A computer worm that ferrets out passwords managed to stow away on laptops aboard the International Space Station, NASA has confirmed. It is not the first time a NASA computer has become infected.

SpaceReg.com identified the infection as W32.TGammima.AG, a worm that spreads by copying itself to removable media devices. Once in place, it steals passwords to various online games, according to anti-virus software provider Symantec, which first spotted the worm 12 months ago.

"This is not the first time we have had a worm or a virus," a NASA spokesman told Wired News. "It's not a frequent occurrence, but this isn't the first time."

The infected machines were not considered mission critical, meaning they weren't responsible for command and control. The NASA spokesman was unable to say if the infected laptops were connected to mission-critical systems.

The number of personal information leaks reported in the US this year have already exceeded the total amount in all of 2007, San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center said today.

With four months left in 2008, the firm found that 449 US businesses and government agencies have thus far reported lost or stolen customer and employee data

But the agency reckons the actual number is likely higher, due to under-reporting and data loss that affects multiple businesses being reported as a single event. All told, ITRC said its 2008 list represents compromised records of more than 22 million individuals

NVISION 08 Day 2 - We continue where we left off, Buzz Aldrin flies by to talk about a 3D movie, we got Kyle Busch, NASCAR racing sensation; Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systems; Eileen Collins, former NASA space shuttle commander; and Lorne Lanning, film director and founder of Oddworld all on stage.

• http://www.guru3d.com/article/nvision-08-day-2--its-the-buzz/

Man, what an high number of game-traailers lately eh ? Eidos unveiled a new Tomb Raider: Underworld trailer at the Games Convention in Leipzig. The new Tomb Raider game will be released in early November for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

NVIDIA issued a new beta driver this morning. It's the full monty and includes the PhysX drivers as well. The driver has precision GeForce Forceware Vista 177.92 and supports GeForce 6-series, 7-series, 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs, including the newly released GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, 9500 GT, and 9400 GT GPUs.

• Adds support for NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory (this driver package installs NVIDIA PhysX System Software v8.08.18).
• Experience GPU PhysX acceleration in several full games and demos today by downloading the GeForce Power Pack.
• Adds support for 2-way NVIDIA SLI technology with GeForce GTX 200-series GPUs on Intel

Taipei, Taiwan, August 25, 2008

A new entry level GPU is introduced today. The 9400 GT will be available from a variety of our partners at prices as low as $59. I have to elave to a conference in a couple of minutes so fogive me the blunt copy and paste from NVIDIA marketing:

NVIDIA continues to offer consumers more choice with the addition today of the GeForce 9400 GT. The GeForce 9400 GT delivers unsurpassed value by enabling end users to enjoy gaming, HD video, enhanced visual effects, and smoother Vista performance for retail prices as low as $59.

• In addition, the GeForce 9400 GT further extends CUDA

Much like way too many manufacturers these days, Arctic Cooling is following the trend as they have released the Fusion 550R. A PSU that follows the default ATX-Form-Factor and thus will fit into every ATX PC-Case. It fulfils the ATX 2.2 specifications and can offer a continuous power of 500 Watt - enough for every Highend System. Equipped with two 6-pin- and 8-pin PCIe connectors the PSU is ideal for powering a Crossfire- or SLi-setup.

Main features 

• Ultra quiet 80mm PWM fan with low noise impeller
• 550W maximum output power, ATX 2.2
• 82-86% efficiency, 99% PFC
• 80mm ARCTIC F8 Pro fan
• Intelligent fan control (700

I think they paid like 900 million for it initially, yet a press release reveals that Broadcom has become the lucky buyer of AMD's digital TV division. In a joint announcement, the two firms say they've entered a definitive agreement that will see Broadcom acquire the division in exchange for a $192.8-million cash sum. If all goes well, the transaction will close some time during the fourth quarter of this year, and 530 former AMD employees across six design centers worldwide will get new jobs at Broadcom (if they agree to the company's invitation, that is).

The acquisition will give Broadcom ownership of AMD's Xilleon integrated processors, NXT receivers, Theater 300 DTV processors, and panel processors. According to the press release, Broadcom will subsequently be able to "offer a complete product line that covers all segments of the [digital TV] market ranging from low-end value and mid-range quality to high-end interactive platforms and panel processors."

Anyone else getting sick of this?

A computer hard disc containing one million sets of bank details was bought on eBay for just

On Monday the 25th August the Electronic Sports World Cup Grand Final have begun here at the NVISION 08 in San Jose, California. Open to all the video games enthusiasts, the NVISION 08 and ESWC Grand Final will host during three days six tournaments gathering 650 international champions from more than 40 countries. All fans are welcomed to follow the show and support their favorite

On the second installment of our articles covering NVISION we'll handle the primary keynote speech from -Jen Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, some Case Modding sessions and ... Cylon number Six from BattleStar Galactica -- Tricia Helfer.

