02 64kb demo - Yesterday some websites have posted a small 64kb "Kreed" demo. This was an intro to a scene 64kb intro competition at Assembly '03 (1st place in Combined 64K Intro Competition ). The only thing it has in common with Kreed developer Burut is that the programmer works there. The intro has nothing to do with Kreed the game in terms of content or engine wise :) Anyway, it's really worth checking out!
  • SIM ICQ 0.9.2 - SIM (Simple Instant Messenger) (download) - plugins-based instant messenger with support various protocols. It used QT library and works on X11 (optional KDE-support), MS Windows and MacOS X.
  • Nero version 6.3.0.2 - Ahead have released Nero version 6.3.0.2 (direct FTP link ~ changelog)
  • Bandwidth Monitor Pro 1.27 - Bandwidth Monitor Pro (download) is a utility that displays and logs your network adapters bandwidth usage. It supports logging of all your network adapters at once and has a detailed transfer history.
  • Fresh Download 6.50 - Fresh Download (download) is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite software, mp3 files, video files, picture collections, etc.
  • Riva Tuner v2.0 RC14.3 New Years Edition - RivaTuner (download) is the most powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA and ATI display adapters running under Windows 98 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME / Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of Detonator and Catalyst drivers.
  • Realtek ALC650 Drivers v3.53 - The ALC650 incorporates proprietary converter technology to achieve a high SNR, greater than 90 dB. The ALC650 AC'97 CODEC supports multiple CODEC extensions with independent variable sampling rates and built-in 3D effects.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,28 2003 - tech
Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:50 PM CET - Dec,28 2003 - Post a comment
  • Scam Targets Visa Customers - Security experts are warning of a new Internet scam that preys on Visa credit card holders, using e-mail and a specially designed Web site to harvest customer account numbers and personal identification numbers. The ruse is the latest example of "phisher" scams and comes as one e-mail security company reports a jump in such scams. Such hoaxes typically use decoy Web pages and spam e-mail messages to trick unsuspecting users into divulging sensitive information.
  • In chasing movie pirates, Hollywood treads lightly - When Tim Davis got caught trading songs, it made him semifamous. Davis, an artist who teaches photography at Yale, was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America last September and was featured in news articles around the world.  Since then, he has made his plight a public cause to help recoup the $10,000 he spent on his legal defense and to settle the lawsuit. He sold "Free Timmy" T-shirts and held a fund-raising party at his studio. Visitors to his Web site, davistim.com, can leave a donation in an online "tip jar." The lawsuit, he said, is "an insane kind of disproportionate response" to his musical sins.
  • Microsoft aims to make spammers pay - "The basic idea is that we are trying to shift the equation to make it possible and necessary for a sender to 'pay' for e-mail," explained Ted Wobber of the Microsoft Research group (MSR). The payment is not made in the currency of money, but in the memory and the computer power required to work out cryptographic puzzles. "For any piece of e-mail I send, it will take a small amount computing power of about 10 to 20 seconds."
  • Saudi Arrests Five After Seizing Bomb-Making CDs - Saudi authorities, facing a wave of militant attacks, have arrested five people after raiding computer shops selling compact disks containing hidden bomb-making instructions, a local newspaper reported on Thursday. Police were questioning four owners of computer shops in the southern Jazan region and a fifth person believed to have supplied the CDs to the shops, Al-Watan newspaper said. Officials were not immediately available for comment. The daily said some of the shop owners might not have known about the bomb-making tutorial files hidden on the CDs.
  • Domain Names Once Again Fetch Top Dollar  - One more sign the technology sector is rebounding: An Internet domain name is again commanding seven figures. Last week, a Florida man sold men.com for $1.3 million, a healthy profit over the $15,000 he paid for it in 1997. The buyers, largely entertainment industry folks who have opted to remain anonymous behind the acquiring company, men.com LLC, want to create a portal for men.
  • Largan Precision to produce 1.3-megapixel mobile phone camera lenses - Largan Precision, one of Taiwan’s top three makers of optical lenses, has received orders for lenses for 1.3-megapixel mobile phone cameras and will begin production in early 2004, according to company president Scot Y Lin.
  • Intel Confirms and Denies x86-64 Processors - The worlds No.1 chipmaker this week reportedly confirmed existence of its own 64-bit x86 microprocessor, but then denied the reality of any Intel's x86-64 CPU, when asked for clarification. Investor's Business Daily on Wednesday published an article quoting Intel public relations' officers saying that the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has a working prototype of a 64-bit x86 design that it could bring to market "when customers request it." When asked for clarification, an Intel’s spokespersons said: "the Intel PR person was misquoted... So we have not confirmed a CPU or prototype or whatever IBD claimed." "The report is an error. Intel has not confirmed or commented on the existence of an x86 64-bit CPU," another one official from Intel commented. This is not the first indication of a 64-bit x86 design from Intel, though, this time all information comes from Intel's official PR people, not analysts or sources close to the company.
  • Gigabyte intros ATI-based Pentium 4 board - Taiwanese mobo firm Gigabyte said yesterday it has released the Pentium 4-based Titan 8TRS300M. The board uses the ATI RS300 integrated graphics chipset, and includes support for 800MHz front side buses, hypethreading and DDR 400.
  • ATI PCI-Express Photo - Bi-Tech have posted the first photos for ATI's Radeon 9600 showing of the new PCI-Express bus.
  • Dell Inspiron 8600 review - The Insipron 8600 is based on Intel's Centrino platform, which means that under the bonnet you'll find a Pentium M processor, the Intel 855PM chipset and Intel 802.11b wireless networking. The Pentium-M processor in this review model is the 1.7GHz version, but the Inspiron 8600 is available with processors from 1.4GHz up.
  • PSX Review - A couple days ago, Lik-Sang has posted a review of the new PSX, a high-end electronics device designed to run PS2 and PlayStation games, connect to broadband and record both DVDs and television. The unit is also be capable of receiving analogue television broadcasts to an included TV tuner. Two versions were released on Saturday the 13th December in Japan, one with 160GB hard drive (PSX DESR-5000), and one with 250GB hard drive (PSX DESR-7000).
  • Eumax 5-in-1 MP3 Player - The Eumax 5-in-1 Player is compact and has dimensions of 2.25" (W) x 2.25" (L) x 0.75" (D). The unit has 128 MB of built in memory so you can store around 38-40 songs.(depends on size of the mp3). The unit supports MP3/WMA Digital music format playback. Transfer to the unit is fast thanks to the convenient USB 2.0 interface.
  • Albatron’s GeForceFX 5950 Ultra - The GeForceFX 5950 Ultra now utilizes a 475MHz core frequency, which is exactly 25MHz faster than its predecessor, the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra. Similar frequency alterations have been made to the memory, boosting it from the 425MHz (850MHz DDR) speed of the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra, to 475MHz (950MHz DDR) for the GeForceFX 5950 Ultra. These high numbers give the GeForceFX 5950 Ultra an impressive memory bandwidth of 30GB/s. This is almost 3GB/s more than the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra.
  • ASUS Radeon 9600XT/TVD 128MB review - Hexus let us know they have posted a review of ASUS Radeon 9600XT/TVD 128MB.
  • OCZ EL DDR PC-3700 Gold Edition Dual Channel Rev.2 review - OCZ delivers an impressive dual memory set with their PC3700 Gold series. This memory can handle tight timings at ~200Mhz speeds, while at the same time it will soar higher then its rated speed, reaching 250Mhz (PC4000) at good timings. This memory will allow you to find the sweet spot for your P4 system. The added advantage of being able to use 2.9v on these sticks while still keeping your lifetime warranty make this memory set a very interesting deal for those seeking to increase their memory bandwidth.
  • SilverStone B032FW Enclosure - If you’re wanting an aluminum enclosure that won't make you look like a total newb at your next LAN event, or even if you just want to make your home system more stylish, there are several options. If you want all this plus expensive features AND an affordable price, the number of choices become few. At the top of that small list I would place SilverStone. With a tool-free design and features you don’t normally see on lower-priced enclosures, you just can't go wrong.
  • Logitech Cordless MX Duo - TheTechLounge has posted a quite positive review of Logitech Cordless MX Duo.
  • Preventing Data Theft from a Stolen Laptop - In  this article, PCStats take a look at methods to reduce the risk. First, they cover physical security methods that can help prevent laptop theft in the first place, then they go step-by-step through some essential data securing techniques that can drastically reduce the chance of your data being stolen along with your laptop if the worst does happen.
  • The MOSFET Heat Sink Guide - In voltage regulators with fewer phases, the MOSFETs can get very hot, especially when the voltage regulator needs to supply a lot of power to the processor. Hence, the use of heat sinks on such MOSFETs.
  • CuteFTP Pro 3.3 Build 12.22.2003 (expensive SHW) - CuteFTP Pro integrates state-of-the-art security standards including SSL via FTP and HTTP, SSH2 and advanced S/KEY password encryption to ensure that confidential business data stays that way. You can maximize bandwidth throughput, download from multiple sites while uploading or browsing, automatically update Web content and customize data management processes all in one cost-effective application. Since CuteFTP costs a lot of money, I recommend you to try WinSCP (download English version 3.4.2) which is free.
  • AVG Free Edition 6.0 Build 556 - A free registration is required to run AVG. You will be emailed a registration code and can not install it without it. The installer does provide a link during installation to get your code.
  • Avant Browser 8.02 Build 210 - Avant Browser (download) is an upgrade to Internet Explorer. Avant Browser is a fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile multi-window browser.
  • Zoom Player Standard (Beta) 3.30 RC1 - Zoom Player (download ~ changelog) is a robust Media and DVD Front-End Player.
  • Jet-Audio 6.0.0.3224 - Jet-Audio (download) features an impressive home audio system interface, including independent A/V components for Digital Signal Processor, Audio CD Player, Digital Audio (MP3, RA, etc.), MIDI (MID, MOD etc.), and Digital Video (AVI, MPG, MOV, etc.), along with a Mixer and a Remote Controller.
  • TVTool 9.5.5.3 (SHW) - TVTool (download) is a control center for the TV output of nVidia graphics cards. With this tool it is possible to adapt the TV output perfectly to your needs and to control the TV mode in a comfortable way. TVTool accesses the hardware directly and is able to offer a significant greater functionality and picture quality than most standard graphics card driver.
  • Safe XP 1.03.12.27 - Safe XP improves your system performance and makes Windows to run faster, more secure and more stable.
  • OPN-462 v0.8.20 - The Socket A AMD Processor Identifier - OPN-462 (download) is an intelligent program designed specifically to translate the three codes found on, or around the core of all Socket-A, AMD CPU's.
  • DVD Decrypter 3.1.8.0 - DVD Decrypter (download) allows you to copy the whole contents of your DVDs to harddisk circumventing the CSS protection.
  • XviD-1.0-Beta3  - A new beta Xvid is available for download from the official website (changelog ~ download). This new beta fixes a couple of bugs, supports display aspect ratio settings, contains some SSE2 optimizations and is generally quite a bit faster.
  • NEC1300 modified firmware - Herrie and BronKowTech45 have released a modified firmware for the NEC1300 DVD burner (download). Beside the usual "region free", the patch also allows changing the booktype setting.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,24 2003 - tech
Pre-Xmas Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:37 AM CET - Dec,24 2003 - Post a comment
  • New IE flaw allows easier phishing - According to analysts from the X-Force division of security firm ISS, the flaw can allow website addresses or URLs to display incorrectly in the browser's navigation bar, thereby allowing scams that trick users into trusting a bogus website. The flaw, which ISS says is trivial to exploit, may be triggered when individuals navigate to URLs from within emails or hostile web pages.
  • MySQL Quashes Defects in Database Release - According to its study, Reasoning officials said the company found 21 software defects in 235,667 lines of MySQL source code. The report's Defect Summary noted 15 defect instances of NULL Pointer Deference, three defect instances of an allocated memory leak, and three defect instances of an uninitialized variable prior to usage.
  • Bollywood in Internet download deal  -  India's film makers are offering Internet movie downloads on website Kazaa in a move that could lower costs and boost revenues in Bollywood, the world's most prolific film production centre. Some 35 producers will be able to sell movies using Kazaa, a file-sharing program owned by Australia's Sharman Networks, according to company statement. The industry started its first download last month when Kazaa's users were offered "Supari" (A Contract for Killing), a slick thriller, for $2.99. The file was programmed to self destruct after being viewed and could not be copied.
  • Asimov's "I, Robot" - The movie - Isaac Asimov's classic collection of short stories about the role robots play in humankind's future is being made into a movie set to release on July 16, 2004, starring Wil Smith. (thanks Slashdot.org)
  • Xdrive launches video-sharing service - Xdrive has added videos to the list of file formats supported by the company's services. People can now store video clips encoded in formats such as MPEG, Windows Media, RealNetworks, QuickTime and AVI. The service then lets people e-mail outside contacts and invite them to view these files. The same holds true for Xdrive users who store other types of files, such as music, photos and documents. Xdrive charges $9.95 a month for 500MB of storage and progressively up to $49.95 a month for 5GB.
  • Kingmax intros cheap DDR 500 DIMM  - Kingmax said it has released a DDR 500 memory module which it described as "hard core" and "hyperband".  This DDR 500 DIMM, said Kingmax, is tested for "hyperband" compatibility with all 875/865 motherboards currently in the market.
  • Intel’s Xeon 3.2 GHz / 1MB Processor review - Amazingly, Intel has stayed fairly inanimate over the past few months, until now only releasing one updated Xeon processor, the 3.06 GHz w/ 1MB L2 cache. The 3.06 GHz/1MB was the Xeon equivalent of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. It utilizes a more expensive processor core and moves it down to a lower price point in order to make the standard Xeons competitive versus the Opteron.
  • Intel Aircooling - Heatsink roundup -  MadShrimps reviewed the Scythe Kamakaze, Swiftech MCX478-V, Speeze EE429B0 CopperSnake and the Thermalright SLK947-U.
  • Gigabyte K8NNXP review - The K8NNXP has left a strong impression, just as the K8VNXP did. Having said this, which motherboard should you purchase assuming the decision is to use a Gigabyte branded Athlon64 motherboard? Or more to the point, which motherboard is better? The K8VNXP, sporting the VIA K8T800 chipset or the K8NNXP boasting the NVIDIA nForce3 chipset. Let’s analyze the key differences between these two motherboards first.
  • Asus P4S800D-E SiS 655TX review - HotHardware has posted a review of Asus P4S800D-E SiS 655TX Motherboard.
  • BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB - BFG's Asylum GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB performs like a slightly overclocked 5900 Ultra, and that's basically what it is. In most cases, it performs better than its older brother, the 5900 Ultra, and its (the 5900U's) archrival, the 9800 Pro. A price search at the time of this review shows this board going for around $410.
  • Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimate Edition - If you're desperate for silent computing I'd take a serious look at water cooling first, but if that's not for you then this is probably the next best solution.
  • IBM ThinkPad T41 TC12FUK review - The T41 is based on Intel's Centrino standard and you'll find a 1.4GHz Pentium M processor at its heart. Surprisingly, there's only 256MB of RAM supporting the processor, which is a little below par by today's standards. That said, at least there's a free SODIM socket so you can upgrade your memory complement at a later stage. Storage is more adequately taken care of by a 40GB 5,400rpm hard disk. If you do feel the need to offload some data, there's also a DVD/CD-RW combo drive present.
  • Hitachi 7K250 Serial ATA Drives in RAID_0 review  - EnvyNews has posted a review of two 250GB Hitachi 7K250 Serial ATA drives in RAID_0.
  • AOpen XC Cube & Soldam Pandora Claire review - With cool features like PSU muffler and swingable PSU, Soldam has really perfected what Shuttle has created in the XPC. Soldam can really claim to be the Rolls Royce of computer cases.
  • 2.1 Speaker Smackdown: Xhifi versus Logitech - The fit and finish of Xhifi's Xducer 2.1 speakers are certainly welcome in the PC speaker market, where such considerations often get sacrificed at the bill of materials altar. The Xducers' wood veneer, gold-plated connector posts and overall aesthetic clearly put them in a class by themselves. That said, the Xducer 2.1's $795 price tag can't be justified by their audio performance. In fact, at nearly an eighth of the cost, Logitech Z2200s were much more pleasing to our ears on almost all the test music. For the cost of the Xducers, you could outfit a seven-man LAN party with Z2200s and still have money left over for beer and munchies.
  • Cube House - This is what happens when a person gets a brilliant idea and a little free time :)
  • ASUS PC Probe 2.22.03 - ASUS PCProbe is a convenient utility to monitor the computer's vital components: fan rotation speeds, voltages and temperatures.
  • Tweak FX 3.26b -Tweak FX is a powerful configuration tool for Windows. It uses plugins written in VBScript and provides all functions included in the VBScript language specification.
  • Maxtor Maxboost utility - MaxBoost (download Trial ~ lic.until June 30th 2004) is performance-boosting driver software which operates under Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP and which is designed to complement your Maxtor ATA or SATA hard drive. The MaxBoost driver intelligently caches data in the host system RAM before it is written to and read from the Maxtor disk drive, enhancing the effective storage speed of your system under a variety of system conditions and applications.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,23 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:28 AM CET - Dec,23 2003 - Post a comment
  • DeCSS Creator Cleared on Appeal - An Oslo Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court's ruling clearing Jon Lech Johansen of charges related to his development and distribution of DeCSS, a software tool that can be used to crack copy protection on DVDs. Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, was acquitted in January by the Oslo City Court. Okokrim, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime, decided in March to appeal the verdict. Okokrim had called for 20-year-old Johansen to be given a 90-day suspended jail term.
  • Apple issues patch for Mac OS X hole - Apple Computer has issued a security update that, among other fixes, closes a hole in Mac OS X that could have allowed hackers to take control of a computer under particular circumstances. The patch, which the Cupertino, Calif.-based manufacturer released late Friday, essentially changes the default settings for connecting to a Dynamic Host Communication Protocol (DHCP) server on Mac OS X 10.2.8. (aka "Jaguar"), Mac OS X 10.3.2 (aka "Panther") and the corresponding server versions of these operating systems.
  • Mythic Sues Microsoft Over Mythica Title  - Mythic Entertainment, developer of Dark Age of Camelot, today filed suit against Microsoft for trademark infringement and unfair competition. The title of Mythica, Microsoft's in-development MMORPG, apparently sounds a bit too much like "Mythic" for their tastes, and represents a case for legal action. Mythic's lawsuit claims that the resemblance between the two names, although the one refers to a game and the other refers.
  • Sony Ericsson tests multiplayer m-games - Sony Ericsson has begun trials on a multiplayer mobile gaming system that will allow up to eight players to compete in real-time. The multiplayer mobile gaming service will initially include two games. The first is Rally, which can be played by up to four players and the other is RC Battle, which can be played by up to eight players. The games can be played on a variety of Sony Ericsson phones, including the T300, T230, Z608 and T630 handsets. The games will be available for download from the Sony Ericsson Web site from January onwards.
  • Mobile Battery Problems Explode - When lithium-ion batteries replaced nickel metal hydride, researchers increased the energy density (the amount of power they could pack into the space), eliminated the memory effect, and made batteries lighter. But lithium ion in most cases uses cobalt oxide, which has a tendency to undergo "thermal runaway," explains Joe Lamoreux, vice president of research and development at Valence Technology. "When you heat this material up, it (can) reach an onset temperature that begins to self-heat and progresses into fire and explosion."
  • Taiwan makers to face 8x DVD Dual price pressure from Japan and Korea in 1Q - Main Taiwanese producers of optical disc drives anticipate a further drop in the OEM price of 8x DVD Dual burners in the first quarter of 2004 due to increased supply from Japanese and South Korean competitors.
  • Global notebook sales exceed 10 million mark in 3Q 2003- Quarterly notebook sales in the global market broke the 10 million mark for the first time in the third quarter of this year, reaching 10.36 million units, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Wow I still don't own even one :)
  • Prices for 3-megapixel DSC-use controllers down below US$10 - According to sources, 3-megapixel DSC-use controllers without integrated MPEG-4 and audio functions are priced at below US$7, while integrated solutions are quoted at close to US$10. Currently, prices for 2-megapixel DSC-use controllers are between US$5 and US$8, sources said.
  • Athlon64 3000+: 64-bit at Half the Price - The Athlon64 3000+ is the chip that answers the need for a lower cost Athlon64. At just over $200, the 3000+ cuts the cost of entry for Athlon64 computing in half. This in itself is significant and should have A64 3000+ chips flying off dealer shelves. Value, however, is not just about price; it is about performance for your dollar. The Athlon64 3000+ delivers value in spades. Running at the same speed as the 3200+, the reduction in cache to 512k has only a minor impact on performance. In almost every benchmark, the 3000+ is only a few percent lower in performance than a 3200+. Even more important, the 3000+ performs very well compared to Intel’s 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 — a chip that sells for almost double the cost of the Athlon64 3000+.
  • The Matrix Trailers re-encoded - The chaps at The Matrix website, have re-encoded all nine trailers from the original Matrix, bumped up the resolution and uploaded them for readers to enjoy, including a never before released trailer. (thanks Slashdot.org)
  • Registry Repair Utility for Win2k-based computers - The Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility can be downloaded on to floppy disks and then run on the system with the corrupted registry. You must have six floppy disks to download this utility. The utility will try to repair the corrupted registry and permit the computer to start again.
  • Windows XP SP2 Beta 1 Build 2055 Download  - For all of you testers that didnt make it to the official list Geeknewz have the express install file ( you can download without registering) here for the latest Windows XP SP2 beta 1 that was released to testers yesterday.  Remember to make a restore point before you install, enjoy.
  • Python 2.3.3 final - This is a bug-fix release for Python 2.3 that fixes a number of bugs, including a couple of serious errors with weakrefs and the cyclic garbage collector.
  • PHP 5.0.0 Beta 3 - The third beta of PHP is also scheduled to be the last one (barring unexpected surprises). This beta incorporates dozens of bug fixes since Beta 2, better XML support and many other improvements, some of which are documented in the NEWS file.
  • F-Prot Antivirus for Linux v4.3.2 - This newest version of F-Prot Antivirus for Linux (tar ~ RPM ~ DEB) contains new system startup scripts (rc-scripts) for the Mail Server component. These new scripts allow for a far simpler and more precise setup and configuration procedure. This results in a more secure system and increased peace of mind for network administrators.
  • WGP System Protect 5.6.15 - WinGuard Pro Free is a program that lets you lock some features of your system so that nobody can use them while you are away.
  • WinRAR 3.30 Beta 4 - WinRAR is a general purpose archiving and compression program competing with/replacing programs such as PKZip, ARJ, and others. RAR offers significantly improved compression ratios.
  • Media Player Classic v6.4.7.3 - Media Player Classic has been updated to version 6.4.7.3.
  • Alcohol 120% v1.4.8.1222 - Alcohol 120% (download) can handle the creation of 31 virtual CD & DVD-ROMs, allowing the user to play discs whithout needing the physical disc. It also allows users to make copy CD & DVD to CD-R / CD-RW / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD-RAM / DVD+RW.
  • TVTool v9.5.5.2 - TVTool (download) was developed to replace the poor support video card manufacturers had for TV_OUT. TVTool works with most NVIDIA based cards such as TNT, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra, GeForce cards with BT86x (e.g. Viper 550, Erazor 3, Xentor 32, 3D Prophet, etc.).
  • NVIDIA Linux drivers v1.0 5358 -  These new drivers support latest GeForce FX and Quadro FX GPUs, UBB and FSAA Stereo, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0. and  support for GLX_SGI_swap_control.
  • ATI Omega Drivers Based on Catalyst 3.10 - The new Omega Drivers for Win9x/ME/2k/XP are available for download. According to Omega website, "this set will be the LAST set of drivers for Win9x/ME".
  • Massive BIOS Update - PCTunning has posted a lots of new BIOS updates (Czech website, but download description is in English) from last week, also OnlyNews has posted its massive BIOS/Drivers update.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,22 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:52 AM CET - Dec,22 2003 - Post a comment
  • Chats led to Acxiom hacker bust - A Cincinnati man who plead guilty Thursday to cracking and cloning giant consumer databases was only caught because he helped out a friend in the hacker community. Daniel Baas, 25, plead guilty Thursday to a single federal felony count of "exceeding authorized access" to a protected computer for using a cracked password to penetrate the systems of Arkansas-based Acxiom Corporation -- a company known among privacy advocates for its massive collection and sale of consumer data. The company also analyzes in-house consumer databases for a variety of companies.
