ExtraTorrent Blog

Here’s a piece of information we came accross, Microsoft have confirmed that the Vista service pack 1 won’t be available for download until march.

During beta testing for Vista service pack 1, Microsoft found that some device drivers were causing problems on some systems with service pack 1 installed.

Although the issues can be fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, Microsoft decided this would be too complicated for most users.

So Microsoft are spending from now until March fixing drivers that are causing problems, and we have also learned that Microsoft have given OEM’s the disk images based on Vista service pack 1, so they can build their machines on the new service pack 1 format.

Microsoft have also started producing Vista service pack 1 on DVD for volume licensing.

Vista should be more stable after the service pack is installed. Wait and see

Here is the full list of the 80th Academy Awards Nominees

Winners to be announced on Sunday, February 24th.

This post will be updated with links to all the featured below…

keep an eye out . magic!

Best Motion Picture of the Year

Nominees

Atonement (2007)
Tim Bevan
Eric Fellner
Paul Webster

Juno (2007)
Lianne Halfon
Mason Novick
Russell Smith

Michael Clayton (2007)

Sydney Pollack
Jennifer Fox
Kerry Orent

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Scott Rudin

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson
Daniel Lupi
JoAnne Sellar

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Nominees (more…)

Before I start I have to say, im not really meant to do these sort of posts, but as its a hot topic just now, I think it’ll be fine (magic’s hoping ;))

Okay.. You may be aware that there was a strike on between screen writers who write some of our favourite shows.

Hollywood Directors Union and major television studios have reached a deal on the 10-week old strike.

There is more to this story, due to time I can’t write any more on it, but we will be seeing more of our favourite shows back soon. yyaaaaaay!! magic!

Commodore (back after 25 years) Update…

Earlier on in 2007 Commodore announced they were coming back in the form of PC systems!

Well I can now say that Commodore have been selling their new machines, they run Windows Vista 64-bit version.

Its cool how in 1980’s it was 8-bit C64 in 2008 its 64-bit Commodore PC

Here’s a review from Commodore website:

Pros Excellent spec for gamers. Loads of stylish skins to choose from. It says Commodore on it

Cons Costs as much as 11 Xbox 360s

After dominating ’80s home computing with the C64 and Amiga, Commodore died a horrible, slow death in the ’90s. But now the brand has been revived for a range of Windows PCs aimed at gamers. Prices start at £1000 for the entry-level G model, rising through the GS and GX to the top-of-the-range XX, tested here.

When is a Commodore not a Commodore?
You might be wondering what’s so Commodorey about a PC that’s specced (as these machines inevitably are) with components from numerous different companies. Times have changed since computer manufacturers made their own bespoke hardware, and yes, in many ways the XX is just another PC.

In fact, you could say the Commodore connection is only ‘C-Kin’ deep. C-Kins are Commodore’s own custom case design decals that can be added and removed to suit your mood, new wallpaper or fashion leanings, and it’s these above anything else that mark out the Commodore range from the competition.

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A 150-inch high-definiton plasma TV unveiled by Panasonic is the world’s largest to date, the Japanese consumer electronics company claimed Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

The plasma panel features an 8.84 million pixel image resolution.

Its screen is the equivalent of nine 50-inch sets, with an effective viewing area of 11 feet, the company said.

It’s a step up from Panasonic’s 103-inch version, which cost $70,000 when it launched.

The company did not say in a news release how much the 150-inch panel will cost.

(more…)

GeForce 9800 GX2

NVIDIA’s yet-to-be released GeForce 9800 GX2 in the “flesh.”

We reveal some of the specs and what should be expected.

The best way to think of the GeForce 9800 GX2 card is as an 8800 GPU that has been die shrunk to 65nm and placed in an SLI configuration in a “single” card.

The 9800 GX2 is very reminiscent of 7950 GX2 of days past.

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will launch in late February or early March as it now stands and will replace the 8800 Ultra (single GPU) card in NVIDIA’s high-end product line up.

The 9800 GX2 is said to be at least 30% faster than a 8800 Ultra.

