OCZ Introduces DDR-3 1800 speed RAM
It's really nice to have this spiffy new and fast RAM, now we just need a motherboard to truly take advantage of it.

Memory based on the exciting new Micron Z9 memory chips for DDR3 first appeared a couple of weeks ago and we looked at it in Super Talent & TEAM: DDR3-1600 is Here! As predicted in that review, it was only a matter of days until most of the major enthusiast memory makers began talking about their own products based on Micron Z9 chips. Some even announced availability of the new kits in the retail market.

As explained in the past, all memory makers buy raw memory chips available in the open market. Some memory makers do not like to talk about the chips used in their DIMMs, as they consider that information proprietary, but this secrecy does not normally last very long. It is rare to see a memory manufacturer with a truly exclusive supply arrangement with a memory vendor, but several companies have been trying very hard to do just this, and we may see more of these attempts in the future.


Read all about it here, courtesy of Anandtech.com

Eric

Ageia Island: Is it Time to Buy a PhysX Card Yet?
If you have a spare $15o laying around, go for it...

We weren't too kind in our initial review of the Ageia PhysX physics accelerator in May of last year. At almost $300, it was expensive, and from what we could tell, it didn't do much of anything. One of the first supporting games was Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and the additional physics interactions displayed were definitely underwhelming. Not to mention, adding the PhysX card didn't improve performance much. We closed out our negative review by saying that the card had potential, and, "We could be singing a different tune in six months. By then, perhaps there will be dozens of titles on the shelves, and maybe they'll deliver really impressive new physics interactions with the PhysX card. We'll be happy to revisit this card at a later date."

Unfortunately, it has taken much longer than six months for PhysX support in AAA titles. In fact, the next really big game to deliver the kind of enhancements we were expecting from the card is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, just released. The game ships with a special "Ageia Island" mission that's heavily accelerated by the PhysX card and does a much better job of showing off what hardware-accelerated physics in games can be.

PhysX cards from BFG and ASUS are now around $150, roughly half of what they cost upon launch. This makes them more attractive prospects. We stand by our initial review, but we wanted to take another look at the card with a new AAA title that offers a much better experience. Continued...



Read all about it here, courtesy of extremetech.com

Eric

AMD reveals 4-Way CrossFire & New Roadmaps
Is AMD planning a coup against Intel? Only time and benchmarking will tell...

Introduction

The following roadmaps and slides are information that was released at AMD's Analyst Day this morning in Sunnyvale, CA. Most of these obviously do not require a lot of narration, so we will leave you to the slides. You might want to take a look at our 3-way CrossFire & Phenom at 3GHz news post this morning as well as our "AMD's Direction and Next-Gen Bulldozer Revealed." All the news this morning has certainly inspired many thoughts and feelings to be expressed in our AMD forum. Please feel free to join.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

Five Tech Mistakes to Avoid
Here are some great tips to keep your PC safe and secure.

A friend of ours was amazingly proud of installing his first ever wireless network. He's not what you'd call technical, so this was a fairly major accomplishment. That is, until we asked how he protected it and he said, "That weep thing."

"WEP?" we asked.

"Yeah, that."

"Why didn't you use WPA or WPA-2?"

"Huh? All it said was WEP."

This user made two mistakes. He didn't upgrade the firmware on his Belkin router (the latest firmware comes with the latest encryption technology), and he didn't protect his wireless network as well as he could have.

In chatting with friends, surfing tech forums, and sifting through our email, we've come up with a list of five common tech tasks that lots of folks overlook. Here they are.

Mistake Number One: Leaving your Wireless Network Unprotected
That nameless guy in the intro did the right thing in enabling WEP to protect his wireless network. It wasn't, however, enough. If he'd updated the router's firmware, he'd have had access to better options.

Read all about it here, courtesy of extremetech.com

Eric

Malware Removal Guide
It's as easy as 1-2-3...

It's that time of year again folks, where I remind you of the great importance of running a clean, secure and efficient Windows operating system. The first step is get that box all cleaned up! Follow this guide, it's as simple as following each step, installing and then running the software!

Disclaimer:
Read the instructions on each of the pieces of software that your installing so you know how it works. Also, please remember, I nor 3DCOOL will be held responsible should your pc blows up or, something equally bad happens to it. This is a guide to help you, and can only help pc's that are stable enough to run the software. Use at your own risk.

