Go read what NSI are doing accroding to ARS. Pretty weak. But what do you expect when certain corporations are given so much power without rules or penalties for violating the rules. Call me cynical, but just go see for yourself.


AtomicGuY's unofficial WindowsME site (down)- AtomicGuYsent me an email giving me the heads-up on his new site! WindowsME is microsoft's next consumer Operating System, so when you need info. on WinME, pay AtomicGuY a visit.
I'll add a WinME section to my software/OS links page soon enough.
Related Links:
Microsoft WindowsME home-page. What's suprisingly hard to find on this site is the release date. Apparantly, WinME was released to manufacturers starting June 19, and is scheduled for retail release in mid-September.


1GHz P3 on the cheaps - source: Thresh's firing squad
Bob "CalBear" Colayco over at FiringSquad upgraded to a P3-700 and proceeded to crank-it-up a notch or two. He "get's it up" to 1001MHz: pretty nice. He does say something I feel is important. When you hear all these outrageous overclocking stories and decide to try it for yourself. For whatever reason (usually bad luck), you may end up with a chip that simply will not go as fast as the stories you've heard. So keep your expectations low, and you're less likely to be disappointed. I think this is good advice you can apply to many aspects of your life (are you women out there paying attention? ).

*NOTE: Incase you didn't see it, this is a BX-system, so the poor AGP bus is overclocked quite a bit (He's running 143MHz fsb which gives you an AGP speed of 96MHz instead of it's 66MHz spec). You will need a high-quality video card in order to run at such a high AGP clock. You may want to consider an i815E solution if you want to run your AGP at a more sane speed. I bet the PCI clcok is over spec too, so just keep that in-mind.

And don't forget to factor in shipping & "handling" which can put the hurt on you if you're not a careful shopper. Yeah, and try to ignore the (tired) Blair-Witch references.


A note about this site. I just looked at the site in Netscape (4.72) and Mozilla (M14 I think) and it looks like garbage. It also looks like crap in ie5 if your font settings aren't "small enough." It's mainly due to the font-size settings in the CSS. I'll look into this too.

In an attempt to compete with faster processors from AMD, Intel will again prolong the life of the venerable P6 core by shrinking the process yet again from the current 0.18 microns down to 0.13 microns. This should allow Intel to make faster P3's to 1.13 GHz and beyond. Intel plans to market these chips to the high-end desktop and workstation market until the PentiumIV (formerly codenamed Willamette) becomes available in Q4 of this year. Intel plans to release the p4 at speeds of 1.3GHz and 1.4GHz this year and 1.5GHz in Q1 2001.
Thnx Ars for the linkage.

In a related story, Intel plans to use third-party chipsets (from companies like VIA, ALi, and Micron) to support DDR SDRAM with high-end P3 systems. Intel's current contract with RAMBUS prohibits it from developing (selling) a DDR (non RAMBUS) memory platform (chipset). Oops!

In a story related to that , ALi intends to announce it's DDR enabled chipset on July 26th. Read all about it at Ace's Hardware.

Related links:
For an excellent explanation on how CPUs are made (and what a 0.13 process means) click here.
Register story: Intel server & workstation roadmaps and Register story: Intel boxed chip roadmaps give a peek into what's up Intel's sleeve for the coming quarters.


Harware Extreme has an article entitled, Optimize your PC Audio. Someone should write an article for them to read entitled, "How to optimize MSPaint graphics for websites" .

This article is actually by Van Smith over at TomsHardware. He basically explains the whole current situation with regards to Intel and the whole RAMBUS vs The World™ situation. He brings up some interesting points regarding RAMBUS' conduct concerning the creation of SDRAM standards and the patents it owned. It gets complicated, but it appears as though RAMBUS helped create the "open" standard, and once the industry was well down the path, revealed that it "owned" the patents to many of the technologies that the industry was using. Huh... And I thought Microsoft was evil. I think I need to fire-up etrade and buy some (more) RAMBUS stock. Go read it for yourself!


