Johan De Gelas van Ace's Hardware heeft het eerste deal van zijn CeBIT 2000 verslag online gezet, met informatie over de plannen van Intel, AMD en VIA. Johan wist een redelijk gedetaileerde AMD roadmap bijeen te puzzelen. Volgens deze roadmap zal de Thunderbird al in april/mei gereleased worden, gevolgd door de Spitfire in juli/augustus en de Mustang met verbeterde Athlon core en grotere L2 cache in september/oktober:

While the CPU roadmap is pretty vague, the chipset and motherboard roadmap is very detailed. For example, while the CPU roadmap simply indicate mid 2000 for the Thunderbird launch, the motherboard roadmap says that production boards, with a VIA KX133 Socket A chipset should be available around april/may.

Achille [AMD ventje] confirmed that this means that the Thunderbird should be there around april/may, as motherboard won't be produced if here are no CPU's available.

Thunderbird socket A version will ship before the slot A version, and before the Spitfire, which will only be available in a socket A version. In september or october, boards with 266 MHz FSB based on the AMD 760 chipset (EV6 bus at 133 MHz, DDR), will be available. These boards will be able to accept 200 and 266 MHZ DDR RAM (100/133 MHz at DDR).

AMD is also working on the 770 chipset, and the first Dual Athlon boards should appear around December 2000. Chipsets of ALI will be available too, with the same features like the 760 and 770.

The Register heeft uit een aantal documenten van Intel vernomen dat de chipgigant toegeeft dat SDRAM even snel als Rambus kan zijn. Hieronder een fragment uit dit artikel:

In news from another Intel document, we learn that SDRAM is a good thing. A white paper Intel issued on the 840 says that the 82804 SDRAM based MRH can give bandwidth equal to Rambus.

The document says: "In server applications, memory capacity is typically even more important than memory performance. Large memory subsystems can be divided into many banks, allowing the main memory to be interleaved. This approach delivers higher performance in multithreaded and multiprocessing environments. These large memory systems can offer bandwidth equal to that of RDRAM although implemented with SDRAM." (Our italics).

In yet another Intel document we have seen, it is apparent that the company realised it could go with PC-133 and DDR (double data rate) memory as far back as October/November last year.

This document, called the PC SDRAM Specification, makes the following statement: "The objective...is to define a new Synchronous DRAM specification ("PC SDRAM") which will remove extra functionality from the current JEDEC standard SDRAM specification, so that it will be a fully compatible device among all vendor designed parts. It should be easy to design and manufacture and highly cost optimized for the main stream volume desktop Intel architecture PCs".

Thanks insane voor de link.

The Register meldt dat Intel om onduidelijk reden de release van de PIII 866 en 850 geschrapt heeft. De prijs van de 866 en 850 werd eerder vandaag bekend gemaakt, maar deze mogen we blijkbaar al weer vergeten:

Roadmaps Intel sent to both its channel and OEM partners last week showed that the company was set to release 866MHz and 850MHz Pentium IIIs today, as well as a pair of faster Celerons. But according to an Intel representative today, there are no plans to release the microprocessors in the "imminent future".

That led us to ask whether it would release such parts in the "near future", to which the reply came it depended what the "near future" meant.

[...] Intel refused to comment on information that was not publicly available at press time, but it always says to its channel partners that it can change prices and product specifications whenever it chooses.

Marcel brengt ons op de hoogte van het nieuws dat Apache 1.3.12 gereleased is:

Apache Group is pleased to announce the release of the 1.3.12 version of the Apache HTTP server. The main improvements in this release are those pertaining to the Cross Site Scripting security problem that was announced in a recent CERT Advisory. Apache 1.3.12 is the best version of Apache currently available; everyone running 1.2.X servers or earlier should upgrade to 1.3, as there will not be any further 1.2.X releases. At present, the Win32 port of Apache is not as stable as the UNIX version. Further releases of the 1.3.x tree will bring the Win32 port closer to parity.

