A senior civil servant has been suspended for leaving top secret intelligence documents on a Waterloo to Surrey train.

The commuting spook left an orange envelope on a seat when he got off the train. It contained two documents prepared for the Joint Intelligence Committee - one on the capabilities of Iraqi security forces and one on al-Qaeda's vulnerabilities marked "UK Top Secret" and "for US/UK/Canadian and Australian eyes only".

The documents were handed in to the BBC which passed them to the police.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office told the Beeb: "Two documents which are marked as 'secret' were left on a train and have subsequently been handed to the BBC.

"There has been a security breach, the Metropolitan Police are carrying out an investigation."

The unnamed male civil servant worked for the Cabinet Office. Police were already searching for the documents which he had reported missing.

Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs committee, called for an official inquiry, as did the Tories.

Civil servants can face disciplinary action for leaving such documents on their desks within Whitehall. Strict procedures are supposed to mean these documents are only considered safe when properly locked up.

The government's review of data security did mean civil servants were carrying copies of documents to work on at home because they were no longer allowed to take insecure and unencrypted laptop computers out of the office. But we kind of hoped the security services took this stuff a bit more seriously.

The government last night won the right to intern terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge. Brown won by nine votes provided by the Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP has denied it did any deal with Brown in exchange for votes.

» Read full story

AMD is partnering with Intel to improve the way its graphics chips can handle physics and other scientific calculations.

Well, sort of. AMD's actually working with Intel subsidiary Havok, which the chip giant acquired last year. Havok operates separately from Intel to develop its Havok FX physics processing API, which allows developers to code up such algorithms to run on GPUs rather than CPUs.

It's main rival was Ageia, developer of a similar API and a dedicated chip, PhysX, to run the calculations. Ageia, however, is now part of Nvidia, which is understandably playing down PhysX while promoting Ageia's software technology as a way of running physics calculations on its own GPUs.

All this stuff is going to run on discrete graphics chips, so it makes more sense for AMD to partner with an Intel company, which isn't competing with it - yet - in the discrete GPU market.

The partnership will ensure that Havok FX can take full advantage of the idiosyncracies of AMD's Radeon GPU architecture and of its x86 processors.

Games, in particular, are increasingly incorporating algorithms that can model complex interactions between players and the worlds they inhabit. Traditionally, these calculations have been handled by the CPU, but they're better suited to the GPU's parallel-processing design, which whizzes through them while the general-purpose CPU would struggle.

» Read full story

Word is spreading that NVIDIA will lower the price of the GeForce GTX 260 from $449 to $399 to make the card more competitive against ATI's Radeon HD 4870.

Here's a little summary of the expected MSRPs:

• AMD Radeon HD 4850: $249
• AMD Radeon HD 4870: $349
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260: $399
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280: $600-$650 ?

Rumors ... of course, another one is that the new suggested retail price might drop as low as $499 for the GTX 280; but that one is very doubtful.

» Read full story

AMD and Intel owned Havok today announced plans to jointly investigate the optimization of physics effects utilizing AMD

» Read full story

Cute .. Elecom has launched very stylish, compact stereo speaker system ASP-CR550P for iPod and ASP-CR550 with 3.5mm stereo mini- plug for digital players and laptops.

The Elecom stereo speaker systems can be used as one piece where space is a problem or as two separate left and right speakers. This clever idea makes it very easy to carry the speaker unit in style when not in use. The Elecom stereo speaker systems ASP-CR550P/ ASP-CR550 with two full range 40mm diameter speakers, 2W (1W+1W) out put are powered by alkaline batteries or AC adaptor. When using the AC power source, the iPod also gets charged. The Elecom stereo speaker system is available in three colors-white, grey and black. The unit measures 64x57x112 mm, weighs 110 g (no battery). The Elecom iPod model ASP-CR550P is available for approximately 5,040 yen ($50) and model ASP-CR550 for 3,780 yen ($37) in Japan.

» Read full story

Western Digital today launched its new line of WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM 3.5-inch SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives for high-performance desktop, workstation and multi-drive systems.

Available in capacities of 750 GB and 1 TB, WD Caviar Black hard drives are part of a new family of WD product categories designed to simplify the buying experience for customers worldwide. WD Caviar Black drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed with the SATA 3 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. WD Caviar Black 750 GB (model WD7501AALS) and 1 TB (model WD1001FALS) hard drives will be available next week for approximately for $199 and $249 respectively.

» Read full story

Heatpipe CPU cooler roundup review

Today Guru3D reviews five heatpipe based CPU coolers from Noctua, CoolerMaster Z600, Tuniq, OCZ Vendetta 2, Coolink. Over the past month or six several new heatpipe based coolers where introduced onto the market. And I already can disclose this .. not one single cooler was doing a below average result. So for this test I decided to go a little more extreme. We'll crank up the usual system requirements a notch by using a fairly high-end PC as we take a Core 2 Duo Q6600 Quad Core processor and then overclock it to 3600 MHz to see how well these coolers still do.

