 Time Names Gateses, Bono ?Persons of 2005?
The richest man in the world, Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, were named Time magazine?s ?Persons of the Year? along with Irish rocker Bono for being ?Good Samaritans? who made a difference in different ways. ?For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are Time?s Persons of the Year,? the magazine said in its Dec. 19 issue, made public on Sunday.
Managing Editor James Kelly said the three had been chosen as the people most effective at finding ways to eradicate such calamities as malaria in Africa, HIV and AIDS and the grinding poverty that kills 8 million people a year. Time also named former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton as ?Partners of the Year? for their humanitarian efforts after the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and the unlikely friendship that developed from that work.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: December 20, 2005, 4:43 pm
News Source : MSNBC
 ReplayTV to Launch TV Recording Software for PCs
Digital video recording pioneer ReplayTV plans to announce on Monday it will start selling software to allow personal computers to tune in and record live television next year in a deal with Hauppauge Digital's Hauppauge Computer Works.
Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR tuner-encoder card, which lets PCs tune in and record live television, will be sold with ReplayTV software starting next year in North America. ReplayTV, owned by D&M Holdings, said it has successfully restructured over the past year, and its digital video recorder business is "solidly profitable."
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: December 20, 2005, 4:43 pm
News Source : Reuters
MTV's Online Music Service Gets Ready To Roll
Is Sumner Redstone late to the digital music party, or is it just getting started? Redstone's Viacom will find out sometime next year, when his MTV unit will roll out its long-anticipated online music service. The company officially announced Tuesday the roll out of its Urge service in 2006, but said little else about the offering, which has been in the works for years.
In the meantime, plenty of competitors have opened shop on the Internet, to mixed results. To date, digital music sales seem to work best for companies that don't need to make money selling digital music. Apple Computer has used its store primarily as a way to push its iPods; Yahoo! has used its music-subscription service to help serve ads; and News Corp.'s MySpace simply uses lets users listen to music free of charge. Napster, the only pure-play music retailer, has yet to make a penny.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: December 15, 2005, 11:30 am
News Source : Forbes
AMD Denies Phase Out of Opteron Chips for Socket 939
Advanced Micro Devices denied on Tuesday rumours spread by a web-site regarding cancellation of production of AMD Opteron processors for servers and workstation designed for desktop-oriented 939-pin infrastructure. The company said it would continue to ship the chips for uni-processor (UP) business machines for more than a year from the time speaking.
?Socket 939 AMD Opteron 100 Series processors are in production. AMD will continue to produce Opteron 100 Series processors with ECC unbuffered memory support in 2006, and we will adjust production volumes as needed to supply our server and workstation customers,? said Brett Jacobs, a spokesman for AMD.
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: December 15, 2005, 11:29 am
News Source : Xbit Labs
Intel's Napa Wireless Platform Promises More with Less
Intel Corp. is touting its next mobile platform, dubbed Napa, as another major milestone in notebook PC history. At a session for reporters and business analysts here Tuesday, Erik Reid, product marketing director at Intel's Mobile Platforms Group, stood Yonah?the chip maker's first dual-core mobile Pentium processor?and Napa next to such advances as flat-panel displays and the chip maker's first Centrino chip bundle, which helped to jump-start the trend of pairing notebooks and wireless.
Intel claims the latest notebook technology stands to boost average performance 68 percent beyond that of its current Sonoma platform, which includes its single-core Pentium M, while reducing power consumption an average of 28 percent, extending battery life beyond the 5-hour mark, Reid said. Napa also improves wireless bandwidth and can help cut the size of a notebook by 30 percent versus today's machines, the Santa Clara, Calif., company said.
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: December 15, 2005, 11:28 am
News Source : eWeek
AMD Set to Launch New Chips After April ?06 ? Report
Advanced Micro Devices is reported to unveil its central processing units (CPUs) in the second quarter of the year 2006, after April, claims a new research note from DRAMeXchange, an analyst firm. But according to the report, the ramp of DDR2-supporting chips will be quick as the chipmaker plans to release DDR2 supporting chips for different market segments, including desktops and laptops at approximately the same timeframe.
The research note claims that AMD will only commercially launch its DDR2-supporting CPUs after April 2006 and the share of its DDR2-supported microprocessors will be 25% of all desktop and mobile CPU shipments in Q2 2005. Since AMD should ship a large proportion of its DDR2-supported CPUs to PC OEMs, limited positive impact should be posed on DDR2 demand at spot market, suggests the note.
AMD desktop and mobile processors that have built-in DDR2 SDRAM controller for mobile and desktop computers will require new infrastructure, namely sockets and mainboards. The majority of processors AMD produces are desktop processors, so, 25% share mainly consists of desktop components, which should mean that the chips will be relatively affordable, if the report is correct. According to AMD, it will launch DDR2-supporting processors, including high-end AMD Athlon 64 FX and entry-level AMD Sempron chips, for different market segments in the next 12 months.
