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August 27, 2008
Some laptops aboard the International Space Station are infected with a computer worm known as Gammima.AG. NASA confirmed the infection but didn't know how it occurred. The laptops in question are used to run nutritional programs and for personal email and no critical command systems are at risk. Gamma.AG was first discovered a year ago and the Symantec web site describes it as a worm that spreads through removable media and is used to steal passwords to various online games. The laptops are not equipped with anti-virus protection software, but NASA says the ISS is not directly connected to the Internet and all traffic from the ISS is scanned before being transmitted. Plans are being put in place to equip future laptops with better security systems.
As we already know, the first Intel Nehalem chips will hit under the Core i7 moniker, but what sort of motherboards can we expect to go along with them? Gigabyte has been showing a prototype Core i7 board at the NVISION 08 conference in San Jose, CA this week, which looks to cram in the features. Based on the X58 chipset, it has four PCIe x16 slots, and two more x4 (open ended) slots. That means you can stick six graphics cards in there if you so wish (12 monitors from one system would be an impressive sight). The board also supports up to 24GB of DDR3-1333 or 6GB of DDR3-1900/2000 (with overclocked 2GB DIMMS) and sports a 12-phase CPU power design. Gigabyte has apparently said there will be room for a bit of Overclocking and that they have paid special attention to ensure "workstation-class stability". Looks like there is plenty of scope for dropping a whole pile of cash here then.
As happens with seemingly every new product release these days, there have been rumors circulating about the Nikon D90 for a while now. All of those can be confirmed or put to bed as Nikon officially annouced the D90 earlier today. It is a camera that is aimed squarely at the serious end of the amateur photography spectrum, with features filtering down from some of Nikon's higher end offerings, such as low noise even at high ISO settings (which you can push as high as 6400). Key features include the 12.3 megapixel image sensor, 3 inch live view display and 11-point auto focus. One thing that does stand out is the fact that the D90 can also record 720p video at 24fps (in clips up to 5 minutes long). The video mode will work with any of your lenses, so it has plenty of potential for some artistic shooting. The D90 will set you back $999 for the body only, or $1299 with the 18-105mm f3.5/5.6 VR kit lens.
Solid state drives have continued to develop at a pace, improving in performance and reducing in cost. SSDs are particularly suited for application in the many netbooks we have seen flooding the market recently, so news that Samsung has been adjusting its production to pump out some low cost, low density drives is promising. The drives in question will come in 8, 16 and 32GB capacities and be a mere 30% the size of a 2.5" SSD. Performance isn't too bad for the SATA II equipped units either, particularly the 32GB version, which should achieve reads of 90MB/s and writes of 70MB/s. The 16GB and 8GB versions maintain the same read speeds, but write speeds drop off to 45MB/s and 25MB/s respectively. Samsung say the drives are highly cost effective to manufacture, though how friendly they will actually be on your wallet is yet to be seen. Mass production starts next month.
We all use the web to make our lives that little bit easier, but does jumping around from site to site to achieve a very simple task seem like the most efficient way to get what you want done? Mozilla labs launched a new plug-in yesterday called Ubiquity, which aims to give the user an interface to tell their browser what they want it to do. Though still in the early stages of development, Ubiquity already provides some quite useful functions. For example, if you see something on a website that you think a friend might like, instead of having to copy and paste it into a new email, you can highlight the content and tell Ubiquity you want to mail it to one of your contacts (though it is limited to GMail at the moment). The introduction video on the Mozilla Labs page explains things much more neatly than I could here, so I suggest you go and watch it. This is a plug-in that has some interesting potential, so I'll be keeping a close eye on its development.
It has been widely mentioned in reviews and by users themselves that ATI's HD 4800 series cards can get pretty toasty when used on stock cooling (largely down to issues with fan speed settings). Diamond's latest 4800 series cards should have no such issues, seeing as they ship equipped with water cooling blocks courtesy of Danger Den. HD 4850, HD 4870 and HD 4870 X2 cards under Neptune Edition branding are available in the line up, with each coming overclocked out of the box (though what those speeds will be aren't specified). Apart from the improved cooling, Diamond has also been tweaking with the firmware on the cards which it claims will allow users to push beyond normal overclocked speeds for extra performance. All three of the Neptune Edition cards should be available through System Builder Smoothcreations, NCIX, TigerDirect and Newegg starting today.
