W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for November 2004

Hardware

A guide to what is ahead in PCs, software, mobile gadgets, home electronics, and more -- link.

10 toys we grown-up cannot live without -- link.

Systems

How to get the most desktop for your dollar at any price -- link.

Future-proof your DIY PC -- link.

Make a Half Life 2 system on a budget -- link. Get a cheap HL2 PC in the USA, UK.

Intel’s Pentium-M processor on the desktop is a mixed bag at this time, but with more positives than negatives when one looks at the big picture ... and the idea clearly has a lot of potential -- review. Dothan Revisted: Focusing on gaming performance confirms that the Dothan is a superb gaming CPU across the board. The Pentium-M can typically perform within 5% of top of the line Intel/AMD processors while running at one fourth the heat production levels, on antiquated platform technologies! -- review. Discussion here.

Build yourself a great Pentium M desktop -- link.

FIC’s Condor is an attractive and unique new form factor (quasi-SFF) PC, but is based on the dead end 865G (socket 478, AGP rather than PCIe) chipset -- review.

Gateway’s new E-Series PCs use Intel’s BTX chassis design to help machines run cooler and quieter -- link.

Media Center PCs may promise yet another computing utopia, but they are nothing more than a self-replicating virus that will wipe out a cherished way of life -- link.

The AnandTech Linux Xbox PC experiment ... is at least interesting -- link.

Advice sought on notebook backpacks -- link.

AOpen shows off next-generation Centrino ‘Sonoma’ laptop -- link.

Shuttle’s pico-BTX barebones chassis, the XPC SB86i, is the first “shoebox” barebones system using the BTX form factor.

Building a MicroBTX system -- link.

Faster, smaller, better ... handheld computing remains at the forefront of innovation -- link.

CPUs/motherboards/chipsets

Dual core chips herald start of digihome wars, abandoning the megahertz madness -- link.

Q4 industry update -- link.

Processor fabrication: How a CPU is built -- link.

AnandTech CPU and motherboard price guides for November -- link.

Build an $800 gaming PC -- link.

-- AMD

ATI unveils integrated, discrete Radeon Xpress chipsets -- link. ATI’s Radeon Xpress 200 chipset proves itself a contender in the AMD K8 chipset market, bringing PCI Express and a rebirth of the integrated graphics solution for the non-OEM market -- preview.

ATI’s Radeon Xpress 200 series (formerly RX480 discrete graphics/RS480 with integrated graphics) impresses greatly, bringing performance, PCI Express and DX9 to the Athlon 64 chipset market -- review 1, review 2.

MSI’s K8N NEO2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra chipset Socket 939 motherboard is great performance-wise, while having a few layout issues -- review.

AMD move to use Singapore foundry Chartered Semiconductor to make some of its processors is chip insurance policy -- link.

Athlon-64 PCI Express shootout: MSI ATI Xpress 200P chipset-based motherboard goes head-to-head with nVidia’s nForce4 Ultra motherboard -- link.

AMD’s “Winchester” 90nm CPUs run much cooler and consume far less energy than their 130nm brethren, with no performance loss -- link.

Dell puts itself before its customers in failing to offer AMD-based PCs and servers -- link. AMD price spikes as Dell says um, ah maybe -- link. Dell “to add” AMD CPUs to product line (CEO) -- link.

Gigabyte’s K8NXP-9, the first nForce 4-based motherboard to appear, shows impressive features and performance -- review.

-- Intel

Free advice for Intel -- link.

Candid Intel webcast heralds big changes and challenges for the chip giant -- link.

Intel readies “East Fork” digital home PC platform (think Centrino for the living room) -- link 1, link 2.

Intel shares Itanium 2 plans -- link 1, link 2.

Abit and Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel have partnered to produce what is arguably the fastest Intel gaming motherboard that you can buy -- link.

Sales of laptops using Intel’s Pentium M are picking up, a year and a half after its introduction -- link.

Intel’s 3.8GHz Pentium 4 570J leaves AMD on top of the performance heap -- review 1, review 2.

Intel’s long awaited BTX motherboard form factor will require new cases, power supplies and motherboards ... while reducing size, fans needed, and noise -- link. Discussion here. Here comes BTX. Should you care? -- link.

-- Other

Sun’s Niagara is a family of CPUs that blurs the lines between chip, CPU and thread, something that could have a profound effect on how software is written and used (or it could flop) -- link.

G6: More POWER on the way? -- link.

Dual-core IBM PowerPC “to ship in single-core form”; ex-Motorola chip division Freescale is continuing work on the G4-class MPC7448, its first 90nm PowerPC chip -- link.

Graphics

Open Source graphic card project seeks experts -- link.

AnandTech’s November video and memory price guides -- link.