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: December 15, 2005, 11:28 am
News Source : Xbit Labs
Sony BMG shortlisted for 'internet villain' gong
Sony BMG, the European Commission (EC) and Russia have all been nominated for this year's "internet villain" award. The annual awards - run by UK trade group ISPA - are supposed to "reflect those individuals or organisations that have either helped or hampered the interests of the Internet industry in the past year".
Past winners of the "villain" award have included BT and the Home Office. This year, though, the nominations seek their inspiration from further afield. Among the villains nominated this year are EU Commissioner Viviane Reding and her plans to extend the scope of broadcasting regulation to content delivered via the Internet.
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: December 14, 2005, 2:28 pm
News Source : The Reg
Boffins use Play-Doh to fool biometrics
Researchers from Clarkson University in New York have managed to fool biometric systems by making fingerprint copies using Play-Doh. Testing a range of biometric technologies the team created 60 fake fingers which were successfully authenticated by the combination of the fingerprint readers and their accompanying software in nine out of every 10 attempts.
"Digits from cadavers and fake fingers moulded from plastic, or even something as simple as Play-Doh or gelatin, can potentially be misread as authentic," said Stephanie Schuckers, associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clarkson University. But the research also highlighted ways of mitigating against such fraud. The team developed a technique for distinguishing live digits by detecting changing moisture patterns, successfully reducing the false detection rate to less than 10 per cent.
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: December 14, 2005, 2:27 pm
News Source : Vnunet.com
 Microsoft Security Updates: December 2005
Microsoft has just posted their security patch builletin for the month of December. As usual all required patches for your PC can be found on Windows Update. Here's a brief summary of the two patches released this month:
MS05-054: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (905915) Critical
Vulnerabilities exist in Internet Explorer, the most severe of these could allow an attacker to take complete control of an affected system.
MS05-055: Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (908523) Important
A vulnerability exists in the Windows Kernel that could allow elevation of privileges on an affected system. An attacker must have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to exploit this vulnerability.
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: December 14, 2005, 2:26 pm
News Source : Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for December
 The World Wide Web Turns 15
In celebration of 15 years of the "http" protocol, CNN has compiled its list of the 10 greatest moments of the web's first 15 years of existence. After exploding thanks to browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape, up and coming companies such as Yahoo!, Amazon, and eBay, and the dot-com boom, the WWW has become an integral part of our everyday lives. We're seeing what amounts to a second boom era, with companies such as Google and Skype picking up where upstarts Yahoo! and Hotmail left off.
Check out the list of top 10 Web moments and vote for your favorites.
News Posted by : GoogleFreak On
: December 14, 2005, 2:26 pm
News Source : CNN
 Original Xbox Game Support November 2005 update
Original Xbox? game support enables your Xbox 360? video game console to play an array of games from your original Xbox video game console. A list of games that are currently backward compatible is available here and we will continue to add support for additional games over time.
News Posted by : PCGamer On
: December 13, 2005, 3:38 pm
News Source : Microsoft
Sober worm cracked
Finnish security firm F-Secure has cracked a code used by the Sober worm, potentially allowing the company to block the worm from receiving updates.
Sober has mutated constantly since October 2003, when the first variant was picked up, with more than 20 other variants making the rounds. Last month the latest version, called Sober.Y by F-Secure (or CME-681 using US-CERT's CME naming system), was responsible for the biggest outbreak of the year, and still accounts for about 40 percent of all infections detected by F-Secure.
One of the features that has made Sober so dangerous is its ability to download new variants, instantly infecting large numbers of machines, say security experts. The current variant is expected to re-activate itself on 5 January, according to iDefense.
The downloading pattern stumped anti-virus researchers for a time because the URL used was created by a secret algorithm. "Sober has been using an algorithm to create pseudorandom URLs which will change based on date. These URLs point to free hosting servers typically operating in Germany or in Austria," said Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's manager of anti-virus research.
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: December 13, 2005, 3:37 pm
News Source : Tech World
Song sites face legal crackdown
Thanks DCrad for this submission. The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics. The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.
MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed. He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were "completely illegal". Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective".
The move comes after several years of bitter legal battles against unauthorised services allowing users to download recordings for free. Publishing companies have taken action against websites in the past, but this will be the first co-ordinated legal campaign by the MPA.
The MPA would target "very big sites that people would think are legitimate and very, very popular", Mr Keiser said.
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: December 12, 2005, 11:59 am
News Source : BBC
World Network Speed Record Broken for Third Consecutive Year
An international group of scientists and engineers have broken the world network speed record for the third consecutive year. The team consists of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers from the California Institute of Technology, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Fermilab, CERN, and the University of Michigan, and includes partners at the University of Florida, the Brookhaven National Lab, Vanderbilt University as well as international participants at the University of Manchester and UKLight in the United Kingdom, Rio de Janeiro State University, UERJ and the State Universities of S?o Paulo, USP and UNESP in Brazil, Kyungpook National University and KISTI in Korea and the KEK Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan.