Read all about it here, courtesy of mywebpages.comcast.com

Eric

Sony VAIO VGN-TZ12VN
The first mass produced solid state hard drive laptop goes into mass production, courtesy of Sony.

The big question is whether you can actually tell the difference when using a notebook with an SSD as opposed to an HDD, and I’m glad to say that you definitely can. When I reviewed the TZ11MN I mentioned that it was a little sluggish at times, but I’ve encountered no such issues with this machine. Applications open incredibly quickly and Vista as a whole just feels far more responsive. Of course some of this improvement is no doubt due to the 2GB of memory installed, as opposed to the 1GB seen in the TZ11MN. However, my Samsung Q40 definitely feels more responsive since being equipped with an SSD, and since I was previously using it with a standard HDD and the same amount of memory, it’s clear that an SSD does make a discernable difference to everyday Windows work.
The down side of a solid state drive is capacity, and just like my Samsung, this Sony ships with a 32GB drive, which is pretty meagre by today’s standards, even for ultra-portables. In fact, the TZ model one rung below this one ships with a massive 100GB hard drive! But I’m generally of the opinion that you really don’t need masses of storage space in a notebook, especially one as thin and light as this. If you use a notebook for work, there’s almost no amount of files that can fill up 32GB. What eats up hard disk space is stuff like music and video libraries – stuff that is far from necessary on a machine that’s supposed to be a work tool. If however you’re looking for an ultra-portable machine for personal use, you may want to look at one of the cheaper TZ models with a traditional drive.


Read all about it here, courtesy of TrustedReviews.com

Eric

Great Free Files: 20 Fantastic Open Source Downloads
Don't be fooled, these files are as good as or in some cases better than the paid for counterparts.

The very earliest days of the PC revolution were soaked in idealism. People shared their knowledge with one another freely; the very idea of charging for software was an anathema. The early days of the Internet had a similar rosy view of the world.

Today, of course, all that has changed. But there are still plenty of idealists out there, sharing their work with the world freely, and asking others to work cooperatively with them. That's the underlying idea behind the Open Source movement. People create software, and allow others to download and use it freely, and let them modify it as well.

This idealism can create great software. That's where Firefox got its start, for example. But there's plenty of great, free Open Source software beyond Firefox. I've rounded up 20 of my top Open Source favorites. Their sophistication and power will surprise you; you'll find everything from a universal instant messaging program to powerful multimedia and graphics tools, security software, and beyond. The programs show that Open Source adherents aren't wild-eyed zealots--they produce plenty of great software.

Read all about it here, courtesy of PCWorld.com

Eric

Five dirty truths about clean technology
An interesting perspective on the "get green" craze.

perspective: The planet is changing. The complacency is changing. The energy business is changing.

And--after more than two centuries of hydrocarbon use and 150 years of extracting oil--history is changing as a growing number of companies and public-sector entities try to transform the fossil-fuel era in real time.

The clock is clearly ticking as we confront these critical issues, but we should keep the hours, minutes and seconds in perspective. The economic and environmental consequences stemming from our poor energy choices have been building since the Industrial Revolution. So it's unrealistic to think that we can scrub the skies overnight.

We can't. And we won't.

Most meaningful technology transformations usually take up to 100 years, which is why it may already be too late to solve our current energy problems, especially given the growing evidence that production in the world's largest oil fields may be peaking. The long lag time to fruition is generally due to a lack of workable innovation and perspective; it's hard to understand the future when you've never been there.

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET News.

Eric

React OS: Here comes the Windows Nemesis?
IS this the OS that makes transitioning from Windows seamless and painless...maybe.

ReactOS is a free and open-sourced operating system based on the Windows architecture, providing support for existing applications and drivers, and an alternative to the current dominant consumer operating system.

ReactOS 0.3.1 Mainly, the work focused on rewriting certain parts of the ReactOS Core (kernel, HAL, bootloader, etc). It’s very hard to sum up the huge Changelog in an outline, but briefly:

• Freeldr was improved
• HAL’s key areas have been significantly improved (irql-related, bus support, kd-functions)
• The Kernel experienced a massive rewrite of incompatible parts (and is still in the process of improvement)
• Run-time library (Rtl) got a lot of improvements and bugfixes
• Bugs were fixed in kernel-mode drivers and a better USB driver was added
• Registry-support has been greatly improved thanks to addition of “cmlib”, a library shared by the boot loader and the kernel to handle binary registry hives; it even supports binary registry hives created by Windows
• More fixes in the Win32 subsystem and user-mode DLLs
• Boot video driver (and a splash screen) was added

Read through the changelog, and you will see the amount of changes in this release!
However, there are a few things worth mentioning. First of all, please don’t forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS (due to stability and compatibility concerns). And second, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware.