Apache 1.3.12 kun je vanaf www.apache.org/dist naar binnen hengelen.

jaspov1 stuurde ons een link naar K-bench waar gemeld wordt dat nVidia S3's S3TC texture compression techniek zal gaan ondersteunen in nieuwe driver versies.

IXBT has posted that Nvidia will inclue S3TC function in there graphic board drivers soon.

NVIDIA confirmed that one of the results of NVDIA-S3 cross-license agreement would be S3TC support by company's products - they will add it in the nearest drivers version.

Therefore S3, ATI and Nvidia support S3TC and Voodoo series from 3dfx will support its own texture compression scheme FXT.

Ace's Hardware heeft wat meer info gevonden over de opvolgers van VIA's Cyrix III processor, de Samuel en Matthew. De Samuel zal gebaseerd worden op de Winchip-4 en zal in in het tweede kwartaal zonder L2 cache gereleased worden. Sam II zal wel 256k L2 on-die cache krijgen en volgt begin 2001. Over de Matthew is nog weinig bekend, behalve dat hij DDR-SDRAM zal ondersteunen.

PC Watch Japan has more coverage on Cyrix III, and more importantly, its successors Samuel and Matthew. Unfortunately I can only extract a few bits out from the report since it's in Japanese: Samuel is based on Winchip-4, and as I reported days ago, there will be two versions available. Sam II will have 256k L2 on-die cache and will debut in H1 2001; Sam I will have no L2 but less power-consuming and will be out by H2 2000. Also, VIA's answer to Intel's Timna is called Matthew, and info on Matthew remains sketchy. If I read it correctly, Matt will support DDR-SDRAM. As for integrated chipset, VIA is slated to introduce Apollo PM (ProMedia)-266 chipset with integrated Savage2000 and DDR-SDRAM in 2001.

The Register heeft meer details gepost over de Intel prijsslachting van gisteren. Hier overzichtelijk tabelletje met de nieuwe Pentium III, Xeon en Celeron prijzen:

Intel zit met deze prijzen duidelijk boven de prijzen die AMD met de prijsverlaging van vandaag voor ogen heeft.

Craig Campanaro van Sharky Extreme heeft een review geschreven van de Diamond Rio 500 die 64MB aan ruimte biedt voor je MP3's. Hieronder wat meer info over zijn geluidskwaliteit:

After playing music from every possible genre over several hours we're prepared to render judgement on the Rio 500, and for the most part it's very favorable.

First off, we requested that a manually controlled equalizer be put on the next-generation Rio when we reviewed the first PMP300 player in 1998. The PMP300 offered just a few "pre-set" EQ settings which were mediocre at best, and we wanted full control over the settings ourselves in order to best customize the music playback.

The Rio 500 offers a compromise: single manually adjustable Treble and Bass controls that the unit will remember even when powered down.

This is a good start in our opinion, but we'd also like to see a third Midrange control added to allow near-complete manipulation.

RCA's new MP3 player, the Lyra, offers a five-band manually controllable equalizer, and in comparison to the Rio 500's limited two-band equalizer, it sounds superior.

We ultimately recommend the Rio 500 over the Lyra for a variety of other negatives that the Lyra has, but in terms of sound reproduction the Lyra does hold a slight edge over the Rio 500 in our opinion.

Uwe Scheffel van Tom's Hardware Guide heeft een verslag van het Intel Developer Forum online gemikt. In het verslag wordt geschreven over de Pentium IV (Willy), de Tehama chipset, IA-64 en Itanium, Foster en de Colusa chipset, Timna, AMD's 1.1GHz Thunderbird demonstratie, Serial ATA en USB 2.0. Hier een hap over Serial ATA, dat in 2001 ATA100 op zal volgen:

