Hackers bypass Windows 7 activation

Hackers have managed to find a way around one of the key antipiracy protections built into Windows 7.

Ordinarily, the operating system requires users to activate their copy of Windows 7 within 30 days. However, a recently outlined method allows the normal notifications to be turned off.
The software doesn't actually get confirmed as legitimate, but users are able to keep using the product indefinitely.



Microsoft confirmed on Friday it is aware of the technique, but said that it is working to shore up the activation procedure.

"We're aware of this workaround and are already working to address it," a Microsoft representative said in a statement, which also urged customers to only use genuine software, noting the fake stuff can contain malware and other bad things.

It's the latest in a long history of cat-and-mouse moves between the makers of Windows and those who would rather not have to pay for the privilege.

Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony

Windows 7 and Ubuntu, despite their opposing missions, can get along like best pals on a single computer. Here's how to set up a dual boot system that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds in perfect harmony.

By default, Windows 7 takes over your boot-up process and wants to be your only OS, and Linux treats Windows like a weekend hobby you keep in a shed somewhere on your hard drive. But I've been dual-booting Ubuntu and some version of Windows 7 for nearly a year, and I've learned a lot about inconveniences, annoyances, and file-sharing necessities, and now I'll walk you through how to set up your systems to achieve a peaceful union of your dual-boot OSes. (Both with Windows 7 already installed, and with a clean system ready for a new dual-OS existence.)
Follow through this guide, and I'll explain how to rebuild a system from the ground up with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, with either a backed-up and cleaned-out hard drive (recommended) or Windows 7 already installed. When we're done, you can work and play in either operating system, quickly and conveniently access your documents, music, pictures, and other files without worry or inconvenience, and boot into either system without having to worry about whether Windows is going to get mad at you. Plus, when Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows 8 come along, you'll find it much easier to install either one without having to start over entirely from scratch.

What you'll need

• Windows 7 installation disc: For clean installations, either a full installation copy or an upgrade disc is needed. If you own an upgrade disc but want to start from scratch, there's a way to do a clean install with an upgrade disc, though that's a rather gray-area route. Then again, there's probably not a person on this earth that doesn't have a licensed copy of XP or Vista somewhere in their past.
• Ubuntu 9.10 installation image: You can grab an ISO at Ubuntu.com, or hit "Alternative download options" to reveal a (usually very fast) BitTorrent link. You'll want to get the ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso download for 32-bit systems, or ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent for 64-bit on AMD or Intel systems (despite the name).
• Blank CD or empty USB drive: You'll need one of these for burning the Ubuntu ISO, or loading it for USB boot. If you're going the thumb drive route, grab UNetBootin for Windows or Linux, plug in your USB drive, and load it with the downloaded ISO image.
• All your data backed up: Even if you're pulling this off with Windows 7 already installed and your media and documents present, you'll want to have a fallback in case things go awry. Which they shouldn't, but, natuarlly, you never know.
• Free time: I'd reckon it takes about 2 hours to pull off two OS installs on a clean system; more if you've got a lot of data to move around.

Setting up your hard drive

If you've got nothing installed on your system, or you've got your data backed up and you're ready to start from scratch, you're in a great position--skip down to the "Partition your system" section. If you've got Windows already installed, you can still make a spot for Ubuntu, though.
(Only) If Windows is already installed: You're going to "shrink" the partition that Windows 7 installed itself on. Before we do that, clean out any really unnecessary applications and data from your system (we like Revo Uninstaller for doing this). Also, open up "Computer" and take note of how much space remains on your main hard drive, presumably labeled "C:". Head to the Start menu, type "disk management" into the search box, and hit Enter.
Windows 7 probably put two partitions on your hard drive: one, about 100 MB in size, holding system restoration data. We don't want to touch it. Right-click on the bigger partition to the right, and choose Shrink Partition.

 After a little bit of hard drive activity and a "Please wait" window, you'll get back the size you can shrink your Windows partition by.

If the space Windows offers doesn't jibe with what your Computer view told you was "remaining," you might need to hit Cancel, then head back and defragment your hard drive, and take some of the steps laid out by the How-To Geek. Run the Disk Management tool again and try a Shrink Volume operation again, and free up as much space as you can.
Partition your system: You're aiming to set up a system with three partitions, or sections, to its hard drive: One lean partition for the Windows operating system and applications running from it, another just-big-enough partition for Ubuntu and its own applications, and then a much larger data partition that houses all the data you'll want access to from either one. Documents, music, pictures, application profiles—it all goes in another section I'll call "Storage" for this tutorial.
How do you get there? We're going to use GParted, the Linux-based uber-tool for all things hard drive. You could grab the Live CD if you felt like it, but since you've already downloaded an Ubuntu installer, you can simply boot a "live," no-risk session of Ubuntu from your CD or USB stick and run GParted from there. Once you're inside Ubuntu, head to the System menu in the upper left when you get to a desktop, then choose the Administration menu and GParted under it.

 
You'll see your system's hard drive and its partitions laid out. You're going to create partitions for Linux and your storage space, but not Windows—we'll let the Windows installation carve out its own recovery partition and operating space. On my own system, I give Windows 15 GB of unallocated space, and Ubuntu another 15 GB of space right after it, with whatever's left kept as storage space. Then again, I've only got a 100 GB hard drive and don't run huge games or applications, so you can probably give your two operating systems a bit more space to grow.
Click on the unallocated space and hit the "New" button at the far left. In the "Free space preceding" section, click and hold the up button, or enter a number of megabytes, to leave space for Windows at the front. When you've got the "space preceding" set, set the actual size of the Ubuntu partition in the "New Size" section, and leave "Free space following" alone. Choose "unformatted" under file system—we'll let Ubuntu do the format itself and hit "Add." Back at the main GParted window, click on the space to the right of your two OS spaces, hit "New" again, and set the file system as "ntfs." Give it a label like "Storage," hit "Add," and at the main GParted window, hit the checkmark button to apply your changes. Once its done, exit out of GParted and shut down the system from the pull-down menu in the upper-right corner.
If Windows is already installed: If you've shrunk down its partition for free space and booted into a live Ubuntu or GParted, click on the "Unallocated" piece next to the two "ntfs" partitions that represent your Windows 7 installation and system recovery tools. Create a 15(-ish) GB unformatted partition, and give it a label like Ubuntu. If you've got a good deal of space left, format it as "ntfs" and label it something like "Storage." If can just barely fit the Ubuntu partition, you can just keep your media files in the Windows partition—until you can remedy this with a full wipe-and-install down the line.
Experienced Linux geeks might be wondering where the swap space is going—but don't worry, we'll create one, just not in its own partition.

