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Social networking technology is a great tool. But, like most powerful tools, it can be misused. If you value your relationships, remember that the true strength of most relationships is determined by the content of the relationship and the effort invested by both parties, rather than the mechanism that established the relationship in the first place.

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The results of the study are striking. As the women were stimulated, activity rose in one sensory part of the brain, called the primary somatosensory cortex, but fell in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas involved in alertness and anxiety. During orgasm, activity fell in many more areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, compared with the resting state, Holstege told a meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development in Copenhagen on Monday.

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So astronauts could inadvertently bring the life back to Earth, with potentially dangerous consequences. "The possibility of transporting a replicating life form to Earth, where it is found to have a negative effect on some aspect of Earth's ecosystem" would present the greatest biological risk, the team wrote.

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Work by several groups has shown that a tiny proportion of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) spontaneously develop into primordial germ cells when allowed to differentiate in a dish. In this latest study, Behrouz Aflatoonian and colleagues at the University of Sheffield, produced primordial germ cells which began to express the proteins characteristic of sperm cells, while others resembled eggs.

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The submarine-launched rocket, carrying the solar sail is targeted for liftoff on June 21 at 3:46 p.m. EDT. The Volna rocket being tapped to toss Cosmos 1 into a roughly 500 mile (800 kilometer) circular, near polar orbit is a converted ballistic missile of the type once armed and aimed at the United States. Cosmos 1’s flight is viewed as a stepping stone in developing future solar sail technologies. Solar sailing has been a long sought technology that could lead to future interstellar flight.

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The bridged card opens up the X800 XL for a well-established market that covers a plethora of chipsets, and the Rialto bridge doesn't appear to hurt performance at all. GeCube's eschewed the reference design by using an in-house cooling system, although it's not as elegant as the company's Uni-Wise implementation. Going with a custom cooler has added extra noise over and above the reference card's, so GeCube loses a few marks here. The card, too, is a larger-than-normal affair, making installation into small form-factor PCs needlessly difficult. The saving grace, as far as design is concerned, is the inclusion of ATI's no-frills Rage Theater ASIC, giving rise to basic VIVO functionality. The bundle makes a point of reiterating the card's HDTV and VIVO compatibility, but, other than that, it's strictly average.

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Economical videocards of today allow users to experience all the same DirectX 9 eye candy that higher end models offer. This is quite a change from the past when both ATi and nVIDIA removed important features out of their low-end graphics processors in an attempt to cut costs. Times have changed for the better, and hopefully this will bring the world of full-fledged PC gaming to more consumers.

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Today I am reviewing the latest offering from AMD, the Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 4200+. This is one of the first dual core CPUs being offered to the home market. Dual Core CPUs will become the future of computing, what is dual core, and how does it improve the performance of the CPU you ask? Well read on to find out.

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It is clear that the FX doesn't quite have the same luster with the X2 on the scene. AMD is quick to say that gaming performance is best on the FX still, but clearly from our marks the FX57 will not have a significant edge over at least the 4800+, and likely will not overclock much further if at all. The advantage of the dual core remains the ability to raise the clock multiplier. While we still yearn for the days of the K6-2 when we started the site almost seven years ago when a simple jumper change would change the multiplier it seems unlikely that due to remarking, and perhaps somewhat due to overclocking AMD will not unlock mid range or lower CPUs.

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This time around Mushkin has secured a number of Winbond based UTT IC's that have been packaged and put on some Brain Power 815 PCB's. The end result was not only a new part number, but a whole new memory series called Mushkin Redline XP (Extreme Performance). Today, we take a look at their XP4000 2-2-2 Redline memory and see if it is all that Mushkin says it to be...

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Corsair XMS ram in general should be on your very short list for any enthusiast application. After working with this XPERT RAM in particular it's hard to want to use anything else. Corsair once again delivers some of the highest quality sticks of RAM in the industry.

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If you want to get to 600DDR speeds with tight timings, TCCD chips are your only choice. If you want some of the best-implemented TCCD sticks made (and soon to be the only ones made), then Corsair is the deal. What surprised me most was how high the memory would go without any tweaking at all. Talk about plug and play overclocking! I have owned many sticks of Corsair over the years and have never had even one issue at all with any of them not exceeding my expectations in quality, reliability and sheer speed when overclocked. The TWINX1024-4400C25PT once again lives up to Corsair’s high reputation.

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With the introduction of the Xpert modules Corsair has yet again captured the wallets of enthusiasts everywhere. By utilizing their X-treme Low Latency memory chips with the addition of the Xpert module they have melded performance and looks together.....

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I think it's safe to say that ATi actually has a leg up on the competition when it comes to graphics integration. Intel and VIA have been producing decent performing budget chipsets but the two company's integrated graphics options are still lousy on the 3D front. ATi traditionally has excellent 2D/3D image quality and as we've seen so far, it's integrated Radeon IGP is a solid performer good enough for the casual gamer.

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ECS has impressed us, and we have to say this is the top board from them we have ever tested. It is not yet at the top end, but it is a marked improvement. The low cost is certainly in their favor, and we hope they provide good BIOS support for upgrading CPUs down the road like Asus does. We are a bit disappointed at their not being a bit more to work with for overclocking settings particularly with the extra board cooling, but hopefully in the future that will be updated.

