Ik las op het Pine Security Digest over een nieuw virus dat zich razendsnel verspreid via email en usenet. Hier wat quotes:

"Een nieuwe computer worm verspreid zich razendsnel over het internet door zich te koppelen aan email en newsgroup postings. De worm richt zelf geen schade aan, maar stuurt email en newsgroup postings zonder dat de internetgebruiker het weet. De worm zou hierdoor complete emailservers en newsservers kunnen plat leggen." "Een echte worm is het niet, in de zin dat hij zichzelf niet propageert naar nieuwe systemen, maar door slachtoffers zelf moet worden gedownload en geinstalleerd."

HardOCP heeft wat info over het verschil in overklokbaarheid tussen de vertrouwde en welbekende C300A en de nieuwe C366. Nogal een existentiële vraag voor mensen die op dit moment een nieuwe CPU willen aanschaffen, zo lijkt.

De mening van FrgMstr van HardOCP:

ell, I can tell you that the question above would be easily answered if the Celeron 366 was like its little bro the 300A.  But the days of OC'in a Celeron by 150Mhz without even trying have come to pretty much of an end. 

Out of the three Celeron 366's (and I am gonna talk about the C366's cuz I got no C400's and they are cheaper anywayz) I have here at the FragPalace, NONE of them will do the much strived for 550MHz.   Did you hear me?  NONE of them will do 550MHz.  I have busted my ass on these badboyz with peltiers and freak cooling.  Damn I even put each of them in the freezer over night!  They will NOT DO 550MHz no matter what.   Just want to make sure you understand what I am saying.  Maybe I just got a bad draw......

If you think you are gonna go out and pick up a C366 and go home and up the ante to 550MHz, you are probably, seriously mistaken.   I hope I am wrong, and a new figure out I saw said 50% would do the deed.  But I think that is BS too....

Now we do know that there are C366's that will do the 550MHz.  So if you buy one with the 550 thought in mind and it works, that is gonna be FREAKIN GREAT!  You can bet you sweet ass it is gonna smoke a 300A at 450MHz.  No doubt about it!  I wish I could find me an elusive 550MHz CPU.....

But what if you get it you C366 home, all cooled down and cranked up to about not dick?  Just like what happened here at the HardOCP. 

...en er staat nog veel meer.

De video's van de verhoren van onze vriend Bill zullen vrijgegeven worden. Dat wordt smullen Wat zal het heerlijk zijn om Bill in het nauw gedreven te zien worden.

Techweb heeft er een nieuwsbericht van:

The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Friday that all of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates' videotaped testimony must be made available to the public.

In a unanimous decision, the court upheld a decision by District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who is presiding over the U.S. Department of Justice vs. Microsoft antitrust case.

While some of the Gates video testimony had been shown in court, attorneys for Microsoft had objected to disclosing the full tape to "protect trade secret and other confidential business information."

Gates was deposed in private last summer at the Redmond, Wash., headquarters of Microsoft. While nine high-ranking Microsoft executives are testifying on behalf of the company, neither Gates nor president Steve Ballmer were on the witness list. But Jackson allowed a considerable amount of Gates deposition to be shown. Several news agencies have sought to have the entire 20-hour deposition released.

Adrian's Rojak Pot heeft een review van de Chaintech 6BTM, een vrij bekende moederplank hier in de polder (kwam ooit goed uit een C!T test). Hier wat overklokkers info, voor diegenen die stug blijven volhouden dat ze 't ook zonder BH6 kunnen redden:

While the SeePU CPU setup allows the manual setting of the bus speed, it, most unfortunately, does not allow manual setting of the CPU's voltage. This is bad news for users with stubborn Celerons or Pentium II processors which require a voltage boost to run at high overclocked speeds.

For example, the Celeron I used for the tests requires 2.05V to run properly at 450MHz. But because the 6BTM automatically sets the voltage to 2.00V, the Celeron processor was not stable enough to benchmark. So, Celerons like this one will not run at 450/464MHz which is the goal of most users who buy the Celeron 300A and Intel 440BX motherboard combination.

Chaintech should include such a voltage setup option in the SeePU menu. After all, ABIT has already proven that manual voltage setup is possible and useful.

Gateway gaat een nieuwe serie PC's uitbrengen gebaseerd op AMD K6-3 processors, omdat dat significant goedkopere PC's zou opleveren.

The North Sioux City, S.D., company has been evaluating the chip, code-named Sharptooth, for some time, according to sources, and plans to offer the new computer line at prices unattainable when equipped with Intel chips.