Installing and configuring Windows

Grab your Windows 7 installation disc—either a full copy or modified upgrade disc, and insert it into your DVD drive. If your system isn't set up to boot from CD or DVD drive, look for the button to press at start-up for "Boot options" or something similar, or hit up your system maker's help guides to learn how to change your boot order in the BIOS settings.
Follow through the Windows 7 installation, being sure to choose "Custom" for the installation method and to point it at that unallocated space we created at the beginning of your hard disk, not the NTFS-formatted media/storage space we made earlier:

Work your way through the Windows 7 installation, all the way until you reach the Windows desktop. Feel free to set up whatever programs or apps you want, but what we really want to do is set up your Storage partition to house your pictures, music, video, and other files, and make your Libraries point to them.
Hit the Start menu, click Computer, and double-click on the hard drive named "Storage" (assuming you named it that earlier). In there, right-click and create new folders (or hit Ctrl+Shift+N) for the files you'll be using with both systems. I usually create folders labeled Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos—I could also see folders for saved games and data files from big software packages. Copy your media files into these folders now, if you'd like, but we've got a bit more tweaking to pull off.
In the left-hand sidebar, you'll see your "Libraries" for documents, music, pictures, and video. At the moment, they point to your Public shared folders and the My Pictures-type folders on your main Windows drive. Click once on any of the Libraries, and at the top of the main panel, you'll see text stating that this library "Includes: 2 locations ...". Click the blue text on "2 locations," then click on each of the folders below and hit "Remove" on the right-hand side. Now hit "Add" and select the corresponding folder on your Storage drive. Do the same for all your music, pictures, videos, and other media folders.

Want to add another library for quick access? Right-click somewhere on the desktop, choose New->Library, and follow the steps.
That's about it for Windows. Now get your Ubuntu CD or USB stick ready and insert it in your system. Ignore whatever auto-play prompts appear, and restart your system.

Installing and configuring Ubuntu

Restart your computer, this time booting from your Ubuntu Live CD or USB boot drive. When your system boots up, choose your language, select "Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer," and you'll boot into a "live" desktop, run entirely off the CD or USB stick. Once you're booted up, try connecting to the internet from the network icon in the upper-right—it helps during the installation process, ensures your network is working, and gives you something to do (Firefox) while the system installs.
Click the "Install" link on the desktop, and fill out the necessary language/location/keyboard info (most U.S. users can skip through the first 3 screens). When you hit the "Prepare disk space" section, select the "Specify partitions manually" option, then hit Forward. Select the free space that's after your first two Windows partitions with ntfs formats, then hit the "Add" button at bottom. Your partition should already be sized correctly, and the only thing to change is set "/" as a mount point. Here's what your screen should look like:

Click OK, then finish through with the Ubuntu installation. If it catches your Windows 7 installation, it might ask if you want to import settings from inside it—you can, if you'd like, but I usually skip this. Wait for the installation to finish, remove the CD or thumb drive, and reboot your system.
When you start up again, you'll see a list of OS options. The only ones you need concern yourself with are Windows 7 and the top-most Ubuntu line. You can prettify and fix up this screen, change its settings, and modify its order later on. For now, let's head into Ubuntu.
We're going to make the same kind of folder access change we did in Windows. Click up on the "Places" menu, choose "Home Folder," and check out the left-hand sidebar. It's full of links to Documents, Pictures, and the like, but they all point to locations inside your home folder, on the Linux drive that Windows can't read. Click once on any of those folder, then right-click and hit Remove.

You should see your "Storage" partition in the left-hand sidebar, but without that name—more like "100GB filesystem." Double-click it, type in the administrator password you gave when installing, and you'll see your Documents, Music, etc. Click and drag those folders into the space where the other folders were, and now you'll have access to them from the "Places" menu, as well as any file explorer window you have open.
Ubuntu won't "mount," or make available, your Windows 7 and Storage drives on boot-up, however, and we at least want constant access to the Storage drive. To fix that, head to Software Sources in the System->Administration menu. From there go to Applications, then the Ubuntu Software Center at the bottom. Under the "Ubuntu Software" and "Updates" sections, add a check to the un-checked sources, like Restricted, Multiverse, Proposed, and Backports. Hit "Close," and agree to Reload your software sources.

Finally! Head to the Applications menu and pick the Ubuntu Software Center. In there, search for "ntfs-config," and double-click on the NTFS Configuration Tool that's the first result. Install it, then close the Software Center. If you've got the "Storage" or Windows 7 partitions mounted, head to any location in Places and then click the eject icon next to those drives in the left-hand sidebar. Now head to the System->Administration menu and pick the NTFS Configuration Tool.
You'll see a few partitions listed, likely as /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and the like. If you only want your storage drive, it should be listed as /dev/sda3 or something similar--just not the first or second options. Check the box for "Add," click in the "Mount point" column to give it a name (Storage, perhaps?), and hit "Apply." Check both boxes on the next window to allow read/write access, and hit OK, and you're done. Now the drive with all your stuff is accessible to Windows and Linux at all times.

Adding swap to Ubuntu

"Swap" memory is a section of the hard drive that your system's memory spills over into when it gets full and busy. Until recently, I'd been creating a whole separate partition for it. Recently, though, I've found that swap isn't always necessary on systems with large amount of memory, and that swap can simply be a file tucked away on your hard drive somewhere.
Follow the Ubuntu help wiki's instructions for adding more swap, but consider changing the location they suggest putting the swap file—/mnt/swap/ for the place your Storage is held—/media/Storage, in my case.