Check out the review here:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/heatpipe-cpu-cooler-roundup-review/

» Read full story

The Xbox 360's infamous Red Ring of Death problem was the price Microsoft paid for attempting to save money by designing its own graphics chip for the console rather than buy one off a specialist supplier, it has been claimed.

Speaking at a chip conference in California, Gartner chief analyst Bryan Lewis said the software giant created the console's graphics engine itself in a bid to reduce the cost of producing the console, EETimes reports.

Had the company gone to a company like AMD or Nvidia in the first place, he suggested, it would probably have avoided the problem. A graphics specialst, he said, would have been able to come up with a GPU that pumped out a lot less heat.

Overheating was fingered early on as the cause of the RRoD failure.

In 2007, Microsoft said it would spend $1bn to fix Xbox 360s suffering from the RRoD.

Microsoft has never given specific details for the reason for the failure. When it announced the $1bn charge, Xbox chief Robbie Bach it said the issue was not related to the console's manufacturing and hinted it was the result of a "Microsoft-initiated design".

Lewis claimed that Microsoft subsequently called on a graphics chip maker - no, he didn't say which one - to fix the problem. It's believed that AMD got the gig, having acquired GPU maker ATI.

It was ATI's 'R500' GPU that was the basis for the Xbox 360 graphics engine. Certainly, ATI was always claimed to be the Xbox 360 GPU supplier - it said as much itself back in 2003.

"We selected ATI after reviewing the top graphics technologies in development and determining that ATI's technical vision fits perfectly with the future direction of Xbox," said Bach at the time.

When the 360 was finally released and able to be taken apart, pundits found both the console's GPU and CPU stamped with Microsoft logos. Essentially, Microsoft took ATI's design, added some extra bits and sent to out to manufacturing.

Last month, it was claimed that Microsoft ordered its first 65nm graphics chip, believed to be intended for use in a further revision of the Xbox 360, codenamed 'Jasper' and due this summer.

» Read full story

Simply amazing. Rev. Richard Patrick has come out of the woodwork to jump on the "games are evil" train and share his myopic, frightened views with the world. The real kicker here is that he suggests having a game burning" without the slightest trace of irony.

Rev. Richard Patrick had this to say, blaming entertainment for crime, rather than, y'know, criminals:

• We are considering having something similar to a rally where parents and children can bring CDs and video games that they consider are destructive to the mind set of our youth and have a burning, just like they had a gun buyback last year...
• Young people are being influenced by what they see and what they hear. They are being influenced by television ... television and videos are telling young people a vision but something that's not reality...
• [Violent media] has a tremendous influence on young people and violence. That's basically all they see. Most of them try to emulate what they see, when in reality, the people they see don't even live in those communities. Some of the rappers they see on TV portraying crime don't live in the urban areas
  

» Read full story

HP TouchSmart PCs feature a clutter-busting, all-in-one form factor made to fit into common areas of your home. The bulky look of a desktop is gone. Instead, there's a sleek, piano-black design with elegant espresso side-panel highlights that add a look of sophistication to any room.

The footprint is smaller, but HP TouchSmart PCs deliver big visuals on a 22" diagonal hi-def widescreen, along with powerful, more energy-efficient performance with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. One cord powers the entire PC. A wireless keyboard and integrated wireless LAN, receivers and dongles reduce dangling wires. Interact with the PC via your fingertip, wireless mouse or low-profile keyboard, which stows away to free space when not in use. With the 22" diagonal hi-def widescreen and built-in premium stereo speakers, your TV shows and videos look and sound awesome on the HP TouchSmart PCs. The HP TouchSmart PCs can be many things to many people: It's a desktop PC, an entertainment PC and a communication hub of the house.

With prices starting from $1,299, the HP TouchSmart 2 sports a 22-inch display, "500GB disk, 256MB of NVIDIA GeForce 9300 M HS HD graphics, 802.11n WiFi, and 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo T5850 processor thumping through the cycles."

» Read full story

Microsoft today released its June 2008 security bulletin, which includes three critical, three important, and one moderate patch. Of the critical, one is for the Bluetooth stack in Windows XP and Windows Vista, one is for DirectX, and another is a cumulative update to Internet Explorer. The one moderate bulletin covers a flaw in the speech recognition feature in Windows 2000, XP, and Windows Vista. Of the important bulletins, one concerns Active Directory and another Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM)

MS08-030: Critical - Titled "Vulnerability in Bluetooth Stack Could Allow Remote Code Execution (951376)", this bulletin is critical for users of Windows XP and Windows Vista (both 32-bit and 64-bit editions). The update addresses vulnerabilities detailed in CVE-2008-1453. The patch modifies the way that the Bluetooth stack handles a large number of service description requests. Microsoft says an attacker could use this to take complete control of an affected system; install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

MS08-031: Critical - Titled "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (950759)", this bulletin affects all users of Windows. However, the critical designation only applies to users of Windows XP and Windows Vista; all others are deemed moderate or important by Microsoft. The update addresses vulnerabilities in CVE-2008-1442 and CVE-2008-1544. The cumulative patch fixes a couple of vulnerabilities including one that could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer and another which could allow information disclosure if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer.