Zoals het artikel zelf ook al meldt: deze stap zou een voorbeeld kunnen zijn voor andere grote PC bouwers, dus dit is zeer slecht nieuws voor Intel.

De Free Record Shop, die eerder in de Volkskrant nog niet zo'n probleem zag in het op grote schaal kopieren van cd's wil nu dat platenmaatschappijen zo snel mogelijk gaan werken aan een kopieerbeveiliging.

Uit het artikel:

De platenbranche wil cd's wel beveiligen, maar zegt dat het nog niet kan. ,, Kopiëren - wij zeggen klonen - is inmiddels een groot probleem'', zegt Theo Roos, topman van platenmaatschappij Universal Music (vroeger Polygram) in Nederland. ,,Zo'n kloon is een uiterst verhandelbaar product. Maar beveiligen mag nog niet door een oude afspraak met de electronica-industrie. Bovendien kunnen we nog niet zo goed beveiligen dat de code niet binnen een paar weken gekraakt zal worden.''

Precies... ;)

Op het net gaat het gezegde: "the only way to accelerate an NT server is at 9.8m/s2". Tot zover niks nieuws, maar een paar mensen bij ZDnet hebben eens een praktijktest gedaan tussen een paar bekende Linuxdistributies en NT server. Hier de belangrijkste grafieken:

Kijk hier voor het hoofdartikel. Ze zijn helaas Slackware vergeten, en een vergelijking met FreeBSD was ook leuk geweest. Verder een goed opgebouwd artikel. Opvallend trouwens dat ZDnet tegenwoordig erg Linux-minded is.

JC heeft wat info gepost over de PIII en Intel's PII variant voor mobiel gebruik. Zijn conclusie: de mobiele PII is door z'n snellere cache waarschijnlijk sneller dan de PIII! Intel blijft me verbazen...

In defense of Intel: You know, I'm usually hard on the fellows, but there's one thing I have to back them up with lately. The new Pentium II PE mobile processor, earlier known to us by the cooler codename "Dixon", packs in 256k of on-chip L2 cache, instead of 512k of much slower L2 off the main silicon.

As a result, these notebook processors pack more of a punch (eg..they're faster) than their desktop counterpart Pentium II. In fact, they're likely even faster than the Pentium !!!. I'm starting to hear complaints here and there that Intel is holding back the design from the desktop market, and people are hence getting screwed with slower chips.

I want to just take a couple seconds aside to explain why these faster chips are only being offered for notebooks. Basically, the size of the die of the Dixon is rather immense, being probably about 35% larger than the Pentium II die and over twice the size of the K6-2. Because of a larger size, not only can Intel fit fewer of the chips onto each production wafer (hence they can't make as much), but the percentage of bad chips shoots up as the size goes up.

So, the yields of the PE chip are likely not capable enough for the desktop market. Intel can only relegate it to a market with higher profit margins and less demand -- the notebook market. Basically, Intel will port these chips over to the desktop market in the second half of this year (with KNI/SSE added, of course). This will happen after Intel goes through with their die shrink from 0.25um to 0.18um (which'll basically have the effect of chopping the die sizes in half). The 0.18um chips, by the way, are currently codenamed Coppermine.

Op Slashdot vond ik deze verwijzing naar een berichtje op de linux ggi-list. Een quote uit het bericht:

"I will be given NDA access to full specs and sample code for all 3Dfx, nVidia, 3DLabs and Rendition chipsets and will be able to produce fully 2D/3D accelerated binary-only KGI drivers for all of them, which through the magic of KGIcon will also be fully useable on standard Linux kernels. Mesa targets for all of these will also be written. When this is combined with the Soundblaster Live support and the power of the LibGGI userspace library system, Linux will have as least as much gaming and graphics capacity as Win32/DirectX. And new hardware will be supported at release time with Linux drivers, just like Win32.

Lijkt erop alsof de desktop doorbraak van Linux inderdaad ophanden is. Nadeel van al dit Linuxnieuws is dat M$ er handig gebruik van maakt om aan te tonen dat er wel degelijk concurrentie is...