Note: This project is still in Alpha state .. But has shown massive improvements which is a good point.

Read all about it here, courtesy of tuxenclave.wordpress.com

Eric

DDR3 Memory: Not Ready for Prime Time
The air apparent to the memory throne, is not quite ready yet. Given time, price cuts and optimized memory controllers on motherboards this will become the new standard.

Time for another memory transition!

Well, not quite. DDR3 memory has arrived on the scene, but the move to DDR3 memory is looking a lot like the transition from DDR SDRAM to DDR2. What's happening is that newer memory trades off latency for bandwidth.

The recent release of the Intel P35 and G35 chipsets is the beginning of the shift to DDR3, a new memory technology that builds on the foundation built by DDR2. We've seen a plethora of DDR2-based P35 and G33 motherboards arrive on the scene, but only a handful of DDR3-based boards. Part of the reason for this is the high cost of DDR3. Right now, 2GB DDR3 kits, consisting of a pair of 1GB modules range in price from $400-$500. Speed doesn't seem to be a factor, with DDR3 1333MHz pairs costing roughly the same as DDR3 1066MHz kits.

These types of transitions are always painful. Make the jump too early, and you'll end up spending way too much money for expensive RAM that drops quickly in price—and get to help debug new motherboard BIOSes in the process. Jump to late, and you may end up with a motherboard that can't take newer CPUs and only older memory.

Today, we're taking a look at performance of DDR3 versus DDR3 memory across a wide array of applications. We benchmarked on both dual-core and quad-core CPUs as well. But before we dive into the numbers, let's take a look at the technology. Continued...

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked
TechARP lays the smack down to hard drive "urban legends"...

The Hard Disk Drive Myth Guide

This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk drive that are still being propagated in many discussions. As you read through this guide, you may think that some of these myths may have been made up. We wished it was true. We collected these from discussions we heard or read over time.

To be honest, many articles have covered these topics. It would have been easy for someone to do a quick search online before imparting their opinions to newbies. Unfortunately, it became apparent to us that some folks just prefer to trust their innate instincts over logic and knowledge. As such, these hard drive urban legends have remained more popular than the simple truth. So, let's get down to basics and examine some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them!

Read all about it here, courtesy of TechARP.com

Eric

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
Intel kicks it up a notch and tries to further it's lead from rival AMD.

We finally have it! After well over a year of asking nicely, rudely and creatively - we know when AMD's next generation microarchitecture is being launched.

Well, sort of.

Barcelona, as you maybe remember, is the code name for AMD's next-generation server processors. AMD recently announced that in August, it will unleash Barcelona unto the world at clock speeds of "up to 2.0GHz." But Barcelona only applies to the server world, and today we're reviewing a desktop microprocessor, so when do we get to see AMD's brand new Phenom processors on the desktop?

We'd expect Phenom in our hands 30 days after Barcelona's launch, making it approximately September/October by the time you'd see a preview/review and widespread availability about 30 days from that. If all goes perfectly, AMD's Phenom chips should be in customers' hands by November or December at the latest.

Penryn, Intel's 45nm update to its current Core 2 processors, will also make its debut at the end of this year, potentially spoiling AMD's launch party. A few possibilities exist with Penryn:

1) Penryn could launch across the board at all clock speeds and at competitive prices, quite possibly the worst case scenario for AMD, or
2) Penryn could launch strictly at upper clock speeds/price points, allowing AMD to have an easier time competing at lower speeds, or finally
3) Penryn could launch at lower clock speeds and price points, giving AMD an equally hard time as in the first scenario

It's important to recap AMD's impending launch as we've had yet another round of price cuts, making buying a new CPU today very attractive.

Read all about it here, courtesy of anandtech.com

Eric

Spam filter cost lawyers thier day in court
I really want to laugh about this, but I just can't....

The trouble at Franklin D. Azar & Associates began with pornographic spam.

