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According to the lawsuit, Sharman and a partner called Altnet met repeatedly with movie and music industry executives over the course of 2002, seeking to license copy-protected content for online distribution. Providing legal, authorized versions of popular entertainment content would help mitigate piracy on the file-swapping system, Sharman and Altnet said.

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The software giant said it is extending support for Windows NT 4 Server for an additional 12 months. The change means that network administrators will be able to get security patches and "hot fixes" until Dec. 31, 2004. Microsoft had planned to pull the plug on these and other updates later this year.

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The company will unveil three versions of its low-power Pentium-M processor, formerly code-named Banias, as part of the Centrino package. Aside from coming out with a standard Pentium-M chip, which is expected to run at speeds ranging from 1.3GHz to 1.6GHz, the company will release two as-yet-undisclosed lower-power versions of the chip, sources close to the company said. The new chips include an ultra-low-voltage Pentium-M that will debut at 900MHz and a low-voltage Pentium-M chip that will begin at 1.1GHz, according to the sources. The chips, along with the rest of the Centrino family, will allow Intel to target the full range of notebook models sold by manufacturers.

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The Azerbaijan-born grandmaster took his first step toward burying the ghost of 1997, when he lost a match to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, with a convincing win in just 27 moves and 3 hours 40 minutes play. Kasparov won a point for the win over Israeli-built Deep Junior and the second game is scheduled for Tuesday. But Kasparov told reporters that despite the comfortable victory, the program was "very strong" and he was taking nothing for granted in the $1 million match.

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According to the Echo Web site, the companies will be able to offer on-demand streaming and downloading with music recommendation services, using a "standard and open platform."

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GPU: GeForce FX5800 Ultra
128MB DDRII
Core clock: 500Mhz; Memory clock: 1Ghz
Board weight: 600gr
75 watt power consumption under full load!
Excessively loud in 3D mode
DVI; S-Video; VGA connectors
Provided driver: 42.63

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For chess and programming buffs, the $1-million, man-versus-machine match carries the glitz of a Las Vegas boxing bout. Deep Junior hasn't lost to a human in two years; Kasparov has been the world's top-rated human player for the past 18.

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Figuring out why birds have such an amazing variety of beak styles is integral to the study of evolution. One of Charles Darwin's most famous observations during his 1835 visit to the Galapagos Islands was that finches were subtly different depending on where they lived on the chain of pristine, volcanic islands. His analysis of differences such as the beak size and type led to his theory of evolution through natural selection.

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The $122 million mission is designed to help scientists understand the Sun's role in climate change here on Earth by measuring the amount of solar energy reaching the planet as our nearest star radiates through its various cycles.

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On Monday, Jan. 27 the Moon will visit Mars. On Tuesday it will pass near Venus and on Wednesday you can use the slender lunar sliver to point the way to Mercury. If your local weather cooperates it may be worth setting your alarm for about an hour before sunrise; then simply head out and take a look toward the southeast sky.

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But last July's original security advisory about the vulnerability certainly wasn't the first time SQL users were told to patch their systems. Nor was it the only time. Yet system administrators were still left scrambling over the weekend to recover from the latest fiasco.

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Sounds like ATI has an Ace up their sleave: a top dog at ATI has told us that the R350 will debut in march, and as told before will be 10% faster than the FX, but the kicker will be that it's also $150 cheaper. The massive price difference is due to the fact the R350 will be a 10 layer PCB, while Nvidia's fastest will require 12 layers. Graphics wars are gonna be interesting in the coming months to say the least...

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UT2k3 2166 - Flyby (2X FSAA / 4:1 Anisotropic Filtering 1024x768x32Bit)
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro - 110 FPS
Nvidia GeForce FX - 143 FPS
Nvidia Ti4600 - 65 FPS

UT2k3 2166 - Flyby (1024x768x32Bit)
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro - 201 FPS
Nvidia GeForce FX - 196 FPS
Nvidia Ti4600 - 170 FPS

UT2k3 2166 - Botmatch (2X FSAA / 4:1 Anisotropic Filtering 1024x768x32Bit)

ATi Radeon 9700 Pro - 65 FPS
Nvidia GeForce FX - 65 FPS
Nvidia Ti4600 - 65 FPS

UT2k3 2166 - Botmatch (1024x768x32Bit)
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro - 71 FPS
Nvidia GeForce FX - 68 FPS
Nvidia Ti4600 - 71 FPS

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To address the criticism, the company has decided to release the source code of the core part of the software, known as the nub or nexus, so that others can verify it is secure and is doing only what the company has claimed.