Anand heeft een review van de Tyan Thunder X, een dual Xeon moederplank met GX chipset. Hoewel geen plaat voor de typische overklokker heeft Anand wel wat oc-related info (altijd lachen, een dual Xeon doodklokken):

Speaking of overclocking, Tyan has typically not supported overclocking to a great extent and since the board is intended for servers, and probably will be used as such, stability is key. Thus, overclocking probably will not be performed too often with the Thunder X. With that said, it is in fact possible to overclock this thing as alluded to above. Unfortunately, unlike the Supermicro S2DGU AnandTech tested, the 112MHz bus speed would not even POST with our 400MHz Xeon at 448MHz. So while the Supermicro board offered some overclocking options for high-end workstations, the Tyan fell a bit short here.

Hoewel de PIII pas over enkele weken officieel gereleased wordt hebben sommige resellers het ding al in de verkoop liggen. C|Net news.com heeft er een artikel over:

Although Intel won't officially release the Pentium III until February 28, a number of resellers are already offering the chip and systems built around the chip to customers.

These pre-opening sales come because Intel has already shipped the processor to distributors and chip brokers. In turn, these companies have turned them over to resellers. The debut of the Pentium III will also coincide with price cuts across the Pentium II line.

A 500-MHz Pentium III costs in retail anywhere from $823 to $899, and will likely drop when the official release occurs. Intel's current wholesale price for the processor is $790 for quantities of 1,000, but it will drop to $764 by the time of the release.

Computer resellers who have tested the chip say it comes close to Intel's more expensive Xeon processors for servers and workstations and even outperforms it in some respects. The Xeon performs approximately 10 percent better on benchmark tests for accessing data from main memory, according to Roland Baker, president of Net Express, a Silicon Valley reseller and workstation manufacturer.

The Pentium III, however, is about equal in performance to the Xeon on number crunching applications, he said. "This is important for the scientific community."

Baker added, however, that computer buyers need to be careful when upgrading. The core voltage of the Pentium III is different from the core voltage of the Pentium II and therefore will not work properly on all Pentium II motherboards. The Asus P2B motherboard is so far the most compatible board for the task, he added.

Connectix laat zich niet intimideren door Sony nu deze dreigt met een rechtszaak:

onnectix yesterday announced it was commencing mass production of its PlayStation emulator, Virtual GameStation (VGS), in preparation for the software's retail launch.

The announcement was the company's first strike against moves made by PlayStation developer Sony on Wednesday seeking to block sales of the software in preparation for legal action against Connectix for alleged copyright and intellectual property infringement (see Sony to sue Connectix over PlayStation emulator).

Sony's initial complaint also claims Connectix's software bypasses the company anti-piracy policy by effectively encouraging the use of bootleg PlayStation CDs.

Connectix denies all charges. It claims to have reverse engineered the PlayStation without recourse to Sony intellectual property, and to have "developed technology specifically designed to prohibit the use of pirated PlayStation titles with VGS. We've worked hard to prevent use of pirated software and have added additional security technology into Version 1.1", according to Connectix CEO Roy McDonald.

So far, VGS is only compatible with around 100 of the 350-odd PlayStation titles currently on the market, and in case will only play versions of games for the US NTSC TV standard -- so UK users will need to find an importer of US titles.

Wel of geen Playstation emulator voor de Mac, het zal ons pc gebruikers worst wezen :D

Goed nieuws voor alle arme stakkers met een inbelaccount. KNP gaat binnenkort onder druk van de Opta voordeelnummers invoeren. Kun je een of twee nummers die je vaak belt kiezen (natuurlijk neem je die van je moeder ;^) waar je extra korting op krijgt. Dit systeem bestond al veel langer bij mobiele telefonie.

'OPTA gaat akkoord met de concrete voorstellen die KPN heeft gedaan voor de invoering van de zogeheten Voordeelnummers. Daarmee wordt een tweede stap gezet op weg naar de verlaging van de telefoontarieven die KPN in de eerste helft van dit jaar moet doorvoeren. De eerste stap vond op 1 januari jl. plaats. Om de voorgeschreven verlaging te bereiken moet KPN ook nog een derde stap zetten.'

PC Powerhouse heeft wat interessante voor mensen die problemen ondervinden met het overklokken van hun Celeron of TNT:

You definately want to read this if you have been having problems either overclocking your Celeron (lock-ups in Win9x), overclocking your TNT (3D game lock-ups), or a combination of the two. So first off let me say that although my system is stable at 504MHz, when playing 3D games (mostly Half-Life) for any length of time caused either Half-Life to crash, or worse, caused the system to lock-up. What was real bizarre was that I could run endless benchmarks using Quake2 crusher, and 3DMark99, with absolutly no problems. So to run Half-Life I needed to slow the system to 464MHz (still not to shabby, but 504MHz is definately the $hit).