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The Soltek SL-N4Pro-939 is a solid choice for the Athlon 939 architecture. The combination of an attractive color scheme and solid performance make this a dependable core for any Athlon 64 system. Experts will find the BIOS options a bit limited for tweaking but novice overclockers will find the SL-N4Pro-939 gives just enough room to play with out getting into dangerous territory. Much like the K8TPro this latest offering from Soltek is a solid performer loaded with the most common options. I look forward to seeing the RedStorm 2 bring this motherboard to the next level when it is released.

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The demo was part of an extraordinary two days in which outsiders were invited into the heart of the Windows empire for the express purpose of exploiting flaws in Microsoft computing systems. The event, which Microsoft has not publicized, was dubbed "Blue Hat"--a reference to the widely known "Black Hat" security conference, tweaked to reflect Microsoft's corporate color.

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Supporters of rolling back the library and bookstore provision said that the law gives the FBI too much leeway to go on fishing expeditions based on what people read. Innocent people could get tagged as potential terrorists based on what they check out from a library, critics said.

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The reasons are not entirely clear. Friends and confidantes might help with coping in times of stress and difficulty, the team suggests. They might also encourage healthy behaviours, such as seeking help for new medical symptoms. "And friends are perhaps less likely to be a source of negative stress, which, for some older people, their children can be," says Lynne Giles of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who led the work.

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The prototype consists of a hand-held video camera connected to a wearable computer, but later versions may link the camera to a head-up display within an astronaut's visor, says Patrick McGuire, who is leading the Spanish and German project at the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain.The prototype flags up anything a geologist might find interesting, based on its unusual or distinctive appearance, McGuire says. Later versions may feed image data to a geological "expert system" program designed to analyse images in a similar way to a human geologist.

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"With Napster we are uniquely positioned to deliver the easy to use, complete suite of music offerings our customers are asking for," said Ericsson Chief Executive Officer Carl-Henric Svanberg, calling Napster "the strongest digital music brand in the world."

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In particular, the company is focused on improving its alternatives to the so-called LAMP stack, the combination of the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, MySQL database, and scripting languages PHP, Perl or Python. Microsoft's anti-LAMP strategy is to heap features into its low-end products and to build a comprehensive set of tools--spanning development to management--in the hopes of making Windows Server more attractive.

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Researchers combed through the seven years of virus-laden messages stored in Panda's malware database to determine which celebrities most often had their names involuntarily used in association with malicious spam. Rounding out the top five in Panda's "celebrity virus ranking," were Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, and Osama Bin Laden.

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Windows XP use surged to 38 percent by the first quarter of this year, up from 6.6 percent in the third quarter of 2003. However, the popularity of Windows 2000 has remained high, with the venerable operating system still in use in 48 percent of business PCs during the first quarter of 2005, down just four percentage points from the third quarter of 2003.

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Mission managers in Darmstadt, Germany, deployed the 20-metre-long boom on 14 June at 1130 GMT. After a series of manoeuvres designed to warm the boom evenly in sunshine, the spacecraft reoriented itself towards Earth about two hours later and began beaming data to mission control.

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On June 9, Opportunity hit 490 sols and Spirit attained 510 sols since their independent landings in January 2004. Reaching 1,000 sols “is a remarkable accomplishment,” said Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He tipped his hat to friends, colleagues and comrades, engineer and scientist alike, on the MER uplink team.

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OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, is pleased to announce the release of the extremely gamer-friendly OCZ PC-3500 Gold GX series, an aggressively priced, low latency line.

These high-speed modules run at DDR433 with the gaming-essential timings of CL 2-2-2-5! The enhanced latency of PC-3500 Gold GX allows it to thrive in even the intense gaming environments of Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and World of Warcraft, and will help eliminate frustrating frame lag or system crashes due to incompatibility.

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The PolarFLO TT Universal Chipset water block is the first of a new limited production CLEAR ACRYLIC line of liquid heat sinks. We have incorporated the design of the TT Series into this new line. They use the same high performance copper bases and the same Posi-Seal barbs and plugs.

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Available from VIA Gamers Arena, the latest custom DOOM 3 map offers an ideal multiplayer environment for benchmarking high-end gaming systems, while a multiplayer demo allows for simple yet effective performance testing

Taipei, Taiwan, 10 June 2005 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today released viavga_d3_bench, a compact DOOM 3 multiplayer map crammed with heavy geometric detail and striking lighting effects designed to test PC system performance to the full.

Built from the ground up to push today’s high-end systems into breaking a sweat, the map was developed by renowned mapper Josh ‘b0rg’ Holmes, the editor of VIA’s official games website VIA Gamers Arena, to offer a glimpse at what to expect from tomorrow’s games using DOOM 3 technology, the world’s most technically advanced PC gaming engine. The multiplayer demo recorded for benchmark testing is approximately twice as demanding as the default single player demo packaged with DOOM 3. The map is suitable for 2-4 player deathmatch games and demands an impressive system to run smoothly, such as one based on the latest VIA K8 or PT series core logic chipsets.

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The figure marks an increase of over 500,000 subscribers since mid-March, when World of Warcraft was already the most popular MMORPG in North America, Europe, Korea, and Oceania. China likely contributed many of those subscribers, as anticipation for WoW was extremely high in the country. That enthusiasm hasn't diminished now that the game has been released. According to Blizzard, the beta test of the Chinese WoW localization saw 500,000 players online concurrently--roughly the same peak-number figures for North America, Europe, and Oceania combined.