When this year is over the old ATA100 standard (also known as UDMA/100) for the parallel transmission of data for hard disks and CD-ROM's can be buried. The successor will be the Serial ATA standard. As the name implies, data transmission is serial. The individual hard disks using Serial ATA are connected using a four-wire cable. A standardized connector will be used for all drive types, i.e. 5.25", 3.5" and the 2.5" notebook versions. Two wires transmit the data for writes and the other two are used for reads. As Serial ATA is a direct connection (point-to-point connection) type, jumper settings such as Master and Slave will no longer be needed in the future. For compatibility reasons, adapters are intended to be made available for a transition period so that old hard disks can still be used. The serial ATA 1x standard (from 2001) permits a maximum data transmission rate of 1.5 GBits/s (approx. 150 MByte/s).

iXBT-Hardware heeft een review online gepetst van het Chaintech 6ATA4 moederbord met de VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset. De 6ATA4 doet onder Quake III timedemo's totaal niet onder voor een i820 + SDRAM setup en is voor gamers dus een uitstekend alternatief. Overklokkers zullen ook vrolijk worden van de mogelijkheid om een bussnelheid van 155MHz te gebruiken:

And now let's pass over to practice. To check the overclockability of Chaintech 6ATA4, we tried to overclock Intel Pentium III 500E. The system was equipped with PC133 SDRAM and a graphics card on NVIDIA GeForce 256. When we overclocked this processor in the system with i440BX based mainboard, the maximum we managed to get from the system bus was 133MHz (with the processor running at 667MHz). All our further attempts to increase the FSB frequency ended in failure: the system crashed because of the exceedingly overclocked AGP, which prevented the graphics cards from performing properly. Well, this problem of i440BX, which allows only 1 and 2/3 AGP dividers, has always been well-known. VIA Apollo Pro133A based mainboards, including 6ATA4, use 1/2 to get the AGP frequency from 133MHz FSB and hence guarantee proper operation of this bus. The effect didn't keep us waiting for long: we managed to overclock the CPU up to 155MHz FSB (775MHz).

EETimes meldt dat Sony Computer Entertainment komende herfst met een plank op de markt komt waarmee ontwikkelaars van arcade machines customized systemen en games kunnen bouwen op basis van de Playstation 2 architectuur:

Arcade game manufacturers will be able to develop their own machines that combine the Playstation 2 board with their own boards, such as interface boards, according to SCE. The company said it intends to supply the board in volume in autumn when vendors are ready to produce machines based on the board in volume.

"SCE intends to actively expand this business," an SCE spokesman said. Use of the Playstation 2 architecture in the arcade market is expected to simplify the development and porting of game titles to and from arcade game machines and the Playstation 2 home console. SCE has already shipped about 300,000 boards of the popular first-generation Playstation to arcade game vendors.

Bij CD-R Info is een review te vinden van de Sanyo CRD-BP2 12x CD brander, uitgerust met Sanyo's BURN-Proof techniek die buffer underruns tot verleden laat behoren. Uit de test bleek dat het inderdaad mogelijk was om het branden gewoon de onderbreken om vervolgens vrolijk verder te fikken waar je was gebeleven. Check this:

When we first read about BURN-Proof we thought ..nah.. this can't be possible. We can make our PC's buffer underrun whenever we want. So when we got Sanyo CRD-BP2 at our hands our first concern was to test the so called "BURN-Proof" capability. What did we do?

We tried to burn at 12x and at the same time run the following programs:

- Winamp with Visual OpenGL plug-in
- Prassi PrimoCD doing 2 images from 2 CD ROM's into same HD
- AVP checking for virus same HD
- Scandisk of Windows checking same disk
- CheckCD98 of WinOnCD measuring same HD
- Several IE and NS windows open
- Sisoft Sanda Benchmarking PC same time all above programs running

Running all of the above programs simultaneously, almost succeeded bringing my PC into its knees, crash (CPU LOAD 100%) but no bad burn! Want more tests?

How about writing CDs in 12x from Disk Drives and no coaster? How about while writing CDs pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, leave the PC at this condition for 5 minutes and then come back continue burning and not a single coaster? Is this impressive or not ? All our projects causing buffer underrun (and coasters) with BURN-Proof feature turned on failed

However this showed that BURN-Proof technology really works great and future CDR-W based on this technology will make you all happy. You will be able to work and at the same time burn your favourite CDs without caring for destroying the media. This is something no one was able to do in the past.