  • Software shares out spare processing power - Software to be launched in January will let PC users run as many "distributed computing" projects as they like. The program will let PC users search for aliens, help predict climate change and perform advanced biological research - all at the same time.
  • Secret of "strained silicon" chips revealed - Intel has taken the wraps off a secret technique it is using to increase the speed of its Pentium and Centrino chips. The technique boosts the rate at which transistors switch, without having to make them smaller.
  • Borland Delphi 8 for the MS .NET Framework Ships - Borland announced the immediate availability of Borland Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework. This latest edition of  Delphi development environment outlines a clear path for the future of Delphi, enabling Delphi developers to use their existing Delphi language and Framework skills to create .NET Framework-based applications and migrate existing Win32® Delphi applications to the .NET Framework.
  • USB Powered Miniature Christmas Tree with Oscillating LED Light - Addlogix (formerly CompuCable) is introducing a new way of celebrating this holiday season, with the USB Christmas Tree (USB X-MAS Tree) for your computer. What better way to brighten the holiday spirit in the office and home by plugging in a stand-alone mini X-MAS tree with LED cycling through 6 different colors.
  • AMD opteron 146 review - At this time I can’t fault the Opteron 146, it is a great chip for the gamer and home user especially if you need that bit of extra power and considering that performance can only improve when 64bit support is added to Windows things can only get better for the Opteron.
  • Intel 3.2GHz 800FSB review - The Intel Pentium 4 "C" revision processor offers excellent overclocking potential along with incredible out of the box performance. Compatiblity is not an issue and the Pentium 4 has never been known as a bad apple when it comes to heat and durability, an issue that has plagued AMD in the past. Look for the Pentium 4 "C" to continue its popularity trend until AMD lowers the price of the Athlon 64 FX.
  • NVIDIA 5950 vs 9800 XT - Looking at the speed of the 2 cards they are both very fast. In all DriverHeaven tests, other than Call Of Duty, the XT is faster than the 5950 Ultra.
  • Soyo KT600 Dragon Ultra Platinum Motherboard review - Soyo’s performance and optimisations was top notch, with a resounding victory in all the benchmarks it is hard to put a damper on this product. All the features like Firewire, additional Serial ATA RAID controllers and Gigabit Ethernet with hardware 6 channel sound makes this motherboard one for those who want to overclock without paying for a simple name that doesn’t guarantee the fastest or most feature-packed product of its kind.
  • Thermaltake Aquarius III Water Cooling System review - If you’re after a quiet cooler and don't really care about overclocking and hardcore gaming, then get one of these water coolers today. But if you're looking for better than air cooling for aggressive clock speeds, then you'll want to either look elsewhere or build your own water cooling rig.
  • Samsung 957MB 19-inch CRT Monitor review - Like almost all Samsung monitors, the 957MB does come with Magic Bright. This is a nice, handy tool that you can quickly hit a button to set the screen brightness to preset levels for what you are doing. Also Samsung includes a button called Highlight. This feature allows you to make one area of the screen brighter than the rest. You can adjust the size of this area if you wish. The benefit is that you can open a window that you are working on and highlight that window so it stands out more. I myself have never found a use for it, but some of you might have one.-
  • BrookGPU 0.2 - Brook for GPU is a compiler and runtime implementation of the Brook stream program language for modern graphics hardware. The goals for this project are: Demonstrate general purpose programing on GPUs, Provide a useful tool for developers who want to run applications on GPUs and Research the stream language programing model, streaming applications, and system implementations.
  • Adobe Reader Speed-Up 1.09 - Adobe Reader Speed-Up (download) significantly decreases the amount of time required for Adobe Reader 6.0 to start by disabling most of the least used plugins. Plugins can be freely enabled and disabled, if required.
  • FastVoodoo2 4.0 XP Gold Edition driver -  3dfxzone.it has posted FastVoodoo2 4.0 XP Gold Edition driver (download) that supports 3dfx Voodoo2 video cards with Win2k/XP.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,20 2003 - tech
Saturday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:51 AM CET - Dec,20 2003 - Post a comment / read (3)
  • "Open source" IE patch withdrawn for further patching - The third-party "open source" patch for Internet Explorer that I mentioned yesterday contains more than a few potentially nasty surprises.  German tech site Heise had already warned (German article -> babelfish) of dangerous buffer overflows. In addition, the authors of the patch also enabled a Windows Registry key used by spyware. IEmsg.dll. There's no doubt this was a truly poor attempt at a fix - buffer overflows, memory leaks, and a nice liveupdate.exe hidden in the registry. So rather don't install it!
  • Software glitch brings Y2K deja vu - Software maker PTC, a specialist in product lifecycle management applications for engineers and product designers, has rekindled memories of the Year 2000 bug, or Y2K, as it scrambles to patch a glitch that will render most of its products inoperable after Jan. 10. The flaw involves the way the programs handle date entries, Gavaghan said. To be able to recognize dates, PTC programmers had to set a date for infinity. They chose 2 billion seconds since 1970--when the Unix operating system was developed and Year Zero for many Unix applications. That number brings PTC software up to Jan. 10. After that, the software will be unable to recognize dates and will no longer operate.
  • Online gamer in China sues over virtual theft - A Chinese court has ordered an online video game company to return hard-won virtual property, including a make-believe stockpile of bio-chemical weapons, to a player whose game account was looted by a hacker. Li Hongchen, 24, had spent two years, and 10,000 yuan (750 pounds) on pay-as-you-go cards to play, amassing weapons and victories in the popular online computer game Hongyue, or Red Moon, before his "weapons" were stolen in February, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday. Li asked the company, Beijing Arctic Ice Technology Development to identify the player who stole his virtual property, but it declined, saying it could not give out a player's private details, it said.
  • Nanotubes break speed record - Semiconducting carbon nanotubes are significantly better at conducting electricity at room temperature than any other known material, according to recent tests at the University of Maryland. The findings are the latest evidence that nanotubes could form the basis for future generations of powerful electronics.
  • Swedish firm to offer 100Mbit/s broadband for L70/month - A Swedish supplier will introduce an amazing 100Mbit/sec broadband connection for 895 kroner in April next year. That's about L70 a month, and that speed is in both directions. Bredbandsbolaget will cap downloads to 300GB as part of the service it's offering.
  • S3's DeltaChrome Preview - The core of the DeltaChrome S3 is 300Mhz and has around 60-80 million transistors, and yet it still "hangs" with the other cards. While the initial numbers are impressive It is almost certain that this card will be "fine-tuned" by PCB revisions, BIOS updates, and driver improvements. After these changes it will possibly challange ATI & nVidia for a piece of the mainstream ~$150 video card market share.
  • Artec's WSM-52Z & WRR-52X CD-RW Drives review - ExplosiveLabs has posted a review of Artec's WSM-52Z & WRR-52X CD-RW Drives.
  • The North Bridge Wet-Sanding Guide - As you all know, the NVIDIA nForce2 is a very, very hot chipset. I can't even leave my finger on the south bridge for more than 6 seconds, let alone the north bridge. The early revisions of the nForce2 chipsets shared one common flaw - the north bridge chip's surface wasn't flat. An imperfect contact surface is one of the best excuses to wet-sand your north bridge and that's exactly what I did. Believe it or not, the result was fantastic. .
  • Daemon Tools 3.43 - DAEMON Tools (download) is an advanced application for multiprotection emulation. It is further development of Generic Safedisc emulator and incorporates all its features. This program allows running BACKUP copies of SafeDisc (C-Dilla), Securom or Laserlock protected games.
  • ZoneAlarm Pro 4.5.538.0 - ZoneAlarm (download) includes five interlocking security services that deliver easy-to-use, comprehensive protection.
  • Opera 7.50 Tech Preview 1 Build 3494 w/a Java - Opera for Windows (download) introduces the looks and the performance of an exceptional Web browser. Opera's user interface has received a major overhaul with the new start-up dialog, and new default buttons, skin and panels in a blue and white color scheme that can be changed back to classic Opera look or another design. At start-up you can select a single or multiple document interface (SDI/MDI).
  • MSN Messenger 6.1.0207 - A new MSN Messenger version is available.
  • WinAmp 5.01 Final - WinAmp is an audio player that can handle audio CDs, MP3 audio files and streaming audio broadcasts. It combines extensive functionality with an intuitive interface. WinAmp features a playlist editor and a 10-band graphic equalizer with user-definable presets that can automatically load specific files. It also includes Windows Media Technology 4.0 input/output support and the industry-standard Fraunhofer MP3 decoder. This download no longer includes VIS/DSP plug-ins; you can download them separately.
  • ASUS PC Probe 2.22.02 - The ASUS PC Probe is a simple utility that monitors vital information in the computer such as fan rototations, voltages and temperature.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,19 2003 - tech
Friday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 01:16 PM CET - Dec,19 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Open source firm releases patch for IE spoofing flaw - An open source and freeware software development web site has released a patch (download) to fix the URL spoofing vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by scammers who try to trick people into revealing details of online banking accounts or other private information. Openwares.org, a Vaunatian company, with branches in Israel, the US and France, released the patch and the source code for the same a couple of days back. The company has also set up two pages where users can test to see if they are vulnerable to the exploit, one a fake Microsoft Update example and the other an example of a fake PayPal site.
  • Off-topic: First private rocket ship goes supersonic - The first piloted and rocket-powered craft to have been developed by a private company made its maiden flight on Wednesday, over the Mojave desert in California. The craft, called Space Ship One (SS1), also become the first such craft to break the sound barrier, reaching a top speed of 930 mph (1490 km/h). The flight, exactly 100 years after the Wright brothers made their historic flight, marks a big step to winning the $10 million X Prize for private spaceflight.
  • Wal-Mart Music Download Service Launches - Wal-Mart launched their music download service yesterday. They are providing wma files for 88 cents.
  • The big PC giveaway - UK start-up Metronomy has joined forces with IBM to offer free PCs to UK consumers in exchange for watching 90 minutes of advertising every month. Users must watch three minutes of advertising for every hour the PC is used. And households will have to use their PC for a minimum of 30 hours per month, which equates to an average household of four each using the PC for 15 minutes every day. The computer must also connect to the internet at least once a month to confirm that the ads have been watched.
  • DVD drive marries red and blue lasers - NEC has developed technology to record and read both current and next-generation DVDs with a single optical head, adding to the momentum of blue-laser DVD products.  NEC said Thursday that its new optical head combines both blue and red lasers. Red lasers are used in today's DVD players and recorders. Blue lasers can be used to read and write greater amounts of data on discs, according to NEC.
  • ATI to mass produce R420 graphics chip in 1Q - ATI Technologies is expected to enter volume production of its R420 graphics chip core as early as the end of the first quarter, according to local industry sources. The R420 will be fabricated at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) using a low-k process technology. The graphics chip core is expected to boast 160 million transistors and support an AGP 8x bus and GDDR3 memory architecture. The product name is currently unknown. Nvidia is expected to launch its comparable product (the NV40) around the same time. Not much is known about the NV40, except that it will also support the AGP 8x bus and be made using a 0.13-micron process.
  • AMD introduces budget Athlon 64 - The new Athlon 64 3000+ runs at 2GHz, the same as the existing Athlon 64 3200+, but it only comes with a 512KB secondary cache, according to an AMD spokesman. The 3200+ features a 1MB cache. A cache is a pool of memory integrated into the processor for rapid data access. In general, large caches lead to better performance. AMD, however, prices the Athlon 64 3000+ at $218 in quantities of 1,000 while the 3200+ sells for $418. At AMD, the new chip is known as the "A-Rod," a reference to baseball player Alex Rodriguez. The chip was released earlier this week.
  • NVIDIA to Bring Firewall Capabilities in its Next Chipsets - NVIDIA will add firewall capabilities into its Athlon 64-supporting chipsets due next year. The move’s key aim is to provide more security for enterprises adopting 64-bit technology from Advanced Micro Devices. Sources close to NVIDIA’s partners said firewall capabilities will be present in some of the company’s core-logic products, including in code-named CK8-04 that will be mass produced in the third quarter 2004 and the CK8S2. The former is anticipated to be a single-chip logic that will boast with support for PCI Express x16 (PEG x16), PCI Express x2 as well as 10 USB 2.0 ports. The latter – CK8S2 – will be a version of nForce3 250 designed for Socket 939 processors. It is not fully clear whether NVIDIA’s firewall technology utilises both hardware and software means, or will rely fully on silicon, not software.
  • Athlon 64 3000+ Performance Review - In conclusion the Athlon 64 3000+ is one of the best CPUs AMD has never announced. It makes a sub $1,000 system that is 64 bit capable easy to reach, and is able to perform quite admirably even with half of the cache of the other AMD64 CPUs. Will AMD make more 512kb cache Athlon 64s in the near future? How long will Socket 754 continue? Is this 3000+ an overclocker of merit? Stay tuned. For now if you have been craving for a powerful and cheap system with 64 bit onboard then the Athlon 64 3000+ is your CPU. It has no competition in its class, and likely will not for months to come.
  • DeltaChrome S8: First look - The chips in the DeltaChrome line are all DirectX 9 compatible and include full support for pixel and vertex shader versions 2.0. Pixel shader precision maxes out at 96 bits per pixel, or 24 bits of precision for each of the red, green, and blue color channels, just like ATI's R3x0 graphics chips. DeltaChrome's pixel shaders support 128 color instructions per pass, with up to 32 texture instructions and 16 texture lookups, but they can't branch and loop like NVIDIA's flexible GeForce FX pixel shaders. DeltaChrome's pixel shaders do, however, support per-pixel gamma correction.
  • External Hard Disks from Maxtor and Seagate Get Mobile (And Attractive) - The latest generation models not only look good, they are also more intelligent - and they come with up-to-the-minute features such as one-touch backup. THG tested the OneTouch from Maxtor and the External Hard Drive from Seagate.
  • Creative 3D Blaster 5 FX5900 review -  NVNews has posted a review on the Creative 3D Blaster 5 FX5900 video card.
  • Sapphire Radeon 9600XT - For those who have been looking for performance on a budget, the recent release of the Radeon 9600XT was a true blessing.  TweakTown take a look at the Sapphire version of this very VPU.
  • Designtechnica's 2003 Holiday Gift Guide - Designtechnica has posted a holiday gift guide.
  • Linux 2.6 kernel released -  A major update to the Linux kernel, version 2.6.0, has been released.  The new version of the core, or kernel, of Linux has several changes that make it better suited to powerful computers with numerous processors, a market dominated today by servers running versions of the Unix operating system on which Linux is based.
  • Windows XP SP2 Beta Build 2055 Released - Microsoft released their latest SP2 in the form of a beta this evening. Newsgroups are live for testers and after some initial problems every tester is now able to install and download the various bits. The build is 5.1.2600.2055 (XP SP_2 Beta 1.031215-1745).
  • Microsoft IE Security Patch - This patch addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer that could allow Hackers and con-artists to to display a fake URL in the address and status bars. The vulnerability is caused due to an input validation error, which can be exploited by including the "%01" and "%00" URL encoded representations after the username and right before the "@" character in an URL. Successful exploitation allows a malicious person to display an arbitrary FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) in the address and status bars, which is different from the actual location of the page.
  • Style XP 2.0 Beta 4 - 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. Style XP can manage and rotate themes, visual styles, backgrounds, and logons, which are freely available at ThemeXP.
  • QuickTime 6.5 - QuickTime (11.7MB) is Apple's cutting-edge digital media software for both Mac and Windows-based computers delivers unparalleled quality for creating, playing and streaming audio and video content over the Internet. Besides playing MPEG-4 and MP3 content, it supports timecode tracks as well as MIDI standards such as the Roland Sound Canvas and GS format extensions.
  • Acrobat Reader 6.0.1 - Adobe has updated their Acrobat Reader program to version 6.0.1 (download). Adobe Reader is free and freely distributable software that lets you view and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Adobe Reader also lets you fill in and submit PDF forms online.
  • Windows Startup Inspector 205 beta - Windows Startup Inspector is a Windowst platform software that helps Windows user to manage Windows startup applications. On www.windowsstartup.com, there are more than 3,400 known programs in the database. Windows Startup Inspector can thus provide a consultative information on the programs that are running at your Windows startup process. Whether a program is necessary to the system, or is the program a spyware.
  • FeedDemon 1.0  - FeedDemon enables you to quickly explore the world of RSS from your desktop without having to visit hundreds of sites. Written by Nick Bradbury, creator of TopStyle and HomeSite, FeedDemon makes RSS as easy to access as your email.
  • ExtractNow 3.56  - ExtractNow lets you extract multiple archives with the ease of a singular button. Supports ZIP, RAR, ACE, & JAR file formats.
  • Fresh UI 6.75 - Fresh UI (download) is the fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of useful hidden settings, this software covers the customizing and optimizing technique that you'll be glad to know.
  • HWiNFO32 v1.34 - HardwareInfo32 is a powerful system information utility designed especially for detection of hardware.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,18 2003 - tech
Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:11 AM CET - Dec,18 2003 - Post a comment
  • Eighteen people arrested in England for piracy, more raids today - Eighteen people were arrested in a joint anti-piracy operation involving industry bodies BPI, FACT and ELSPA on Sunday December 14 at Inglistone open-air market near Edinburgh airport. Over one hundred officers from the Lothian and Borders police force took part in the raid where they seized an estimated Ł10 million-worth of counterfeit CDs, DVDs, as well as business and games software.
  • B'buster chief: End regional codes, thwart pirates -  Blockbuster Inc. president and chief operating officer Nigel Travis on Thursday called for an end to regional coding on DVDs, saying they merely create more opportunities for piracy. "I believe, in addition to the elimination of two-tier pricing, the studios should also make another significant strike against piracy with the elimination of regional coding," he said.
  • Israeli Gov't Moves Away From Microsoft  - Y-net reported that the Israeli Treasury has decided to walk away from the Government's contract with Microsoft. Signed two years ago, the contract expires this month, and the ministry is testing localized builds of Mandrake Linux.
  • Off-topic: Techie makes "WMD" treasure hunt game - As computer programmer Shane Messer watched U.S. forces look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the search struck him as a perverse sort of treasure hunt. So he created an international treasure hunt called "Find Those Weapons: The Hunt for the Real WMD" by using actual public documents related to the American invasion as clues.  The game he created, which started shipping this week for $39.99 a copy, is also a clever piece of self-promotion that Messer hopes might generate enough profits to put him through law school. The game includes a booklet with 10 clues and a master clue; a map of Iraq; and a CD-ROM that contains 3,000 public documents, leaflets dropped in Iraq and text transcripts.
  • Off-topic: EA Bans Players Over Fan Newspaper - According to this Salon article, Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy and linguistics at the University of Michigan, was banned recently from EA and Maxis' The Sims Online. Ludlow, who goes by the name Urizenus in the game, writes a blog in which he exposes the dark side of Alphaville, a large city within the game. (thanks Peter)
  • Off-topic: Tiny nanowire could be next big diagnostic tool for doctors - A tiny nanowire sensor -- smaller than the width of a human hair, 1,000 times more sensitive than conventional DNA tests, and capable of producing results in minutes rather than days or weeks -- could pave the way for faster, more accurate medical diagnostic tests for countless conditions and may ultimately save lives by allowing earlier disease detection and intervention, Harvard scientists say.
  • Off-topic: New 'smart' highways could warn drivers of trouble - Transportation Department officials are testing the technology at an intersection in McLean, Virginia, where sensors can automatically warn a motorist when another car is approaching, thus helping to avoid a collision. The technology, still five to 10 years away from being installed in cars and along highways, also could use a beep, a dashboard light or an electronic voice to tell drivers when it's safe to change lanes, or when to put on the breaks to avoid rear-ending the motorist in front.
  • Off-topic: 100 Years Of Powered Human Flight -  In this centennial year we celebrate the world's first manned powered flight of 17th December 1903 and mark a century of achievement that has changed the whole of society. Another nice article can found at Time.com
  • Windows XP 64-bit Edition delayed again?  - TheInquirer is reporting that the 64-bit version of Windows XP for AMD x86-64 processors is now scheduled for release at the beginning of Q2 2004, so all being well that should be sometime in April next year, with, we presume, the hype happening at CeBIT in March.
  • Intel to launch WiMax chip in Q2 - Today's Economic News from Taiwan is reporting that Intel will start selling a WiMax chip in the second quarter of 2004. According to the report, the 802.16a broadband chip will throw data over the aether at speeds of 70Mbs and at distance of a staggering 50 kilometres.
  • SiS ships mobile Athlon XP chipset - SiS yesterday unveiled the mobile incarnation of its SiS741 integrated chipset for the AMD Athlon XP. The SiSM741 supports a 333MHz frontside bus and DDR SDRAM clocked at up to 400MHz. The integrated DirectX 7 graphics core - SiS' Real 256E - utilises a portion of the main memory as video RAM, communicating at the memory's own speed rather than that standard AGP 8x connection rate. It can support display resolutions of up to 1920 x 1600. The chipset's South Bridge is SiS' SiS963, which provides Serial ATA, ATA-133, six USB 2.0 ports, 5.1-channel surround sound, a 56Kbps modem and 10/100Mbps Ethernet.
  • Toshiba Adds VOIP to PCs - Toshiba America Information Systems' Digital Solutions Division released a software program Tuesday that can turn a desktop or notebook PC into a VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone, the company says. The Toshiba SoftIPT SoftPhone costs about $200 per software license depending on the number of licenses purchased and the system for which the software is designated.
  • Java-powered home audio device frees music files from computers -  A new Java powered home entertainment audio device design promises to simplify sharing computer music files among computers and stereos in connected homes. The Gloo middleware can theoretically run on any device that supports Java, and Gloolabs's first customer is MacSense, which built its $250 HomePod around embedded Linux and a hardware design of its own. Both MacSense and GlooLabs have hardware reference designs that device manufacturers can license.
  • eMachines T6000 review - Like most of the company's systems, the T6000 ($1150) makes trade-offs to hit a sweet price, but breaking with past practice, the CPU isn't one. In fact, with a fast AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 512MB of DDR SDRAM, and a 160GB, 7,200-rpm drive, the T6000 turned in a 21.6 on Business Winstone 2004 and a 31 on Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004-productivity performance comparable with that of our recent Editors' Choice high-end box, the Velocity Micro ProMagix DX-W, which has twice the memory and a RAID 0 configuration. Unfortunately, the pep stops with productivity apps.
  • Titan TTC-CW9TB/SC Copper Pentium 4 Heatsink review - FrostyTech has posted a review of Titan TTC-CW9TB/SC Copper Pentium 4 Heatsink.
  • VIA EPIA CL10000 Mini-ITX  - When building a HTPC, size and noise are two key factors. The guys at ViperLair take a look at an all-inclusive motherboard that addresses these concerns.
  • Leadtek WinFast TV DV2000 TV&FM Tuner review - The Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 Expert tuner leaves an unclear impression. On one hand, it integrates the 10-bit CX23881 ADC from Conexant and has a user-friendly user guide; on the other hand, the audio quality in the FM mode is not that good.
  • HIS RADEON 9600SE 128MEG VIVO review - If you do not need a $350 video card, why would you buy one? If you are not apt to use all of its features, then save yourself a couple hundred bucks and buy something that isn't as powerful. The HIS Excalibur 9600SE is a good little video card, albeit flawed. However that one glaring fault (the 64bit memory bus), does not ruin the card.
  • Plextor Premium-U (52/32/52) review  - Based on one of the most popular internal writers available, the Premium-U is great looking, easy to install and overflowing with features. The Premium-U also performed pretty well overall. However, there were times when it did not deliver the level of performance we've come to expect from Plextor.
  • Plextor PX-708A review - The PX-708A is a real monster, not only does it write DVDs at speed, but it supports both DVD writing standards (+/-). Add to this the fact that it is currently one of the fastest DVD+R writer available today makes for one appealing upgrade.
  • DVR-A06 4x DVD+RW review - DukGamers take a look at Pioneer's DVR-A06 4x DVD+RW drive which is the retail version of the popular 106 drive.
  • ATX Case round-up - THG have tested over 25 ATX cases (If you are looking for the MicroATX cases, check their earlier MicroATX case madness).
  • D-Link i2eye DVC-1100 review - D-Link's i2eye DVC-1100 Wireless Broadband VideoPhone lets you videoconference with friends and family using just your TV. No wires. No PC. The device lets you videoconference over the Internet wirelessly using Enhanced 802.11b. The DVC-1100 can send and receive video at up to 30 frames per second. An optional telephone handset can be attached for enhanced voice quality.