Share Firefox profiles and more

That's about it for this guide to setting up a harmonious Windows and Ubuntu existence, but I recommend you also check out our previous guide to using a single data store when dual-booting. It explains the nitty-gritty of sharing Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin profiles between Linux and Windows for a consistent experience, as well as a few other dual-boot tricks.
You might also want to consider creating virtual machines with VirtualBox for those moments when you're in one OS and need to get at the other. Ubuntu is free to create as many instances as you want, of course, and Windows 7 (Professional and Ultimate) are very friendly with non-activated copies—not that either can't be otherwise activated in cases where it's just a double-use issue.

Breaking : AMD and Intel Announce Settlement of All Antitrust and IP Disputes

Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) today announced a comprehensive agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes between the companies, including antitrust litigation and patent cross license disputes.
In a joint statement the two companies commented, “While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.”
Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement, Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement, and Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion. Intel has also agreed to abide by a set of business practice provisions. As a result, AMD will drop all pending litigation including the case in U.S. District Court in Delaware and two cases pending in Japan. AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide. The agreement will be made public in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“This is a historical settlement for the microprocessor industry. The settlement will set transparent ground rules for open, competitive markets, with which Intel, in full public view, has agreed to comply. Fair and open competition dictates that the best product wins and market forces prevail. I am very confident that this development will help us strengthen our market position.” said Ramkumar Subramanian, VP, Sales & Marketing, AMD India.
So, as long as the competition keeps going, we as the customer have the freedom of choice and the market remains democratic. The day there’s monopoly, the company is free to manipulate the market for its gains and innovation hits a dead end. Any company needs to realize that competition is necessary and healthy. It helps them innovate and come up with new products to one-up the competition. It also justifies the reason to pay salaries to their sales & marketing departments that help promote the brand and attack the competition.
Did you even care about the dispute? Would you now care about this settlement? Do you think it affects you – the end consumer? Share your thoughts.

Microsoft To Ban Xbox Players Who Run Pirated Games

Technology giant Microsoft has plans to ban Xbox players who run illegal pirated games in their Xbox console from using live services that will enable them to connect with millions of users in their network with whom they can compete against with.
Recent announcement from Microsoft states that they have developed a new technology that will point out the users who are using pirated copy of games in their console and will ban them from connecting to the network, although these players can continue to play games offline with their pirated games.
Xbox is said to have to around 20 million users in its network worldwide and it is expected that about a million users will be affected by this new system approximately. The main aim of Microsoft in making this move is to encourage and support game developers, retailers and third party people who take pains to provide and develop great games.

As you might have know it already one of the best selling gadget in Amazon is their latest e-book reader kindle, following its success Amazon is looking forward to increase their e-book business further as there seems to be a lots of competition from their competitors like Google and Sony who have a major plans ahead of them in dominating the industry. I am really not surprised by this move from amazon offering this free application to all PC users that will enable them to access all the ebooks available for Kindle users from their own PC and gives them the ability to buy books directly through this application. This application is still in Beta phase but I am sure you should not be facing big bug issues with this one. 

NSF backs development of laser-guided robot wheelchairs

It's been well over a year since we last saw the laser-guided, self-docking wheelchair developed by folks at Lehigh University, and now the team is back with an altogether more ambitious project. According to associate professor John Spletzer, the recipient of a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the goal is to "extend the autonomy of the wheelchair so it can navigate completely in an urban setting and take you wherever you need to go." This will be done by equipping robotic chairs with laser and camera sensors (which the team developed for the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge) as well as exhaustive, Google Street View-esque maps of the city where they will be operating. Of course, these guys will be operating in a busy urban environment, so in addition to large-scale 3D maps, they must be equipped with motion planning features for operating in dense crowds and a changing environment. It's too soon yet to say when these things might become available commercially, but if you're a resident of the Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Allentown, PA, you might have your chance to test one soon enough.

Verizon unveils Hero-like, $100 Android phone

Verizon Wireless announced its second Android phone, the $100 Droid Eris, which is based closely on the HTC Hero and its Sense UI. In related news, HTC is upgrading the Hero to Android 2.0, and Motorola announced a Europe-destined multi-touch, GSM version of the Droid called the Milestone.

The Droid Eris -- which for those of you keeping score at home, appears to be the rumored HTC Desire -- will be available tomorrow along with the much hyped Droid by Motorola, but for half the price. The phone appears to be nearly identical to the HTC Hero, which was introduced this summer by Orange in the U.K., and adopted by Sprint. The only major difference, apparently, is the Eris' slightly thinner, but boxier case, and some redesigned button controls (see phones side by side below).
 Verizon's Droid Eris (left) and Sprint's HTC Hero (right), both by HTC


Compared to the Droid by Motorola, the Eris has a smaller (3.2 inches), lower resolution (320 x 480) capacitive touchscreen, and it lacks a slide-out keyboard. In addition, the Motorola model's 550MHz ARM Cortex-A8 based CPU is considered more powerful than the 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7600 used in the Hero and Eris, despite the similarity of the clock speeds. The Eris is sold with an 8GB card, or half the flash memory provided by Motorola's Droid, but four times the memory offered standard with the Hero. Like the Hero, the Eris provides 288MB RAM, and 512MB internal flash, and the 8GB microSD card can be swapped out for up to 16GB, half the limit touted for the Mot phone. In addition, the Eris ships with the earlier Android 1.5 (Cupcake) instead of this fall's version 1.6 (Donut), or the new Android 2.0 (Eclair) that is offered with the Motorola Droid.

