News

According to Digitimes, VIA is losing some ground on their AMD chipset business.

Affected by its declining share in the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)-platform market and the product transition to new Pentium 4 PCs, VIA Technologies reported its revenues fell 30.4% to NT$7.301 billion and its pre-tax profits 53% to NT$1.091 billion in the first-quarter compared to a year earlier. -Digitimes

I thought the news was that 9.1 would be released instead of 9.

Dear DirectX 9.0 Beta Tester:

The DirectX team would like to thank you for your patience as we prepare to release DirectX 9.0 Beta 1. We are currently working on the final stages of Beta 1 for DirectX 9.0 and plan to release it to you for testing very soon. When the beta has released, you will be sent email with further instructions. We appreciate your willingness to test DirectX and look forward to working with you.

Team DirectX

SEARCH-ENGINE TECHNOLOGIES WERE among the first services to appear on the Internet, and their popularity continues today. More searches continue to be performed through Yahoo's Web portal, but Google's site is quickly closing in on the leader.SEARCH-ENGINE TECHNOLOGIES WERE among the first services to appear on the Internet, and their popularity continues today. More searches continue to be performed through Yahoo's Web portal, but Google's site is quickly closing in on the leader.

Of all search referrals worldwide, 36.35 percent come from Yahoo, while Google trails close behind with 31.87 percent, according to figures from market researcher WebSideStory, which released the results of a tracking study by its StatMarket division Tuesday.

Microsoft's MSN network placed third with 12.73 percent of worldwide search referrals. - InfoWorld

Tweak news just put up a review of a task program for Windows.

LI Utilities was founded in 1999 by a small group of IT professionals with the goal of creating a complete solution for remote support. After nearly three years of development and a large number of smaller projects, we are now about to release our enterprise series of support tools which radically change and improve tech support in larger corporate, academic and and government computing environments. By integrating error reporting, advanced search capabilities and remote control softwares into one package, we can offer a complete solution for anyone interested in lowering tech support costs, while improving response time and support quality.[PAGEBREAK]
Tweaknews

I was looking at Symantec's official website and came across this virus. I check Symantec.com a lot to see what's out there, but most viruses do very little damage- this one's a killer.

Trojan.Fatkill is a DOS program that overwrites the File Allocation Table of the hard disk so that it becomes corrupted. This may result in the computer being unable to restart.

Both the wild and distribution on this virus are low, however, so there is an extremely low chance that you will be effected by it. Remember to keep your virus definitions updated, and even if you have an auto-protect feature on your anti-virus, it's good to run scans on your system frequently.

For more information on Trojan.Fatkill and other viruses, click Here.

According to The Age, KaZaA now comes with a trojan horse and no, it doesn't come with TROJAN MAN!!![PAGEBREAK]
KaZaA Media Desktop is software bought by Sharman in January that lets computer owners swap music and other digital content. Technology boffins call it filesharing or peer-to-peer (P2P) because users communicate directly with each other.

Hidden inside KaZaA, however, is Altnet - Trojan software that aims to harness the spare processing, storage and communications power of the millions of computers connected to KaZaA's FastTrack network, a concept known as "distributed computing".

The Age

Has the scoop on the new Intel chipsets. Yeah, the ones that come with graphics integrated.

The D850EMV2 uses the 850E chipset and therefore RDRAM memory, and supports the 533MHz bus. Intel is describing this as a low volume high performance board for enthusiasts for the CAD and modelling.

The 845EBG2 family adds ICH4 and 533MHz support for DDR 266 memory types. At first. This is aimed at people building machines with add-in AGP cards.

GameSpot UK has a preview of the new Warcraft, version 3![PAGEBREAK]
Thanks to its extensive beta testing program, much of the recent focus on WarCraft III has been on the multiplayer aspect, but that's only one part of the game. The whole storyline, the introduction to the new races - Night Elf, Undead and Demon - and the progression of the Human and Orc timelines are all encapsulated in the single-player campaign. Unlike WarCraft II, but like its sister product StarCraft, you won't just play the campaign as a race that you choose from the outset, you'll be exposed to all four of the playable races in WarCraft III (the Demons being the only one to remain computer-only), and with methods and tactics varying considerably for each one it should prove engrossing and constantly challenging. We recently had a demo of the single-player game, and a chat with Bill Roper, Blizzard's director of developer relations.

GameSpot UK

From the creators of Star Office comes the new and improved Open Office. The Open Office suite will lay the ground work for future version of Star Office as well.[PAGEBREAK]
Pre packaged downloads here


Source code here

It is funny to think that MIT would take Microsoft's side. But, whatever, his arguements are still flawed.

Stuart Madnick, professor of information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the states' demand for a version of Windows that can be customized by computer makers and other software makers would be difficult to achieve and sap resources devoted to improving the operating system.[PAGEBREAK]
Read More at CNET

X-bit has a post up about some potential new information of future AMD cpus.