Leveranciers en distributeurs hebben op de CeBIT te horen gekregen dat de Athlon 600 komende tijd moeilijk verkrijgbaar zal zijn. Volgens The Register is dit bewijs dat AMD de produktie van de Athlon 600 in april stop zal zetten. Verder suggereert The Register dat AMD sneller over zal stappen op Socket A:

On the stand itself, executives were showing the Socket A form factor and the Thunderbird chip to journalists, who were, however, not allowed to take photographs of the parts. That suggests that AMD may displace the Slot A cartridge for its Socket A model sooner than expected.

One PC vendor at the show said he was surprised that AMD was moving to cut prices of the Athlon by as much as 60 per cent. But, he added, the drought of Intel Coppermine Pentium IIIs has now ended, and he and others were beginning to receive "more than sufficient" quantities of the chips.

Kryotech, ook aanwezig op AMD's stand, zou gezegd hebben dat een 2GHz systeem eind dit jaar beschikbaar komt.

Sander Sassen van HardwareCentral heeft een review getikt van de erg stoere Plextor UltraPlex 40x Max SCSI CD-Rom speler. Hieronder wat meer info over zijn performance:

Upon looking at both screenshots we see that the 12/20 Plex has a sequential read speed of 1897 KB/s, whereas the UltraPlex 40X Max has a sequential read speed of 2840 KB/s. That’s a 2840 / 1897 = 50% increase in performance. Also take notice of the spindle speeds, these are just estimates, but I can tell you first hand that the UltraPlex spins really fast; the spec sheet mentions ‘over 8000 RPM’ and I think that is very realistic.

If we look at the random read speed, we’re looking at a 622 / 560 = 11% increase in performance. Take notice however that the drive’s mechanics are working against the odds here, as the laser pickup unit now has to move back and forth across the CD’s surface and thus it is limited by its mass and the speed and strength of the drive motor. Mounting a bigger drive motor or just making the pick up lighter might seem like a way to tackle this problem, but in reality won’t quite cut it; with all laser pickups it is a trade off between speed and precision. So an 11% improvement is a nice accomplishment.

K-Bench heeft van haar 'bronnen bij nVidia' wat informatie weg geplukt over de specs van de NV11 en NV15 chip van nVidia. Als onderstaande verhaaltje klopt zal de NV15 3 keer sneller zijn dan de huidige GeForce (NV10) en 400MHz DDR Ram gebruiken:

According to the close source of Nvidia, NV15 is going to be 3 times faster than current GeForce256(NV10)

The source told us that NV11 is at least 1.5 x faster than NV10 and it is targeted at budget customer solutions against NV15.
NV11 has 2 texel/pixel, 2 pixel/clock rendering pipeline structure and supports both SDR & DDR SDRAMs. Memory clock of SDR SDRAM version of NV11 will be 166MHz.
As an option, NV11 card with additional DAC can do dual display like G400's DH.
In this case, primary displays at 2048x1536 @60MHz, secondary displays at 1600x1200 @100 is feasible.

NV15 will be 3 times faster than GeForce256 with 400MHz of DDR SDRAM. It has 2 texel/pixel, 4 pixel/clock rendering pipeline structure and supports 720P HDTV. NV15 can be configured with SCA(Scalable Cooperative Architecture) that 1 AGP + 1 Virtual AGP(PCI) can be set. 90 frames / second at 2048 x 1536 x 32bit color is expected, the source said. This chip will be manufactured with 0.18 micron process and will be available in late spring.
High-end version of NV15, NV15GL will be released also. NV15GL card will have 128MB of DDR SDRAM(400MHz) and uses AGP Pro 4x interface.

