News for Thursday, 8 December 2005

Thanks to Achamayou for the info which will please many readers.

The driver for the Broadcom wifi card (in particular the Airport Express cards by Apple) is available. People who use Linux on their Mac will finally be able to benefit from their card.
http://bcm43xx.berlios.de
One small note: These drivers have been created using reverse-engineering; they are not official drivers

The noise from the 7800 GT does not go well with a water-cooled G5, and naturally, since we want silence, we made it quieter.
We installed a Zalman VF 700 CU cooler on it.

The difference between the noise from this barely audible cooler and the original one from the 7800 is colossal. The G5 Quad is now a silent machine.
The temperature that we saw, thanks to Hardware Monitor and the integrated probe on the card, with the original cooler was 52° in 2D and 70° in intensive 3D usage. With the VF 700, the temperature "at rest" is 46° and 63° at full load.
It is thus very beneficial, especially in view of the day when it will be possible to overclock this card.
In a few days, we will write a detailed article showing how to install this cooler.

Source: Ars Technica
The topic of the mistake made by Sony of trying to protect its CDs from malicious customers does not end.
Researchers from Princeton University have discovered that the rootkit hides a component which can encode a CD into the protected AAC format from Apple.
It is unknown whether Apple knew about this use of its code, but if that is not the case then tensions between Sony BMG and the iTMS are likely to rise.
To continue on the same topic, It has been discovered that another anti-protection system for Sony created by SunComm MediaMax has a security flaw which allows one to gain unauthorized administration access in Windows.
The software in question would be present on 6 million audio CDs in a hurry.
An update is available to fix the problem from the following address:
http://sonybmg.com/mediamax/
It will be remembered that in 2005 updating an audio CD was invented...

aMSN, the clone of MSN Messenger which brings more functionality to the Mac than the official version, has released version 0.95.
You can find it at the following address:
http://www.amsn.xcoded.com

Microsoft posted a download on Xbox live for a plug-in called "Optional iPod Support." Once installed, it is as simple as plugging the iPod in via USB to the console to have access to its musical content and to listen to it via the console. As usual, protected AAC can not be played.
It should be noted that Microsoft lowered it's pride in order to make its console a little more attractive.

Here is the latest Creative Zen Vision:

Its design is extremely close to that of the iPod 5G. It is also capable of recording audio, playing videos, and displaying photos.
It supports more audio formats than the iPod, except of course for protected AAC; supports more video formats than the iPod; and has a FM tuner.
The competition is gaining, and for Apple to remain in front, it will need some new ammunition.