HOT HEADLINES
Todd Moeller of New Jersey was sentenced to 27 months for his part in sending 'spam' e-mails to more then 1.2 million AOL subscribers. Sadly it seems that the scheme actually made Moeller, and his partner Adam Vitale quite a fortune: almost $40,000 a month!Their spamming was done via traditional monkeying with open mail servers and header...
Read more...
There has been a lot of buzz about Sony's 40GB PS3, but sadly it looks like not all of the buzz is correct. Sure it's still cheaper than the other current PS3/PS3 bundles, but it's not going to save you as much on electricity as you might have thought because it's still using a 90nm chip.“A Sony spokesperson has told Heise Online that...
Read more...
Back in September we told you about a new version of Google's popular GMail that was being tested, but now that it is getting closer we have a few more details for you. Apparently the motivating factors in doing an upgrade were to bring the older Java-script code up to date and to increase overall performance on both the client and server...
Read more...
Microsoft is getting its wish: its new image format, HD Photo, has been approved as a possible sequel to JPEG.The multiple countries participating in the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the JPEG standard, have approved an effort to make Microsoft's HD Photo format a standard called JPEG XR, said Bill Crow, who has led Microsoft's...
Read more...
All good things must come to an end, and that includes the NES. Nintendo has announced it will end support for the NES after 24 years.Nintendo has reportedly decided to stop all repairs of the original Nintendo after 24 years of support, Agence France Presse reported on Friday. A spokesperson said that the company has decided to end...
Read more...
While GDDR4 is still working on becoming the standard for high-end graphics cards, it looks like GDDR5 is already being sampled. So what is new with GDDR5, well all we have are rumors but a key one is cyclic redundancy checks or CRC. Perhaps this will turn out to be a sort of 'automatic' throttle for self-overclocking cards.One...
Read more...
One thing you have to love about Apple are their benchmarks. When they used to tout the PowerPC series of chips, they had benchmarks showing how the G4 and G5 could topple anything that AMD or Intel were producing. Then came the transition to Intel, and those benchmarks magically reversed themselves, perhaps in small part due to...
Read more...
With several countries offering cheap broadband internet to the masses, the U.S. is starting to look like we're in the slow lane, at least according to a bill introduced by Massachusetts Representative, Ed Markey.What is clear is that broadband providers are charging an arm and a leg compared to other countries, and possibly even mislabeling...
Read more...
Call it "Hot Coffee" take two, for Take Two games. You may recall the "Hot Coffee" mod that exposed, er. sexual content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? This isn't quite as successful, but some of the AO content that was hidden rather than removed from Manhunt 2 has been unlocked.In "Manhunt 2," the player takes the role of a...
Read more...
The CTO of Mozilla and the platform architect for Microsoft's Internet Explorer are engaging in a little war of words over the format for the next version of the Javascript language. Microsoft's Chris Wilson wants to see an entirely new language supersede the existing version; Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich wants to supercharge the existing...
Read more...
Apple computers have finally reached the market share necessary to make them attractive targets for malware. Apple is now the third largest seller of desktop and laptop computers in the US, accounting for an 8.1 percent share of the market. This week a Trojan-horse designed to infect Apple's operating system was discovered in the wild....
Read more...
At least, unlike the Hannah Montana fiasco, the servers just crashed rather than end users getting the shaft.Ticket sales for the Games were halted after demand proved to be far too much for the database to handle. The ticketing database could supposedly process 150,000 transactions an hour, but in just the first hour, the Games' site had...
Read more...
Hype, we all know the drill. We've seen it many times before. There's only so much commotion you can digest before you start to wonder if something is as good as it's played up to be. Such is the case with the highly anticipated Asus Eee PC. In fact, this product has been easily the most researched and searched-upon...
Read more...
Shell wants customers to give them the finger, at least in terms of paying for their gas. 10 Chicago-area stations are testing biometric payment systems. Ten Shell gas stations in the Windy City are testing biometric systems that let consumers walk up to the pump, scan their fingertips on a device and fill up their vehicles. The systems,...
Read more...
Western Digital has announced the availability of their Scorpio 320 GB 2.5-inch SATA Hard Drive. By "available," they seem to mean they have a picture of one. The Western Digital website says the bare drive is out of stock, and not one vendor I can find in their voluminous list of "Buy Locally" outlets even lists it yet. Too bad, because...
Read more...
Data recovery firm Retrodata is reporting that Seagate hard-drives used in MacBook laptops and MacMini desktops are prone to catastrophic loss of data. It's unclear whether the irreversible damage to the disk surface is caused by poor quality control in the factory, or whether Mac's Safe Sleep feature, which automatically backs up your computer...
Read more...
Mac OS X malware? It can't be! That OS always purports itself to be so safe. And they're using a favorite type of bait: porn.Intego, a Mac security software company, issued an alert Wednesday warning Mac users of the OSX.RSPlug.A malware, which it describes as a Trojan horse. Those of you familiar with mythology recognize...
Read more...
Hype, we all know the drill. We've seen it many times before. There's only so much commotion you can digest before you start to wonder if something is as good as it's played up to be. Such is the case with the highly anticipated Asus Eee PC. In fact, this product has been easily the most researched and searched-upon...
Read more...
Glitchy playback in Windows? Yesterday Microsoft tried to give us an explanation of just what's happening, besides, say, the bloated Vista OS. Yesterday, Microsoft's program manager for sound in Windows Vista (what a great title!), Steve Ball, posted a blog entry explaining why audio playback sometimes gets glitchy in Windows. There's...
Read more...
Here's a treat for gamers, and possibly a trick for gaming systems, as Epic and Midway announce that yet another DX10 title, Unreal Tournament 3, has gone gold. Midway and Epic today announced that Unreal Tournament 3 has gone to gold master for the PC. Developed by the team behind the critically acclaimed video game Gears of War, Unreal Tournament...
Read more...
Despite the day, we are not trying to scare you or anything, but if you are one of the many who are switching from desktops to notebooks in your life (as evidenced by sales figures), Intel seems to be having trouble keeping up with demand.Due to Intel's misjudgment of notebook demand, the gap between the company's production capacity and market...
Read more...
We love solid state memory. Let's face it; you're going to have to explain to your grandchildren what it was like to have a big magnetic spinning platter holding all your ones and zeros for you. And for quite some time, it seemed like it would be advances in flash memory that would finally put conventional hard drives in their graves. But...
Read more...