Anand levert vandaag een flinke roundup af van in totaal 12 moederborden gebaseerd op de de VIA Apollo Pro 133 (AGP 2x) dan wel de VIA Apollo Pro 133A (AGP 4x) chipset. Uit de test blijkt dat de performance tussen de verschillende moederborden erg verschillend is, tot wel 42 frames in Quake III. Anand legt de oorzaak bij de mobofabrikanten die te weinig getweakt hebben in de BIOS instellingen. De borden van Gigabyte komen als beste uit de test, terwijl de P3V4X van Asus nog wel een paar BIOS updates kan gebruiken. Hieronder een gedeelte uit de conclusie:

The performance issue is present with virtually all of the motherboards in this roundup, and it is a very disappointing scene. It has been just about two years since the last time we did a major motherboard comparison where there was a significant difference in performance among the entries. The VIA Apollo Pro 133/133A chipsets are viable alternatives, and although there are quite a few motherboard manufacturers out there that are using the solutions we're going to need a greater level of perfection from these manufacturers before the platform can get to the point the BX platform is today where you can go out and pick up virtually any board without having to worry about performance issues.

If motherboard manufacturers don't take it upon themselves to fix the problems with their boards, VIA needs to step forward and endorse only those manufacturers that properly implement their chipsets as well as follow a set of guidelines for performance and stability when using these chipsets. From the manufacturers that we've talked to, we've received the impression that VIA isn't nearly as cooperative as Intel with helping motherboard manufacturers with their designs. While this may be an illustration of the capabilities of a large company versus a smaller one, it is also a sign that VIA does need to do more if the problem's roots is indeed with them and not lax motherboard manufacturers.

Jurrien bracht ons op de hoogte van het nieuws dat KDE.org versie 1.1 van KDevelop en de KDE Development kit heeft aangekondigd:

Sandy Meier announced version 1.1 of the wildly popular C/C++ IDE, KDevelop. Sandy sums up the changes between version 1.0 and 1.1:

• 7 new application templates
  • KDE1 OpenGL
  • KDE2 SDI
  • KDE2 mini
  • KDE2 MDI
  • QT2 SDI
  • QT2 MDI/QWorkspace
  • QT2 MDI/QextMDI
• complete integrated internal debugger
• extended documentation, inclusive a KScribble tutorial and example code
• improved editor: visible bookmarks, comment/uncomment code in editor window, support for multibyte character
• improved other components: dlgeditor, classviewer
• Htdig search engine support
• translations (online help, manual) into many languages
• better OS support: KDevelop is now available for Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris and Unixware

Version 1.1 of the KDE Development Kit was also announced.

Onderzoek aan de Michigan State University heeft een nieuw thermo-elektrisch materiaal opgeleverd waarmee de temperatuur van IC's met 200 graden Celcius verlaagd kan worden, terwijl de kloksnelheid tegelijkertijd kan verdubbelen. De techniek zou een ideale vervanger van de huidige heatsink+fan combo's kunnen zijn (thanks tomson voor de tip):

A new thermoelectric material that becomes cool when conducting electricity promises to replace heat sinks and fans in electronic equipment. For a 20 percent premium in manufacturing chips, the patented material may increase their speed 100 percent by dropping a circuit's internal temperature as much as 200°C below current operating temperatures, its inventor says.

"Today people use bismuth and tellurium alloys to make thermoelectric materials that can drive temperatures down 50°K below the ambient, but by adding cesium we can drive the temperature down from 60° to 100° or even 200°," said professor Mercouri Kanatzidis, the material's inventor here at Michigan State University. Tests of p-n junctions made with the new material showed a maximum thermoelectric performance at 225°K.

[...] As for cooling chips and electronic equipment, Kanatzidis believes his material can be sandwiched with traditional bismuth-tellurium alloys to provide continuous cooling capability from ambient temperatures down to 200°K below normal operating temperature.

Check dit artikel van EETimes voor meer info.

De FBI is afgelopen vrijdag zelf doelwit geworden van een distributed denial of service attack. De FBI bleek niet in staat te zijn om zich tegen de aanval te verweren, met als gevolg dat de website van de Federal Bureau of Investigation gedurende drie uur onbereikbaar was:

Not wanting to miss the denial-of-service party which so many sites have had lately, the FBI site held one of its own. The attack shut down its servers for several hours.