They were showcasing two servers built with Sledgehammer processors (Opteron) and two workstations connected to them built on ClawHammer processors. They used 64bit Windows Server OS version for both and were running IIS and Terminal Server software. On the client systems they were running 64bit Internet Explorer. Also AMD demonstrated how well these systems coped with 32bit applications.

According to AMD officials, ClawHammer DP and SledgeHammer processors will use the same Socket 900+ and feature the same amount of HyperTransport (HT) channels: 3. As you remember, SledgeHammer is planned to come out in Q1 2003, and ClawHammer – in Q4 2002.

20 months isn't that long. But it isn't that important that he wrote the virus itself, it is important that the great creator of software has so many security flaws.

THE AUTHOR OF THE Melissa virus received a sentence of 20 months in federal prison and a $5,000 fine in a federal court today.
David Smith (33), apologised for creating the virus in a court today and his cooperation with the authorities after he was arrested saved him a possible five years prison sentence.

He was arrested in 1999 and pleaded guilty late that year to some specimen charges.

According to the Wall St Journal, Smith made the viruses in his flat and using a stolen password posted files in various alt groups which contained the virus.

Melissa helped expose both the inadequate state of security in some Microsoft software and also the unpreparedness of many corporate and other users for such an event happening.

Melissa mailed itself to the first 50 names in Microsoft's Outlook's address book

Preview versions of the Macromedia MX products have been posted on their site. This is not beta releases. These are full version previews.

download page

I knew it was a majority, but 95% is impressive.

According to Web analysis firm OneStat.com, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is, by far, the dominant Web browser, with over 95 percent of the market.

full article

This is likely to change many time before SP1 is released. I don't even think MS knows what it really plans to do.

In yesterday's WinInfo Daily UPDATE article titled "Next-Gen Windows Rumors Heat Up," I discussed a report from "Microsoft Windows XP--The Official Magazine" that described Windows XP Service Pack (SP1) and a purported follow-up release called XP Second Edition (SE). This publication is the second to publish information about an XP SE release since I speculated that such a product was possible back in January. However, Microsoft says XP SE isn't on the schedule. "There are no plans for Windows XP Second Edition," a Microsoft representative told me yesterday.

Microsoft will release XP SP1 this fall, and then begin the beta program for the next Windows version (code-named Longhorn). But Longhorn isn't set to ship until sometime in 2004, leaving an empty release slot in late 2003. The fact that Microsoft has shipped a new consumer Windows product every year since 1995 has led to speculation about XP SE.

An Israeli software firm has discovered a flaw in Netscape and Mozilla software that allows code hidden in a Web page to read files from the user's PC. The bug is a more serious variant of one patched in Microsoft's Internet Explorer in February.

[PAGEBREAK]
According to the report, verified by other developers, XMLHttpRequest doesn't properly check the security settings for some types of data requests in a Web page, allowing them, if properly disguised, to request data from the user's hard drive. The Internet Explorer bug required an attacker to know the name of a file on the user's PC in order to exploit that file, but the Mozilla bug also allows the contents of directories on the local drive to be listed.

GreyMagic Software report

There is no patch for this yet.

Sun will lose Ed Zander, its president and chief operating officer in the summer.

Zander, 55, will step down on July 1. Sun CEO Scott McNealy will take on Zander's duties. Zander will stay on to assist McNealy with the transition, among other things, for the rest of the calendar year, the company said. - CNET

The heatsink forum contest is nearing its final days! You better get your posts in soon. Simple rules can be found here.

Want to play video games for cash? I do...[PAGEBREAK]
That's your job if you sign up here on May 13th.

w00t!

Finally, another patch.

HomeLAN - Since all of you worked at Dynamix on the Tribes game series, how does it feel to "come home again" for want of a better phrase?



Jeff Tunnell - Our first priority is, of course, GarageGames. We do whatever is best to further the long term development of our vision for helping indie gamers. Working on this Tribes 2 "update" helps this effort in many ways. Beyond that, we still feel a connection to the Tribes community and it feels good to help it along.[PAGEBREAK]
Read more at HomeLan Fed

Coolermaster ATCS 200 Version 2
Coolermaster have been around in the case world for some time now and the ATCS 200 was one of the first cases they released, so why are we reviewing this case again? Well Coolermaster have recently announced major price drops on the ATCS 200 and 201 and the new models are slightly different from the old ones. I am going to see what changes have been made and whether they improve the case or not.

AMD 760MPX Chipset Overview
As a precursor to our upcoming MSI K7D Master review we thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the underlying technology that makes the board possible, in particular the chipset. AMD are a relative newcomer to the multi-processor arena with AMD CPU's traditionally used in uni-processor systems and it's only recently with the launch of the AMD 760MP and the chipset we are covering today, the 760MPX that AMD have offered a multi processor chipset for use with their CPU's.

Looks as though the HP takeover of Compaq will happen.