Patch Available for “Malformed E-mail Header” Vulnerability
I guess there's a virus going around that you don't even have to open or read. Anyway. Read about it here on ABCNews.com and then get the patch from Microsoft here.
The vulnerability is only in Microsoft email readers (Outlook and OutlookExpress) or so I've heard.
(I 'jacked' this link from Ars - thnx guys!)
Related Links:
Microsoft - the purveyor of wonderful software that is affordable and reliable! HA HA HA HA HA!

ZDNews is reporting on Palm's new Palm-pilot offerings. The M100 is the new entry-level offering, coming in a variety of colored face-plates. The wireless Palm VII will receive an upgrade, becoming the VIIx and upping the onboard memory from 2MB to 8MB. The M100 will cost $149 while the Palm VIIx will cost $449. There are various other modifications like a 25% smaller screen.
Related links:
Palm - there isn't any information on the new palms yet.


TweakCentral Project950+ begins. I just ordered an Athlon 700 (SocketA Thunderbird) CPU and an ASUS A7V motherboard. I'm going for 950+MHz... I'll keep you informed. I also ordered a micro-tip conductive pen from these guys (Hosfelt), it's the cheapest I was able to find in 3 minutes. Wtf is the conductive pen for? Go see Anand's article from a couple days ago...
Related Links:
xxx
GamePC - where I got my ASUS A7V (motherboard)
Hosfelt - where I got my conductive-pen, it's like a giant radio-shack online!

I figured out you can add more "security-zones" under windows. I did a little write-up: go check it out!
In this way, you can assign certain security settings to specific web-sites.
For example, if you want to (need to - why would you want to) enable cookies and ActiveX controls for some web-sites, but only cookies and NOT ActiveX controls on others, now you can have separate categories for various sites.
Related links:
my paranoid internet explorer 5 user page.

I will do a full write-up in a few, but for those who are interested, I figured out you can add more "security-zones" under windows. In this way, you can assign certain security settings to specific web-sites.
For example, if you want to (need to - why would you want to) enable cookies and ActiveX controls for some web-sites, but only cookies and NOT ActiveX controls on others, now you can have separate categories for various sites. For now, see my paranoid internet explorer5 user page.

"Wonderboy" aka Anand has an article (less than 40 pages this time) demystifying the art of overclocking AMD's new processors, the Thunderbird Athlon and Duron. They successfully overclock the crap out of various Duron and Tbird chips. I'm basically >< this far from buying a 700MHz Tbird and bumping that bad-boy up to 950 (or more?). They're only $170 so I have the feeling I'll be hiding out from my landlord next month.

MACWorld: Apple sets hype-factor to 10 - source: CNet. Jees-Louise... iCEO Steve Jobs (ugh) makes all kinds of crazy claims at this year's MacWorld Expo. You do have to give Apple credit for creating so much media and consumer hype considering their products. Jobs even goes so far as to claim that their new dual-processor model PowerPC G4's are the first dual-processor computers, and that G4's are "the world's fastest computers" - wow! You know what? If you buy a Mac, you're still stuck with a Mac.

C|Net to buy Ziff Davis - source: The Register. This is too boring for me to waste time on, but you can read about it yourself if you're interested. I just put it here so I can combine my links to CNet News and ZDNews.

PureNetworking.net added to links - source: Andrew Smith via email
A visitor to TweakCentral, Andrew Smith was kind enough to let me know about a new site called PureNetworking.net. They are new so there isn't a ton there, but they do have a great hints & tips section with quite a bit of good information. They also have book-reviews so go take a look!

3DSpotlight: Tweaking system memory
3DSpotlight has a guide up that shows you how to do more than just tweak your system memory. They cover hard-drive and CPU setups as well. I think it's for Win2k, but it's good information.

This article by Steve Gibson (Gibson Research Corp) describes how downloading software like "RealNetworks RealDownload, Netscape/AOL Smart Download, or NetZip Download Demon utilities," send information about you, your computer and what you're downloading to a server somewhere without your knowledge or consent. ("informed consent," what's that?). He also points out how companies like Real like to operate: First by denial, then by threat of legal action (ugh) without even checking the possibility that Gibson could be right! He rechecked his findings and guess what? He was right all along.