  • Creating an Unattended XP CD Guide  - Have you ever wanted a Windows XP CD that would install Windows XP by automatically putting in your name, product key, timezone and regional settings? Followed by silently installing all your favourite applications along with DirectX 9.0b, .Net Framework 1.1 and then all the Pre-SP2 hotfixes, updated drivers, registry tweaks, and a readily patched UXTheme.dll without any user interaction whatsoever? Then this guide will show you how you can do just that!
  • AutoPatcher 4.2 (December 2003) - This release contains over180 fixes for your Windows operating system. If this works as advertised, you might be my new best friend this week.
  • .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Final - The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Redistributable includes everything you need to run .NET Compact Framework applications, including the Common Language Runtime and the .NET Compact Framework class library. The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Developer Redistributable includes the latest .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 CAB files for all supported processor types.
  • MySQL 4.0.17  - MySQL 4.0.17, a new version of the popular Open Source/Free Software Database Management System, has been released.
  • RegSupreme 1.1.0.24 - RegSupreme is the superior standalone, ultra fast and lightweight registry cleaner.
  • Macromedia Flash Player 7.0.19 - Macromedia Flash (download ~ changelog) lets designers and developers integrate video, text, audio, and graphics into effective experiences.
  • DeepBurner v .1.0.89b (free) - This new version (download 1.58MB) adds check for audio files consistency (44 Khz, 16 bit), Ogg Vorbis audio format support, check for updates via Check for New Version on the Help menu and displaying progress of files while creating image.
  • Hotmail Popper 2.1.1  - Hotmail Popper (download) is a small application that allows you to check your Hotmail account e-mail from a normal POP mail client (such as Eudora). Unlike standard mail accounts which allow users to retrieve their e-mail through a POP mail client.
  • Official DeltaChrome drivers -  A new Logo'd: WindowsXP Drivers for DeltaChrome (DevID 8E00) v15.06.33.4 are available (with InstallShield version / No InstallShield version) (thanks longo213)
  • CATALYST Windows XP 3.10 Driver (Dec 17, 2003) - ATI CATALYST drivers (fixed in this driver) provide fully qualified display support for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 systems with Radeon display cards, but requires a special version of ATI's Video Capture (WDM) drivers for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 systems with All-in-Wonder boards, which will be provided by your computer manufacturer.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,17 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:37 AM CET - Dec,17 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Bush OKs spam bill - but critics not convinced - President Bush signed the "Can-Spam" bill Tuesday, creating the first federal law regulating spam, a move backers say will be a major step in the war against e-mail solicitations for pornography, Viagra, diet pills, get-rich-quick schemes and the like. With Bush's signature, a complex set of rules will take effect Jan. 1 to govern how companies may communicate with customers they already know and with people they don't. Falsified e-mail headers could be punished with prison terms, as could sending "sexually oriented" e-mail that is not properly labeled. The Federal Trade Commission receives new enforcement authority and could choose to set up a "do not e-mail" list akin to the commission's wildly popular National Do Not Call registry.
  • European RIAA-style anti-file swap lawsuits "inevitable" - The European music industry plans to take the fight against Internet piracy right to the doors of file sharers with individually targeted lawsuits, the head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) sayes. And the subpoenas could start flying next year. Writing in the IFPI in-house magazine, organisation chairman and CEO Jay Berman says: "Lawsuits on a large scale have so far been restricted to the US; this 'fight back' will almost inevitably have to take place internationally as well."
  • WinXP SP2 Beta Available This Month, Final Version Due Mid 2004 - Microsoft is working out the kinks in its Windows XP 2 Service Pack, and won't ship the final version until mid-2004 according to Mike Nash, vice president of Microsoft's Security Business Unit, during a Webcast Tuesday.
  • CD-burning software prompts patent suit - A small California storage company filed a patent suit late Friday against software maker Roxio and said the dispute will likely expand to cover other hardware and software companies involved with CD-ROMs.
  • Off-topic: Crooked gun shoots round corners - A gun that can fire shots accurately around corners has been demonstrated by a US arms maker. The Corner Shot, developed by a Florida-based company, resembles a rifle with hinge in its middle. It has been tested by the Israeli military and was demonstrated at a firing range at Shoham, near Tel Aviv, on Monday. Units have already been sold to military forces in 15 different countries. The front section can be bent up to 60° to the left or the right, allowing a soldier to shoot around a wall or door without exposing any part of themselves to enemy fire.
  • PSX rolls out in Japan, but analysts disappointed - PSX, Sony's integrated games console, DVD recorder and digital video recorder, has arrived in Japan, but analysts now seem unconvinced by the machine following the company's decision to scale back its specifications.
  • Microsoft SPOT Watches Hit Stores - Wristwatches and wireless services based on Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology won't be on sale in time for the holidays, but they are coming soon. The devices will be available in January, the software giant confirms. Microsoft will use next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to announce the availability of the devices, which were announced there last year. The software maker also plans to launch updates to its MSN Internet Software, and is expected to outline planned improvements to the Media Center Edition of Windows XP at the show. Microsoft's MSN Direct Service, which will deliver information to the watches, will also be available at that time. According to Microsoft, plans are priced at $9.95 per month or $59 per year; watches start at $129.
  • VIA ships world's first IGP chipset for AMD Athlon 64 processor - VIA Technologies yesterday announced the immediate availability of the K8M800 chipset, claiming that it is the world's first core-logic solution supporting Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 and Opteron processors to feature an IGP (integrated graphics processor) core.
  • Samsung allocates 0.11-micron capacity to SDRAM production - Samsung Electronics has shifted some 0.11-micron capacity from DDR to 16Mbit and 64Mbit SDRAM production while allocating the 0.13-micron capacity originally used for SDRAM to NAND flash production, according to sources with the company.
  • Neuros 128MB player -  Neuros Audio Computer is not only an mp3 player. It is an mp3 player on a high dosage of caffeine. It gives offers many features to the users such as an FM transmitter. With the FM transmitter you can transmit the music currently playing on the Neuros to an open frequency on a car stereo etc. Now you can hear your favorite music booming over your car speakers.
  • Skymedia 256Mb MP3 Player Review - Dan's Data has posted a review of Skymedia 256Mb MP3 player.
  • Neuros Digital Audio Computer 128MB Review - HardExtreme has posted a review of Neuros Digital Audio Computer 128MB.
  • ATI's Multimedia Center 8.8 - The Home Multimedia Server  - There are two points that we should make about the CPU used in an EazyShare server system. In terms of CPU usage, we highly recommend using, at a minimum, an Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz (533MHz) or AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.0GHz) on the EazyShare server. This is due to the amount of CPU usage bound to MPEG encoding operations. The client won't have the burden of MPEG encoding, which is why our two tested Pentium-M notebooks fared fine.
  • Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 XT review - Concluding, the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 XT is another quality product from Sapphire. A true gamer and enthusiast card, it does not disappoint and definitely one of the most powerful cards out on the market. It's high price tag, $450, may lead some astray, but for those looking for performance over anything else, the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 XT is a quality card definitely worth looking over.
  • eVGA's e-GeForce FX 5900SE - As you can see, the overclocked 5900 SE gave had a much higher frame rate, almost catching the 5950 Ultra. This shouldn't actually come as a major shock, since the overclocked speeds we achieved were similar to the standard speed of the 5950 Ultra (475/475). The major point you should be coming away with is that we are getting 5950 Ultra like performance at 5700 Ultra prices. Not too shabby.
  • HP dvd400i DVD Writer review - The HP dvd400i has a lot going for it in the way of reliability and software features but fails in the performance category. DVD and CD write times are sub par and while the drive can read DVD+R/RW media, it cannot write to this type of media. And while HP includes all of the necessary software for you to get going, it runs in the background slowing down your system. Computer novices should be happy with the overall package, but hardcore computer users should look elsewhere. For $199 you should be able to purchase a drive that writes both DVD media formats.
  • Maxtor 5000DV or Another Round of USB 2.0 against FireWire Battles - It is very likely that the HDD performed the same way with both IEEE 1394 controllers. They looked like twin-brothers in most benchmarks, that is why it was really hard to single out the winner. Anyway, I would consider Agere FW323 to be a better choice.
  • Western Digital's WD740GD with RAID-50 review  - The benchmarks we've shown in the last few pages speak loudly, as the new Western Digital Raptor is undoubtedly the best performing Serial ATA/150 hard disk WD has ever released. Since the original Raptor was the previous performance king, the new 74GB Raptor just exceeds on the performance gains WD already has over the compeitition, as the WD740GD proves itself to be the best performing non-SCSI drive on the market. The performance gains made by the WD740GD were even better compared to what we were expecting and are impressive any way you look at them. On a drive-to-drive level, the 74GB Raptor is about 10% faster compared to the 36GB Raptor, which is quite an improvement considering they have the same spindle speed and cache amount. 
  • Logitech MX900 Bluetooth Optical Mouse - Not long ago Logitech released their MX series of mice, MX700 was a great mouse with 4.7 mega pixel/sec of image processing power and resolution of 800 dpi and of course the rechargeable option, however it missed Bluetooth technology, where it would have allowed the mouse not ever lose connection integrity.  After using the MX700 for almost a year, it was time for a new mouse, MX900 which offers Bluetooth connection and a Hub that allows any Bluetooth device to connect to the computer.
  • Xandros v2 ships -  Xandros is now shipping version 2 of their Desktop Linux distro (based on Debian, KDE 3.1.4, 2.4.22 kernel) and it's also possible to purchase a download version.
  • BIOS Optimization Guide: Important Video RAM Cacheable Update - Adrian's Rojak Pot has posted an important update of the Video RAM Cacheable BIOS option.
  • The Trouble With AVI Movies In Windows XP - Whenever I click or open certain AVI movies in Windows XP, Windows Explorer would lock up and cause the entire system to come to a standstill. You also cannot edit or delete these AVI movies.
  • Outlook 2003 Junk E-mail Filter Update - This update enhances the junk e-mail filter in Outlook to help provide a higher level of protection against junk e-mail. As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to reducing junk e-mail, periodic updates will be provided to Outlook users.
  • WinGuard Pro 2004 v1.1.6 - WinGuard Pro 2003 - Free Edition (download), stop people changing your settings, accessing unauthorized programs, and important files.
  • BlindWrite Suite 5.0.5.120 (SHW) - 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. Blindwrite Suite can also create CD audio from MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA, monkey`s audio and be use with an cd-rom emulator like Daemon Tools.
  • NetCaptor 7.5.0 Gold (Free) - NetCaptor (download) is powerful web browser which gives each web site its own tab.
  • Winamp 5.0 silent update - Grab the update Winamp 5 final version from the official website.
  • XVid;-) 2.0 - XVid;-) is a video player designed for watching movies on your PC.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,16 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 04:37 AM CET - Dec,16 2003 - Post a comment
  • Off-topic: Studio Warns Kung Fu Site  - For the past three years, Mark Pollard has been writing reviews and posting news on his website Kung Fu Cinema. But while he's used to feedback from fellow fans of kung fu movies, Pollard was caught by surprise recently when he heard from a new correspondent -- Miramax Film. In a letter drafted by its legal affairs department, the studio demanded that Pollard stop selling copies of a Chinese film for which it owns the distribution rights.
  • Brother Updates Office Laser Printers - Brother International has introduced a pair of midrange office laser printers, the HL-6050D and the HL-6050DN. Aimed at office desktops and small workgroups, the new printers provide up to 25 page per minute speed, built-in duplex capability, expandable paper capacity, a wireless networking option, and more. Priced at $549, the HL-6050D comes standard with USB 2.0 and parallel interfaces. The HL-6050DN costs $699, and comes standard with a 10/100baseT Ethernet print server. An internal 802.11b/g Ethernet print server is also available.
  • Toshiba Creates World's Smallest Hard-Disk Drive  - Toshiba Corp has developed a hard-disk drive that measures 0.85 of an inch in diameter, smaller than the record 1-inch HDD that Hitachi Global Storage Technologies released in November, company sources said on December 13. The drive, which is small enough to be used in mobile phones, can store up to two hours of high-definition moving images and just under 60 hours of music. Its tiny size will likely lead to the development of extremely small video cameras.
  • Java Wrist Watch with JBlend -  In an report from the Tron show K-Tai Impress highlights Java based Wrist Watches. Aplix develops the Mobile Java environment JBlend. The wrist Watches running JBlend can have different uploadable applications. Aplix plans to introduce the JBlend Java environment for wrist watches to Watch manufactures in the future. WOW!
  • T-Cube revelaed - At the TRON 2004 Show Japanese Personal Media Company shows off the T-Cube a pocket-size PC running T-Engine. T-Engine is somekind of OS standardization project for networked computers in Japan that started in 2002. Seems they want to build something that does not require to license Windows. (thanks Mark)
  • Bapco releases Sysmark 2004 - Benchmark consortium Bapco has released the latest version of its PC performance testing suite. Sysmark 2004 uses an "updated" range of commercial applications in its scoring system, including Adobe's Acrobat 5.0.5, After Effects(R) 5.5, Photoshop 7.01 and Premiere 6.5; Discreet 3DS max 5.1; Macromedia Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX; Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series, Access 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002, Word 2002, PowerPoint 2002 and IE 6.0; Network Associates McAfee VirusScan 7.0; and WinZip 8.1.
  • Hercules 3D Prophet 9800XT Classic 256MB review - After seeing what ASUS has done with its 9800XT card and package, Hercules' bundle seems meagre in comparison. There's only a coupon for Half-Life 2, redeemable some time next year. There's not much else from a gaming perspective. We expect a bundle jam-packed with goodies if we're shelling out L375, really. The problem with the 3D Prophet 9800XT Classic, and every other 9800XT card for that matter, is price. One can purchase a standard 128MB-equipped 9800 Pro that performs to within a few percent of an 9800XT for L240.
  • Arctic Silver 5 Extensive review - The Madshrimps let us know they have tested Artic Silver latest compound.
  • Dlink's DI-624+ wireless router review - PyroPort let us know they have posted a review of Dlink's DI-624+ wireless router.
  • The SiS, VIA and Intel Chipset comparison - In most benchmarks, SiS' 655TX was able to outperform VIA's PT880 and its predecessor 655FX. Assuming the lead in the odd category is VIA's PT880 chipset, which will grace the first boards mid December. Intel's 875P remains an outstanding yet very pricey option. Its biggest advantages lie in the manufacturer's solid reputation and its integrated CSA network interface. SiS' 655TX is a lot cheaper and offers the bottom-line best price/performance ratio in our comparison.
  • UnixWare 7.1.3 review - If you want to use a commercial Unix for x86 (and one not targeted by SCO – at least not yet), then Solaris x86 is a very strong offering, with far more enterprise applications available, is far less expensive, and leverages a much larger install base than UnixWare.
  • Winamp 5.0 Final - Nullsoft has released the final version of Winamp 5.0. This new version features support for classic Winamp 1.x/2.x/2.9x skins and Winamp 3 ("Modern") skins, Integrated video, AVS, and Milkdrop support, CD ripping support (AAC@2x in free version, MP3 at unlimited speeds in pro),
    CD burning support (limited to 2x in free version), Support for playback of AAC and VP6 in NSV files/streams and much  more. An article about this new version can be found at ZDNET.
  • VisualBoy Advance 1.7 Final - Visual Boy Advance (download) is a Game Boy Advance and Game Boy emulator that runs with Windows systems.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,14 2003 - tech
Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 05:45 PM CET - Dec,14 2003 - Post a comment / read (10)
  • Off-topic: Saddam Hussein has been captured alive  - Eight months after the fall of his government, Saddam Hussein was captured by coalition forces near his hometown of Tikrit, where he was hiding in a farmhouse cellar, U.S. officials said Sunday. The arrest was a major victory for the coalition that has been battling an insurgency for months.
  • Self-assembled "nanorings" could boost computer memory - Recent nanotechnology research at Purdue University could pave the way toward faster computer memories and higher density magnetic data storage, all with an affordable price tag. Just like the electronics industry, the data storage industry is on the move toward nanoscale. By shrinking components to below 1/10,000th the width of a human hair, manufacturers could make faster computer chips with more firepower per square inch. However, the technology for making devices in that size range is still being developed, and the smaller the components get, the more expensive they are to produce.
  • Radio-fueled credit cards could end swipe -  For more than a year, MasterCard and American Express have been testing "contactless" versions of their credit cards. The cards need only be held near a special reader for a sale to go through -- though the consumer can still get a receipt. The card companies say the system is much faster and safer because the card never leaves a customer's hand
  • iRiver introduces a compact & light 1.5GB Microdrive MP3 player  -  IGP-100 combines the compact size and light weight of a flash based player along with the high storage capacity of a hard drive based player. Its internal hard drive stores up to 1.5GB of music; enough for up to 24 hours of 128kbps MP3 playback..
  • The Corsair 512MB Low Latency PC3200 TwinX Memory Modules Review - Adrian's Rojak Pot let us know he has posted a review of Corsair 512MB Low Latency PC3200 TwinX Memory Modules
  • ASUS DRW-0402P/D DVD±RW/DVD±R Drive review - The DRW-0402P/D DVD is one of its latest products; actually, it was designed in collaboration of Pioneer and ASUS and it's one of OEM versions of the DVR-106.
  • MSI DR4-A DVD±RW/DVD±R Drive review - Digit-Life has posted a  review a multiformat DVD recorder DR4-A from MSI - the company that goes with Sanyo's technologies and hardware which are rarely used today.
  • AOpen DRW4410 DVD+RW Burner review - Being one of the first DVD burners to break below the US$100 barrier, the AOpen DRW4410 is almost a steal just to be able to burn DVDs. So if you are on a tight budget and want to spend under $100, we will go ahead and tell you now that the AOpen DRW4420 is our #1 choice. If you are interested in faster speeds and price is not a number one concern, we suggest you look at some of the newer 8x burners.
  • Digital Pen Roundup - The Pens integrate with all your regular packages such as Outlook or Lotus Notes, Calendar and Word, enabling you to send your writing or sketches where needed.  To briefly summarise the differing appeal of the individual pens reviewed, the Logitech io Pen is the most advanced for editing your handwriting once synced with your PC. The Nokia SU-1B Digital Pen is the only one that has the ability to send images directly to Bluetooth phones (and PC via USB). If you want to email directly from your digital pad without a PC involved then the choice must be the Sony Ericsson CHA-30 Chatpen.
  • QCD Build 66 - Quintessential Player brings a huge arsenal of quality features, and uses simplicity as its decoy. It is truly the most unique player available. Supports MP3, CD Audio, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, VQF, MP+, Windows Media, and streaming audio including SHOUTcast.
  • K-Meleon 0.8.1 - Meleon is a fast, customizable, lightweight web browser for the win32 (Windows) platform based on the Gecko layout engine (the rendering engine of Mozilla). K-Meleon is free, open source software released under the GNU General Public License.
  • MyIE2 v0.9.11 - MyIE2 (download) is a multi-tabbed browser based on the IE core (IE5.x or above required). It can open multiple web pages within one browser window, and uses little system resources. MyIE2 has a greatly integrated & customizable interface which supports Skins, Plug-Ins, IE Extensions, & specific toolbars.
  • Intel NIC Drivers 7.2.18.10 WHQL - Intel has released a new Win2k/XP drivers for their GigaBit NIC adapter series.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,13 2003 - tech
Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 05:24 PM CET - Dec,13 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Flaws Found in Sony Digicams - More than 100 of Sony's high-end and high-price Qualia digital still cameras have been hit by at least one of three problems, the company says. The most common problem, which affected 133 cameras, Sony says, was a software bug that meant the flash unit sometimes failed to fire. The problem occurred when a second flash photo was attempted exactly 30 seconds after the first one. If the second photo is attempted at any other time difference after the first picture the flash fires normally, says Yoshikazu Ochiai, a spokesperson for Sony in Tokyo.
  • China's market logic presents the pirate DVD player - China's vast market in pirated movies is well known. Police seize more than 50 million discs a year, and this year busted 10 big underground optical disc factories and dozens of mastering studios. But China is still flooded with pirate DVDs that supply about 90 per cent of total demand and rob the US film industry of millions in royalties. Now the world's electronics industry is about to face competition from Chinese brands of video disc players that have risen on the back of the pirate market. As any foreign visitor who has stocked up on China's cheap pirate copies will relate, the discs do not always play when you put them on your machine at home. Enter the caoqiang jiuchuo or "super-correcting" Chinese model of DVD player. Developed by the Jiangsu Shinco Electronic Group and selling for about half the cost of brands such as Philips and Sony, it is designed to cope with the poor quality of pirated video discs.
  • Canada OKs P2P music downloads - Canada's copyright agency has OK'd the downloading of copyrighted music from Peer to Peer networks - for now, at least - slapping a small tax onto MP3 music players. The Copyright Board of Canada declined to extend existing levies on blank audio and CD recordable media to DVD recordables, or to removable memory, such as Compact Flash or MMC cards. While uploading and distributing copyrighted music remains illegal, Canada's simple solution provides copyright holders with some compensation through existing royalty distribution channels.
  • Microsoft to Remove Swastikas from Office  - Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that its latest version of Office software inadvertently contained a font featuring two swastikas, and said it would offer tools to remove and replace (download removal tool) the offending characters from the program. The swastika, which was made infamous by Nazi Germany, was included in Microsoft's "Bookshelf Symbol 7" font.
  • Microsoft wants non-standard media for Xbox 2? -  A job advertisement posted on Microsoft's careers website suggests that the company may be considering moving to a proprietary disc format for its next console, in an effort to make piracy on the device more difficult. According to the ad, Microsoft's Xbox team is seeking an engineer "to manage the design and development of the Xbox Game Disc for the next generation Xbox console", with the job description going on to mention anti-piracy as the first in a list of key factors for the new game disc specification.
  • TI Preps Power-Saving Phone Chips - Texas Instruments plans to release samples of its latest OMAP chip, which will be the company's first 90-nanometer chip, in the first quarter of 2004. The OMAP 1710 will run 10 percent faster than its OMAP 1610 predecessor and consume 50 percent less power, taking advantage of the drop in power consumption afforded by a process technology jump, TI says. The OMAP product line is designed for cell phones and other mobile devices.
  • Intel's 'Prescott' chip to keep Pentium 4 name - Intel will upgrade its flagship PC chip in the beginning of the year, but it will keep the current name. "Prescott," the code name for an optimized version of the Pentium 4, will continue to be sold under the Pentium 4 name, according to sources close to the company. Prescott chips will contain 13 new instructions to improve multimedia performance and run at higher speeds than existing Pentium 4s.
  • Creative Labs Europe Disclosed RADEON Lineup Details - One of the most successful retailers of all time and also the inventor of Sound Blaster is now offering RADEON 9800 XT 256MB, RADEON 9600 256MB and RADEON 9200 SE 128MB graphics cards at different-price points. The graphics cards cost $575 (470 Euro), $150 (123 Euro) and $67 ($55) in that order.
  • Radeon 9800SE and Geforce 5900XT do battle at 205 Euros - The introduction of these two cards -- which will obviously be available through many ATI and Nvidia partners - will make life difficult for the existing Radeon 9600XT and Geforce FX 5700 Ultra. These are still priced at the same level as their new big brothers, the 9800SE and 5900XT.
  • AMD Microprocessor Plans for 2004 - Sources close to AMD unveiled some of the company’s plans concerning next year desktop central processing unit products. As anticipated, the company will continue to use Socket 754 and 940 form-factors till some point, but will also bring 939-pin 64-bit processors with faster bus: ClawHammer 940-pin 1MB L2 cache (0.13), ClawHammer 939-pin 1MB L2 cache (0.13 micron), Newcastle 939-pin 512KB L2 cache (0.13 micron), Winchester 939-pin 512KB L2 cache (90nm), San Diego 939-pin 1MB L2 cache (90nm), ClawHammer 754-pin 1MB L2 cache (0.13), Newcastle 754-pin 512KB L2 cache (0.13), Paris 754-pin 256KB L2 cache (0.13 micron), Barton 462-pin 512KB L2 cache (0.13 micron). AMD Athlon 64 4000+ and AMD Athlon 64 4200+ slated to come in the Q4 2004 and the Q1 2005 respectively will be intended only for Socket 939 platform. To serve the lowest-end of the market, AMD introduces Socket 754 Athlon XP processors with 256KB of level-two cache in 2800+, 3000+ and 3200+ version in Q3 2004, Q4 2004 and Q1 2005 respectively.
  • The Fastest Graphics Cards of 2003 - This review will help you to choose between 9 premier graphics cards based on VPUs and GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA in 16 benchmarks representing performance in past, present and upcoming 3D games.
