News

I'm going around the site and fixing/adding things that should be done. I've already added a search to the articles, and a categorized view. I've got some really good stuff planned for ASEville as well. Coding will start soon.

Hardware:
Kingston HyperX 4300 @ ClubOC.
Chaintech 9PJL @ RBMods.
MSI 5950 U @ Hexus.
EPIA M2 @ EPIACenter.
Volari Duo @ TT.
AMD Barton 2600+ @ Techtastic.
Gigabyte 5950U @ HCW.
Silverstone SST-TJ01 @ MTB.
PMI Turbo 3200 @ FLHW.

Other:
Vmouse @ aTR.
TT 480W PSU @ ClubOC.
Glidetape Glidepads @ Extremereviews.
Logitech MX900 @ Envynews.
TT Xaser Damier @ aTR.
Enermax Fancontroller @ Ascully.
Qtec CDRW @ Metku.
Asus MyPal @ PDAToday.
Samsung SyncMaster 192T @ ipKonfig.

The upgraded version of the FX chipset from last week.

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Check the entire article here! This is a damn fine chipset for the Pentium 4.

Bill Gates is giving away free Office programs to government employees. And now the Army says... NO.

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Microsoft has been mailing free copies of Office to government employees, but at least two federal agencies are warning recipients to return the gifts or risk violating federal ethics policies. Microsoft has given out tens of thousands of free copies of its flagship software, which retails for about $500, to workers at its biggest customers.

And also...

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Meanwhile, Microsoft may have a hard time convincing the open-source community that nothing nefarious was brewing when it made a referral that led to $50 million in BayStar Capital funding for the SCO Group--another Linux foe. BayStar, an investment company, has confirmed that Microsoft introduced BayStar to SCO. But BayStar declined to share further details and is repeating its earlier position that Microsoft did not actually invest money in the deal.

I'm serious... ASEville construction will start soon... Tomorrow is the planning stage. Let me here whatever ideas you have in the suggestion forum! Also check out that new »SiS 655TX Review I just posted.

XPcases Fancontroller @ RBMods.
Evercool fancontroller @ RBMods.
eXtreme Mega Mat @ ER.
Case Master Server case @ Madshrimps.
Zalman fancontroller @ FLHW.
Aerocool HT @ VL.
Sunbeam fancontroller @ CM.
AS5 @ TWL.
Kingston HyperX 4000 @ Tweaknews.
Soyo Bay One @ ER.
Raidmax Game Case @ MTB.

With a new memory controller and some tweaks, this evolution to the 655FX proves to be faster indeed. This is the new chipset to buy for the Pentium 4 boards. Find out why...Next Page »

I think this deserves a news post. Mandrake has finally released the new Version 10.0 Community. The FTPs are getting hammered, and I'm downloading on BitTorrent. It's been going all night, but now I'm getting 200K download or more. Grab the FTP here. And here is the .Torrent file.

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Mandrakelinux 10.0 features the following software:

Kernel 2.6.3
XFree86 4.3
Glibc 2.3.3 with Native POSIX Threads Library (NPTL) support
GCC 3.3.2
Apache 2.0.48, Samba 3.0.2, MySQL 4.0.18
ProFTPD 1.2.9, Postfix 2.0.18, OpenSSH 3.6.1p2
KDE 3.2, GNOME 2.4.2, IceWM 1.2.13
OpenOffice.org 1.1, KOffice 1.3, Gnumeric 1.2.6
Mozilla 1.6, The GIMP 1.2.5, XMMS 1.2.9

Okay, okay... I know I said that the SiS655TX review would be out yesterday, but the thing is... I was tired... And! Downloading Mandrake 10 at the moment. It isn't the 'stable' version yet, it is the community download. http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/10.0/features/

Asus 9800XT @ PCStats.
Arctic Cooling 4 Pro @ Legitreviews.
Vantec Nexus @ CI.
Z-Alien case @ MTB.
Evercool Magic Cooler @ 3DX.
Thermal Integration Heatsink @ Frostytech.
Evercool CUF-715 @ Bigbruin.
NES HTPC @ Futurelooks.

The SiS 655TX Review is coming out tonight. Look at this space for more info soon.

Hardware:
Athlon 64 3000+ @ Hexus.
Shuttle ST62Z @ LC.
OCZ PC3200 @ ClubOC.
Chaintech FX5700 U @ Ninjalane.

Other:
Enermax Fan Controller @ FastlaneHW.
Noiseblocker Forton PSU @ Metku.
Antec 350W PSU @ Pimprig.
GPU Cooler roundup @ Madshrimps.
Antec P160 @ VL.
TT Aquarius 3 @ Modsynergy.
Silverstone usb hub @ ATR.
CM Centurion 2 @ Bigbruin.
MS Intellimouse V4 @ Guru.

Finally, another review @ ASE Labs! This is a good chipset that rivals the Springdale from Intel.

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Check the entire article here! More to come today or tomorrow.