Late Friday, the FBI made public its inability to handle distributed denial-of-service attacks. The federal site was taken offline for three hours on February 18. The attack doesn't appear to be similar to those suffered by the FBI last year.

Last year, many federal sites were hacked and/or disabled in an ongoing battle between the government and hackers.

An FBI spokesman claimed indecision as to whether a technical fault or flat-out malicious attack shut down the server, but maintained "vandals" were responsible.

No casualties were suffered in the attack.

Aldus Maximum PC (thanks jurrien voor de tip). Zie voor meer info ook dit artikel van SiliconValley.com, ingestuurd door Flamerz 'r uz.

Intel heeft gisternen een aantal nieuwe Pentium III, Xeon en Celeron varianten gereleased. De PIII familie werd uitgebreid met 850 en 850MHz modellen, aan de Xeon reeks werd een 866MHz versie toegevoegd en bij de Celeron zagen we de Celeron A zijn terugkomst maken in de vorm van de C500A en C533A. Dit zijn net zoals de nieuwe Celeron 566 en 600 processors met FC-PGA packaging. Tegelijkertijd werden de oudere PIII's, Xeons en Celerons in prijs verlaagd. Onderstaand informatie ripte The Register uit een Intel memo (overzicht met de exacte prijzen volgt later vandaag):

As well as the introduction of the 866MHz and 850MHz Coppermine Pentium IIIs, Intel notified the channel of the percentage drops as follows 800EB MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 24%, 800 MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 24%, 750 MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 29%, 733 MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 23%, 700 MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 26% 667 MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 25%, 650 MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 25%, 600EB MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 24%,600E MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 24%, 600B MHz (SECC2) 24%, 600 MHz (SECC2) 24%, 550E MHz (FC-PGA/FC-PGA) 20%, 550 MHz (SECC2) 20%, 533EB MHz (SECC2/FC-PGA) 10%, 533B MHz (SECC2) 10%, 500E MHz (FC-PGA) 0%, and 500 MHz (SECC2) 0%."

For its Slot Two (Xeon) processors, it is also introducing a 866MHz part. The 800 MHz (SECC-Slot 2) 256K Cache drops by 29%, the 733 MHz (SECC-Slot 2) 256K Cache 22%, the 667 MHz (SECC-Slot 2) 256K Cache 15%, the 600 MHz (SECC-Slot 2) 256K Cache 0%.

Here are the Celeron changes. Intel has introduced a 600 MHz (FC-PGA) and a 566MHz (FC-PGA) Celeron. The percentage drops since the last price cut on the 23rd of January are as follows.

The 533A MHz (FC-PGA) 24%, the 533 MHz (PPGA) 24%, the 500A MHz (FC-PGA) 27%, the 500 MHz (PPGA) 27%, the 466 MHz (PPGA) 18%, the 433 MHz (PPGA) 0%.

Thanks Sinterklaas 82 tm voor de tip.

Alex van Kaam heeft een 'Wizard Beta 1 Test' voor Motherboard Monitor 5 uitgebracht. Ik heb niet uitgeprobeerd wat het is, maar afgaande op de omschrijving lijkt het erop dat Alex op zoek is naar bepaalde feedback over de werking van nieuwe features in het proggie:

Available for download is the MBM 5 Wizard Beta 1 Test (cool name or what ??!!).

It is not a fully functioning MBM, it's just a wizard, what I need tested is if it works or if it does not work. DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU DON'T HAVE MBM 4 RUNNING, it does not add new sensor chips so it's no use.

There is a small manual on the 1st step of the wizard, it will explain what info I am looking for

Webmasters, please don't place the EXE on your page, it's just a temporary beta which I will probably remove after a few days (or less) so just link to this page please.

Thanks, Alex

Dankewel KMK.