ATI’s next-generation 90nm product ‘R520’ taped out -- link.

nVidia’s new GeForce Go 6800 laptop GPU is fast but hot -- review 1, review 2.

nVidia’s GeForce 6800 Go vs. ATI’s M28: Let the mobile GPU wars begin -- reviews.

ASUS AX800 XT/TVD graphics card boasts tremendous speed and a gorgeous accessories bundle, at a very high price -- review.

Microsoft’s certification puts graphics innovations under fire -- link.

New nVidia Linux 32 and 64 bit video drivers available -- link.

Compared to the $200-300 AGP cards available today, the GeForce 6600GT AGP cannot be beat, thanks to nVidia’s PCI Express-to-AGP bridge chip -- review.

Memory, storage

AnandTech’s November optical and magnetic storage price guides are out -- link.

Hitachi’s Desktar 250GB SATA HD is a mixed blessing and indicates that SATA is still an emerging technology that has not yet reached its potential. Cost per GB is also more than for parallel ATA drives -- review.

Western Digital introduces new SATA HDs from RAID Edition family -- review.

DVD burner roundup: dual layer and 16X DVD+R -- reviews.

Blu-ray next-generation DVD technology still has some kinks to be worked out -- link.

Which is storage devices are better, micro(hard)drives or flash memory? -- link.

Billions, trillions, even quadrillions of bytes are piling up in computer centers. What to do with it all? -- link.

Miscellaneous components and periferals

Zalman’s ZM80D-HP enables your graphics card to run noiselessly (or merely very quietly for powerful hot-running cards) -- review.

Thermaltake’s Silent PurePower Fan-less 350w PSU uses a combination of heat pipes and external copper heat exchangers to dissipate the heat away from internal components. It does run silent, but also runs hot under load -- review.

Thermaltake’s VA3000 Tsunami Dream PC case is stylish and well-designed, although the fans are a bit louder than is ideal -- review.

5 cool Pentium 4 coolers compared, and fail to offer a persuasive argument for not sticking to Intel’s default cooler -- reviews.

Vantec’s Ion2 350w PSU runs quiet with its 120mm fan, but far from silently -- review.

Gigabyte’s 3d Rocket Cooler (PCU-22SE) is well worth the $60 or so it costs -- review.

Swiftech’s H20-120 Rev2 Athlon 64 water cooling kit is effective ... at a price -- review.

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook audio solution brings the entire desktop PC feature set to laptop gamers and audio enthusiasts -- review.

Klipsch’s $100 ProMedia Ultra 2.0 speakers put desktop-quality sound in a package you can lug around -- review.

The art of cable folding -- link.

Non-graphics PCI Express products start to appear -- link.

Canon’s affordable (well, ~$1600) SLR 20D is shaking up the digital camera community, producing low-noise images that rich with detail -- review.

Wireless USB standard pledged by year’s end, may bring world of wireless peripherals to market -- link.

Operating Systems

Mac vs. PC: A history lesson -- link.

Linux

Feather Linux: The Swiss Army Knife of LiveCDs -- link.

What is the best Live Linux CD for Christmas giving? -- link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Magic” series latest -- Looking for strings, An extreme term makeover, A OneFinger salute, prompt mods, Colorize your prompt, Ispell. Series index here.

Adobe dipping toes into desktop Linux waters -- link. Discussion here.

Fun with video effects on Linux -- link.

Some of the fun has gone out of things for the Linux Today editor -- link.

Where have all the HOWTOs gone? -- link.

Using a non-default GUI (in Red Hat and Kin) -- link.

Installing the Linux Business Desktop (sample chapter from Marcel Gagne’s Moving to the Linux Business Desktop) -- link.

Proprietary software vendors’ licensing terms driving users towards Linux -- link.

Too many cooks in Linux? -- link.

The Bash shell and beyond -- link.

Linux spread continues in the Caribbean -- link.

Using DSL with Linux -- link.

Desktop Linux’s final hurdles -- editorial.

Interview with Novell’s Ted Haeger -- link.

Is “enterprise” Linux broken? -- link.

Jon “maddog” Hall on the State of Linux -- link.

Tinyminds.org: A not-tiny Linux site -- link.

Bash shell and beyond -- link.

Moving to Linux in small steps -- link.

TransGaming Technologies Cedega 4.1.1 is an excellent program for running your Windows games on Linux -- review.

SELinux: NSA’s Open Source Security Enhanced Linux -- book review.

DriverLoader and NDISWrapper gift-wrap your wireless Windows devices -- link.

Unifying Linux package management -- link.

Point and Click Linux includes the book itself, a SimplyMepis Linux Live CD, and a DVD video guide for getting started. The book is for the interested beginner, not the power user -- book review.

Linux on a flash drive -- link.

BSDs, other Unixes

The state of BSD -- link.

Interview with Hubert Feyrer of NetBSD -- link.

What is New in FreeBSD 5.3 -- link. FreeBSD looks ahead to 6.0 -- link.