  Otherwise, the feature comparison is surprisingly similar despite the $100 difference in price. (Sprint's Hero, by the way, is now available for $180, or $80 more than the Eris).
Like both the Droid by Motorola and the HTC Hero, the Droid Eris offers WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, GPS, digital compass, and even a five-megapixel camera. A 3.5mm headset jack and a USB port are also provided, and cellular network support is listed as including CDMA dual-band 800/1900MHz and CDMA2000 1xRTT/1xEVDO rev. A.
(For a more detailed list of Eris features see the HTC Eris link at the end of the story, or look to our initial coverage of the HTC Hero, here.)
Sense comes to Verizon
Unlike the Droid by Motorola, the Eris offers the HTC Sense UI, which is layered atop the Linux-based Android operating system. The Sense UI offers a seven-panel wide home screen studded with customizable widgets, as well as a "Scenes" feature that enables users to spin off multiple home screens, each with different widgets and shortcuts, says Verizon. In addition, users can set up customized profiles and other user-specific functions.
HTC Sense is also said to offer unified messaging features for managing and integrating phone calls, emails, text messages, photos and other data. For example, users can organize interactions by person, accessing access text messages, e-mails, phone calls, Flickr streams, and Facebook updates from a single contact card.
The Eris also provides a full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities, as well as "seamless compatibility with Google services like Google Maps, Gmail, Google Search and more," says Verizon.

HTC preps Eclair for Hero, raises questions on "Dragon"
In other HTC news, the company recently announced on Twitter that the HTC Hero and its Sense UI will be receiving an Android 2.0 (Eclair) update soon, skipping over Android 1.6. This would seem to suggest that the Droid Eris, too, might also soon offer the latest, greatest Android, which Verizon ships with the Droid by Motorola.


Meanwhile, rumors about an upcoming Android version of HTC's hot new Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Windows Mobile phone, the HD2, called the HTC Dragon, were thrown into question by recent comments from the company's CEO. As reported recently on our sister site, WindowsForDevices, CEO Peter Chou told Forbes that HTC has no plans to make an Android version of the HD2. Still, Chou seemed to keep his options open by saying, "Technically, we could make the HD2 an Android phone, but I have to take care of Windows Mobile."
If the HTC Dragon is for real, it is likely to offer the Snapdragon, but it may be sufficiently different in design from the HD2 to enable Chou to say it's not the same phone. Stay tuned.
Mot's Droid packed off to Europe as the "Milestone"
While Motorola's much-hyped Droid will start shipping tomorrow on Verizon Wireless' U.S. network, along with the Droid Eris, a new GSM-enabled version called the Milestone is heading for Europe, Motorola announced this week. The company did not mention carriers or ship dates, but said the Milestone will first appear in Italy and Germany.
The phone appears to be identical to the Droid except for the quad-band GSM radio. However, one more differentiating feature also jumps out: the Milestone offers a "multi-touch and pinch display," with "pinch and zoom web browsing," says Mot.
This may be great news for European users, but why isn't this iPhone like capability also available on the Droid? Well, as it turns out, it just may be, at least on one app called Picsay. Neither Verizon or Motorola are saying much about it, however, perhaps to avoid running afoul of Apple patents.

Verizon's Droid by Motorola That is the speculation of PC World's Harry McCracken, anyway. In a recent review, McCracken had noted that the Droid lacked the iPhone's multi-touch input, only to be surprised today when he read a story by Rob Jackson in Phandroid, pointing out that the Droid's Android image editor, Picsay, uses multi-touch. This, together with the Milestone announcement, would suggest an underlying capability of the Droid that is not being implemented elsewhere.
McCracken confirmed the discovery, noting that Picsay let him control the Droid using more than one finger at a time, including the ability to "zoom in and out of images by pulling and pinching them." In other Droid apps, users must "double-tap to zoom in, or use zoom/shrink buttons that appear in the lower left-hand side of the screen," writes McCracken.
He then speculates that Verizon Wireless, Motorola, or Google are wary of running afoul of Apple's multi-touch patents. Yet, he also cites Engadget's Nilay Patel as saying pinching and pulling are not likely to be covered by the patents. One point in favor of that argument: the Palm Pre, which offers multi-touch and pinch/zoom capability has yet to be sued by Apple on that score, despite the ongoing battle between Palm and Apple over iTunes sync.
Early Mot Droid reviews: "a killer phone"
With our without multi-touch, McCracken liked the Droid by Motorola, by the way, as have most reviews we've seen. eWeek's Michelle Maisto has rounded up two very favorable reviews meanwhile. One is from the New York Times’ David Pogue and the other is by the Wall Street Journal’s Walter S. Mossberg.
According to Pogue, the Droid isn't an iPhone killer, but he was said to have enthused "it’s certainly a killer phone." Pogue went on to write, "Motorola’s new team faced a spectacularly difficult task and did a spectacularly great job."
Mossberg, meanwhile, called the phone "the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola phone I’ve tested and the best hardware so far to run Android."
Over at Gizmodo, meanwhile, Matt Buchanan dubbed the Droid "the best phone on Verizon, and with Android 2.0, the second best smartphone you can buy, period." The other, of course, is the iPhone 3GS. As with many reviews, this one went gaga over the quality of the display and the overall design, as well as the vast improvements to Android 2.0. Like several reviewers, Buchanan notes, however, that the keyboard is only mediocre, and he absolutely slams the camera on both hardware and software fronts. Still, all this pales in comparison to the Droid's other benefits, he concludes.
Availability
The Droid Eris by HTC will be available, along with the Droid by Motorola, in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online tomorrow, Nov. 6. The Eris will sell for $100 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement on a voice plan that an includes an e-mail feature or e-mail plan, says Verizon. As with the Droid by Motorola, the mail-in rebate is offered in the form of a debit card.
More information should be available at Verizon tomorrow, here. Meanwhile, more tech information may be found at HTC, here.
HTC's tweet about its Eclair upgrade for the Hero should be here.
The PC World story on the Droid's multi-touch capability should be here, and the Phandroid story on the same topic should be here. Additional speculation on why the Droid is differs from the Milestone in this regard can be found on the Engadget website, here.
eWEEKs round-up of Droid reviews may be found here, and its slide show investigation of the Droid should be here.
Gizmodo's Droid by Motorola review should be here.