  • Crucial RADEON 9800 Pro 256MB - OK, so what is the price of this board from Crucial? It is available on the company's website for $469.99. That would have been competitive a few months ago, but now it's easy to find on PriceGrabber 256 MB 5900 Ultras and even 5950s for cheaper than that! That makes it hard to recommend this card; however, for a die hard ATI and/or Crucial fan, the flagship board from Crucial would make a great choice. Keep in mind some of the higher cost of this card is probably due to the inclusion of DDR2 instead of the more commonly used first generation DDR spec.
  • The BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5700 Ultra - BFG is a relatively new graphics card company that has opted to offer NVIDIA based video cards. "Built by gamers" and with former team members from Visiontek, the company is taking a different approach to the market, offering lifetime warranties and free 24x7 technical support for all of their products. Instead of focusing on overly flashy packaging, with countless copies of yesterday's gaming titles, the company aims to win new customers over by letting them know that they stand behind their products 100%.
  • Asus Radeon A9600XT review -The software package that comes with the Asus Radeon A9600XT is also quite impressive, including; PowerDirector, AsusDVD, Ulead Cool 3D, UleadExpress SE 4.0, Asus Medi@ Show SE 2.0, a six game demo CD and two full versions games (Battle Engine Aquaila and Gun Metal). Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the Asus Radeon A9600XT also comes with a Half Life 2 coupon that will allow you to download the full game via ATi's website when it's released! Not too shabby at all!
  • Seasonic Super Tornado 400W Power Supply  - PCStats has posted a review of Seasonic Super Tornado 400W Power Supply.
  • Chenbro Xpider Gaming Case review - It is available in four wild colors including; Orange, Silver, Green, and Blue. The flexibility this case offers is great and it remains an at an awesome budget price of approximately $58 USD.
  • Changes to Functionality in Windows XP SP2 - This document (download) specifically focuses on the changes between earlier versions of Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 2 and reflects Microsoft’s early thinking about Service Pack 2 and its implications for developers.
  • Internet Explorer on Longhorn 4051 First Look - The chaps over at OSNews have been checking out the new build of Internet Explorer that comes with Windows Longhorn 4051. In related new, Quentin Clark provides an overview of WinFS.
  • TVTool 9.5.5 (SHW) - TVTool 9.5 introduces a number of new features, improvements and important bug fixes. Especially the infrared part has been changed a lot. With the new options TVTool supports more remote controls than the leading IR program from a competitor.
  • Ahead's Nero v6.3.0.0 (SHW) - Ahead Nero (download) is a flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use application designed to write both data and CD audio to CD-R and CD-RW discs. It supports ISO 9660 images as well as ISO mode 1 and XA mode 2, and allows for on-the-fly disc recording in addition to overburning (if supported by hardware. The new version features an unlimited MP3 encoding and OGG vorbis encoding/decoding (only for US customers and requires online registration within 90 days), significant usability improvements, AMD64bit support and Hyperthreading support. You can also grab new versions of  Nero InCD 4.1.0.0, Nero Media Player 1.4.0.16, NeroMIX 1.4.0.16 and NeroVision Express 2.1.0.3.
  • Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition 3.5.3 - The Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition software package provides support for high-performance Serial ATA RAID 0 arrays and redundant RAID 1 arrays on select IntelR 865 and 875 chipset-based platforms using Windows XP or Windows 2000.
  • Dell Radeon Catalyst Drivers 7.96 WHQL - Station-Drivers have posted a new set of Radeon Drivers from Dell version 7.9.6 (6.14.10.6396  for WinXP).
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,12 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:04 AM CET - Dec,12 2003 - Post a comment
  • Virginia Arrests Man for Spam Email Under New Law - Virginia authorities said on Thursday they had arrested and charged a North Carolina man for sending "spam" e-mail in the first use of a new state law that could bring penalties of up to 20 years in prison. irginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said Jeremy Jaynes had been arrested earlier Thursday in Raleigh, N.C., on four counts of using fraudulent means to transmit spam.
  • Microsoft gets Windows XP update ready  - The beta version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 is expected to be made available to testers soon (before the end of this year) via Microsoft's developer Web site. The final version is expected to be released in the first half of next year, Microsoft said. During this beta, Microsoft hopes to garner significant feedback from developers and IT professionals that will be incorporated into and improve the final product. Among the security improvements in Service Pack 2 are a beefed-up version of Windows Firewall, previously called Internet Connection Firewall, and software designed to block pop-up ads and prevent the unintended downloading and installation of software. The company also turned off the Windows Messenger service, which had been abused by some hackers.
  • Windows Patch Arrives Late -  A glitch in Microsoft's Windows Update automated patching service caused a security fix that was released last month to be delivered to computer users on Tuesday. The patch was delivered on the same day Microsoft proclaimed December would be a patch-free month. The software patch fixes a serious vulnerability in a set of Web site management tools called FrontPage Server Extensions, which are part of Microsoft's Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Office XP software, according to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-051. Exploiting the flaw could allow an attacker to gain control over a user's PC, Microsoft says.
  • Windows 98 Remains Widespread - Microsoft is planning to end support for Windows 98 next month, but many businesses still have computers running on the operating system, a new study shows. AssetMetrix, an Ottawa-based IT asset analysis tool vendor, collected data on over 370,000 PCs from 670 businesses in the U.S. and Canada. It found that 80 percent of those companies have at least one PC running either Windows 95 or Windows 98. The older operating systems accounted for about 27 percent of operating systems found.
  • Sony and Toshiba close to sampling Cell technology -  Trial runs of the advanced semiconductor manufacturing process which will eventually create the much-vaunted Cell microprocessor are set to start at Toshiba's fabrication plant in March of next year. According to a statement from Sony and Toshiba issued today, work on the 65nm chip production technology - which is more advanced than any system in commercial use today, as most companies are still coming to grips with the switch from 130nm down to 90nm processes - is proceeding to plan.
  • Hitachi to squeeze fuel cell into PDAs - Japanese electronics giant Hitachi is teaming up with Tokai, a maker of disposable cigarette lighters, to produce commercial fuel cells for handheld computers in 2005, the companies said this week.  Several electronics companies are investigating fuel cells as an alternative to existing nickel cadmium batteries and lithium ion batteries, which will inevitably hit a barrier when portable devices become more power-hungry. Fuel cells, just one of the alternative techniques under investigation, could create a long-lasting and cheap power source in a small package.
  • Intel Pentium M "Dothan" Launch Date Revealed - Sources close to Intel Corporation said today the company has a big week for mobile announcements starting from the 16th of February 2004 - the first day of Intel Developer Forum Spring 2004. The company unveils new highly-anticipated Dothan processor, new LV and ULV Pentium M and Celeron M chips and a more advanced WLAN adapter. Intel Pentium M “Dothan” processor with 2MB of L2 cache will start at 1.80GHz speed-bin. Given its higher core frequency and 2MB of cache instead of only 1MB featured by its predecessor, the CPU will consume more energy compared to the Banias despite of thinner 90nm fabrication technology. Earlier this year it was said that TDP of higher-end Dothan processors will be 29W to 31W, while thermal design power of current Pentium M “Banias” chips is just about 24.5W.
  • Mini-server review - Sudhian has posted a review of EmergeCore's "IT in a Box" IT100 which comes equipped with a Transmeta Crusoe 533MHz, 128MB RAM, 20GB IBM TravelStar, 802.11b Access Point, and boots from a 32MB Flash card.
  • Axis' 205 Network Camera: Inexpensive, Small and Different - The new Axis 205 Network Camera is the smallest of the network attached cameras that we have seen so far. However, this claim to fame comes with a few trade offs. While Axis's Model 205 represents a unique network attached camera for less than $200, the device also lacks features otherwise taken for granted.
  • ASUS SCB-2408-D CD-RW/DVD-ROM review - CDRLabs.com have taken a close look at the external ASUS SCB-2408-D combo drive.
  • AMD Athlon 64 Motherboards Head to Head - Albatron vs. EPoX  - While Albatron have quite a nice looking motherboard on their hands, the package is not the most exciting and overall performance is lacking.  If you're interested in a motherboard that brings the latest Athlon 64 chipset at a more affordable price, the EPoX 8HDA3 might be a better option.
  • ATi Radeon 9600 XT 256 MB review - The ATi Radeon 9600 XT is an excellent buy for only $199.00 MSRP you can easily find this product cheaper online, from different partners of ATi, or even OEM (bare, no retail packaging). For your money the Radeon family of products has truly delivered from the 9200 SE (low end for ATi) to the monstrosity 9800 (high end for ATi) we've found performance for decent prices. We just wish we all could afford a 9800 XT.
  • Image Quality Analysis Fall 2003: A Glance Through the Looking Glass  - Unfortunately, defining image quality is a more difficult task than it seems. Neither ATI nor NVIDIA produce images that match the DX9 reference rasterizer (Microsoft's tool to estimate what image should be produced by a program). There is, in fact, no "correct" image for any given frame of a game. This makes it very hard to draw a line in the sand and say that one GPU does something the right way and the other one does not. There is the added problem that taking screenshots in a game isn't really the best place to start when looking for a quantitative comparison.
  • The Trouble With AVI Movies In Windows XP Editorial - Adrian's Rojak Pot let us know he has posted The Trouble With AVI Movies In Windows XP editorial.
  • Bart's PE Builder 3.0.24 - Bart's PE Builder (download) helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
  • Serence KlipFolio 2.5a Beta - Klipfolio is a small, efficient and easy to use desktop application that allows you to collect, view and manage live information channels.
  • Winamp5 Full RC 666  - Nullsoft Winamp is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. Winamp supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI, etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV). This beta fixes a potential crashbug in ml.
  • 7-Zip 3.13 - 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, RAR, CAB, GZIP, BZIP2, and TAR formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format. It also compresses to ZIP 2-10% better than PKZip and WinZip.
  • Avant Browser 8.02.207 Stable - Avant Browser is a custom Web browser application based on Internet Explorer with versatile multi-window support. It allows users to browse multiple Web sites simultaneously and block all unwanted pop-up pages. This new version has Improved Download for FavIcon; Display FavIcon in Favorites, Links and Address Box; Create Favorites with FavIcon; Improved kernel for speed and stability; Improved Support for groups; Fixed a bug of favorites band drag-and-drop and Some other fixes. 
  • HijackThis 1.97.7  - HijackThis is a small software that scans for all objects which may be affiliated with Web Browser activity. StartList scans the system for all objects that are in all startup sections of the registry.
  • RivaTuner 2.0 RC 14.2 - RivaTuner is the most powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA display adapters running under Windows 98/ME/Win2k/XP. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of the Detonator drivers. This RC adds support for ForceWare 53.xx drivers.
  • A-Tuner 1.7.32.5216  - A-Tuner is a small tool for changing/tweaking settings on your NVIDIA based graphics card. Includes Anti-Aliasing (including all unofficial modes), Anisotropic Filtering, VSync, and MipMap LOD Bias.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,11 2003 - tech
Weekend Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:56 AM CET - Dec,11 2003 - Post a comment
  • Security Experts Warn of New Way to Attack Windows -  Security experts have found a new way to exploit a critical vulnerability in Windows that evades a workaround and enables the attacker to compromise a number of machines at one time. Microsoft Corp. issued a patch for the vulnerability in November, but the security bulletin also listed several workarounds for the flaw, including disabling the Workstation Service and using a firewall to block specific UDP and TCP ports. But penetration testers at Core Security Technologies, a Boston-based security company, discovered a new attack vector that uses a different UDP port.  The attack takes advantage of several characteristics of the UDP protocol. Unlike TCP, UDP is "connectionless," meaning that there is no TCP-style handshake, and you need not establish a connection with a remote machine in order to send a UDP packet. Also, because the Internet's DNS service uses the protocol, UDP packets usually have no trouble traversing firewalls.  If someone hasn't applied the patch but blocked the ports as they should have, they're still vulnerable," said Max Caceres, a product manager at Core Impact.
  • IE bug lets fake sites look real - A vulnerability has been identified in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to display a fake URL in the address bar. The vulnerability is caused due to an input validation error, which can be exploited by including the "%01" URL encoded representation after the username and right before the "@" character in an URL. Successful exploitation allows a malicious person to display an arbitrary FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) in the address bar, which is different from the actual location of the page. This can be exploited to trick users into divulging sensitive information or download and execute malware on their systems, because they trust the faked domain in the address bar.
  • Group wants P2P files to pay - The Content Reference Forum is hoping to create a kind of intelligent file that can be distributed through file-sharing networks like Kazaa, Web pages, e-mail or almost anywhere else online. Instead of containing a song or movie itself, the file would set up a process that automatically delivers files in the right format and potentially triggers an automatic payment system that could be changed moment to moment by the content distributor.
  • Sun sets Solaris x86 free - Starting this week, Sun has removed the $20 price-tag for the OS - versions 8 and 9, replacing it with a red FREE sign instead. A fair number of Sun users have kept a close eye on this saga and will remember that it was way back in Jan. of 2002 when Sun first said it would halt development on Solaris x86 only to buckle and bring the OS back at cost.
  • P4 chipset prices dip below US$10, sources say - Seeking the number two position in the Pentium 4 (P4) chipset market, VIA Technologies is said to be quoting some of its P4 chipsets to first-tier motherboard makers at below US$10, according to local industry sources.
  • Sony DRU-530A 8x DVD Burner review - ExtremeTech has posted a review on the Sony DRU-530A 8x DVD Burner.
  • Windows Longhorn Preview - Windows-Help.NET has published a review on the PDC build of Windows Longhorn.
  • BattleStar Galactica Trailers - Scifi.com has posted the first trailers for the new BattleStar Galactica miniseries the remake of 1980's hit show.
  • Visual Boy Advance v1.7 beta 4 -  Visual Boy Advance (download) is a GBA and GB emulator that runs with Windows systems. According to the offical website, this will be the last 1.7 beta and contains numerous fixes to the GUI problems since the GUI migration. It also reverts some of the timing back to 1.6a timing due to problems caused by the new timing. Also, several Gameboy bugs are now fixed.
  • DVD Backup Guide - Techimo have published their new two part DVD Backup Guide (part #1 ~ part #2).
  • UltraEdit-32 v10.10b (SHW) - UltraEdit-32 is a Windows text editor with support for unlimited file sizes, a spell checker, drag and drop, full HEX editing capabilities, user configurable syntax highlighting (pre-configured for HTML, Java, C/C++, VB, Perl), column editing, sorting, and a configurable toolbar
  • 7-Zip 3.12 - 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, RAR, CAB, GZIP, BZIP2, and TAR formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format. It also compresses to ZIP 2-10% better than PKZip and WinZip. It has an additional powerful command line version and FAR Manager support.
  • Oficial ForceWare Drivers 53.04 for Win9x/ME - For those who haven't noticed, NVIDIA has released also new ForceWare Drivers v53.04 for Win9x/WinME.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,09 2003 - tech
Tuesday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:49 PM CET - Dec,09 2003 - Post a comment
  • Microsoft -- No security bulletins for December - Microsoft currently has no security bulletins to release as part of the monthly release cycle for the month of December. That would be fine if there were no any outstanding issues......but there are - A CHINESE RESEARCHER has discovered 7 new security holes in Internet Explorer and Microsoft is looking into them, or perhaps through them. According to Russ Cooper of TruSecure, two of the holes are critical vulnerabilities which could permit an attacker to remotely execute malicious programs.
  • Police arrest iPod email suspect - A 21 year-old Cambridgeshire man has been arrested and released on police bail after a hoax email on Friday had thousands of worried people jamming Cambridgeshire Police's main switchboard. The arrest was made just hours after the email began to circulate around the country, which led consumers to suspect that their credit card details had been used to buy an iPod. The email, from a company called Huntington Mail Order, appeared to be an invoice for a 40GB iPod music player. It informed recipients that UKCards Ltd would charge L399.99 to their credit cards.
  • Mafia muscles in on spam and viruses - Organised crime is moving online into spam and virus writing - which means attacks may become less common but more dangerous, a Russian antivirus expert has warned. As criminal gangs get involved, the 'independent' operators that currently dominate the spam and virus market will be squeezed out, reducing the total number of attacks. Another story can be found at TheRegister.
  • Virus hunter: It's a "horrible world" - CNET has conducted an interview with Symantec's CEO John Thompson as he talks the growing problem of worms, spam legislation and other security issues.
  • Developers take Linux attacks to heart - During the last four months, unknown intruders have breached the security around servers hosting programs and code published by the Linux kernel development team, the Debian Project, the Gentoo Linux Project and the GNU Project, which manages the development of many important programs used by Linux and other Unix-like systems. The attacks have convinced open-source project leaders to take another look at their security.
  • Dell BIOS DoS (Invalid Characters in BIOS Password - Dell Inspiron 2650 System BIOS, A11 (A11 is the current BIOS as of writing, and was released in late September of this year). Unfortunately, once a Hard Drive Password is set which contains one or more of the following characters , < > . ; : ' [ ] { }. It can not be later entered to access the machine. It appears as though a bug in the BIOS code prevents those characters from being taken as input when the user is asked for the password - however, the BIOS incorrectly allows users to set passwords containing those characters.
  • W32/Mimail.L-mm Hits with Offensive Porn Message - Last week, we witnessed the appearance of yet another couple of Minmail strains. Designated W32/Mimail.L-mm and W32/Mimail.M-mm, these viruses typically arrive as explicit, pornographic messages that try to entice the reader into opening the virus attachment. With a twist to the Mimail mass mailing scenario, W32/Mimail.L-mm will attempt to replicate in a porn message, with a copy of itself in an attachment. However, if that fails, Mimail.L will then try to send another message without an attachment, but claiming your credit card will be charged weekly for child porn.
  • Oracle Patches Security Flaws  - Oracle has issued a security alert and software patches for a set of serious vulnerabilities in the security protocols used by some of its server products. The flaws affect certain versions of Oracle's 8i and 9i Database Server, Oracle 9i Application Server, and versions 8 and 9 of the Oracle HTTP Server, according to the alert, which is dated December 4.
  • Coca-Cola Delves Into Digital Music - Coca-Cola is aiming to enter the growing music download market by launching its own download service in the U.K. in January. Run by European digital music company On Demand Distribution, the music service will offer 250,000 tracks from over 8500 artists. Tracks will cost $1.72 each, Coca-Cola said.
  • Creator of Tetris works at Microsoft  - In 1985, Alexey Pajitnov developed Tetris as part programming exercise and as something fun to do. He got the idea for Tetris from a popular puzzle game called Pentamino. When Pajitnov saw Pentamino, he thought about adding a time element to gameplay, so he added the twist of having the blocks drop. Alexey Pajitnov wanted to produce more computer games, but he felt that the Soviet Union did not have a large enough consumer base to support such a market. He moved to the United States in 1991 after visiting in 1990. Pajitnov ended up working for Microsoft's gaming division.  Pajitnov likes puzzle games the best. He is not a fan of shooters. He is currently working on a second version of Pandora's Box. (thanks WinXP.Bink.nu)
  • Off-topic: Battlestar Galactica: Will You Be Watching? - For some fans, the name stands up there with Star Wars and Star Trek. The battle lines are drawn and two foes await to clash. However, instead of the remnants of humankind fighting a fight of desperation again the robotic Cylons, the foes are fans of the original sci-fi epic. One camp remains dedicated to the classic incarnation of the show led, perhaps, by Richard Hatch (Apollo) of the original cast. They saw their beloved show on one historic season on network TV. The other camp gets their shot starting tonight in a four hour miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel.
  • Sharp Shows First Efficeon Notebook - Sharp has become the first personal computer maker to announce a machine based on Transmeta's new Efficeon processor, the companies said Tuesday. The Sharp Mebius Muramasa PC-MM2-5NE will go on sale in Japan on January 2 and is expected to be priced around $1675, says Miyuki Nakayama, a spokesperson for Sharp in Tokyo.
  • VIA to sample PCI Express P4 chipset in January - VIA Technologies will begin sampling the PT890, an 800MHz FSB (front-side bus) Pentium 4 (P4) chipset supporting dual-channel DDR400 DDRII and PCI Express, next month.
  • DeltaChrome update - For S3's DeltaChrome, Club3D receives a few "DeltaChrome S8" chip samples from S3/VIA and work on board samples now. S3 will bring the DeltaChrome S8 to hardware reviewers in the next weeks and into the market in the first weeks of 2004.
  • MicroATX Case Madness - The MicroATX form factor continues to grow in popularity. THG take an in depth look at a variety of MicroATX chassis solutions prior to our full ATX mid tower case review. However, not all MicroATX solutions are the same and only a few made the grade here.
  • 512MB Mushkin PC4000 Dual Pack Memory Modules review - Adrian's Rojak Pot let us know he has posted a review of two revisions of the 512MB Mushkin PC4000 Dual Pack Memory Modules.
  • Plextor PX-504A review - OCModShop have posted a positive review of Plextor PX-504A."The drive was also able to quick erase a DVD+RW in 9 seconds and do a full erase of the media in 25 minutes. I have to say that I am very impressed with the amount of time it takes to burn 4.7GB of data."
  • News Interceptor 1.10 - Version 1.10 of News Interceptor is now available. This new version fixes a problem which caused errors for some users when trying to log in. Also, a modification done to the LiveUpdate feature will allow better and more reliable software download updates.
  • HyperSnap-DX v5.40.06 (SHW) - HyperSnap-DX (download) brings you professional quality, convenient Windows screen captures. It was designed for ease of use, with powerful and useful features - including capture from DirectX and 3dfx Glide games, and some DVD/Video players - to aid the professional as well as support the needs of the occasional user.
  • Capturex v1.4 - Capturex is a DirectShow image grabber designed to save stills from videos to a wide range of image formats. It has a intuitive GUI with an instant preview of every grabbed frame and the possibility to open the image in any external image editor direct from the application.
  • Avant Browser 8.02 Build 207  - 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.
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.22.09.09 - The private and individual use of the AntiVir Personal Edition is completely free of charge.
  • AVG antivirus Free Edition 6.0 Build 550  - With AVG 6.0 Free Edition and you will be able to use it without any limitations for life of the product. However you must agree to the AVG Free Edition license agreement and fill in the simple questionaire form. (A free registration is required to run AVG. You will be emailed a registration code and can not install it without it. The installer does provide a link during installation to get your code)
  • Integrated VGA driver for the KN400 / KM400 chipsets for Win2K/WinXP - Microsoft's recently changed their requirements to a minimum frame buffer of 16MB, however KPLE's maximum frame buffer is 8MB. Therefore, KPLE drivers can no longer fulfill the requirements to get Microsoft's logo - download.
  • Serial ATA and RAID driver for the VT6420 controller and the VT8237 South Bridge - The advanced VIA DriveStationt V-RAID Controller is featured in the VT8237 South Bridge, currently (August 2003) shipping with most KT600 chipset mainboards and soon to ship with PT800 chipset mainboards (and future chipsets as well). If you are not sure what South Bridge chip is featured on your motherboard, please check your manual. The VT6420 Serial RAID controller also utilises the same driver package - download.
  • DeepBurner version 1.1.0.85b (free) - DeepBurner is a new CD/DVD burning software that utilize power and effeciency. With DeepBurner you can create data, bootable, and audio CDs as well as data DVDs.
  • RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.2 - RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.2 has been released. The test suite performs various tests of electroacoustical performance of sound cards and other real-time audio devices.
NVIDIA ForceWare Drivers v53.03 - tech
(hx) 07:49 PM CET - Dec,09 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
A new WHQL Forceware graphics drivers v53.03 are available for download from the official NVIDIA download page. This new version increases graphics performance when using nForce3 systems, improves HDTV Y Pr Pb component out support for 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i formats, adds support for GeForce 5900 XT. The complete list of fixes can be found here.
Corrected the following issues from 52.16:
  • Clone mode may be set for the GeForce FX 5600 although only one display is connected.
  • GeForce FX 5950 Ultra: When 4x FSAA is enabled, half of the screen is black in Tiger Woods 2004 introductory video.
  • GeForce4 MX 440 and GeForce4 Ti 4400, Windows XP: Blue-screen crash during Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat.
  • GeForce FX 5950 Ultra: Homeworld2 antialiased performance is slow.
  • GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and GeForce4 Ti 4400, Windows XP: Rendering corruption in Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat.
  • GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, Windows XP: "X2: The Threat" benchmark is choppy or jerky in some places.
  • All GeForce FX:Intermittently, Warcraft III videos are not displayed properly on some systems.
Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 03:39 AM CET - Dec,09 2003 - Post a comment / read (10)
  • Off-topic: Half-Life 2 & Doom 3 Only For Xbox? - Kaptain Kangaroo posted a scan of PC Gamer in 3DGPU's forums, showing a page with some games on there, and one of them is Half-Life 2, with the logo "Only On Xbox" stamped on it. (thanks 3DGPU) I'd say that just means that PS2 and GameCube won't get HL2 or DOOM 3. It can be rumor too..... who knows :)
  • Experts Worried After Worm Hits Windows-Based ATMs -  Automatic teller machines at two banks running Microsoft's popular Windows software were infected by a computer virus in August, the maker of the machines said on Monday.  The ATM infections, first reported by SecurityFocus.com, are believed to be the first of a computer virus wiggling directly onto cash machines. Computer security experts predicted more problems to come as Windows migrates to critical systems consumers rely on. An unknown number of ATMs running Windows XP Embedded were shut down during the spread of the so-called "Nachi" worm, said officials at Diebold Inc., which made the ATMs and refused to name the customers affected.
  • Japan police arrest two for file sharing - The two suspects, a 41-year-old man who runs a business and an unemployed 19-year-old, were detained November 27 for alleged copyright violations using a "peer-to-peer" program called Winny that is available on the Internet for free. The program allows users to trade files without revealing their Internet Protocol address, the Internet's equivalent of a phone number. Kyoto police spokesman Yukinori Kumamoto didn't say how police identified the suspects. Winny is partly based on Freenet, a freely distributed program intended to bypass Internet censorship by making users anonymous.
  • Spam bill headed to U.S. president  - The U.S. House of Representatives has approved an amended version of a bill that will allow penalties of up to $6 million and five years in jail for sending some e-mail spam, the last step before the bill can be signed into law by President George W. Bush.
  • Kazaa shuts down Kazaa Lite  - This weekend users of Kazaa Lite K++ learned that almost every download site of the popular peer-to-peer file-sharing application had disappeared, including the links on its own home page.
  • Microsoft to drop older products - In a posting to Microsoft's developer Web site, the company lists several older products that are being phased out and that will no longer be available to customers as of Dec. 15. The roster of products to be dropped includes SQL Server 7, Office XP Developer, Windows 98, and a number of Office 2000-related tools and patches. Microsoft said it will update Java-compliant versions of some products by the end of December, including Office XP Professional with FrontPage, Publisher 2002, Windows NT 4.0 and Small Business Server 2000. Microsoft said that after the deadline the products would no longer be available through its MSDN developer Web site or "other channels at Microsoft."
  • NEC Recalls Laser Printers - NEC is recalling about 170,000 laser printers because of an overheating problem that leads to a subsequent risk of fire, the company says. The company is recalling 11 printer models, that were sold in Japan between 1997 and 2000. The printers are monochrome laser printers, mostly in its MultiWriter range. Around 440 printers sold by Hitachi during the period from 1999 to 2001 include the same part and are also subject to recall, Hitachi said in a statement.
  • Tiny Hard Drives Offer Big Storage - The drives are expected to appear in products which require high-capacity data storage in a small form factor such as MP3 players, handheld digital video players, and other portable consumer electronics and even some cellular telephones. Such is the demand already that Toshiba recently announced it is doubling production of its PC Card-size 1.8-inch hard drive to 600,000 units per month by March 2004. The drives can be found in Apple's IPod, Toshiba's own Gigabeat digital music player, and some ultra-portable notebook PCs and are available in capacities from 5GB to 40GB.
  • Micron ships 1Gb DDR 2 chips - Micron has begun shipping 1Gb DDR 2 chips, and has designed DIMMs to take the parts, along with its 256Mb and 512Mb DDR 2 chips, the company will say today.
  • PIE launches 4,800-dpi film scanner - Pacific Image Electronics (PIE) has launched a professional-level film scanner, the PF4800MF, for large-size film slides/negatives used in of professional photo studios, wedding photos and biomedical imaging.
  • ESS's VibrattoII MX DivX certified DVD chip powers Samsung's DVD-VHS combo players  - ESS Technology today announced that its VibrattotII MX system-on-chip (SOC) DivX Certifiedt DVD chip is shipping in volume in Samsung Electronics' latest line of DivX Certified DVD-VHS combo players.
  • E200 phone review - The E200.. What is it ? Well, for those who don't know what a Smartphone is, it's basically a phone which is based on the Windows Mobile Operating System. This phone can play MP3's, it'll synchronise with your PC so all the contacts you have on your computer are matched on the phone. Calendar notes will be matched too - so you need never remember anything again! :) It also has a full colour screen, it'll play PROPER sound when someone calls.. yes, a recording of your favourite tune if you want. It'll also do that Polyphonic stuff too.
  • Inkjet Multi-Function Printer round-up - The Christmas buying craze is upon us, and this year's printer crop has arrived: the Canon i865, the HP 5652 Deskjet, the Epson CX5400, the Lexmark X6170 and the Brother MFC 4820C, to name only a few. This year's Christmas season review roundup offers some glimpses of new multifunctional features, including recto-verso printing, sensors, LCD screens and more.
  • Massive 80 videocards round-up - Digit Life has posted a new review covering 80 video cards from 1999-2003 (but only those which are able to work on modern mainboards requiring AGP power supply of 1.5V, that is why Voodoo3/5 based cards are missed). But this is just a summary review, not a comparative analysis as it doesn't make sense to compare speeds of various cards of different generations without accounting for quality because up-to-date accelerators deliver perfect gameplay with AA and anisotropy enabled, in contrast to video cards of previous generations.
  • Free Exchange Server 2003 Resource Guide  - Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and ENTmag.com have teamed up to create the Exchange Server 2003 Resource Guide.
  • SmoothWall Express 2.0 - SmoothWall (download) is a firewall operating system distribution based on Linux, enabling a low-end, possibly otherwise redundant, Intel and compatible PC to become a hardened Internet firewall. (thanks Slashdot.org)
  • GAG 4.3  - GAG is a Boot Manager program. It's loaded when the computer is turned on and allows you to choose the operating system you want to use.
  • A-Tuner 1.7.27.5216 - A-Tuner is a small tool for changing Anti-Aliasing (including all unofficial modes), Anisotropic Filtering, Vsync and MipMap LOD (Level Of Detail) Bias on your ATI and Nvidia cards and should work with Nvidia Detonators 23.11 - 52.16 and ATI Catalyst 3.0 - 3.9.
  • TVTool 9.5 - TVTool 9.5 introduces a number of new features, improvements and important bug fixes. Especially the infrared part has been changed a lot. With the new options TVTool supports more remote controls than the leading IR program from a competitor.
  • NVIDIA Forceware Driver 53.04 tomorrow -  Hardtecs4U is reporting that Nvidia will be releasing two new sets of Forceware Drivers in the shape of 53.03 for Windows XP/2000 and 53.04 for Windows 9x/Me Tomorrow. Of course, also some new catalyst drivers should be out next week sometime.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,08 2003 - tech
Morning Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 10:57 AM CET - Dec,08 2003 - Post a comment / read (3)
  • Halo 2 for Xbox To Be Released 4/4/04 - According to Neowin (confirmed by several Microsoft Xbox insiders), the 4th of April 2004 will mark the date for the widely anticipated Xbox game - Halo 2. Following on from its father (Halo), Halo 2 is expected to be packed full with better weapons, more intelligent enemies, online multiplayer gaming with Xbox Live! and the ability for optional voice commands to team mates in single and multiplayer.
  • Lian Li EX-23 Hard Drive review -  The Lian Li Aluminum HDD Module for the 6077 series is yet another accessory that adds both form and function to the case. The ROM drive covers and now the hard HDD Module are just more proof of the level of thought that Lian Li has placed into their cases. If you have a 6077 series case or possibly other PC60 series cases with two empty upper bays then the HDD module would be a great accessory for you.
  • Plextor 708A review - The 708A's 8 speed DVD writing in around 8mins is a far cry from the days of Pioneer A03 (which was our first reviewed DVD writer) and would write a DVD in around 1 hour. At 8 speed the 708A gave the fastest DVD writing times of any DVD writer we have tested. Since 8 speed DVD+R isn't an official standard the Plextor 708A can write to a few good quality 4 speed +R at 8 speed (saving you a few quid in the process).
  • Audio Revolution 7.1 Sound Card - HardExtreme has posted a review of M-Audio Revolution 7.1 Sound Card.
  • Power Color Radeon 9800 XT 256MB review - As of now it would be almost pointless upgrading to the Radeon 9800 XT over the Radeon 9800 Pro, unless you have the cash to blow. However, if you want an impressive game bundle at the cheapest possible price and are on the market for a high-end graphics card or are upgrading from a graphics card which is a year or more old, the Radeon 9800 XT from Power Color would be a good move to choose as we await intensive games to be released next year.
  • 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi Directional cAntenna review - Matt Cameron at Overclockers Club takes a look at two comercially avaliable 2.4GHz cAntenna's.
    Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2 -     The Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2 CD images are finally available.
  • WMP9 Plugin for Opera 7.x v0.90 - NVMax's forum member Rejzor has updated his Windows Media Player plugin for Opera 7.xx.
  • foobar2000 v0.7.5 Final - Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint and native support for several popular audio formats.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 Final - Mozilla Thunderbird (what's new) is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component.
  • Yahoo! Messenger 5.6.0.1356 - Yahoo!'s Instant Messenger (download) service has been updated to fix security issue.
  • WinRAR 3.30 Beta 3 - WinRAR (Win32 ~ DOS ~ Linux) is a powerful archive manager. This new beta fixed: Volume size autodetecting did not work properly with self-extracting volumes, Combination of -v -st switches could produce corrupt volumes so now RAR automatically turns off -v in such sitution,
    "Rename" command did not work in the flat view mode for files in archive subfolders and  Command line -f and -u switches could fail to work when extracting files.
  • jv16 PowerTools v1.4.1.248 (SHW) - Jv16 PowerTools provides the best solutions to maximize the performance of your PC. You can diagnose, monitor and tune up your computer.
  • Koepi's XviD Codec 1.0 Beta 2 Build 05122003 - Koepi's XviD Codec is a video codec just like DivX. Many new movies and videos are being encoded with this codec.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,06 2003 - tech
Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 01:55 PM CET - Dec,06 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Vulnerability in Yahoo! Instant Messenger - A vulnerability in Yahoo Messenger can result in the execution of arbitrary code on the vulnerable system. Yahoo Messenger's yauto.dll ActiveX/COM component is registered under a ProgID called YAuto.NSAuto.1. Inside this component, a function named Open(String URL) can cause a buffer overflow if an attacker sends a long stream of data in the form of a URL. Because yauto.dll is an ActiveX component, the attacker can exploit the vulnerability simply by creating a Web site with the correct ActiveX class ID (CLSID) and calling the function directly. The company said it immediately began working to validate the flaw and address the issue, so keep checking their security page for updates.
  • ASA slaps .eu domain name seller - The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered a Cambridge-based company to stop sending emails implying that it is accredited to offer .eu domain names. .EU Registry Services claimed it was the operator of the .eu suffix, which is actually the responsibility of a non-profit organisation, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names (Eurid).
  • Police hit in iPlod spam attack  - Cambridgeshire Police is investigating what it describes as "a deliberate attempt" to affect its services, after being inundated with phone calls when its number was listed in a hoax email. The email claims to be an invoice for a 40GB iPod music player and tells the recipient that their credit card will be debited L399.95. It then directs customers with questions to call a 'customer services' number.
  • Microsoft warns on Xbox prize hoax - Microsoft is warning of a hoax email which claims that the recipient has won an Xbox games console. The email from US based company Prize-Giveaway.com says: 'Congratulations on winning, from Microsoft and the Prize-Giveaway.com team!' The lucky 'winners' are then directed to the company's website.
  • Humans and computers compete in virtual creature game  - An online game that lets contestants build and race virtual beasts is being used to pit humans against a variety of artificial intelligence algorithms. The objective of Sodarace, which started at the end of November, is to construct a two dimensional creature that can travel over a certain type of terrain in the shortest possible time. Each creature is constructed of "mass", muscles", "limbs" and "joints" which control the way it moves. These creations can then be raced over a piece of terrain. Creatures can have many limbs or none at all and can walk, wriggle or even jump along. It is relatively simple to construct a creature by hand. But the game has been written so that a creature's key parameters can easily be fed into another computer program and artificial intelligence (AI) programmers are being invited to take part.
  • Off-topic: The best physics humour ever - Robert P Crease selects the funniest jokes about physics and physicists from his readers' poll.
  • FAT File System Technology and Patent License - Microsoft is offering to license its FAT file system specification and associated intellectual property. With this license, other companies have the opportunity to standardize the FAT file system implementation in their products, and to improve file system compatibility across a range of computing and consumer electronics devices.  For example, a license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
  • Taiwan second-tier makers hope to turn out 8x DVD+R/-Rs in 1Q 2004 - Taiwan's second-tier optical disc makers are preparing to begin production of 8x DVD+R/-R discs in the first quarter of 2004. The top three makers indicated that they have started or will start production of 8x DVD+R/-R discs this month.
  • Smart Phones May Go Wi-Fi - Chip design company SyChip is testing software for its secure digital I/O (SDIO) wireless LAN card so it can be used to add Wi-Fi capability to smart phones. With the card and the software, smart phones will be able to use a WLAN to transmit data and double as a cordless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone when linked to a corporate IP telephony service, says Navi Miglani, SyChip's director of marketing.
  • The Fujtisu Lifebook-P5010 review - The sleek, diminutive Fujitsu Lifebook P5020 is one of the most feature-rich laptops in the sub-notebook market. If you prize the portability and uniqueness of a sub-notebook laptop but have hesitated to give up on features, the 3.7lb Lifebook P5020 might be what you are looking for. It is a tiny laptop that still packs in Wi-Fi, a CDRW/DVD combo drive and five hours of battery life. Priced starting at $1,549, this is one laptop built for the road, similar to the Sony VAIO TR2A.
  • Pinnacle ShowCenter: Symbiosis Between PC And Hi-Fi Device - The device is hooked up to a television via S-VHS or SCART and imports all data - video, audio and photos - from a PC. Data transfer occurs via either 100 Mbit/s Ethernet or wireless WLAN. For that reason, it doesn't need mechanical components such as a DVD drive or hard disk.
  • Soltek SL-87CW-EL Motherboard review -  Soltek are a company who are known for producing many different value-end motherboards. TweakTown have got their SL-87CW-EL motherboard based on the Intel Canterwood chipset for the Pentium 4 on the test bed which offers great value for money.
  • VIA PT880 Reference Preview  - Performance was very impressive, and more so when you consider VIA's history with pricing. If they can get these boards to market at a competitive price, Springdale boards are going to have a real fight on their hands.
  • Corsair XMS 1GB DDR400 Registered Memory - The Corsair XMS modules came in the common clear plastic clamshell that also housed detailed directions with pictures and the first ever "Powered By Corsair" sticker that we have ever seen. The CMX512R-3200C2PT is a 512 MByte, registered, two-bank memory module that has been created with gamers and enthusiasts in mind. Corsair tests their PC-3200 registered memory on currently available platforms such as the ASUS SK8N motherboard, which just happens to be the board that we will be using for our benchmarking.
  • GeXcube GC-R9800XT 256MB ATI R9800XT VGA review - How can you improve one of the best gaming VPU on the planet? The short answer is to raise the clock and memory frequency. That's the basic philosophy behind ATi's latest VPU, R9800XT. Let's take a look at the clock speed of the R9800 and R9800XT series.
  • Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Review - HardwareZoom has posted a review of Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra video card.
  • Black Iceman Gaming mousing surface review - The Icemat comes with what it calls "Pad Surfers". These are strips of Teflon with adhesive on one side that allows smoother movement of the mouse. The company suggests you should stick strips of them over the bottom of your mouse. It also includes instructions on how to apply the Pad Surfers.
  • Razer Boomslang Boomer Speed (2100) - With an "opto mechanical" interface (the ball is still there, but so is an optical system, which reads the movement of the ball) the Boomer Speed has a maximum DPI of 2100. This statistic alone is promising, but how did it fair when I got it on the desk?
  • How to Volt-mod your ATI Radeon videocard - Right out of the box, Radeon 9700s (and upwards) are extremely fast cards and will, according to John Carmack, run next generation games such as Doom 3 just fine.  If you decide to go with the mod you should be aware of the fact you may turn up with dead board, they recommend you to follow this guide closely and verify at least twice your own readings and calculations. This mod can very well be performed by you as long as you are cautious.
  • Build It: A Speedy PC for $800 - Extremechech has posted a guide how to build the best PC for just $800.
  • Tutorial on how to burn an ISO image - This article will cover how to burn the ISO image of the distro that you chose.
  • ACDSee 6.0.2  (SHW) - ACDSee makes it easy to get, view, organize, print, enhance, and share your digital photos. I used in the past (v.3.1), but now it is a horrible piece of bloatware :( I rather recommend you to try IrfanView which is smaller, faster and free.
  • Fresh UI 6.70 - Fresh UI (download) is the fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of useful hidden settings, this software covers the customizing and optimizing technique that you'll be glad to know: Customizing Windows User Interface, Optimizing system settings, Optimizing hardware settings, Customizing Windows application settings, and Control user environment with policies.
  • MS Autoplay Repair Wizard - The Microsoft's AutoPlay Repair Wizard (Windows Server 2003, Windows XP) scans your computer devices to find defective AutoPlay settings, and attempts to fix those it finds.
  • SecureCRT 4.1 Final (SHW) - SecureCRT (download) gives you an encrypted SSH session with both SSH1 and SSH2t servers. SSH security goes far beyond the basic secure logon, rerouting data or local applications using TCP/IP ports through an encrypted channel. The VCP utility secures file transfers using SFTP.
  • SecureFX 2.2 Final (SHW) - The SecureFX (download) lets you choose between SFTP or FTP over an encrypted SSH2t connection for secure transfers, or standard FTP for non-secure transfers.
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.22.09.09 - The AntiVir Personal Edition (download) 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.
  • MySQL 4.1.1 Alpha - MySQL (download) is the world's most popular open source database, recognized for its speed and reliability.
  • Koepi's XviD-1.0-Beta1-30112003 - XviD (download) is a video codec just like DivX. Most new movies and videos are being encoded with XviD.
  • Total Commander 6.01  - A new version of Total Commander v6.01 has been just released. This upgrade corrects some problems, mainly with the new functions introduced with Total Commander 6.0.
  • Win9x/ME nForce System Drivers - A new Nvidia nForce system drivers (v3.75 for Win9x/ME) are available on the MSI site. This nForce Win9x driver package contains the below components: Audio driver 3.62 (WHQL), Audio utilities 3.62, Ethernet driver 3.13 (WHQL), GART driver 3.34 (WHQL), Memory controller driver 3.38 (WHQL), SMBus driver 3.38 (WHQL) and Installer 3.42. (thanks Warp2Search).
  • Nvidia ForceWare Driver 52.18 - Station-Drivers have posted a new set of Nvidia ForceWare drivers 52.18 (13.8MB) for Windows 2K/XP. The drivers can be also found at HardwareOnline.dk.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,04 2003 - tech
Thursday Tech Reading Part #2 - tech
(hx) 05:50 PM CET - Dec,04 2003 - Post a comment / read (4)
  • Intel Prescott on Feb 2nd 2004 - Source close to Intel Corporation said the company plans to formally launch its 90nm desktop processors code-named Prescott on the 2nd of February, 2004. As expected, the firm will ship a family of Prescott chips at different frequencies under Pentium 4 with SSE3 brand-name. Monday, the 2nd of February will be a big day for Intel, as the company unveils 7 new desktop microprocessors on that date. The list includes 4 Prescott processors with 1MB of L2 cache, 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, SSE3, HT technology, running at 3.40GHz, 3.20GHz, 3.00GHz and 2.80GHz.
  • Microsoft's DirectX Next Preview - Beyond3D has published an interesting preview of Microsoft's DirectX Next and what sort of fuctions and features you can expect from DirectX Next compatible hardware.
  • Gigabyte's GO-M1600A Multimedia In A Box For PCs - Gigabyte Claims its GO-M1600A serves as an all-in-one MP3, FM radio and DVD player in a single box. While it fits in the 5.25" PC slot inside the case, the device can surprisingly still operate independently without having to turn on the PC. THG tested the device to see how well it performed and measured the speed of its operations. keywords
  • Audio Sonica Theater - USB 7.1 Surround Audio  - The M-Audio is an interesting product that should certainly be of interest to anyone wishing to upgrade the audio in their home theater PC without occupying the PCI slot in their computer. It has several attractive features which will endear it to many people. These include its tiny size, lack of external power supply and high-quality 24-bit/96kHz recording and playback capabilities. Home theater enthusiasts will be delighted by the support the SRS audio processing and impressed by the thundering bass and dialog clarity it brings to even low end speaker systems.
  • Apple iPod 20GB Review - One of the greatest things about the iPod is that it isn't just an MP3 player. In reality, it's more of a portable hard drive with the ability to play MP3's. Now you can transfer files and applications straight from my computer onto the iPod. This is very handy if you have large files you wish to share with your friends.
  • The Pentium 4 3.2 GHz Extreme Edition review - The Pentium 4 3.2 GHz Extreme Edition appears to be the most powerful singular X86-based processor Intel has ever released, it's a pretty amazing little processor. The chip easily can best previous Pentium 4 processors in gaming, continues to run creative applications great, and should run any software which is cache or memory intensive very quickly.
  • Dual CPU Shootout: Opteron versus Xeon  - Most of Extreme Tech coverage revolved around single processor systems, including our examination of Opteron on the desktop and the Athlon64 line of PC processors. They've also looked at Athlon64 in the small form factor arena and the first shipping mobile Athlon64 notebook PC.
  • The Intel Pentium 4C vs. AMD Barton Comparison - Since the launch of AMD's Athlon 64 & Athlon 64 FX one and a half months ago, the hardware community has been hit by the Hammer fever. Despite being delayed for many months, these revolutionary K8 chips are finally here! Long touted by AMD as fully capable of executing current 32-bit and future 64-bit applications, can they meet our expectations?
  • AMD Athlon XP 3200+ review - The only difference to the XP3200 is the FSB speed has been increased to 400MHz, apart from that the core is still based on AMD's 0.13 micron manufacturing process and the processor has 128KB of level 1 cache and 512KB of level 2 cache. The XP3200 core is clocked at 2.2GHz which is only a 33MHz increase from the XP3000 which is clocked at 2.167GHz.
  • Motherboard round-up - ABIT IC7-MAX3 i875 (1) | ABIT IC7-Max3 i875 (2) | ABIT KV8-MAX3 S754 | AOpen AX4C Max II  | ATI RADEON 9100 IGP | DFI LANPARTY "B" Canterwood and Springdale | FIC K8-800T K8T800 | VIA PT880 and SiS 655FX Showdown 
  • Soltek 5600 FX review - The Soltek Geforce FX 5600 is certainly not the fastest card out there, but it wasn't as slow as I had imagined. You will be able to play most recent games fairly well with this card, as long as you have a decent CPU and don't feel like using the highest resolutions with a lot of anisotropy and anti-aliasing.
  • PNY GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 3D - The FX5700Ultra really is a card that is equal to the CBR600RR in as much as the impact that it will have. The middle range of cards are becoming so good that they are relegating the larger cards to mainly show and benchmarks.
  • Tyan Tachyon G9800Pro-M review - Chaps at HardOCP compared Tyan Tachyon G9800Pro-M against three other cards, the 9800XT, 9600XT and 9500Pro using realworld gameplay evaluation.
  • The AOpen Aeolus FX5600S - The most impressive feature of this card, however, is the 256MB of Dual DDR RAM on board. AOpen chose 3.6ns Hynix memory chips, which should leave us some room for overclocking this card.
  • Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra MyVIVO 256MB and ASUS V9950SE 128MB reviews - Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra MyVIVO 256MB is a high-quality product with an excellent accessory pack. The developers do not pack cards into jackets anymore, and the cooler now looks very effective and not that bulky. However, the first PCI slot can hardly be used. It's for you decide whether to buy such an expensive card or not - if it's cheaper than the RADEON 9800 XT, the choice isn't going to be difficult. / ASUS V9950SE 128MB follows the Albatron GeForce FX 5900CP, i.e. it will drop in the niche between the FX 5700 Ultra and FX 5900. But the card can stand against the RADEON 9800 of approximately the same cost only if the vendors keep down their appetite.
  • Leadtek's WinFast A360 Ultra TDH & WinFast A380 Ultra TDH MyVIVO review - Now Leadtek is back again, with their GeForce FX 5950 Ultra based A380 Ultra TDH MyViVo and GeForce FX 5700 Ultra-based WinFast A360 Ultra TDH. Let’s take a look at what Leadtek has done to make them stand out from the competition.
