ATI takes aim at M2

Taiwanese moles have released that ATI is mapping out their new M2 style motherboard chips to support the new chips that AMD is planning. The Register has the story here. Seems like they might be trying to get the jump on Nvidia. I guess time will tell.

Apple extends iMac G5 warranties

Apple has extended the warranties on the first generation of the iMac G5. After the standard 1 year warranty expires the only thing covered is a single part of the video sub-system that iMac owners have complained about. The symptoms would be scrambled, distorted or no video. However be careful, Apple notes "it is possible that your iMac G5 may exhibit video or power issues that are unrelated to the component failure identified by Apple as part of this program and are not covered under this program". The affected serial numbers are listed on this article.

Intel Chip Changes UPDATE

I read this great article on the Inquirer, check it out! Speculates on Intel's CPU changes.

The Windows Activation Stripsearch

I had to send my laptop into Gateway for a repair last month. And since I don't trust anyone else with my stuff, I wiped and reloaded Windows before I sent it in. I didn't activate it before it left for Texas, and didn't do it until basically forced this weekend.

I knew that Microsoft had increased their activation security for the OEM licenses, but WOW! It took me 10 minutes on the phone answering questions to get my activation code. The guy (In India) needed to know; laptop model number, location of the registration sticker, where I purchased it, HOW i purchased it (by web or phone), what its main usage was (home or work), and then I had to read back the 25 digit serial number to him again. Now I understand some of these, but the others just felt violating. Why should they care about this stuff? What's the deal Redmond? Am I going to have to go through this everytime now?

ZOTOB Worm

Microsoft recently released a warning of new security flaws in their Windows operating systems. A new virus called ZOTOB, which is a worm, could allow full remote access to infected machines. Trend Micro, a computer security company, has reported that there have been many infections in the United States and Germany.

Microsoft has since released an update to fix the problem. As far as removing the virus, your best bet would be to keep your anti-virus software updated and scan often. If you don't have anti-virus software, you can visit Housecall, which is a free online scanner from Trend Micro. If you wish to manually look for the virus it will appear in the Windows system folder, usually under the name BOTZOR.EXE. According to Microsoft, the virus is low threat and can only infect Windows 2000, although others say it can infect any version of Windows from 95 to XP.

Intel to Announce Chip Changes

Intel has announced plans to completly change their chip architecture in the near future. Nothing has been uncovered yet, but Paul Otellini will be talking about it later this month at the company's bi-annual hardware and software conference. The only thing we know about the change is that it has focued on multi-core units, and power consumption. "A big emphasis is going to be performance per watt," says Intel spokesman Bill Calder.

We can only wait to see if Intel plans to hit us with something that can compete with AMD's current offerings. I truly am suprised that Intel has held their market share this long. The Athlon CPUs have almost always performed better in benchmarks, and the current X2 is the king of dual core at this point. 2005 is turning out to be quite a crazy year in the chip market, and now we can finally see some of the direct results of that.

Article Here.

Silicon Photonics

As I was finishing my post from yesterday, Chuck brought me over a magazine with a big head line on it, "Intel's Breakthrough". I could only wonder what this was all about; well let me tell you. It is a technology known as 'Silicon Photonics', or a Silicon based chemical laser. Being a geek to these kind of things I had to read the article. All is can say is......WOW.

The lasers function due to a physical property known as the Raman Effect; which, without getting too out of hand, states that if an electrical current is applied to a crystalline structure then the molecules will rattle. This rattling will increase the photons energy when they are sent from a pump laser. Intel has a cool little flash demo here of what I am talking about.

Basically the idea is to replace copper as a conductor by using Silicon based lasers to send data. See copper can only conduct the binary 1s and 0s at a certain speed due to electrical interference. This forces the pulses to be sent slowly and far enough apart to still be recognized after the degradation they incur. With the laser that is not a problem, the circuits will conduct at the speed of light, every time.

This is the future everyone, don't be surprised if in 10 years we all have computers based on this technology. No solid numbers have been thrown out yet, and to this point they have only been able to create a continuous beam, but damn this stuff is cool...

MIT Tech Review Article Here

Better late than never.....

Hell has officially frozen over... with Apple's release of the Mighty Mouse. The Mighty Mouse, specifically designed to work with Apple's Tiger operating system, has a range of functions not currently in use on a standard 2 button wheel mouse. But the weird part, or the cool part to mac users, is that there are no real buttons, it's all touch. HMMMM.... I smell a few accidental clicks coming on....
Mighty Mouse

I caught a virus on the way to work...

You all know by now that computers have Virii. And some of you may know by now that all the new cell phones come with internet access. Well this is all well and good until you realize that your phone is a small computer and that it also is subject to virus infection. Now a lot of cell phones are equipped with Bluetooth, which is a nifty little wireless setup.

Guess what else uses Bluetooth? That's right, it's your car. A lot of the newer cars are coming with navigtion systems and wireless devices that are partly run with Bluetooth. So let's do some math: Virus gets on the internet, virus gets on your computer, virus sneaks into your phone, virus makes the jump to your car !?!?!

A lot of your car's systems are run by computer. Your airbags, emission controls, navigation, sound system, and certain parts of the engine are run by the car's computer. Can you imagine how nasty that would be if you lost control of those. Now let's not fret just yet. F-Secure a prominent anti-virus software company has made some attempts to load a virus into a car's system and was unsuccessful. Bear in mind that even if your systems were taken control of, you would still have the use of the car, but some of the systems may not be working correctly. It would most likely require some form of system reboot or flash from the dealer to correct the issues. For now the problem is on the horizon, but as we all know, in the computer business, the horizon is only a day away.

X2 Price Cuts

AMD has announced the release of the Athlon X2 3800+ at a price of $354 for a tray of 1000. This is great news for the AMD crowd, being that all benchmarks put the X2 far ahead of the Pentium D. AMD seems to be aiming to take some of the low-cost dual core business away from Intel's Pentium D 820, and in doing so flexing its performance muscles. Intel better do something, they are still behind AMD technology wise, and things don't look to be changing.

Ars Article Here