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Under the agreement, Universal Pictures receives domestic rights to Halo, with Fox handling international distribution. Compared to the reported $10 million asking price for the Halo script, the current deal supposedly entails a more realistic sale for $5 million. The upcoming Halo film is based upon a script penned by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland. So far, Microsoft has kept quiet about any story details, though it's sure to involve Master Chief blowing up a bunch of Covenant.

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Gentoo founder and former Gentoo Chief Architect Daniel Robbins began a new position at Microsoft on 23 May 2005. According to drobbins: "I'm helping Microsoft to understand Open Source and community-based projects." While in the midst of hastily packing to move to Redmond, drobbins nonetheless managed to find the time to finalize the transfer of Gentoo's intellectual property (essentially copyrights on ebuilds and other software as well as soon-to-be trademarked Gentoo logos) to the not-for-profit Gentoo Foundation, Inc.

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"We are thinking of introducing another brand under Lenovo," Deepak Advani, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Lenovo, told the Xinhuanet news service during a press briefing in New Delhi. "Lenovo has developed some good products in China which might meet the need of (the) Indian market. For example, it has worked out products for those not very skilled in computer(s) or for schools where many students have to share one computer."

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And there is a synergistic effect. “Fat smokers are at the highest risk of all. An obese smoker is on average at least 10 years older than a lean non-smoker,” says Spector. “It’s not just about heart disease or lung cancer, the whole chromosomal clock is going faster. That’s the public health message.”

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"The limitations of physical space makes playing the game exciting," says Michele Chang, a technology ethnographer with Intel in Portland, Oregon. There is also a social element, says Chang. Last year, as a social experiment to see how people behave with real-world games, she created Digital Street Game, which ran for six months in New York. The aim was to acquire territory by performing stunts dictated by the game at public locations around the city, such as playing hopscotch at a crossroads while holding a hot-dog. "People are more reserved than you would imagine," says Chang. Some players took to performing their stunt on rooftops to avoid being seen, she says, while others relished being ostentatious - like players of Pac-Manhattan, in which New Yorkers dress up as the video game icon Pac-Man and flee other gamers dressed up as ghosts.

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When SLI was first announced the enthusiasm here in the Ninjalane Labs for the new technology was crazy. Everyone was running around trying to get their hands on something SLI enabled in hopes of making that big score and upgrade to SLI.

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G.Skill is fairly new to the PC-Enthusiast market, but the company has been manufacturing high performance DRAM for 16-years, they have no problem labeling themselves as a "niche" DRAM provider and are proud to bear the appellation. Today I test a product which earns a place in the semi-conductor Lexicon opposite the term versatile. G.skill´s PC3200/PC4800 is an all inclusive DDR part in 512MB kit form and is one of the best examples of SPD programming I've seen to date.

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Aggressive timing memory, low latency (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS) has always been the only way to fly for Overclockers, Enthusiasts, and Gamers. Bottom line is, if you want higher frame rates for gaming or world record benchmarks the numbers 2-2-2-5 is what you're looking for. Mushkin has come out with series of memory called Redline XP4000 rated to run at 2-2-2 timings.

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Memory: What is it? How does it work? What kinds are there? We try to answer almost everything you can possibly think of, and maybe bring up a few things you didn't think mattered!

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The Mushkin 2GB HP3200 Dual Pack is really a 2-in-1 combo. You get great gaming perfromance at very tight timings coupled with huge amounts of RAM for applications that need it. A definite winner wherever you look at it.

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It appears as though DDR2 memory is becoming more and more mainstream. It also appears OCZ, with its EB Platinum Edition, is serious about staking the claim of performance in this arena. With CL timings that you would be hard pressed to match, especially at PC2-5400 speeds, looks like the stake is driven deep.

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With the release of the Venice and San Diego cores we have been on quite the overclocking spree here at AMDZone. So far we have gone through the Venice core 3500+, 3200+, and 3000+, and approached 2.8GHz with air cooling. We had already reviewed the Toledo core Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual core, and found it would reach 2.7GHz on mid range air. Well that just wouldn't do as we decided 3GHz, a number we told AMD we would love to see released earlier this year at CES, would be a better target. That would amount to a 25% overall overclock, and 50% than our first attempt. Would it be possible on air? We thought so, but it meant an upgrade to our test bed.

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For smaller companies that may not want to invest the time or the $1,000 to rent the Intel system, a company called Advenio has a service in which it will do the necessary porting work. As an indication of the relative time involved, the company is charging a flat $100 fee to create a universal binary of a Cocoa application; the fee for porting a Carbonized program starts at $500 and depends on the amount of work involved.

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The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-0 to require that all medium-sized televisions, those with screens from 25 to 36 inches in diameter, be capable of receiving both digital and traditional analog signals by March 1, four months earlier than the commission had decreed three years ago. Regulators also retained a requirement that half of all new mid-size televisions must have digital receiving capability by July 1.

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When surgeons make a graft to bypass a blockage in a blood vessel they often have to use prosthetic tubes because suitable arteries and veins are hard to come by. Similarly, when patients with renal disease have dialysis, a loop of tubing may be fitted between a vein and an artery, usually in the arm. This loop, made from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), is called a shunt. The problem with this is that blood flow in these prosthetic tubes is different from in natural blood vessels. Arteries naturally twist like a corkscrew and this 3D structure makes the blood swirl as it flows, which stops it stagnating. In contrast, blood flows through an artificial tube like water in a river, leading to areas of faster and slower flow, and stagnant zones, resembling the inside of river bends where sand builds up.

