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CIO Today is reporting that Microsoft has given security companies access to the Windows Vista kernel. Hopefully this brings the ongoing feud between Microsoft and McAfee and Symantec to an end.
Microsoft sent some holiday cheer in the direction of security vendors this week by releasing new programming interfaces for developers working to create software that can interact with the Windows Vista kernel.
In addition to the information we have posted above on the NVIDIA 680i BIOS hotfix, there are new BIOS updates that were posted earlier today from eVGA as well as BFG Tech. Everyone else, make sure you hit the link above for more information.
This morning, NVIDIA and its partners released a new system BIOS for the NVIDIA nForce® 680i SLI "Designed by NVIDIA" motherboards. These are the motherboards designed by NVIDIA and sold by EVGA, BFG, Biostar, and ECS. This BIOS update eliminates a bug related to the operation of SATA hard disk drives experienced by some customers. The bug is specific to these "Designed by NVIDIA" motherboards, and is not present on any other NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI motherboard, nor is it present in our MCPs (chipsets).
Sun Microsystems has released a 3D desktop called Looking Glass this week for Windows XP, Linux and Solaris users. The program allows certain applications to be rotated in 3D space to maximize the available desktop space.
Looking Glass, which was first shown off in 2003 and released as an open-source project in 2004, allows users to run a Java-based desktop environment on top of Windows, or on Linux or Solaris. The software allows certain applications to be run in a "2.5D" environment, allowing them to be rotated in 3D space to maximize the available desktop space.
An Australian court has ruled that simply providing Web links to copyright-protected music is enough to make a site legally liable. People are now afraid that Google and other search engines could possibly be guilty of the same violations if search results returned links to copyrighted material.
They were accused of authorizing copyright infringement because they provided a search engine whose results linked to songs available for illegal download, even though the Web site did not store the music files directly.
According to this article at DigiTimes, AMD is speculating that demand for DirectX 10 compliant video cards will not take off until the second half of 2007.
With no boost from DirectX 10, the graphics card market will stay put in the first half of 2007, while watching Vista's acceptability, according to Chow. In the second half of 2007, DirectX 10-compliant products will see demand pick up, so the competition will hot up, with more games and blue-laser products hitting the market, he added.
Yet another Samsung executive has plead guilty (this makes number five) to price fixing and will serve ten months in prison. Ten months? With time off for good behavior, they might actually have enough time to book him in before he’s released.
Young Hwan Park, president of Samsung Semiconductor Inc., the company's U.S. subsidiary, is the fifth Samsung executive to agree to a prison sentence over price manipulation of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, the most common type of memory chip used in personal computers.
[H] Enthusiast has its evaluation of the MSI P965 Platinum posted today for your viewing pleasure. While not as overclocker friendly as some boards, it does well and our guys say the P965 Platinum is a rock when it comes to stability.
Stability at stock speeds, while running my drive benchmarks and network tests was exemplary. For 48 hours, the system ran flawlessly, and gave me no issues. During the stress test I ran Orthos and ran SuperPi along side it just to be extra abusive. The system performed flawlessly under these conditions.
TweakNews has put one of our new RatPadz XTs to the test and, I think it is safe to say, they liked it…a lot. Here is a quote from the full review:
At first I scoffed at the fact that I need a mousepad with a high precision laser mouse. But after several days of use and personally enjoying the slippery silky goodness I just cannot push myself to remove this from my workstation / gaming machine.
IBM Researchers have published a paper demonstrating how photons that represent data traveling in a processor can be slowed down.
Intel, IBM and relative newcomers such as Primarion and Luxtera are trying to devise ways to replace the metal cables that connect chips inside computers, as well as wire connections inside chips, with optical components. Optical technology consumes much less energy. Plus, it doesn't generate heat, and it can transfer signals faster than metal wires.
Read here on how to determine if you need this "hotfix" and how to go about it if you do. Then do it whether you need it or not. 
This is for all reference design nForce 680i motherboards.
The Mozilla Foundation has issued critical security updates for vulnerabilities found in Firefox. We planned on posting this update earlier but Mozilla.org was offline a good portion of the day.
Flaws were found in versions of the open-source software prior to both Firefox 2.0.0.1 and Firefox 1.5.0.9, as well as prior to Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 and SeaMonkey 1.0.7, Mozilla said Tuesday.
Is there something to this whole Mouse Rage Syndrome (MRS) or is it all just a bunch of hooey? Can your PC turn you into a raving mad lunatic with computer-cidal tendencies?
It's Mouse Rage Syndrome, and it infects all Internet users sooner or later, according to a study of 2,500 Web users that was released Tuesday. Conducted by the Social Issues Research Centre in the United Kingdom, the study identified key factors that can negatively affect cardio functions, as well as the immune and nervous systems.
