Tomorrow's News Today
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| Name | Results received |
Total CPU time | Average CPU time per work unit |
Average time between results |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kim Heise | 1081 | 4136 hr 26 min 35.1 sec | 3 hr 49 min 35.4 sec | 4 hr 25 min 21.0 sec |
Just last Thursday I was around 300 units processed
and now this. I wish the SETI @ Home team would respond to my emails so I can
figure out this mystery. I used to process around 2-3 units a day and since I've
added my GeForce DDR it's been well over 200 a day.
Update: I sat and watched the SETI screen blanker for sometime and it processed
a whole work unit in 1min and 0.12sec. That's simply unbelievable.
DVD-RAM prices fall.
Posted: 01/16/2000 Source:
AGN
Hardware Added by: Kim Heise
I saw this post over at Anandtech
first but AGN
hardware has this article noting the massive price drop on DVD-RAM drives.
Creative® PC-DVD™ RAM 5.2GB Creative® PC-DVD™
RAM 5.2GB is the unbeatable choice for storing up to 5.2GB of data such as
graphics, multimedia files, video, and more. From the leader in PC sound cards,
speakers, CD-ROM kits, and PC-DVD ROM, Creative delivers reliable, low-cost,
high-speed DVD storage.
With the included software, files can be dynamically recorded or deleted the same way as on your computer hard disk. In addition to storing up to 5.2GB per double-sided cartridge, you can record up to 10 hours of CD-quality audio or 230 minutes of MPEG-2 video. Creative PC-DVD RAM also runs CD programs at up to 2,400KB/second (16X) and DVDs at up to 2,700KB/second (2X).
All for $299.00
Windows Millennium: First preview.
Posted: 01/16/2000 Source:
Win98Cetnral
Added by: Kim Heise
Users can step their systems back through these checkpoints to recapture pre-change or optimal system behavior. On demand for space, System Restore will remove older restore points to make room for new restore points. File change and registry copies are stored on the Windows partition in an access protected data store. System Restore monitors the entire disk.
As part of the operating system, System Restore is installed enabled with Millennium. System Restore requires a minimum of 200MB free space on the Windows partition. System Restore can be turned on or off .
It's a never Ending Story: The Amiga is reborn
(again).
Posted: 01/15/2000 Source:
TechWeb
Added by: Kim Heise
It's just amazing that this once
powerful computer for it's time is still holding on. I think the Amiga computer
rights has been sold to a new company almost 3 times in the last year. The last
big company to pick up the Amiga license was Gateway but it's finally been
handed over again to
The Amiga company now regrouping under
former Gateway marketing executive Bill McEwen has entered a strategic
partnership with the U.K.'s Tao Group, a real-time operating system and software
tools company. Tao will bring a new level of multmedia, Java, and systems
software support to Amiga, which debuted in 1982 as a games platform and won a
loyal following among multimedia developers but failed to win a broad market
under a succession of corporate owners.
I still have a fully loaded Amiga 500, monitor, disk drive and printer
sitting in my basement that I found at a local yard sale for $10.00!
DDR SDRAM Gains Momentum.
Posted: 01/15/2000 Source:
TechWeb Added by: Kim Heise
I can't say
this news post is surprising since DDR RAM is significantly cheaper than the
much hyped RAMBUS from Intel. Anyway, TechWeb has posted a very noteworthy
article regarding the fact the DDR RAM is going more momentum and several
video/motherboard manufacturers plan to roll out DDR RAM based products.
Here's a couple of worthwhile items to note:
DDR will enter the market this year in mainstream desktop PCs through the
introduction of three enabling chip sets from Via Technologies, Advanced Micro
Devices, and Intel, industry sources said. San Jose-based Reliance Computer will
launch a DDR-equipped chip set midyear for servers, and Intel has said it will
have a DDR-enabled server chip set in the first half of 2001.
Double-data-rate (DDR) SDRAM could account for half of the memory market's unit
shipments after 2002, a majority share that once was the sole claim of Direct
Rambus DRAM, according to chip vendors and analysts.
Software updates from Microsoft.
Posted: 01/15/2000 Source: Microsoft
Added by: Kim Heise
Download two new security updates from
Microsoft. The first is for Windows NT 4.0 only and is called the "Spoofed
LPC Port Request" security patch and you can find more information here.