Insane Hardware heeft de primeur met de eerste review van de Asus P3V4X, een slot 1 plankje met de VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset en uitgevoerd in een erg relaxte layout: naast 4 DIMM slots zijn er maar liefst 6 PCI sloten. Verder is de door velen gehate Audio Modem Riser volledig afwezig . Van de Apollo Pro 133A chipset zou je een goede overklokbaarheid verwachten, maar dat bleek bij het Asus bord helaas tegen te vallen: een PIII-450 ,die op een BE6-II moeiteloos op 600MHz draait, deed dit niet op de P3V4X. Interessant zijn de benchmarks: tot op heden liepen de VIA chipsets op het gebied van geheugen en AGP performance achter bij de chipsets van Intel. De geheugen performance van de P3V4X blijkt op een PIII-450 met 100MHz FSB en 133MHz memory bus al bijna het niveau van de 440BX te bereiken. Sisoft Sandra (nogal een lame benchmark) behaalt een hogere score op de P3V4X, terwijl 3DMark 2000 iets sneller loopt op de BX:

All round, I am pretty happy with the Asus P3V4X mainboard. I'd like to conclude with my thoughts on the performance of the board. First off, I think that this board may perform better if the Northbridge is coupled with the Via 686A Southbridge. I think that all round the 686A is quite a good chip and performs a bit better than the 596B chip that is on this board. This could be the reason for the performance hit. Well considering it has been round since the MVP3 chipset, it may be time to move on to the 686A, although that has been around for a while aswell. If Asus release a version with this chip, it may just clean up big time. I shall wait with bated breath.

Another dissapoitment with this board was it's overclocking capabilities. I tried for an hour to overclock the test CPU, with no luck above 501 MHz. I seriously think the board is due for a BIOS update or new hardware revision. Well with everyone reading this, and this being the first review of it on the net, Asus may find sales dropping and actually do something about. Who knows.

Thanks Ad van Oers voor de link.

Marcel schrijft: "Vlak na de release van PHP4 beta 4 volgt er een nieuwe versie van PHP3, te weten 3.0.15. Naast een aantal bug en security fixes zijn er nieuwe functies waarmee het o.a. mogelijk wordt om WAP bitmaps uit te poepen. Ze blijven goed bezig! Neerladen en make'n maar":

PHP 3.0.15 fixes a couple of issues and addresses some security concerns. If you are using PHP's safe mode feature, you are urged to upgrade to the latest release. More information will be posted later. PHP 3.0.15 is available in source form and binary form (for Win32). See the ChangeLog for a complete list of changes:

Fixed crash in preg_match_all(). (Andrei)

Backported safe_mode_protected_env_vars and safe_mode_allowed_env_vars INI directives from PHP 4.0 (Zeev)

Added Matthew Herman's FTP module patch for compatibility with Microsoft FTP service. (Andrew Skalski)

Fixed crash in strip_tags() and related functions.

Fixed passthru() to no longer return any value. (Andrei)

base64_decode() will decode POST data correct. (Thies) Patch submitted by: Turadg Aleahmad

Fixed a bug in the XML module that could cause crashes (Zeev)

Fixed a long historical bug in the API function call_user_function(), that could cause crashes in functions that made use of it (e.g., XML module functions) (Zeev)

Fixed possible buffer-overflow in base64_decode(). (Thies)

Fixed possible buffer-overflow in setcookie(). (Thies)

Added ImageWbmp() for outputting WAP's Wireless Bitmaps (markonen)

Support for LZW-compressed GIFs with gd 1.5, gd/freetype cleanups (markonen)

Added IMAP modified UTF-7 encode/decode routines (Andrew Skalski)

Add .ini option to set the default charset for the default text/html mime type that php serves up (Rasmus)

Imation heeft aangekondigd dat het binnen twee jaar met een holografisch opslagmedium op de markt zal komen. Uit onderzoek, dat in samenwerking met Bell Labs werd uitgevoerd, is gebleken dat commerciële toepassing van de techniek haalbaar is. De holografische drives zullen een capaciteit hebben van 125GByte en zullen eerst in versies voor de server en high-end markt uitgebracht worden. De prijs ligt tussen de 5.000 en 10.000 gulden (thanks McCormick voor de tip):