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The worm infects computer servers that run on Microsoft Windows 2000 SQL software. Once it attaches to a server it transmits multiple data requests in a random manner to other addresses on the Internet looking for more vulnerable servers to infect. The effect is a flood of traffic that bogs down ISP networks and can even knock Web sites off-line, Hypponen said. He added the worm was probably installed on a faulty server by a virus writer or hacker within the past few days.

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The threat of a corporate crackdown looms over Net operations that are courting high-speed users at a time when few such connections reach into the home. Nearly 87 percent of people accessing the Net from work are using a broadband connection compared with about 28 percent from home, according to Net researcher ComScore Networks.

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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in an e-mail Thursday that the software giant has taken great strides to secure its products, but acknowledged that the company still has far to go to achieve its goal of "Trustworthy Computing."
The e-mail message to Microsoft's customers is the latest monthly missive sent by the company's executives as part of a customer-relations drive known as Executive Emails. Coming a year after Gates exhorted company employees to focus on security, privacy and reliability, the memo predictably focuses on the results of that initiative.

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Privacy worries about the Pentagon system, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), came to a head this week after the FBI indicated it wanted to use TIA domestically against U.S. citizens. In a letter to Grassley, Defense Department Inspector General Joseph Schmitz said the FBI is considering "possible experimentation with TIA technology in the future."

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For home entertainment PCs, it is price instead of performance that is a more important factor to both manufacturers and consumers, he added. Processors without sockets will help clients reduce development costs. According to sources, one socket generally costs US$1.50 at present.

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"An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could cause the Locator service to fail, or could cause code of the attacker's choice to be executed with system privileges," the software giant said in the security bulletin. "Customers running Windows NT 4.0 domain controllers or Windows 2000 domain controllers should apply the patch immediately."

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During the past several years, Rosen has served as a focal point for all the criticism and complaints levied by advocates of unfettered technology. Indeed, she was featured in the most recent issue of Wired magazine as "The Most Hated Name in Music"--a bold statement in an industry notoriously rife with avaricious record producers and label executives.

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If quasars and their host galaxies assembled within surrounding haloes of dark matter, that would explain how they formed so quickly. Unfortunately there hasn't been any evidence for these dark-matter haloes - until now.

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A new study underscores the promise of adult stem cells for changing into other useful cell types. The results, published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that transplanted bone marrow cells can migrate to a recipient's brain and transform into neurons.

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The new species, Microraptor gui, provides yet more evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and could go a long way to answering a question scientists have puzzled over for close to 100 years: How did a group of ground-dwelling flightless dinosaurs evolve to a feathered animal capable of flying?

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Using a technology AMD calls x86-64, the company added new instructions to the current x86 processor architecture that extended the chip to 64 bits of data. The move to 64 bits enhances performance for servers by allowing them to support much larger amounts of memory than current AMD Athlon chips, which manage only 32 bits of data. Thanks to the extra memory, a server can decrease access times for data by minimizing its need to seek out that data on a hard drive.

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The "wick" used for the heat pipe is made of finely etched lines that are about as deep as fingerprints. The liquid is able to defy gravity--much like a kerosene lamp wick--as it flows between several locations and an arbitrary end point.

"That is the uniqueness--the ultra-fine etching," said Kevin Krewell, a senior editor at the Microprocessor Report. "Most of the heat pipes are tubes about the width of a piece of spaghetti or thicker."

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The court did not comment in rejecting an appeal filed by the families of three girls killed in 1997 at a high school near Paducah, Kentucky. They argued that entertainment companies were wrongly using the First Amendment free speech protection to shield themselves from lawsuits.

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The three-month average of worldwide semiconductor equipment orders was $839 million, up 8 percent from November orders of $777 million, and 37 percent up from the $614 million in orders posted a year earlier, said trade group Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).