Content and news by Rob Williams

“Opera is trying to close the net on phishers with the release last Friday (February 25) of a second beta of its forthcoming Opera 8 browser. The Beta 2 release is designed to display the name of an organisation that owns the certificate of a site inside an address bar, located next to the padlock icon that indicates the security of a site. By clicking on the bar, surfers can find out who issued a certificate.”

This is great news if you are a Opera user. Read the full details and explanations over at The Register.

Bit-Tech has released some pictures of a new 512MB 6800 Ultra card from Nvidia. Hardcore for sure.. and set to match wits of the ATI X850XT 512MB.

“It appears that the video card is not just a Gainward-only technology – from the looks of the pictures it seems to be an NVIDIA reference board, however this is just our speculation. It is also worth noting that there is a new power layout at the end of the board, much different to previous versions of the GeForce 6800 series on both AGP and PCI-Express.”

Check out the post on the Bit-Tech Forums. Can’t wait to see some benchmarks on these 512 cards.

Now that Intel finally released a 64-Bit processor, T-Break took advantage of the situation to do some hardcore benchmarking. Now the question can be answered to go Intel 64, or stay at AMD 64.

“While AMD’s CPUs have had 64-bit support for quite some time, Intel just introduced them for their desktop PCs this week. Microsoft is slowly but surely working towards the 64-bit version of Windows XP which is currently in RC2 state meaning it is almost done. Now the Athlon64 has been benchmarked on the 64-bit XP quite a few times but we’re sure that lots of people are interested in finding out Intel’s performance.”

Check out the full article at T-Break.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bank of America Corp. has lost computer data tapes containing personal information on 1.2 million federal employees, including some members of the U.S. Senate.

That’s a lot of records to lose. Hey, at least they apologized. Check out the news posting at Foxnews.com.

“One of the benefits of the MEGA View 561 is that it is multipurpose. While it’s larger than the iPod, it’s smaller than portable DVD players. Add to the fact that you can pile on quite a few movies on the 20GB drive, you save the additional hassle of packing extra DVDs.”

Check out the full review at Viper Lair.

A brand new set of DNA drivers for ATI cards have been released today.

* Based on the Official CATALYST 5.2 Release
* Updated DNA-ATi Theme Changer to V1.2
* Fixed ATi Tray Tools version number typo
* Updated modded driver deletion for:
– ATI Optimized Driver by TechConnect Magazine v2.0, 1.9 and 1.8
* Added special eXtreme Players DNA-ATi Theme
* Control Panel LOGO’s made by Cen0xâ„¢ this release
* Readded the special CounterStrike OpenGL driver

Also released it a “Lite” version of the driver set. If you want to check out the new version, you can download it over at the DNA Drivers site.

And yet another way to ad grip to your mouse handling, Techware Labs has reviewed three X-Raypad mousepads.

“With in insurgence of optical mice on the maket and even the latest release of laser enabled mice, are mouse pads really necessary? This reviewer thought so until thegamercompany.com sent TWL a few items from XRaypad.com to try out. The items included the Thunder8, Thunder9 and the Aqua3 mouse pads.”

Check out the full review at Techware Labs.

Ever play a late night CS: Source session, and suck? Then you tear your mouse out of your computer, and throw it in the garbage? “Damn those lack of grips!”. Monster-Hardware has reviewed the new Steelpad Steelgrip, which allow you to stick some grips on your mouse, to give you better control. Unique idea, for sure.

Check out the full review at Monster-Hardware.

Blizzard has added Five new pieces of Fan Art to that section. These are incredible pieces of art.. so definately check them out at the Official Fan Art Page.

MARKHAM, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb. 23, 2005– Gamers from around the world are invited to join ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY)(NASDAQ:ATYT) and its marketing partners at the Ultimate LAN, held in association with the Texas Gaming Festival in Dallas, February 25th to 27th. In addition to offering gamers three days of top-notch gaming, the event will include an overclocking demonstration and a PC modding event. Attendees will get the opportunity to preview the world’s first 512MB gaming card and one lucky gamer will even get to take one home.

Another geeks dream card! This is the first card that has an available 512MB of RAM, and it makes us wonder if Nvidia has something similar in the works. As we know, Doom III’s “Ultra Quality” option recommends a card with 512MB of RAM, so it would be interesting to see new benchmarks on that setting with this card.

ATI at the event is allowing people to test out the card, and to even Overclock it.. even to the extent of attempting to break world records. The results are going to be much anticipated, to say the least. Check out Tom’s Hardware Guide for more info on the card and event.

What really happened to the ultra-popular Bit-Torrent site, LokiTorrent? A million things. Previous months before the sites shutdown, they were asking for donations to help against legal battles. They raised over $40,000 in that time.

“Muff Torrent has lost the fight for your rights to freely share on the internet,” the site says. “All donations to this point have been spent on legal fees. Any future donations will be spent paying off remaining bills.”

It’s easy to argue the use of ‘fight’ in that statement. Weber settled out of court. If you donated money to LokiTorrent, it was apparently used to craft document 3:04-CV-2642-N available in PDF format from P2Pnet here. If you traded on LokiTorrent, Muff Torrent or any other Webber owned site, you paid a lawyer to turn over your identity and evidence of your file-trading to the MPAA.

Check out the full article on this at the Register. You can also get through to another site that actually has legal documentation.

“Redefining the performance bar for gaming enthusiasts (scores of over 12,000 in 3DMark 2003) or anyone looking for the ultimate HD video notebook, the new Inspiron XPS features the latest GeForce Go 6800 Ultra with state-of-the-art technology.”

If the 12,000 3D Marks proves to be true, then that makes this an incredible notebook for gaming. Check out the page over at Nvidia to read up more on it. *drool*

“Saitek, a leader in high-quality gaming peripherals, has come up with a solution that is as practical as a conventional keyboard, but also has the added flexibility of up to 27 programmable keys which should be able to handle just about any game you can think of—the Saitek PC Gaming Keyboard”

Check out the full review at Barry’s Rigs-n-Reviews.

” Hightech Information Systems has been in the VGA market for quite some time and recently they have taken the enthusiast world by storm with some very high quality graphics cards. We have reviewed several here and have always been impressed with Hightech’s innovation, packaging and pricing strategy. Today, we get a chance to take a look at a couple of the top notch cards based on ATi’s award winning X850XT VPU. I was a bit surprised when I saw that HIS was producing not only the X850XT but one with their IceQ cooling solution.”

Check out the full review at Overclocker Cafe.

“With today’s CPUs starting to resemble easy-bake ovens rather than processors, cooling has become a key in ramping these cores up to high speeds. With some CPUs (I’m not pointing any fingers, but its name is Prescott) nearing 100W of heat output, a standard heatsink and fan is no longer an option. We have long since passed the days of being able to buy a $5 Radio Shack heatsink to cool down our brand new investments.”

Check out the full review of this “cool” product at /* */