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However in March it was discovered that the Flyby spacecraft's High Resolution Instrument (HRI) was not focusing properly. The team will use a process, called deconvolution, to remedy the situation. Deconvolution is widely used in image processing and involves the reversal of the distortion created by the faulty lens of a camera or other optical devices, like a telescope or microscope.

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Yes, its yet another memory maker trying to enter the low-latency stream. A few years ago, there were quite a few memory makers, but since the introduction of low-latency TCCDs from Samsung, the market seems to have exploded with these wonders from practically every memory maker in the market. Either the profit margins are ridiculously high on memory these days that even a small percentage accounts for serious revenue or memory makers simply think of Samsung’s TCCDs as a gift of appreciation.

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My first thought when asked to review a completely silent X800 XL was, 'Hey, that would be a perfect HTPC card. Good gaming and silent! Sign me up!' Unfortunately, the height of the Silent-Pipe X800 XL (GV-RX80L256V) due to its heatpipes will prohibit it from fitting in my current HTPC case (an Antec Overture) and many others. Nevertheless, it still seems like a top media PC option to me. Keep reading to find out if the performance is on par with other X800 XL PCI Express cards and to learn more about this cool and silent offering from Gigabyte.

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If you are any of those then this kit is awesome. The tight timings and overclocking headroom make this kit an excellent choice. Having 2GB of ram gives you some nice options when it comes to system performance and usability. You can totally eliminate any virtual memory in the system, and you also have the ability to make a good sized high speed ram drive. Try running an app out of a ram drive and you will never want to use your hard drive again.

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At 3.2V, the OCZ PC4000 Gold Dual Channel VX seemed very happy and the system was stable all the way up to 260 MHz. Anything higher caused more stability problems. It seems like the memory was starting to top out, since the voltage had to be increased substantially to squeeze out a few more MHz. In the end, the memory hit a high of 268 MHz while running using 2-2-2-5 memory timings with a voltage of 3.5V . Increasing the voltage higher actually lowered the memory's maximum overclock.

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The memory review we have in front of us today should be very interesting, this ram has already been reviewed by several sites and had very high overclocking results. The name of the kit today is OCZ DDR PC4800 Platinum, which you might have read about already but today rbmods will take their shot with this nice looking ram so stay tuned as we compare it to some other very fast sticks or ram.

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A stalled experiment to search for underground water on Mars is back on track after officials agreed to deploy the second of two identical radar booms on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. The deployment, set for 14 June, could give the entire spacecraft a new lease on life, as its future funding may depend on the data obtained by this radar.

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"We definitely will not be doing long blind drives in this terrain for awhile. Instead, we’ll start turning back on many of the safety checks that we have in our driving software, proceeding much more cautiously," Squyres said. "We’ll also try to plan our drives so that we stay in the troughs between the dunes, rather than driving up and over them."

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According to a study published this week, up to 45% of the differences between women in their ability to reach orgasm can be explained by their genes. Despite decades of surveys and conjecture about the role of culture, upbringing and biology in female sexual function, from Freud in 1905 to the Hite report in 1976, this is the first study of the role of a woman’s genes.

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The $29.99 pocket-sized camcorder was developed by Pure Digital Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up company. ... The camcorder weighs under 5 ounces and holds 20 minutes of digital video and sound. It features a 1.4 inch color playback screen and an ability to delete video, and it saves video on a memory chip instead of tapes. After shooting, customers have to return the recyclable camcorder to their local CVS store and its contents would then be transferred onto a DVD disc to view and share for a $12.99 processing fee.

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Citigroup said Monday that personal information on 3.9 million consumer lending customers of its CitiFinancial subsidiary was lost by UPS while in transit to a credit bureau -- the biggest breach of customer or employee data reported so far.

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Samsung actually had a license to produce these types of memory. Under the terms of that agreement, the company was obliged to pay Rambus royalties unless a court invalidated the patents, according to now former Rambus executives. So far, courts have generally upheld the patents. The license was set to expire at the end of the month. Rambus did not explain why it terminated the license agreement and sued now. Ironically, Samsung was more vocal in promoting RDRAM, a type of memory designed by Rambus, than any other major memory manufacturer.

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Called the Universal Torah Registry, the system works like this: A synagogue mails in a form with their contact information and the number of Torahs they want to place in the system, and the registry sends back a computer-coded template for each scroll. The 3.5- by 8-inch template resembles an IBM punch card, with eight holes arranged so their position relative to one another describes a unique identification number in a proprietary code.

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According to numbers released by French Web metrics company XiTi, Firefox accounted for 14.08 percent of browsers used to access a large sample of Web sites that use XiTi measurement software. That's up from 13.31 percent in April and 11.60 percent in March.

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The change will provide a power and performance boost for computer users, analysts say, but could cause headaches for software developers adapting programs. Another challenge could be preventing bootleggers from creating copies of Apple’s new Intel-adapted OS X operating system for non-Apple computers

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The MSN Web site, http://ilovemessenger.msn.com/, contained a so-called cross-site scripting flaw, a Microsoft representative said on Monday. In its initial review of the issue, the company found that an attacker could use the vulnerability to obtain "cookies" from Hotmail users by getting them to click on a malicious URL. That could then grant access to those e-mail accounts, the representative said.