Moblin v2.1 for Netbooks and Nettops Ships

The Moblin project today released Moblin v2.1 for Intel Atom processor-based netbooks and nettops. The incremental release reportedly adds an installer for Moblin Garage apps, additional languages, and 3G data connection support, along with a host of performance, stability, and documentation improvements.

The release was announced today by Imad Sousou, directory of Intel's Open Source Center, in a Moblin.org post, here. Topping Sousou's list of touted improvements was a better browser, something many early reviewers have clamored for. Wrote Sousou, "After much work, we are including a new internet browser application that far exceeds our previous browser performance and adds full support for features such as plug-in support and add-ons."

Other highlighted improvements include:

• 3G Data Support using Ericsson MBM 3G modems
• Application Installer Integration
• Clutter 1.0
• Bluetooth audio, input, OBEX and phone modem device discovery and pairing via a toolbar panel
• ConnMan stability, performance enhancements
• UI scaling for "a wide range of nettop resolutions"
• Improved Instant Messaging account setup and connection manager improvements, including "transparent connection to your friends on your local network"
• System-wide input method support.
• Localization in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional
• Community translation project working on additional languages
• Upgraded versions of key open source apps involving Moblin developers: the Linux kernel version 2.6.31, Intel Linux graphics driver 2.9, X server 1.6.4, and Mesa 7.6
• Updated documentation, sample code and updates to the Moblin SDK

A full list of changes and known issues can be found here, while a list of "tested netbook and nettop hardware" should be here. The Live CD image can be downloaded directly here.

Apple opens doors to France's first Apple Store

Thousands flocked to The Carrousel du Louvre on Saturday, the scene of France's first Apple Store opening.

Beneath the Louvre Museum in Paris one can find a host of high-end shops and eateries and can now also find France's first Apple store. Saturday saw the store's opening, and thousands were on hand to peruse Apple's current line of products and take advantage of the Genius Bar's knowledgeable staff.

Gary Allen at ifoapplestore.com was there opening day and made several interesting observations. Allen reports that the employees were using the new iPod Touch POS devices and even managed to snap a few pictures of the tool in use. Called the EasyPay touch, it combines iPod touch features with a magnetic stripe reader, advanced barcode scanner and Apple-written software to facilitate both plastic and cash transactions. It replaces the Pocket-PC based solution currently in use in stores which opened prior to Paris.

 

Allen notes that the store "shares several features of the more spectacular Apple stores in the chain - views for visitors." Lower-level visitors have views of the spiral-glass staircase and can peer through the 30-foot tall window to the outside which is dominated by the inverted glass pyramid unique to the Carrousel du Louvre mall.

During a press briefing at the new location, Apple executives noted that France will see the fastest rate of new store openings of any other country to date. The Montpellier location will open Nov. 14 and summer 2010 will see a store near the Opera Ganier.

Manhattan Apple Store Spy Shots

Gizmodo has a spy-shot of the flagship Manhattan Apple Store slated to open on Saturday. The store is located at Broadway and 67th and reportedly cost $37.0 million dollars to construct.

Acer AspireRevo AR1600-U910H Review And Specifications

I see Acer Aspire Revo as something unique reason is it doesn’t fit in to the group called desktop nor it does fit in to Notebooks absolutely not, I see this product as something which goes in between both, its portable like a laptop but still its not really a laptop but again as its portable and can be carried along with you where you travel I don’t think it fits in to desktop range of PCs as well.

As of now it doesn’t feature attractive specifications but I think its enough for your normal computing needs as you travel along with this desktop and also it may prove to be a perfect solution for your kids. Design part of this desktop certainly saves a lot of space for you on your desk or where ever you choose to keep it. You have an option to mount this one to the back of your monitor which will save you further space but you need to pay a little extra for the mount separately.

Product Features
* 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 Processor
* 1024 MB DDR2 Memory, Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader
* 160 GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive, No Optical Drive included
* Integrated NVIDIA ION LE Graphics, 6 USB 2.0 Ports, VGA & HDMI ports,
* Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3, USB Keyboard & Mouse
Processor, Memory, and Motherboard

* Hardware Platform: PC
* Processor: 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 230
* Number of Processors: 1
* RAM: 1000 MB
* RAM Type: DDR2 SDRAM
* Memory Slots: 2
Hard Drive
* Size: 160 GB
* Type: Serial ATA
Cases and Expandability
* Size (LWH): 7.1 inches, 1.2 inches, 7.1 inches
* Weight: 9 pounds

Software Bugs Can Cost Your Life Sometimes

I know the title might sound little strange but its true that software bugs need to be taken little seriously, There special people appointed by software companies paid thousands of dollars for software testing and report the bugs before the actual software is being released to the public and these softwares are being used by us, whether we are conscious about it or not, almost every device we use runs on a specially designed software.
Some of the software which are used in complex medical instruments can be a threat to many people’s life if they were not tested properly and debugged effectively for the these machines to work properly, recently there was a case reported in United States that a patient is been threatened to death by a machine resembling CT scan, Gamma knife is used to treat tumors in brain, person wears a special helmet screwed to his skull before being exposed to the focused gamma radiation exactly over the tumor. Gamma rays can be dangerous if anything goes wrong in the whole process and Gamma knife posed a threat to a patient when the emergency stop button failed to function and literally making the staffs of the hospital to manually pull the patient out of the machine and later it was found that it was due to the minor bug found in the software that makes the machine to run and function properly from the commands received from buttons.
Just make sure when your loved ones or known friends are been taken to special therapy or some treatment which involves machines that runs on specialized software works perfectly without any bugs or problems as this may pose a serious threat to their life under unwanted circumstances.

Using gimmicks properly: hands-on with Avatar The Game

It's hard to get excited about a game based on a film. We've all been burned so many times before—remember Watchmen: The End is Nigh and X-Men Origins: Wolverine—that it's often hard to believe a great movie-based game will ever be made. And while Avatar: The Game might not be the title to change all that, it's certainly trying.