Asus A7V (VIA KX133/SocketA) motherboard to include DIP switches after all. As reported here and here and here, Asus, which removed the DIP switches for a short-time has stated via email that all shipping A7V motherboards will indeed have the DIP switches. The DIP switches allow users to directly manipulate the multiplier which is by far the easiest way to overclock a chip. The email from Asus states the fact that AMD will be clock-locking their chips (not allowing direct manipulation of the multiplier) which overrides any settings made by the user via the DIP switches. This is good news to overclockers who either have "engineering sample" (as AMD refers to them) CPUs which do not have are not clock-locked, or override the clock-lock by other means (read "soldering iron and dremel" ).
Related Links:
Overclockers.com discussion on OC'ing the Duron
Tom's Hardware article discussing OC'ing AMD chips

My buddy Hans, in a vain attempt to demonstrate his gratitude for introducing him to the Microsoft optical mouse, showed me this site: DigitalBlasphemy.com (I can never speell it right). It's basically a gallery/archive of some nice 3D and computer-generated images. What I like most about this site is that the images come in a variety of formats, not just the lame (yeah, lame) 800x600. So if you have a large desktop, you can find images up to 1600x1200. One caveat to the site is the lack of naked-chicks, but think of these as good wallpapers for your desktop for when your girlfriend or wife is nosing around your pad .

...and having taken Computer Animation (cs417) last quarter, I have a new found respect for what a pain-in-the-ass these things are to make.


GideonTech added to links: Ed Chen over at GideonTech emailed me asking to add them to my links page. I was happy to comply! His site is a hardware enthusiast site devoted to providing information that's not so-technical, that you need a PhD, or at least some time at your local community college just to understand it. I dig the philosophy.

He made the mistake of referring to TweakCentral author(s) as "you guys" - even though it's just me. I could see how one would think that such a crappy website would require a team of jackasses to create, but somehow I manage to screw everything up just by myself! Go check them out!


In an update to my little tirade about the i815E chipset yesterday, Sharky (SharkyExtreme) chimes in with his own review of the Asus CUSL2 motherboard (i815E chipset). The shark-ster seems to like it. And he manages to say so in just 9 pages (a record, I think...)

CNet is reporting on "web bugs" or "1-pixel gifs" that somehow work with or like cookies (which we all know were sent by the devil. No, not that devil.) to track what sites you visit and what you click on, of course, without your knowledge or consent. I have no idea how this works. I'm going to look into it and I'll post more information as I find out...

*Note: I use 1-pixel gifs on this site, but they're what's known as "shims." For example, if you want the time in the little bubble above, to the right to be a little off of the right-edge, you stick a 1-pixel gif in there and stretch it out to 4 pixels wide and now there's a little space in there.


Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 5.5 The new features are too numerous (read trivial) to list here. I heard that ie5.5 had a lot of bugs and problems (which is wierd, considering who makes it...). I hope they got those squared away. I'm sure they did. Microsoft wouldn't ship a buggy product. (Ha.. ha ha ha!)


Thresh's Firing Squad has a review of Intel's new i815 chipset. The skinny on the i815 is this: Intel released the i810 and i820 chipsets to replace the 2+ year-old work-horse the BX chipset. The i810 doesn't have an AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot, so nuts-to-that, and the i820 is RAMBUS (read $$$) only and doesn't allow SDRAM. The problem with the BX, is that technically, it doesn't support 133MHz fsb (front-side-bus). In reality, it does, but running it at 133MHz requires you to run your AGP port at 89MHz, which some video cards don't like. So now Intel has the i815. It supports SDRAM, has an AGP port and runs at 133MHz fsb with a 1/2 AGP divisor which gives you a 66MHz AGP - which is spec. for AGP. Got it?
For the last year or so, VIA has offered an alternative to the BX chipset they call Apollo Pro133A (and variants). The Apollo Pro runs at 133 MHz fsb, but is often slower than a BX board on 100MHz fsb.
In the market for a new Intel CPU? Rather buy a house instead of RAMBUS RAM? Check out this review and see if i815 is right for you.
*NOTE: There's an i815 and i815E. I think i815E is the one you want. It offers ATA/100 support as well as 4 USB ports as far as I can tell...
Related links:
Intel i815/i815E information pages
Tom's review of the i815 - He doesn't think it beats the BX - definitely a difference of opinion here.