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Hard-drive manufacturer Maxtor aims to find out. With so many consumers snapping digital photos and storing music files, Maxtor executives said they are enthusiastic about the company's next-generation Serial ATA, or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, hard drive, which can store up to 500GB, or half a terabyte of information.

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The HIS X850XT IceQ II Turbo did well today in our tests, and provides enough performance for AGP motherboard owners to perhaps convince you that it may not be necessary to upgrade to a PCIe board if you're only interested in a single card upgrade.

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PCstats knows overclocking. You know overclocking. Everybody knows overclocking. The PC runs faster and hotter, provides more performance, and yadda yadda yadda. Overclocking has become so routine in the hardware world that every processor, motherboard, memory module and videocard needs to be overclocked as part of its review. We never know if the people actually buying the hardware care about its overclocking potential, but as computer journalists and enthusiasts, we know we have to test it out. This got us thinking though; what about under-clocking? Most modern processors and motherboards can just as easily run under a rated speed as it can run over... but is there a point to this? Well possibly.

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Albatron has worked hard to deliver a motherboard capable of performing the tasks that all enthusiasts want while maintaining a reasonable price tag that many can afford. The K8SLI is bundled with some very nice features, but some additional accessories would be nice. The ABS was a real nice touch, in case you're one of those people who happen to corrupt their BIOS occasionally. The jumperless SLI switching will be very handy for those using the full capabilities of the motherboard. The space saving, smaller layout has both advantages and disadvantages that won't be much concern to many end users.

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Built upon years of experience, will OCZ's Titanium series continue in the same success shared by the Gold and Platinum performance memory modules? In this review, we'll be trying out the OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Dual Channel Titanium system memory. This memory runs at 2-3-2-5 while conforming to PC-3200 DDR speeds and featuring Enhanced Latency Technology and an OCZ PowerSwap warranty. Will this be the new ideal RAM for gamers and enthusiasts alike?

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The Deep Impact spacecraft is expected to arrive near Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, one day before the comet reaches perihelion (its closest point to the Sun). It will have released its copper impactor about 24 hours before, while making a "deflection maneuver" to move off to a safe distance of about 300 miles (500 kilometers) from the comet.

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Under the terms of the settlement, Apple has agreed to extend its warranty from one to two years for newer-generation iPods that came with dock connectors and were purchased before May 31, 2004. If batteries in those devices fail within the extended warranty time, Apple will replace either the battery or the iPod for free--or provide a $50 credit toward any Apple merchandise from its online and brick-and-mortar stores.

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Whitehouse showed in 2004 that a hacker could arrive at this link key without knowing the PIN using a piece of equipment called a Bluetooth sniffer. This can record the exchanged messages being used to derive the link key and feed the recordings to software that knows the Bluetooth algorithms and can cycle through all 10,000 possibilities of the PIN. Once a hacker knows the link keys, Whitehouse reasoned they could hijack the device.

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Debate has gone on for years over spyware and adware, with manufacturers defending some of these applications as legitimate marketing tools. The terms are slippery, frequently used to apply both to the information-thieving software and the often-annoying advertising tools bundled with free software programs.

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the management of top level domains such as .com, .org and .net, endorsed the creation of the new adult domain, .xxx, at an international ICANN meeting in Mar del Plata, Argentina on Wednesday.

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From 2015 to 2025, NASA would deploy instruments to search for gravity waves and how they were affected by inflation. The Big Bang Observer would follow, looking for gravity waves produced by the big bang and quantum effects during inflation. Uncovering the enigma of dark energy is the third objective, starting with measuring properties of the cosmos that put limits on its nature. After 2025, the Big Bang Observer will precisely measure the distances to more than a million binary systems that include neutron stars and black holes. Pinning down the geometry of the Universe in this way will help reveal the nature of dark energy.

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The Albatron K8SLI motherboard being tested over the following pages is a compact nVidia nForce4 SLI board that packs in quite a bit into a small space. Albatron K8SLI comes with a basic set of features, such as Gigabit network ethernet, 5.1 channel audio controller (with SPDIF out), two free 32 bit PCI slots as well two PCI Express x1 & PCI Express x16 slots, and the standard assortment of SATA and IDE connectors supported by the nForce 4 SLI chipset.

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The MSI 661FM3-V Micro-ATX motherboard is based on the SIS 661FX chipset and SIS 964 Southbridge. This tiny board supports all 533/800MHz FSB Intel Socket 775 Pentium 4 processors and can hold up to 2GB of DDR memory in its two slots. Notably, The SIS 661FX chipset does not support dual-channel memory. The 661FM3-V features integrated graphics courtesy of the SIS 'Mirage' chip, sharing up to 128MB of main memory by default, but fortunately also implements a full AGP8X videocard slot. Two PCI slots are present for expansion cards, as PCI Express is not yet supported by the SIS chipset. up to 4 IDE and 2 SATA devices can be added to the motherboard.

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You want a rock solid, dependable, Socket 939, NF4, PCIe solution for your HTPC? WinFast has a motherboard with your name all over it. If you don't expect to overclock, or to use the onboard sound, you will be happy with what the Winfast NF4K8MC has to offer.