Last May, the Aurora, Colo., law firm was being bombarded with offensive messages, and enough of it was seeping through the company's spam filters that employees complained to management. IT administrator Kevin Rea was told to do something.

What happened next, as detailed in federal court filings, shows how the fight against spammers can backfire. Spammers have been using increasingly sophisticated techniques to evade filters, so that over the past few years and despite predictions to the contrary, unsolicited e-mail continues to plague businesses worldwide.

On the morning of May 21, Rea dialed up the spam settings on the Barracuda Spam Firewall 200 used by Azar & Associates to block unwanted mail. The changes made it harder for spam to land on the desktops of company employees, but they also had one unforeseen consequence: The Barracuda Networks appliance began blocking e-mail from the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, including a notice advising company lawyers of a May 30 hearing in a civil lawsuit.

Azar & Associates lawyers blew their court date, and this week, the judge overseeing the matter ordered the company to pay attorney fees and expenses incurred by the lawyers who showed up representing the other side of the case. Rea did not return a call seeking comment on the matter.

What happened to Azar & Associates is unusual but reflects a legitimate worry for law firms.

"This is an IT guy's nightmare if you work in a law firm," said Matt Kesner, chief technology officer with Fenwick & West, a Bay Area law firm with about 250 attorneys. "It doesn't take a very high percentage of false positives in the anti-spam world to misidentify a crucial piece of correspondence."

Fenwick & West has missed e-mailed court notices in the past, although it has not blown court dates as a consequence, Kesner said.

Over the past 10 years, U.S. state and federal courts have increasingly done business electronically in a move to become more efficient and more environmentally friendly.

This charge has been led by the federal court system, which uses an electronic document system called Case Management/Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) in nearly 200 courts across the country. All federal bankruptcy and district courts use CM/ECF, and soon it will be standard in the appellate courts, according to Richard Carelli, a spokesman with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Read all about it here, courtesy of infoworld.com

Eric

5 Worst Websites
Time picks the worst of the web..., some may surprise you...well, actually not.

Here is the first one as a teaser...

Our main beef with this online dating site is its power to cause utter despair. eHarmony claims its more "scientific" approach to matchmaking differentiates it from competitors — its users complete extensive personality questionnaires, in order to connect them to others based on compatibility. In early 2006, eHarmony announced that more than 16,000 couples had married during the previous year as a result of meeting on the site, citing a 2005 Harris Interactive poll. That's about 90 people finding love every day, a track record bound to inflate expectations. On a more typical dating site, where users are prone to making snap judgments based on photos and sketchy profiles, if you don't find that special someone you're less likely to take it personally. It's easier to shake off because, after all, that's hardly the real you up there on that site. But if you've taken the time to answer eHarmony's 436 compatibility survey questions and paid its premium charges ($21 to $60 a month, depending on how many months you prepay), and the site then delivers terrible recommendations — or worse, rejects you as unmatchable — what do you tell yourself then? The company's advice, to stick with it for several months to improve your odds of finding a soul mate, sounds all too self-serving (the longer you use the site the more you pay). The site also discriminates against gays.

Read all about it here, courtesy of time.com

Eric

Microsoft served with XBOX 360 lawsuit
Come on now, $5 million for two scratched games? Don't get me wrong, that Gears of War game is really valuable...

By JESSICA MINTZ
AP BUSINESS WRITER

SEATTLE -- A Florida man who claims Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 scratches game discs has sued the company, saying the consoles are "negligently designed and manufactured."

In the lawsuit filed Monday in a Florida federal court, Jorge Brouwer says Microsoft has received thousands of complaints but has not replaced all scratched discs. The lawsuit seeks class-action status.

Brouwer said his Xbox 360 scratched two games, "Gears of War" and "Madden NFL 07," and that Microsoft offered to replace them for a $20 fee. He is seeking more than $5 million in damages, according to the court filing.

Last week, Microsoft extended the warranty for the Xbox 360 consoles that completely stop working due to a vague condition the company calls "general hardware failure." This is a separate issue from the scratched discs, though Brouwer's lawsuit cited it as evidence Microsoft "is well aware that the Xbox 360 console has been defective since its introduction to the marketplace."

Microsoft denied the allegations.

"Out of the millions of Xbox consoles in use, Microsoft has not received any widespread reports of Xbox 360s scratching discs," spokesman Jack Evans said in a statement.

