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Posted on February 04, 2005 Yet another worm is spreading around the internet. Security firm Trend Micro
has raised the threat level on the Bropia.F worm to medium-risk. The worm is using the popular MSN Messenger instant messaging program to make
its way through the internet. The worm is quite malicious even though at first,
it seems rather harmless. Users of MSN Messenger receive the file and open it to find a simple picture
file of a sun-tanned chicken. But in the background, a second worm is triggered
that infects the user's PC with the Agobat.ajc virus. The secondary virus seeks
out older Microsoft security holes in Windows and logs password and account
information. It also connects to the IRC server and shuts down the machine's
audio system. Trend Micro suggests MSN Messenger users block any file transfers.
-- Newsbug.net
SUN
NOT SHINING AFTER REALIZING AMD CAN’T BE THEIR FRIEND
Sun
Microsystems has been a hostile customer of Intel for years.
They would rather not buy Xeon processors from Intel but they have no
choice. If Sun were to partner with
AMD and start building Opteron based servers, their ultraSPARC based servers
would suffer. Why?
AMD’s chip is too good. Sun
fears that customers would realize the Opteron is pound for pound (or gig for
gig) a much more cost effective 64bit processor.
They will continue to buy Xeon’s from Intel knowing that it cannot
compete at the level of ultraSPARC.
You
may ask “Why don’t they just stop selling Xeon’s?”
Sun does not want to lose market share.
Therefore they offer low end Xeon based servers and high end ultraSPARC
servers to cover all their customers’ needs.
(Sun offers the ultraSPARC in multiprocessor flavors up to 106
processors) If they switched to Opteron for the low end the ultraSPARC would
look less attractive in many ways. Considering
Sun actually put this information in a press
release AMD has to be beaming with pride right now.
June 24 03
Microsoft
announced last week that a combination of a Hyperthreading P4 and Windows XP
will see a significant performance reduction after loading Service Pack 1.
The problem is in the UnmapViewOfFile function.
Microsoft has a fix for the problem but they suggest that if you are not
currently experiencing any problems you should wait for the release of Service
Pack 2 which will contain the fix. For
more information on this problem you can visit the Microsoft Support website.
The site will show you how to determine if you have the bug and what to
do about it.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815227
COUNTERFEITING
IS BACK
This one was unexpected. You may remember a few years back the rash of remarked CPU’s, and counterfeit software. The CPU problem has gone away for the most part. The software problem will never go away. The new thing is, believe it or not, RAM. It doesn’t seem very cost effective but there are people out there buying cheap modules, remarking them with name brand logo’s and selling them for below market. How they are making money at this is a mystery to me. We haven’t seen any here yet but one of our suppliers told us that they received a batch of fake Micron modules. Be careful what you buy. Remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”
April
4, 2003
U.S.
GOVERNMENT STICKS IT TO HYNIX
This
week the U.S. Commerce Dept. imposed a whopping 57.37% duty on Hynix
Semiconductor for receiving illegal Korean Government subsidies.
U.S. Analysts stated that this basically shuts down Hynix exports to the
U.S. Samsung, who was also part of
the countervailing duty case was only imposed a .16% duty.
Why there was such a huge difference was not clear in the report.
However, the affects on Samsung are insignificant.
Hynix,
although Korean based, has a fab in Eugene Oregon that will not be affected by
this ruling. Hynix stated that the
Oregon fab is running at full capacity and there should be no affect on
deliveries of DRAM to U.S. memory assemblers.
However, we have seen in the past that any reason to raise prices can and
will be used. As expected we have
seen an increase in pricing but it is expected to be short lived.
There are still mountains of unsold DRAM out there.
Hynix
also stated that they would ship from Korea to other countries before shipping
to the U.S. to avoid the duty.
March 18 03
137GB
HARD DRIVE LIMITATIONS
The
smallest hard drive we sell anymore is a 40GB.
We sell these by the truck-load because most people don’t need anything
larger. However, with the growing
popularity in video, audio, and large data file storage, we are seeing hard
drive capacity grow beyond certain limitations.
One such limitation is the 137GB mark for most controllers.
Currently we are using ATA-5 controllers.
In detailed terms ATA-5 is limited to 137GB because there are a maximum
of 28 bits for addressing the logical block of cylinders, heads, and sectors.
When you do the math, this equates to a maximum of 137GB that can be recognized
by the controller. The drives we
are seeing these days that exceed that capacity are ATA-6.
This technology raises the addressing bits from 28 to 48.
Once again let me do the math for you.
Our next limitation will be 144 petabytes.
Q: What’s a petabyte? A: A
thousand terabytes. Q: What's a
terabyte? A: A thousand gigabytes. Is
this starting to sink in? Our next limitation is a long long way off.
It is so far off that data storage technology will probably change to
another format before we get there. The
one thing you may be overlooking is the operating system limitations.
Current Windows platforms including XP are 32 bit.
(Yes I know, 64 bit is already out there.)
Anyway, the current O/S can’t recognize a drive larger than 2.2
terabytes on a single disk. Although
2.2 terabytes seems huge, remember Moores Law.
“Computers will double in speed and capacity every 18
months….forever.” This law has
stayed true and is on track for a long time.
See newsletter archive from April 13, 2001
There
is a problem with our current situation that everyone should be aware of.
If you purchase a drive larger than 137GB ATA-6 and install it on a ATA-5
controller, when the drive capacity hits 137GB, you will run into the
wrap-around affect. Instead of
telling you that the drive is full something very bad happens.
First of all, an ATA-5 controller will recognize a drive with capacity
over 137GB. Therefore you may think
you have the ability to use the entire drive.
However, the controller does not know how to handle this situation and it
starts overwriting your data at the beginning of the drive!
The next thing you know you have lost all your data.
137GB of data isn’t easy to recreate. (Note that some of the Maxtor
hard drives are not true ATA-6 and will not experience this problem.)
The
solution to this problem is simple. An
ATA-6 controller. We will write
more on this fix as information becomes available.
We are researching several different fixes as we speak.
We will provide information on Serial ATA, Firewire etc. so you can
understand all the options available.
March 7 03
AMD
BARTON VS. INTEL HYPERTHREADING
AMD
and Intel are battling it out again. Both
have released new processors claming theirs is the best and fastest.
AMD released the Barton Core processors in 2500+, 2800+, and 3000+.
The 2800+ are also manufactured with the Palomino Core so you need to be
careful you understand which one you are getting.
The biggest difference between Palomino and Barton is the L2 cache.
Palomino has 384K and the Barton 640K.
This cache increase has been needed for a long time.
Intel has been running the P4 with 512K for a while.
AMD’s
selection of Barton has one advantage over Intel’s new Hyperthreading
Technology. Currently there are 3
processors to choose from with the Barton Core.
Intel only has one processor running Hyperthreading, although the 3.06Ghz
won’t be the only “Hyperthreader” on the block for long.
With AMD adding cache and boosting the front side bus to 333MHz, there
isn’t a whole lot more to say about it. The
performance is still impressive.
Hyperthreading
is new, interesting, and revolutionary. The
basic idea is tricking your software into thinking there are two processors on
board and sending twice the normal data to one processor.
Although the old strategy for a dual Intel board was to offload excess
data to the second processor, Hyperthreading is more like the AMD MP platform
where processors run parallel. This
breakthrough allows for simulated parallel processors while keeping the cost,
size, and heat to a minimum. The
increased throughput allows faster multitasking for workstations and faster
response time for servers.