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In short, the i945G (or i945P) is a reasonable proposition for all but the die-hard enthusiast who needs the ability to run two graphics cards in tandem. I hope that motherboard manufacturers quickly release versions equipped with the ICH7R southbridge. You'll then be able to purchase it with, say, a Pentium D 820. Perfect for huge and varied storage potential, decent sound, and the loveliness that a dual-core CPU brings.

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This is a great kit from Mushkin once again, we were able to overclock it very easily and it ran smooth without any lockups or bootups during benchmarking and testing. It also looks very nice with the read heatsinks and you have great performance even at stock speeds. I think our testing says pretty much everything needed to be said about this ram and we give this kit 5 out of 5 and our editor´s choice award for the best memory kit this far from Mushkin that we have had the pleasure to test.

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Patriot Memory has started off on the right foot, Tight timings, and great overclocking along with things you expect, such as lifetime warranty. Let's hope they continue this pursuit, as I enjoy being able to pick from more than one or two vendors when it comes to performance oriented gear.

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The move to exclusivity of PCIe as the sole interface of high end GPUs may have been a bit premature, the biggest sector of the enthusiast gaming market is after all that of the DYI system builders, especially those that are willing to shell out some extra money if it's worth it but who otherwise have built a reputation of mercilessly twaining out any possible resource in their existing system configuration via overclocking or other system optimizations. Needless to say that this group is by necessity very budget-conscious, too, and if there is any way to get the performance without the price tag, that's where the entire flock will be heading.

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If you are looking for a mid-range card with passive cooling system, Tul is one of the companies that offer such solution on X700 based cards. With good performance in its class and okay bundle, PowerColor Bravo X700 is an interesting product to consider. The Silent Cooling System has proven to be a worthy addition, the passive solution performed marvelously and ran very cool.

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The dual core processor is what I consider the next major technological step in the evolution of the processor. With the exception of the bit-size increases which are major steps as well, all the other improvements to the processors have increased performance (for single processors) and have added in a few features. The dual core processor focuses on something other than single application performance, which is multiple application performance. At least for Intel, the clock speeds of the new dual cores are clocked lower than that of their top single core chips. This means that unless Intel includes some sort of new efficient clock speed technology, the performance of their fastest dual core chip for a single-thread application should be lower than that of their fastest single core chips. The dual cores are meant to handle multi-tasking, multi-threaded applications, and multiple simultaneous applications much better than a single core chip.

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Taipei, Taiwan, 1 June 2005 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today launched the VIA C7-M mobile processor at the VIA Technology Forum 2005, with compact notebooks exemplifying the 'Simply Mobile' lifestyle featured on the VIA booth at Computex 2005.

Specifically designed for the rapid-growth mobile segments of mainstream and thin and light notebooks and ultra portable devices, the VIA C7-M boasts a winning formula of superb power consumption and management for longer battery life, all the performance required for all the popular digital media and productivity applications with speeds of up to 2.0GHz, and an unrivalled suite of security features integrated directly onto the processor die for easy and practical deployment of high-end security functionality.

"With its perfect blend of performance, power management, profile and price, the VIA C7-M processor can do more to drive notebooks mainstream than any other single innovation on the mobile platform," said Richard Brown, Associate Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Moreover, as security rapidly becomes the number one concern in the mobile space, the extensive hardware security within the VIA C7-M brings pervasive information security in the mobile space within easy and practical reach for the first time."

The VIA C7 processor combines exceptionally low power consumption with a host of unique technologies to maintain cool running and extend battery life. The enhanced VIA PowerSaver technology combines superior power management through defining intelligent power stage changes with ultra low power levels in sleep mode, while the advanced 90nm system-on-insulator (SOI) process allows unprecedented levels of integration within the tiny 30mm2 processor die, permitting performance scalability and considerable feature additions while maintaining the signature low power draw of VIA processors.

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(Taipei, Taiwan — May 31, 2005) Shuttle Inc - the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of small form factor (SFF) PCs and accessories - has today released two new enhancements for its XPC products at Computex Taipei 2005.

“At Shuttle we are dedicated to creating the most advanced small form factor products on the market,” began Ken Huang, Chief Architect of the XPC, “With the innovative designs of our motherboard, chassis, and cooling systems and our powerful integrated software tools, we can proudly offer performance and functionality comparable to full-sized desktop PC systems. XPC Accessories are a continuation of this package, guaranteeing that end-users will have opportunity to extend and enhance their XPC based systems as technology advances or if their computing needs change.”

New products released today are the PN18 Wireless LAN Module and the PE20 Xtended Storage Enclosure.

The PN18 Wireless LAN Module is a 802.11b/g compliant wireless kit with in-built support for WEP and WPA encryption standards. Designed particularly for Shuttle’s P and i chassis XPCs, the PN18 continues the innovative toolless design of these models with a simple slot-in installation the can be completed in seconds. Bundled with the kit is Shuttle Access Point Software, a powerful utility which makes the process of building a home or small office network quick and easy.

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Fremont, CA (May 27, 2005) - Corsair® Memory, Inc., a worldwide leader in high performance memory and cooling products for enthusiasts and overclockers, today is pleased to unveil XMS2-8000ULTM as its latest addition to the high performance XMS family of products. First in the industry to ship DDR2 memory modules at factory default frequency of 1GHz, Corsair once again demonstrates its leadership position in high performance products and commitment to support platform transitions.