  • GeXcube GC-R9800XT 256MB ATI R9800XT VGA - Thanks to the higher core/memory frequency, R9800XT is around 5~11% faster than an R9800Pro in benchmarks. The R9800XT truly shines when comparing with Nvidia's flagship, FX5950Ultra. The FX5950Ultra's performance is on par with R9800XT at standard setting; however, ATi's R9800XT takes a commanding lead (up to 40%) when FSAA is enabled
  • Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 250GB (SATA) - The Deskstar 7K250 is built with three 80GB/platter disks, each with two read/write heads. Total that up and you get about 240GB. How did the extra 10GB come about? Well, if you look at the specification sheet, you'll notice that the track density of the 250GB model is much higher than those at with 120GB or 160GB capacities. The track density of the 250GB is rated at 93.5 KTPI (thousands of tracks per inch) as compared to the 160GB model which is only 90 KTPI. If you calculate the difference between these two, you'll find that it's about 3.8% more, and that equates to roughly 10GB more.
  • Zalman 5.1 ZM-RS6F Headphones - Yes, 5.1 headphones, and very odd things they are. These could prove to be a god-send for the LAN gamers amongst us who hate having to downgrade from a 5.1 setup to a 2 channel headphone setup when gaming! Zalman have attempted to create the true 5.1 (6 speaker) surround effect within a pair of headphones.
  • Hercules Digifire 7.1 soundcard review - The Digifire 7.1 features a Line/Mic Input, 4 Stereo Line Outputs, an Optical S/PDIF Output (no S/PDIF input) and a MIDI/Gameport add-on bracket. Additionally 2 FireWire ports are provided on the bracket (as opposed to one on the Audigy/Audigy 2) and a third extra port is available internally.
  • Qpad XXXL gamer mousepad  - First and foremost, invest in quality Q-PAD mousepads are manufactured from 100 % natural rubber, with a textile surface. They stay still on the desk, giving optimum friction to the mouse. They are anti-static, do not fray at the edges, and are washable.
  • Professional Mouse Pad -  The SteelPad 4D isn’t steel, but a huge double sided, flexible plastic mousing surface measuring in at 290 x 257mm. The pad is only 2mm thick and rests on a separate non slip rubber surface. The rubber surface does not attach to the mouse pad, so the pad can be quickly swapped from side to side, depending on your preference and/or type of mouse.
  • XGI Volari Duo Score 5370 On 3DMark2003 - XGI said that its dual graphics processor Volari architecture will be available on December 8th. The firm, which previewed its architecture at last September's Computex, claims that its Volari Duo systems will nearly double the performance of what it describes as "traditional" GPU technology. In related news, Club3D is the first firm to announce their XGI V8 Volari Duo card. The card has two V8 Volari cores which are running at 350MHz with 256MB DDR II RAM running at 400MHz.
  • One Internet Connection - Two Private LANs - Sometimes having everything on one LAN doesn't cut it for security and other reasons. Fortunately, inexpensive routers have made this an easy problem to solve. THG's new Problem Solver will show you how.
  • ACDSee 6.0.2.0014 - ACDSee digital photo software (update 6.0.2 for standard edition / powerpack edition) makes it easy to import, view, organize, print, enhance, share and archive your digital photos. ACDSee is easy to use for everyone from beginner to professional level, and also powerful and flexible enough to meet your needs as your image collection grows. "Indispensable," says American Photo Magazine of this picture viewer.
  • Outlook 2003 Video e-mail - This is a new version, updated December 3rd, 2003, that fixes an issue with a link in the body of the video e-mail.
  • SlimBrowser 3.86 Build 003  - SlimBrowser is a multiple-site browser based on tab-page interface. It incorporates a large collection of wonderful features like recoverable popup killer, skinned window frame, form filler, site group, quick-search, auto login, hidden sites, built-in commands and scripting, online translation, script error suppression, blacklist / whitelist filtering.
  • foobar2000 v0.7.5 beta 1 - Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. No changelog is available.
  • OpenGL Extension Viewer 2.06 - This program displays the vendor name, the version implemented, the renderer name and the extensions of the current OpenGL 3D accelerator.
Thursday Tech Reading Part #1 - tech
(hx) 12:37 PM CET - Dec,04 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Hacker gets 1 1/2 years in the Federal Pen for hacking former employer's retail website -  A former employee of American Eagle Outfitters was sentenced in a Pittsburgh court to 1 1/2 years in federal prison on Tuesday for posting passwords online to the retailer's Web site and orchestrating an Internet attack. Kenneth Patterson, 38, of Greensburg, must also pay more than $64,000 in restitution as part of his September guilty pleas to password trafficking and computer damage.
  • Web Virus Authors "Winning Battle" - Creators of computer viruses are winning the battle with law enforcers and getting away with crimes that cost the global economy some $13 billion this year, a Microsoft official said Wednesday. Counterfeit centers are shifting from California and Western Europe to countries including Paraguay, Colombia and Ukraine said David Finn, Microsoft's director of digital integrity for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In Asia, pirate plants have emerged in Vietnam, Macao, and Myanmar (Burma) in addition to more established facilities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
  • Yahoo Instant Messenger contains security flaw - Security researchers are warning of a security hole in Yahoo Inc.'s Messenger that could allow attackers to run their own code on computers using the instant messaging program. The buffer overrun vulnerability was discovered by researcher Tri Huynh in a file named "yauto.dll," which is an ActiveX component of Messenger software versions up to 5.6.0.1347, according to a security alert released Wednesday by Secunia Ltd. of Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • Banks to miss Chip-and-Pin goal - Programme Management Organisation (PMO) has said that the vast majority of the UK's 42 million cardholders should be using chip-and-Pin cards by the end of 2004. But as the deadline approaches, its goal is starting to look increasingly unlikely. Lloyds TSB and Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) have announced that most of their customers will be chip-and-Pin enabled by that time, but both have conceded that it will probably be mid-2005 before they can update all of their cardholders.
  • Tiscali shuts forums following "racist" complaints - Tiscali UK has closed its news forum after recieving complaints from a "small number" of users concerning the posting of allegedly racist comments. The ISP denies that pulling the plug was an overreaction.
  • Off-topic: Exploding black holes rain down on Earth  - Are mini black holes raining down through the Earth's atmosphere? It is possible, says a team of physicists. They think this could explain mysterious observations from mountain-top experiments over the past 30 years. Ordinary black holes form when stars explode at the end of their lives. The heavy stellar core can collapse into a superdense "singularity" whose gravity is so strong that nothing - not even light - can escape. These black holes would be invisibly small, with a mass of only 10 micrograms or so. And they would be so unstable that they would explode in a burst of particles within around a billion-billion-billionth of a second.
  • Your Next OS: Windows 2006? - In PCWorld's preview code (the official beta isn't due until the second half of 2004, and rumor has it that the upgrade may not ship until 2006), Windows Explorer routinely displayed much more information about files and computer resources than it does in Windows XP.Explorer's attractive displays of files and properties come courtesy of Longhorn's new graphics subsystem, code-named Avalon, which will hand much of its work to the PC's graphics subsystem. Minimum requirements for the preview call for an 800-MHz Pentium III processor, 256MB of memory, and a graphics card with 32MB of video RAM. Such specs are beefier than XP requires, but Longhorn-capable systems should be commonplace by the time the OS ships.
  • Intel accelerates its Celeron shift - The chipmaker has begun shipping a new 800MHz "ultra low voltage" Celeron chip to tablet PC manufacturers such as Motion Computing, a company spokesperson said. New mobile Celeron processors don't always make headlines, but the 800MHz chip marks the beginning of a transition for the Celeron line to a new generation of underlying technology--a few months earlier than expected. Unlike past mobile Celerons, which were based on the Pentium III-M or the Pentium 4, the ultra-low-voltage chip borrows its circuitry from Intel's more recent Pentium M. The company had been expected to make the circuitry transition in the first quarter of 2004.
  • AOL offers PCs for $299 - The move follows AOL's announcement that it plans to launch a new discount Internet access service to combat the growing threat from both cheaper alternatives and speedier broadband offerings. The stripped-down service is expected to launch in early 2004 for $9.95 a month and offer fewer of the bells and whistles found on AOL's $23.90 a month service, according to a source close to America Online.
  • 15-Inch LCD Prices Rising - If you've been holding off on that 15-inch flat-panel in hopes of a better deal, you may have waited too long. After years of falling prices, high demand is driving the costs of 15-inch LCDs up, and analysts say they're unlikely to drop anytime soon.
  • Asus Radeon 9800XT/TVD - As you might expect the Asus 9800XT produced some fantastic performance scores, beating the reference GeForce FX 5950 in most tests, if only by a small margin. In 3DMark03, at a resolution of 1024 x 768, it hit a score of 6024 to the 5950's 5912. In Unreal Tournament at 1600 x 1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 4x anisotropic filtering enabled it won out with 75.2fps over the 5950's 70.2fps.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,03 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:36 AM CET - Dec,03 2003 - Post a comment / read (3)
  • "Anonymous" file-traders arrested - Japanese police have arrested two people suspected of distributing pirated films and computer games through a supposedly anonymous file-sharing network. Police also raided the home of the programmer who created the program used to connect to the network. His program, called "Winny", is meant to hide the identity of a user from everyone else on the network. So far he has only been identified by his online pseudonym "47". It is unclear how the two suspects were traced but their arrests have raised concerns about the security of the Winny network. According to the Japanese Association of Copyright for Computer Software around 250,000 regularly use it to trade files.
  • Hackers used unpatched server to breach Debian - A security alert issued by the Debian says that a known Linux kernel code vulnerability was used to break into the project's servers, bringing development builds to a halt. An encrypted program (encrypted using the TESO BurnEye obfuscator) used an overflow in brk() which allowed the user process to get executable access to kernel space. It's a local exploit, which was only possible because a hacker used a stolen password, then escalated the privileges. All passwords on one of the development machines were invalidated.
  • Mimail variant attacks anti-spam sites. Again -  A new variant of the infamous Mimail worm attempts to knock anti-spam websites off the Net. Mimail-L typically spreads as an attachment (wendy.zip) to a pornographic email claiming to come from a woman called Wendy. Windows users who run an infectious file (for_greg_with_love.jpg.exe) within the compressed attachment get a compromised PC and not the compromising pictures promised by the email.
  • Symantec fixes product activation glitch - The security software maker patches a flaw in its product activation technology that was causing its Norton family of security applications to fail.
  • Microsoft finds flaw in server software - The problem affects all customers who installed SharePoint Services after Nov. 24. SharePoint, which is used to create a company intranet, is included as part of the standard and premium editions of the recently launched Small Business Server 2003 package, which also includes the Windows Server 2003 operating system and Microsoft Exchange e-mail software. The problem prevents SharePoint from installing properly.
  • Largest prime number ever is found  - A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history by discovering the largest known prime number. The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers. Michael Shafer a chemical engineering student at Michigan State University used his office computer to contribute spare processing power to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The project has more than 60,000 volunteers from all over the world taking part.
  • Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier -  Max Lyons has just posted on his site what seems to be the first 1 Gigapixel picture (tnx Slashdot.org), created from 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite.
  • China implements new Wi-Fi security standard - The Dec. 1 deadline for all Wi-Fi gear makers to start using the Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) specification was set by the Standardization Administration of China, which manages standards in various industries in China. Support for WAPI is not included in current or upcoming security specifications, such as Wi-Fi Protected Access or 802.11i, developed and enforced by industry groups the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Wi-Fi Alliance. WAPI is to be used with Wi-Fi standards in the 2.4GHz radio band, according to a notice from the Standardization Administration of China.
  • Sony sets date for PSX - Electronics giant Sony announced that it will begin selling the PSX, a new multifunction version of the company's PlayStation 2 game machine, in Japan on Dec. 13. The PSX will combine a PS2 game machine with a digital video recorder and and a DVD player/recorder. The device is set to become available in other parts of the world next year.
  • PlayStation 3 "concept image" (?) hits web - A picture purporting to be concept art of Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation 3, has been circulated on the Internet, showing a sleek silver console with a slot-loading DVD drive.
  • Napster Offers Free Trial - It may not be a return to the heyday of free-and-easy song-swapping, but old-school Napster users have a chance to try out the newly launched service with a three-day free trial period this month. The free installation of Napster 2.0 is for users in the U.S. only and is currently only compatible with systems running Microsoft's Windows XP or Windows 2000, according to Melissa Foo, Napster's retail marketing manager in the U.K. As an added incentive to sign up for the Napster service, the company is also offering five free tracks that can be burned to CD or transferred to one of 40 compatible portable music devices for those who subscribe to the service for $9.95 per month after their free trial ends.
  • VirtualDub 1.5.10 - VirtualDub (download) 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.
  • Media Player Classic 6.4.7.1 - Media Player Classic (Win9x/ME ~ Win2k/XP) is similar to windows media player 6.4 but with features pertained to minimalist advanced users. It also supports DirectX 9 and VFW drivers for capture. It supports viewing through ActiveX controls of Real and QuickTime files.
  • VIA Hyperion 4in1 v4.51 -VIA Hyperion drivers (download) are suitable for any VIA chipset and all Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (Win95/98/98SE). If you are looking for VIA 4in1 drivers, these are the drivers you are looking for. They fixed the issue of the Delayed Write Failed only for special condition. Note: Please install 4in1 4.51 on safe mode if the issue happened.
  • Nero 6.0.0.28 - Nero (Nero 6.0.0.28 ~ Nero Vision Express 2.0.1.15 ~ Nero Media Player 1.4.0.14 ~ Nero Mix 1.4.0.14) has been updated, however no change log is available.
 Gameguru Mania News - Dec,02 2003 - tech
Monday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:12 AM CET - Dec,02 2003 - Post a comment / read (4)
  • Sysbug-A Virus On the Prowl - The Sysbug-A virus has been set loose and is attacking "the usual suspects"--meaning that Microsoft Windows users should be on alert, according to one IT security company. According to security provider WhiteHat, those vulnerable to the virus include anyone using Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows NT, and Windows XP.
  • Asian Pirates Sell Microsoft's Next Windows System - Malaysia's brazen software pirates are hawking the next version of Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system years before it is supposed to be on sale. Underscoring the scale of U.S. companies' copyright problems in Asia, CDs containing software Microsoft has code named "Longhorn" are on sale for six ringgit ($1.58) in southern Malaysia. Microsoft's current version of Windows, XP, sells for upwards of $100 in the United States. The software is an early version of Longhorn demonstrated and distributed at a conference for Microsoft programmers in Los Angeles in October, Microsoft Corporate Attorney Jonathan Selvasegaram told Reuters.
  • .name registry site hacked - The website of the .name registry was hacked over the weekend through an Apache exploit. London-based Global Name Registry was updating its Apache and PHP system when hackers SUr00tIK & GroMx broke into the system and replaced the frontpage index file
  • Gametrac mobile console to ship for under L60 - On the basis of its web site, Gametrac Europe's kids-oriented handheld Windows CE .NET-based gaming console appears as much like vapourware as does Infinium Labs' still unlaunched Phantom. A few hi-res Wavefront or Maya renders and a noisy Flash presentation do not a real product make. However, Gametrac's parent, Tiger Telematics, does at least have some impressive partners associated with the development of the console, making its debut during Q2 2004 seem more likely to happen.
  • Sony Readies Pared-Down PSX - Sony has dropped several features from its upcoming PSX, a combination video and gaming device. The company has not been able to complete development in time for the year-end sales period, Sony said Monday. Gone from the latest specifications are the abilities to play back DVD+RW discs, play back data CD-R discs (although audio CDs recorded on CD-R discs are supported), display TIFF and GIF format images, display movies taken with Sony's Cybershot digital still cameras, and play back MP3 files. In addition, copying of video files from the PSX's hard drive to DVD discs has been slowed down, from 24X speed to 12X speed, and the device also cannot connect to the PlayStation BB online gaming service.
  • Future PlayStations to read hand gestures - Phil Harrison, a vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), told the Australian Financial Review newspaper that "future generations" of PlayStations will include motion-sensor and camera hardware similar to that found in the EyeToy, a peripheral device for the PlayStation 2. While Harrison didn't mention the PlayStation 3 specifically, his remarks suggest it is likely to incorporate current hardware upon its scheduled launch in 2005.
  • Video game consoles Guide - Detroit Free Press has published a newbie's guide to video game consoles.
  • Linux tablet PC breaks $1,000 barrier -  A small PC maker and a Linux distributor have teamed up to offer a tablet-style PC for $999, hundreds of dollars less than similar devices running Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC Edition software. The device runs on a 1GHz Antaur processor from Via Technologies, includes a 30GB hard drive and uses a customized version of the open-source Linux operating system put together by Lycoris, a Seattle-area company that specializes in dressing up Linux with a user interface similar to Microsoft's Windows.
  • Intel scientists find wall for Moore's Law - Granted, that end likely won't come for about two decades, but Intel researchers have recently published a paper theorizing that chipmakers will hit a wall when it comes to shrinking the size of transistors, one of the chief methods for making chips that are smaller, more powerful and cheaper than their predecessors. Manufacturers will be able to produce chips on the 16-nanometer manufacturing process, expected by conservative estimates to arrive in 2018, and maybe one or two manufacturing processes after that, but that's it.
  • Samsung Shows 57-Inch LCD - Samsung Electronics has developed a 57-inch liquid crystal display panel, the largest such panel in the world, the company said Thursday. The panel was produced on the company's new fifth-generation TFT LCD production line that began operation in September this year. The maximum size panel that can be manufactured is governed by the size of glass sheet that a production line can handle. Fifth-generation lines can accept glass up to 110 centimeters by 130 centimeters (43.3 inches by 51.2 inches), making the 57-inch panel possible, said Samsung.
  • Merconnet 7 Inch Mini Widescreen LCD TV review - Merconnet's 7" LCD TV would be a great addition to a small portable DVD viewing station, but as for the Cable TV viewing, it is a little lacking. If stereo composite connectors were added and the TV tuner refined, this would be a great product.
  • SIS Flexible Dual Channel Memory Controller review - This feature allows users to mix & match memory sizes and odd number of sticks to operate in Dual Channel mode.
  • ATI Radeon 9100 IGP “RS300” Pentium 4 Chipset review - Till around about two months ago, Intel hadn’t been bothered as far as competition goes in the Socket 478 Pentium 4 chipset area. That was until ATI released their codenamed "RS300" Radeon 9100 IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) chipset for the Pentium 4 offering many of the same features as Intel’s mainstream Springdale chipset including Dual Channel DDR-400 support and onboard video to rival the best in the business. TweakTown have got ATI’s very first, now fully licensed and ambitious desktop chipset on the test bed today in the form of the FIC P4M-RS300 motherboard.
  • Asus Radeon 9800XT/TVD review - As its name suggests, the 9800XT is a revision of the Radeon 9800Pro rather than a fresh design. The essential differences are an increase in VPU clock speed, up from 380MHz to 412MHz.
  • TDK DED+440N DVD+RW review - HardwareZone.com has posted a review of the external TDK DED+440N dual format DVD burner. The drive uses the USB 2.0 interface and can burn DVD+R and DVD-R media at 4x.
  • Saitek P3000 Wireless Gamepad Review - 3dXtreme has posted a review on the Saitek P3000 Wireless Gamepad.
  • SuSE Linux Pro 9.0 review - The SuSE 9.0 Pro packaging continues the tradition of previous SuSE Pro releases. The box and contents are almost identical to the SuSE 8.2 Pro release. In other words, a big box containing two hefty books, and a folded cardboard box with the bits in 5 cd-roms and this time a single but double sided DVD-ROM disk.
  • 101 Tips and Tweaks for Windows XP - PC Stats has published a new beginners guide: 101 Tips and Tweaks for Windows XP.
  • XIII Problems and Tip Fixes -A post to the official XIII forum offers some work around tips for users having troubles running XIII on systems that have CD copying software installed. According to post, the problem is caused by the copy protection software that is encoded on the disk after the GM process.  The source of the problem is anything that creates a virtual drive on your system, so it's not just limited to Daemon Tools, Clone-Cd and the like. Newer versions of Nero, EZCD Creator and a lot of burning packages also create virtual drives.
  • Koepi's XviD Codec 1.0 Beta 1 Build 30112003 - They finally decided to make the current development status official beta 1 of XviD-1.0 (download). They need some feedback now to make final XviD-1.0 rock-solid. Please take the time and test and report bugs over at Doom9's.
  • aTuner 1.7.27.5216 - aTuner is a small tool for changing/tweaking settings on your NVIDIA based graphics card. Includes Anti-Aliasing (including all unofficial modes), Anisotropic Filtering, VSync, and MipMap LOD Bias.
  • Lite-On CD-RW Firmwares - LiteOn has released a new CD-RW firmware updates for LDW-811S, LDW-411S, LSC-24082KX, LTR-52327S, LTN-526S and LTN-486S.
  • DON'T INSTALL Hyperion 4.50! - Due bugs, Via has removed their Hyperion 4.50 driver that was released some days ago from download page. The latest stabile version is Hyperion 4.49p. (tnx Warp2Search) The Inquirer is reporting: "After detailed investigation of the issues that have been reported, we have found that they only occur with systems configured with 1GB or more of memory and an ATI graphics card where the AGP aperture has been set above 32MB. We are currently working on a new revision of the driver that changes the default size of the AGP aperture to 32MB".
 Gameguru Mania News - Nov,29 2003 - tech
Friday Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:38 AM CET - Nov,29 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Cyber-pirate back to harass Hollywood -  A hacker famed for defeating Hollywood in a cyber-piracy trial has rejected allegations he has illegally unlocked a code that enables unauthorised copying of music files from the internet. Jon Johansen, a 20-year-old Norwegian computer programmer who was cleared of piracy charges in January, has developed a source code for copying music and posted it on the internet less than a week before he is due to appear in an Oslo appeals court. Johansen's code allows users of Apple Computer Inc's new iTunes online music store to break digital rights management (DRM) technology that prevents people copying files downloaded from the service. On an internet site named "So Sue Me", Johansen said critics had "failed to understand that by buying into DRM they have given the seller complete control over the product after it's been sold", calling them "clueless about copyright law".
  • Launch agreed for Euro tech-crime team  - The agency, dubbed the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), will co-ordinate information sharing between European member states on cyber-crime issues. ENISA, which will begin operations in January 2004, will work with business and the public to minimise the effects of viruses, hacking and online surveillance, and collaborate with industry to promote more constant security standards.
  • ABO aims to out-compress JPEG - A Singapore company claims to have developed a technique of compressing files far smaller than what conventional methods can achieve and what's more, to do it without losing information. The method, dubbed Adaptive Binary Optimization (ABO), can help hospitals compress and manage medical images, aid film distributors archive and transmit movies and even make faxes and scans smaller for faster travel across networks, claim its makers.
  • Windows 95, 98 get system restore - Waycam Technologies, a Lincolnshire-based security specialist, has launched a set of data recovery tools that protect PCs from accidental or malicious data loss by creating a "protected area" on the system hard drive and using it to record all changes made by the user. Waycam's Goldensoft’s Recovery Series is designed for small businesses and home users who want to add another layer of protection to their data. The system is similar to that provided by Windows XP's System Restore utility, which allows a PC's configuration to be "rolled back" in case a conflict arises, but Waycam's utility can be used with all versions of the Microsoft OS made after Windows 95.
  • Sony's all-in-one PSX console available on Dec 13 in Japan - Sony Corp confirmed that it would start selling the "PSX" - an all-in-one entertainment system that includes a hard disk drive (HDD) and DVD recorder plus a PlayStation 2 console - on December 13 in Japan.
  • China Gets Playstation 2 Soon - Earlier today, Sony Computer Entertainment announced that China will receive Playstation 2 units starting December 20th. The machine will sell for 1,988 Yuan ($240) in China, unlike the $179 price in the United States, the company stated in a report. Two games will be available at launch and have a price of 168 Yuan. The two launch titles were not revealed.
  • Xbox makes gains as Japanese price cut bites - Microsoft's Xbox has had its most successful week to date this year in Japan, capturing almost seven per cent market share following a price cut to the hardware and the launch of a Project Gotham Racing 2 bundle deal. Although that market share still represents well under 8000 units sold in total, it's still a massive gain for the console - which generally languishes at under one per cent market share in this territory. The price cut which caused the boost was a drop from €129 Euro to 113 Euro.
