Archived News From May 2006

Web Hardware Reviews for 2006-05-21 | Sunday, 21 May 2006 | 16:48

Adrian's Rojak Pot

OCZ 1GB Mini-Kart USB Flash Drive
"There are so many USB drives in the market that no one really takes note of a new one. But you will take note of this new USB flash drive from OCZ Technology simply because of its size."

Read the full story here:
http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=322

BlueTomorrow

Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser
"Unlike most keyboards, which can only send information to your PC, the MX 5000 Cordless Keyboard also has the ability to receive and display information sent from your PC. The stylish keyboard offers an LCD panel, capable of displaying the time and date, room temperature, song titles for music files, and various other displays."

Read the full story here:
http://www.bluetomorrow.com/content/section/254/374/

Bjorn3D

Thermaltake Armor Jr
"Remember Thermaltake Armor review? Forget that for the time being -- it's heavy, big and you don't necessarily like it because of it. The case I have with me is something that might be of interest: lightweight, aluminum, same Armor design sporting most of its features."

Read the full story here:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=915

Bigbruin

Super Talent 2GB MEGA Screen MP3/FM/Recorder Player
"Super Talent has come up with a great little device that does much more than just play MP3s. Even though the voice recording feature was of questionable quality, it did work well enough to be useful..."

Read the full story here:
http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/supertalent2gb_1

Tweaknews

Zalman VF700-Cu LED Ultra Quiet VGA Cooler
"The VF700-Cu LED from Zalman has performed very well for me this past week and I can highly recommend it. With great looks and excellent performance, this cooler would be an asset to most any compatible graphics board out there. Installation was a snap thanks to Zalman's online installation guides and compatibility charts, and the noise-to-cooling ratio is very good."

Read the full story here:
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/zalmanvf700culed/

TechZone, The

Magellan RoadMate 760 GPS
"The RoadMate 760 features turn-by-turn guidance with SayWhere text-to-speech technology that tells you the upcoming street name as well as distance to the turn. Also TrueView 3D visually indicates your next turn so you can confirm the direction at a glance..."

Read the full story here:
http://www.thetechzone.com/?m=show&id=544

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Java Going Open Source! | Wednesday, 17 May 2006 | 08:31

Well, I'm happy. My favourite lanugage, Java, after resisting for some time, has plans to move open source.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation.

Read the full story here:
http://www.vnunet.com/2156205

Discuss the story here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?showtopi...ntry422

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MPAA training Dogs to Sniff Out DVDs | Thursday, 11 May 2006 | 08:36

The MPAA has trained the dogs, Lucky and Flo, to sniff out DVDs. They faced their first test at the FedEx UK hub at Stansted Airport.

"FedEx was glad to assist in Lucky and Flo's first live test in a working situation. They were amazingly successful at identifying packages containing DVDs, which were opened and checked by HM Customs' representatives. While all were legitimate shipments on the day, our message to anyone thinking about shipping counterfeit DVDs through the FedEx network is simple: you're going to get caught."

Doesn't this make you not want to send things through FedEX? Seriously, this is like training drug dogs to find plastic bags.

Read the full story here:
http://www.spacegrinder.com/article8.html

Discuss the article here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?showtopic=104

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O3 - The OpenOpenOffice Project | Tuesday, 9 May 2006 | 15:35

The OpenOpenOffice Project, or O3, is a plugin for Microsoft Office to allow ODF (Open Document Format) to be exported and imported.

Microsoft has made a promise of cooperation with the makers of ODF. Their Director of Standards Affairs, had this to say on the occasion of ODF's approval by the members of ISO and the IEC:

"The ODF format is limited to the features and performance of StarOffice and OpenOffice and would not satisfy most of our Microsoft Office customers today. Yet we will support interoperability with ODF documents as they start to appear and will not oppose its standardization or use by any organization. The richness of competitive choices in the market is good for our customers and for the industry as a whole."

Read the full story here:
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standa...ry=20060506173536926

Discuss the article here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?showtopic=102

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INTIMUS 7.1 Channel Speaker Set | Saturday, 6 May 2006 | 19:39

Written: 2004-02-03

"Are you still using those generic tin can speakers that shipped with your PC? Maybe you've felt the need to upgrade to something a little more satisfying. Whatever the case, mark my words, they will hold no ground when compared to a true home theatre setup. But what does home theatre have to do with computing? May I suggest one potential answer? Everything!"

Read the full review here:
http://www.uniquehardware.ca/reviews/intimus7.1/intimus7.11.1.php

Discuss the review here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?/topic/99-intimus-71-channel-speaker-set/

802.11n Specifcations Are Still in the Air | Thursday, 4 May 2006 | 14:48

The 802.11n standard has not yet been agreed upon. 802.11n is a highly anticipated successor to today's Wi-Fi, promising a huge performance boost.

The draft specifications promise to deliver data rates up to 180Mb/s, which could make wired networks unnecessary. At issue, is whether the draft specifications are far enough along that companies can make products that will provide that performance and still be compatible with each other and with older Wi-Fi equipment.

Read the full story here:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/wireless/0,70806-0.html

Discuss the article here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?showtopic=97

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Open Sourced Java | Wednesday, 3 May 2006 | 00:17

About two years ago I was giving news about the open sourcing of Java. Now it looks like, according to eWEEK.com, there's another open sourced Java debate going on. By the sixteenth of May, we should get a confirmation or denial about this issue.

"Sun should endorse PHP and go one step forward and make sure the 'P' languages run great on the JVM [Java virtual machine] by open-sourcing Java."

Read the full story here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1955448,00.asp

Discuss the full story here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?showtopic=93

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Serious X11 Missing Parenthesis Flaw | Wednesday, 3 May 2006 | 00:06

The department of Homeland Security (United States) have discovered a very critical bug in X11. It allowed people to gain root access and several other problems.

But get this! You know the problems we had in WD1 class (the problems my classmates and I had in our Web Development class)? Well, here's what the problem was in X11, it was a change from this:

if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid != 0)

to this:

if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid() != 0)

Kudos to the heroes who painstakingly reinserted the missing parenthesis! Anyway, as you may guess, the problem has been already patched.

Read the full story here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20060502/tc_zd/177195

Discuss the article here:
http://forums.uniquehardware.ca/index.php?showtopic=95

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