IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 24/01/2009

Techconnect Review Round-up 23/1/09
CPU & Motherboard

- MSI X58 Eclipse Motherboard @ Viperlair

Memory

- Corsair Dominator 6GB 1866 MHz DDR3 @ Guru3D

Storage

- Super Talent Godfather Flash Drive @ BigBruin

Graphics cards

- Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB @ bit-tech
- ASUS EAH4850 MT Republic of Gamers HD 4850 @ Overclockers Club
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 @ VR-Zone

Enclosures & PSUs

- Antec Signature 850 PSU @ ProClockers
- NZXT Zero 2 chassis @ Bjorn3d
- AKASA Infiniti Zor Gaming Case @ DriverHeaven
- NZXT Tempest case @ Modders-Inc
- Hiper Osiris Black Mid Tower Case @ Extreme Overclocking

Displays

- Dell S2309W 23" Widescreen Monitor @ TheTechLounge

Cooling and modding

- Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT CPU Cooler @ Hardware Canucks
- Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro Heatsink @ FrostyTech
- Akasa Nero أ¢آ€آ“ 1366 CPU cooler @ PureOC
- Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler @ Futurelooks

Peripherals

- Steelseries WoW Mouse @ XSReviews

PCs

- LG X110 netbook @ RegHardware

Photo and video cameras

- Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR @ HotHardware
- Canon PowerShot SX10 IS @ TrustedReviews

Sound

- V-Moda Vibe II Headset @ Legit Reviews

Other

- HTC S740 Qwerty keyboard smartphone @ RegHardware
- Evo-G MP3 Mousepad @ ProClockers
- Verbatim MediaStation Pro @ InsideHW
- Nokia N79 and Emtec Movie Cube S800 @ TrustedReviews
- Sunbeamtech HDD Docking Station @ Fusion Mods
Read More ...

Qimonda goes bankrupt, plans to restructure
Following the failure of negotiations with strategic and financial investors, Infineon's memory manufacturing subsidiary Qimonda has decided to begin insolvency proceedings and reorganize its business in hopes of coming back stronger than ever. Falling memory prices and tough competition have seen Qimonda post nothing but losses since Q3 of fiscal year 2007 and the global financial crisis simply put the final nail in the coffin, a coffin that is planned to be broken out of after the upcoming restructuring moves come into effect.

"German insolvency law offers the opportunity to accelerate the restructuring process that has already been started in order to reposition the company back onto a solid base," said Kin Wah Loh, President and Chief Executive Officer of Qimonda AG. "Qimonda possesses established products and, with its Buried Wordline technology, is currently bringing a promising future technology to the market." ... "We assume we will be able to continue our business within the context of our restructuring program with the support of the temporary insolvency administrator and our employees," Loh added.

A Munich court has already appointed Dr. Michael Jaffأƒآ©, a lawyer specialized in insolvency law and expert in restructuring, as preliminary insolvency administrator for Qimonda AG and Qimonda Dresden OHG.
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New mobile trojan uses SMS to steal money
Kaspersky Labs are reporting that its researchers have discovered a malicious application which is more than capable of connecting to and controlling a user's mobile phone account through the devices themselves.

Written in Python programming language, the trojan has been called 'sms.python.flocker' and it targets Symbian-powered phones using the services of Indonesian operators. The malicious program is capable of sending SMS messages to a command number (such as the number you dial to retrieve your balance), which can instruct the operator to transfer funds from one mobile phone number to another - presumably that of the criminals involved.

"Obviously, the authors of the Trojan want to make money," said Denis Maslennikov, a senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab. "It seems that the focus on financial fraud in the mobile malware industry will only get more pronounced over time. Until recently, many people thought that malicious programs that send SMS messages without the user's knowledge were a purely Russian phenomenon. Now we can see that the problem no longer affects only Russian users - it's becoming an international issue."

Each SMS gets the cyber-thieves USD $0.5-0.9, and as you can imagine, many of these running continuously on multiple handsets could gather quite a bit of money!
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Another Jobs' death hoax hacked onto Wired
More news about Steve Jobs having a heart attack surfaced yesterday on Wired.com, and has been revealed to be the third time the Apple CEO has been targeted by juvenile media hoaxes. If this continues, when will we actually know if he has taken a bad turn, or worse actually died?

According to CNet News, someone created a legitimate web page resembling that of Wired.com and by using the site's public image viewer, generated the page containing the image under a Wired logo banner. Wired.com have reported that the hole has now been patched and fixed, but this will likely not be the last of false news regarding Mr. Jobs.

The post itself is actually incredibly grammatically flawed, with misspellings throughout. Fortunately not many people took this hoax seriously, as was the case in the October iReport incident, at which point a post was made on CNN's citizen report page causing Apple stock to take a brief plunge.