  • Casio using a-Si technology for OLED displays - Casio has used amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology to produce an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display at 30% lower production costs than required by LTPS (low-temperature poly-silicon) OLEDs, the Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun reported yesterday. The company has conducted test production of a 2.1-inch, 260,000-color active-matrix (AM) OLED panel of 160×128-pixel resolution and only 1.2mm thickness. It plans to launch large-size OLED TVs in 2006 or 2007.
  • The Elta 8883 MP4 DivX player - The Elta 8883 MP4 supports advanced compression methods of the MPEG-4 Advanced Profile, which are partly used by DivX Pro and newer versions of Xvid: Global Motion Compensation (GMC), Motion compensation for quarterpixels (QPel), B-Frame support, Post-processing, Data Partition (DP), Error Resync Marker (RM), Due to the fact that the chips from Sigma and ESS do not support all these features, Elta is using a different, but currently unknown chip for their drives. It supports media of type CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW and among support for playback of DivX and Xvid, it is capable of playing the usual formats like Audio-CD, MP3, OGG, DVD, VCD, SVCD and even DVD-Audio. The only thing missing is SACD.
  • Coolermaster Premium Thermal Compound - Bryan at Overclockers Club has completed a review on the Coolermaster Premium Thermal Compound. "We've taken a look at several different thermal compounds over the last couple years, but all of those have been product made by Arctic Silver or NanoTherm. Today we'll break that trend and take a look at a product by company that you probably don't associate with Thermal Compound, CoolerMaster. Those of you familiar with CoolerMaster probably know them from their heat sinks like the XDream, Aero 7+, or perhaps even their Neon Case Fans, today we'll get to know their Premium Thermal Compound (PTC)."
  • AOpen Aeolus GeForceFX 5950 Ultra - Hexus.net has posted a review of AOpen Aeolus GeForceFX 5950 Ultra. "It's quiet, nView 3.0 is excellent, the 2D quality was the best I've ever seen in isolation using my Sony G400 monitor and it should be comparatively cheap. Radeon 9800XT's are quicker, but FX 5950 Ultras make a decent case for themselves. Overclocking was a highlight too."
  • TDK DED+440N External DVD Writer  - The external model bodes well for consumers who needs the occasional portability and also for those who have absolutely no idea on how to install an internal writer. Whichever the reason, the USB 2.0 connectivity located at the rear end of the unit will provide for a hassle free installation. A word of caution though, this unit requires a USB 2.0 port to work, the bandwidth of a USB 1.1 port just doesn't cut it if you want to unleash the full potential of the drive. So do make sure your PC, be it a desktop or notebook has a USB 2.0 port before you invest your dollars into this product.
  • Sony Ericsson GC79 WLAN + GPRS card - Sony Ericsson isn't the first to market with a PC Card that allows a notebook to connect to the Internet across a cellular network, but its GC79 has the novelty of also providing an 802.11b adaptor in the same card.
  • Kyocera Finecam SL300R First Look - Thanks to an innovative, parallel-tasking signal processor technology called RTUNE (sourced from NuCORE Technology), the SL300R ($380) performs better than many high-end prosumer digital cameras in terms of speed. Power-on time is less than a second, and the shutter delay is barely perceptible. Most impressively, the SL300R can shoot continuously at 3.5 frames per second (or capture video at 30 fps) until the memory card is full—no stopping after a few frames to let the camera process the images.
  • Gigabyte combines Wi-FI, USB Flash drive  - Gigabyte has a novel idea for fans of go-anywhere computing: a USB Flash drive that features a built-in Wi-Fi adaptor. The GN-WLBZ201 offers 128MB of Flash storage accessible using any OS that supports USB storage devices. The device sports a fold-up antenna module with activity lights
  • How to Override the License Server Discovery Process in Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services - This article describes how to override the license server discovery process in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services.
  • How to make your XP Professional machine an MP3 server - The Crucible have published a new guide for turning your XP Professional machine into an MP3 server.
  • Editorial on The NVIDIA nForce3's Unlocked PCI Bus - Adrian's Rojak Pot let us know he has posted an editorial on The NVIDIA nForce3's Unlocked PCI Bus.
  • Stable 2.4.23 Linux Kernel - Marcelo Tosatti has released the final 2.4.23 stable Linux kernel (download), three months after 2.4.22. This latest kernel includes a number of changes, including the removal of the OOM (out of memory) killer among other significant VM updates.
  • Bart's PE Builder 3.0.22  - Bart's PE Builder helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
  • Threadmaster 1.12  - ThreadMaster Monitors Threads and handle high CPU utilization on a per application basis. This function is primarily indented for Terminal servers hosting multiple users. ThreadMaster can also be used when running multiple virtual machines on the same server, to limit each virtual machines CPU usage.
  • AIDA32 v3.88 - AIDA32 is a professional system information, diagnostics and benchmarking program for Windows platforms. It extracts details of all components of the PC.
  • AMD N-Bench 3.0  - N-Bench is a Benchmark program that is capable of CPU performance and displaying 3D graphics. It consists of a "Demo mode" that plays back beautiful 3DCG movies and a "Benchmark mode" that measures CPU performance.
  • Fresh Download v6.40 - Fresh Download (download) is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite software, mp3 files, video files, picture collections, etc. Unlike any other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no charges, no banners in the software, no spyware.
  • Media Player Classic version 6.4.7.0 - A new version of Media Player Classic is available for download (WinXP/2k ~ Win9x/ME). It supports DirectX 9 and VFW drivers for capture. It supports viewing through ActiveX controls of Real and QuickTime files.
  • K-Lite Codec Pack 2.20 final - The K-Lite Codec Pack contains a collection of codecs and related tools. Codecs are required to encode and decode (play) audio and video. The basic version contains all the codecs that are needed for playing most movies that can be downloaded from the Internet. The full version has some extra codecs which are used less often and includes a media player. There are three options for playing XviD content. The first option is to use the DivX Pro decoder (recommended). The second option is to use the XviD decoder.
 Gameguru Mania News - Nov,27 2003 - tech
Thanksgiving Turkey err...Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:14 PM CET - Nov,27 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Microsoft Employee Gets Jail Time for Fraud -  A former Microsoft employee was sentenced to 17 months in prison Tuesday after fraudulently ordering more than $6 million in software and then selling it to a third party. Kori Robin Brown, 31, was an administrative assistant in Microsoft's Xbox division when she used her work computer to order millions of dollars worth of high-end software from ClientLogic, a business providing warehouse facilities for Microsoft.
  • Cash machines infected with worm - Cash dispensing ATMs belonging to two US financial institutions were shut down when the computer worm Welchia invaded their embedded Windows XP operating systems in August. Diebold, the Ohio-based company that makes the machines, revealed the security breach on Tuesday. It is the first known case of a worm actually installing itself on individual ATM operating systems, says Peter Lind, a security expert at Spire Security in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Earlier in 2003, the Blaster worm shut down Bank of America ATMs, but only by causing a flood of traffic that clogged the network's bandwidth.
  • California Police Arrest Man in Bank PC Theft - Police have arrested a California man in connection to a burglary in which a computer with sensitive information about Wells Fargo & Co. customers was stolen, officials said on Wednesday. Edward Jonathan Krastof, 38, was arrested at his home late on Tuesday in Concord, California, the same town where the computer was stolen earlier this month, said Concord Police Sergeant Steve White. Krastof, who works at Home Depot, confessed to stealing the computer, as well as another computer and a laptop, after breaking into the office of an analyst for Wells Fargo, according to White. Police recovered the equipment at Krastof's home, along with equipment used for scanning identity cards and checks, he said.
  • Damaged undersea cable blamed for UK Net problems - A damaged undersea transatlantic cable is being blamed for causing havoc for Net and phone users in the UK last night. A number of ISPs are understood to have been hit by the problem, which surfaced (the problem, not the cable) yesterday afternoon at around 4pm
  • iPod's 'dirty secret' wins Web fans - Brothers Casey and Van Neistat, who collaborate on video projects using Mac editing software, said they were told by a technical support representative at Apple Computer that the cost to replace the dead battery in an 18-month-old iPod would be $255--comparable to the cost of a new device. Irked at what seemed to be the early obsolescence of the music player, the brothers trekked around New York City stenciling the words "iPod's unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months" on all the iPod posters they could find. Now the Neistats claim that the video they created of their exploits is getting 50,000 hits a day on the Web site Ipodsdirtysecret.com. As of Wednesday afternoon, the site's traffic counter indicated it had seen more than 194,000 visitors.
  • DVD Forum approves portion of new format - An HD DVD format proposed by Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. as the next-generation DVD format was finally approved by the DVD Forum's steering committee during recent meetings in New York. The proposal includes both read-only and rewritable formats, but only the ROM format in its 0.9 version was approved by the committee during meetings last week by a vote of 8-6.  The HD DVD format is a violet laser-based optical disk system with a capacity of 15-20 Gbyte per side using the same disk structure as current DVD disks.
  • "Stuffed" nanotubes could enable high-density storage - Scientists said they hope to use stuffed nanotubes to make nonvolatile memory. The small dimensions could theoretically allow a 1,000-fold increase in storage density compared to semiconductor based DRAM cells, said IFW's Albrecht Leonhard. Another application of these tubes would be as tiny magnets, he added.
  • MobileCore Project - Jacco Bikker announced the initial release of MobileCore, an open source project which aims to ease cross-platform development of games for mobile devices.
  • Sharp Actius AV18P First Look - The AV18P's competitors are few. Best known are the $2,199 Toshiba Portégé M100 and $1,599 Apple PowerBook G4 (12-inch), both with 12-inch displays and integrated optical drives. Sharp beats them on price ($1.449) but is weak on performance and battery life. PCMag test system, which ran only 2 hours 19 minutes, would likely not have played an entire 2-hour video, given the extra power consumed by constant DVD accesses. To get the 4:47 the Portégé M100 gave, you'd have to add a $200 clip-on battery.
  • Daily Gift Guide: Game On! Action Pack, Volume 1 - Aladdin Systems delivers a holiday treat for Mac gaming enthusiasts with the release of Game On! Action Pack, Volume 1. A $150 value, the package comprises six popular games for about $50. It includes Freedom Force, Incoming, SpyHunter, Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force, and Tomb Raider Chronicles.
  • Notebook roundup - ExtremeTech look at a couple of new mobile PCs that think beyond the box, including the first Athlon 64 notebook.
  • Opteron 248 Review - The results of the 32-bit tests show the great potential of the Opterons - except the problem of overheating mentioned above all tests ran very stable. While the Athlon MP tried to catch up to the Intel XEON the Opteron sets a new point of reference unreachable even by the flagship XEON 3.2 GHz with L3 cache. On the other hand the tested XEON 2.8 GHz was a good competitor and a switch from a XEON 2.8 GHz to an Opteron 248 would make no sense at this time.
  • PC4000 HyperX Examined - While RST Pro2 testing the Extended and Base memory we found that after 5 loops on each set of modules that no errors were found! Memtest86 was used and again confirmed these results. No issues with either the Hynix or Samsung IC's used on the Kingston HyperX PC4000 memory were found during stability testing at all.
  • Gainward 5950 Ultra / 1800 XP Golden Sample review - NeoSeeker has posted a review of Gainward 5950 Ultra / 1800 XP Golden Sample.
  • Nu Tech DDW-081 8x DVD+R/RW review - CDRLabs.com have posted a review of a Nu Tech DVD recorder. Nu Tech is a new brand in the optical storage industry. Based on Philips' new "Nexperia" platform, this new drive features 8x DVD+R and 4x DVD+R writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 12x. Needless to say, Nu Tech hasn't stopped there. The DDW-081 also offers 40x CD reading and writing speeds, 10x rewriting speeds and features like Seamless Link buffer underrun protection. Best of all, Nu Tech's new DVD+RW drive comes at a very reasonable price.
  • HP LJ1010 vs Samsung ML-1710 - HardwareZoom has posted a comparison review between the HP LJ1010 against the Samsung ML-1710 laser printer.
  • Professional Mouse Pad comparison  - ZBNUK.com has posted a comparison of a handful of several professional mousing surfaces.
  • Watchguard Firebox SOHO 6tc Wireless - WatchGuard's Firebox SOHO 6 tc Wireless is one of the few available VPN wireless LAN routers. It's priced lower than competing products, but we found it to be a case of you get what you pay for.
  • Redirection Leads to Downloading EXE and Executing -  I mentioned the nasty bug two days ago, but anyway for those who missed it.....A vulnerability in Internet Explorer is found: any attacker that can reach MYCOMPUTER security zone(a.k.a local zone) is able to download his EXE file and execute it. There is a harmless demo. Disable Active Scripting in INTERNET zone!
  • Rdesktop 1.3.0 review - Rdesktop is an open source RDP client for unix which enables linux, sun and other *nix users to connect to a Microsoft server with terminal services enabled. This way the desktop can run a (cheap) opensource OS such as Linux and still have give those users access to windows applications.
  • Setting up an FTP Server in WinXP - PCStats have posted a great guide that explains how to set up a FTP server on WindowsXP (tnx Russell).
  • Tomb Raider Benchmarking Guide - TweakFactor has posted a Tomb Raider Benchmarking Guide.
  • ATI Catalyst Driver Comparison 3.x - The Madshrimps put ATI's latest Catalyst 3.9 up against 5 previous driver revisions, showing you which one performs best.
  • NT4 tools for Windows 2003 - User Manager for Domains is a Windows Server 2003 tool you can use to manage security for Windows NT 4.0 domains, member servers, and workstations. For Windows Server 2003 domains, member servers, and Windows XP Professional computers, use Active Directory and the other Windows Server 2003 administrative tools instead.
  • COMDEX Microsoft Matrix Spoof -GeekNews has posted the clip (direct link) that was shown at after the COMDEX Keynote featuring Bill Gates as Morpheus and Steve Ballmer as Neo.
  • Personal Firewall 4.0.8 - Kerio Personal Firewall (download) represents smart, easy-to-use personal security technology that fully protects personal computers against hackers.
  • Gaim 0.74 - Gaim 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. Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.
  • Download Accelerator Plus 7.0.1.0 - Download Accelerator Plus (download) is a download manager, allows you to download up to 300% faster (according to users and website reviews) with increased reliability, resume support and errors recovery.
  • MyIE2 v0.9.10 - MyIE2 (download) is a multi-tabbed browser based on the IE core (IE5.x or above required). It can open multiple web pages within one browser window, and uses little system resources.
  • Style XP 2.0 Beta - 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. Style XP can manage and rotate themes, visual styles, backgrounds, and logons, which are freely available at ThemeXP.
  • Total Commander 6.01 Beta 2  - The second beta of Total Commnander 6.01 is now available for download. "This is the first time that I offer a beta version to the public, to allow all those who found a bug/problem in Total Commander 6.0 to check whether the bug/problem is gone or not. If you try the beta, I would appreciate your feedback here in the forum!"
 Gameguru Mania News - Nov,25 2003 - tech
Another Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:11 PM CET - Nov,25 2003 - Post a comment / read (7)
  • Scripting flaws pose severe risk for IE users  - A set of five unpatched scripting vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer creates a mechanism for hackers to compromise targeted PCs.  The vulnerabilities, unearthed by Chinese security researcher Liu Die Yu, enable malicious Web sites and viruses to bypass the security zone settings in IE6. Used in combination, the flaws might be exploited to seize control of vulnerable PCs. Proof of Concept exploits have been released by Liu Die Yu to validate his warnings. Microsoft has yet to patch the flaws. But users can protect themselves against the flaws by disabling active scripting or by using an alternative browser.
  • Chip implant gets cash under your skin - Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Fla., is hoping that Americans can be persuaded to implant RFID chips under their skin to identify themselves when going to a cash machine or in place of using a credit card. The surgical procedure, which is performed with local anesthetic, embeds a 12-by-2.1mm RFID tag in the flesh of a human arm.
  • Opera Patches Browser Flaws - Opera has released a new version of its Web browser, which closes two security holes that could allow someone to remotely take control of a computer. The new version, released Friday, also incorporates a patch for the OpenSSL protocol, according to developer Opera Software. Versions 7 to 7.22 of the browser for Windows contain both security flaws: using them to visit a specially crafted Web page could allow someone to remotely take control of a computer. The same versions for Linux contain only one of the flaws, a buffer overflow vulnerability. The company recommends upgrading to Version 7.23, according to a note on its Web site.
  • SecureCRT 4.1 Beta 5 - SecureCRT (download) gives you an encrypted SSH session with both SSH1 and SSH2 servers. SSH security goes far beyond the basic secure logon, rerouting data or local applications using TCP/IP ports through an encrypted channel.
  • SecureFX 2.2 Beta 5 -  SecureFX client application (download) lets you choose between SFTP or FTP over an encrypted SSH2 connection for secure transfers, or standard FTP for non-secure transfers
  • FlashFXP 2.1 Build 924 - FlashFXP is a powerful and popular FTP & FXP Client loaded with features for the power user. It has an intuitive user interface that takes only minutes to master.
  • Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 (7.0.1) Update - An update for the Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 has been issued. The patch fixes crashes.
  • PCMark04 - PCMark 04 (download) is the latest version of the popular PCMark series. PCMark04 is an application-based benchmark and a premium tool for measuring overall PC performance. The first review of PCMark 04 can be found at EliteBastards.
  • Internet Explorer Pre 6.05 Build 0006 - This beta version of Internet Explorer comes from Windows Longhorn build 4051 and works with Windows XP and Server 2003. What's new: Build 6 Navimages fixed added PopUpBlocker v2.0.
  • Official VIA Hyperion (4-in-1) drivers v4.50 - VIA Tech has released an updated set of VIA 4-in-1 set of chipset drivers (download).
  • Logitech MouseWare v9.7.9 - The official Logitech FTP offers a new version 9.7.9 of the Logitech mouse software. As usually, there is no info what's is new or changed in this version.
Tuesday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 12:52 PM CET - Nov,25 2003 - Post a comment
  • House Approves Antispam Bill - Lawmakers are one step closer to enacting the first nationwide antispam law. The House of Representatives on Saturday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would fine spammers who violate restrictions on unsolicited commercial e-mail. You can also check this statement from Microsoft.
  • New IE may burst pop-up bubble - The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant recently indicated that it will add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer (IE) next year, as part of an update for Windows XP. Others have offered similar tools before, but because IE so thoroughly dominates the browser market, ad executives and Internet watchers believe the changes could finally burst the bubble for pop-ups.
  • Intel Touts Making of Next-Generation Test Chips - Intel on Monday said it has built test chips using next-generation 65 nanometer technology and expects to be the first to produce them, in 2005.
  • IBM makes play for online games  - IBM is set to release on Tuesday an early version of software intended to allow game developers to easily build support for business functions into online games. The company's Business Integration for Games (BIG) will provide ready-made tools for handling business tasks such as processing sales transactions and managing pay-to-play tournaments. IBM will release an early version of the software under its AlphaWorks program to encourage companies to experiment with emerging technology.
  • Hydro-Québec in Canada to test internet over power lines - Hydro-Québec is planning to offer high-speed internet service over its power lines to compete with similar services from cable and telephone companies.  The utility already uses signals over its power lines to control stoplights, but now it wants to adapt it to offer internet access. Some experts say such a service could be up to five times faster than high-speed cable internet service.
    Apple Offers IPod Battery Tips -     Some IPod owners have complained that new-generation IPods display inaccurate battery charging data, so Apple Computer has posted a brief technical note to help. "The IPod battery indicator shows, approximately, how much charge is left in the battery," Apple explains. The company's note discusses situations in which the indicator will show there is charge left in the unit, when in fact it is out of power.
  • Voodoo ships first DirectX 9 "Centrino" notebook - The Envy m:460 isn't a true Centrino machine - it simply uses Intel's Pentium M processor, offered at 1.4GHz to 1.7GHz. VoodooPC will provide an Intel Centrino 802.11b wireless card, but it's touting an 802.11g alternative. The company doesn't say which company manufactures the card. The notebook's graphics engine comes from ATI: it's a Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro. The 130nm chip offers full DirectX 9 support and comes with 128MB of G-DDR2-M graphics SDRAM.
  • Mitac launches GPS Pocket PC - The Mio 168 features Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC OS, an 300MHz Intel PXA255 processor, 32MB ROM, 64MB SDRAM and a 3.5-inch, 65,000-color transflective TFT LCD screen. For expansion, it has an SDIO slot. Aimed at car drivers, the Mio 168 includes a map function, providing navigation to places such as gas stations, restaurants and parking lots in Taiwan. With each purchase, the company is also providing a free 32MB MultiMedia Card (MMC) with a US map. Mitac currently does not plan to market the device in the US. “But the map function will be great for Taiwanese business travelers on the road in the US,” said Justine Liu, a PR manager at Mitac. The Mio 168 is priced at NT$12,000 (about US$352).
  • AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Barton review - If you're planning to buy that one last AthlonXP processor, or are upgrading an old Socket A system but don't want to spend a lot of money, make sure you take a close look at the AthlonXP 2500+. You'll no doubt like it's excellent price/performance ratio.
  • MB Round-up - ABIT AI7 Springdale | ABIT KV8 MAX3 K8T800 | DFI NFII Ultra Infinity nForce2 | DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B | ASUS P4S800D-E SiS 655TX | SiS755 Reference Board Preview | Soltek SL-865-GR
  • ATI Radeon 9600 XT VPU - This popularity will only continue for ATI with their brand new Radeon 9600 XT VPU. It offers a remarkable cost to performance ratio against the Radeon 9800 XT, as shown in our benchmarks, and at times is even close to matching its performance when overclocked. Image Quality is up there with the best offering higher AF rates than the competition from nVidia. Retailers in Australia have given us an idea of what retail graphics cards based on the 9600 XT will cost and it is less than half what the Radeon 9800 XT 256MB currently costs. This fact will make the Radeon 9600 XT perfect for people who are on a budget but still want quality gaming performance for current and some upcoming game titles.
  • AIW 9600 Pro review - ATI announced the AIW 9600 Pro in July of this year. At the time, ATI figured that the card would hit retail in August/September. Unfortunately, things didn't exactly go according to plan. Due to the blackout that hit the Northeast and the various problems with the SoBig worm, it was slightly delayed. ATI is now shipping the AIW 9600 to stores and it should be available as you read this review.
  • SilenX 400 Watt Power Supply Unit review - When most of us Overclockers think 'power' we think 3 things - Higher, Faster, Louder. Well, this PSU is about to change the face of what we're looking for. Rated at 14 dBa or LESS, this PSU is the quietest one on the market, bar none. At 14 decibels, its not a matter of how much you need to ramp it down to hear it - its a matter of checking to see if its still on! But can something so quiet be efficient and useful?
  • Thermaltake PurePower 480 Butterfly PSU - When it comes to choosing a power supply the goal must always be quality power output first, then anything else you want to look for second. With the 480 watt Butterfly we see an extraordinarily stable output of power along all power rails, so we have met the primary requirement.
  • Logitech Z-5300 speaker system review - If you are looking for an affordable set of surround speakers for your game system or computer consider this one. The list price is $200 but we looked around and saw it for as little as $120 with an average price of $140.
  • Rio Karma 20 GB review - The 20 GB Karma has a current street price of around $280 compared to the 20GB I-pod which has a current street price of around $388. Instead of spending the majority of this review comparing the Karma to the I-pod, here is a list of advantages/disadvantages of the Karma.
  • Inkjet Printer Round-up - The new Canon printer has a raft of extra modules making it a bit like a tank, the HP has an LCD screen and integrated photo retouching, and the Epson has gone for cost-effectiveness with new ink and a model at half the price of the others. So which of them is right?
  • AMD Athlon 64 Performance Computing - The heat is on! - TweakTown has collected high-end performance parts from AMD, ABIT, ATI, GeCube, Mushkin, Maxtor and Thermaltake and built the fastest possible Athlon 64 desktop computer around. The heat is on - become part of the action and read about what this high-powered system is capable of!
  • Has AMD Castrated Overclocking?  -  If you're an overclocking freak, yes. With its latest release of the 64bit processors, mainly the Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64 FX, AMD is not allowing much room to the 'push for more' world. It's quite sad for a lot of us who enjoy looking for our CPUs upper limits--hitting them feels so darn cool, ya know.
  • Windows tweaking download guide 2.0 - There is an updated version of XP-Tweaking Guide, now called XP tweaking Experience 2.0. The Tweaking Experience for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 and Windows 2003 Server brings together all Tweaks for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 and Windows 2003 Server such as Internet, Miscellaneous, System Performance, Windows 2003 Server and User Interface related Tweaks into a single, easy-to-use, centralized help file.