The game will be appearing on virtually all viable platforms, but different systems will receive different experiences. I was able to check out the game on both the Wii and the Xbox 360, and while both versions are very different beasts, they share at least one common thread: a love of new technology and peripherals.

  Like the film it's based on, the 360 version, which will be the same as the versions hitting the PlayStation 3 and PC, will support 3D visuals. Displayed on a not-yet-available television utilizing Sensio 3D technology, Avatar: The Game looked absolutely stunning.

The lush, alien world of Pandora really pops, with fog and smoke swirling just off the screen. But by far the most impressive bit of visuals were the flying sequences. The 3D rendering of the helicopter looks great, and I had to fight the urge to reach out and grab the tail of the craft as if it was actually in front of me.

But while I was able to view the game on a $4,000 3D enabled set, I was told that it would also run on TVs that are 120Hz capable and have an HDMI output.

Disappointingly, it looks like the visual technology is the main draw for this title. The action itself is a fairly standard third-person, mission-based shooter. Built using the Far Cry 2 engine, Avatar: The Game has players taking on missions which consist mostly of collecting objects while staving off the aggressive inhabitants of the planet. These inhabitants range from explosive plant life to raging Na'vi warriors—the tall, blue alien species from the film. I was told that the key to success was picking the right weapon for the right job, but in my brief time playing I found that the grenade launcher solved almost any problem just fine.

"We wanted a game that was accessible for people who saw the movie," an Ubisoft representative explained, possibly explaining why the main game felt so straightforward and relatively simple.

One interesting aspect is a meta-game that looks very similar to the board game Risk. Using experience points earned in the main game, players can expand their army's reach by conquering new areas of Pandora, adding another layer of complexity to the game.

The Wii version, meanwhile, obviously doesn't feature the same level of visual fidelity as its 360 counterpart. It's a good -ooking game, but it smartly takes advantage of some of the strengths of the console. Namely, its wealth of peripherals.
Taking place before the events of the film, the Wii version of Avatar puts players in the role of a Na'vi warrior whose village was destroyed, and is now hell-bent on getting revenge. The game is a combination of stealth action and flying segments, both of which utilize a different Wii add-on.
The action segment I was able to play took place in a gully, with the game guiding me along a predetermined path. Littered with enemy soldiers—who often seemed to ignore me until I actually attacked—the goal was to sneak up on them and dispatch them quietly, so as not to alert others in the areas. This could be done in one of two ways: taking the high road and dropping down on the target, giving them little time to react, or sneaking in the brush where you can't be seen and quietly taking out enemies from behind.
Attacks are made using a combination of button presses and Wii remote gestures, and, though it wasn't on display, the game will support MotionPlus to make these gestures more "intuitive." What exactly that means remains was unclear.
Far more interesting, though, was the flying segment I was able to try, which made use of the Wii Fit Balance Board. Essentially you use your feet to fly. It takes some time to get used to, especially considering you'll also be using the Wii remote to aim and fire as you tilt back and forth controlling your craft, but eventually the controls come to be fairly intuitive. The section I played was very early in the game, and essentially served as a tutorial: you maneuver your way around obstacles while firing at unmoving targets. I was told that things will pick up significantly though, as ship-to-ship combat is introduced later in the game.
"The action definitely picks up," the Ubisoft rep explained.
Avatar on the Wii also features an RPG-like character upgrade system, where you can collect orbs and then use them to level up attributes like strength and stealth, depending on what type of player you are. There's also a drop-in, single-screen co-op mode.
All told, both versions of the game looked solid. But what has the potential to set them apart from the hordes of movie licensed games available is their clever use of different gimmicks. The 3D visuals really do add a lot to the experience, while the Balance Board controls make an otherwise unremarkable portion of the game more enjoyable. Whether these will be enough to make Avatar one of those rare, satisfying movie games, remains to be seen.

Spy Shots Of Lenovo Thinkpad Released

Its been believed that spy shots of Lenovo think pad has been released recently, Latest Thinkpad is one of the most expected release from Lenovo for Thinkpad fans around the globe and the latest shy shots of this Thinkpad had grabbed the interests of many. If you are a Thinkpad fan then just peek in to this Spy shots. Lenovo hasn’t denied the claim of these shots are of actual Lenovo think pad and at the same time they hadn’t approved the claim either they just made a statement that they cannot tell anything about the product until its actually released. Till then just enjoy the spy shots and believe it to be the actual picture of forth coming release of Lenovo Think pad.

Highly Anticipated Windows 7 Is Finally Out

Microsoft has finally made an official announcement of their release of Windows 7 Operating System. Highly anticipated release of the latest operating system from Microsoft promises more user friendliness in this release and also they promise that PCs will run more faster than their previous of windows vista. One of the best features of windows 7 is that this version will now support touch screen technology. they have increased the security features to a new level.
The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $ 299, with improvements being $ 199. Windows 7 ultimate price of $ 319 million with an upgrade version of $ 219. The full version of Windows 7 Home Premium at $ 199, with upgrade from Windows Vista or XP costs $ 119.
So if you were looking forward for this release from Microsoft then this is the right time for you to go ahead and purchase your copy of Windows 7

Palm Pre Facing Poor Sales? Drop In Prices On Palm Pre

We are really not quite sure why Palm Pre prices are going down again to $99.95 but if you just rewind the tape a little and look back at the past initially this device was actually planned to be released for a price of about $199.95 but then Bell decided to get the price down to $149.95 lately but again they have decided to bring down the price tag to $99.95, well it may be great news for customers of Bell as they are getting a smart phone which was initially thought to cost them $199.95 but I really don’t see it as a good sign for Bell or Palm for certain. May be people are more biased towards range of android devices nowadays over others perhaps.

Will Google Advertise Droid Handset Like Chrome?

When we think of the latest release of Motorola droid from Verizon on the one end we are eagerly waiting for its release soon and on the other end one thing that pops up on my mind is apple’s iphone. Will droid pose a competition to iphone? It wont come as a surprise to me if it did because as we have already seen a lot of features being displayed over blogs all over internet with the features that Droid has in store for us.