If you are receiving emails supposedly from Microsoft, don't be fooled. A new virus is popping up pretending to be a MyDoom patch. Don't execute files from emails and run an Antivirus scanner! http://www.grisoft.com it's free! I use it.

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Sober.d arrives as e-mail pretending to be from Microsoft with a patch for the MyDoom worm. Microsoft does not e-mail its customers with new patch information. The subject line could be in either German or English, with random letters or words in some variation of "new Microsoft security patch." The body text, also in German or English, reads:

Next Page »

Semiconductor sales are planned to surge in 2004. IDC plans 18% growth. That's pretty high.

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Growth in 2004 will depend on factors beyond economic upturn and seasonal purchases, hinging on sales of PCs to both consumers and businesses, according to IDC. Semiconductor revenue in desktop and mobile segments will grow 18 percent to $53.6 billion in 2004, the research firm predicted. That will be the peak annual growth rate during the period from 2003 to 2008. The compound annual growth rate during the period is pegged at 7.8 percent, with revenue in the final year of that period set to come in at $66.1 billion.

I've got some exciting news for you this week! I just put up a new review on the »SiS 655FX chipset. The 655TX chipset will be out on Tuesday or Wed. More hardware reviews to come. This is the start of steady news and reviews again. I just had to get back into the swing of things to budget my time better. By the way, for all site members, check out the new GALAXY theme in your UserCP - Preferences section. Let me know what you think. More original themes to come by the way. I'd also like to thank RudeMoody for his great work on the logos for this and the gaming site. A new forum logo will be coming soon. And sooner or later we'll be breaking ground for the new ASEville! Stay parked here for all the details soon.

This concludes your public service announcement. We will now return you to your regularly scheduled reading.

Hardware:
FIC Radeon 9800Pro @ ClubOC.
SFF Showdown @ TT.
HIS 9600Pro @ Envynews.
HIS 9800Pro @ Monkeyreview.
DFI Lanparty Canterwood B @ Tweaknews.
Aopen Prescott ready board @ VR-Zone.
Albatron FX5700 @ TWL.
Chaintech nForce3 @ OCC.
Abit K8v-Max3 @ VL.
Gigabyte 8IPE1000 Pro2 With Wifi @ HCW.
Shuttle SFF Barebones @ RBMods.
HIS 9600 XT @ VL.

SiS makes some great chipsets. The 655FX is the first dual channel SiS chipset for the Pentium 4 platform. It targets the Springdale market, and it does it well. It is even faster than the Springdale! Read on...Next Page »

What the hell is SCO doing anyway? SCO is suing everyone under the sun now.

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The suit against the Linux user is separate from IBM's case, McBride said. Though the first case will involve a company that has a Unix license, the company plans others against companies who don't have that existing business tie to SCO, he added.

A school system is Georgia has built its own fiber network for the scant price of $2.2 million! That provides 10 gigabites to the network. No word on what the monthly costs are. A similiar network plans on selling 100 mbits for only $28!!

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Now the "do-it-yourself" model has begun to move into more densely populated areas, like Douglas County, where telecommunications providers and cable operators are already offering services. These municipalities want to control their own networks, and they want to be able to offer services to their government agencies or constituencies that the local incumbent provider is not offering, such as fiber to the home (FTTH).

All this plus and minus crap is coming to the next generation Blue Laser DVD writers. Two standards are emerging and Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been placed as one of the codecs to be used in the HD-DVD standard. The other standard is Blu-ray. Damn split formats.

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A standards win on DVDs would dramatically buoy Microsoft's ambitions to take its multimedia technology beyond the Internet. It also could give the Redmond, Wash., giant substantial credibility when it shops its codec to partners outside of the PC business.

Taking a tip from the Matrix movies, Windows XP will have a second version (remember Win98SE?). Get ready to plop another $200 on it. Then a year or two later, Longhorn will come out.

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Issuing an update to XP would represent a significant shift for the software maker, which for months has insisted that it had no plans to create a separate version of Windows before Longhorn. A company executive confirmed to CNET News.com on Thursday that Microsoft is now discussing a product internally referred to as "Windows XP Reloaded."

Let me just chat a bit about Spam right now. My inbox gets about 95% of spam and only 5% of emails that I would want to look at. My roomate informed me about Spambayes, a plugin for Outlook. It works GREAT!! My inbox is no longer cluttered with spam. It uses a bayesion matching scheme to target spam. There are standalone versions as well.

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net

Intel will start showing more ads that influence buyer to buy Centrino type notebooks. Having 802.11g standard is one of many reasons the Centrino hasn't been adopted by consumers. There are others such as the processor speed, Intel hasn't made it that clear that the Pentium M is faster at the same clock speed than the Pentium 4M.

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The ads will tout the notebooks' ability to "unwire," or detach, from a power line and a modem or an Ethernet network cable, and to check e-mail or surf the Web using wireless networking. The Centrino bundle includes an 802.11 wireless module, along with the Pentium M processor and an Intel chipset. Centrino offered only the 802.11b standard, at first, but Intel recently upgraded it with a dual-band 802.11b/g module. The module has since been working its way into new notebook models.