FreeBSD for Linux users -- link.

Painless FreeBSD system updating -- link.

An encrypted file system on a USB thumbdrive (FreeBSD) -- link.

OpenBSD team members interviewed about upcoming version 3.6 -- link.

OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement -- review.

Sun announces Solaris 10 -- link. Sun stares down Red Hat with Solaris 10 -- link.

The sun is setting on Sun -- opinion.

Solaris 10 looks to be a fine OS, but it may be too little, too late to help Sun regain its market share -- link.

Windows and DOS

Windows XP Media Center 2005 connects smoothly with video and audio equipment -- link.

Windows declared safe for Royal Navy -- link.

Why Microsoft paid Novell half a billion bucks -- link.

Who needs Windows? -- link.

Hacking Windows XP excerpt: Speed up your network and Internet access -- link.

Intel aims for Microsoft’s Linux jugular -- link.

The verdict on WinXP SP2? -- link.

Other OS’s

Running Mac OS X Panther -- book review.

OpenVMS survives and thrives -- link.

Xen enables you to run multiple operating systems images concurrently on the same hardware, securely partitioning the resources of the machine between them. Version 2.0 released -- link.

The future of BeFree -- link.

PearPC .4pre released and speed comes along with it -- link.

Ekush tries to pull a fast one on ReactOS, Wine, and other projects -- link.

News on the Open Desktop Workstation, a good way to have many OS’s on good and cheap PowerPC hardware. -- link.

hOp, a Haskell OS -- link.

Applications

Macromedia introduces special version of Contribute to simplify creation of eBay stores -- link.

Optimizing Apache -- link.

Which Open Source Wiki implementation works for you? -- link.

The Grumpy Editor’s guide to free documentation licenses -- link.

Disk partition editing with GNU Parted and GParted -- link.

Gina Fant-Saez builds the global music studio -- link.

Google gives Gmail POP3 support, plans antivirus-scanning feature -- link. Yahoo! is nipping at Google’s heels on email -- link.

Welkin is a general-purpose RDF browser -- link.

AnandTech guide to better photos: composition -- link.

Wired, a music production and creation system -- link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Mozilla launches Firefox 1.0 -- link 1, link 2. Mozilla mulls desktop search features for Firefox -- link.

10 extensions to enhance Firefox -- link. Firefox: the searcher’s browser -- link.

Firefox 1.0 is end users’ dream machine -- link.

Mozilla president browses the future -- link.

Inkulator 9000 renders pen-and-ink style drawings from 3D meshes -- link.

Digital Camera Poster Creator 2.03 does what it promises -- review.

A sneak peek at Trillian 3.0: The instant messaging consolidation service adds audio and video chat -- link.

Konfabulator comes to Windows -- link. Konfabulator, DesktopX and the widget wars -- link.

Getting the most from OpenOffice.org Writer fields -- link.

$100 entry-level video editing apps from Adobe and Pinnacle bring plenty of editing power to desktop directors -- review.

Blinkx unveils smarter desktop search, but only on Windows 2000 and XP desktops -- link.

The GIMP gets ready for 2.2 -- link.

Programming

Introduction to Unicode -- link.

GNUstep is a cross-platform, object-oriented environment composed of frameworks, tools, and servers (daemons). Version 1.10.1 is out -- link.

InstallShield X creates universal software installers for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BSD and others -- link.

What version of GCC? -- link.

Find (Open) Source code fast on Koders.com -- link.

The Blacksmith and the Bookkeeper posits that the postmodern programmer (not just those domiciled in the U.S.) shares much with the blacksmith of old, and will become just as extinct in relatively short order -- link.

Tutorial D, a language designed to overcome of the shortcomings of SQL -- link.

The state of natural language programming -- link.

Joel on Software is a collection of essays from the Joel Spolsky’s Joel on Software web log. It is a must-read for developers, product managers and those who want more insight into the world of developing software -- book review.

Graphical user interface, Web design

Creating modern, CSS-based websites by hand -- link.

Creating dynamic graphs using SVG -- link.

Introducing S5, “a slide show format based entirely on [standards-compliant] XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript” -- link.

The Open Clip Art Library project announces their first widely-publicized release, containing over 2,500 unique vector images in SVG format -- link.

10 Years of OpenStep celebrated -- link.

The Independent Qt Tutorial has been updated with a brand new chapter on lists, trees and tables -- link.

Delphi is experiencing a revival -- link.

User-centric GUI design explained to all -- link.

C/C++/Java family

Decompiling Java -- book review.

SWT is an emerging Java GUI toolkit that gives developers access to the OS’s native widgets in a cross-platform manner -- link.

Scripting and high-level languages

How to take a text file, evaluate the content using PHP, and then display results on a browser “dashboard” -- link.