From the information what we have already we know for sure that droid is going to be an excellent handset with great display and features is sure to excite many buyers but when we think of iphone on the other hand its been while for sometime on the market and it has already gained a huge reputation among users all over the world and it has already gained a more user base can droid able to compete well against the more established market of iphone? as we already know one of the biggest player on internet Google is involved in the whole project with this device featuring Android 2.0 so do you think Google will use its adwords and also its one of the most popular and well known homepage in the whole world to advertise about droid handset like it did for chrome web browser to millions and millions of people around US ? We have to wait and see.

Renault To Launch Production Of Zero Emission Cars

One of the most popular french car manufacturer renault well known for its releases of vast range of mini cars and family cars that are compact enough to fit in to tiny parking spaces. Renault has already started its work on next generation zero emission electric powered cars and they have managed to grab a lot of attention in the recent Frankfurt Motor show and they have made an official announcement recently regarding the production of these zero emission cars and they will be available in market by 2011.

The Cloud: a short introduction

The Cloud: a short introduction

Few terms have been as simultaneously hyped and reviled as "cloud computing," but there's definitely more to the phenomenon than just a buzzword and some vague talk of "efficiencies" and "agility." We've put together this short, simple introduction to cloud computing that you can send to your CIO the next time you catch him abusing "the cloud" at a meeting.

 

There's a kind of supply-and-demand dynamic that applies to technical terms—when a few knowledgeable insiders are hoarding a word, it maintains its meaning, but when the masses get hold of it and abuse it, it's quickly emptied of value. This is certainly the case with "the cloud," a term that used to mean something, and now means everything and nothing. "The cloud" is so overused by startups desperate for VC money, and by big companies desperate to look like hip startups, that IT professionals are increasingly wary of anything cloud-related. It doesn't help that the image conjured by the word is of something vaporous, flimsy, and fleeting—whatever cloud is, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you want to entrust critical business functions to.
Despite the fact that everyone seems to see a different shape when they stare at it, there is something worth preserving in "the cloud" as a term that usefully describes one approach to what is often called "utility computing," which latter term is itself a metaphorical way of speaking about a business model centered around the idea of computing power as a service like electrical power.
In first defining and then describing cloud computing in this brief article, my aim is to provide a useful definition for IT professionals who are tasked with exploring cloud services as a potential avenue for finding new efficiencies, reducing fixed costs, tackling scaling challenges, and solving novel problems at Internet scale. My secondary audiences for this piece are IT pros who need to quickly explain "the cloud" to a clueless CIO, and clueless CIOs who'd rather not have to rely on IT pros to explain buzzwords to them.
This article takes a historical and comparative approach to the topic of cloud computing. First, I'll introduce the venerable client-server model, a model of which cloud is just the latest instance, and then I'll contrast the cloud with its immediate predecessor, the grid. Finally, I'll describe the three-tiered model of cloud services.

A brief history of client-server

One of the most common questions asked by cloud skeptics is, "isn't cloud just client-server?" The answer to this is, yes, it is. There are many producer-consumer relationships at every level of computing, from the individual system out to the network, that can usefully be thought of in client-server terms. For instance, a PC's main memory serves a variety of clients scattered throughout the system via DMA requests. In general, a client-server relationship is characterized by a single producer that allows multiple consumers access to its resource pool.
In this respect, cloud fits the client-server model, and, insofar as the typical cloud client is the same as the typical enterprise client (i.e. single desktop or laptop computer), some observers have a tendency to stop at this level of analysis. But, of course, the real action in the cloud happens on the server side of the equation, and that's where things get interesting. But before we get into the cloud in earnest, let's take a brief look back at client-server.
There are essentially two kinds of resources that a server can provide to clients: storage and compute cycles. Client-server models can generally be categorized according to which type of resource they provide.
Chronologically, the first type of client-server pair to become popular was the mainframe and terminal. Since storage and CPU cycles were so expensive, the mainframe pooled both types of resources and served them to thin-client terminals. With the advent of the PC revolution, which brought mass storage and cheap CPUs to the average corporate desktop, the file server gained in popularity as way to enable document sharing and archiving. True to its name, the file server served up storage resources to clients in the enterprise, while the CPU cycles needed to do productive work with those resources were all produced and consumed within the confines of the PC client.
The '80s also saw the rise of the supercomputer, which featured a large, homogenous array of processors and was designed to serve CPU cycles to "fat-client" workstations. Supercomputers were limited to government (mostly military) and government-sponsored parts of academia, not just because those sectors were the only ones with the appetite for that much number crunching power, but because those types of public institutions had pockets deep enough to afford these machines (it was very, very expensive to pool CPU cycles and serve them at a scale that could actually do useful work).
But while the supercomputer market was heating up along with the Cold War that much of its output went toward fighting, the seeds of that market's destruction were being sown by both Moore's Law and the Internet.

The grid, and the rise of utility computing

In the early 1990s, the budding Internet finally had enough computers attached to it that academics began thinking seriously about how to connect those machines together to create massive, shared pools of storage and compute power that would be much larger than what any one institution could afford to build. This is when the idea of "the grid" began to take shape.
The term "grid" is a metaphor deliberately drawn from the realm of electricity generation, where electric utilities provide power over a "grid" network to clients who pay on a metered basis for the electricity that they consume. The idea behind the grid model, and the related concept of "utility computing," was that a sufficiently large number of networked computers could be pooled together like a giant, virtual supercomputer or file server, and access to that pool of compute or storage resources could be sold in an on-demand, metered fashion.
In all, grid computing features a large number of networked, often geographically and institutionally separate nodes that together make up a shared pool of compute resources. Data and computational grids are characterized by autonomous, homogeneous nodes that are loosely coupled and often use public networks. Note that the grid's loose coupling of nodes is a major characteristic that distinguishes it from the cluster, a similar multinode computing concept with which the grid is often confused. Clusters feature nodes that are connected by very high-bandwidth links, and this bandwidth advantage gives them a lot more average compute power per node than a grid because nodes don't spend as much idle time waiting on data to arrive.
Computational grids are more common than data grids, and applications have to be specially written for such grids and designed to scale to a large number of parallel nodes. A typical computational grid client turns to the grid because he needs to run a massive, compute-intensive job that will occupy a large subset of those nodes for a given period of time.