The record was broken during the SuperComputing 2005 Bandwidth Challenge at a demonstration that achieved a peak throughput of 151 Gbps and recorded an official mark of 131.6 Gbps which was measured by the Bandwidth Challenge judges on 17 of 22 fiber optic links used by the team. This beat their previous record of 101 Gbps peak by 50 percent. Breaking it down in terms that we can all understand, this would be the equivalent of serving 10,000 MPEG2 HDTV movies simultaneously in real time or transmitting all of the printed material in the Library of Congress in 10 minutes.
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: December 12, 2005, 11:58 am
News Source : California Institute of Technology
Sun Opens Niagara Chip Design to the World
Sun Microsystems today complemented the release of two new servers with some potentially significant changes to its processor architecture licensing policy and the way in which Oracle will price its database for the fresh gear. We covered the Sun Fire T2000 and T1000 servers earlier today. What's important about the boxes in the context of the licensing and Oracle developments is their use of the eight-core UltraSPARC T1 - aka Niagara - processor. This chip marks the most major development in Sun's UltraSPARC line in a long, long time and gives it a part unlike any other offered by Tier 1 competitors.
Sun has moved to "open source" the UltraSPARC T1's design in a bid to generate outside interest around the chip. The exact details for this plan remain a bit thin, but Sun did say it would publish the specifications for "the source of the design expressed in Verilog, a verification suite and simulation models, instruction set architecture specification (UltraSPARC Architecture 2005) and a Solaris OS port" for the UltraSPARC T1. In so doing, other companies could create versions of the low-power chip to handle other software than the web and application server loads Sun has aimed at with its new servers.
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: December 12, 2005, 11:57 am
News Source : The Register
 ATI Catalyst 5.12
ATI has released its December update for its Catalyst Display Drivers. This month's update introduces dual core support for CPU bound cases. This feature provides improved graphics performance for DX 9 supported graphics adapters installed in systems running the Windows XP and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating systems. Below are some of the more prominent fixes introduced this month.
Notable Fixes
* 3DMark05 gains as much as 5.7%
* 3DMark03 gains as much as 3.3%
* 3DMark2001 SE gains up to 10%
* Aquamark 3 gains up to 16%
* Comanche 4 improves as much as 20%
* Far Cry gains as much as 25% on some product configurations
* Half-Life 2 performance improves as much as 8%
* Splinter Cell improves as much as 8% in certain parts of the game
* Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness runs as much as 10% faster
* Unreal Tournament 2004 framerates improve as much as 10%
For a complete list of fixes and bugs still being addressed please refer to the release notes linked below.
NOTE: The Catalyst Control Center requires Microsoft .NET Framework
News Posted by : DoDgEtHiS On
: December 9, 2005, 3:17 pm
News Source : Neowin
Download : @ ATi.com
Sims 2 Finds Life on PSP
Pixelated people find new neighborhood in Sony's portable; characters get their life on this Friday.
The Sims sensation is one step closer to claiming another victim today. Electronic Arts has announced that The Sims 2 has shipped for the PSP, the first Sims game for the platform, and will be available nationwide December 9. The game is the latest addition to a franchise that has already sold almost 60 million units.
News Posted by : PCGamer On
: December 9, 2005, 3:03 pm
News Source : Gamespot
Resident Evil 5 Debuting Simultaneously on 360, PS3
Capcom plans to release its latest horror-survival game on two consoles at once, a first for the series.
In an interview published in Xbox360ism (a special edition of Dorimaga ), Capcom Research & Development division chief Keiji Inafune said he expects Resident Evil 5 to be released simultaneously on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 if possible.
"We want to grow the Resident Evil series into a multi-platform franchise, so we hope to release it simultaneously [on the two next-generation consoles]," Inafune told Xbox360ism. "But since we don't know the launch period for the PS3 yet, so it's hard to say [if we can]." Inafune also revealed that Resident Evil 5 will feature online elements, although he did not elaborate.
News Posted by : PCGamer On
: December 9, 2005, 3:02 pm
News Source : Gamespot
No Halo Director Chosen Yet
Peter Jackson tells Dark Horizons that he hasn't chosen a filmmaker to help adapt the popular shooter.
Late last week, the Web was afire with rumors that Guillermo del Toro ( Hellboy ) would direct the film adaptation of Halo, the wildly popular Xbox and PC shooter. The choice seemed very plausible, given del Toro's visual flair and the fact his career path mirrored that of the project's executive producer, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.
News Posted by : PCGamer On
: December 9, 2005, 3:02 pm
News Source : Gamespot
Sony Acquires Killzone Developer Guerrilla Games
Sony Computer Entertainment has announced the acquisition of Guerrilla Games, developer of hit PS2 title Killzone, as part of a long term strategy to expand its development arm. The two companies have already had a close working relationship for over a year - Guerrilla signed an exclusive development agreement with SCE in March 2004, and Sony went on to ship 2 million copies of Killzone worldwide. The Amsterdam-based studio is now working on a PlayStation 3 instalment in the series, along with a Killzone PSP game.
News Posted by : PCGamer On
: December 9, 2005, 3:01 pm
News Source : GamesIndustry
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