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL, From Novice to Professional will replace many other PHP and MySQL volumes -- book review.

Extending Ruby with C -- link.

Zope launches next-generation application server with version X3.0.0 (the “X” indicates lack of backward compatibility with Zope 2) -- link.

Wing, an IDE for Python, version 2.0 is available -- link.

Gambas offers an easy IDE and a BASIC interpreter that allow the user to create both graphical and console programs, database applications, and communications programs -- link.

30th anniversary of the Pascal programming language honored -- link.

Security & Privacy

Boom times ahead for IT security profession -- link.

Anti-Bush blogger gets night visit from U.S. Secret Service -- link.

Counting the cost of security training -- link.

Antivirus subscription prices climb, as vendors try to encourage users to upgrade to a complete Internet security suite -- link.

Alleged DDoS kingpin joins FBI’s most wanted list -- link.

Security basics: Beating hackers, pirates and thieves -- link.

What does risk mean to you, Mr. Businessman? -- link.

Group investigates how easy it is to get a website taken down by complaining (falsely) to the host that it contains copyrighted material -- link.

An introduction to encryption -- link.

The fine print in an insurance policy becomes an issue when a bizarre chain of IT disasters leaves a company without a single copy of the source code to its flagship product -- link.

How scammers run rings round eBay -- link.

Holes, patches, defenses

Phishing for dummies ... hook, line and sinker -- link.

Eudora 6.2 e-mail client will help protect users from phishing scams -- link.

Heavily advertised spyware-removal tools found to be less effective than reputable free products. A couple even installed new spyware -- reviews.

10 WindowsXP SP2 flaws leave users open to hackers -- link.

Securing Windows XP -- guide.

De-worming the net -- link.

Google beta search app creates vulnerabilities that may threaten your data’s security -- link.

Spam, advertising

Beware of Yahoo! spam scam -- link.

Spammer sentenced to 9 years in jail in nation’s first-ever felony spam convictions -- link.

Beat spam using Hashcash -- link.

Miscellaneous

Three minutes with Ray Kurzwei -- link.

Flying cars, mars colonies, and cyberspace ... what ever happened to the future? -- link.

How has the USA PATRIOT Act Affected You? Slashdot readers respond -- link.

Neal Stephenson Q & A with Slashdot readers -- link.

Scientists define Murphy’s Law -- link.

Africa becoming vast frontier for free and open software -- link.

Business

Should prices for blank media and recording products include a royalty fee to copyright holders for presumed losses to piracy? -- link.

One standard, one Microsoft: how the UK National Health Service sold its choice -- link.

Stealing movies: Why the MPAA can afford to relax -- link.

Spam-maker Hormel spends to reclaim name -- link.

The new dot-com Gold Rush -- link.

The world’s patent systems need reform so that innovation can be properly rewarded -- link.

Use Linux and you will be sued, Ballmer tells governments -- link.

Interview with the founders of a small, independent record label -- link.

Novell’s case against Microsoft vis a vis WordPerfect explained -- analysis.

What is the tech jobs situation in late 2004? -- link.

The Internet

Firm says Microsoft will try to lay claim to whole Internet -- link.

Circling the wagons: the Internet politics of exclusion -- link.

ICANN changes rules so that requests for transferring a domain will be automatically approved in 5 days unless they are denied by the owner of the domain -- link 1, link 2.

The case of the incredible, disappearing website -- link.

Microsoft’s Google-killer arrives with a “whuh?” -- link.

How 5 of the new search engines stack up -- link.

Telecommunications

Cellular Nation looks perky again, judging by the US mobile industry’s recent trade show CTIA -- link.

Does Vonage have the recipe for VoIP success? -- link.

Qualcomm to build national wireless media network, would beam music and video to 3G handsets -- link.

Cisco rethinks 802.16 WiMax. UltraWideBand its longer term bet? -- link.

WiMax Operator’s Manual: Building 802.16 Wireless Networks -- link.

Individual states do not have the power to regulate VoIP, the U.S. FCC decided, but more questions remain -- link.

Rocky and Bullwinkle go wireless -- link.

SBC Communications, the second-largest Baby Bell telephone group, lowered its estimates for the cost of the advanced fibre-optic network it plans to build to compete with cable network operators offering “triple play” voice, data and video services to $4 billion -- link.

Wireless ISPs (WISPs) blaze trail for WiMAX -- link.

Roaming agreement among four of the world’s biggest wireless operators gives Wi-Fi hotspot market a boost, and users access to more than 20,000 hotspots -- link.

Akimbo wants to deliver premium television content over broadband Internet connections -- review.

Speakeasy will test a WiMax network in downtown Seattle. If successful, plans to roll out similar networks in other cities will follow -- link.

The continued advance of VoIP -- link.

FCC gives Nextel spectrum at a $5 billion discount -- link.

WiFi seeker, finder, detector roundup -- link.