     So along comes my fellow web bud Kingman, who goes out and purchased an Abit BH6, Celeron 300a, 64Megs PC100 SDRAM, and a Diamond Viper v550 TNT based card. Now he is telling me that he can't do any 3D when his CPU is overclocked to only 450MHz, yet everything else works just fine. So after countless fiddling (including voltage tweeks to the CPU, adding extra fans to keep the video card cool, and even underclocking his video card using Powerstrip), it's still no good. So I'm thinking maybe his video card is bad, but he say's he hasn't had a problem with the card when running the CPU at 300MHz. Strange is one word that comes to mind.

     Anyway, so on Thursday I received some E-Mail that said moving the SDRAM from the first SIMM slot to either slot 2 or 3 could help with CPU / Video card stabiltiy problems. Well, I have no Idea why having the SDRAM in a different slot would make any difference, but I decided to give it a try by moving my SDRAM to slot 3. Well let me just say HOLY $HIT!!!!!!!!! Not only was I able to now run Half-Life at 504MHz, but I can also use PowerStrip to overclock my TNT video card (which I couldn't before without encountering 3D lock-ups). So instead of running my Canopus Spectra at it's default core clock of 90MHz, and memory clock of 110MHz, I cranked it up to 105MHz core and 115MHz memory. The difference when running my Celeron at 504MHz with these changes to the TNT, well so far 3DMark99 (at 800x600x16bit color) went from 2284 to 2358.

Ace's Hardware heeft een Overclockers guide to hardware in elkaar gezet. Het ding is behoorlijk lang dus er zal wel wat handige info in staan. De bedoeling van het verhaaltje:

"What is the best hardware to buy for overclocking?" This seems to be the question on many of the computer enthusiasts these days. It seems the number of people discovering the thrills and benefits of o/c doubles each day. Many people are buying entire systems for the sole purpose of running them to the very limits from day one. Some fail, some succeed. What this article is for is to help you, the would be overclocker buy the right hardware for your needs.

Voodoo Extreme heeft wat info gepost uit een interview met Mika Tuomi, een ventje van BitBoys' Oy. Bitboys heeft een super vette videokaart in ontwikkeling, de Glaze3D. Het ding bestaat vooralsnog alleen op papier maar het is de bedoeling dat rond het eind van de zomer een werkend silicon beschikbaar is:

Banks-Question1: I would like to know why your Pyramid 3d never came to market?

Mika Tuomi-Answer1: Pyramid3D project involved three parties. Bitboys doing

high level architecture and algorithm design, VLSI Solution (Finnish company) doing silicon design, and TriTech Microelectronics doing the FAB and marketing. The reason P3D never got to market is that the silicon implementation had so many problems with speed.   And fixing those took so long time that the market windows was missed, then TriTech decided to pull the plug for it's own 3D program.

Banks-Q2: Why does the picture on your page say only 12.2 hz on the simulation for the card (not sure if it was Glaze3d, or other I forgot to ask)?

Mika Tuomi-A2: It is the speed of screen refresh rate the simulator can update. The simulator is "emulating" monitor in realtime.

Banks-Q3: Will your Glaze3d run as sli on a single board?

Mika Tuomi-A3:Yes

Banks-Q4: Will Glaze3d be agp only (sli in agp)? 

Mika Tuomi-A4: We will have to see whether it makes sense to make PCI boards. That would enable the two board SLI configuration. We will have a big announcement soon about new partners and higher performance numbers! Keep checking our web.

Het Nintentendo 64 emulator project waar ik gisteren wat over postte is nu al weer gecancelled:

As DavesClassics.com has noted, yesterday was one of the most historic and memorable days in emulation history. Two programmers released a PC-based Nintendo 64 emulator, called UltraHLE, something no one thought was possible. Imagine playing Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time on a Pentium II 300 with a Voodoo2 at 30 FPS. From a technical standpoint, the news was unbelievable, and for Nintendo, the earth trembled.

However, the saga ended as fast as it has begun. Several terabytes of N64 roms were swapped in chat rooms last night, although just 15 titles operated with the emulator. The action was so maniacal, the authors, who have wisely remained anonymous, issued a statement saying no subsequent development would be done.

According to DavesClassics.com, the emulator was an experiment to see if N64 emulation was possible. However, once it was released, it became a tool for pirates and legal questions rose to the vanguard, prompting the cancellation.