With top end GPUs getting all the media attention, it would be easy to forget that more affordable cards existed, let alone that the major GPU makers make a good chunk of profit from their low end offerings. ZOTAC's latest cards make use of NVIDIA's 9400GT GPU, with its 16 stream processors. While it may not be a gaming powerhouse, the 9400GT should help take the load of your CPU for high definition video playback while maintaining low power requirements. ZOTAC has two versions of its 9400GT available, both coming equipped with 512MB of GDDR2 memory. The ZONE edition card also features a passive heatsink for silent operation. Pricing and availability of the cards isn't mentioned.
August 26, 2008
29.1% of honest, hard-working, computer-toting citizens fall prey to internet spam. Either voluntarily or by accident, the amount of people succumbing to the endless stream of Spam seems to be growing, says a survey from Marshal, a security firm. This number has grown from 20% in 2004. I'm assuming this is because of the older generation that has just begun to learn about the "internet" actually thinking that the items in the bulk folder are important. Among, the many products sold on the internet, Spam usually advertises such things as sexual paraphernalia, “legal” software, adult “items” and luxury accessories. These items are usually pirated or imitation brands ,cough *Kirkland signature* cough. Even with all the CanSpam laws and email filters, the amount of Spam has doubled since last year.
Here at OCC we've been fortunate enough to review two cases from NZXT with the most recent being the Guardian 921 case. Now NZXT has announced the latest entry in its lineup with the Whisper. As you might have guessed from the name, the Whisper is engineered for silent performance. Designed to deliver performance without sacrificing silence, the Whisper is an full-tower gaming chassis featuring sound-dampening 10mm foam pads on both sides as well as the top and bottom panel. Coupled with rubber grommets for mounting the hard drives and a padded PSU holder, the Whisper offers significantly reduced noise levels. Seeing as it's targeted toward gamers and enthusiasts it also sports plenty of space with room for 9 hard drives and 6 5.25" bays and room for the latest oversized video cards. With cable management, screwless installation and 4 fans the Whisper will make a great start for your next gaming rig. The Whisper carries a MSRP of $139.99 US and will become available in September.
In a high-tech version of the man-bites-dog story, Mac clone builder Psystar has gone on the offensive against Apple. The Miami-based company was originally sued by Apple for building computers that came with its Leopard operating system pre-installed. Instead of rolling over, Psystar retained the services of a high profile Silicon Valley law firm that had successfully fought Apple in the past. Today Psystar returned fire by filing a countersuit against Apple claiming it is in violation of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, specifically the fact that Apple's EULA forbids installing the Mac OS X operating system on non-Apple hardware, effectively bundling the hardware and operating system which Psystar is claiming is unlawful restraint of trade.
German scientists have released the results of a new study indicating cows tend to orient themselves in a roughly north-south direction when grazing and resting. Using satellite images from Google Earth, the researchers counted 8,510 cows from over 300 herds worldwide and found that roughly two thirds of the animals were lined up on a more or less north-south axis, suggesting cows may have a sense of magnetic direction. Because the pictures were taken on generally clear days and at different times of the day, environmental effects were minimized. The resolution of the images was not detailed enough to determine which end of the animal was pointing north, however. Growing up on a farm we had lots of cows and I can't ever remember noticing this particular phenomenon. Not that anyone would have really cared about it to tell you the truth, which leads me to agree with one observation from the article and that is the research has no practical value whatsoever.
August 25, 2008
A bizarre tale of a what can happen when a virtual relationship goes sour could be funny if it wasn't so scary. Apparently it all began when a North Carolina woman, Kimberly Jernigan, met a 52-year old man through the virtual world Second Life. After establishing a virtual relationship online, the pair finally met in the real world. The alleged victim, in this case the gentleman, ended the relationship. In a classic case of "Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd", Jernigan set out to exact her revenge upon her hapless 'boyfriend'. First she allegedly went to the victim's place of work in an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap him at gunpoint. Not to be deterred, she returned a couple of weeks later, determined to track down his home address in Delaware. Since he had just recently moved, Jernigan posed as a postal worker and succeeded in tracking down his new place of residence. Then, with her dog in tow, she managed to cut through a screened window and break into his apartment. Armed with handcuffs, duct tape and a Taser she laid in wait for her virtual ex. When he returned home, he fled the apartment when he noticed the targeting laser dot on his chest and summoned police. When the authorities arrived they found Jernigan's dog bound with duct tape in the bathtub of the victim's apartment (apparently the dog was making too much noise). Jernigan was later spotted in a rest area on I-95 and taken in to custody. Check out her picture posted on the linked site and tell me she doesn't remind you of Kathy Bates in the movie Misery.