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - A Delaware court on Tuesday ruled in favor of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HWP.N) and against dissident shareholder Walter Hewlett, clearing the path for HP's $18 billion purchase of No. 2 personal computer maker Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ.N). - EETimes

Via Hardware has a review of the MX440 offering from MSI.

Today we are going to take a closer look at one of the cards used in those tests - the MSI G4MX440-T (MS-8861). As the name suggests, this card is based on the GeForce4 MX440 graphics solution and is targeted at those who are looking for a good 3D card but are on an even more constrained budget. The MSI card will run you just under $100, and is easier on your wallet than a Ti4400 or Ti4600 card. But what about performance? Will it keep you happy, and is it worth your money? Read on to find out.

Carbon nanotubes will be the future of heatsinks. They offer a great deal of thermal conductivity over todays heatsinks.

He found that the light restructured the tubes into horn-shaped configurations, surprising since carbon bonds need temperatures between 1,500°C and 2,000°C to break and reform. Also, multiple-walled carbon nanotubes, carbon soot and samples of Buckminsterfullerene (C60) were not affected by the light, which came from an ordinary photographic flash lamp. Ignition in the presence of oxygen required a local temperature of 600°C to 700°C, which could be achieved at a threshold illumination of 100 milliwatts/cm2.

Interesting stuff, more can be found here<

PDA watches are finally coming down the pike. Here is what ZDNet had to say.

The watch has 190KB of memory -- the equivalent of 1,100 contacts, 800 appointments, 5,000 to-do notes or 350 memos. It uses an application on the Palm device, which can be installed directly from the Wrist PDA, to customize which information to relay to the watch's memory. It is also capable of displaying the time and date. It better display the time and date, it is a watch.

ZDNet

Hexus.net has a review of the 1.8aGhz.
The move to 0.13 micron along with all the benefits including reduced cost, reduced power consumption, reduced heat and the overclocking possibilities make the Northwood a very attractive proposition at the moment. The cheaper CPU's are excellent overclockers and the cost per unit is quite low for an Intel CPU although the 2.2 is still very costly.

And AMDWorld???? has a review of the same chip.
I want to cut and paste something from their review, but they don't allow to highlight...

I just got this in my email this morning. Everyone that registered thier domain with Go Daddy should be careful.

Dear Valued Go Daddy customer,

Tuesday morning, alert Go Daddy customers notified me that another scammer is after your personal information. Our legal team is already working with the FBI to take any and all appropriate action.

In the meantime, I want to make sure you're informed and protected. Here are the details of the scam:

Someone is sending emails to our recent .US domain registrants. The emails are disguised as coming from " sales@godaddy.com ". This is a legitimate Go Daddy email address, but these emails are not coming from us.

The scammer's email instructs recipients to divulge - via fax - their Go Daddy account login, user name and password; their Social Security Number; and proof of address. The pretence provided is that this information is needed to verify eligibility for the .US domain. Again, the scammers are requesting this information be sent to a fax number in Nevada.

I want you to know two things: First, Go Daddy would never ask for this information, in any form, period. We'd never ask for your Social Security number. And we never ask you to fax or mail us your personal information.

Second, the scammers did not get your email contact information from Go Daddy. Scam artists constantly probe the "Whois" database, the central repository of ownership information for all domain name owners. (You can think of the Whois database as being the Internet equivalent of your local County Recorder's office. Real estate ownership information is required by law to be public; it's the same with domain name ownership

I won't speculate as to the intent of these scammers, but it can't be good. So please: If you receive one of the emails I've described above (or any other communication that makes you suspicious in the future) please do not respond to them! Instead, forward them to the special address I've set
up: alert@godaddy.com

Your best protection against scammers is awareness. So please stay on guard, and if you receive any communication that strikes you as suspicious, forward it to alert@godaddy.com

The Inquirer has put up a review of nVidia and ATI's latest offerings for the high end Quadro and FireGL brandings in the workstation market. You can check it out here.

Chris at SocketA has reviewed the KT333 offering from Soyo.

Soyo is back with the latest in their popular Dragon series with the KT333 Dragon Ultra. As the name alludes this board uses VIA's KT333 chipset which adds DDR333 support. Will this new offering be as impressive as the K7V Dragon Plus and K7V Dragon? We will no soon, but first lets take a quick look at the board.

Warp2Search reviews the Lian Li PC-6083A.

And I'm glad to see Warp2Search back up and running.

Nowadays personal computers are almost an embedded part of the electronic equipment in a household. PC's as other accessories represent a picture of the personal taste of their owner and, especially if custom build, these are a unique piece. Add to it that many enthusiasts are looking for a PC case with lots of space, good handling and superior cooling compared to factory cases. If you do make that count you'll probably end up looking at an aluminium case. Today we will be looking at the new Lian Li PC-6083A. This case is about to hit store shelves and retailers in June. I would like to thank James Wu of Lian Li for providing the test case.