The legitimate looking page was created using a hole in the image upload viewer.
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Core Temp updated, backed by Scythe
This has been a busy week for Core Temp as the CPU temperature monitoring software got updated to version - 0.99.4, and it received some praise and backup by Japan-based Scythe, a manufacturer of CPU cooling solutions like the Mugen 2, Kama Angle, Orochi and Ninja 2. While Scythe's support is welcomed, what you'll be more happy to know is that Core Temp 0.99.4 is quite a significant update as it features:

Major changes:

- Completely rewritten base code.
- Core Temp is now available in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

- Add: CPU detection improved, efficiency improved, speed improved, clock speed detection improved.
- Add: Initial support for Core i5 (Lynnfield).
- Add: Automatically detect Core i7/i5 series TjMax.
- Add: Show real-time TDP of Core i7 processors (still needs work).
- Add: Alternative clock speed detection for Core 2, i7 and i5 series and up.
- Add: Support for all currently available and some future processor families. (Intel & AMD)
- Add: Temperature changes color when temperatures hit high levels to alert the user. (Orange = hot, Red = critical)
- Add: Show (!) besides the temperature of a core which hit critical temp as a notification of past overheating.
- Add: Invalid temperature values are followed by (?) for both Intel and AMD.
- Add: AMD AM2+ 65nm processors get a 21c offset to fix incorrect temperature reporting (info from AMD).
- Add: AMD Black Edition processors identified by "BE" suffix after PR rating.
- Add: Display time and date on G15 LCD.
- Add: Complete DPI awareness - Core Temp GUI now scales perfectly with any DPI setting.
- Add: Rewritten algorithm for "Register dump" function, works much faster and more accurate (no ghost devices).

- Add: Redesigned log file system:
1) Settings window allows to start logging when Core Temp starts.
Logging can be toggled on or off from the Options menu or simply by pressing F4.
2) Layout is completely changed. Now it's easy to create graphs and the output is more coherent and understandable.
3) CSV file format is preserved.
4) Each logging session creates a seperate log file named with time and date of session start.
5) Logging is now off by default.

- Add: Register dump provides much more information:
1) Supported instruction set.
2) Supported features.
3) Manufacturing node.
4) Default CPU speed, multiplier range and maximum VID.
5) Bus ratio multiplier.
6) Bus frequency.
7) Processor and OS thread counts.
8) Cache: Count and size.
9) Processor topology.
10) PCI register dump also lists device names when "PCIDEVS.TXT" file is added to Core Temp's directory, Link (scroll down a little).
11) Better output layout, easier to read.

- Fix: Core Temp crashes on Intel multi-processor platforms with Socket #0 unpopulated.
- Fix: Countless minor bug fixes due to rewritten code base.
- Fix: System tray icons do not appear after explorer.exe crash/restart.

- Change: Core Temp will now work with A0 and A1 revisions of 65nm Core 2 processors.
- Change: Core Temp will not work on some/all virtual machine software.
- Change: TjMax values for 65nm Core 2 series adjusted.

To download the latest Core Temp release visit this page.

New RFID technology looks to be promising cost cutter
American electronics researchers have announced that they have developed a brand new type of semiconductor ink which could be used by retailers to replace the rather expensive radio frequency ID technology available today.

From deep within the research and development departments at BASF Future Business and Polyera Corp comes the new 'wonderink' which, unlike existing products, is design to carry an N-Type negative charge enabling it to be printed onto any material using a simple modification to a regular inkjet printer.

Up until now the problem has been cost effective mass production of the labels, however, if it were possible to simply print the tags using existing technology, then they would be very simple, very fast and very cheap to manufacture. It is important for retailers to keep the cost of tagging, storing, counting and securing stock down, and the new product, called 'ActivInk' should help do just that.

Read More ...

NetApp knocks Google off the top employer list
Google's reign as the number one company to work for in Fortune Magazine's top 100 employers list has come to an end at the enthusiastic hands of the Storage development company NetApp.

NetApp employs 8,000 people worldwide (impressive, but small in comparison to Google's 18,000) and it was selected for the enthusiasm and excitement of its employees. The ranking this year slipped NetApp up to the pole position, where last year it was at 6th place. Google has been top trump at number one for two years running - now falling back down to 4th. This ranking probably comes from the cut of the annual company ski trip, and lets not forget - employees were only eligible for a developer G1 at Christmas instead of the regular bonuses. Shocking.

NetApp is one of the few company's in the world that pays $11,400 in adoption aid to five paid days to do volunteer work. And better yet - the company is one of a select few that are actually hiring people, not firing people in the new year.
Read More ...

Danamics LM10 liquid metal cooler stops selling
Released in November the LM10, Danamics' first liquid metal CPU cooler has now been phased out with no new units planned to be shipped in Europe or anywhere else. According to Danamics, the LM10 was supposed to be a limited edition product from the get go (although we can't recall such mentions) and now that it did its job, to focus enough attention to its maker and the technology used, it's ready to retire.

Without much mourning, Danamics is already back to work and is planning to release new, high-end coolers based on liquid metal technology later this year.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 24/01/2009

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