Available immediately in both single module and dual kit packages and rated to run at aggressive latency settings of 5-4-4-9, the new XMS2-8000UL was developed in collaboration with ASUS® Computer for its latest Intel® i955X chipset based motherboard, the P5WD2 Premium. Backed with a life time warranty and a potential to be overclocked to 1066+ Mhz, Corsair's new XMS2-8000UL complements ASUS' P5WD2 Premium motherboard as the ultimate choice for enthusiasts. In SiSoft Sandra memory test performed at Corsair, overclocking XMS2-8000UL memory to 1066 MHz delivers an incredible 17% memory performance improvement compared with DDR2-667. Leveraging Intel processor's native support for multi-threaded tasks, Corsair brings new memory capability to the platform to run memory intensive applications such as 3D games concurrently with other demanding applications.

"Last month, we saw enthusiasts worldwide overclocking our ultra low latency XMS2-5400ULTM memory modules to over 1GHz. This month, we are pushing the envelope further with the introduction of the native low-latency 1GHz parts" said John Beekley, VP of Applications Engineering at Corsair. "Corsair's engineers have achieved a milestone in memory development with the XMS2-8000UL. Combined with the availability of performance motherboards such as the ASUS P5WD2, we expect adoption of high performance DDR2 memory to explode," continued Beekley.

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These dual-core chips also sell at a premium price. The 4800+ will sell for $1,001 in quantities of 1,000 while the 4600+ will go for $803, far higher than Athlon chips today and higher than most mainstream desktop chips sold in the last several years. (The 4400+ and the 4200+ sell for $581 and $537, respectively.)

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Working prototypes of the Mac mini look-alike running Microsoft Windows and based on Intel's Pentium M CPU have already been built by Taiwan PC maker AOpen at Intel's request, according to two sources in Taiwan's PC manufacturing industry who have seen them. AOpen manufactures PC and components as a subsidiary of the Taiwanese corporation Wistron, and is affiliated with the giant Acer group.

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The main problem with laptops is that the screen and keyboard are so close together. Without the aid of peripherals, laptop users have two choices, neither of which would win them any points for posture. They can cramp their neck down to view the monitor or they can elevate the machine to eye level, which can wreak havoc on shoulders and arms.

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One of the research team, Scott Chapman at Caltech, California, US, says this means the disc of the galaxy is actually three times larger than had been thought - 220,000 light years across, instead of previous estimates of 70,000 to 80,000.

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The Tokyo-based company said it will be investing $787 million (85 billion yen) in the Miyazaki Works facility of its Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display (FHP) project, which should be completed by late 2006. The plant is the result of Hitachi's partial purchase of Fujitsu's equity stake in the factory earlier this year. Hitachi said it will now make FHP a consolidated subsidiary.

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This is why we see a new batch of video cards from the two big players (ATI and NVIDIA) every six months or so. It was only December when we were looking at the almost-top-of-the-line ATI Radeon X800 XT, and already I have in front of me the upgraded X850 XT Platinum Edition. The X850 XT PE is based on the R480 core clocked at 540MHz, has 16 pixel pipelines, and 256MB of GDDR3 clocked at 590MHz (1.18GHz DDR). We have rounded up a good number of cards to pin against the X850 XT PE, including NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line Geforce 6800 Ultra. Let's find out if this behemoth is all it's cracked up to be.

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Manufacturers tend to take different approaches to retail video cards. Some may focus on a nice bundle, with extra features. Others go a bit further, like adding overclocking features and funky cooling solutions. Most though, are content to just slap their logo on the heatsink and call it a day. Gigabyte is one of the few who go a step further - most of their video card lineup consists of silent versions on both the ATI and NVIDIA side. Today, we're looking at two higher-end ATI based cards - the X800 and X800XL. That's right; a 100% fanless X800XL - a 16 pipe card clocked at 400 MHz. Surprisingly, Gigabyte did not include oven mitts in the bundle!

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Having left off testing the X800XT for a few months, we have had ample time to live with this new technology in normal day-to-day use and especially game play. It is certainly nice to have the option of antialiasing, anisotropic filtering or high resolutions without worrying about performance loss. Such performance grunt may be regarded as overkill when so many recent games are CPU-bound, but we totally disagree with this viewpoint. These high-end cards are not purchased to deliver 500fps at some previous level of visual quality, but are instead designed to deliver conventional frame rates at heightened levels of visual quality hitherto unattainable. In future games, hinted at by the Ruby and CryTech demos, these modern cards will be far from CPU-bound, in fact, in dual-core systems they may well struggle to deliver. Although initially touted as a Playstation game, and irrespective of its eventual competence, the KillZone 2 trailer provides the best indication of how future games will look. Grab it below and you’ll never again complain that your video card is TOO powerful.

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One of the main benefits of this X700 Pro vs the vanilla one is that this one comes packaged with Sapphire's A.P.E. software. This is definitely the easiest out of the box overclocking software I have ever used... to a fault. Simply slide in the install CD and run the setup app and reboot. Done. Don't bother to look for any settings or fancy system tray setup. It won't be there. For the minimalists among you this little app will be extremely attractive but for control freaks like me that love bells, whistles, switches and options (for starters) this little app just won't sit well and you will most likely opt to use your preferred overclocking software instead.