Read all about it here, courtesy of seattlepi.nwsource.com

Eric

World of Warcraft on iPhone
Two of my most favorite things, together in perfect Zen like harmony like Peanut Butter and Jelly!

After having finally gotten an iPhone yesterday after much hassle in tracking one down, I discovered Telekinesis, a wonderful app that runs on your Mac and provides a web gateway for controlling it through an iPhone-friendly interface.

Naturally, I tried running a variety of applications using my iPhone as a controller and screen for my Mac, but the most impressive was World of Warcraft. While performance was hardly smooth, I could control several actions in WoW through the iPhone interface. Most notably, I could read and respond to in-game chat without too much of a problem.

I recorded the experience and posted a video here on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

To clarify, WoW is running on the MacBook Pro that you see in the beginning. The iPhone just serves as a separate screen and controller connected over the internet. The iPhone's CPU is NOT running the game.

Read all about it here, courtesy of everythingdigital.org

Eric

In Depth iPhone Review
It's not perfect, but perfect enough to wake up the major players in the cell phone biz...

The Apple iPhone. (Cue theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey)

The anticipation has been building for months. Even before the keynote in January, rumors of the iPhone were everywhere. Then at MacWorld San Francisco, Steve Jobs dropped the bombshell of an integrated phone and video iPod along with a real non-WAP web browser.

Looking back now, things seemed so different then, in my coverage of the announcement I talked the most about the phones features, rather than the user experience. And that’s what the iPhone has come to symbolize. It doesn’t have 3G speeds, GPS, Adobe Flash or stereo Bluetooth capabilities, but judging from the long lines and sold out stores this past weekend it doesn’t seem to matter that much.

What does seem to matter is making the experience easier and more convenient, and having it all in one device. When Apple launched their ads at the beginning of June, everyone went nuts. My parents and even my grandma called me when they saw the ads and were interested in getting one (until I told them the price was $500).

The content of the ads (unlike most other phone ads which tell you what their products can do) showed you what the product does along with how it gets done. People could see how easy getting around the phone was, and that’s what they wanted. What good is a phone if the features are too difficult for most people to utilize?

But would a huge bug with the data and phone service be enough to sour my experience?

Read all about it here, courtesy of thetechlounge.com

Eric

XBOX 360 will cost Microsoft more than $1B
Yup, that's a billion with a "B"

SEATTLE -- In another setback for Microsoft Corp.'s unprofitable entertainment and devices division, the company says it is planning to spend at least $1 billion to repair serious problems with its Xbox 360 video game console.

Microsoft declined to detail the problems that have caused an onslaught of "general hardware failures" in recent months but said Thursday it will extend the warranty on the consoles to three years.

The glitches, and the bad publicity, could weigh the company down as it claws for market share in the highly competitive console market. In May, the Xbox 360 ranked No. 2 in unit sales behind Nintendo's Wii, but still beat out Sony's Playstation 3, according to data from NPD Group.

"We don't think we've been getting the job done," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, which also makes the Zune digital music player, a distant competitor to Apple Inc.'s powerhouse iPod. "In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for our liking."

Bach said the company made some manufacturing and production changes that he expects will reduce Xbox 360 hardware lockups, but he declined to identify the problems or say which others might remain. Microsoft said it will record a charge of up to $1.15 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended June 30, to cover the additional costs associated with the warranty extension.

The news comes just days before the video game industry descends on Santa Monica, Calif., for its annual E3 conference, and it could overshadow Microsoft's plans to build buzz for holiday season video game releases and "Halo 3," a much-anticipated shoot-'em-up for the Xbox 360 set to launch in September.

The software maker also said Thursday that sales of the game console fell short of expectations for the fiscal year that just ended.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, estimates that Microsoft's entertainment and devices division has lost more than $6 billion since 2002.

Read all about it here, courtesy of seattlepi.newsource.com

Eric

Video games rob reading, homework time: U.S. study
Straight from the "I can't believe someone spent money on this research" files....

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Boys who play video games on school days spend 30 percent less time reading and girls spend 34 percent less time doing homework than those who do not play such games, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

But they said video games do not appear to interfere significantly with time spent with family and friends.

"Gamers did spend less time reading and doing homework. But they didn't spend less time interacting with their parents or their friends, nor did they spend less time in sports or active leisure activities," said Hope Cummings of the University of Michigan, whose study appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The study comes as U.S. doctors voice growing concern about the long-term effects of video games.