The second is for all version of Windows and is called the "Schannel.dll"
security update that can be downloaded/installed via Windows Update. The "Schannel.dll"
only applies for users who have upgraded to Internet Explorer 5.01.
SETI@Home
scores.
Posted: 01/15/2000 Source:
SETI@HOME Added by: Kim Heise
Just this morning I checked my SETI scores and I'm
simply confused on how fast my computers are working through the work units.
This is going to sound rather unusual and maybe you have an explanation but when
I added my GeForce DDR to my 450mhz system, my computer has generated over 600
work units since last Friday. The usual rate was 1 or 2 a day! I have no idea
what's going on and I have emailed the SETI team to see if they have any
answers. Any ideas?
If you're not familiar with SETI here's a quote from the SETI@HOME web site:
SETI@home is a
scientific experiment that harnesses the power of hundreds of thousands of
Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and
analyzes radio telescope data. There's a small but captivating possibility that
your computer will detect the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth.
nVidia releases official V3.68 Detonator drivers.
Posted: 01/14/2000 Source: nVidia Added by: Kim Heise
Ignore all the beta drivers
circulating the web because nVidia has released official reference drivers for
the TNT, TNT2, TNT2-Ultra and GeForce video cards. You can download them here.
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates steps down.
Posted: 01/14/2000 Source: N/A Added by: Kim Heise
This is hot news in the press today
that Microsoft Bill Gates has decided to step down as company CEO. His new
official title will be "Chief Software Architect" and long time friend
and partner Steve Balmer will be talking the helm.
Somehow I get the feeling it's just a political move and Bill Gates will not be
giving up any power over Microsoft.
Update: You can read the official press release from Microsoft here.
nVidia NV-11 & NV-15 sneak preview follow-up.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source: N/A Added by: Kim Heise
It seems nVidia has gotten wind of the article
regarding the new NV-11 and NV-15 processors and is not happy. Apparently the
article contains internal company secrets and has incorrect information
regarding the new chips. I had a gut feeling something was wrong when the
article was posted without an official press release from nVidia.
I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the group that posted the web page without
authorization as it could very well lead to law-suits. This should be a lesson
to all of us, especially myself, to take what we read on the internet more
carefully before jumping on the band-wagon.
Update 2: I've decided to completely remove the article because most of the
information is incorrect and was not authorized by nVidia.
Site News Update.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source: N/A Added by: Kim Heise
Finally the GeForce review is online and you can use
the "Articles" link on the left to read the GeForce article. Please
let me know what you think. Please
note that this is not a technical review but more of a "hands-on"
review.
New Creative Labs GeForce "Annihilator"
Beta video drivers.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source: Creative
Labs Added by: Kim Heise
Creative Labs has jumped on
today's bandwagon of releasing beta video drivers for their GeForce based video
cards. The new drivers address some AMD K7 compatibility issues and improve
performance/stability. Download them here.
The new beta drivers are only for Win9x.
First Windows 2000 virus.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source: CNET
Added by: Kim Heise
This news article made me laugh
as Windows 2000 is not even out yet and viruses are already being created. There
appear to be several users out there with too much time on their hands.
The virus, known as the Win2000.Install or W2K.Installer virus, inflicts no damage, but can potentially point out conceptual vulnerabilities for future virus authors, said researchers at anti-virus software makers Symantec and F-Secure. So far, Win2000.Install has not been released in the "wild," or infected users at large.
The virus and at least two variants, found several days ago, only affect Windows 2000 because the virus writers specifically earmarked it for the new operating system, said Vincent Weafer, director of Symantec's Antivirus Research Center.
New nVidia 3.69 beta reference drivers for
Win9x.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source: 3D
Chipset
Added by: Kim Heise
There are new beta reference
drivers for the TNT, TNT2 and GeForce video cards for Windows 9x. You can
download them here.
No information was posted on what has been changed. As usual be careful with
beta video drivers.
Elsa Erazor X2 DDR Review.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source: Anandtech
Added by: Kim Heise
Anandtech has posted a very detailed
review on another superb GeForce 256 DDR video card manufactured by a German
company called the Elsa Erazor X2 DDR. Elsa has two GeForce 256 based video
cards on the market, the slower SDR Erazor X and the beefier Erazor X2 with DDR
RAM. Typical as with other GeForce video cards the price difference between the
two is around $50-$60.