According to a report by the Sunday Herald, hackers recently made of with the personal details of over 8 million customers of Best Western, the hotel chain. Data apparently included names and adresses, credit card details, telephone numbers and place of employment and were garnered from reservation details from over 1300 of the company's continental European hotel locations since 2007. The breach occured when a hacker gained login details to the reservation system after installing a trojan on one of the company's computers. These details were then sold off, leaving the buyers able to download the system’s 2007 - 2008 records. Best Western has since closed the breach and is continuing to investigate the issue, though it is estimated that the data stolen could be worth in excess of £2.8 billion (over $5 billion).
edit - It seems that Best Western are calling the reporting of the Sunday Herald "grossly unsubstantiated" and are claiming that only 13 customer records were actually exposed.
ZOTAC today announced the introduction of NITRO, a hardware based overclocking controller compatible with all of the company's GeForce series graphics cards. The premise of NITRO is to allow overclocking adjustments, which are normally made through software, to be made using a hardware controller connected to a USB port. The controller itself is a unit and dock with a VFD screen that displays clockspeeds for Core, Memory and Shaders, as well as temperature of the card and the fan speed. Three buttons on the controller allow you to adjust clock speeds (in 5MHz increments) and fan speeds, even if that happens to be during actual gameplay. Pricing and availability currently unknown.
When Open Tech announced it was building computers capable of running most popular operating systems, it was implied to mean Apple’s OS X as well although the company was not offering to sell its clones with the OS pre-installed a la Psystar. Now, just a month later, the only thing available for sale on the Open Tech web site is the company itself. You can have everything including the web site, the company name, trade secrets etc. for only $50,000. To make things even easier, the web site offers a PayPal link. Once your payment has been processed, Open Tech promises to send you all the information by e-mail or fax. This doesn’t sound fishy at all. Or should I say ‘phishy’?
For those of you who don’t know, CUDA is Nvidia’s version of the C language.CUDA's new version, 2.0, allows programs to harness much more of the graphic card’s potential and help use it to accelerate non-3D programs such as Photoshop. In fact, developers have gone so much as included a plug-in example for Photoshop to illustrate how to efficiently connect the two. Nvidia states that this would provide “dramatic performance improvements”.
When AMD announced its second quarter results last month, it also disclosed it was exiting the digital TV market. Today AMD announced a deal that enables Broadcom to buy the business unit for $192.8 million. The digital TV unit was part of the consumer electronics piece AMD picked up when it purchased ATI in 2006. The unit had been underperforming and AMD has been looking for ways to stem its losses associated with the ATI buyout. Shedding the digital TV unit will allow AMD to focus more on it core processor line of business. The deal also helps AMD with an infusion of cash while allowing it to reduce expenses for headcount and R&D. The move allows Broadcom to strengthen is digital TV lineup and both companies expect to finalize the deal some time in the fourth quarter.
Input devices have evolved greatly over the years, from keyboards to joysticks to mice...even to devices controlled by eye movements or your mind. So it goes without saying that the next evolution in input devices would come in the form of...your tongue. This isn't to control an on-screen avatar or aim your gun in games though, but instead to provide a new way for disabled people to control key components of their every day lives, such as maneuvering a wheelchair or turning on a light. The aim of the device, dubbed the Tongue Drive System, is to transform the mouth into a virtual computer; the teeth become the keyboard, and the tongue manipulates it all as a joystick of sorts. Why the tongue? One of the main reasons is because the tongue and its functionality is often spared in paralyzing accidents, as the tongue is attached to the brain and not the spinal cord. In addition, the tongue is flexible, sensitive and tireless, making it an ideal instrument for more complicated actions and prolonged use. The system uses a small magnet placed under the tip of the tongue, and the movement is tracked by sensors on the side of each cheek, which then sends data to a receiver atop a headgear. Software then converts those signals into commands for various devices, like a wheelchair. The device is still in its infancy, but it's already promising to researchers, as well as testers.