While it is not clear from the pictures below, we are told it will support “Quad SLI.”

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This is something I found but happened and was reported last year, but not here.

eBay helped to shut down a Russian Web site last week (way back in 2006) that was offering to sell stolen customer account information for as little as $5 each.

Armed with an eBay customer’s login and password, a fraudster could post items for sale, collect payments, and then never deliver the goods.

The site was also offering to sell a handful of PayPal accounts.

The site was inaccessible Friday morning, but Alex Eckelberry, president of security vendor Sunbelt, posted screen captures in his blog that appeared to show account information for sale from customers in the U.K., Germany, and Australia.

The site preferred accounts that were used infrequently, meaning a user would take longer to notice any suspicious activity, and asked a higher price for accounts with good feedback ratings. Prices ranged from $5 to $25 per account.

EBay reiterated its guidelines for customers to avoid having their data stolen: Be extremely wary of e-mail that ask you to update personal account information, download eBay’s toolbar with software that detects fraudulent eBay and PayPal sites, and report suspicious e-mail.

It’s quite common to buy anything from hacked user account on estores to nice ICQ or MSN numbers…

Thanks to our various sources for this.

Apple’s latest offering in the arena of operating systems, Leopard has broken all previous sales records.

Apple’s efforts to provide new and innovative things to the people has touched one more landmark as the estimates show that the first month sales for the latest operating system “Leopard” are up by 32.8 percent dollar volume and unit volume up 20.5 percent.

These data are on the basis of the comparison made to sales of “Tiger” in its first month. Leopard is the fifth OS in the Mac OS 10 series and its shipping started on October 25 all over the world.

The new copy of Leopard costs $129 for a single user and $199 for a “family pack” that can be installed on as many as five computers in a single household.

It has no variations in the price range for different versions unlike Microsoft which launched Vista in the price range of $100 and $260 for its versions- Home Basic, Premium, Business and Ultimate.

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The 1394 Trade Association announced today a new specification, one which will quadruple the speed of FireWire to 3.2 Gbps, or a theoretical maximum 400 MB/s transfer rate.

Dubbed “S3200″, the faster communication technology is fully backward compatible and builds upon the existing 1394b standard ratified in 2002.

S3200 will also use the same cabling and equipment as FireWire 800, making for fast adoption and industry uptake.

S3200 will begin the ratification process in January, 2008, and is expected to be ratified in February, 2008. FireWire 800 products today deliver 90 MB/s of sustainable throughput.

With the anticipated 3% overhead, FireWire 3200 could deliver nearly 390 MB/s of usable data bandwidth, though a straight-forward 400% increase would be 360 MB/s.

That is enough to drive full 1920 x 1200 HDTV signals at up to 50 fps.

FireWire hard drives can move data on FireWire 800 nearly three times as fast as with USB 2.0.

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Malware researchers at Prevex have highlighted what they are calling a ‘massive growth’ in the number of PCs harboring rootkit infections.

More than 725,000 PCs were scanned using the Prevx CSI malware scanner over a two-month period. Of the around 291,000 users who scanned their PCs during October 2007, some form of spyware or malware was found on one in six.

Significantly, although rootkits were detected on 15.6% of PCs during October 2007, that figure had risen to 22% by early December.

Rootkits are often ‘dropped’ or buried by other infections.

They then modify a PC’s operating system to hide themselves from both the user and any security products installed on the computer.

By so doing rootkits can allow criminals to remotely monitor, record, modify, steal and transfer data from the victim’s PC.

Some rootkits are undetectable by conventional antivirus and antispyware applications. A tech-savvy user may believe his or her computer is ‘clean’, and unwittingly pass on increasingly valuable personal and financial data.

Since 1 December 2007, 114,891 new users have run Prevx CSI with rootkit-detection features enabled. Of those PCs, 1,678 had what Prevx describes as ’significant rootkit infections’.

That equates to 1.46% or approximately one in 70 systems, which is almost 15 times higher than the one in 1,000 rootkit-infected PCs previously estimated by industry experts.

Thanks to PC World for this.