MS08-033: Critical - Titled "Vulnerabilities in DirectX Could Allow Remote Code Execution (951698)", this bulletin affects all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008. This update addresses the vulnerability detailed in CVE-2008-0011 and CVE-2008-1444. Microsoft says the vulnerability "could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted media file. An attacker who successfully exploited either of these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights."

» Read full story

NZXT, a company built on realizing the dreams of gamers worldwide, is proud to announce the Khaos, a high-performance premium gaming chassis in the NZXT Classic Series.  Khaos features breakthrough design in every category effectively satisfying the needs of the most power hungry PC Enthusiasts and Gamers. 

• Unparalleled Design
  

» Read full story

Electronic Arts announced today that Calgary Flames defenseman Dion Phaneuf will be the cover athlete and spokesman for NHL 09.

» Read full story

Nehalem is a codename for both a processor microarchitecture and a processor. Nehalem will be released in late 2008 for high-end chips and early 2009 for mainstream chips. The codenames "Bloomfield" (desktop chip), "Gainestown" (server chip), "Gilo" (mobile chip), and "Beckton" (or "Becton") (server chip) have been associated with Nehalem consistently, but with very few details.

According to a new roadmap, Intel has already prepared three Bloomfield with different clock for different class of users. Till now other spec still TBD and we will wait for Intel

» Read full story

XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Black edition review

King of pre-overclocked products has to be XFX, their speed-bin of releasing OCed products is exceedingly fast. I do not think that there is an XFX product out there that is not available as a triple X edition or other series name slapped on top of it. Today will be no different, we received XFXes top of the shelf product, the GeForce 9800 GX2, the cool thing is that this is the new mystified named 'Black edition' series of cards, meaning it comes with a nice pre-overclock and an lovely game bundle.

Find the full review here:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/xfx-geforce-9800-gx2-black-edition-review/

» Read full story

Last week at Computex we already took some photo's of the new gadget, but Corsair is releasing the Flash Voyager Mini. It's weighing just 5.4 grams and comes in an okay 4GB version worth of storage space and features an all-rubber housing which is supposed to protect it against the elements and shocks.

The Flash Voyager Mini utilizes a cap-less retractable connector plug which easily opens with the flick of the thumb, and its ergonomic rubberized housing makes it easy to connect and disconnect from any computer. This makes it the perfect flash drive for users with busy and active lifestyles. Utilizing the latest Chip-on-Board technology the Flash Voyager Mini is the perfect synergy of size, looks and function.

Features :

• Durable
• Shock Proof
• Retractable connector tip
• Plug-n-Play compatibility via USB 1.1 or 2.0 port
• 10 Year Limited Warranty

» Read full story

it's been confirmed that Call of Duty 5 being called Call of Duty: World at War and is set in the Pacific theatre of WWII. The news comes from subs issues of UK mag games, which landed this morning.

VG247 has an excerpt from the UK mag: "Right, apparently it's going to be grittier, as gritty as ANY game out there to quote. The enemy will be scarier and use new tactics. There will be co-op for the first time in a Call of Duty. Also there will be vehicles and squad-based elements to the multiplayer. Formats: PC, PS3, 360 and Wii. The Wii version is being worked on by a separate team within Treyarch."

» Read full story

According to the Wall Street journal that is. We all know men hate to ask for directions. Apparently they loathe putting directions in computer code, too. Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres
» Read full story

Appearantly Soundblaster driver modder Daniel Kawakami or better known as Creative's Daniel_K is backing off his deal with providing modded software for all Creative sound cards for free. He again might have gotten in trouble with Creative labs and received a second warning mail from Creative threatening him with legal actions.

He is finally "gone for good". He has posted a message over at the Creative forums informing everyone for his decission. MIn my opinion, the email is to vague to be legit. So the email might be fraude as well .. it just doesn't seem to be a legit one. Daniel is still awaiting Creative Labs official response on this new alligation.

Creative labs needs to take a stance in this as this is getting out of hand and definitely will hurt their product sales.

Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 15:25:44 +0000
From: forums@customercare.creative.com
To: dkbox2000@hotmail.com
Subject: Stop the redistribution of Creative software

Hi Daniel,

Please stop the redistribution of any Creative software, otherwise we will take legal action against you.

Creative Labs
http://forums.creative.com

» Read full story

This download is a beta driver providing Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows XP support for Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series of audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

Take note of the following:

* THIS IS AN UNSUPPORTED BETA DRIVER. There is no technical support for this driver.
* We recommend that only experienced users install this driver. Do not install this driver on a system used to perform critical tasks.
* Users who are looking for stable drivers should wait for the final release. When this happens, user should install the latest Sound Blaster X-Fi series driver available.

This download supports the following audio devices only:

* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty

» Read full story