The card stacks up very will with the competition but is extremely difficult to
locate in the US especially the DDR X2 version.
AMD Athlon VS. Intel P3 prices.
Posted: 01/13/2000 Source:
CPU Review
Added by: Kim Heise
CPU review takes a look at current CPU prices on the
market and compares the price difference between the two CPU titans. Currently
the the Athlon costs approximately 30% less than the Pentium 3 at 550Mhz, 28%
cheaper at 500Mhz! and at least 17% cheaper at all other speeds.
When those 2nd generation AMD motherboards begin to ship it will be time to try
one of those new speed demons.
Windows 2000 Readiness
Analyzer.
Posted: 01/12/2000 Source: Anandtech
Added by: Kim Heise
If you're thinking of adding Windows 2000 to your PC
you may want to download this
program from Microsoft. The "Readiness Analyzer" examines your PC
and tries to determine what is and what isn't compatible with Windows 2000.
Intel announces "Speedstep"
processors for laptops.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: ZDNET
Added by: Kim Heise
Intel has announced a new set of laptop processors
that "step" down in speed when switching from electrical to battery
power. For example your 600mhz laptop using electrical power would drop down to
500mhz when using the battery. This is a very smart idea and I wonder just
exactly how much power it does save.
XFree86 3.3.6 released.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: RivaZone
Added by: Kim Heise
There is a new version of XFree86 available for
download and the new version supports the following new graphic chipsets.
For those of you not familiar with XFree86 it is a free X-Windows implementation for various flavors of x86 based UNIX operating systems. For more information visit the XFree86 website.
Video RAM Caching article.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: Adrian
Rojak's Site Added by: Kim Heise
Adrian, the hardware guru takes a closer look at
caching your video RAM using your system bios. As always his articles are well
worth the read. Here's a clip:
Also, remember that the needless traffic through the AGP (or PCI) bus will
reduce the bandwidth for texture transfers, etc... The traffic runs both ways
since for the L2 cache to store the data from the video RAM, it needs to be sent
in through the AGP bus; and when that memory region is read, the data is sent
back though the AGP bus to the graphics chip. Because the AGP bus is pipelined
and is mainly used for texture reads from the system RAM to the video RAM, the
data reads from the A0000h-AFFFFh region of the video RAM to the L2 cache will
cause the flushing of the pipeline since the transfer is in the opposing
direction and such data cannot be transferred via the SBA port.
Novell ships Netware 5.1.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: TechWeb
Added by: Kim Heise
Here's a major portion of the article.
NetWare 5.1 includes IBM's WebSphere
Application Server 3.0 Standard Edition and WebSphere Studio 3.0 Entry Edition,
designed to allow customers tomore easily and rapidly develop Web-based
applications.
NetWare 5.1 also features a management portal that enables administrators to manage the network operating system server from any browser, as well as identify and fix server problems.
Novell has priced the server at $1,345 for a five-user upgrade, $1,430 for 10 additional 10 users, $3,155 for 25 additional users, $5,455 for 50 additional users, and $10,745 for 100 additional users.
Intel drops Celeron prices.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: TechWeb
Added by: Kim Heise
This always is music to the consumer's ears. As you
can guess, the steady heat from AMD has caused Intel to be a little nervous so
in retaliation the company has dropped the price on their Celeron processors.
Here's the bottom line: 533mhz Celeron down to $167, 500mhz Celeron down to
$129, 466mhz dropped to $89 and last but also least the 400mhz has dropped to
$64.00
Diamond Viper II review.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: GamePC
Added by: Kim Heise
It appears as if Diamond/S3 are still having driver
issues to be resolved on the new Viper II video card. Since the merger between
Diamond and S3, Diamond has dropped all other third party video processors
except of course S3. Performance on the Viper II is so-so with driver problems.
I shouldn't get started with the driver issues with Diamond MM but the company
has let me down and I will refuse to purchase any products from them at this
point. I own a Diamond Viper I (TNT-2 Ultra) that hasn't seen any driver updates
in over 4 months or more. Finally now they have released some updates. There
should be no excuses since nVidia hands out the reference drivers and it should
be rather trivial for manufactures to update their drivers.
Creative Labs "Annihilator
Pro" FAQ.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: nV
News Added by: Kim Heise
Still have some unanswered questions regarding
Creative Lab's speed demon video card? The FAQ has been updated over at nV News
and may provide some answers. Read the FAQ here.