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Where the Bravo X700 gets its market share is from those loving their silence. Utilizing the heatpipes and heatsinks, the silence would be golden in an HTPC machine. Seeing as the card is bundled with TV Out, HDTV support and paired with CyberLink and not a Half-Life 2 voucher coupon, this is what you'd want in playing your latest and greatest movies. However, at the lower resolutions, the Bravo X700 will be able to perform well for those who have an itch to play a game or two on a large HDTV. When it comes to a PC, the dual digital outputs will be great for the executives who can't be bothered with a whining fan but also need to power dual digital LCDs. Either way, the PowerColor Bravo X700 is one card you don't want to overlook when it comes to finding a very versatile card at a midrange price.

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The HIS iX850XT Turbo card is without doubt the best value X850 XT card I have seen. Thanks to the included iTurbo program, HIS can guarantee that it will run at full Platinum Edition clock speeds without issue. This was proved to be true in our benchmark suite, where we never observed any problems running it at these elevated speeds. When you consider that the X850XT Platinum Edition offers no improvement in performance or features compared to the iTurbo, it is a little more difficult to recommend.

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GSkill was smart to release a lower-end product into their line-up, as not everyone can afford the top of the line memory, nor do they need it. With the GSkill 2-3-3-6 memory you get a great “bang for your buck” with retail prices hovering around $100 USD. The memory performs well, has better timings then most similarly priced memory, and is no slouch in the OC department. The only major disappointment I had with the GSkill memory is that I was not able to achieve the type of overclock that the GSkill website claimed. Overclocking will vary from stick to stick, but if you are going to claim a certain overclock, I think that all of your products should be capable of those numbers. Possibly I just got a bad batch…hard to say.

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At 667MHz with 3-2-2-8 timings the memory bandwidth was found to be roughly 6700MB/Sec. By pushing the FSB of our processer up to 316MHz and running the 3:5 divider we were able to get over 8,000 MB/Sec of bandwidth....

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Focusing on the enthusiast and high-end workstation markets, Intel started its multi-core desktop campaign last month by introducing the 955X Express chipset and Pentium Processor Extreme Edition dual-core CPU. Today's release is aimed at the mainstream market, though. The new mainstream chipsets are the 945G Express Chipset and 945P Express Chipset (the 'G' variant providing onboard graphics), and the three new mainstream dual-core processors are the Pentium D Processor 820, 830 and 840, which run at 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.2GHz, respectively.

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Every once in a great while the internet rants and raves about an up and coming component that will allow you to be an overclocking God. Even though such occurrences are rare they are starting to become more common every time DFI unleashes its ingenious BIOS engineers and layout designers. The one problem is timing, since it never seems to happen in OUR time. Meaning more specifically the slow release time of their boards. I can't think of a single time DFI has ever released a board on OUR time, but when they release it time stops, and people buy them. Ever since the LANPARTY series originated a couple years ago, owning a DFI motherboard really says something about you as a computer enthusiast. The Ultra-D is such a board of this recognition despite being a somewhat lesser vessel than its bigger SLI brother. SLI still begs the question as to why, since the obvious single card configuration gives you more than enough gaming power, but that's another story. For now we'll stick to pointing out the features of what we have here right now, the LANPARTY Ultra-D...

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Today we're taking a look at VIA's latest small form factor All-In-One EPIA motherboard, the SP 1300 based on the latest processors and chipsets to come from the VIA labs. This low power consumption platform with hardware MPEG-2 decoding and hardware MPEG-4 acceleration might just what you're looking for in a silent HTPC or car computer. Read on as we take a close look at the humble yet impressive EPIA SP 1300 All-In-One motherboard from VIA Technologies.

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ABIT Fatal1ty AN8's passes its biggest test, that is, being a supreme enthusiast-orientated S939 motherboard. What makes it so good is the sensible choice of a feature-rich chipset, nForce4 Ultra, and due care and attention that's given over to both frequency and fan-speed manipulation. These two factors combine to push the sample's stable HTT frequency to 320MHz - the highest yet seen at HEXUS. It's achieved without any additional cooling and it paves the way for the Fatal1ty AN8 to be paired with the best S939 overclocking CPUs available today, be they Venice or San Diego cores.

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Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women's groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead" (Source: Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920). While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

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The chip will also incorporate a number of security features. Like many of the latest Intel and AMD processors, the C7 will come with an NX bit, which allows the processor to block many buffer overflow attacks. Via also included circuits that make it easier to encrypt documents. Another feature allows a user to encrypt a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) call made through a notebook. The software to enable these options will come out later.

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The prototype, called the Cell Processor Based Blade Server, measured approximately 23 x 43 cm. Each board featured two Cell processors, two 512 Mb XDR DRAM chips and two South Bridge LSIs. The Cell processors were demonstrated running at 2.4-2.8 GHz. "We are driving the Cell processors at higher rates in the laboratory," said the engineer. "If operated at 3 GHz, Cell's theoretical performance reaches about 200 GFLOPS, which works out to about 400 GFLOPS per board," he added. IBM plans to release a rack product capable of storing seven of these boards.

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In the VAB, it will be mated with a new fuel tank that has a heater designed to prevent ice from forming. Ice and insulating foam, like the piece that caused a deadly breach in Columbia's wing, are the most common sources of debris from the tank during launch.

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"The original plan for Longhorn was to build lots of components on top of the next version of the .Net Framework," according to one of our developer sources, who requested anonymity. "But given how late [.Net Framework 2.0] is, and how new it would be, [Microsoft chairman] Bill Gates realized it would be foolish to build important pieces of Longhorn on top of .Net."