  • WinAmp Plug-In File Writer 1.20 - At this moment it will let you specify a directory to write files in, it will let you choose between the raw, ape, mp3, ogg and wave file formats and it supports three different modes for creating a filename, just title simply uses the title as a filename, expanded title uses the title but expands some variables just like with the title option of my LineIn plugin (see the Option reference of my LineIn plugin), the expandable string option enables you to specify an expandable string which is used to create the filename (usefull with a setting like: %ut - on %dl), you have to use at least %ut (unexpanded title), %et (expanded title) or %p# with that option, %p# expands to the playlist position (padded with zeroes upto # digits).
  • WinRAR 3.30 Beta 2 - This new beta fixed a bug in beta 1 ISO format support, Now WinRAR "Rename" command does not allow to enter an empty string as a new file name, "Scan archive for viruses" command is able to recognize more antivirus scanners and "Generate report" command includes the report creation date to title of HTML reports.
  • HyperSnap-DX v5.40.05 (SHW) - HyperSnap-DX brings you professional quality, convenient Windows screen captures. It was designed for ease of use, with powerful and useful features - including capture from DirectX and 3dfx Glide games, and some DVD/Video players.
  • XMark 7.0 Service Pack 1  - Dacris Software has released the first service pack for XMark 7.0, the distributed system benchmarking and optimization suite.
  • ObjectDock 1.0  - ObjectDock is a freeware program that combines program launching and task management into a single "dock" that does it with style. ObjectDock allows for dock items to react in many different ways to mouse overs and supports "Docklets" which can add new functionality to the dock.
  • Media Player Classic 6.4.6.9 - This new version fixes the broken AVI opener and reindexer, the roq decoders have been enabled and there's a new built-in ogg splitter. (thanks Doom9.org)
  • nVidia nForce 3.22/3.26 Remix driverset - It uses the 3.75 beta sound drivers that has fixed some peoples sound issues. While still giving you the best sounding driver and gaming performance that you like to have. This nForce driver package contains the below components: International Version No display, Audio driver 3.75 (WHQL), Audio utilities 3.75, Ethernet driver 3.39 (WHQL), GART driver 3.43 (WHQL), SMBus driver 3.43 (WHQL), USB 2.01, Installer 3.65.
  • Matrox Parhelia Drivers 1.05.01.008  - Matrox has issued a driver update for its Parhelia, P750, and P650 graphics cards, fixing a nagging bug that impeded performance in SPEC's viewperf workstation graphics benchmark.
 Gameguru Mania News - Nov,23 2003 - tech
Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:18 PM CET - Nov,23 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • "Modern Day Gamer 2" film released - The main purpose of this documentary is to ask whether we will ever see gaming become a mainstream spectator sport. The film (157MB mirror1 ~ mirrro2) features the Four Kings Wolfenstein squad as they compete at Quakecon 2003. They follow the team as they progress through the event & talk exclusively with them about tactics before their games. Featuring interviews with: John Romero, Sujoy Roy (iGamesUK), Paul 'Locki' Wedgwood (Splash Damage), David Mitchell (Intel UK), Toby Aldridge (4K^Zommy) & many other 4K players. For more info on the film check out this interview on PQ3.
  • DVD Jon unlocks iTunes' locked music (updated) - Jon Lech Johansen, better known as DVD Jon for his authorship of the DeCSS decryption software, has turned his attention to Apple's locked music format. While he hasn't decrypted the DRM which Apple uses, he has produced a simple Windows command line utility which will install a DLL which dumps the output of a QuickTime stream to a file. The short C program is called "QuickTime for Windows AAC memory dumper". An application called MyTunes already performs much the same function, but Johansen's is open source.
  • War driving kiddie porn downloader busted using other peoples wireless networks - Toronto police have charged a man with theft of telecommunications in a bizarre case that involves downloading child pornography from a laptop in a moving car and using other people's computer networks to obtain the images.
  • Michigan Wi-Fi hackers 'try to steal credit card details'  - Federal officials this week accused a third Michigan man of conspiring to steal credit card numbers from the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores by taking advantage of an unsecured wi-fi network at store in suburban Detroit. The new defendant, Brian Salcedo, 20, was named by the original suspects, Paul Timmins, 22, and Adam Botbyl, 20, in an FBI interview following their arrest, according to a government affidavit filed in the case.
  • RIAA smells victory Case transfer would aid music industry - A federal judge in San Francisco said Friday she is leaning toward a ruling that would give the recording industry a key victory in its quest to seek out and sue individuals who allegedly are illegally sharing music on the Internet.
  • Electronic Nose May Replicate Dog's Sniffing Skill - A new device called a "dog on a chip" may combine the benefits of technology and nature by not only detecting dangerous or illicit substances but by providing the electronic equivalent of a dog barking, researchers said on Friday. The device is more accurate and faster than other electronic sensors and drug-sniffing dogs, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology said. The dog-on-a-chip works with antibodies by looking at their molecular structure, Hunt said. In this case the researchers tested cocaine antibodies, which change in structure and mass if they come into contact with cocaine molecules.
  • Young scientists put SA on innovation map  - This year's Expo for Young Scientists, for which Intel is one of the major sponsors, proved that innovation is alive and well and living in the minds of young South Africans. Held in October at the University of Pretoria Sports Complex, the expo showcased the abilities of local learners in the fields of science, engineering and information technology. The winning projects included a unique Multi-Pixelled Disk (MPD) capable of storing up to 64 times the amount of data that a DVD can hold at present and an innovative computer-controlled robotic soccer player called Robosoccer.
  • SIS755 Chipset Preview - SIS’s dual chip solution consists of their brand new 755 north bridge that connects to the existing 964 south bridge that made its debut a couple of months ago. The 755 communicates with the A64 via a 16bit HT link that operates at 800 MHz like VIA’s K8T800. Compared to the nForce 3’s 16 bit down/8 bit upstream 600 MHz link, SIS is at an advantage. Since the memory controller is embedded into the processor, the 755 only contains the AGP interface. Like every other chipset available on the market, the 755 is AGP 3.0 compliant which provides support for AGP4x/8x cards.
  • Creative Zen NX: Let There Be Music!  - THG conclusion is that the Creative Labs Zen NX is the best-designed portable player around. Its perfectly acceptable size, gigantic storage capacity, good looks, good ergonomics and, above all, outstanding quality playback make this the best device of its kind on the market.
  • New Alpine MP3/WMA Hard Disk Drive Player For The Car - Alpine Electronics' new in-dash HDA-5460 player with a 16GB removable hard disk drive enables people to take upwards of 3,000 of their favorite MP3/WMA/.WAV music files on the road with them. The Alpine HDA-5460, available nationwide at Alpine authorized dealers in early December (target retail price $1,000), is the quintessential holiday gift for any MP3/WMA music enthusiast.
  • Crucial Gizmo! 256MB Portable Storage  -  It handles file transfers with speed and efficiency and has the added benefit of securing sensitive and confidential information. Its small size makes it easy to tote from PC to PC and even from home to work. The included dust cap and hard plastic case make it unlikely that a drop or throwing the unit in your junk drawer will cause any stability problems.
  • Plextor PX-708A DVD+R/+RW Recorder Goes 8X - Plextor offers a product of excellent quality with the fastest DVD+R write speed to be found at the moment. Its speeds are also the best in DVD+RW, DVD-R and DVD-RW modes. And the CD mode ranks the PX-708A as one of the best...CD recorders! It also has a lead for speed in the + format which will only be reached by the - format in 2004.  Like any exclusive new product, the PX-708A is sold at a high-end price, of $249 (270 euros to 290 euros) depending on the version. Exclusivity will always cost you.
  • 3D Prophet 9800 Pro 128MB review - OnlyNewZ has posted a review of 3D Prophet 9800 Pro 128MB video card.
  • Mad Dog Multimedia Entertainer 7.1 DSP Soundcard - VIA´s Envy24HT-S chip is powering some new soundcards out there, MadShrimps take a look at its features and see how it performs when put it up against a Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1 / SoundBlaster Live 5.1 and nVidia's Soundstorm
  • Build your own Windows PE (WinPE) Boot-CD - Bart's PE Builder helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
  • Overclocking Your P4 800FSB - Dev Hardware has published a Pentium 4 overclocking guide. "With the 2.4C's and 865PE/875P boards, it's almost like a return to the days of the Celeron 300A and 440BX mobo's. Fifty percent overclocks are not exactly commonplace, but with the right hardware combinations, it's definitely achievable. So, without further ado, lets get this party started."
  • Video BIOS Shadowing and Caching - Adrian's Rojak Pot let us know he has posted a major update of the Video BIOS Cacheable and Video BIOS Shadowing BIOS options.
  • HighMAT Extension for WinXP CD-Writing Wizard - The HighMAT Extension for Windows XP CD-Writing Wizard can be used on a computer running the Microsoft® Windows XP operating system to create a HighMAT CD that contains mixed media content (such as audio, video and image files).
  • Nero CD-DVD Speed 1.11 - Nero CD-DVD Speed is a benchmark which can test the most important features of an optical drive. Tests include: Transfer rate, Seek times, CPU usage, Burst rate, DAE quality & Spinup/spindown time. CD Speed also has a function to check the CD media quality.
  • The Cleaner 4.0 Professional - MooSoft Development LLC has released the latest version of the award winning anti-trojan/worm/spyware product. The Cleaner 4.0 Professional adds many new features such as a stealth mode to defeat firewall/av killers, a quarantine system, a scheduler and a totally redesigned GUI.
  • Foobar 0.7.4 - Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint and native support for several popular audio formats
 Gameguru Mania News - Nov,22 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 03:39 AM CET - Nov,22 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Feds' Cybercrime Crackdown Yields 125 Arrests -  A crackdown on Internet fraud schemes dubbed Operation Cyber Sweep has netted 125 arrests or convictions and more than 70 indictments, federal law-enforcement officials say. The operation began Oct. 1 and involved more than 125,000 victims with losses estimated to exceed $100 million. Department of Justice officials said Thursday that more than 90 search-and-seizure warrants were conducted.
  • Is Russia a Haven for Software Pirates? - Russia's reputation as a haven for software pirates is being reinforced by allegations that a code thief has been illegally distributing a program called RaceCAD that is actually a product of Texas-based software company Alibre.
    Alibre alleges that the individual responsible is a former employee who stole the source code for Alibre Design after being terminated. Alibre has contacted ISPs in Russia who are hosting a site that offers RaceCAD and requested they stop. The site remains up but a link to download the software is no longer working.
  • Man Arrested Over "Spam Rage" - A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture, kill and send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with spam promising to enlarge his penis.
  • Customer Data Was on Stolen PC, Wells Fargo Says - Wells Fargo & Co. said on Friday it had offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the burglar who stole a bank consultant's computer that had sensitive customer information on it.
    The computer was one of several stolen earlier this month from the office of an analyst for the bank in Concord, California, the bank said. The stolen PC contained names, addresses, bank account numbers and social security numbers for customers who had taken out personal lines of credit that are used for consumer loans and overdraft protection, according to Wells Fargo. No passwords or personal identification numbers were among the stolen data and no other Wells Fargo customers were affected, the bank said.
  • Off-topic: Nano-transistor self-assembles using biology  - A functional electronic nano-device has been manufactured using biological self-assembly for the first time. Israeli scientists harnessed the construction capabilities of DNA and the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes to create the self-assembling nano-transistor. The work has been greeted as "outstanding" and "spectacular" by nanotechnology experts.
  • Off-topic: US begins hypersonic weapons program - The US military has begun development of an ultra-high speed weapons system that would enable targets virtually anywhere on Earth to be hit within two hours of launch from the continental US. Ten companies have been given grants by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon for six-month "system definition" studies. If the Pentagon likes the results, a three-year design and development phase will begin. The ultimate aim, slated for around 2025, is a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) that can take off from a conventional runway in the US and strike targets up to 16,700 kilometres (10,350 miles) away.
  • Off-topic: Walking robot carries a person - The first walking robot capable of carrying a human was unveiled on Friday in Tokyo, Japan. WL-16 uses 12 actuators to move forwards, backwards and sideways while carrying an adult weighing up to 60 kilograms (130 pounds). The robot can adjust its posture and walk smoothly even if the person it is carrying shifts in the chair. At present it can only step up or down a few millimeters, but the team plans to make it capable of dealing with a normal flight of stairs.
  • Comdex 2004 Coverage -  PCWorld | ZDNet | OverclockersClub | Bink.nu | Bill Gates: on web services, Linux, security and more...
  • Intel sets the bar at 4GHz - The chipmaker, which discussed its plans in a wide-ranging meeting with financial analysts on Thursday, said it aims to boost the performance of a broad range of its products next year, including cranking up its desktop PC processors. "Our goal is to hit 4GHz in 2004," Intel President Paul Otellini said during a meeting that was Webcast.
  • Samsung Unveils LCDs, Printers - The 17-inch SyncMaster 172X LCD has a response time of 12 milliseconds, according to Samsung representatives, who target it for multimedia applications. Many gamers continue to eschew LCDs in favor of CRTs for their speed. The 172X is scheduled to ship in January with an estimated street price of $649. The top and bottom bezels are a half-inch wide; the sides are 0.4 inches thick.
  • AMD delays 90-nm process ramp by one quarter - Amid a new and bold plan to build a 300-mm wafer fab, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. disclosed that it has delayed the volume deployment of its 90-nm process technology by two to three months. AMD originally hoped to ramp up its 90-nm process in the first half of 2004, with volume production due in the latter part of the second quarter of next year, said Hector Ruiz, AMD's president and CEO. The company now plans to move into volume production in the second half of 2004, Ruiz said. Specifically, the AMD executive indicated that 90-nm chip production would take place in the third quarter of 2004, he said.
  • Tablet PC Claims Nine-Hour Battery - The $2599 Tablet PC weighs 3.1 pounds and has a 12.1-inch display; it's only 0.75 inches thick without its detachable keyboard. The SC 2000 runs on a 1.2 Intel Pentium M ULV Centrino processor and has 512MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. It also has 10/100 megabits per second Ethernet on board and comes with a 56-kilobits-per-second modem. The screen offers 1024 by 768 resolution.
  • Windows XP Service Pack 2 Nears Beta  - Windows XP Service Pack 2, a major update of the most current version of the desktop operating system, will enter beta testing in the next few weeks, according to E-mail from Microsoft posted on a Windows enthusiast Web site. Neowin, which frequently posts copies of E-mails from Microsoft's beta team on its site, displayed a copy of a message to beta testers alerting them that Service Pack 2, which Microsoft has said would release sometime during the first half of 2004, will be "available in a few weeks."
  • Fresh UI 6.65 -  Fresh UI (download) is the fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of useful hidden settings, this software covers the customizing and optimizing technique that you'll be glad to know: Customizing Windows User Interface, Optimizing system settings, Optimizing hardware settings, Customizing Windows application settings, and Control user environment with policies.
  • MSN Messenger 6.1.0203 - MSN Messenger 6.1 (Win9x/ME ~ WinXP/2k) has been silently updated, although nothing has changed visually.
  • HyperSnap-DX 5.40.04 (SHW) - HyperSnap-DX (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, 3dfx, Voodoo and Glide mode games.
  • Adobe Acrobat 6.0.1 Patch - A new patch for retail version of Adobe Acrobat is out.
  • Opera 7.23  - Opera (Win32 with Java ~ Win32 w/o Java | Linux) browser is significantly faster on computers with lower modem speeds and weaker system resources.
  • SoundStorm Audio Driver 3.75 (non-WHQL) - A new set of Soundstorm Audio Drivers and Control Panel version 3.75 (Abit AN7 release) is availlable for download.
 Gameguru Mania News - Nov,20 2003 - tech
Thursday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:17 PM CET - Nov,20 2003 - Post a comment
  • GGMania RSS Headlines - GGMania now has an experimental XML RSS 1.0 feed. Please test it out and see if it works. This allows you to grab a headlines of the news on the front page. If you have a news aggregator program, you can process the news file in the same way you would from other sites offering similar feeds.
  • Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers - The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that the FBI is not legally entitled to remotely activate the system and secretly use it to snoop on passengers, because doing so would render it inoperable during an emergency. In a split 2-1 rulingthe majority wrote that "the company could not assist the FBI without disabling the system in the monitored car" and said a district judge was wrong to have granted the FBI its request for surreptitious monitoring.
  • New Round of DMCA Letters - Users of Bit Torrent and E-Donkey get a visit from the DMCA fairy via Comcast headquarters. As Kazaa became the primary focus of the RIAA's pirate-hunt, many users fled to alternate networks like E-donkey or began using Bit-Torrent (see past article on Bit Torrent) in the belief they might be able to avoid the piracy police. According to this thread in our Comcast forum, that isn't the case. The E-donkey crackdown isn't surprising, since it's a mainstream p2p application, but the Bit Torrent film crackdown has even more traders fleeing to newsgroups and IRC.
  • Encrypted cell phone foils eavesdroppers - CryptoPhone, a unit of privately held GSMK, said a European model of its encrypted GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone is available immediately for $2,270 (1,900 euros), and a U.S. configuration will ship by the end of the year. Two CryptoPhones are necessary to have a secure conversation.
  • Tape Drive Alternatives Unveiled - Three companies at Comdex are challenging the viability of tape backup, offering alternatives that tackle the same task. Iomega's solution is a drive and high-capacity removable disks. Fastora is hyping a one-drive NAS device, while Nexsan's answer is a two-unit storage array. Iomega and Nexsan both claim their storage products are cheaper than tape alternatives and their message seems to be the same: the tape drive's days are numbered.
  • Dream Screens  - PCMag has rounded up five plasma and five LCD screens ranging from 30 to 43 inches diagonally, with prices ranging from about $3,000 to $9,000. Most are at the low end of that range. These displays are still much more expensive than standard CRT television sets, which is why market research firm iSupply/Stanford Resources projects that CRTs will maintain an 80 percent market share worldwide in 2007. But for TVs 30 inches and larger, the CRT share will drop to 51 percent, and other designs will take over. Plasma will account for 13 percent of the 2007 market, and LCD a whopping 23 percent, iSupply predicts
  • Intel to cut P4 chipset prices on December 28 - Intel, preparing for its upcoming Grantsdale line, will cut 865 series chipset pricing by as much as 6.3% on December 28. According to Intel's roadmap, it will launch Grantsdale P and Grantsdale G chipsets supporting the new-generation Socket T (LGA775) Prescott processor in the second quarter of 2004. Since the entry-level Grantsdale GV and Grantsdale GL will not be introduced until the third quarter of next year, Intel has decided to keep the prices of the 845 series flat, with the exception of the 845GE chipset.
  • Comdex Fall 2003 Coverage - Day 1 / Day 2 / Day 3 @ THG.
  • AMD's Athlon64 FX-51 Processor review - Nevertheless, AMD still has a beast of a processor here which will satisfy any gamer. Hopefully we'll see AMD announce some more models for this family to make this CPU line a bit more attractive. If AMD would release a 1.8 or 1.6 GHz Athlon64 FX-51 models, it would make the platform much more viable. As of now, AMD's Athlon64 FX-51 is nearly twice as expensive as today's Pentium 4 3.2 GHz, as Intel has been rapidly slashing prices on their high-end models to make way for their upcoming P4EE models.
  • Motherboards round-up - Athlon 64 Motherboard Showdown | ASUS K8V Deluxe (Wireless Edition) on VIA K8T800 | Albatron & FIC K8T800 Boards | Shuttle's XPC SB75G2 small form factor system | VIA PT880 Chipset review
  • Ten ATX Power Supplies Compared  - Ten ATX power supplies were evaluated on features and performance ranging in size from 400 watts to 550 watts. Each PSU was tested under controlled load conditions (~300 watt combined load). All ten power supplies survived the rigors of testing – not one gave up its smoke!
  • Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256-MB review - The Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256-MB utilizes the same 412 MHz core and 730 MHz DDR memory clock speeds, which is the main reason for ATI upgrading the cooling hardware. The heatsink is copper and the main unit creates a maze of ducts for airflow to not only cool the GPU but the DDR memory as well. As with the ATI card, the Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256-MB is a heavy piece of hardware and almost on-par with the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra boards.
  • PowerColor RADEON 9800 XT ( XR98T-D3) 256MB DDR review - It's darn tough, when you get right down to it. The Power Color Radeon 9800 XT isn't a breed apart from other 9800 XT cards. It is in fact the twin of the Sapphire, with a little nicer makeup. That might make a difference in dating, but doesn't really help all that much when it comes to laying out 500 smackers for a top performing card.
  • Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB Video Card review - As to the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, this is just a reference solution: it wins and loses right the same way. In the shader tests the NVIDIA card mostly loses the battle. The price will be a determining factor! If it's $70-80 cheaper than the top RADEON 9800 XT, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra can be a success (but remember that the cooler is pretty bulky and not that quiet).  Another review can be found at Overclockers New Zealand.
  • ATI Radeon 9800 Pro review - ViperLair take look at the performance of the Catalyst 3.6, 3.7 and Omega 3.6 build, for comparison numbers against the FX5900.
  • GeXcube Radeon 9600Pro 128mb EXTREME review - The GeXcube Radeon 9600Pro EXTREME is your typical ATI 9600Pro reference card with a twist. Unlike most 9600Pro who uses 3.3ns or even 2.8ns memory chips, this unique 9600Pro version uses 2.5ns chips. Thus, the EXTREME monicker. Aside from that, there is no other difference.
  • Ultra320 Hard Drives With 15,000 RPM  - In comparing such high-class hard drives, it's practically impossible to recommend one particular model for all possible uses. In addition, apart from the raised requirement of cooling - which cannot in any case be got around in professional use - none of the models revealed failings.
  • 160GB External Drive - The drive that Seagate uses it its 80GB-per-platter drive that packs two platters for a 160GB total storage - it's the same unit we've reviewed in an Serial ATA formfactor. This means you have the same 8MB cache and 7200rpm spindle rate that looks good on paper, but more importantly, since each platter has such a high density, the transfer rates are really good.
  • Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus & TX4 SATA Controllers Video Review - The Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus & TX4 SATA Controllers offer excellent performance at a very reasonable price. These controllers are capable of RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD and support most Operating Systems. The TX2plus model only has two SATA connections but the TX4 has four SATA connections which will satisfy even the most demanding storage needs.
  • The Plextor PX-708UF DVD+R/RW Drive review - Overall, the Plextor PX-708UF is a great looking drive. The drive is a little large, but not so large that it feels like a hulking mass on our desk. The added base unit also helps to minimize the amount of valuable desktop space being used. The only thing left to do is put the drive through a few tests to help get an idea of what to expect in everyday performance.
  • Ximeta Netdisk (80 GB) review  - The Ximeta Netdisk is the first device to offer connectivity to your computer via USB 2.0, as well as connectivity to an entire network via an Ethernet connection. The NetDisk is currently the only offering from this corporate youngster, which describes itself as "a data storage solution company focusing on the growing trend toward networked information storage, in which storage systems are linked on a network via Ethernet."
  • MPIO 1.5GB USB Storage Drive  - These tiny devices fit in your pocket and offer capacities ranging from a nearly-useless 16MB to a covetable 1GB. Unfortunately, that 1GB storage drive would set you back around $260.
  • Auravision (EluminX) Laser Mouse review - The Laser Mouse looks just as great in dim lighting. The deep blue sapphire glow from the scroll wheel is very similar to that of the EluminX keyboard and compliments it quite nicely. The semi-transparent bottom allows the red optical lighting to shine through the rear and the blue glow from the wheel through the sides. Looks very nice.  It's smooth and silent. Very similar feel to most Logitech mice.
  • Philips Key Ring 003 MP3 Player review - DesignTechnica has posted a review of Philips Key Ring 003 MP3 player.
  • Alcoholer 4.1 final - New version is out. Also this is last version of Alcoholer (download). This new version adds MDS/BWA Editor, DaemonScript, fixes problem with TwinCreator and maybe some bug fixes too.
  • DivX 5.11 - DivX Networks has released a new version of DivX, bringing the latest version number to 5.1.1. This version introduces some new features, bugfixes and improvements.
  • WinAmp 5 RC8 - Nullsoft Winamp (download RC) is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. Winamp supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI, etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV), custom appearances called skins (supporting both classic Winamp 1.x/2.x skins and Winamp 3 freeform skins), audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins, blah blah.. :)
  • Call of Duty: system hangs or VPU recover error messages playing game  - patch - This issue affects the following configurations: RADEON 9500/9600/9700/9800 Series, CATALYST 3.8 and later drivers. Some users have reported that after the game is launched, the system may hang or produce a VPU recover error. Download patch directly from ATI.
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