Microsoft Debuts Millennium at CES
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: BetaNews
Added by: Kim Heise
Not sure what Microsoft's spin doctors are up to since
the company is touting a sequel to Windows 98 dubbed "Millennium".
Arguments are aplenty about if Microsoft should be calling this a new OS or
simply an upgrade to Windows 98.
There are a couple of new features however that may make the upgrade worth it:
Only time will tell if the upgrade is worth it. If my memory serves.....I think the release date is sometime quarter 2 2000. Don't hold me to that.
3dfx Interview.
Posted: 01/11/2000 Source: Extreme
Hardware Added by: Kim Heise
Extreme hardware has posted an interview with 3dfx's
Peter Wicher regarding the upcoming Voodoo 4 and 5 chipsets. Couple of
interesting items to note: The next generation Voodoo chips will be clocked
between 166mhz and 183mhz and no DDR RAM versions of the boards are planned.
Also still no mention of T&L support.
Here' s a summary of the new cards planned from 3dfx. Table source: Extreme
Hardware.
| Voodoo4™
4500: Single VSA-100 32 MB AGP & PCI 333-367 Megapixels/sec around $179 |
Voodoo5™
5000: SLI VSA-100 32 MB PCI 667-733 Megapixels/sec around $229 |
| Voodoo5™
5500: SLI VSA-100 64 MB AGP 667-733 Megapixels/sec around $299 |
Voodoo5™
6000: 4-way SLI Vsa-100 128 MB AGP 1.33-1.47 Gigapixels/sec around $599 |
At this point I am not impressed with these specs. No DDR, no mention of T&L and the fill rates on the Voodoo5 5000 are not much better than the GeForce DDR and the cards are at least 3 to 4 months away. The Annihilator Pro GeForce card I tested with 3DMark 2000 showed a fill rate of around 500 to 600 megapixels/sec and you can purchase it today.
Site News Update.
Posted: 01/10/2000 Source: N/A
Added by: Kim Heise
I will write a quick article regarding my thoughts on
the Creative Labs GeForce DDR that I picked up late last week. After running
test after test and throwing everything at it (almost including the kitchen
sink) I will let you know what I think. Not to give to much away here but the
card was substantially faster than my TNT-2 Ultra.
The article is not going to be a lengthy piece covered with benchmarks but more
of a overall personal experience with this impressive new card.
Keep checking back throughout the week and I will post it as soon as possible in
the new "Articles" section. If you have any articles that you would
like to post online please send me an email.
Affordable home MP3/DVD player for $169.
Posted: 01/10/2000 Source: ARS-Technica
Added by: Kim Heise
The team over at ARS-Technica have picked up a Apex
DVD player over at Circuit City for $169.00 that let's you play CD's full of
recorded MP3 files. Even MP3's with long filenames, hidden under several
subdirectories on the CD were flawlessly handled by the DVD/MP3 player.
Unfortunately Circuit City no longer carries the player and ARS-Technica are
trying to track down alternative sources. I will keep you updated on news posts
regarding the Apex DVD/MP3 hybrid.
SETI@Home 2.0 to be released next week.
Posted: 01/10/2000 Source: Wired
Added by: Kim Heise
The search for little green men will get a boost next week when the Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project releases SETI@Home 2.0, an
overhaul to its screensaver that scans radio signals from space for signs of
alien life.
The SETI@Home project was launched in May as an effort to harness the idle CPU power of Internet users. It asked people who left their computers running when they weren't in use to leave the client running, which operates as a screensaver.
The SETI Project, run at the University of California at Berkeley, hoped to snare 150,000 users. Instead, it has 1.5 million users, more than 500,000 of whom are active at any time. The result is that it has the most users of any distributed computing project in the world. It's also the world's most powerful computer, providing more than eight teraflops of processing per day, according to SETI@home director David Anderson.
"A supercomputer to do that would cost [US]$100 million, and we've done that out of essentially nothing," he said.
AOL and Time Warner to
merge.
Posted: 01/10/2000 Source: ZDNET
Added by: Kim Heise
Not sure if this is good news or not to you but AOL
and Time Warner are planning to merge. Suffice it to say that I should
have stayed in bed today.
America Online found a cable strategy and Time Warner found its Internet
strategy as the pair merged Monday in a stock swap valued at $350 billion.
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