The grid. Different colored jobs belong to different clients.

(One of those jobs belongs to the Department of Defense.)

Grid jobs are often run in batches, where available nodes are pooled together and then assigned work that monopolizes them until it's done. (Note: many grid nodes, like those involved in the distributed.net project, also run local client software simultaneously with their grid job; but from the point-of-view of the grid, that node is still working on a single job.) When the grid job is complete, the nodes are released back into the pool of available resources, and are ready for some other client to use.
One key aspect of the grid is that multiple institutions can share the same hardware resources without worrying about anyone else on the grid gaining unauthorized access to their data. Even though the data is on a publicly accessible grid, it remains accessible only to the client that owns it. It's also the case that the grid hardware itself often has many institutional and/or individual owners—each party contributes compute resources to a shared pool, and in exchange, contributors can bid for cycles from that pool.

The cloud

The cloud is the same basic idea as the grid, but scaled down in some ways, scaled up in others, and thoroughly democratized.
Take a look at the diagram below, and contrast it with the grid diagram above:

The cloud. Different colored jobs belong to different clients.

(One of those jobs belongs to your 18-year-old nephew.)

Like the grid, the cloud is a utility computing model that involves a dynamically growing and shrinking collection of heterogenous, loosely coupled nodes, all of which are aggregated together and present themselves to a client as a single pool of compute and/or storage resources. But though the server side of the model may look similar, most the major differences between cloud and grid stem from the differences between their respective clients.
Instead of a few clients running massive, multinode jobs, the cloud services thousands or millions of clients, typically serving multiple clients per node. These clients have small, fleeting tasks—e.g., database queries or HTTP requests—that are often computationally very lightweight but possibly storage- or bandwidth-intensive.

Cloud vs. Grid

Another difference between the cloud and the grid is that the grids are biased toward serving compute cycles, while clouds typically offer more in the way of storage than cycles. Indeed, most grids would be very ill-suited to cloud workloads like Web serving, and most clouds would fall far short of grid clients' massive compute needs.
Because of the nature of their respective client profiles, clouds and grids also have different ownership characteristics. I noted above that grids tend to be multi-institutional, where institutions and/or individuals all contribute hardware resources that are then shared by other contributors. A cloud, in contrast, is always owned by one institution, regardless of whether use of the cloud is open to clients outside that institution or not (i.e., whether the cloud is public, private, or hybrid).

Cloud services: tiers and fears

Cloud services are offered at three basic levels, or tiers, that are distinguished by the level of abstraction that each presents to the client. These tiers roughly map to the three layers of the standard hardware/OS/applications stack familiar to anyone who uses a PC.
The lowest cloud tier is infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), which looks to the client like a dynamically scalable pool of compute and/or storage resources. The basic metered unit of IaaS is usually either a single virtual machine (e.g., Amazon EC2) or an abstract storage object of a certain size (e.g., Amazon S3).
Next up the ladder of abstraction is platform-as-a-service (PaaS), which provides API-level access to a cloud infrastructure layer. Examples of PaaS are Google AppEngine and Force.com. Because PaaS offerings often come wrapped in a vendor-specific API, the use of this layer pretty much locks you into a particular vendor. It's at this tier that enterprise customers must take seriously the risk/reward tradeoff between the convenience and agility afforded by a vendor's cloud offering and the potential inconvenience of being unable to easily move away from that vendor's platform should business or technical considerations demand it.
The final and most popular tier of cloud service is software-as-a-service (SaaS). Google Apps and Salesforce.com are the two paradigmatic SaaS examples, and they're so ubiquitous that not much more needs to be said about this cloud tier.
Insofar as anyone old enough to have their name on a credit card can instantly access a growing suite of services at all three of the above levels to build applications at Internet scale, the cloud represents a huge step forward in the democratization of access to compute resources. A college freshman can tap hardware and software resources that a Fortune 500 company could scarcely dream of just five years ago. But as transformative as the cloud paradigm is, especially for individuals and smaller organizations, it has met with some well-justified resistance in enterprise circles.
For many IT pros, the most important aspect of all cloud services at any of the three tiers is that they all ultimately depend on servers that someone else owns and controls. When I asked the Ars Server Room to define "cloud computing" this past April, "black box" was a word that came up quite a bit in the responses. IT pros are fine with black boxes as long as they're on the inside of them and their users are on the outside, but when IT is outside the black box as well, the comfort level drops markedly.
This issue came up at a press roundtable for the launch of the OpenCirrus cloud testbed a little over a year ago. Intel's Andrew Chien suggested that IT departments are concerned about the loss of control associated with a shift to cloud services, and that they're attached to the status that the "trophy server" or "trophy datacenter" confer on their department. When IT is asked to give up the critical parts of the company's capital that it "owns" so that this infrastructure can be replaced by cloud services that IT will still have to support, the IT function gets something that looks suspiciously like a classic raw deal: less control, fewer resources, and more responsibility.
To return at last to the definitional problem posed at the outset of this article, I'd like to offer a definition of cloud computing that I hope will be relatively unoriginal and uncontroversial, but nonetheless useful:
Cloud computing is an approach to client-server in which the "server" is a dynamically scalable network of loosely coupled heterogeneous nodes that are owned by a single institution and that tends to be biased toward storage-intensive workloads, and the "clients" are a wide variety of individuals and institutions that use fractions of shared nodes to run jobs that are transient with respect to time, lightweight with respect to compute-intensity, and anywhere from lightweight to heavy with respect to storage-intensity.
In the next article, we'll take a closer look at some of the actual technologies involved in cloud computing. Most of the discussion will be centered on Google's cloud, but we'll also look at clouds from a few other vendors.