Naar dataopslag met holografie wordt sinds meer dan tien jaar onderzoek gedaan, de commerciële toepassing liep tot nu toe echter steeds stuk op de gevoeligheid en de hoge prijzen van de componenten. Met de ontwikkeling van een polymeer-opslagmedium, dat ook met gebruikelijke rode lasers te beschrijven is, slaagden de onderzoekers van Bell erin een belangrijke technische doorbraak te behalen. Verdere technische details aangaande de nieuwe drives kon Imation echter niet verklappen, aangezien de technici van Imation nog met technische onderzoeken bezig zouden zijn.

Lees voor het complete bericht dit artikel op de FNL (c't) Newsticker.

WausMaus schrijft dat hij en z'n mede-bARTikanen slachtoffer zijn geworden van een distributed denial of service aanval. Als gevolg hiervan zijn de POP server en de users.bart.nl webserver down geweest:

Melding: JRvdW

Tijd: 10:40

Omschrijving: De POPserver was door een bepaald individu op het Internet aangevallen in de hoop dat ze een DoS konden forceren of een bufferoverflow. Helaas voor de misbruikers zijn onze systemen in zekere mate hiertegen beveiligd.

De desbetreffende IP adressen zijn toegevoegd aan onze configuraties en de afdeling Techniek is druk bezig met het onderzoeken hoe deze problemen te voorkomen in de toekomst.

Melding: JRvdW

Tijd: 11:05

Omschrijving: users.bart.nl is offline. Voorlopige conclusie is gerelateerd aan de eerder gemelde DoS-achtige aanvallen op de POP server.

Eric van Fastgraphics.com heeft het tweede deel van zijn CeBIT verslag online gezet. In het artikel wordt aandacht besteed aan de Videlogic DigiTheater DTS, de GeForce en Savage2k videokaarten van Gainward en de MP3 spelers van Unitech en Human Information Technology. De laatste twee bedrijven blijken interessante MP3 spelertjes in ontwikkelingen te hebben die in een normale cassette recorder gebruikt kunnen worden:

The second player from Unitech is called "ROME" and is actually a more inventive player. It looks just like a normal audio cassette. The player has all controls at the top and comes with 32 Mb of built in memory, which can be expanded up to 64 MB.

Now, the really cool thing about the ROME is that you can actually insert it into a normal cassette player to play MP3 music on your car or home stereo. The controls of your cassette player will then be used to control the MP3 player. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to hear the soundquality produced this way, but this is a very cool way to upgrade regular stereo equipment to play MP3 files.

DOS schrijft: "Het wetenschappelijke bewijs van de vermoedens die wij al lange tijd hebben is nu geleverd. Vrouwen zijn minder handig met computers dan mannen. Volgens het onderzoek komt dit omdat het werken met computers minder aantrekkelijk en toegankelijk is voor vrouwen, wat weer verband zou houden met het macho imago van de computer, de houding van ouders en stereotypen in lesmateriaal":

Uit het onderzoek blijkt dat meisjes niet alleen minder dan jongens deelnemen aan cursussen over computers, aan het keuzevak informatica en aan informatica-opleidingen, maar dat ook leren met computers hen minder aantrekt. Het laatste is van belang omdat ICT in steeds meer vakken als leermiddel wordt gebruikt.

Meisjes staan over het algemeen minder positief tegenover ICT dan jongens en hebben minder vaak plannen om in de toekomst iets met ICT te gaan doen. De verschillen tussen jongere meisjes en jongens zijn overigens kleiner dan bij oudere leerlingen.

Het is nog niet duidelijk of het hier om een ontwikkeling in de tijd gaat. Dat is wel denkbaar omdat de computer een steeds vanzelfsprekender onderdeel uitmaakt van de leefomgeving van kinderen.

Meer informatie over dit onderzoek van het ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen vind je in dit artikel van Nu.nl.