August 23, 2008
Apparently, Hillcrest Laboratories in Maryland thought of the ingenious architectural masterpiece behind the Wii-mote before Nintendo did. However, almost two years later, news of their “stolen” creation hits the media. Interestingly enough, Nintendo-spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said that they have yet to be sued. In proper terms, Hillcrest stated that Nintendo violated its patents involving “…technology for a handheld three-dimensional pointing device and a display interface system for organizing graphic content on a TV”. Hillcrest has brought its lawsuit to the District Court in Maryland. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Intel’s baby brother of processors, the Atom, was revealed to be made for desktops in a dual core fashion. This Atom processor will debut in September and will be preconfigured with a D945GCLF2 motherboard which is based around the 945GC Express Chipset. Sporting around 8W of power usage, the dual core Atom will have 1 MB of L2 cache and will use the 45nm process as well as possibly include Intel’s signature Hyperthreading technology. For a processor with such low power usage, it is only normal to assume that it will have a mobile variant. As for the motherboard included (D945GCLF2), it sports a GMA 950 integrated graphics (Crysis cruncher anyone?), upgradability to 2GB of RAM, gigabit Ethernet and SATA and PATA connectors.
August 22, 2008
If you are anything like me, then websites which make heavy use of Javascript may get slightly frustrating at times, slowing down pages that would otherwise be responsive. The good news is that Mozilla has been working on some new optimization to greatly increase the performance of Firefox's Javascript engine. The optimization tactic called 'tracing' has seen performance increases of between 20 and 40 fold in some cases, and believe the work being put down will pave the way for developers to use Javascript for writing full applications. It should also increase Firefox performance in general, as a number of components and extensions are coded in Javascript. The code should see inclusion in the next update to Firefox (3.1), and it is worth noting that Apple have also been implementing performance improvements, which are due to find their way into Safari 4.
We've been seeing plenty of interesting things coming out of the Intel Developer Forum and today is no different. Intel has been showing off some 16GB RAM sticks made by Hynix, which claim to use technology from MetaRAM to get the extra chips onto the modules. If that wasn't impressive enough, the sticks were being demoed in a server system with 2 Nehalem CPUs and a total of 160GB RAM (ten of the 16GB sticks). Seeing a task manager screenshot with over 100GB of RAM in use would certainly be something most users can only dream of. We can only guess at when you might actually be able to buy modules with such capacity, but let us hope it isn't too far away.
When Intel officially released its low power Atom processor at Computex in June, demand was already exceeding supply as more companies announced plans to build mobile Internet devices using the chip. Feeding off the popularity of Assustek's Eee ultra-portable device, many other companies rushed to put out devices of their own including the MSI Wind and the Acer Aspire One. That put a dent in the availability of the diminutive processor forcing Intel to ramp up production. That's a good problem for Intel to have as long as the can deliver on its promises. Apparently the shortage is continuing and Asustek has been devoting their limited supply to its higher end Eee PCs leaving it no choice but to turn to alternative sources for processors. Fortunately for Intel, that source turns out to be the Celeron and not a competitor’s product such as Via's Nano chip. Asustek said it will be using the older Celeron M 353 in its 904HD and 1000HD models. The Celeron happens to be cheaper and those models are targeted to price-sensitive markets.
Facing budget problems, the state of New York passed a bill last April requiring online retailers to collect and remit sales tax on items sold to New York residents. Newegg began complying when the law took effect June 1, but has reversed that decision after reviewing the situation and listening to customer feedback. Generally states cannot tax businesses or require them to collect sales taxes unless they have a physical presence in that state. Most states require residents to report online and catalog purchases and pay taxes on them but since few do, New York was looking to reap around $50 million in unpaid taxes with this bill. Amazon is currently embroiled in a legal fight with New York claiming the bill is unconstitutional. The state claims that Amazon technically has a presence in the state by way of its affiliates program as some of those who participate are located in New York.
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