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By using the same ut2003.ini file in each quality test ensures that the game is setup the same for each test making comparative reviews a reality. Of course writing the batch files was not an issue but a certain amount of subjectiveness creeps in when we start defining the quality levels utilized. I had to figuring out what D3D settings needed to be adjusted and to what values. I looked at how they effected the game on an IQ and performance level to judge what needed to be set for a High Quality setting, a Medium Quality setting and a Low Quality setting. Then I edited the appropriate lines in the ut2003.ini file for each quality setting. The last step was to make batch files that made it all work.

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All Nvidia cards including AGP 8x versions will work. Also this driver adds support for NV30 as stated in nv4_disp.inf:

%NVidia.Nv30.1% = nv4, PCIVEN_10DE&DEV_0301
%NVidia.Nv30.2% = nv4, PCIVEN_10DE&DEV_0302
%NVidia.Nv30GL.1% = nv4_WSApps, PCIVEN_10DE&DEV_0308
%NVidia.Nv30GL.2% = nv4_WSApps, PCIVEN_10DE&DEV_0309

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The Athlon XP 2000+ and 1900+ processors will be featured in consumer notebooks coming out from Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu-Siemens and others, according to AMD.

The chips will provide approximately the same performance as the Intel's 2GHz and 1.9GHz Pentium 4 chips, according to historical trends. Intel's fastest mobile chip, the 2.2GHz Pentium 4, will still likely rule the mobile performance roost, but Athlon-based notebooks often cost substantially less.

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The move teams up two companies who are perpetually engaged in separate battles against software giant Microsoft. Lindows, which is being touted as a low-cost alternative to Windows, ran into legal trouble with Microsoft for initially promising to offer a version of Linux that would run many Windows applications. Although it has since backed off that claim, it is still targeting the consumer segment of the market that has been essentially locked up by Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system.

Meanwhile AOL Time Warner and Microsoft are fighting to control consumers' desktops. AOL's Netscape browser software has watched Microsoft's Internet Explorer corner the browser market. AOL and Microsoft also compete in the Internet service provider market, instant messaging, and for Web traffic to their portals.

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When an amateur astronomer discovered the object two weeks ago, space enthusiasts speculated that it might be a natural Earth satellite. The reason is that it travels in an erratic orbit, which suggested that the planet had snagged a wandering space rock.

The Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, a clearinghouse for minor planet and comet discoveries, plotted its course and determined that it most likely was a section of a Saturn 5 rocket, which took Apollo astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972.

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A PC under the Compaq name with a DVD+RW will also be introduced as the holidays approach. Other PC makers will probably follow suit, incorporating DVD rewritable drives as an added temptation to buyers. This year's holiday season, typically the most significant time of year for manufacturers, follows on a lackluster back-to-school period, and PC makers will do what they can to give sales a lift.

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The new software also takes direct aim at several of the measures that record companies and movies studios have been taking to counteract peer-to-peer piracy. A cottage industry of companies has sprung up that saturates file-swapping networks with false or corrupted versions of songs and videos, hoping to frustrate would-be downloaders.

Kazaa's new software allows people to rate files so that corrupt or false files will quickly collect ratings poor enough to warn people away from downloading them. It also comes with a setting called "filter bogus music and video files" that is set by default as active.

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Weird as it sounds, antimatter is a normal feature of the real, unfictional universe. Scientists see the creation of anti-hydrogen atoms as the first step toward testing some physicists' deepest notions about nature, which hold that antimatter should look and behave identically to ordinary matter.

For example, any violation of the expected symmetry between hydrogen and anti-hydrogen would rock physics to its core.

The new research was conducted by physicists at CERN, the particle physics laboratory outside Geneva.

By corralling clouds of antimatter particles in a cylindrical chamber laced with detectors and electric and magnetic fields, the physicists assembled anti-hydrogen atoms, the looking glass equivalent of hydrogen, the most simple atom in nature. Whereas hydrogen consists of a positively charged proton circled by a negatively charged electron, in anti-hydrogen the proton's counterpart, a negatively charged anti-proton, is circled by an anti-electron, otherwise known as a positron.

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VIA's first chipset to support QBM will be the P4X800 for the Pentium 4; the chipset will begin sampling in Q1-2003 and it will ship by the end of Q1-2003. Unfortunately this in itself may limit the success QBM sees; we've already established that motherboard makers won't touch VIA's renegade Pentium 4 chipset because of pressure from Intel, and even though QBM is a tempting technology we have our doubts that it will be what causes players like ASUS and MSI to go against Intel's wishes. The QBM technology itself is licensed from Kentron Technologies, so in theory SiS could obtain a license to produce their own QBM enabled chipsets should the technology take off.

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However, he indicated that the new 64-bit K8 processors would definitely be launched in the first quarter of 2003 and volume shipments would be available in the second quarter of next year. Heye added that AMD is also planning to introduce the 64-bit K8 processors into the mainstream desktop market, where prices are set at US$999 on average, by the end of 2003.

The Barton-core processors, which will also adopt the SOI manufacturing technology, will hit the market in the first quarter of 2003 as well, Heye said.

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The strategy should start to take shape with this fall's PC lineup. HP is preparing to introduce a low-end $399 Compaq Presario desktop (without monitor), according to a source, while HP-branded PCs will come with high-end features such as DVD burners.

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The prime contender at the moment seems an unlikely choice: cable. Through its contractor, Raytheon Polar Services, the science foundation is looking into the feasibility of installing a fiber-optic cable across a continent that is marked by glaciers, deep crevasses and towering mountains and is notorious for having some of the world's most extreme cold and winds.

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Q: Is this StarCraft II?
A: No.

Q: Will there be a StarCraft II? When?
A: Although we have not made any announcements and do not have a development or release timeline, we do fully intend to revisit the world of StarCraft on PC at some point in the future.

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Philips Semiconductors, which manufactures a wide range of chips that go into smart cards, believes that wireless smart cards have great potential because of their low cost and convenience. Philips' range of RFID tags mark the identity of an object and use wireless to broadcast information such as its location.

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The system involves multiple components mounted both inside and outside the eye. A spectacle-mounted camera takes video that is then processed and transmitted into the eye by radio. There, a chip made from micro-machined silicon and protective coatings receives the signal and extracts data with which to stimulate the retinal nerves. Like a crystal radio set, it also extracts the power it needs to run from the radio signal, removing the need for any external wires or internal power pack.

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Representatives from Pioneer Electronics USA, based in Long Beach, Calif., said that writing to blank 4x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW discs can cause its DVD-rewritable PC drives and DVD recorders to freeze.

If the drives or recorders remain frozen for longer than five minutes, the optical lens, which writes to the discs, can overheat and render the hardware inoperable.

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As previously reported by CNET News.com, the worm is spreading moderately quickly. Symantec reported 2,000 infected servers early Friday afternoon. That jumped to 3,500 by Friday evening, and 6,700 as of 2 a.m PT Monday.

Once infected, a computer drawn into the Slapper network can be ordered--by commands passed from machine to machine--to attack a target in one of four different ways: send out a deluge of data, force the target to execute a command, redirect certain requests to another computer, or send back e-mail addresses or information about known infected servers.