ZTR-DAC BLOG

Gamespot
is reporting that long-delayed S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl,
developed by GSC Gameworld and published by THQ, has finally gone gold.
The announcement was made by THQ’s Executive Vice President, Kelly
Flock, at THQ’s Gamer’s Day Event in San Francisco. After six years of
development, the title is to be released on the 22nd of March, 2007.

Link: Official Developer Site | Official Pulbisher Site
News source: Gamespot

Warner/Chappell
Music, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group Corporation, and
Microsoft Corporation announced a worldwide music publishing
administration agreement, whereby Warner/Chappell lays claim to
compositions for Halo, Halo 2, Age of Empires, Fable, Kameo and other
video game franchises, including music in future video games to be
published by Microsoft Game Studios. Financial terms were not
disclosed. Warner/Chappell will also claim and register Microsoft-owned
copyrights in all territories worldwide, as well as identify and
develop new synchronization, performance and other music publishing
opportunities for the Microsoft music publishing catalogs.

In making the announcement, Ed Pierson, Executive Vice President, Legal and Business Affairs, Warner/Chappell Music, said, "Warner/Chappell
is proud to partner with a technology leader like Microsoft and
delighted to be the worldwide publisher for the company’s video game
music catalog. We’re confident we can develop and identify some
exciting and unique new licensing opportunities for these well-known
game compositions."

News source: DailyTech

The
next stage in the Command & Conquer Universe has begun. The demo of
Command & Conquer 3 has been released and thousands of C&C fans
around the world are already getting into the action. The demo totals
at 1,206.8 MB.

Download: Command & Conquer 3 Demo (Fileplanet)
Screenshot: >> Click here <<
News source: Planet CNC

Sun Microsystems has released a new version of its Java
Enterprise System (Java ES) set of subscription-based enterprise
middleware with the emphasis on making the offering more modular. The
vendor unveiled Java ES 5.0 Thursday, the first major release of the
bundle since October 2005. The offering brings Sun’s infrastructure
software, support and training together into a single product and is
aimed at companies looking to purchase the vendor’s middleware at a
gradual, predictable rate. Java ES is also available in the form of
individual software suites known collectively as Java System Suites.

"Java ES 5.0 continues a lot of what we started four years ago," said Jim McHugh, vice president of software infrastructure
at Sun. In 2003, the vendor introduced what became Java ES as Project
Orion as a way for customers to buy an integrated middleware stack made
available on a regular quarterly release cycle. Users can begin by
buying the Java ES 5.0 Base for $100 per employee per year, which
includes Sun’s application, portal, and Web servers,
and then choose to add on subscriptions for Sun’s Java System Identity
Manager or its Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS).
Adding in identity management brings the annual cost per user to $140,
which then increases to $200 when Java CAPS is also included.

View: The full story
News source: InfoWorld

Anti-virus
researcher Andreas Cleminti, owner of Innsbruck, Austria-based AV
Comparatives Web site posts quarterly results of tests that compare the
top anti-virus products against a dynamic list of nearly half a million
individual pieces of malware. In his February 2007 on-demand
comparative, Cleminti tested 17 anti-virus programs and found
Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare claimed last place after detecting
82.4% of the threats. G Data Security’s AntiVirusKit (AVK), scored the
best score: 99.5%. Following close behind were: AEC’s TrustPort AV WS
(99.4%), Avira’s AntiVir PE Premium (98.9%), MicroWorld’s eScan
Anti-Virus (97.9%), F-Secure’s Anti-Virus (97.9%) and Kaspersky Labs’
AV (97.9%).

Cleminti also tested the 17 products against
polymorphic viruses, those which produce sometimes vast numbers of
variants as they try to sneak by scanners. "The results of the
polymorphic test are of importance because they how flexible an
anti-virus scan engine is and how good the detection quality of complex
viruses is," said Cleminti in his write-up. Only Symantec’s Norton
AntiVirus and ESET’s NOD32 Anti-Virus caught every variant of the 12
polymorphic families, he said. In that test, OneCare placed 15th,
detecting every version of only two families, and missing seven of the
polymorphic families completely.

"We are looking closely at
the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live
OneCare performs better in future tests," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Link: AV Comparatives | Forum Discussion (Thanks macstorm)
View: February 2007 On-demand Comparative
News source: ComputerWorld

Thanks to voidunknown for submitting this to the Front Page.

It
appears that Keznews forum member Snooza has discovered a method that
effectively obtains a Windows Vista key which can then be activated.
The idea is a simple brute force attack: the software generates keys
and when it finds one, you manually have to check if it activates. The
8-step method can take anywhere from two minutes to two days. Members
of the forum have verified the strategy and claim it works. This
technique should worry Microsoft, not because they are losing customers
to piracy again, but because the customers who are actually spending
the money on the latest Windows version may start being unable to
activate the software with a legally purchased key. It seems that the
main issue is time, and with today’s modern PCs, it really isn’t that
much of a problem. Evidently, pirates would rather wait a couple of
hours, than go to work and make the money needed to purchase a legal
copy. The author of the article over at Keznews has a disclaimer which
emphasizes that, "under no circumstances should anyone sell the key
that they generate. I do not support Piracy, this was simply an
experiment in which i used to practice my vbscripting. This was just
for fun and was a complete accident! I strongly encourage everyone to
purchase windows vista, and be a genuine customer!"

That hasn’t stopped him from offering his crack as a public download.

Link: Forum Discussion
News source: the Inquirer