A new version of the popular GPU reporting tool GPU-Z has just been posted at Techpowerup, taking the revision number to 0.3.1.

The listing of fixes and updates for this new release are as follows :-

GIGABYTE has quickly rushed out its variant of NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 285 graphics card to market and a lucky lad over at the HKEPC forums has scored himself one for some playtime.

He kindly posted up a bunch of pics and info of the card (GV-N285-1GH-B) of which he purchased for the equivilent of around $413 USD.

Further to initial reports in Q4'08, more evidence has come forth which supports NVIDIA's intent to move all of its lower/mid-range GPU lineups across to the GTxxx naming scheme.

A channel vendor of Acer and Packard Bell PCs has advertised three of its latest desktop PCs with entry-level GeForce graphics cards under the new naming; a GeForce G100 which carries 512MB memory, GT120 with 1GB and GT130 which supposedly carries a whopping 1.5GB memory (surely they're mistaken here?!).

With Voodoo now under HP's wing we've been seeing some interesting gaming oriented systems introduced at the desktop and portable levels that continue to show what Voodoo does best, innovation. Another which is in the works and will be showcased in just a few days at CES (in prototype form); the HP/Voodoo Firefly, a gaming notebook that houses a rich feature-set with exclusive touches.

laptopmag have come through with the goods early on, getting some hands-on time with the notebook and sharing with us their thoughts along with plenty of pics.

Having already taken the capacity lead in the storage market with its 1.5TB beast, Seagate is now looking to make the next leap and will begin shipping single platter 500GB HDDs as early as next week. They will be available for purchase for less than 50€.

Kicking off a new series of drives, the Barracuda 7200.12 500GB HDD is codenamed ST3500410AS and features a 16MB buffer with 3.0 Gbps SATA interface. Its singular platter not only makes it more economical/cheaper to manufacture, but technically it should run with lower access times as well.

After you have recovered a little from your New Year's Celebration You might want to head over to Theo Valich's Blog.

He has a very interesting read on the direction computer and peripheral companies are headed. He penned this as a sort of response to a Blog entry by Rahul Sood from Voodoo HP. Sood declaims (in his blog entry) that the high-end PC is dead while pitching Voodo's upcoming Blackbird 003 which is a small and neat little device.

Read Theo's article here.

There is bad news for people that use online banking and shopping (which is most of us). Security experts have discovered that there is a fairly easy way to mimic the digital ID for CA authority sites.

A multinational team was able to mimic the Digital ID for RapidSSL. RapidSSL still used the MD5 method of encrypting its Digital Certificates. MD5 is an older encryption standard and has a more than a few known weaknesses. This enabled them to generate fake certificates signed with the false ID.

The exploit play off of a weakness in just about all internet browsers.

nVidia is still having a rough time, Not with GPUs and MCH chips. No this time it seems they are going in the wrong direction with their newest 3D Glasses.

If you have ever tried a pair of these (not just from nVidia) they are not exactly the easiest thing on the eyes. They usually consist of a pair of glasses that are little more than small displays that alternate the image between your town eyes creating a 3D Effect. The last pair I used gave me a headache that lasted a couple of days.

According to Charlie Demerjian; nVidia is using a similar technology to the migraine inducing ones I remember. The Green team are choosing this technology at a time when everyone else is moving away from active glasses for that very reason.

If you are a regular watcher of the TV Show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe you know that not everyone agrees with the new "Green" movement. Many companies and Celebrities wave the green flag and talk about protecting the environment. But are they really doing anything about it? Or is it all just talk.

Amongst the Green talking companies we have Apple, they even went so far as to claim their latest line of MacBooks was the "Greenest Ever". Problem is they are not that green at all. They still contain Chips with High Lead in them and still put off carbon monoxide like everyone else. Green Peace pointed this out to us and Apple eventually pulled the ads.

The latest company to be caught lying about being green is Dell. Dell has made claims that it was a Neutral Carbon foot print. However, the Wall Street Journal points out that they are making that claim while omitting a great deal of information. Dell is only including the carbon emissions produced by its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings' electricity use, and its employees' business air travel. But not any of the oil used to make its parts or the fuels used to ship them etc.

The band of thugs that is the RIAA has had a major disappointment handed to them as their one and only Victory in court has been labeled a mistrial.

In the continuing saga of RIAA Vs the Single Mom, the original presiding judge now realizes that he was in error by informing the jury that simply the act of making content available constituted copyright infringement.

RIAA, in a mad dash to protect its one win, submitted an appeal to prevent the mistrial. However the judge wisely denied it without even making a comment.