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Concerned about privacy while web browsing? There’s no need to fear, Browzar is here! This freshly released web browser claims to automatically delete all history, autocomplete, cookies, etc created during the course of a normal web browsing day.

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Download Browzar here

Prices appear to range from $100 to $399, even though the article goes on to quote Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos as declining to comment on Amazon’s presale, saying that Microsoft is still finalizing its pricing model. Amazon’s site also goes on to estimate an availability date of Jan. 30th, based on informal conversations with Microsoft.

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Enterprise anti-virus vendor Sophos on Aug. 23 released a free rootkit detection and removal tool alongside a warning that the stealthy malware threat is a legitimate security concern for businesses.

Sophos, of Lynnfield, Mass., said its rootkit cleaner offers an easy-to-use interface to scan all running processes, local hard drives and the Windows registry for rootkits.

The company joins a growing list of Internet security vendors adding rootkit-scanning capabilities to their product lines. Finnish anti-virus outfit F-Secure offers the BlackLight rootkit clean-up utility, while BitDefender and others are beta testing similar offerings.

Rootkits are programs that are used to give a remote user persistent access to a compromised system while avoiding detection from security scanners.

Now the company has released a free scanner that promises to identify known rootkits and selects, by default, malicious files for removal. Sophos said the tool will remove the rootkit component of the malware without compromising OS integrity.

The rootkit detection and clean-up tool will allow users to remove unidentified hidden files, but does not allow removal of essential system files when hidden by an identified rootkit.

Half-Life 2: Episode One Performance

At 1920×1200 the X1950 XTX just 4% faster than the X1900 XTX, but some 17% speedier than NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 GTX. At 2560×1600, the gap widens to 7% between the X1950 and X1900, while our intrepid newcomer out performs the 7900 GTX by 31%.

With an X1950 CrossFire configuration, we can see a 1.5-1.6x improvement in framerates.

Straight off we see poor performance from the 7950 GX2. It should be able to comfortably beat the single-GPU cards, though probably not the X1950 XTX in CrossFire. However, we see it’s only capable of beating X1950 and X1900 by a fractional margin.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

ATI’s cards prove to be comfortably faster than the GeForce 7900 GTX, in the region of 50% quicker, in fact. There still isn’t much of a difference between the X1900 and X1950, however, X1950 6% quicker at both tested resolutions.

CrossFire shows some impressive performance increases at 1.75-1.8x. At 2560×1600 the greatest benefit can be seen, bringing the framerate up into the realm of the playable.

At 2560×1600, the 7950 GX2 seems appropriately fast, compared to the 7900 GTX.

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) Release Candidate 1 (RC1) has been designed to make everyday tasks easier, provide dynamic security protection and improve the development platform and manageability. End user improvements include a streamlined interface, tabbed browsing, printing advances, improved search functionality, instant feeds (RSS), dynamic security protection, and more.

Visit the Internet Explorer site for more information on IE7 RC1.

Counter-Strike: Source was updated this afternoon with several new features, including a re-vamped in-game radar system and a new version of the map Train (now featuring HDR lighting), along with a few other changes. Fire the game up now to check out the new map and features.

Changes/Additions
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• The radar display has been enhanced
• de_train has received a High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting treatment, as well as some bug fixes and layout tweaks
• The player’s eye height while crouching now matches their in-game player model eye position more closely
• SourceTV now shows the weapon in first-person view
• SourceTV supports the tv_transmitall command

Bug fixes
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Assorted exploit fixes

This Unreal Tournament 2007 trailer offers two minutes of high-def gameplay footage.
Download – Filefront – 6838 kbps (112MB)
Download – WorthPlaying – 5395 kbps (80MB)

Unreal Tournament 2007 will have dozens of new, unique levels covering diverse environments, along with an even bigger selection of playable characters. The game will feature seven game modes in total including one all-new game mode, several new vehicles and an armory full of weapons.

Screenshots
Gamespot, WorthPlaying, Planet Unreal, Filefront

Speech recognition has long been a computer industry dream–but it never has become practical reality for most computer users. But researcher Rob Rutenbar argues that using a custom processor rather than software will improve speech recognition speed and lower its power consumption.

“It’s time to liberate speech recognition from the unreasonable limitations of software,” Rutenbar said here Tuesday at the Hot Chips conference. He likened the situation to the now-widespread use of special-purpose hardware for graphics.

The system recognized several short sentences at about twice the speed it took for researchers to speak them. At the same time, its accuracy was about the same as that of Carnegie Mellon’s Sphinx speech recognition software.

Source

Verizon Communications’ and BellSouth’s DSL customers won’t see a reduction in their broadband bills, even though a special fee that had been tacked on to bills to pay for a federal program has been eliminated.

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission changed how it classifies DSL (digital subscriber line) services, thus eliminating a fee that had been charged to all DSL subscribers to help pay into the Universal Service Fund. USF is a federal program that helps subsidize rural telephone service and provide Internet access to schools and libraries.

Verizon DSL customers subscribing to its 768Kbps (kilobits per second) service paid about $1.25 into USF every month, and customers of its 3Mbps (megabits per second) service paid about $2.83 per month, the company said. BellSouth customers were charged $2.97 per month for USF, according to the BellSouth Web site.

But now that the fee has been eliminated, as of Aug. 14, neither Verizon nor BellSouth plan to pass the savings on to consumers. Instead, Verizon has added a new “supplier surcharge” starting Aug. 26 that’s $1.20 per month for the slower service and $2.70 for the faster service.