• Day 1 - Part 2 Keynote Speech, Case Modding, Tricia Helfer

We have now reached the point where there is so much information and photo's to show you on the NVISION 08 event that I have to revert back to actual articles. As all the photo's on our frontpage would kill off the website.

Here's our first installment of the NVISION in San Jose, which started today. We'll have a look a GeForce LAN, ESWC and NVScene.

Enjoy :)

• NVISION Day part 1 - the Fun Begins

Fail and You It's been called a lot of things: utility computing, grid computing, distributed computing, and now cloud computing. You can come up with any CTO-friendly name you like, but they all mean the same sh**: Renting your quickly depreciating physical assets out because your software company is out of ideas for computer programs.

Amazon's EC2 was likely the brainchild of a mid-level ops director who overbought for a data center and had to come up with a way to save his own ass. Use a free, open source project like Xen for virtualization, give it a sunshine-up-the-ass name like Elastic Compute Cloud, and start pulling in all those venture capital dollars like Cisco and Sun did during the first dotcom catastrophe. F*** me, give that man a raise.

Unfortunately, Bezos and company are a day late and a buck short. This time around, we're working with substantially less money and substantially more developer incompetence.

A Cloud Is Easier To Draw On A Whiteboard Than A Grid

EC2 is very popular with the Web 2.0 crowd, which is strange, considering the hurdles that these java script  all-stars need to overcome. The first, and presumably most difficult, is that Amazon wants money in exchange for their services. That's a stark realization for a budding young social network developer: Web 2.0 runs on cash, not hugs. Who would have thunk it?

Once you're past that, there's the matter of reliability. EC2 is fairly reliable, but you really need to be on your s*** with data replication, because when it fails, it fails hard. My pager once went off in the middle of the night, bringing me out of an awesome dream about motorcycles, machine guns, and general ass-kickery, to tell me that one of the production machines stopped responding to ping. Seven or so hours later, I got an e-mail from Amazon that said something to the effect of:

There was a bad hardware failure. Hope you backed up your s***.

Look at it this way: at least you don't have a tapeworm.

-The Amazon EC2 Team

Datacenter hardware will bend you over your desk every now and then - no matter who owns it. If it's yours, though, you can send some poor bloke down to the server room in the wee hours of the morning and cattle-prod constant status updates out of him. As a paying EC2 customer, all you're entitled to is basic support, which amounts to airing your grievances on a message board and hoping that somebody at Amazon is reading. Being the straight-up gangster that I am, I luvz me some phone-screamin', and I just can't get that kind of satisfaction from Amazon.

Of course, I could pay more for extended support, but it would be nice if the f***ing thing just worked.

What You Looking At, Google? You Want A Piece Of This?

While I'm running my mouth off here, I might as well take a swing at Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

Google App Engine launched with great fanfare from the Python community. "Finally," they said, "somebody has figured out how to make Python scale." The thought is that any developer will be able to run his Twitter-Facebook mashup on the same framework that Google uses to run their apps. Infinite, magical scalability that you don't have to think about, data storage that you don't have to manage, and a language that's easy to program. Sounds great!

That's all well and good, but something tells me that the Google search engine (you know, the thing that makes money) isn't written in Python, making this just a proper beat off for the web programming community. I have further evidence. I have yet to see a program more impressive than a task and time manager running on the Engine. Killer app, indeed.

Google App Engine offers a developer all of the things that he would look down his nose at an ops manager to provide: data storage, web hosting and caching. Web developers are too busy to worry about the app to figure out why the database is running slow. No, it couldn't be a grotesquely complex query anywhere in my code. It's a database problem. The DBA must have f***ed something up in the config. Yeah, that's it. If those DBAs weren't always down at the pub, we could get some real work done around here.

I do have to give both Google and Amazon some credit, though. Both noticed that the only ones to make any real money off of the California gold rush were the outfitters who sold mining equipment.

Cloud Computing's Next Form: Green Tech

As time goes on and venture capitalists get pitched, this technology will continue to change names to mask its stagnation. The next time around, it will be pitched as a "green" technology. Why ruin the environment with your data center? You can run a social media website and still love the earth.

Energy-efficient computers powered by sunshine. This will be an instant hit. There will be greenhouse gas output dashboards with neat little Ajax widgets. You'll have calculators to figure out how much to pay for carbon offsets each month. Don't believe me? Follow the money. "Green" technology is the most efficient, modern way to capitalize on liberal guilt. You also get to pass it off as altruism. Combine that with a web development community that runs on self-satisfaction and you've got a recipe for profit. Best of all, you can squeeze money out of an investor for this by making him feel ashamed to be a person of means.

What started as a noble cause has finally finished its devolution into a racket.

No matter what the name, you, the developer, will still be dealing reliability and accountability. Using someone else's infrastructure for your application will forever be a business risk, but it sounds so much less so with a cuddly name. Your CTO will fall for the next cycle pretty easily. The compunction he feels for his latest data center build-out will outweigh the downsides of an external dependency.

[The Register]