A note about RAMBUS (ugh). Word on the street the last couple days is that PC133 SDRAM beats RAMBUS (duh) even by Intel's own benchmarks, but I think RAMBUS needs a faster processor to really stretch-its-legs. Don't get me wrong, when DDR SDRAM comes out, it'll whoop even the faster RAMBUS that's in development. I'm just saying...

(OC'er = OverClocker) Good 'ol Tom is at it again. In this litte article, Tom shows you how to overclock that AMD chip (Tbird Athlon or Duron) regardless of any multiplier locks. Basically, you burn-out or cut some tiny litte copper-deals on the top of the chip and re-write them to give you whatever settings you want. Yeah, it's locked, but now you're doin' the locking. And if done correctly, you can undo it and change your settings again if you want. Whew! Now we can all go back to getting something for nothing.
The usual warning applies: if you're a jackass who isn't any good at electron lithography and you fry your CPU, don't come crying to Tom or me about it.

He's been pretty mellow lately - I think if he's busy, like he has been, he tones down his anti-______ (fill-in the blank with whatever or whoever Tom hates at the moment, ie 3dfx) rhetoric.

Tom has received a letter from AMD stating that all shipping Thunderbird (Athlon) and Duron processors will contain a multiplier lock which will prevent overclocking. You can still overclock it, but upping the multiplier was way easier, and gave you more speed. Tom says that the CPUs he has aren't engineering samples and don't contain the lock, so maybe you should rush out and buy one?
Some 'Athlon overclocking' articles like this one from TweakTown say things like, "Yes AMD is supporting the overcloker but, no its not actually Multiplier Locked" - besides not knowing the difference between its and it's, guys like this are a little behind the news, so you may want to take articles like this with a grain of salt. You may be sorely disappointed when that 700MHz Athlon you payed $160 for turns out to be nothing more than a 700MHz Athlon that you actually paid $160 for. (wtf?).
I heard-the-word from CNEWZ.

That reminds me, SystemLogic.net has a new ULTIMATE weekly CPU price guide that's so in-depth, it's like pr0n for accountants! They're using some kind of automated script (I hope) cus there's a lot of information there. In the market for a new CPU? Check it out!


GamePC has a technology guide entitled Optimizing your Windows PC. It's a good place to start to make sure your PC's got everything in working order. I've added it to the links page - it's just that darn good.


I added TechPhiles.net and DEEZ Tech (not to be confused with DEEZ NUTS, which, if you represent the west-side like me, you'd know what I'm talking about) to the links. Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I think pedophiles have given everything ending with philes a bad name. Now when I hear audiophiles, I'm like, "Dude, what you do with your 8-tracks is your business but leave me out of it."
DEEZ Tech has a review of WindowsME (Millenium Edition) btw. Worth a look-see if you plan on giving another $150 to Mr. Gates.

Oh yeah, and I keep typing 'Techpiles' without the 'h' which would also make a cool name.


One last thing: Not to toot my own horn (Lord knows, I get enough practice...) but that last QuickTip about turning off animated gifs has got to be the best tweak ever! All those distracting flashing ads used to drive me nuts! Ugh! And not to condone hate or anything, but I also hate the person who conducted the study and revealed that the more flashy and annoying the web-ad, the more clicks it recieves and static, pleasant ads get completely ignored - bastards!

Brian Livingston has an article on a program called 98LiteIII (www.98lite.net - not 98lite.com) that allows you to remove just about anything you don't want from Windows. I knew this bit of anti-bloatware didn't come from Redmond.

Icantbelieveitsadotcom.com - I've made a little page that looks at (ridicules) ill-concieved internet domain-names. You could live your entire life and never hear about these sites, and you'd be a lucky person, but when you do hear them - they just make you cringe.