Prior studies have linked prolonged video game play with attention difficulties and poor academic performance. And some doctors have suggested the games interfere with social development and might be addictive.

Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater at the University of Texas at Austin wanted to see how these games affect academic pursuits and social relationships.

They gathered data from a nationally representative sample of kids aged 10 to 19 in 2002 who tracked their activities on a random weekday and a random weekend day.

Of the 1,491 who participated, 534 adolescents or about 36 percent played video games. About 80 percent were boys.

They found boys spent an average of 58 minutes playing on weekdays and one hour and 37 minutes playing on a weekend day. Of those sampled, girls spent 44 minutes playing on a weekday and an hour and four minutes on a weekend day.

Read all about it here, courtesy of reuters.com

Eric

Top Linux Coders losing the Will to Code?
This does not bode well for the Linux faithfull.

Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex.

By Don Marti

---

Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex.

That is the view of Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of USB and PCI support in Linux and co author of online book Linux Device Drivers.

In the latest kernel release the most active 30 developers authored only 30% of the changes, while two years ago the top 20 developers did 80% of the changes, he said. Kroah-Hartman himself is now doing more code reviewing than coding. "That's all I do, is read patches these days," he said during a discussion at the Linux Symposium in Ottawa last month.

In theory the kernel development process involves changes going from the original author through a file or driver maintainer, to the maintainer of a major subsystem such as PCI or SCSI, to Andrew Morton for testing and finally to Linus Torvalds for a kernel release. But Kroah-Hartman said the process was much more complicated: "I tried graphing that, and that's not what happens. It's a mess. There's routing all over the place."

A graph of all the developers involved in the upcoming 2.6.22 release, as well as of the relationships of who reviewed whose patches, extends to a 40 foot print out with names in small type. The graph is on display at the Ottawa event.

The "mess" results in innovative features becoming integrated into Linux distributions much more quickly, according to Jonathan Corbet, author of the camera driver for One Laptop Per Child and another writer on Linux Device Drivers.

Previously, when developers maintained both "stable" and "development" kernels, it could have been two to three years before a feature made it from development to mainstream users. Today, by contrast, the newly released Fedora 7 distribution has the power saving tickless kernel functionality, which came out in the 2.6.21 kernel in April.

Enterprise Linux distributions that pick a single kernel.org release and maintain it for five to seven years are another reason for the complexities. Instead of waiting for a stable upstream release and then modifying it to include new functionality from development kernels, an enterprise distribution can support any of the 2.6 releases, which come out every two and a half months. Corbet said: "The patch loads carried by the distributors have shrunk quite a bit."

Read all about it here, courtesy of computerworlduk.com

Eric

Gangs flooding the Web for prey, analyst say.
The good news at least we know thier organized, the bad news is we're the target.

(CNN) -- On December 8, Australia suffered a sneak-attack from malevolent forces based in the former Soviet states. The weaponry was a multi-million fusillade of bogus e-mail touts targeting customers of iiNet, owner of Ozemail, one of the most popular Internet providers in the country.

The barrage overwhelmed company servers, which saw e-mail traffic spike from a daily average of 12 million messages to nearly 20 million -- 98 percent of which were spam -- and caused a 10-minute delay for users.

"We're seeing a lot of spam coming from China and Eastern Europe," says Greg Bader, chief information officer of iiNet. "They are organizations that are obviously very well set up and funded in order to release the volume of email they're pumping out."

Cybercrime is big business. The FBI estimates that computer-related crimes -- such as virus attacks and identity theft -- have cost companies and consumers $400 billion in the United States alone, according to a September report.

Disappearing are the days of high-profile attacks by teenage hackers motivated less by monetary gain than creating mayhem. Organized gangs now use "KGB-style tactics" to recruit programmers in universities to write software for high-tech crimes, according to a recent study by IT security firm McAfee.

As the talent pool grows, so do the tactics employed for computer crimes. The localized e-mail assault in Australia this month shows how cyber criminals now favor targeted attacks rather than widespread releases of malicious software, or "malware," such as the MyDoom computer worm which struck around the world in 2004.

In the past year, digital threats grew 163 percent, according a report by IT security company Trend Micro.

Read all about it here, courtesy of cnn.com.

Eric