NASA has scored over 6.5 Billion hits on the Mars rover websites. Bringing the massess back to NASA is great for that organization. The space program is very important.

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NASA said its home page received 6.53 billion hits--the number of times someone pulls up a Web site--surpassing Earth's population of 6.3 billion people. The visitor numbers cover the period from Jan. 4, when the first rover, Spirit, landed, through Thursday.

Let's just unload a collection of review in my Inbox.

Hardware:
MSI FX5700U @ PCStats.
EPIA CL10000 @ Techseekers.
Fosa FX5600 @ TWL.
Chaintech FX5700U @ OCTools.
Corsair TwinX4400 @ Bigbruin.
HIS 9600XT @ TN.
Radeon 9600XT @ LC.
DFI Lanparty 875B @ PCStats.

Other:
Vantec Aeroflow 2 @ ClubOC.
KingwinTC @ ClubOC.
PyroPort MiniITX @ Pyroport.
Silverstone SST-TJ03 @ Modsynergy.
Silverstone SST-TJ01 @ A True Review.
Commercialization of Linux @ Short-Media.
Tweakmonster Ramsinks @ OCIA.
Startech 500W @ Bigbruin.

In case you don't follow space events, the two rovers on the surface of Mars are still going around on the surface. They hope to cover alot of ground in the course of its life.

Quote

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration revised their estimate of the distance to the "Bonneville" crater, saying it's about 1,150 feet (345 meters) from Spirit's landing place. The robot still has about 800 feet (240 meters) to go to reach the crater.

The code was leaked a few days ago and already there are reports that flaws are present in the OS. In IE5 actually, still it shows that releasing source code can actually help.

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According to a message posted by SecurityGlobal.net LLC's Security Tracker Web site, a vulnerability was reported in Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5 that lets a "remote user execute arbitrary code on the target system."

Time to clear out the inbox of reviews. I've got a few hardware reviews to put up, I just haven't the time to get down to writing them. Hopefully this week.

MSI FX5700U @ VL.
Corsair TwinX4400 @ ipKonfig.
Gigabyte FX5950 @ PCStats.
Inno3D FX5700U @ TWL.
Gigabyte K8T800 @ HCW.
MSI FX5900 @ PCStats.
Corsair TWinX3200LL @ OCIA.
Albatron K8X800 @ Metku.
Gainward FX5700U @ Hexus.
Abit AN7 @ VL.

I'm sure you heard about this yesterday, but Comcast tried to do a hostile take over on Disney for $66 Billion. Disney said no, then one of Disney's workers died in the park! Weird.

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Under the proposed deal, the company would issue 0.78 of a Comcast share for each Disney share, a total value of about $54 billion and a premium of about $5 billion above the closing price of the shares on Feb. 10. In addition, Comncast would assume about $11.9 billion in current Disney debt, for a total of about $66 billion. Disney shareholders would own about 42 percent of the company, Comcast said.

Reuters is reporting that Apple is facing not one, but 5 class-action lawsuits for misrepresenting the battery life of the iPod.

Here's a thought: "If it's too good to be true, it probably is."

Read the rest of the article here .

Firefox is the new name of the faster open source browser. Older names like Pheonix and Firebird had companies crawling up to Mozilla for trademark stealing.

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In addition to announcing the name change, Mozilla released version 0.8 of the software, calling it a milestone toward the foundation's first end user-oriented release. Before being spun off by America Online parent Time Warner as the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla considered itself a technology group that was used by AOL's Netcape Communications unit to create user-friendly products.

I missed this last week. KDE 3.2 has been released and contains many updates. I'll be doing testing on it tomorrow most likely. Hopefully a new version of Mandrake will come out soon.

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Some of the most noticeable improvements in KDE 3.2, which is the result of a year-long effort, are in application start-up times and HTML rendering, according to KDE developers. KDE is one of two major packages offering a graphical user interface and integrated applications for Unix and Linux, the main alternative being Gnome. KDE is used as the default interface on systems including Ark Linux, Conectiva, Knoppix, Lindows, Lycoris, Mandrake Linux, SUSE Linux, TurboLinux and Xandros, and is included as an option with most other major Linux systems.

Forget about VoIP, MPLS will be replacing all the data and voice lines for all carriers soon. Moving from a direct line to a packet switched network will cut costs... alot. Will the performance stay the same though?

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In an MPLS network, incoming packets are assigned a "label" by a router. Packets are forwarded along a label switch path where each router makes forwarding decisions based solely on the contents of the label. At each hop, the label is stripped off and a new one is added that tells the next router how to forward the packet.

Once I get off of school today, I'll be working on some real hardware reviews. Also, steady news is coming again. I just needed to get back into the swing of things at work and school. Have no fear, though! Please remember to report all current bugs to the bugs forum, and I plan on started the new code for ASEville soon.