Conficker, the bug that failed to impress anyone on April 1st has been seen to stir.

According to TrendMicro Conficker updated itself through P2P and dropped a payload similar to a keylogger on all of the systems infected. At the same time it appeared that the software was checking internet connectivity by hitting sites like MSN, MySpace and a couple of others.

To make matters more interesting it seems that Conficker may shut down on May 3rd. This is not confirmed and even if it is true the Worm could be reactivated at any time.

In shocking news and in opposition to what most are reporting it looks like at least one ATi partner will be going ahead with a Radeon HD4890X2.

The HD4890, which launched on the 2nd is giving the GTX 285 a good run for its money. ATi and their partners must feel that an X2 version of this part would clean up the rest of the nVidia parts and recapture the speed crown from nVidia.

Read more at Bright Side of News.

While several manufacturers have talked about releasing a 512GB solid state drive, none of them have put their money where their mouth is. Super Talent on the other hand kept their lips seals and has now trumped them all by being the first to have one avaialable for purchase.

The MasterDrive RX drives from Super Talent use their proprietary RAIDSSD technology, enabling extremely fast sequential read and write speeds. MLC drives are available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB models and are rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 160MB/sec. SLC drives are only available in 128GB and 256GB varieties and are rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 200MB/sec.

Boy I just love it when Apple throws its patents around. According to CNet Apple does not want help WC3 Web Applications Working Group with a standard for Widgets.

The Cupertino based company has held out saying that it has a patent that covers how they do things and that should be good enough. W3C proposed an open standard last month to help standardize the way widgets are coded. There is great interest in widgets for smart phones and other mobile internet devices. Apple was quick to whip out its patent once the draft of the standard was sent out.

Read more here.

While fake anti-virus sites are nothing new it would seem they are becoming a booming business and saw a large increase in presence in the second half of 2008.

The rouge AV companies, like Anti-VirusXP and 360, use pop-up messages and fraudulent websites to trick people into paying for security they do not need.

These companies go to great lengths to emulate the Windows security application and popular Norton products. Unsuspecting users then download the full malware and are led to believe they need to pay to get rid of malware they do not have (other than the fake anti-virus app). In most cases once the consumer gives their credit card information it is passed on to others for identity theft. In some they simply take the money and leave the user with an infected system.

One of Google's most well kept secrets has always been the details of their data center. But Google has finally taken the cloak off of the secret bunkers and is showing off their facilities and some of the hardware.

It has always been known that Google's server farm was large. While Google still isn't saying how many servers they have, they are showing off the hardware behind it all. The server that they showed off was a 2U rackmount with two hard drives and eight memory slots and featured its own battery backup.

Although this has nothing to do with computers, I thought it was a pretty cool bit of news and worth mentioning.

GM and Segway have teamed up to create a two seat, two wheel vehicle based off of the Segway design called the P.U.M.A. Paul Miller from Engadget got to take a spin in this nifty little vehicle and was even able to get a video of the ride.

It looks very intriguing, I hope it does not go the way of the first Segway and end up overpriced and quickly ignored in the market.

Well it looks like Microsoft will continue the downgrade program from Vista with Windows 7.

While downgrading is nothing new (businesses using Volume Licensing have been doing it for years) it is still interesting to see MS offer this with their new and supposedly much better OS.

It makes me wonder if 7 is really not much more than Vista with a new GUI. I supposed time will tell on that as Windows 7 is getting closer and closer to launch. Still I am sure it will be comforting for many to know that they can downgrade back to XP if they really, really want to.

Back in January 2008, the SATA-IO team announced that they were working on a Power Over eSATA initiative that would enable eSATA devices to be powered without the need for an external power source, similar to USB. Very little has been heard about it since the initial announcement.

(Click the above image for the large version)

CNET reports that Intel has made some changes to their badging system for CPU's. On top of the new logos, Intel has also introduced a new rating system for their processors. According to the image below the changes took effect April 1st.

Intel says that this is all part of their "aggressive brand simplification plan." Other than just changing the background by adding a picture of a die, the brand and modifier are also easier to distinguish, supposedly making it easier for consumers.