CNet News is reporting in this story that management types are growing weary of tech-related job applicants forgoing some of the traditional interviewing practices: like not eating while being interviewed and keeping your boots off your prospective employers' desk. I find this amusing, especially since I'm about to enter the tech-job field and since I seem to possess about 10 times the arrogance of the average individual. HA. Did I mention the part where I'm condescending?

Now I know that "beggars can't be choosers," oh wait..

In other news:
Ars Technica shows you how to make Windows2000 more secure than LINUX (yeah right) Seriously, they show you how to make Win2k more secure than the default install.
SysOpt takes a look at DDR memory. You probably won't be able to pick up DDR SDRAM until Q1 2001, but from the looks of it, DDR SDRAM kicks DRD RAM's ass*! Oh that was a little confusing. DDR (Double Data Rate SDRAM) outperforms* DRD RAM (Direct RAMBUS Dynamic RAM).
*NOTE: by "kicks ass" and "outperforms" I'm refering to throughput, not FUD, hype, lies or what marketing says.

According to this story in Wired, the European Union (EU) has launched an investigation to look for the US governments alleged covert digital espionage network, dubbed "Echelon." Guess what they're going to find? Nothing. To quote Spaceballs, "Find anything yet?! We ain't found sh*t!" You can't find something that doesn't exist and to even waste money entertaining these paranoid fantasies is ludicrous. These europeans are nuts.
Related links:
Echelon watch - an information site run by the ACLU

btw "wookin' pa nub" is from Eddie Murphy doing buckwheat on SNL.

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July. "Any red-blooded, flag-fearing American would love the M-320. Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it." Yeah! It says something about our country. I just hung-out with the guys, here's a pic:

me and the guys on the 4th - that's me on the left

ActiveWin has done a nice little write-up of Microsoft's latest consumer OS offering: WindowsME (Millenium Edition). It is the latest in the line of consumer OS's starting with Win95, then Win98, 98SE and now ME. WindowsME offers multimedia and networking "enhancements" along with other "enhancements" to make the computer more "user-friendly." WinME will do 2000-esque things like hide items you don't use very often (which can be disabled) and it has a more "intelligent" auto-update feature - which we all know works really well on Win98 and 98SE (um???). Go take a look and see if it is worth your $90 to upgrade? btw - this will supposedly be MS's last OS that will be available to purchase. Future OS's are slated to have a "rental" system where MS enhances the amount of your money it gets.

Microsoft at it again: gives "deinal of service" a whole new meaning - source: ActiveWin
where it says:

This is a denial of service vulnerability. It could allow a malicious web site operator to overwrite a file on the computer of a visiting user. If certain system files on the computer were overwritten, it could render the visitor's computer unusable.

The vulnerability could only be used to overwrite a file as a means of preventing it from operating - it could not be used to replace an executable file with new code of the malicious web site operator's choice.

I'm sorry, but this is not a "Denial of Service" (DoS) vulnerability. This is an ActiveX EXPLOIT. The only service this is going to deny is you using your own computer. I suppose if you were browsing the internet WITH YOUR WEBSERVER COMPUTER, and went to an unsafe site and you have ActiveX enabled, you could damage your WEBSERVER and then a Denial of Service attack will have taken place, but that's a bit of a stretch...

Here's how various people who know more than I do, define DoS

MS's own definition of Denail of Service:

Denial of service A condition in which users are deliberately prevented from using network resources.

PC Magazine defines Denail of Service as:

DoS attacks are aimed at devices and networks with exposure to the Internet. Their goal is to cripple a device or network so that external users no longer have access to your network resources. Without hacking password files or stealing sensitive data, a denial-of-service hacker simply fires up a program that will generate enough traffic to your site that it denies service to the site's legitimate users.

Symmantec has some information on Denial of Service, but they don't mention overwriting files on a user's computer? Whatever Bill.

Not to overlook the whole point, if you run ie5, you probably should get and install the patch.

Just a side-note: MS also states in the advisory: If the malicious user’s web site were running in a Security Zone in which ActiveX controls are not allowed to run, the vulnerability could not be exploited. That's wierd...